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RUPERT EVERETT’S ‘THE HAPPY PRINCE’
ITALIAN GREAT MARCO BELLOCCHIO
DEBRA GRANIK’S ‘LEAVE NO TRACE’
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Contents July 2018
28
FEATURES
20
Cannes: days of seeing wild
The Croisette may have felt a little
quieter than usual, but a selection of truly
outstanding, socially aware Asian films
– from the likes of Lee Chang-dong, Bi
Gan, Jia Zhangke and Palme d’Or winner
Koreeda Hirokazu – helped make the
festival one of the most memorable for
many years. By Nick James PLUS Nick
Bradshaw on the treats to be found in
Critics’ Week and Directors’ Fortnight,
which turned 50 in style this year
28
COVER FEATURE
The irrepressible Agnès Varda
After more than six decades working
contentedly in the margins, the artist and
filmmaker is finally gaining the wider
recognition she deserves. S&S contributors
discuss key aspects of her brilliantly
idiosyncratic work, outlining her central
role in the French New Wave and exploring
her rich visual style, deep love of play and
sharp sense of place. PLUS Kiva Reardon
talks to the director herself
46 40
Power politics:
Vanishing point the films of Marco Bellocchio
In a career steeped in Italian history,
Debra Granik’s Leave No Trace, about a teenager living in the Marco Bellocchio’s by turns defiantly
wilds of Oregon with a military veteran father, is a fine political and slyly anti-authoritarian films
have been marked by a mordant sense
film that taps into America’s pioneer spirit. By Ryan Gilbey of authority’s enduring appeal.
Henry K. Miller looks back at his career,
REGULARS and talks to the director about his time as
5 Editorial Field of vision Wide Angle a student in the London of the early 60s
14 Point of View: Christopher Small
Rushes unravels the truth about Manny
6 On Our Radar: forthcoming attractions Farber’s termites and white elephants
8 Interview: Christina Newland 17 P rimal Screen: Ellen Cheshire
meets Jonas Carpignano, whose explores the influence of silent cinema
neorealist The Ciambra explores on the work of Jane Campion
the lives of Calabrian Romani 19 Profile: Kieron Corless rediscovers
9 T he Numbers: Charles Gant on how Peter Emmanuel Goldman – a
Funny Cow gained northern exposure brilliant lost filmmaker
10 I ndustry: Mark Cousins celebrates
Belfast’s filmgoing heritage, PLUS 95 Letters
Sam Manning on the cinephile
haven of the Queen’s Film Theatre Endings
13 Interview: Anna Bogutskaya 96 Adam Scovell shudders through
talks to Ari Aster, director of the hauntingly violent last 40
the terrifying Hereditary moments of Witchfinder General
July 2018 | Sight&Sound | 1
CLASSICS
Nominated for nine Academy Awards including Best Picture, Stanley Kramer’s The Defiant Ones,
starring Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier broke new ground by delivering its message of racial tolerance
through a fast-moving blend of action and suspense.
On Blu-ray for the first time in the UK in a special Dual Format edition, featuring a new video interview with critic & author Kim Newman and more.
no way out
Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s No Way Out, starring Richard Widmark and Sidney Poitier, is an electrifying film-noir
about a doctor whose ethics are put to the test when he comes into conflict with a racist criminal.
Released for the first time ever on Blu-ray in a special Dual Format edition (DVD & Blu-ray),
featuring a two part documentary on the legendary director, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, a reversible sleeve and more.
COVER
Photo by Thomas Laisné/
Contour by Getty Images
Hand-drawn type by
Sarah J. Coleman at Inkymole
NEXT ISSUE
Digital edition available from 9 July
On UK newsstands: 12 July
And online this month Soundwalk Collective in Godard’s
archives | 1968 Ireland: Rocky Road to Dublin | 1968 Mexico: El grito |
Sheffield Doc/Fest | Israel’s DocAviv bfi.org.uk/sightandsound
July 2018 | Sight&Sound | 3
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Jonathan Romney, Film Comment
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EDITORIAL
Editor
Nick James
Editorial Nick James
Deputy editor
Kieron Corless
Features editor
James Bell
Web editor
Nick Bradshaw
Acting production editor
Anna Coatman
FIELD OF VISION
Chief sub-editor
Jamie McLeish
Sub-editors
Robert Hanks
Jane Lamacraft
Researcher
Mar Diestro-Dópido
Credits supervisor
Patrick Fahy Three of the greatest filmmakers in the world have
Credits associates been in the spotlight of late. The 25th anniversary
Kevin Lyons
Pieter Sonke of Jane Campion’s Palme d’Or-winning The Piano is
James Piers Taylor
Design and art direction
being marked by a UK cinema rerelease. It will follow
chrisbrawndesign.com on the heels of Lucrecia Martel’s astounding 18th-
Origination
Rhapsody
century drama Zama, which is unlike any costume
Printer drama you’ve ever seen, if it can even be called one
Wyndeham Group
at all. And Claire Denis has been in the news for two
BUSINESS reasons. Her study of dating in later life Let the Sunshine
Publisher
Rob Winter
In, starring Juliette Binoche, has just been in cinemas,
Publishing coordinator while her next film, High Life, an English-language
Natalie Griffith
Advertising consultant
SF drama starring Robert Pattinson, is already being
Ronnie Hackston publicised in advance of its emergence later this year.
T: 020 7957 8916
That these three filmmakers are of the same gender
Jane Campion seems to draw out a
M: 07799 605 212
E: ronnie.hackston@bfi.org.uk is not my main reason for mentioning them here. finer essence from actors. Her work
Newsstand distribution I’m thinking more about what else distinguishes
Seymour
T: 020 7429 4000 them from the general run of filmmakers, and the
also treats the landscape setting as an
E: info@seymour.co.uk outstanding difference is that they all make films uncanny presence, almost a character
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bearing a unique visual stamp. While the singularity
T: 020 8525 8800 of these films is presumably the result of collaboration enhanced visual acuity? Yes and no. I’m not suggesting
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with cinematographers and, no doubt, deep obstinacy that there’s a particular kind of cinema that’s inherently
Sight & Sound is a member of the
Independent Press Standards
in the face of financiers, it’s obvious that these female, only that the wider the pool of life experience
Organisation (which regulates the UK’s directors all have personal approaches to visual brought to the look of films, the more multi-dimensional
magazine and newspaper industry).
We abide by the Editors’ Code of language. This is a short space in which to elaborate and startling cinema is likely to be.
Practice and are committed to
upholding the highest standards of what goes into these visions, so I’ll generalise. Two films I saw at Cannes substantiate this view.
journalism. If you think that we have
not met those standards and want to Campion loves actors, as much for their sensual Nadine Labaki’s Jury Prize-winning Capernaum (see my
make a complaint please contact
rob.winter@bfi.org.uk. If we are unable
presence, for how they move and touch things, as for Cannes report on page 20) looks at first like countless
to resolve your complaint, or if you their delivery of lines. You might say that all directors other neorealist films. It’s shot on the streets and in real
would like more information about IPSO
or the Editors’ Code, contact IPSO on should feel that way, but Campion seems to draw out interiors, and cuts quickly to capture the incredible
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Sight & Sound (ISSN 0037-4806)
a finer essence from actors. Her films and television bustle of Beirut street life for dispossessed immigrants
is published monthly by British Film series also always treat their landscape setting as an and children, like its 12-year-old estranged hero. But
Institute, 21 Stephen Street, London
W1T 1LN and distributed in the USA uncanny presence, almost a character in itself. as you watch it you feel a different texture building,
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Denis is the most adaptable of the trio in the sense sense of the artform. Before Cannes I was getting
15% discount for BFI members that the physicality of, say, her renowned Foreign concerned that moving image culture was slowly
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ON OUR RADAR
p Edinburgh International Film Festival q Albert Finney: Son of Salford q Sheffield Doc/Fest
Venues across Edinburgh, 20 June – 1 July HOME Manchester, 3-24 June Venues across Sheffield, 7-12 June
The world’s longest continually running Albert Finney came to fame in 1960 with his Sheffield Doc/Fest is celebrating its 25th birthday,
film festival returns this year with a focus on blistering performance as Arthur Seaton, the and its programme this year features a series
Scottish cinema. Scottish films, filmmakers antihero of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning of live performances that reflect Sheffield’s
and acting talent and films shot in Scotland (pictured). The Salford-born actor went on to forge collaborative arts and music scene, including a
are all spotlighted in a programme that kicks a long and varied career – which is celebrated in new live score by GAIKA, responding to Khalik
off with the international premiere of Puzzle, this season of his films at HOME Manchester. Allah’s new film Black Mother (pictured).
in which Glasgow-born, Aberdeen-raised
actor Kelly Macdonald (pictured) stars as a
woman who finds an escape route from her
unfulfilling life when she discovers she has an
exceptional talent for solving jigsaws. Other
highlights from across the festival include
the UK premiere of comedy Swimming with
Men (see review, page 78); a live version of
Jaws (1975) accompanied by a performance
of John Williams’s score by the Royal
Scottish National Orchestra; and a pop-art
drama, Make Me Up, the latest creation of the
Glasgow-based video artist Rachel Maclean.
WORLDS APART
Jonas Carpignano explores the
lives of Italian Romani caught
between crime bosses and
the police in The Ciambra
By Christina Newland
Jonas Carpignano’s second feature, The Ciambra,
is a neorealist fable about a teenage boy forced
prematurely into adulthood. The film focuses
on a real Romani family living in Ciambra, a
cloistered neighbourhood in Calabria in southern
Italy, starring a 14-year-old from the area named
– in real life and in the film – Pio Amato.
A beetle-browed kid with a raft of unruly
siblings, Pio is thrust into Romani manhood
after his brother and father are arrested. He
steals cars and hocks stolen goods to help
support his family, who live under the yoke
of local organised crime and in constant fear
of police harassment. Carpignano’s film is an
authentic ethnography of a still-persecuted
group, and a thoughtful coming-of-age story
set against a backdrop of racial exclusion.
Christina Newland: Often, non-Romani
filmmakers struggle to get access to these
communities. Can you tell me about getting to
know Pio and his family prior to making the film?
Jonas Carpignano: I actually met them in 2011.
I was shooting a short film called A Chjàna
[The Plain], and one of Pio’s relatives stole my
car. That was the first time I ever went to that
community, to get my car back. I remember
meeting them and it was the first time I’d ever
seen this neighbourhood and this community.
I thought to myself, if I’m living in this town, I
want to know every facet of it. The relationship
was born out of genuine curiosity and wanting
to get to know people. A lot of filmmakers make
the mistake of just trying to approach and say, About a boy: Pio Amato (left) in Jonas Carpignano’s portrait of Romani life in Calabria, The Ciambra
“We want to make a movie.” Automatically
it creates a dividing line between subject and as a hopeful treatment of issues within like Pio would make a decision he makes in
filmmaker. But luckily that was something we the European Roma community? the film. To me, it’s respectful to them to say,
didn’t have. It felt like their voices would be JC: It’s a realistic assessment of the way life “This is good enough to be in the film.” I don’t
heard, and their participation was important. is there. It’s important not to exaggerate the like self-censorship where people say, “It’d be
CN: What challenges did shooting on circumstances or morph the psychology of more hopeful if…” That’s problematic. It’s a way
location, with real people, present? living there, just to appease other people. I feel of saying that the way you live your lives isn’t
JC: The entire film was shot in Pio’s house. good enough, so I’m going to put a first-world
That’s his neighbourhood, those are actually his The entire film was shot in Pio’s ideological spin on it that’s more palatable to
relatives. Those clothes are theirs. It was very other people. That’s wrong. I find the film to be
much a film that, as faithfully as possible, was house. That’s his neighbourhood, hopeful because it’s always hopeful when people
born out of what it is to live in this community.
It provided a lot of advantages and a lot of
those are actually his relatives. are given opportunities to speak about how they
actually live. Even though I don’t think we’re
challenges. On the one hand, I didn’t have to Those clothes are theirs there yet, where they feel like they can fully
worry about them not feeling comfortable in integrate into our town, I do think if there is some
their surroundings: shooting in their houses way to integrate, a path forward, it’s going to be
made them feel comfortable and lends an through someone like Pio. I do feel the film will at
authenticity to their performances. But on least make some people in our town realise that,
the other hand, there were moments when if that were to happen, it wouldn’t be so difficult.
people just didn’t want to go to work. So the CN: I want to ask you about your depiction of
same thing that was great about it was also the migrant African community and the Roma
bad about it. They never felt like they were in in Italy. While writing the film, what compelled
a movie and had to perform, but also because you to think about these groups side by side?
they didn’t feel like they were in a movie they JC: It wasn’t that I set off with the thesis of
would make us adapt to their rhythms and wanting to explore these two marginalised
what they wanted to do on a normal basis. communities. It just happened – we all lived
CN: There’s a bit in the film where Pio’s together. It became an important thing to look
grandfather says, “Remember, it’s us at, because the way things are happening with
against the world.” Do you see this film Jonas Carpignano the migrant community right now in Italy,
By Charles Gant
When it comes to releasing independent
and arthouse films, it’s accepted wisdom
among UK distributors that audiences are
more likely to be found in the south-east
corner of the country. But for the release of
Funny Cow – which tells the fictional story
of an aspiring stand-up comedian (Maxine
Peake) in the sexist pubs and working
men’s clubs of northern England in the
1970s and 1980s – UK distributor eOne was
determined this would not be the case.
As eOne marketing boss Chris Besseling
explains, “Depressingly, time and again with
quality indie films, 50 to 60 per cent of the
box office ends up being London and the
South-East. We felt that everything we did with No joke: Maxine Peake in Funny Cow
Funny Cow had to be focused on the North
– with marketing and publicity, in terms of 6.5 times the opening number. And while
spend, use of talent and our launch events.” London and the South-East have contributed an
On social media, spend can be accurately unusually low 32 per cent of the total, Yorkshire
targeted, and eOne assembled a media buy alone has contributed 24 per cent, and the North
skewed to women over 35 in northern cities. and Midlands collectively 57 per cent. Top venue
Meanwhile content was widely promoted for the film is HOME Manchester, followed by
through social channels by talent associated the Broadway in Nottingham, the Showroom in
with the film with particular pull in their Sheffield, Cineworld Sheffield, Tyneside Cinema,
city or region of origin: Peake (Manchester), FACT in Liverpool, Picturehouse Bradford and
Richard Hawley (Sheffield), John Bishop City Screen York. Besseling says: “It is really
(Liverpool) and Vic Reeves (the North-East) refreshing and rewarding that the audience we
– “Everyone from these different parts of the went after was the audience that turned out.”
Northern arts scene with huge followings At HOME, Funny Cow ranks fourth in
and respected voices,” Besseling says. admissions for the year so far, behind only
The film was launched with a premiere at Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,
Sheffield Showroom and a Q&A screening at Lady Bird and Isle of Dogs. Jason Wood,
HOME Manchester. The BFI Audience Fund the venue’s artistic director for film, says,
supported activity, including female stand-up “Our audiences are attracted to films that
comedy nights at cinemas in the region. eOne authentically depict their lives and experiences.
also hired a regional marketing officer – a The fact that Funny Cow stars Maxine Peake,
tactic it had tried successfully on a bigger a HOME regular, and features a strong female
scale in 2016 with Ken Loach’s I, Daniel Blake. character further convinced me that it would
Funny Cow opened on the sunny weekend be a success for us. I, Daniel Blake, God’s Own
beginning Friday 20 April, debuting with a so- Country and Lady Macbeth were likewise
you see these tent places where they all live. so £68,000 from 62 cinemas. Notable bright great successes for HOME, and I think we’ve
That is very much the way some people in the spots were the North and the Midlands – a built an audience base and a reputation for
Roma community used to live at the turn of success skew that has only strengthened supporting and nurturing those kinds of films.
the century here. If you look at the way African over the course of the run. At press time the Funny Cow, which seems to just run and run,
communities integrate and form ghettos on film had reached £440,000 – an impressive will, I’m sure, pave the way for more.”
the outside of these communities, it’s very
similar to the way the Ciambra formed. It was NORTHERN-SET INDIE MOVIES AT THE UK BOX OFFICE
important to look at whether there could be
solidarity, and what the limits of that solidarity
could be. Centuries apart, these two groups Film Year Gross
have lived relatively similar experiences. Billy Elliot 2000 £18.4m
CN: Criminality has been associated with
gypsies for centuries. Some filmmakers East Is East 1999 £10.4m
would want to smooth those edges off for
fear of negative stereotypes, but I think Little Voice 1999 £8.50m
your instinct not to do that was right.
JC: It’s too easy to say, “Not all gypsies are I, Daniel Blake 2016 £3.42m
criminals.” OK, that’s totally true. But what are Brassed Off 1996 £3.39m
you saying about the people who are criminals?
That they are no longer worthy of sympathy The Damned United 2009 £2.24m
or cinematic portrayal because they do things
that are against your moral compass? That’s the Looking for Eric 2009 £1.31m
question I ask myself. Why does that person
become unworthy of representing being a Control 2007 £1,21m
‘gypsy’? Because they do something you don’t Millions 2005 £1.50m
approve of? That’s very first-world stuff.
The Ciambra is released on 15 June, Nowhere Boy 2009 £1.35m
i and is reviewed on page 62
FIVE TALL TALES: Budd Boetticher & Randolph Scott at Columbia, 1957–1960
5x film, 5x Blu-ray, limited edition (6,000) box set with 80-page book 28 May 2018
18 June 2018 18 June 2018 23 July 2018 20 August 2018 20 August 2018
GRIEF ENCOUNTER
Ari Aster’s Hereditary, a terrifying
portrait of a family coming apart
at the seams, channels the spirit
of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining
By Anna Bogutskaya
Hereditary, the debut feature by American
writer-director Ari Aster, premiered to great
acclaim at Sundance earlier this year, and has
had many hailing it as an instant genre classic.
A nightmarishly claustrophobic tale of grief,
madness and tension within a family, all anchored
by a vivid, emotionally violent performance by
Toni Collette, the film has drawn comparisons
with Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980) for
the way the horror of madness seeps through
the family, destroying it from the inside out.
A graduate of the American Film Institute
Conservatory, Aster had already made a name
for himself on the festival scene with his six
well-received short films, the first of which, the
very twisted The Strange Thing About the Johnsons
(2011), has spawned a roster of reaction videos
on YouTube that are just as worth watching Lost souls: Toni Collette as Annie in Ari Aster’s portrait of a woman reeling from loss
as the 25-minute film itself. With that film
Aster was working through some of the same of her past, moments that are too painful for her satisfying horror film that met the demands of
preoccupations that can be found in Hereditary to process. “The miniatures served as a metaphor the genre but in a way that never deviated from
– in particular, the underlying darkness that for the family’s situation,” explains Aster. “It was the heart of the story, what these people are
exists in the family unit. “When I was trying perfect for Annie’s character, who is someone going through and their suffering,” says Aster.
to get Hereditary financed, I would pitch it as a who feels she has no control over her own life “Ultimately, the film is about grief and trauma.”
family tragedy that curdles into a nightmare,” – this is her way of trying to exert some sort of As Annie dives deeper into her own feelings
Aster recalls. “Stories set within the family are influence over her world. It gives her a feeling and her family history, prompted in part by
a no-brainer for anybody who’s interested in of control, but it is ultimately a total illusion.” Joan’s influence, the film becomes increasingly
drama in general, but I get especially excited by Collette’s award-worthy performance as Annie unsettling, aurally and visually. For the most part
the power dynamics in relationships – and those imbues the film with an emotional rawness that it is a claustrophobically quiet film, but events
become especially insidious in a family dynamic.” echoes the probing family dramas of Mike Leigh are punctuated by low, rumbling sounds – as
Hereditary opens with an onscreen text and Ingmar Bergman more than it does the more of music or voices heard through a wall. The
informing us of a death in the Graham family physically visceral work of genre masters such purpose-built set of the family house also helps to
– that of matriarch Ellen, who leaves behind as David Cronenberg or John Carpenter. Annie is create this sense of undefined dread – as does the
her middle-aged daughter Annie (Collette), one of the most richly drawn characters in recent perfect miniature replica of it modelled by Annie
a miniaturist model-maker artist of a meek horror cinema, and gives the film an emotional in the film: “I was thinking about Freud’s essay
disposition. Ellen’s hold on Annie is palpable even anchor. “Before I even started talking to Toni, I had on the uncanny when I imagined the family’s
beyond the grave. Delivering the eulogy at her written this 15-page biography for her character,” home,” explains Aster. “I wanted to evoke that
mother’s funeral, Annie’s complicated feelings says Aster. “It began with her conception and sense of something familiar becoming unfamiliar,
about her death and the memory of their strained laid out her entire life up until the first scene of literally the home becoming unhomely. I
relationship are obvious. The lingering presence the film. It was important to me that we really wanted to create a home that over the course of
of the departed mother, whom we glimpse only tended to the family drama and the characters.” the film becomes gradually unrecognisable.”
in old photographs and as she lies dead in her Especially Bergmanesque is the way the The film descends steadily into a hellish,
coffin, places the film in a long gothic tradition film explores troubled relationships between a anxiety-inducing third act that eloquently
of ghostly female presences – think of Rebecca mother and her children – messy, raw and full mixes elements of hauntings, possession and
in Hitchcock’s 1940 classic, or Mary Meredith of unspoken feelings bubbling just beneath the psychological horror. “Ultimately this is a film
in Lewis Allen’s chiller The Uninvited (1944). surface. Annie’s attempts at processing her grief about people in the grip of something that
Annie in turn has strained relationships with let us in on the tangled tapestry of dysfunction they have no awareness of,” says Aster. “They
her husband Steve (Gabriel Byrne) and their two that has enveloped her family. But after the have no agency, no control over what’s going
children: son Peter (Alex Wolff), a withdrawn, shocking accident, the little control she had is to happen to them. Everything that happens
teenage stoner; and Charlie (Milly Shapiro), an lost and her behaviour begins to alarm the rest of to them is inevitable. But we’re with them so
oddball pre-teen with a penchant for drawing her family, a situation that only worsens when we know as much as they do. And only at the
roadkill and making clicking sounds with her she meets the sympathetic Joan (Ann Dowd) very end do we get a little more than they do.”
mouth. After the fragile family dynamic is rocked after a help-group meeting, someone whose For my money, Hereditary earns its
still further by a terrible accident – the shock of intentions may not be as benevolent as they comparisons to The Shining. Just like Kubrick’s
which I won’t ruin by revealing here – Annie’s seem. “It was very important that we make a classic, it knows that when horror erupts in
character and the film take a dramatic turn. a place of security and sanctuary, it can be
She retreats even further into herself, pouring Annie is one of the most richly truly terrifying. And, also just like The Shining,
her grief into her work with miniatures. These it’s a film rich in images that are not overtly
small-scale models of places and moments in drawn characters in recent violent or gory, but that creep insidiously under
the family’s life – from recreations of the family
home to the scene of the aforementioned accident
horror cinema, and gives the your skin and haunt you for days after.
Hereditary is released in UK cinemas
– work as creepy replicas of traumatic moments film an emotional anchor i on 15 June and is reviewed on page 65
SHOOTING AN ELEPHANT
The critic Manny Farber’s is uncomfortable even with his own direct they sometimes derided an Antonioni, as he did,
opposition of the two terms, finding things to what distinguished Farber was his unswaying
most celebrated essay has attack or ridicule about the Termites and to belief in the unsettled, diffuse, centreless quality
been widely quoted – but all reflect on carefully in the White Elephants. of any worthwhile work of art. Most Farber
This is part of the ambiguity of the pairing. In acolytes acknowledge this but few carry the
too often misunderstood particular, Termite Art is implied to be ephemeral, notion around in their wallet; it is difficult to
rare in the cinema, difficult to define, appearing resist the urge to assume that what one goes
By Christopher Small only in spots and in the least promising places. to the mat for is termitic or that what one
Among a great many other things, Manny Farber The term is far from monolithic. On the other produces as an artist is far from the “masterpiece
loathed binaries, ideological or otherwise. Over hand, Farber does not hesitate to outline the art” decried in the essay. It is possible to adopt
the course of a long, on-off career as a critic, he characteristics of White Elephant Art and its “termite-tapeworm-fungus-moss art”, as Farber
resisted much of the standard lexicon for movie manifold sins. His assessment of “non-termite” called it, as one would a medallion of honour, a
criticism; what is immediately obvious in reading work is that its style is all-encompassing, “a boy scout’s badge for commendable film-buff
his work is a desire to shun the binaries of even frieze of continuities” that treats “every inch of taste, a token of formal or critical smarts.
the sharpest contemporary criticism – not the screen and film as a potential area for prize- Reading the piece today, one struggles
simply good or bad but also, for instance, auteur worthy creativity”. He chides Tony Richardson with sentences that begin with a sprinkle of
or metteur en scène, low-brow or high-brow, and for his skill in “settling a horse collar of gentility enthusiasm (“Good work usually arises…”) and
so forth. So it is plainly ironic that the closest around the neck of a scene…” Antonioni’s La lead to prickly, acerbic phrasing that, while
Farber came to articulating his profoundly notte (1961) is, for Farber, a “good example of the endorsing the temperament or worldview
idiosyncratic taste was in ‘White Elephant vs. evils of continuity… the sin of framing, boxing expressed, reads like dismissal (“…where the
Termite Art’, his celebrated 1962 essay in which in an idea with a noble idea or camera effect creators have no ambitions towards gilt culture
he pits two whole hemispheres of style against picked up from High Art”. Evidently, the crime of but are involved in a kind of squandering-
each other. As a result, Farber is best remembered elephantine art is that its makers are too shrewd,
for a dichotomy that has come to stand for a too self-consciously gifted to turn out the kind of What distinguished Farber
taste for pulp or, rather, a distaste for supposedly slapdash, “go-for-broke” ingenuity of a termite,
middlebrow art. One side of the pairing, the who gives little consideration to structure or tact. was his belief in the unsettled,
former, Farber lambasts as “overly preened”, the
other he praises as “eager”, “industrious”. Yet
Farber’s fellow critics displayed little of his
contempt for the fully formed, the beautifully
diffuse, centreless quality of
within the piece itself, it is obvious that Farber mounted, the stylish and the modern. Even if any worthwhile work of art
© BECKY COHEN
Binary relation: Manny Farber and his wife, the artist Patricia Patterson
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A RELEASE
WIDE ANGLE PRIMAL SCREEN
SILENT WITNESS
Over three decades of filmmaking, In the psychosexual thriller In the Cut (2003), ice and her father, unable to stop, slices her legs
Campion includes four sepia-toned sequences of a – much as the killer cuts up his female victims.
Jane Campion has helped give a young couple ice-skating. The colour-grading and The dream-world’s final appearance comes when
voice to women – often through camerawork of these scenes, reminiscent of early the killer is strangling Frannie: a flash-vision of
tinted films, contrast with the rest of the film’s her father skating towards the camera jolts her
a judicious use of silence hand-held colour cinematography. There is music to consciousness so that she can fight back.
but no dialogue, and the scenes serve different These scenes pay tribute to a time when
By Ellen Cheshire functions at various points in the narrative. After filmmakers were learning how to use a
Earlier this year, when Sally Hawkins was an initial short burst of the skating couple during medium in which emotional states were
winning plaudits for her role as the mute Elisa in the opening credits, we return to this silent- expressed predominantly through images, a
Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water (2017), film dream-world on three occasions. The first period of creativity and experimentation in
comparisons were drawn with film stars from envisions the romantic story Frannie (Meg Ryan) cinematography and editing. In Campion’s
a century earlier – and with Holly Hunter’s tells her half-sister Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh) films, these ‘silent’ sequences take up only
acclaimed performance as Ada, an elective mute, about how her parents met and fell in love. The a few minutes of screen-time in total, but
in Jane Campion’s The Piano (1993). Twenty-five second time is after Pauline has been murdered by are always provocative, adding layers of
years on, that film remains a powerful example a serial killer: the golden-tinted dream becomes meaning to the narrative or insights into the
of visual storytelling, in which Hunter’s pale face, a nightmare in which her mother falls on the characters’ motives. More superficially, they
framed by dark hair that draws attention to her may offer a welcome moment of whimsy,
large eyes and subtle expressions, is captured In Campion’s films, these ‘silent’ or even form the basis of an amusing game
in long-held close-ups. Ada may appear waif- of ‘spot the film reference’. However you see
like but she conveys a strength and fierceness sequences take up only a few them, they were a risk worth taking.
which is enhanced by her self-imposed silence.
The ‘silent woman’ Campion created there and
minutes of screen-time in total, i
The Piano will be rereleased in UK
cinemas on 15 June, to mark the film’s
in the more recent short film The Lady Bug (2007) but are always provocative 25th anniversary
– part of the anthology film To Each His Own
Cinema – was used to explore female creativity
thwarted by male authority figures. But she has
also employed silent film aesthetics more overtly
and to different ends in two feature films and in
her second short, Mishaps of Seduction and Conquest
(1981, released 1984). This last, a 15-minute
black-and-white film, juxtaposes original archive
footage of George Mallory’s 1924 attempt to
conquer Everest with a fictional love story
between Geoffrey (a fictitious Mallory brother)
and Emma. Though their scenes have dialogue,
in other respects – shot in stage-like rooms with
limited camera angles and movement – they look
like films of the first decades of the 20th century.
By styling the film as a near approximation to
the period in which it was set, Campion cleverly
shifted it from low-budget student short to a
homage to silent cinema, the use of the original
Everest footage adding scale and drama.
In both The Portrait of a Lady (1996) and In the
Cut (2003) Campion essentially made two short
silent films, or as she terms them “otherworldly ‘Mental diary’: the fantasy sequence in The Portrait of a Lady (1996) evokes Murnau’s Sunrise (1928)
cutaways”, that serve as fantasy sequences within
the larger narratives. The Portrait of a Lady features
a 90-second black-and-white near-silent sequence
(there is some surreal use of dialogue/music) that
was shot and graded to give the appearance of an
aged 16mm 4:3 aspect-ratio silent film – the rest
of the film is 35mm colour 2.35:1. A flashback to
the Grand Tour of Isabel Archer (Nicole Kidman),
it at first seems to be a travelogue pastiche
but soon spirals into a psychosexual fantasy
montage. The Middle Eastern setting, evoking
ILLUSTRATION BY MICK BROWNFIELD WWW.MICKBROWNFIELD.COM
I N C I N E M AS J U N E 2 2 I N C I N E M AS J U N E 2 9
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CANNES
DAYS OF SEEING WILD
The Croisette may have felt a little quieter than usual, but a selection of truly outstanding, socially aware
Asian films – from the likes of Lee Chang-dong, Bi Gan, Jia Zhangke and Palme d’Or winner Koreeda
Hirokazu – helped make the festival one of the most memorable for many years. By Nick James
Take the Hollywood element away from any the grim realities of the Japanese labour market. (Zhao Tao – who must have been in the running
festival and you find that the art of cinema is alive This subtle, tender, fine-grained family portrait for Best Actress) who goes to prison to save him.
and artistically thriving, mostly in Asia. The scarcity has the structure of a true-crime story, but is much It is steeped in political and artistic inference, but
of American films at Cannes this year – whether it better written and acted than the director’s recent the motives of some characters remained obscure.
was Netflix-influenced or not – plus the bad odour films. In a golden year, it made a worthy winner. The most blatant omission from the Un Certain
Harvey Weinstein has left hanging over the place Chinese director Jia Zhangke’s elegant, Regard prizes was Bi Gan’s Long Day’s Journey
may have led to a dearth of billboards along the slow-burn portrait of love, self-sacrifice and into Night, a labyrinthine, noir-inspired dream-
Croisette and rumours of hotel bookings falling by disillusionment Ash Is Purest White came away logic film that would be easy to dismiss as all
40 per cent; but what we got instead was a carnival empty-handed. Perhaps that’s because it never style – especially when you’re given 3D glasses
of cinema art, the best of it from Japan, South Korea becomes the gangster movie the first half sets and told to use them only at the moment
and China. This was Cannes at its most joyous: a up, sticking to the kind of character study Jia is the protagonist puts them on. With a time-
savvy jury responded to a programme of the known for. It tracks an affair between a small-time hopping narrative of murder and betrayal
highest quality with good choices, and there was gangster (Liao Fan) and a gambling-den hostess and a quest that takes Luo Hongwa (Huang
room to breathe on the streets and in the screening Jue) drifting into mines and permanent
rooms to restore a cinephile ardour that has been darkness, this was among the most beguiling
damped down for the last few years.
With the #MeToo and #OscarsSoWhite
CANNES TOP TEN films I saw; and once the 3D glasses go on,
the final 50 minutes is all one dazzlingly
campaigns perhaps in mind, jury president Cate NICK JAMES choreographed take. It’s pretty awesome.
Blanchett primed her fellow jurors – including The saddest of Blanchett’s jury decisions was
Ava DuVernay, Kristen Stewart and Andrey 1. Burning Lee Chang-dong to give nothing to Korean Lee Chang-dong’s
Zvyagintsev – to be aware of press expectations. 2. Cold War Pawel Pawlikowski smouldering love-triangle thriller Burning, a
“The world is a very political place and the media 3. The Wild Pear Tree (below) poetic, vivid adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s
very quickly turns human issues into political Nuri Bilge Ceylan short story ‘Barn Burning’ (which borrows its title
issues,” she said after the awards were announced. 4. Long Day’s Journey into Night Bi Gan from a William Faulkner story). Deliveryman
“As artists working in cinema, we made a pact 5. Shoplifters Koreeda Hirokazu Jongsu (Yoo Ah-in) has a brief romantic encounter
with one another that we would look at each 6. Happy as Lazzaro Alba Rohrwacher with the beautiful Haemi (Jun Jong-seo) – with
film as a work of art in and of itself.” Awarding 7. BlacKkKlansman Spike Lee whom he was at school – before she goes off
Koreeda Hirokazu’s Shoplifters the Palme d’Or 8. The Image Book Jean-Luc Godard to work in Africa. She asks him to feed her cat
showed they were true to her word and had 9. Capernaum Nadine Labaki while she’s away. But she returns with rich
acknowledged, too, the strength of Asian cinema. 10. Ash Is Purest White Jia Zhangke smoothie Ben (Yeun Steven) in tow. Thus begins
Like so many films in this socially aware the exquisite peeling back of class distinction
programme, Shoplifters describes an unstable that marks this out as a future classic. I spent
community of the dispossessed – in this case, an a lot of time arguing with colleagues about
outlaw family adept at petty crime and crammed the ambiguities of the apparent crimes that
into the grandmother’s apartment. On a freezing may have occurred; I won’t say more now than
cold night, father figure Shibata Osamu (Lily that this film proves that there is no better
Franky) rescues a battered four-year-old girl filmmaker in the world than Lee Chang-dong.
(Sasaki Miyu) left outside by abusive parents. Nobody wanted to talk about the plot of
Resented at first by Osamu’s wife Nobuyo (Ando the Cannes opening film, Asghar Farhadi’s
Sakura), the girl is soon adopted by teenager Everybody Knows, a mild Spanish vineyard
Aki (Matsuoka Mayu) and Osamu’s son Shota whodunnit. Though Farhadi’s scripts have the
(Kairi Jyo), whom she joins on thieving trips to precision of timepieces, this is clumsily directed.
the shops. Osamu, Nobuyo and Aki all have full- A cast that includes Javier Bardem, Penélope Cruz
time jobs (Aki’s in a sex simulation parlour) yet and Ricardo Darín, huff and puff through the dull
still have to live in a hovel and steal to survive. A play of revelation and counter-revelation about
nuanced moral tale, in which Shota’s dawning who among the villagers has kidnapped
conscience plays a part, Shoplifters lifts the lid on returning expatriate Cruz’s daughter.
Infant mortality
As one American critic remarked to me,
Cannes was a great place to be if you wanted to
feel good about cinema but a lousy one if you
wanted to feel good about the world. Probably
the grimmest of the many takes on social misery
here was Sergey Dvortsevoy’s Ayka. It starts with
an arresting image – four swaddled newborns
on a sheet, bunched and shot as if standing like
ninepins. Ayka (Samal Yeslyamova) is a Kyrgyz
immigrant in Moscow who has borrowed money
from loan sharks to set up a sewing business but
has got pregnant, left the baby in the maternity
hospital, been ripped off by a rogue employer,
and now, bleeding and in pain, needs to make
as much cash as she can. It’s a gruelling, jerky,
handheld-camera experience, so authentically
played it won Yeslyamova Best Actress.
Many journalists thought the Palme might
go to Nadine Labaki’s Capernaum, another tale
of desperate survival on city streets, this time in
Beirut. Cute 12-year-old Zain (the excellent Zain
Al Rafeea) flees from his destitute parents when
they marry off his tiny 11-year-old sister to their
landlord. He soon finds himself looking after the
baby of an Ethiopian immigrant who disappears.
Labaki goes, neorealist-style, for filth, bustle
and clamour, pulling back from sentiment and
melodrama (most of the time), letting Khaled
Mouzanar’s understated music direct emotion.
The courtroom framing device – an imprisoned
Zain suing his parents for bringing him into the Mean streets: Nadine Labaki’s Capernaum tells a desperate tale of survival in Beirut
world – doesn’t quite come off, but the rest of
the film has so much guts, emotion and energy That is also the message of The Gentle The film, which won the UCR Best Actor
you’ll want to see it. It won the Jury Prize. Indifference of the World, a downbeat, elegiac prize, involved a lot of pain and suffering,
Every year a handful of bad films – this time, Bonnie and Clyde from Kazakh director Adilkhan without being in any way grim. Huge applause
Girls of the Sun, Asako I and II and Knife + Heart – get Yerzhanov, in which Saltanat (Dinara Baktybaeva), greeted the end of Lukas Dhont’s Girl, about
into the Competition while some superb films the beautiful daughter of a village widow who’s a trans teenager Lara (Victor Polster), on the
(such as Long Day’s Journey into Night) end up in Un inherited her husband’s debts, is sent to get help path to her new body, who wants to be a
Certain Regard (UCR). Why Moroccan director from her uncle in the city, with doting labourer ballerina. Though it treads water at times, it is
Meryem Benm’Barek’s Sofia got relegated to UCR is Kuandyk (Kuandyk Dussenbaev) in tow. Saltanat is danced and acted with conviction and grace.
hard to calculate. Benm’Barek nearly out-Farhadis pimped off to a businessman and Kuandyk gets
Asghar Farhadi at his best with this intricate tale involved with racketeers; but before doom Barking mad
of the consequences that follow when 20-year-old descends, the two share a bedroom: “I expel gas at Sergei Loznitsa’s tough black farce Donbass
Casablanca singleton Sofia (Maha Alemi), in denial night,” he explains. Yerzhanov is like an embryonic offered near-surreal levels of gangsterism. Broken
about her pregnancy, goes into labour. Though Kaurismäki who hasn’t quite nailed the style. into 13 barely connected segments, Donbass is
her sophisticate sister whisks her off to hospital war as inexplicable hell, the Ukrainian border
without alerting the rest of the family, they’re soon ‘Long Day’s Journey into Night’, a conflict a brutal show run on both sides by
involved, bribing cops to keep Sofia out of prison mafiosi. We see the setting up of fake news
for transgressing laws against sex outside marriage. time-hopping narrative of murder events, a shit-bucket assault on a politician,
Like Ayka and Capernaum, Sofia is a lid-lifting
tale of how the world works for the convenience
and betrayal, is a labyrinthine, fabulously sleazy con men at work, obviously
Russian soldiers taunting naive reporters,
of powerful men, while the destitute suffer. noir-inspired dream-logic film an enemy captive being tied to a lamppost
Jia Zhangke’s Ash Is Purest White Bi Gan’s Long Day’s Journey into Night Lee Chang-dong’s Burning
Sergei Loznitsa’s Donbass David Robert Mitchell’s Under the Silver Lake Jafar Panahi’s Three Faces
Stéphane Brizé’s At War Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cold War Christophe Honoré’s Sorry Angel
50 UNTAMED
The harder they fall: Hosoda Mamoru’s extremely likeable Mirai follows a young boy learning to cope with the arrival of a new sibling
Beyond the Competition, a host of a send-off for Edouard Waintrop, the Quinzaine’s (Kenza Fortas), a former schoolmate, only to
programmer for the past seven years, whose find adult moral choices pressing in fast.
treats were on offer in Critics’ Week contract has not been renewed. His employers Far less questioning of materialism was the
and Directors’ Fortnight, which at the French Directors’ Guild say they want Quinzaine’s own gangster comedy, The World Is
fresh blood, but it must be tricky working for Yours, directed by Costa-Gavras’s son Romain,
turned 50 in fine style this year the directors whose films you accept or reject. who on this evidence aspires to be France’s Guy
As it happened, the best French films I saw Ritchie. It’s rich in supporting turns (Isabelle
By Nick Bradshaw were even further down the Croisette from the Adjani as the bling tiger mother of Karim Leklou’s
“We weren’t a counter-festival, we were another Palais des Festivals, where the official event is whey-faced protagonist, Vincent Cassel as an
festival.” Half a century after Godard, Truffaut and based – in the Critics’ Week strand. Camille Vidal- Illuminati-spooked sidekick), and occasionally
their fellow 68ers shut down the official Festival Naquet’s Sauvage is built on a formidable lead sassy; but the rambling plot hardly justifies
de Cannes, the Directors’ Fortnight (Quinzaine) turn by Félix Maritaud (Max in Robin Campillo’s the overarching self-satisfaction. Then there
– an independent fringe festival that duly arose 120 BPM): he plays Léo, a teddy bear of a rent was Guillaume Nicloux’s confusingly stolid
in 1969, and which in its time has introduced boy who we follow on a no-holds-barred tour drama Until the End of the World, a listless and
Cannes to everyone from Tobe Hooper to Theo of duty – not that duty is a concept that this meandering heart-of-darkness revenge fantasy
Angelopoulos, Sofia Coppola to Lisandro Alonso instinctive hedonist and social innocent shows extrapolated from opaque historical anecdote
– marked its own 50th edition with a round of any recognition of; he’s the Boudu (Saved from about the French colonial wars in 1940s Vietnam.
festivities. Martin Scorsese took to the stage to Drowning) of sex work. Naturally, the street is Of course, the most sensational French entry
the strains of ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’ to be given an not always reciprocally gentle, but Vidal-Naquet was Gaspar Noé’s latest, Climax, a senseless,
honorary award before a tribute screening of shows a spectrum of pleasure, intimacy and semi-wonderful dance feature that plays like Luis
Mean Streets (1973), and a sound performance kindness as well as brutality and abjection. Also in Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel (1962) but with
by Benoît Bories, Cinéma(s) en liberté, mémoires Critics’ Week, Jean-Bernard Marlin’s Shéhérazade lissom young party people (a dance troupe on
sonores, gathered testimonies from the festival’s is a youth crime drama with the energy of Jacques final-night celebration) and, in lieu of our deepest
long-serving founding director Pierre-Henri Audiard’s A Prophet (2009) and the innocence of self-perpetuated unreason, the hazards of drugs.
Deleau and his early accomplices (Werner Herzog something like Peter Sollett’s Raising Victor Vargas The one-room body-popping choreography –
unmistakable among them), emphasising the (2002); set on the streets of multi-ethnic Marseille, supposedly set in 1996 – quickly drives home
festival’s story as an expression of the new and it also has an eye-catching lead performance from that, with his sinuous camera and shotgun
free cinemas that were burgeoning around the Dylan Robert as Zac, a charismatic teen parolee editing, Noé is the perfect filmmaker to put
world in its early years. But this edition was also who falls in as partner and pimp to Shéhérazade krumping and the like on screen. As ever,
5 DISC COLLECTOR’S
EDITION INCLUDES
64 Page booklet with
foreword from Dan Snow
Brand new essays
Never-before-seen
documents and stills
A copy of a rare photograph
taken of the Mohne Dam after
the attack and signed by the
original 617 Squadron
RAF poster of the
Chastise Lancasters
5 Artcards
Feature presented in both
1.37 and 1.75 aspect ratios
/VintageClassicsFilm
AGNES VARDA
THE IRREPRESSIBLE
AGNES VARDA
After decades working contentedly in the margins, the artist and filmmaker is finally gaining
the wider recognition she deserves. Over the pages that follow, our writers discuss key
aspects of her brilliantly idiosyncratic work, outlining her central role in the French New Wave
and exploring her rich visual style, deep love of play and sharp sense of place
– while Varda herself discusses her career
For someone whose artistic lifetime of more than six decades has having no prior filmmaking experience and, by her own admission,
been spent contentedly occupying the position, as she puts it without the obsessive cinephilia of Godard, Truffaut and the other
herself to Kiva Reardon in an interview on page 37, of a “princess” ‘Right Bank’ group whom Varda and her ‘Left Bank’ group – Alain
of the “margins” of film culture, the past year has seen 90-year-old Resnais, Chris Marker and her future husband Jacques Demy – stood
Agnès Varda enjoying a more mainstream visibility. Perhaps the together with but apart from. Where others saw boundaries, or were
times have at long last caught up with her work, both aesthetically more obviously channelled by filmic influences, Varda brought a
– with her long-held disregard for supposed artistic and cinematic more idiosyncratic pool of inspirations to her work – such as her
boundaries and categories chiming with our new more porous experience in still life and documentary photography, felt so keenly
film culture – and politically and socially, for Varda is a touchstone in 60s features such as Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962) and Le Bonheur (1965).
figure for many in the debates swirling around film culture in the That openness surely fed into Varda’s willingness to move
wake of the #MeToo movement and the long overdue heralding between fictional and nonfictional styles – something obvious
of the work of female filmmakers from earlier generations. as early as La Pointe Courte, with its observational sense of place
Defying her age, Varda seems as busy as ever. Last year’s Cannes and time, and on documentaries such as L’Opéra-Mouffe (1962).
saw the premiere of Faces Places, a collaboration with her artistic That open curiosity also naturally led her to embrace the joys of
“comrade”, French artist and photographer JR. Over the past year travel – as when in 1967 she left France with Demy for California,
Varda has received an honorary Academy Award, been elevated where she made a series of films (including one on the Black
to the status of a grand officier de la Légion d’honneur, had her work Panthers). Again, it feels entirely in keeping that she should have
presented in a major retrospective at TIFF in Canada, given two been out of step with many of the other New Wavers, back in
lectures at Harvard University, and just last month walked the France for May ’68 and fired by the political radicalism of the day.
red carpet at this year’s Cannes beside Cate Blanchett, as one of That’s not to say that Varda is not a political filmmaker. Returning
82 women protesting in solidarity against discrimination in the to France in the early 1970s, she was invigorated by the second wave of
film industry. Her front and centre position in that protest was a feminism. Though she was less prolific during that decade, when she
recognition of her status as a veteran pioneer of intensely personal was raising her children, the rallying cry of the feminist movement
filmmaking that has made her an inspiration to so many. that ‘the personal is political’ never feels truer than in her work of
In the UK this summer, Varda’s films play in a two-month that time. Take One Sings, the Other Doesn’t (1977), which parallels the
retrospective at BFI Southbank in London, with a tour of eight contrasting lives of two former friends, Pauline and Suzanne, along
features playing at cinemas across the UK from late July. And in separate paths, or her 1975 documentary Daguérreotypes, about the
recognition of her achievement as an artist beyond the cinema, people who live and work on rue Daguerre, the Paris street where
she has been commissioned to make a new installation artwork Varda has lived since 1951. She is also one of the great character
by the Liverpool Biennial, which will also screen her 1982 short portraitists, especially of women. Think of Cléo finding her sense of
Ulysse, while a film season plays at Liverpool’s FACT gallery. self in Paris or the unforgettable young Sandrine Bonnaire as Mona
If Varda has enjoyed operating in the marginal space she has carved Bergeron in Vagabond (1985), and films about those close to her – such
for herself, she has never adopted a stance of wilful obscurity. As as Jane B. par Agnes V. (1987), about Jane Birkin, and the beautifully
her enthusiastic recent adoption of Instagram shows, her approach true and warm tribute to her late husband Jacquot de Nantes (1991).
to her life and to her work has always been defined by generous The new century saw Varda embrace the possibilities of new digital
inclusivity. We’re welcomed in to her thoughts and fears, to the lives technology but using it entirely in keeping with her approach all
of her children and relatives, to her home and her quirks. There’s along. In the pages that follow, our contributors consider some of
always, in her work, a warm, genuinely inquisitive interest in the the abiding themes that characterise Varda’s work and finally Varda
people she meets and the stories they have to tell, whether they discusses her latest film, Faces Places, due out in the UK later this year.
are real figures in her documentaries or characters in her fiction.
i
Aseasonoffilms,‘AgnèsVarda:VisionofanArtist’,playsatBFI
From the beginning of her film career, when she was first off the Southbank,London,throughoutJuneandJuly.TheUK-wide
blocks among the loose group of filmmakers who would come to eight-filmretrospective‘GleaningTruths’startson27July.Anewly
constitute the French New Wave, Varda has always followed her own commissionedVardainstallationwillshowatFACTGalleryin
self-invented path. She made her 1954 feature La Pointe Courte despite LiverpoolaspartoftheBiennial,whichbeginson14July
PIONEER
combined the New Wave methods she had
pioneered and a unique feminist gaze. The
THE (SELF)-
– stars in works such Kung-Fu Master! (1988), The Gleaners and I (2000) sees Varda scrutinise,
in which he plays the leading role alongside in extreme close-up, her wrinkled, liver-spotted
SANDS OF TIME
Varda and her family in The
Beaches of Agnès (2008, left)
and with Jane Birkin in Jane
B. par Agnès B. (1987, above)
YOUNG AT HEART
Varda in a snap from The
Beaches of Agnès (2008,
left), and uncovering a
heart-shaped potato in The
Gleaners and I (2000, above)
neufs… Oserai-je me lancer à sauter des cahiers Like the surrealists, Varda sometimes stages
de maman aux Cahiers du cinéma?…” verbal puns visually, and vice versa. How
(“C for cahiers [notebooks]: I loved them, can one translate the bilingually punning
when I was little. The desire when one got title of her 1981 documentary about murals,
to choose them. Their smell… An anecdote Mur Murs? Perhaps ‘whispers of walls’, the
about my mother: the bombs fall on Brussels. way a mural calls out to the passerby the
It’s 10 May, 1940, the start of the war. We must secrets of the community it lives in. To such
leave town. Mother packs the minimum whispers, Varda’s ears attend and call the
of luggage for each person… I watch as she viewer to become fully an audi-ence by doing
LE CHAT
fills a box with sugar, pencils and 50 new the same. That associative, often punning
notebooks… Dare I launch into a leap from logic shapes the voiceovers that frame both
THE VISUAL
That Agnès Varda had visual verve was evident had to do. How her films are presented to the
from her first foray into filmmaking in 1954: outside world is another crucial factor – she
STYLIST
La Pointe Courte was clearly a photographer’s made her own posters for Vagabond, fly-
film. Varda’s first feature delights in the posters asking the question: “Have you seen
quiet spectacles of the fishing quarter of the this girl?” Artisanal is a good way to describe
by Mediterranean village of Sète. The attention her style: she is a folk filmmaker at heart, as
Isabel Stevens paid to objects, texture, light and shadow her new film Faces Places further confirms.
and Varda’s unexpected compositions all However, her audacious aesthetics haven’t
betrayed the filmmaker’s background as a always been appreciated. François Truffaut
prowling shutterbug with a love of landscape. found La Pointe Courte “a little too framed”,
One year later, in O saisons, ô châteaux while the critic Georges Charensol dismissed
(1957), a short commissioned by the her visual choices in that film as “gratuitous”.
French Tourist Board, Varda’s signature Cléo’s visual flair was welcomed by more
was more flamboyant. In her idiosyncratic critics, but not Stanley Kauffmann of the
exploration of castles in the Loire region, New York Times, who dismissed Cléo as a
models in colourful haute couture stroll “flashily dressed-up conventional tear jerker”.
along the ramparts, before Varda makes a The charge of frivolity was always more
characteristic digression, and follows the likely to haunt a female director, particularly
castle’s caretakers. Over the next six decades, one who in Cléo explores a so-called frivolous
Varda has never really stopped experimenting singer questioning her objectification.
with style, whether in her films, her The endless mirrors and reflections in Cléo
installations or with her own appearance. highlight a woman trying to discover her true
Characterising her visual style, however, identity (rather novel for 1960s cinema). What
is not easy, as it constantly changes. Just Kauffmann missed was that Cléo’s changing
as in O saisons, ô châteaux, clothing and wardrobe shows how, as the film progresses,
landscape take a central role in many of her she gradually dresses to please herself.
A BRIGHTER SUMMER DAY films: in Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962), the streets Varda, with her purple and grey bob, has
Le Bonheur (1965, above), of Paris and singer Cléo’s appearance loom always dressed to please herself (not least with
interrogating happiness in
full glare, and One Sings, the large. Meanwhile, in Vagabond (1985) – her potato outfit at the 2003 Venice Biennale).
Other Doesn’t (1977, below) the antithesis of Cléo in many ways – a Now she is celebrated for her formal
homeless woman in muddy clothes roams adventurousness, but for years her visual
the countryside. Tracking shots figure sensibility – easily dismissed as simply
heavily in both films – as indeed in many of whimsical – was perhaps one reason she went
her others – as Varda gives the impression under the radar as an auteur. But for all her
of walking along with her flâneuses; just visual playfulness, Varda’s aesthetic quirks are
another instance of realism and overt underpinned with meaning. What would Le
stylisation going hand in hand in her work. Bonheur be like with dampened hues? Not
Varda likes intertitles and formal nearly so caustic, strange and claustrophobic.
tricksiness, as shown by the chapters of Or what if The Gleaners and I (2000) was a
Cléo, and the pointing hands that direct polished, orderly documentary? It’d be far
us back and forward in time throughout poorer as a celebration of the imagination, and
Jacquot de Nantes (1991), her portrait of the would lack that vital questioning of what is
early life of her husband Jacques Demy. counted as cinematic.
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40 | Sight&Sound | July 2018
In a career steeped in Italian history, and
spanning more than half a century, Marco
Bellocchio’s by turns defiantly and slyly anti-
authoritarian films have been marked by a
mordant sense of authority’s enduring appeal
By Henry K. Miller
POWER
POLITICS
THE FILMS OF MARCO BELLOCCHIO
Jean Renoir’s dictum that “everyone really only makes
one film in his life” ought not to apply to directors as
shaped by Marxism as Marco Bellocchio. As the world
has changed over the more than 50 years of his career so
far, so should have the films. The themes of a late-career
peak like Dormant Beauty (2012) – the performance of
normality; the toll taken on those who can’t or won’t
achieve it, and the bad faith of those who do – are all
there in his first two films Fists in the Pocket (1965) and
© SIMONE MARTINETTO
China Is Near (1967). But this remarkable consistency is
itself a critique of a culture in stasis. For a time those first
two films seemed to have presaged the decade of revolu-
tionary high hopes that followed 1968; in a longer per-
spective – one which Bellocchio’s often self-referential DEATH WISH
oeuvre provides – they foretold its bitter end. Lou Castel as antihero
Produced outside the industry, with his brother’s Alessandro and Paola
Pitagora as his beloved sister
money, and in his mother’s house, Fists in the Pocket – a Giulia in Fists in the Pocket
story of fratricide, matricide, madness and incest in pro- (1965, left), the provocative
vincial Emilia-Romagna – was hailed by the critic Ken- debut of director Marco
Bellocchio (above)
neth Tynan as the most impressive debut since Jean-Luc
Godard’s. Indelibly played by Lou Castel, Bellocchio’s
antihero Alessandro seeks to kill himself and the rest of
his ailing family – even his beloved sister Giulia (Paola
Pitagora) – so that his better adjusted elder brother Au-
gusto might escape their grasp, marry his fiancée and
prosper in the new Italy of the economic miracle. Fists
still shocks, but it was especially controversial in 1960s
Italy, where the Christian Democrats, the dominant
party between 1948 and the early 1990s, stood for the pri-
macy of the family above all other loyalties. As Pauline
Kael noticed on the film’s arrival in New York, “the mate-
rial is wild, the direction cool and assured”, but Belloc-
chio’s ironic distance from a manifestly personal subject
makes the film all the more richly disturbing.
He wrote it in London, where he had come in
1963, that autumn joining the Slade School of
Fine Art’s new film department, led by the veteran remain in suspension, to preserve an absolute disponibil- The wave of
director Thorold Dickinson. Bellocchio had gradu- ity [openness] towards words and things”. For left-wing
ated from the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, critics such as Goffredo Fofi, with whom Bellocchio student protests
the most prestigious film school in Western Europe, and would later collaborate, the Antonioni of La notte (1961) began in Italy in
might otherwise have taken the conventional appren- and L’eclisse (1962) represented the “ideology of ‘the end
ticeship route to the director’s chair. Instead he chose of ideology’” – exquisitely melancholy, but finally too November 1967
quite self-consciously to leave Italy to prepare his debut. “disponible” towards the coming technocratic society. and Bellocchio
One’s first film, he wrote in his application, is a summary Bellocchio’s second film, though as cool as his first,
“of a life still free from the tyranny of art”; but “only by would be no such thing. China Is Near (1967) is a mer- was instantly
forgetting the nostalgia of a lost childhood can one find, ciless political satire in which an aristocratic professor, swept up by
at the appropriate moment, the universal terms in which again in Emilia-Romagna, is prevailed upon to stand as
to describe it without any subjectivity… in England I can a Socialist candidate in a local election – the Socialists events, taking
think about my life in Italy.” He proposed to write a thesis having been in coalition with the Christian Democrats, part in university
comparing acting styles in Michelangelo Antonioni and under the premiership of Aldo Moro, since 1963. In one
Robert Bresson, though what survives of the result, re- scene the professor explains to his Maoist younger broth- occupations in
cently discovered by Slade archivist Liz Bruchet, is far er: “I might not believe in what I’m doing, but I continue Turin and Rome
from being a dry academic exercise. doing it; therefore I believe it.” After the Maoists plant a
Instead, it is a fascinatingly involved study of Anton- bomb in the Socialists’ office, he scolds him for not in-
ioni the man as much as the auteur, with elements of self- stead bombing the Communists, “the official opposition
portrait and self-projection. Having cited an article from that doesn’t feel like opposing any more”. When China Is
the Italian film magazine Bianco e nero from the time of Near was unveiled at Venice, where it won a joint prize
Il grido (1957) on Antonioni’s “closed, proud, miserable” with Godard’s La Chinoise (1967), Bellocchio told Sight &
provincialism, Bellocchio writes that with L’avventura Sound that he sympathised with the Maoists – something
(1960), Antonioni “goes outside his province, his moralis- by no means evident from the film – but that “they don’t
ing, his frustrations [and] becomes part of the world, inte- represent any political force or alternative to the official
grates himself, makes intimately his own the experience left wing parties”.
of others”. In other words, Antonioni had finally brought The wave of student protests and occupations which
off, with his sixth feature, what Bellocchio wanted to do culminated in Paris in May 1968 began in Italy only a
with his first. Through a close reading of Antonioni’s couple of months after Venice, in November 1967. One
interviews – his words and his gestures – Bellocchio of the first universities to erupt was Bellocchio’s alma
identifies the process he himself sought to undergo: mater, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan,
the cinematographic rendering of “an autobiography a notable nursery of Christian Democrat politicians;
made up not of past experiences, but of the rhythms, the part of the protesters’ critique was that the centrality
PRIME TARGETS
tempos, the electrocardiograms of his life”. of the family in Italian politics precluded collective (Clockwise from top left)
Bellocchio’s obvious admiration for Antonioni’s abil- action. There was now no question of remaining in sus- Bellocchio’s films include
ity to “classify his emotivity and set it into motion” is, pension. Bellocchio was instantly swept up by events, China Is Near (1967), Good
Morning, Night (2003), Blood
however, tempered by suspicion of its obverse, what he and took part in university occupations in Turin and of My Blood (2015) and In the
calls Antonioni’s “absorbent condition”, his “desire to Rome. In the summer of 1968, with Elda Tattoli, lead Name of the Father (1971)
moment of acting, in order to reach a of summer, and began to prepare it. to conform. But while still at odds with his conservative
‘naturalness’, speaking as we speak The shoot began in January 1965. family, he finds scant solace in his career as a rebel for
normally. Otherwise the actor, if he With thanks to Carla Scura hire, telling her: “I’ve become almost a caricature…
has to improvise, or if he has to make and Loreta Gandolfi The years have gone by and nothing has changed.”
None of Bellocchio’s reckoning with the public dimen- into the Great War with words that anticipate (or echo)
sion of the aftermath of 1968 came two decades Mao’s: “This war will kill all wars.” Ida, played by Giovan-
Bellocchio’s later, in Good Morning, Night (2003), a dramatisation of the na Mezzogiorno, keeps faith with Il Duce because, as his
films have had abduction and murder of Aldo Moro by the Red Brigades, first supporter, she helped make him what she believes
in the spring of 1978, on the advent of the Communists’ he has become; but while she rejects a sympathetic doc-
the leaven of ‘Historic Compromise’ with the Christian Democrats. tor’s advice that “this is the time to be quiet, to be actors”,
Anglo-American For most of the intervening period, Bellocchio’s films had in order to improve her lot, Mussolini himself, replaced
fallen under the influence of the renegade psychoanalyst within the film by newsreel footage, becomes the ultimate
stars, and they Massimo Fagioli, eventually his screenwriter, and were historical actor, abandoning his principles so comprehen-
often demand largely disengaged from political questions. The positive sively that he even signs an accord with the Pope.
legacy of their collaboration is a distinctive freedom with By apparent contrast, Dormant Beauty, Bellocchio’s next
acquaintance with flashbacks and fantasy, which has carried over into the major production, was set almost in the present – Febru-
Italian culture and current phase in Bellocchio’s career, beginning with The ary 2009 – but the continuities, though inexact, are ines-
Nanny (1999). An adaptation of a Pirandello short story, capable. Toni Servillo plays an ex-Socialist turned Forza
politics, and so set around 1900, in which a doctor hires the illiterate Italia senator who is leaned on to vote for Berlusconi’s
with Catholicism wife of an imprisoned revolutionary as a wet-nurse for cynical anti-euthanasia law, against his vestigial con-
his children, The Nanny is a return to Bellocchio’s most science; Isabelle Huppert, meanwhile, is an imperious ac-
enduring theme – bad faith. “You express yourself with tress whose greatest role will be that of a devout, self-
love,” the doctor tells her at one point. “You don’t need to sacrificing mother to a daughter on life support. When she
learn how to write.” tells a priest, in tears, “I don’t have faith, I act, I’m always
The Nanny marked the screen debut of Maya Sansa, in acting, even now,” he is unfazed; who isn’t? A psychiatrist
the title role, as well as Bellocchio’s first collaboration with remarks of the politicians he treats: “If TV doesn’t call
Daniela Ceselli as screenwriter; both returned for Good them, that’s the tragedy... In front of the cameras, you’re a
Morning, Night. Told from the limited perspective of one character actor, not a walk-on.” Like the younger brother
of Moro’s captors, who begins to lose her faith as negotia- in China Is Near making sure his reflection matches the
tions for his release drag on, the film’s conceit is that the look of a Maoist poster, like Lou Castel going to see his
terrorist cell, for all its vaunted rejection of convention, younger self on screen, like the terrorists raptly watching
is a family, isolated from society no less than the family the consequences of their actions play out on the news, the
in Fists in the Pocket, and with all the role-play that entails. characters of Dormant Beauty inhabit a hall of mirrors.
The role the terrorists proclaim for themselves, despite There is another kind of consistency to Bellocchio’s
their isolation, is that of the proletariat, making Moro less career. His films have almost invariably premiered at
a person than the personification of the idea of Christian Cannes or Venice, the earliest of them belonging to a time
Democracy; but more deeply ingrained identifications now mythologised by the former. Most have subsequently
supervene. In one of the film’s comic scenes, Sansa’s char- come to the London Film Festival – but few have come
acter returns to her actual family for a memorial service, much further. More than a decade separates the British re-
and sees the older generation – now members of the pros- lease of his debut, in 1966, from that of the next of his films
perous middle class – singing communist battle anthems to win a release here, In the Name of the Father, in 1977. The
of the resistance years, believing themselves still to be ad- 15 years since Good Morning, Night have seen a revival, but
herents of the ideals which she and her comrades believe even then Dormant Beauty was never picked up.
themselves to be putting into practice. This may be accounted for by a second kind of consis-
Bellocchio returned to Italian history from a woman’s tency – Bellocchio’s films are thoroughly Italian. The inevi-
ASTUDYINTYRANNY perspective in Vincere (2009), also written with Ceselli, in table comparison is with his near contemporary Bernardo
GiovannaMezzogiornoas which Mussolini’s rise is seen from the point of view of his Bertolucci, another son of Emilia-Romagna, whose Before
BenitoMussolini’sloverIda
Dalser,whowasdisavowed lover Ida Dalser, who was disavowed and institutionalised, the Revolution (1964) belongs to the same moment as Fists
andinstitutionalised,along together with their illegitimate son, as soon as Mussolini in the Pocket, but whose films have long been international
withtheirillegitimateson,as came within sight of power. The film begins with the in scope, and have always had more to do with the nouvelle
soonasthefuturedictator
camewithinsightofpower, future dictator – socialist, republican, anti-clerical – break- vague and with Hollywood. In fact, at 78, Bellocchio is em-
inBellocchio’sVincere(2009) ing ranks with his comrades and endorsing Italy’s entry barking on his most ambitious production to date, based
on the life of Mafia supergrass Tommaso Buscetta, with lo-
cations on three continents. But none have had the leaven
of Anglo-American stars, and they often, as with Dormant
Beauty, demand some acquaintance with Italian culture
and politics, and so with Catholicism – not infrequently
an awkward aspect of outwardly post-religious Britain’s
relationship with European film culture. The irony here
is that, as Bellocchio’s films have indicated, whether in the
cool 1960s, the hot 70s, or in his mellower current incarna-
tion, the hour of religion, no matter our pretensions to the
contrary, has not yet passed.
i
Aseasonoffilms,‘SatireandMorality:TheCinema
ofMarcoBellocchio’,playsatBFISouthbankandthe
CinéLumière,London,throughoutJuly.Aweekend
event,includinganonstageinterviewwith
Bellocchio,isatBFISouthbankon23-24June
POINT
other. They’re in the middle of the country but if they
were food you’d push them to the side of the plate. If they
crop up at all in news reports or popular culture, it is usu-
ally because they have contributed to an electoral upset
(see 2016) or an unlikely media phenomenon, such as
Debra Granik’s ‘Leave No Trace’, the tale of a teenager living the recent hit revival of the blue-collar – and now Trump-
in the wilds of Oregon with her military veteran father, taps cheerleading – sitcom Roseanne. In popular music they
have been invoked as a reminder of the wholesome, au-
into the pioneer spirit of the American past but emerges as a thentic or true. The Talking Heads song ‘The Big Country’
product of our own times – a political film that sits alongside the finds David Byrne’s snooty but secretly envious narrator
work of directors such as Kelly Reichardt and So Yong Kim gazing from his plane window at the “shapes I remember
By Ryan Gilbey from maps… I guess it’s healthy, I guess the air is clean/ I
guess those people have fun with their neighbours and
friends.” In ‘Fly over States’, the country singer Jason
Aldean is also up in the clouds looking down, eavesdrop-
ping on businessmen who disparage those “little towns
with funny names/ Who’d want to live down there in the
middle of nowhere?” before putting them right: “I bet
that mile-long Santa Fe freight train engineer’s seen it all/
Just like that flatbed cowboy stacking US steel on a three-
day haul.”
If a post existed for poet laureate of flyover cinema,
there would be several contenders, all of them female.
The most established is Kelly Reichardt, who has shown
in a series of finely detailed rural studies a curiosity about
lives, desires and communities commonly hidden from
i
Leave No TraceisreleasedinUKcinemas
on29Juneandisreviewedonpage67
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(UK)
(WORLDWIDE)
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98 Journal of Film
Journal of Film Preservation
04.2018 Preservation The Journal of Film Preservation is published
twice a year by the International Federation
of Film Archives (FIAF). It offers a forum for
both general and specialized discussions on all
theoretical, technical and historical aspects
of moving image archival activities. Articles
are written in English, French or Spanish, with
summaries in the other two languages.
www.fiafnet.org
Vicious circle: Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead’s film follows two brothers returning to the commune where they were brought up after their mother’s death
that took them in as children after their mother’s something ineffable but palpable that is trying
The Endless death in a nearby car accident. Justin insists to bring about Justin and Aaron’s eternal return.
USA 2017 that Arcadia was a “UFO death cult”, whose The Endless opens with a quote from H.P.
Directors: Justin Benson, Aaron Moorhead brainwashed members were castrated and suicide- Lovecraft concerning “fear of the unknown”
bound – but the younger Aaron, sex-starved and – programmatic for a film involving an
Certificate 15 111m 40s
lacking much will to live, remembers Arcadia observant, aerial entity that is never seen, let
Reviewed by Anton Bitel only as a childhood idyll, and longs to return to alone understood, and whose essence various
Spoiler alert: this review reveals a plot twist its fresh food, open air and sense of community. characters struggle to articulate without resorting
Bound as it is by its linear shape as a feature Right at the beginning of The Endless, a to obscure metaphor or mystic mumbo jumbo.
film, The Endless comes with a beginning and mysterious videotape – not unlike the ones in Yet the quotation is also, for anyone who has
an ending, which it marks formally with David Lynch’s Lost Highway (1997) and Michael been following Benson and Moorhead’s shared
introductory text and closing credits. Yet from Haneke’s Hidden (2005) – is delivered to the career in transgressing genre boundaries and
the outset the film conjures its central idea of brothers’ doorstep, with an ambiguous recorded contemplating death, something of an in-joke. For
endlessness by plunging us in medias res. When message from one of the Arcadians, Anna (Callie while it became a cliché among critics to describe
we first meet its principal characters, Justin Hernandez), heralding a coming “ascension” and a their previous collaboration, the tentacular
(played by writer-director Justin Benson) and “round trip”. One glimpse of the camp again – and romance Spring (2014), as ‘Lovecraftian’, the
his brother Aaron (co-director and director of of pretty Anna – and Aaron is hooked like the fish filmmakers themselves protested their complete
photography Aaron Moorhead), they are stuck he used to enjoy catching. Justin is more sceptical, ignorance of the author and his works at the time
in a repetitive rut that has already lasted many but reluctantly agrees to take his brother back they made the film. Now, it seems, they – and
years – a seemingly inescapable cycle of low-paid to see their former adoptive ‘family’ – if indeed we – have come full circle, and Lovecraft, once
jobs and social disconnection in the city, as they they are still alive. Both quickly sense, though, denied as an influence, has been retroactively
struggle to meet their rent, or indeed any girls that the collective’s hippieish membership woven into the texture of their films.
they don’t quickly frighten off. They have been may after all be right and that there really is I use that plural advisedly here, because not
playing this broken record for a decade, ever since something out there, watching over anyone who only do all Benson and Moorhead’s films share
they fled ‘Camp Arcadia’ – the rural commune has strayed into this zone across the decades – the theme of everyday experience brought into
Apocalypse now: Xavier Tchili as Lek in Andrew Kötting’s film, inspired by a play about a real-life Russian child who lived with a pack of dogs in Moscow
the soil, and Ivul about someone living above it, itself is relatively easy to follow, presented in
Lek and the Dogs Lek was next to venture underground. Almost a linear fashion from Lek’s flight from the family
United Kingdom 2017 decade later, he does exactly that in the science nest, aged four, through his time with the dogs,
Director: Andrew Kötting fiction-inflected tragedy Lek and the Dogs. his capture by the authorities and his adulthood.
Certificate 15 92m 4s
Both of the previous films in this loose However, both visual and audio channels are
‘Landworks’ trilogy are about people trapped composed of several different streams that
Reviewed by Ben Nicholson on the margins and tied to the land, struggling intertwine, resulting in a dense tapestry of
French actor Xavier Tchili first played a character to survive. Kötting could hardly have found a meanings around an ostensibly straightforward
named Lek for Andrew Kötting in the 2001 film more fitting source of inspiration for a third tale. Chapter titles appear regularly, offering
This Filthy Earth. A reimagining of Emile Zola’s instalment than Hattie Naylor’s 2010 play Ivan a rabbit hole of interpretation by quoting, or
1887 novel La Terre by way of John Berger’s Pig and the Dogs. Lek had occupied a position on the alluding to, philosophers such as Montaigne and
Earth, it channelled Bosch and quoted the Polish fringes of the earlier films but takes centre stage Emil Cioran, writer W.G. Sebald and modernist
surrealist filmmaker Walerian Borowczyk in a here, replacing the eponymous Ivan. The play was poet Basil Bunting. Abstract archival footage,
familial tragedy of myth, mud and madness. In based on the true story of Ivan Mishukov, who newsreels and home movies commingle with
it, Lek was a foreign farm labourer, an observer spent two years living on the streets of Moscow empty landscapes and Tchili’s strange, sad,
and scapegoat (“Away, darky! Away!”) who was as a feral child with a pack of dogs. On stage, the absorbing performance. Voiceover commentary
ultimately unable to convince a young woman story was relayed in a monologue by an older punctuates a symphony of echoing confession, as
to escape her plight. Tchili played another Lek Ivan, accompanied by ‘soundscapes’ and projected Lek speaks to the camera, is heard via recordings
in Kötting’s Ivul (2009), this time the mute imagery that brought memories crashing into the or listens to tapes of himself as a child – and all the
servant to a family whose exiled son vows never present. All of this makes it a perfect jumping-off while distorted screams interject from the past.
to touch the ground again, living on rooftops point for Kötting’s typically singular new work. The most striking of these layered component
and in trees; in that film, Lek occupied the roles The focus on a social outcast allows him to parts is the post-apocalyptic framing that is
of voyeur and would-be protector, though push Lek to the furthest periphery yet, while unique to the film, shot in the Atacama Desert.
again his efforts were in vain. In the Sight & the play’s own multimedia texture prefigures Tchili wanders a barren landscape, initially
Sound review of Ivul, a reference was made to the filmmaker’s employment of various visual naked and scrambling on all fours, later clothed
a mooted third appearance from Tchili as Lek. and formal techniques that blur recollection, and on two feet, as a minimalist electronic score
If This Filthy Earth was about people living on imagination and warped psychology. The narrative emphasises the ruin. This is a desolate future that
The dogs will be with him always tragedy and trauma of his childhood keep clawing
A devastated landscape, the near future. Lek roams
an abandoned terrain, sometimes naked and on all
fours, at other times clothed but dazed. Hiding in the
dark, he listens to recordings made by himself as a
child; using these as prompts, he relates the story of
his life among the dogs on the Moscow streets.
His story begins at a time of deprivation, with
families struggling to find enough food. Despised by
his stepfather, Lek runs away from home. He tries to
follow other street children into an underground lair,
warmed by pipes, but they shun and subsequently
beat him. Lek feels threatened by older vagrants and
other adults, seeing safety only among the dogs.
The dogs are wary of Lek, but when a man attempts
to hurt him, they come to his aid and he joins their
pack. Voiceover excerpts provide context for Lek’s
developing psychology and attachment to the dogs.
Lek lives with the dogs for several years, surviving
as best he can, until he is caught by the authorities
and the dogs are slain. Back in civilised society, Lek
is adopted by a woman whose generosity teaches
him that people can be kind. Despite finding love and
having a child of his own, Lek ultimately flees back
underground, abandoning his family to survive.
Sand and freedom: Tchili’s Lek in a desert wasteland which was filmed in the Atacama Desert in Chile
cinematic of creatures. Like the most beloved in Peril (2013), a striking, hallucinatory piece
movie stars, onscreen horses compel by about a survivor’s grief after a tragedy at sea,
embodying contradictory qualities – power it’s perhaps a surprise that his follow-up is a
and vulnerability, tenderness and destructive found-footage collage on the theme of the British
potential – while their intimate interconnection landscape. But in fact the two films make quite
with the history of human warfare and industry a pair, sharing much thematic and stylistic
makes them a source of both pride and guilt. kinship, and it’s refreshing to see a talented
Quite possibly the influence of cinema – the young director following his muse rather than
romance it has attached to wide-open spaces, taking the career-building route into high-
the rugged machismo with which it imbues profile drama that might have been expected.
solitary riders and calmers of wild beasts – is While For Those in Peril blended a social-realist
part of the draw of an event like the Mongol rendering of life in a Scottish fishing town with
Derby, the punishing 1,000km endurance a mesmerising visualisation of its protagonist’s
race depicted in this documentary. One rider disintegrating interior state, Wright’s textural
sets out in the hope that galloping across the use of numerous film stocks and his personal
world’s second-largest landlocked country on approach to editing (highlighting the potency of
one of its indigenous wild horses will provide unexpected transitions) are given even freer rein
him with “an amazing spiritual experience of here. Since he evidently relished having the run
an otherworldly place”. What the film goes on of the National Archive to plunder documentary
to show us, however, is a little more prosaic: a and fiction-feature footage from the silent era
cross between promotional material for a high- onwards, we never know quite what’s coming
end extreme sport and a competitive reality-TV Steppe on it: Devan Horn next. What unfolds is an exhilarating (if perhaps
show, without that much attention given to the slightly exhausting) audiovisual journey through
horses themselves, the local people who look veterinary penalty for overtiring her horse, and shifting perceptions of our native landscape.
after them, or the landscape they command. still upset – not about the damage to the animal, “Once upon a time in the heart of the British
“You definitely need to be either brave or you understand, but about the not winning. countryside,” runs the opening voiceover, over
stupid,” declares one rider, Paul, before the This is what Devan says about how she chooses a startling image of a sinister shadowy figure
race begins. You also need to be well off: the a horse: “If he has a ‘fuck you, let’s go’ look in looming above broken soil; the narrator goes
cost of entry isn’t specified in the film, but his eye, and fire in his heart, and I can see it, and on to describe a “fair maiden” who is followed
this year it’s almost $13,000. Whether it’s connect with it, I’ll pick him.” This is how we see everywhere by “a great darkness”, until a dream
“brave”, exactly, to pay an enormous amount Devan choose a horse: she asks the Mongolian reveals that “the answer to her problems lay
of money to do something very dangerous to guide which is the fastest and takes the one within the land around her”. The words are
yourself is another matter entirely. Paul falls he points to. Subsequently she succumbs to Wright’s own, one of the few sections of voiceover
and breaks his collarbone almost immediately. heatstroke, and persistently phones her father not lifted from an existing source, and hence a
Another rider punctures a lung and fractures back in the States to tell him how sick she is. thematic key to the whole undertaking – one
her pelvis. Someone else fractures his neck. If the filmmakers were aware that these that, incidentally, almost immediately chimes
A horse is injured and is put down. individuals might come across as a little spoiled with a similar device in For Those in Peril, where a
Amid all these incidents – to which medical or sheltered, it doesn’t show. The whole piece has mother’s tale of the devil lurking at the bottom
and veterinary professionals are of course the oblivious, boastful sweep of an advert, and a of the sea sets the tone for the story. In both
summoned across vast distances – we don’t see clear agenda to promote the race – it’s anxiously instances, what drives the proceedings is an
much that’s spiritual or otherworldly. We do asserted, for instance, that the horse fatality is the anxiety about something malign in land or
experience some striking attitudes, however, first since the race was launched in 2009, “a great ocean – a vivid flip side to the sort of pantheistic
such as that of fund manager Simon, a white record although a very sad day”. But low numbers euphoria that Terrence Malick, for instance,
South African who is struck by the fact that of equine deaths aside, it’s hard to tell what is has been channelling in his latter-day output.
there is a black South African in the race. meant to be particularly inspiring or meaningful Given its otherwise gritty depiction of bored
Mongolians, he asserts, will be “intrigued” by here. And it’s harder still not to wonder what small-town youth and dead-end jobs at a fish-
the sight of a black man, while for the black people with this much money, energy and processing plant, For Those in Peril demanded
rider himself, Mongolia will be “like going to bravado might be able to achieve if they set their a leap of faith from the viewer to buy into this
the moon”. Then there is American competitor sights on a project with a more public-spirited underlying notion, but the defining idea proves
Devan, robbed of victory in a previous year by a agenda behind it than “fuck you, let’s go”. a better fit here. Assailing us with a torrent of
images and a potent, multifaceted score from
Credits and Synopsis Adrian Utley and Will Gregory of avant-rock
bands Portishead and Goldfrapp, Arcadia
effectively works the audience into a kind of
Producers Martilo Pictures In Colour A documentary about the Mongol Derby, a 1,000km
Darcia Martin presents a 3rd-i [2.35:1] horse race based on the postal service established
reverie, making us more open to perceptions
Ivo Marloh Films production
by Genghis Khan in the 13th century. It is the longest beyond familiar rationalist or religious
Filmed by A film by Ivo Marloh Distributor
Ivo Marloh in association with Guerrilla Films event of its kind in the world. Riders must master worldviews. This kind of collage cinema isn’t
Cinematography Guerrilla Films, semi-wild horses and over ten days must negotiate perhaps the best place for precisely delineated
Michael J Sanderson The Adventurists, the challenging terrain of the Mongolian Steppe.
Ivo Marloh Twickenham Studios
arguments but, driven by fast-cut highs picturing
Edited by
On the first day, two competitors suffer injuries and bacchanalian liberation and contrasting
Executive Producers
Ivo Marloh Anthony Ward are forced to leave the race. American rider Devan,
Music Thomas who is determined to win after a narrow loss in a moments of doomy frisson in pixellated images
Christopher Barnett Marcus Browning previous year, sees victory slip away again when heat of surviving folk traditions, its cumulative impact
Location Sound David Nicholas exhaustion gets the better of her. A further competitor takes us out of ourselves into an altered state
Kevin Augello Wilkinson
Sunny Vohra falls face-first and fractures his neck. Two Irish riders, somewhere between waking and dreaming.
©3rd-i Films Andrew Boswell Donie and Richie, take the lead. A horse is found to The seasoned cinephile, of course, will try to
Production have a badly broken leg and is put down – a first in
Companies Dolby Digital the history of the race. Donie is the eventual winner.
spot the provenance of the clips, but that turns
out to be a fool’s errand, since the wealth of
REVIEWS
publisher since the water-vs-fire battle of the Sub-
Mariner and the Human Torch in Marvel Mystery
Comics #8-9 (1940). In the early 1960s, writer Stan
Lee and artists Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko (among
others) revived Marvel’s key characters – bringing
Kirby’s WWII icon Captain America back to life,
for instance – and invented a new range of bizarre,
flawed heroes. The so-called Marvel Universe
evolved quickly, predicated on the notion that
each of the publisher’s titles was set in the same
world. Huge, all-in crossovers became customary
with Fantastic Four Annual #3 (1965), where pretty
much every Marvel hero and villain showed up at
the wedding of Mr Fantastic and the Invisible Girl.
Since Jon Favreau’s Iron Man (2008), Marvel’s
cinema arm has been patiently merging its
output on this model, forced to work around
the inconvenience of not owning the film
rights to some of its core characters. Each film
has been salted with elements of a larger plot,
which is finally tied together in this epic space
opera. It’s not so much a crossover as a mosaic,
and it sets out – among other impossible
tasks – to shuffle the colourful, light-hearted
hijinks of James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy
films and Taika Waititi’s Thor: Ragnarok with
the angstier, despairing, politicised tone of
the Russo brothers’ Captain America sequels,
Spiral eyes: Arcadia while at the same time reconciling the science-
fictional and magical worlds of Iron Man,
material – and the velocity with which it leaps a fair amount of bouncy vintage naturist footage Black Panther, the Hulk and Dr Strange.
at us – pretty much demands that we go with and seeming propaganda images enshrining The macguffin bringing it all together is the
the flow. There’s always something fascinating a bucolic ‘Merrie England’ of mock Tudor and Infinity Gauntlet, added to the Marvel Universe by
on screen, from early cinema ethnography of cricket on the village green. Wright must be writer Jim Starlin, creator of the groove-chinned
English country life to some choice 1970s TV commended for avoiding the obvious, and while purple thanatophile Thanos. The gauntlet
reportage (the woman who has had her pet his intriguing choices retrieve the likes of Kevin imposes a plot structure that’s like something
poodle stuffed is desperately sad, shamefully Brownlow’s Winstanley (1975), David Gladwell’s out of a 1940s serial – such as The Adventures
amusing and unexpectedly disturbing all at once), Requiem for a Village (1976) and Chris Newby’s of Captain Marvel, which featured a different
Anchoress (1993) from the margins of British Captain Marvel from the character whose
Credits and Synopsis cinema history, the expansive archive survey future screen debut is teased here – whereby a
on view here is ultimately in thrall to his own villain has to get hold of the components of a
overall design. Hence dividing chapters lay out superweapon over many chapters. The heroes
Producer in association Mark Bell
John Archer with BBC and BFI Mary Burke both the liberating and chastening aspects of fight valiant battles and escape from various
Editor National Archive Clara Glynn rural life, before suggesting how urbanisation perils, until a final chapter in which the great
Michael Aaglund with Crossover Ross McKenzie
Music Labs and Common has distanced us from our previous affinity gadget is unleashed but the villain thwarted.
Composed by Ground a Hopscotch with the land, while scientific footage of natural This is the scheme of Infinity War, up to a point
Adrian Utley Films production With regeneration tops and tails the proceedings where it breaks radically with convention.
Will Gregory Supported by the Ian Sexon
Sound Palette National Lottery Laura Rennie to express the cyclical potential of renewal. With so many characters – not just headline
Dario Swade through Creative voices
Scotland
Overall, it’s weirder and gnarlier than, for heroes, but also their supporting casts – to be
©Peavor Limited/ Creative Scotland In Colour and example, Penny Woolcock’s 2012 national found room for, it’s no surprise that this is an
The British Film BBC Scotland Black & White portrait From the Sea to the Land Beyond, though extra-long instalment of the franchise, and a
Institute Made with the [1.78:1]
Production support of the not perhaps as compact and purposeful as few lines have to be thrown in to account for
Companies BFI’s Film Fund Distributor Benedikt Erlingsson’s splendid combination of absences. A peril of crossover comics, evident
BFI and Creative Executive BFI Distribution
Scotland present Producers spectacle and social history in 2015’s The Show in some of Starlin’s cosmic trips, is that no
of Shows, among relatively recent rival found- one gets to carry the story, and sheer vastness
A feature-length collage themed around the
British people’s relationship with the land, using footage features. Where it really scores, though, makes for page- or screen-filling spectacle that’s
found footage from documentaries and dramas is in Wright’s instinctive, somewhat Lynchian simultaneously amazing and uninvolving.
from the silent era onwards, as well as television feel for the unexpectedly disturbing quality that After so many films and with some of
archive. Bucolic images of country life show how seemingly benign images of soil or folk costumes the canniest casting on record, Marvel has
the notion of a green arcadia remains strong in take on when they are slowed down or magnified. managed to create screen versions of its
the national consciousness, yet the film suggests
that this perception masks darker aspects such
Meanwhile, Utley and Gregory deploy string heroes so vivid that the recasting common in
as rural poverty, the traditions of hunting and the quartet, analogue synths and a vocal ensemble the Batman or Spider-Man franchises would
survival of various seemingly pagan rituals and to create a musical tapestry that wouldn’t have be a real problem. Whenever the universe-
festivals. The film uses a cyclical form, returning been out of place in a Stanley Kubrick film. spanning storyline threatens to flag or become
to images of growth and regeneration, proposing It’s all a bit wiggy and woolly, but there’s schematic, there is always some neat character
that a balanced relationship with the land should
an authentic and highly personal artistry at interplay – especially in the quadrant
accept both the light and dark within it.
work here that’s surely to be cherished. of the action teaming Robert Downey
REVIEWS
romantic comedy, albeit one in a familiar vein.
Her film takes place in Brooklyn, or rather a
placid, tastefully dressed and well-lit space we
might call Nora Ephron-land. While it has a
little in common with recent female-written-
and-directed millennial urban comedies
such as Lena Dunham’s Tiny Furniture (2010),
Gillian Robespierre’s Obvious Child (2014)
and Desiree Akhavan’s Appropriate Behaviour
(2015), here the edges are all sanded down.
The only spikiness that remains is in the keen,
humorous dialogue, expertly handled by
lead Zosia Mamet, and the deft way the film
frequently undercuts genre expectations. Ex and the city: Zosia Mamet, Diana Irvine
Mamet plays Diana, a twentysomething writer
struggling with her first novel, who returns to Diana, a characterisation far from her gauchely
New York after three years in London on some effusive Shoshanna in Girls. As with many a male
Boy wonder: Jean-Michel Basquiat unspecified professional development mission. lead in a romantic comedy, Diana’s emotional
We’ve already been warned by the first of several flaw is a failure to commit – here it is Ben who is
a freestanding work in itself – but it is at ease flashbacks that before she left for London she the torch-carrier, set on achieving marital bliss.
in its unassuming approach, cherishing its broke up with her boyfriend Ben, so it’s a shock Diana receives a bruising critique of her draft
subject while avoiding the clichés of Great Man to her to discover that he is her new downstairs novel halfway through the film: the friendships
hagiography. Perhaps Driver felt the need of her neighbour. The building they share is a spacious, are well drawn but the romantic lead is a blank.
late, famous friend’s assistance in returning to elegantly renovated brownstone, overseen While it’s true that Ben (Noah Baumbach stalwart
filmmaking after all these years; it’s to be hoped by a maternal, endlessly supportive landlady, Matthew Shear) is fairly enigmatic, this is as
that she’ll be working on her own again soon. widowed former actor Amy. Here Diana, who stark a description of Diana’s emotional life as
supports her writing by selling wedding dresses you could hope for. She has a marked facility for
Credits and Synopsis to snotty rich girls in an upscale boutique, and female friendship, exemplified by her honest
musician Ben live out their days dressed in relationship with her landlady and also her fierce
expensive-looking neutrals, with plenty of time attachment to her sharp and very likeable best
Produced by Productions Wild Style (1983)
Sara Driver presents in Permanent to dwell on their romantic entanglements. The friend Gabby (an excellent comic performance
Rachel Dengiz association with Vacation (1980) most helpfully fantastical element, however, is by Diana Irvine). Tellingly, Diana expresses
Director of Faliro House, Le
Photography Pacte, Leopardo In Colour that no one is glued to their cell phone, which is more jealousy over Gabby finding a new female
Adam Benn Filmes, Bunny [1.78:1] partly why any and all emotional heartpourings pal than the discovery that the same woman
Edited by Lake Films a Hells
Adam Kurnitz Kitten production Distributors
must be performed out loud, preferably in public. is also Ben’s new girlfriend. It’s only a shame
Sound Mixers A film by Sara Driver Modern Films It could all go horribly, indulgently wrong, that Gabby’s storyline dissolves so swiftly.
Dennis Rainaldi Executive Munro Films
Drew Joy Producers
and yet The Boy Downstairs has enough wit and The flashbacks to Ben and Diana’s former
Christos V. intelligence to keep everything on the right track. relationship are the plums here, a series of
©Hells Kitten Konstantakopoulos Ultimately, it’s funny, engaging and even moving. romantic and comic set pieces spilling over
Productions, LLC Jean Labadie
Production Paulo Branco The credit for this must largely go to Brooks’s into the more tentative present-day storyline.
Companies Film Extracts Sauvignon-crisp script, essaying a fine sardonic By combining both strands, The Boy Downstairs
Hells Kitten Downtown 81 (2000)
sense of humour, but much is also due to Mamet’s succeeds as a winning romance and very
introspective, brittle performance as wisecracking promising feature debut from Brooks.
A documentary exploring the early career of the
artist Jean-Michel Basquiat in New York in the late
1970s. In a bankrupt and crumbling city, a cluster Credits and Synopsis
of outsiders and artists congregate in the rundown
Lower East Side. Interviewees who experienced the
scene first-hand include filmmaker Jim Jarmusch, Produced by production Shannon Brooklyn, present day and four years before. Aspiring
David Brooks A Motion Picture Peter Oliver novelist Diana returns to New York after three years
writer Luc Sante, graffiti artist Al Diaz, gallerist Dan Clifton Capital production Julian
Diego Cortez and Jean-Michel Basquiat confidante Producer Executive Producer Theo Stockman away. After finding a suitable apartment, with a landlady
Alexis Adler, whose collection of ephemera from the Leon Clarance Paul Brooks Elliot called Amy, she is mortified to discover that her ex-
period is drawn on extensively. The interviewees, Written by Jaime Fernandez boyfriend Ben is her downstairs neighbour. Flashbacks
whose testimonials are mixed with vintage archival Sophie Brooks delivery man tell the story of their relationship from their first date
Director of Cast Fabrizio Brienza
and meeting each other’s parents to their break-up.
footage, describe a downtown scene centred on Photography Zosia Mamet waiter
the Mudd Club and Club 57, and recall the arrival Stephan Weinberger Diana Carolyn McCormick Ben is hostile to Diana at first; his new girlfriend
of precocious Haitian-Puerto Rican teenager Edited by Matthew Shear mother is Meg, who warns Diana to stay away from him. One
Basquiat. Diaz discusses his creation, with Basquiat, Matthew Friedman Ben Doug Trapp night, Ben and Diana go to the theatre. Ben says
Production Designer Deirdre O’Connell doctor that he has split up with Meg and kisses Diana, but
of the graffiti persona ‘SAMO’, a tag that Basquiat Meredith Lippincott Amy Arliss Howard
eventually took for his own. As uptown graffiti, Music by/Score Sarah Ramos Jack she pulls away. Ben says he doesn’t want to be just
hip hop and breakdance culture begin to cross- Produced by Meg friends. Soon afterwards, Amy tells Diana that Ben is
pollinate with the downtown arts scene, Basquiat, David Buckley Diana Irvine In Colour moving out. A few days later, Diana, shocked to see
Sound Mixer Gabby him, trips on some ice. Ben takes her to the hospital
convinced of his own genius and determined to
Austin Plocher Jeff Ward Distributor
find fame and fortune, refines his practice as an Costume Designer
and then home, where they say a final goodbye.
Marcus Altitude Film
artist, along the way attracting the attention of Keri Langerman Liz Larsen Entertainment Diana realises that she has made a mistake, and
Andy Warhol, whose dilettantish, multidisciplinary Susan that she is in love with Ben. She goes to his new
approach influenced Basquiat’s own. Basquiat’s ©Reliance Sabina apartment and tells him she loves him and wants
Entertainment Friedman-Seitz to try again. He says no, and she is devastated.
contribution to ‘The Times Square Show’ and the Productions 5 Ltd Jenny
Cortez-curated ‘New York New Wave’ exhibition in Production David Wohl Sometime later, Diana finds Ben sitting
1981 launches him on his way to a brief, dazzling Companies Barry on the steps of their old building. They
career, which will end with his death in 1988. A Cliffbrook Films Deborah Offner walk off down the street together.
in the near future, bear in mind that there are page 8 a stolen iPad isn’t traditionally
rules. First, you had better own a nice-looking cinematic in the way that
house, preferably sprawling and/or secluded. bank robberies and high-
Second, you, as the homeowner, will need to kiss speed chases are. These are tedious, long and
goodbye to your phone and any other useful barely-worth-it ways to obtain cash, predicated
items, though a length of hose or a Zippo lighter on commitment rather than skill or patience.
may be permissible. Third, you will need home Although poached tablets and recycling copper
invaders who are rather poorly armed for the are just two of the ways in which Pio Amato and
occasion, and must possess impressive reservoirs his family get by, this is the particular type of
of incompetence and bad luck. Once your nice hustler rhythm – imbued with a sense of purpose
quiet evening at home has ticked all these boxes, but forced to meander, alternating between
please enjoy the ensuing carnage responsibly. urgency and languor – that The Ciambra beats to.
James McTeigue’s entertaining B-movie effort The second film in Jonas Carpignano’s
never strays far from this trusted formula. In projected trilogy about life in the Italian port town
this case, the house is a handsome mid-century of Gioia Tauro (and an extension of a short of the
number with plenty of teak panelling and Get out: Ajiona Alexus, Gabrielle Union, Seth Carr same name), The Ciambra follows Pio (Pio Amato),
plate glass, stuck out in the lonely woods of a Roma teenager, after his father and older brother
Wisconsin. It used to be the fortress hideaway reversal points in this case, the upstanding citizen Cosimo are incarcerated. In their absence, Pio
of a paranoid old man with a dodgy past, but he and her family are people of colour, doing battle takes it on himself to earn cash by any means
has been run over in New York under suspicious with a ruthless gang of stupid white people – necessary – even though his mother specifically
circumstances and his daughter Shaun (Gabrielle plus a psychopath (Richard Cabral) played by tells him that he hasn’t been promoted to man of
Union, who also co-produced) has arrived with an actor of Mexican heritage, for good measure. the house yet. (Still, she doesn’t force him to go
her kids (Ajiona Alexus and Seth Carr) to take Sadly, though, the script declines to make any to school, and takes the money he brings back to
possession. Shaun has Unspecified Issues with use of this scenario’s potential as a commentary her.) While out on his petty-crime expeditions
her dead dad, but it’s handy that she’s amassed on white attitudes to conspicuous black wealth; – stealing luggage from a train that’s about to
some survival skills along the way. It turns perhaps more troubling is the implied glee with leave and dropping it off in a giant pile of other
out that the house, far from being empty, is which we are invited to watch Shaun being snatched suitcases – Pio often runs into or seeks
infested with ne’er-do-wells intent on cracking dragged around and beaten up by the bad guys out his best friend Ayiva (Koudous Seihon), a
a hidden safe full of the old man’s ill-gotten – one of the more dispiriting staples of the genre. 32-year-old migrant from Burkina Faso. The pair
loot. When they take the kids hostage and lock Despite this, along with the film’s dialogue share cigarettes, scooter rides, beers and advice,
Shaun out, it’s up to Bitch Mom From Hell to inadequacies (“You… broke into the wrong house!” always willing to lend each other a hand: if Ayiva
fight her way back in, past the house’s state- is about the level of Shaun’s one-liners) and a doesn’t want to buy something that Pio is selling,
of-the-art surveillance and security features. marked tendency to lapse into incoherence, he connects him with another African migrant
It’s rare, outside the home-invasion genre, Union gives the whole thing her considerable all. who does. Most importantly, Ayiva knows when
for a middle-aged woman to be the strongest, Her committed, nuanced performance flatters to treat him like the kid he is (even though Pio
smartest and most resourceful person on the Ryan Engle’s ropy script and really deserved to resists it) and when to treat him like the man he
screen, which might be why these films are so be in a more thoughtful, complex film. Still, pretends to be – unlike the rest of his family.
much fun – more fun, anyway, than the po-faced it’s always nice when the underdog – or in As in Mediterranea (2015), the first film in
dad-heroics of Taken and its ilk. For added role- this case, the under-bitch-mom – wins. Carpignano’s trilogy, their friendship runs deeper
than simply being fellow outsiders in Gioia
Credits and Synopsis Tauro. Eschewing ‘unlikeliest pals’ clichés, Pio
and Ayiva’s closeness is entirely felt through the
rapport between the two actors, who are playing
Produced by Presented in In Colour US, present day. Shaun arrives with her daughter
Gabrielle Union association with [2.35:1] Jasmine and son Glover at the secluded mansion
semi-fictionalised versions of themselves; there is
James Lopez Dentsu Inc./
she has inherited from her father, a money launderer no emotionally loaded dialogue to spell it out for
Sheila Hanahan Taylor Fuji Television Distributor
Craig Perry Network, Inc. Universal Pictures who has been killed by the criminals he worked with. us. Carpignano’s camera buoyantly manoeuvres
Will Packer Executive Producers International Shaun and the children discover that the house is through empty streets, tiny homes, bars and
Screenplay Jaime Primak Sullivan UK & Eire packed with hi-tech security equipment, though
Ryan Engle Jeff Morrone
nightclubs to give extra life to their extended
Story
this has possibly been tampered with. While Shaun hangout sessions. While it would be wrong to
Valerie Bleth Sharp
Jaime Primak Sullivan is outside, a gang of four thieves – who have broken
Director of into the house to raid a safe full of money – take the call the film’s style ‘immersive’ (there are cuts,
Photography Cast children hostage; when one of them, Peter, attempts variations of shot sizes, multiple angles of the
Toby Oliver Gabrielle Union to snatch Shaun, she takes him hostage in turn. She same scene, ellipses, a repeated vision of a white
Film Editor Shaun Russell
Joseph Jett Sally Billy Burke then uses her knowledge of the house to break in, and horse that symbolises past traditions, and so on),
Production Designer Eddie when she learns that the gang need Peter to open the the framing and commitment to naturalistic
Cecele M. De Stefano Richard Cabral safe, she attempts a hostage swap. But gang leader
Score Duncan Eddie simply shoots Peter – it was a sim-card hidden
dialogue allow the viewer to feel more stitched
Johnny Klimek Ajiona Alexus
in his necklace that the thieves needed, not him. The into the action. Sometimes this comes at the
Production Jasmine Russell
Sound Mixer Levi Meaden remaining three intruders get the money and plan to expense of narrative clarity – the names of
Chris Giles Sam kill the children, but Shaun climbs on the roof to reach most of Pio’s family members and fellow Roma
Costume Designer Jason George them through a skylight. The youngest thief, Sam, dies
Jason Sky Bland Justin Russell
aren’t mentioned until about three quarters of
in the ensuing chaos; the psychopath Duncan is run the way through the film, if at all. Nevertheless,
Seth Carr
©Universal Studios Glover Russell over as Shaun, Jasmine and Glover try to escape in their
car. Outsmarting Eddie, Shaun and the children run eliding such facts is a type of confusion that
Production Christa Miller
Companies Maggie Harris back into the house and lock themselves in. But Shaun’s doesn’t exist in conventional documentaries
Universal Pictures Mark Furze husband arrives unannounced, and she is forced to but very often does in real life; it adds to the
presents a Will Packer Peter
Productions, Practical Damien Leake
open the door. When Eddie looks set to make a deal with feeling of simply tagging along with Pio.
Pictures production Isaac Paulson her, Duncan – who is still alive – stabs him in a rage. While Pio prides himself on being
A James Shaun and her daughter kill Duncan. The family huddle
McTeigue film Dolby Digital together on the porch waiting for the police to arrive.
preternaturally clever (even though he’s
illiterate), the question of what he thinks he
REVIEWS
Universe’, Fox’s treatment of the slice of Marvel
Comics’ rights it controls has shifted into ‘try
anything’ mode. Generally conceding that Brett
Ratner’s X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) was a
misstep after Bryan Singer’s first series entries,
Fox had Singer tinker with the timeline in
X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014), which shunted
everything that didn’t work in any of the films
into an alternate reality. While mainstream
Marvel aims for convergence in big team-up
efforts like Avengers: Infinity War, Fox takes risks
with its film and TV X-Men spinoffs, including
the elegiac Logan (2017) and the experimental
Legion (2017-). In the offing are the horror-themed
The New Mutants and X-Men: Dark Phoenix,
revisiting material bungled in The Last Stand.
Deadpool, introduced in the X-Men comics in
the 1990s, has been a frame-breaking surprise hit
Family law: The Ciambra on several runs of his solo title. Ryan Reynolds
first played the role in the middling X-Men Origins:
knows is what wreaks irrevocable havoc on his Pio is kicked out of his home by his father, and Wolverine (2009), which is revised in a funny
life. After his brother and his father return home spends the next few nights sleeping on the street black-out gag here, and fits into the X-Men film
from prison, Pio suggests that he too should or wherever Ayiva can put him. Cosimo finds Pio universe as a scattershot gadfly, poking fun at
start dealing with ‘the Italians’ (who are very and gives him an unbelievably cruel ultimatum, the series in particular and superhero cinema
possibly ’Ndrangheta, the Calabrian version of one predicated on proving he understands in general. When grim cyborg Cable shows up
the Mafia), the men Cosimo assists in the stealing that it is his family versus the rest of the world, in the person of a scarred, metal-armed Josh
and reselling of goods. Cosimo laughs in his and only certain outsiders are acceptable. Brolin, Reynolds cheerfully greets him with,
face, and Pio retaliates by attempting to steal The Ciambra’s ending is a stark contrast to “You’re dark – are you sure you’re not from the
from one of the Italians. (When first entering most coming-of-age tales: rather than moving DC Universe?” The polar opposite of downbeat,
the man’s house, it seems as if Pio isn’t looking towards something like self-discovery, Pio is slightly pompous Logan, Deadpool 2 opens with
for things to steal, but simply admiring the bullied into burrowing back into the safety of Reynolds’s cancer-ridden, unkillable wiseass
order and beautiful furnishings, far removed his (dysfunctional) family. Cosimo even treats mocking an action figure of the skewered
from his messy, shared bedroom.) The man him to a plump, middle-aged prostitute once the Wolverine and promising to one-up Hugh
returns earlier than expected, catches Pio in the deed is done, to “make him a man”. Rather than Jackman’s onscreen demise by blowing himself
act, and forces him to confess his crimes to his reassuring us that exceptional people will grow literally to pieces. These are scooped up by
entire family – small children included. Having up to do exceptional things, the film dares to steel-skinned stooge mutant Colossus in order
destroyed this fruitful business relationship, show that, very often, the world gets in the way. to drag the protagonist into something closer
to a story than the thin, jokey Deadpool (2016).
Credits and Synopsis Tim Miller, director of the first Deadpool film,
has been replaced for this follow-up by stunt
specialist David Leitch, billed in the snark-heavy
Produced by Nicoletta Taranta Culturali e del Turismo Sophie Mas Rocco Amato Jennifer
Paolo Carpignano Direzione Generale Lourenço Sant’Anna Rocco Kingsley Asimung Bond-parody opening credits as “one of the guys
Jon Coplon ©Stayblack per il Cinema Daniela Taplin Nicolas Damiano Kingsley who killed John Wick’s dog”. The story is complex
Gwyn Sannia Productions SRL and With the participation Lundberg Amato U Ciccareddu
Ryan Zacarias RT Features U.S. LLC of Aide aux cinémas Alessio Lazzareschi Cocchino Grandad Emiloano enough for a straighter film, with the reluctant,
Written by Production du monde - Institut Joel Brandeis Riccardo Amato Koudous Seihon inept hero prodded and poked into taking a moral
Jonas Carpignano Companies français, Centre Dario Suter Riccardo Ayiva
Rodrigo Teixeira RT Features, Sikelia national du cinéma Simona Amato
stand to protect a chubby, rage-fuelled teenager (a
Marc Schmidheiny Productions, et de l’image animée Simona In Colour very funny Julian Dennison) from the Terminator
Christoph Daniel Stayblack Ministère des Cast Cristina Amato [1.85:1]
type who wants him dead. An extended
Director of Production with Rai affaires étrangères Pio Amato Cristina Subtitles
Photography Cinema present et du développement Pio Antonella Amato feint introduces a team of characters
Tim Curtin In association with international Iolanda Amato Antonella Distributor
Editor Film i Väst, Haut and the contribution Iolanda Gesuele Massimo Peccadillo Pictures
Affonso Gonçalves et Court, Filmgate of LuCa Damiano Amato Amato
Production Designer Films and DCM Supported by the Cosimo Nagnolo Italian theatrical title
Marco Ascanio Viarigi Recognized film Sundance Institute Patrizia Amato Francesco Amato A Ciambra
Composer of cultural interest Feature Film Program Patatina Cosimo Amato
Dan Romer with the economic Executive Producers Francesco Pio Amato family members
Sound contribution of Martin Scorsese Keko O’Marrochinu Pasquale Alampi
Giuseppe Tripodi the Ministero dei Emma Tillinger Susanna Amato Raffaele Guerrasio
Costume Designer Beni e delle Attività Koskoff Susanna Faith Uchenna Eburu
Gioia Tauro, Calabria, the present. Fourteen-year-old then retire. When Pio’s grandfather dies, his father
Pio wakes up and brings his grandfather breakfast. and brother are allowed out of jail for the funeral.
He spends time with his family and hangs out with Pio offers to take over dealing with ‘the Italians’
his friend Ayiva. The police arrive at Pio’s Roma (gangsters) for Cosimo, but Cosimo laughs in his
neighbourhood and arrest his father and older brother face. Pio retaliates by trying to steal from one of
Cosimo. Pio delivers a car to a man who was going to the Italians. He is caught, and forced to confess to
buy it from Cosimo, and gives his mother the money. his entire family. Pio’s father kicks him out. After a
He steals some luggage from a train that’s about to few days, Cosimo gives him an ultimatum: help the
depart; Ayiva helps him to sell it. Ayiva shows Pio Italians to steal the goods from Ayiva’s locker, or
a storage locker full of computers and electronics, never come home again. Pio resists at first, but then
which he hopes to sell at home in Burkina Faso and gives in. Cosimo buys Pio oral sex from a prostitute.
Indestructible: Ryan Reynolds
1990s run of the comic (commercially huge, prom nights usually newsworthy?), teenager Billy
artistically dire). Beetz wryly fits in with the tone, Bloom (Alex Lawther) is asked by the supportive
while Tan and a bunch of others are made the butt local reporter (played by trans actress Laverne
of gruesome, effective jokes that clear the decks Cox) how he defines his gender. His semi-serious
for more classic X-folk to show up. The Juggernaut suggestion of “gender-obliterator” is soon shouted
– Professor X’s evil stepbrother – overwrites down by a more ambiguous and charged word,
Vinnie Jones’s damp-squib version in (yes, again) “freak” – an insult hurled by an angry classmate.
The Last Stand, though his exit includes an anal Drag queen Billy’s hazardous ambition to
assault that’s among a gusher of gay-panic reappropriate this pejorative and othering term
jokes now probably past their tell-by date. is representative of the entire enterprise of Trudie
Reynolds’s underlying sweetness takes the Styler’s debut feature Freak Show. Awkwardly
edge off the comic’s homicidal self-pity, though and unconvincingly, this teen movie aims to Escape to victory: Alex Lawther
the endless shtick (partially from the pen of do away with labels to invoke an all too nice
Reynolds himself) has a miss-to-hit ratio of about and frankly disrespectful universalism. At a Zelda Fitzgerald in front of his literature class;
three to one. The film has hectoring, wearisome time when millions of Americans still support Billy’s decision to present a book report to
stretches – with some routines poor enough for a homophobic and transphobic president, his teacher via a full-blown metamorphosis
a Wayans brothers joint – before things gel in arguing tearfully that “we’re all freaks after all” is enjoyable on its own terms, without
the mid-point assault on a jail convoy. However, comes off as a particularly unhelpful denial. pointing towards self-actualisation clichés.
in the climax, Reynolds milks a parody of Freak Show overflows with good intentions, Billy envisions his drag act as an escape from
Jackman’s chatty death scene until the udders which may be why its wilful erasure of the brutality of the world, and film should be
are dry. A final fillip of self-flagellation has the particular pains still inflicted on non- the ideal medium to give him the visual power
Deadpool use a time machine to intervene in heteronormative people leaves such a bad taste. he works hard to evoke, but Styler struggles to
Ryan Reynolds’s timeline, perhaps consigning Billy, whose style inspiration is his mother evade the script’s origins as a novel. Nowhere is
Green Lantern (2011) to an alternate universe. Muv (Bette Midler), is a character rarely seen this more apparent than in the film’s sporadic
in cinema, especially as a lead in a fictional use of voiceover. Evidently meant to echo
Credits and Synopsis coming-of-age drama; save for RuPaul’s excellent, trailblazing gay author Oscar Wilde, Lawther’s
affirmative reality show, drag queens sadly aren’t multi-octave delivery of melancholy witticisms
currently flooding our screens, big or small. makes the film more heavy than profound. These
Produced by Jonathan Eusebio Cast The lanky Lawther is never uncomfortable redundant monologues also see Lawther coming
Simon Kinberg Scott Ateah Ryan Reynolds
Ryan Reynolds Wade Wilson, in the many wigs and fake eyelashes he gets to dangerously close to parody – perhaps of Quentin
Lauren Shuler ©Twentieth ‘Deadpool’
Donner Century Fox Film Josh Brolin
wear, and his ease in this physically demanding Crisp, and his memorable 1975 screen incarnation
Written by Corporation and Cable role is laudable. But his glamorous outings are by John Hurt in The Naked Civil Servant.
Rhett Reese TSG Entertainment Morena Baccarin
Paul Wernick Finance LLC
typically used as metaphorical devices in a In its attempt to counter stereotypes, Freak
Vanessa
Ryan Reynolds Production Julian Dennison predictable story arc. The bridal look he dons Show ends up surpassing them to become
Director of Companies
Photography Twentieth Century
Russell Collins, one day in class loses a bit of majesty when vulgar. Billy’s difficult trajectory through school
‘Firefist’
Jonathan Sela Fox presents Zazie Beetz ascribed a narrative purpose; lying beaten in the is ultimately presented as helpful to others:
Film Editors in association Domino arms of Flip (Ian Nelson), the straight boy he he has shown everyone around him that it is
Dirk Westervelt with Marvel T.J. Miller
Craig Alpert Entertainment a Weasel
fancies, he’s too obviously a damsel in distress. OK to be different. His suffering hasn’t really
Elísabet Kinberg Genre/ Brianna Hildebrand One wishes that Billy’s various transformations righted any wrongs, however. His Trump-
Ronaldsdóttir Maximum Effort Negasonic Teenage
Production production Warhead
were allowed to speak for themselves, like quoting blonde rival remains popular and, in her
Designer Executive Jack Kesy his dazzling performance as a burning-alive shadow, the freak show must go on, quietly.
David Scheunemann Producers Black Tom Cassidy
Music by/Guitars/ Stan Lee Leslie Uggams
Guitarviol Jonathon Blind Al Credits and Synopsis
Tyler Bates Komack Martin
Sound Mixer Kelly McCormick Dolby Atmos
Mark Noda Ethan Smith In Colour Produced by Production Designer Maven Pictures Bruno Wang Flip Dr Veronica Vickers
Costume Designers Aditya Sood [2.35:1] Jeffrey Coulter Franckie Diago presents a Flower Samantha Perelman Celia Weston Michael Park
Kurt Swanson Rhett Reese Bryan Rabin Music Films production Bobby Sager Florence Principal Onnigan
Bart Mueller Paul Wernick Distributor Ember Truesdell Dan Romer in association Cathleen Ihasz Willa Fitzgerald
Stunt Co- 20th Century Fox Chris Miller Supervising with Bruno Wang Nicole Ihasz Tiffany Tarbell In Colour
ordinators International (UK) Trudie Styler Sound Editor/ Productions and Laverne Cox [2.35:1]
Celine Rattray Re-recording Mixer CoMade Sthlm Felicia Watts
When his girlfriend Vanessa is killed, mutant Charlotte Ubben Lewis Goldstein Executive Producers Cast Larry Pine Distributor
Screenplay Costume Designers Drew Barrymore Alex J. Lawther William Miracle
mercenary Wade Wilson (aka Deadpool) attempts Patrick J. Clifton Colleen Atwood Nancy Juvonen Billy Bloom Bette Midler Communications
suicide. His friend Colossus tries to get Wade to Beth Rigazio Sarah Laux Pierre Lagrange Abigail Breslin Muv
pull himself together by taking him on a mission Director of Maya Sanbar Lynette John McEnroe
as a trainee X-Man. An attempt to calm down angry Photography ©Freak Show Sawsan Asfari AnnaSophia Robb Carter, coach
Dante Spinotti Films, LLC Sir Ivan Mary Jane, ‘Blah Charlotte Ubben
teenage-mutant outcast Russell Collins ends with Film Editor Production [i.e. Ivan Wilzig] Blah Blah’ Sesame
Wade and Russell both sent to prison. Time traveller Sarah Flack Companies Jenny Halper Ian Nelson Mickey Sumner
Cable arrives in the present to kill Russell before
he can become the villain who will murder Cable’s US, present day. Teenager Billy Bloom has been finding of students who have been waiting for someone like
family in the future. Cable attacks the prison and escape by dressing in drag ever since his mother Muv Billy to help them overthrow the abusive reign of the
Wade defends Russell. After escaping, Wade forms a showed him her collection of dresses. But Muv suddenly rich girls in school. Suddenly, Muv returns home, but
super-team called X-Force and tries to rescue Russell, leaves, and Billy is forced to relocate to the home of Billy’s joy is quickly overshadowed by the realisation
who rejects him to team up with the monstrous his rich but disdainful father in Long Island. At his that what he took for his mother’s boundless joviality
Juggernaut. Cable joins forces with Wade, and new school, his theatrics are met mostly with hatred, was in fact alcoholism; her love for her son was also
concedes that Wade should have a chance to talk but he strikes up a friendship with Flip, a straight boy a love of his father’s parental support money. At the
Russell out of killing his first victim and change he is attracted to. After a brutal ambush by angry school prom, Billy doesn’t win the crown, but his speech
his own future. Wade convinces Russell not to classmates leaves him briefly in a coma, Billy decides calling for everyone to admit they are all freaks like
become a murderer by sacrificing himself, but Cable to run for homecoming queen. Although Flip turns his him moves his father, who has attended as a surprise.
uses his time machine to save Wade’s life. Wade back on Billy after being called gay, Billy finds a friend As he walks on the school field the following year,
uses the same gadget to undo Vanessa’s death. in Mary Jane, and in ‘the shadow people’ – a group Billy returns grateful glances from former enemies.
REVIEWS
page 13 formal prologue to Hereditary
announces the passing of
78-year-old matriarch Ellen
Taper Leigh in the home of her daughter Annie
Graham, after a prolonged illness. “She will be
missed,” are the words that close the obituary –
but there is little evidence that Ellen’s estranged
family really do miss her. Annie (Toni Collette,
travelling convincingly through a range of
nuanced emotions) delivers a tactful eulogy that
not only stresses Ellen’s secrecy but is also clearly
straining to keep hidden the difficulties of Ellen’s
personality. Annie’s husband Steve (Gabriel
Byrne) and teenage son Pete (Alex Wolff) seem
barely to care – and if Pete’s 13-year-old sister
Charlie (Milly Shapiro) was without question
Ellen’s favourite, she is herself a strange, troubled
child, too affectless to express any notion of loss.
Hereditary opens with a long, fluid take
of three different but proximate houses, as
Pawel Pogorzelski’s slow-spinning, sinuous
cinematography first reveals a treehouse (also
the film’s final image) seen across the garden
through a window, then pulls back from the
window to show an artist’s workroom within
the house opposite, and finally pans over the It’s a family affair: Milly Shapiro, Toni Collette
workroom to a table bearing a scale model of
the house (with the wall removed from the suppressed demons must eventually out. Still, the Grahams are being carefully manipulated.
front to expose the elaborately crafted interior). Aster will take his time parcelling out all their The big reveal, when it comes, is played
As the camera moves closer to a bedroom in tortuous secrets, compartmentalised within the with a disarming literalness – but its unhinged
the model, and to a figurine lying in the mini- bourgeois veneer of suburban life, or hidden in irrationality also makes it an effective and
bed, we hear a knock, and – impossibly – Steve plain sight in boxes, lofts and images. Though affecting metaphor for a family’s inheritance
walks right in to wake Pete for Ellen’s funeral. primed to expect that Ellen’s legacy, genetic or of guilt, recrimination and madness. Aster’s
This uncanny trick of blurring a scale model otherwise, must come home to roost, viewers are artistry here is phenomenally assured, even
with the larger reality is something that has been kept in excruciating suspense as to what precise classical, as he deftly mixes subgenres, while
seen before in films with themes significantly form it will take, as recurring motifs of fire and focusing more on his bewildered characters
parallel to Hereditary’s, whether the facsimile decapitation, dissociative identity disorder and than on the horrors that either they or we
of the school in Nick Murphy’s The Awakening ritual beleaguer the film’s structure in a campaign can see (often as blurs or shadows). Hereditary
(2011), which similarly stages the burden of grief, of confusion. Aster throws in a whole palette might be regarded as a psychological or
the persistence of the dead and the seductiveness of haunted-house tropes (seances and spectres, supernatural thriller, an insidious ghost
of delusion, or the display model of the labyrinth creaky corridor and creepy attic, infestations of story, a literal cult movie, or Rosemary’s Baby
in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980), which also ants and flies) as much to confound as to clarify, (1968) after the infant has come of age. On any
pits child against unravelling adult. Yet in opening given that we are being misdirected no less than view, it is a diabolically assured debut.
with this lifelike doll’s house, constructed by
artist Annie to work – in microcosm – through Credits and Synopsis
her family’s long, tragic history and her own
difficult relationship with Ellen, debut writer/
director Ari Aster establishes two things: first,
Produced by Editors Production Windy Hill Pictures Cast Gabriel Byrne
Kevin Frakes Jennifer Lame Companies Executive Producers Toni Collette Steve Graham
the uneasy sense, right from the start, that the Lars Knudsen Lucian Johnston A24 and PalmStar Ryan Kreston Annie Graham
Buddy Patrick Production Designer Media present a Jonathan Gardner Alex Wolff In Colour
Grahams are somebody else’s playthings, like Written by Grace Yun Kevin Frakes and Toni Collette Peter Graham [2.00:1]
the dolls that Charlie collects; and second, that Ari Aster Music Lars Knudsen Gabriel Byrne Milly Shapiro
Director of Colin Stetson production in Charlie Graham Distributor
this mood of play-box paranoia, introducing Photography Costume Designer association with Finch Entertainment Film
Ann Dowd
tension at the outset and from then on never Pawel Pogorzelski Olga Mill Entertainment and Joan Distributors Ltd
once relenting, will be managed with the sort
North America, present day. After secretive 78-year- set fire to Pete, Charlie and herself. At a tense dinner,
of painstaking attention to domestic minutiae old matriarch Ellen dies, her unloving artist daughter Annie openly blames Pete for Charlie’s death. Joan
that Annie herself brings to her art. In these Annie, son-in-law Steve, teen grandson Pete and teaches an initially sceptical Annie a seance ritual.
layerings of houses within houses, and in the beloved but affectless 13-year-old granddaughter Annie performs the ritual at home with a reluctant
dreams within dreams (Annie’s, Pete’s) that will Charlie struggle to grieve. Annie sees Ellen’s ghost. Steve and Pete, and all three – but especially Annie
soon interpolate themselves into the narrative’s Steve conceals news that Ellen’s grave has been and Pete – begin to have supernatural experiences.
desecrated. Charlie also has ghostly visions, and Finding a mutilated photograph of Pete in Joan’s
reality, Aster merges naturalism with unnerving decapitates a dead pigeon. At a support group, Annie candle-strewn apartment, Annie realises that Joan was
allegory to present an increasingly hallucinatory reveals her guilty resentment towards the controlling in a coven with Ellen, trying to conjure the demon spirit
family portrait in which the psychological Ellen, and her sorrow at the earlier deaths of her Paimon. Annie discovers Ellen’s decapitated corpse in
is reified and the devil is in the details. father and son. After going into anaphylactic shock the attic. Steve brings a self-injured Pete home, and
The strange graffiti etched into the Grahams’ at a party, Charlie is decapitated on the way to the spontaneously combusts. Assailed by Charlie’s ghost,
wallpaper – and of course reproduced by Annie hospital – with a stoned Pete at the wheel. Distraught aged cultists and a possessed Annie (who decapitates
with grief, Annie meets Joan at the support group, herself), Pete leaps out of the attic window. In Charlie’s
in miniature – can be recognised as the writing and reveals how once, while sleepwalking, she almost treehouse, Joan crowns Pete the resurrected Paimon.
on the wall for a dysfunctional clan whose
design magazine or (unaffiliated) lavish annual every measure ranks in the second category,
exhibition marketing the latest in desirable has never encountered a scene that he can’t
domesticity, then Andrew Fleming’s comedy belabour to death with the help of his DP, and
shares their goals in shaping perceptions of over the course of In the Fade he empties out the
modern living. The film’s chief success is its whole trunkload of emphatic camera moves:
depiction of a middle-aged gay couple – one a dolly-zoom ‘Vertigo shot’ to accompany a
older, camper and English (Steve Coogan), the moment of terrible revelation, some highly
other surlier, more streetwise and American significant rack focuses, a split dioptre or two
(Paul Rudd) – as largely uncontroversial and, and a howler of a final heavenward crane shot.
eventually, suitable parents to a young kid. There’s nothing wrong with a filmmaker
At any rate, it isn’t their sexuality that makes Bill of rights: Steve Coogan, Paul Rudd using the entirety of the tool kit at their disposal,
them more likely to screw it up than any other of course, but Akin muffles any possibility of
affluent, immature, media-bubble elites. The climactic custody battle with Erasmus’s achieving expressionistic oomph under several
In times of growing global intolerance, once ne’er-do-well son Beau is so perfunctory layers of drab naturalistic padding, including
again depressingly disproportionate towards it’s surprising that it made the final cut. the requisite grey-blue palette, the formalwear
minorities, perhaps we underestimate such Since all supporting characters are ciphers, of the respectable festival film. Such instances of
normalisation. And despite its overreliance much depends on Coogan and Rudd’s chemistry. competing impulses at odds with one another
on broad humour – at one point the action Both are clearly straining to play between, even can make for extraordinary and vivacious
almost stops for a skit on the tired gag of movie- against, the script’s lacklustre lines (one wonders work – take, for instance, the filmography of
inspired porn titles – inside a big soft heart is how much improvisation was required) to Rainer Werner Fassbinder, animated as it is by
where Ideal Home resides. Fleming has declared generate momentum. Yet despite the admission seemingly contradictory impulses. Only a little
that this is his most personal movie, a notion that Erasmus and Paul’s speciality is to “drink over a decade ago, around the time of his The
underlined by the closing-credits stills of real- and argue”, the actors appear at cross-purposes, Edge of Heaven, Akin was routinely garnering
life same-sex couples and their children. What never really gelling with each other or, crucially, comparisons to Fassbinder, presumably by virtue
is also apparent, certainly compared with his with Jack Gore’s strangely muted Angel/Bill. The of the fact that he was a German director whose
cult high-school coven movie The Craft (1996) net result, even as the film plays, is to prompt films are self-consciously contemporary in their
or underrated Nixon-skewering satire Dick recollections of spikier mismatched-adults-and- subject matter, and that Hanna Schygulla was
(1999), is that this is also far from his best. kids efforts: Paper Moon (1973), Bad Santa (2003) seen in that woebegone production. But where
Since his previous Coogan collaboration, or even Rudd’s own superior Role Models (2008). Fassbinder managed to synthesise the direct,
2008’s Hamlet 2, Fleming has largely concentrated What truly fascinates, however, is to watch emotional appeal of popular cinema and the
on television – and while it’s presumably Coogan (on board as executive producer) within removed, intellectual approach that characterised
coincidental, the sketchy, stop-start narrative here the confines of a rare, mainstream American European modernism without appearing
feels as if it’s been hastily reconstructed from a lead role. Hollywood’s demand for comedy to betray either, Akin seems to vacillate. His
more developed sitcom series, patched together characters to be ultimately loveable rubs against films feel less like fields for confrontation and
with clunky montages. All shorthand and short his bravely abrasive British creations – Alan reconciliation between disparate elements than
cuts, as renovations go it’s got ‘cowboy builders’ Partridge, 24 Hour Party People’s Tony Wilson occasions of triangulation, splitting the difference.
written all over it. Angel (or Bill, as he prefers – and love of meta-self-dissection (A Cock and In the Fade is a melodrama made by a director
to be called), the young grandson that Coogan’s Bull Story, The Trip’s various excursions). He’s serenely convinced that there is nothing so
Erasmus and Rudd’s Paul must care for, switches too skilled a performer to flounder; but it’s also moving to an audience as a leading lady sobbing
from sullen and naive to mouthy and worldly- hard to deny that his best US onscreen outing is her guts out repeatedly and at length, and
wise as convenient. Alison Pill’s social worker probably still in Jim Jarmusch’s 2003 anthology accordingly star Diane Kruger is given plenty of
gets two reproachful scenes, then vanishes. Coffee and Cigarettes, playing ‘Steve Coogan’. lingering, tear-streaked close-ups. The part won
Kruger a best actress prize at Cannes, and she does
Credits and Synopsis indeed give a jagged, harrowing performance of
grief, often undermined though it is by Akin’s
incessant directorial interventions, such as the
Produced by Alexander Gruszynski Costume Designer Cow production Cast Jack Gore
absurd prettification of a bathtub suicide attempt
Maria Teresa Arida Editors Judith R. Gellman in association Paul Rudd Bill
Lucia Seabra Jeffrey M. Werner with Fortitude Paul revealed when the camera glides underwater to
Gabrielle Tana Byron Wong ©Enchanted International and Steve Coogan In Colour
Aaron Ryder Production Designer Land, LLC Mustard & Company Erasmus Brumble [2.35:1] capture gouts of blood blossoming from opened
Clark Peterson Anthony Fanning Production A film by Andrew Alison Pill wrists, then gloried over in a God’s-eye-view
Maxime Remillard Music Companies Fleming Melissa from Child Distributor
Written by Martin Simpson Remstar Studios Executive Producers Signature
shot. The flashy bad taste of such a decision isn’t
Protective Services
Andrew Fleming John Swihart presents a Lucky Steve Coogan Jake McDorman Entertainment the issue – it’s the presentation of tawdriness
Director of Sound Mixer Monkey Pictures, Lisa Wolofsky
Photography Andrejs Prokopenko Raygun, Baby
Beau Brumble with an air of sombre solemnity. One almost
wishes Akin would just embrace his crassest
US, present day. Flamboyant British TV chef disruption. A social worker visits and is horrified to see impulses, for somewhere swimming in this
Erasmus Brumble lives with his long-time boyfriend that Bill has had access to the couple’s pornography prestige package there’s a tough, dirty thriller –
and show producer Paul in their luxurious Santa collection when searching for a DVD. Erasmus and and, in fact, the last chapter of the movie, when
Fe mansion. Their carefree life is disrupted when Paul throw Bill a lavish birthday party, and gradually all it switches gear into revenge mode and the
Angel, child of Erasmus’s estranged son Beau, three form a close bond. During a prison visit, they are
suddenly shows up on their doorstep. Arrested dismayed to discover that Beau is set for early parole
score by Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme
by the police, Beau helped Angel escape by and plans to reclaim his son and start a new life in Texas. comes to the fore, is its most effective. (There are
scribbling his grandfather’s address in a Bible. Beau takes Bill away on Christmas Eve. In the chapters, announced by onscreen title cards, a
Angel refuses to talk and, despite Erasmus’s fine turbulent aftermath, discovering Erasmus cosying dunning reminder of Akin’s formalist fronting.)
cuisine, will eat only fast food. Stunned by his arrival, up to another man, Paul decides to accept a job The set-up goes like this: a mother, Katja
Paul and Erasmus clash more than ever as they face in New York. Eventually, however, he relents and
(Kruger), loses her Kurdish husband Nuri (Numan
their new responsibilities. Angel requests that he be stays. When Beau causes a reckless car accident
called Bill. Erasmus and Paul enrol him at a local school. and is returned to jail, the court decides that Acar) and her five-year-old son in a targeted
Paul becomes increasingly frustrated by the ongoing Bill should remain with Erasmus and Paul. bombing. The tragedy sends her into a tailspin
– and here, as well as in the later trial scenes,
Reviewed by
Pamela Hutchinson
See Feature Debra Granik’s third fiction
REVIEWS
on page 46 feature treks through a territory
of backwoods and dysfunctional
families that is only a few steps
removed from her garlanded Sundance success
Winter’s Bone (2010). In Leave No Trace, we’re in
Oregon, on the outskirts of Portland, trailing a
father and daughter as they are forced from their
illicit camp in a state park through a series of
temporary homes and shelters, in a rustic variant
on Ken Loach’s Cathy Come Home (1966). The
opening scenes reveal the practicalities of their
hideaway home – building a fire, boiling eggs,
patching the tarpaulins that provide shelter
from the insistent rain, practising drills to avoid
detection. When a jogger spots their camp,
however, the police arrive with sniffer dogs that
Tom and Will can’t outrun, and they are forcibly
evicted. The film is loosely based on Peter Rock’s
2009 novel My Abandonment, which was itself
Blood wedding: Diane Kruger, Numan Acar inspired by newspaper reports of an off-grid
father and daughter discovered in the same way.
Akin’s script does capture something about the moved past. Her domestic life, seen briefly The film deviates substantially in its plot, and
nature of processing the violent death of a loved in the present tense and then remembered its new title offers an intriguing commentary
one, the degree to which the indignity of their in smartphone videos, was one of blue skies on its protagonists’ precarious situation:
physical violation becomes an idée fixe. The loss, unruffled by a single cloud, and her grief combining a mantra of wildlife conservation
as well as the posthumous character assassination and fidelity to the memory of the departed is with an imperative for fugitives to avoid arrest.
of her husband, is almost too much for Katja to accordingly absolute. (If Akin has some insights The local officials deem Will (Ben Foster) and
bear, but when she receives a vindication of sorts into sorrow, his imagination of happiness is his teenage daughter Tom (Thomasin Harcourt
in the news that the culprits are native-born fatuous in the extreme.) Further simplifying McKenzie) homeless, but the word doesn’t
Nazis, she composes herself to face them down matters, those responsible for the destruction really describe their situation. For one thing,
in the courtroom. Despite a preponderance of Katja’s family unit are unquestionably evil they both insist that the camp they live in, albeit
of evidence of their guilt, the killers go free, and deserving of termination – Akin even illegal, is as efficient and comfortable a home
and so Katja follows them to Greece, where grants them a snarling Nosferatu of a defence as they need. Will has managed (somewhat
she plans to exact justice on her own terms. lawyer, guilty by association. In this absence of improbably) to educate Tom to a higher level
The conflict en route to the film’s explosive complication, it takes a goodly bit of lugubrious than she would have achieved in school, and
finale is largely confined to Katja’s breast. There pacing and contemplative compositions to both are physically healthy and strong. Will
is a suggestion of some tetchiness between pad things out before the final ka-boom, a bang is an army vet, though, and his mental health
Katja’s family and Nuri’s, but this is quickly of an ending for a whimper of a movie. has been ravaged by PTSD; harrowingly, selling
his prescription drugs to addicts is the only
Credits and Synopsis way he can rustle up money to buy supplies.
And as becomes increasingly apparent, a
permanent home is the last thing he wants.
Producers Written by/ Production Filmförderfonds, Johannes Krisch Distributor
Nurhan Sekerci-Porst Produced by/ Companies Die Beauftragte der Haberbeck, advocate Curzon Artificial Eye In the same way that Winter’s Bone showcased
Fatih Akin Performed by Warner Bros. Bundesregierung Samia Chancrin Jennifer Lawrence’s talents, Leave No Trace presents
Herman Weigel Joshua Homme presents a Bombero für Kultur und Birgit German
Ann-Kristin Homann Sound Recordist International and Medien, Film- und Numan Acar theatrical title a potentially star-making turn from its young star
Screenplay Kai Lüde Warner Bros. Film Medienstiftung NRW, Nuri Sekerci Aus dem Nichts Harcourt McKenzie: she is excellent – watchful,
Fatih Akin Costume Designer Productions Germany Filmförderungsanstalt Ulrich Tukur
Co-writer Katrin Aschendorf production In collaboration with Jürgen Möller
sensitive and ambiguously aged. At times her
Hark Bohm In co-production Canal+, Ciné+ Adam Bousdoukos character’s lack of peer-group socialisation leaves
Director of ©Bombero with Macassar Knacki
Photography International GmbH Productions, Pathé, Rafael Santana
her stranded in childhood, while at others she is
Rainer Klausmann & Co. KG/Macassar Dorje Film, Corazón Cast Rocco Sekerci wise beyond her years. At pivotal points in the film
Editor Productions/Pathé International Diane Kruger – when she catches herself in the act of wishing
Andrew Bird Production/Corazón Supported by Katja Jessen, In Colour
Production Designer International GmbH & Filmförderung Katja Sekerci [2.35:1] for a life not ruled by her father’s paranoiac
Tamo Kunz Co. KG/Warner Bros. Hamburg Schleswig- Denis Moschitto Subtitles regime – she seems to stretch and grow older
Original Score Entertainment GmbH Holstein, Deutscher Danilo Fava
before our eyes. Foster, who won acclaim for his
Hamburg, Germany, the present. Nuri, a Kurdish drug suicide by slitting her wrists in the bathtub. This news supporting role in 2016’s Hell or High Water, offers
dealer, emerges from his prison cell to be married to gives Katja the will to stay alive to see justice done in another quite remarkable performance. Will’s
his sweetheart, German-born Katja. Subsequently we court. But although the evidence against the culprits, deep instability is never in doubt, but Foster keeps
see them living as model citizens, raising their five- a young couple, is almost overwhelming, there is it at a simmer, without indulging in exuberant
year-old son Rocco. One day Katja drops Rocco off at enough reasonable doubt to keep them out of prison. displays. In fact, he provokes one of the film’s rare
his father’s office on her way to a spa visit. Returning After the trial, Katja follows the defendants to Greece,
later, she finds the street closed due to a bomb where they are holidaying near an inn owned by a white laughs at one of Will’s lowest moments, as he
attack, and becomes hysterical. The police confirm nationalist whose false testimony at their trial helped struggles to cope with psychologically probing
that Nuri and Rocco are among the dead. Suspecting to set them free. She crafts a homemade bomb of questions fired at him by a machine – a scene
gang retaliation, the police question Katja, asking the type that killed her family, but then hesitates to of grim absurdity that recalls Loach’s I, Daniel
her if Nuri had continued his drug-dealing activities. use it. After Danilo begs her on the phone to return to Blake (2016). This is a film of few, and restrained,
Katja insists that the culprits must be domestic Nazi Germany so that she can begin the process of appeal,
terrorists, a suspicion finally confirmed in a phone she strengthens her resolve and walks into her targets’
emotional outbursts. Tom’s tears when she frets
call from her lawyer Danilo after she has attempted camper, detonating the device and killing them all. about how her potential classmates will
torment her are brief but indelible.
Portland, Oregon, present day. Teenage girl Tom and supplies but doesn’t return. While he’s away, Tom
her ex-military father Will live in a camp in the state finds a newspaper cutting that reveals the cause and
park. They live off the land, topping up their supplies extent of her father’s PTSD. The next morning, she
with cash that Will earns by selling his PTSD drugs finds him unconscious – he has fallen in the woods.
to other veterans camping nearby. One day, the Passers-by take him to the home of a woman, who
authorities discover Will and Tom’s camp and take arranges for a former army medic to treat his injuries
them into state care. After assessing them, social and offers father and daughter a caravan to stay in, in
services find them a home in a small house on a a woodland trailer park. Tom settles in once more but
farm where Will can work. Tom settles in but Will is Will is eager to leave as soon as he can walk without
increasingly uncomfortable. He and Tom flee for a crutches. They set off together, but Tom can’t bring
new camp, going by bus, hitchhiking and then trekking herself to leave again, so they part ways. Tom returns
through the woods. Dangerously cold, hungry and to the caravan and Will heads into the woods. Tom
lost, they finally find a cabin. Will leaves to look for leaves her father a parcel of food in the forest.
University challenge: Melissa McCarthy
squib. While mother and daughter are the Reviewed by Jasper Sharp
height of blandness, their friends have mostly For all the prevalence of young women
been blessed with some intriguing quirks, yet protagonists in Japanese animation, female
REVIEWS
these are never explored or capitalised on. directors remain something of a rarity. Following
When they’re not simply slow, many of Yamato Naoko’s A Silent Voice (2016), Maquia:
the scenes are so messily staged or crashingly When the Promised Flower Blooms becomes
predictable as to be pointless. McCarthy’s big just the second anime feature directed by a
physical comedy set piece, when nerves cause woman to receive a UK theatrical release.
Deanna to sweat and growl uncomfortably Working from her own original script, first-
through a class presentation, ends up not time director Okada Mari presents a heartfelt
as cringe-comedy but merely mortifying. allegorical fantasy that posits motherhood
It’s a bogglingly low-stakes drama anyway, as a supernatural gift, yet ultimately a lonely
as she’s aceing her course and the upshot business. At the beginning of the tale, the
of her humiliation is no more than a pair of eponymous heroine lives a carefree if cloistered
sweaty jeans. She pulls off the mandatory existence as a member of the Iorph clan, a
comic dance sequence with aplomb, though, mystical people famed for their longevity A separation: Maquia
dressed to the nines for an 80s disco – it’s a rare and the legendary magical cloth into which
moment of energy in this flatlining movie. they weave their memories, emotionally constructed chronicle of Maquia’s relationship
With such a strong lead, Life of the Party might connecting themselves to one another. with her ward. If there is occasional confusion,
have scored high with generation-gap giggles, The plot unfolds over the course of a lifetime: it is due to the sheer timespan covered and the
or as an inspirational comedy about a woman not that of Maquia herself, but of the baby boy large number of peripheral figures popping in
converting her midlife crisis into a life-begins- she discovers abandoned in a forest after she and out of the narrative. The animation – a first
at-40 adventure. Instead it barely scrapes a pass. has been wrenched from her homeland by an theatrical feature from the new P.A. Works studio
aggressive and thoroughly masculine invasion. – is generally impressive, if slightly generic. The
Credits and Synopsis In accordance with Iorph custom, Maquia’s character designs by Yoshida Akihiko, best known
loving embrace of this outsider infant, whom for his work on the Final Fantasy videogames,
she names Erial, sees her become one of ‘The adhere to the anime standard of limpid blue eyes
Produced by Day production Jack
Melissa McCarthy Executive Jessie Ennis Clan of the Separated’, raising the foundling and paedomorphic features – though the script
Ben Falcone Producers Debbie as her own in the enemy city of Mezarte. provides some justification for this, since the
Chris Henchy Toby Emmerich Heidi Gardner
Written by Richard Brener Leonor Maquia’s entry into the world of motherhood Iorph characters’ physical form becomes fixed
Melissa McCarthy Michael Disco Chris Parnell happens without any intimation of sexual once they reach adolescence. The locations and
Ben Falcone David Siegel Mr Truzack
Director of Debby Ryan
activity, in contrast to the trajectory of her costumes are drawn from a Hanseatic-era Middle
Photography Jennifer childhood friend Leilia, who is abducted to Europe, with the Iorph homeland, rendered as
Julio Macat Cast Yani Simone
serve as consort to the Mezarte tribe’s Prince a prelapsarian Rivendell-like utopia, providing
Edited by Melissa McCarthy Trina
Brian Olds Deanna Miles Jimmy O. Yang Hazel. When the child of their loveless a stark contrast to the industrial-military base
Production Gillian Jacobs Tyler consummation fails to manifest Iorph powers, of the Mezarte city, crammed with grinding
Designer Helen
Rusty Smith Maya Rudolph Dolby Digital Leilia is forcibly separated from her offspring, cogs and Boschian jets of steam and flame.
Music Christine In Colour and takes to tending instead the dragon-like Maquia is clearly aimed at a young to
Fil Eisler Julie Bowen
Sound Mixer Marcie Distributor creatures kept at the foot of castle, whose mid-teen demographic, but its underlying
Todd Weaver Matt Walsh Warner Bros. powers, harnessed for the purposes of warfare, idea – that the maternal spirit is eternal and
Costumes Dan Miles Pictures
Designed by Molly Gordon International (UK)
have similarly waned in Mezarte captivity. cyclical, unlike the transient physicality
Louise Mingenbach Maddie Miles Okada’s background as a prolific screenwriter of men, and endures in people’s memories
Stephen Root
©Warner Bros. Mike
with two decades’ experience in the anime right up until the point of death – results in
Entertainment Inc. Jacki Weaver world comes across in this by-and-large tightly some undeniably affecting moments.
Production Sandy
Companies Adria Arjona
New Line Cinema Amanda Credits and Synopsis
presents an On the Luke Benward
US, present day. Immediately after dropping their Producers Production Sakurai Yuki The people of Iorph lead a timeless existence apart
Kikuchi Hirohisa Companies young Erial from the world, ceasing to age once they reach their
daughter Maddie at university for her final year, Dan
Endo Naoko Bandai Visual, Hikasa Yoko
Miles tells his wife Deanna that he wants a divorce Takenaka Nobuhiro Cygames, Hakuhodo Dita mid-teens. Maquia, an Iorph girl with no parents, is
– he is in love with a woman named Marcie. Deanna Kyotani Tomomi DY Music & Pictures, Kaji Yuki warned never to fall in love with an outsider, lest she
is distraught, but decides that now is a good time to Screenplay Lantis, P.A. Works Krim face centuries of solitude. When the warring Mezarte
finish her own degree, having dropped out of college Okada Mari clan invades and abducts Maquia’s friend Leilia, forcing
Based on the manga In Colour
when she was pregnant with Maddie. Deanna is full her to marry Prince Hazel to bear him a child with
by Sato Mito Voice Cast [1.78:1]
of enthusiasm for her studies, but struggles with her Director of Iwami Manaka Subtitles Iorph powers, Maquia is torn from her homeland in the
goth roommate and with bullies who mock her age. Photography Maquia mêlée. Lost in a forest, she comes across an orphaned
One night, Maddie and her friends take Deanna out Namiki Satoshi Irino Miyu Distributor baby boy. She carries him to a nearby farmhouse and,
Editor Erial National naming him Erial, decides to raise him as her own.
to a party. Deanna beds fellow student Jack and they
Takahashi Ayumi Kayano Ai Amusements
subsequently have a series of sexual encounters, Art Director Leilia Years pass, and Maquia and Erial move to the
though she tells him the relationship can’t be serious. Higashiji Kazuki Kaji Yuuki Japanese Mezarte city. Here, Maquia is reunited with her
Deanna excels at her course and is inducted into a Original Character Clear theatrical title Iorph sweetheart Krim, who disappeared during
sorority, but nerves get the better of her when she Design Sawashiro Miyuki Sayonara no Asa the Mezarte invasion. Together they plan to free
Yoshida Akihiko Rashine ni Yakusoku no
has to give a presentation in class. On a night out with Art Design/ Hana o Kazaro
Leilia from the castle. Leilia, meanwhile, has been
Hosoya Yoshimasa
old friends, she meets Dan and Marcie, who announce Concept Design Lang separated from her daughter, who manifests
that they are getting married in a week. She also Okada Tomoaki Satou Rina no signs of the Iorph’s magical abilities.
discovers that Jack is Marcie’s son. Deanna and her Music Mido Neighbouring clans invade the Mezarte city.
Kawai Kenji Hikasa Yoko Now an adult, Erial is recruited into the Mezarte
friends crash the wedding and trash the reception.
Sound Director Tita
Marcie, furious, announces that Deanna will be cut Wakabayashi Kuno Misaki army. When the city falls, Leilia is liberated. Erial
off financially. Deanna and her friends throw a party Kazuhiro Medmel flees to his wife Dita, the daughter of the farming
to raise money for her tuition fees, which Christina Chief Animation Sugita Tomokazu household that initially harboured him and
Aguilera performs at. Deanna gives a successful Director/ Isol Maquia, arriving just as she gives birth to their
Character Design Hirata Hiroaki
presentation, and graduates alongside her daughter. Ishii Yuriko Baro
own child. Maquia and Leilia return to Iorph.
Reviewed by Graham Fuller in Frankenstein derived from her own isolation. Reviewed by Lisa Mullen
Although her film is timed to coincide with the Less convincing is the proposition that in Like the movie business, fashion’s stock in trade
200th anniversary of the publication of Mary writing fictions appropriated by Shelley and is spectacle. If you can’t enchant the audience,
REVIEWS
Shelley’s Frankenstein, director Haifaa Al-Mansour, Byron, Mary and Polidori – whose The Vampyre repel them; for maximum impact, do both.
who has made bold films about women’s issues was initially published under Byron’s name This, Alexander McQueen excelled at. He made
in Saudi Arabia, notably Wadjda (2012 ), has – created monsters of the two literary lions. clothes that told stories about magic and death;
taken the opportunity to make a movie more This notion is intended to align with the poets’ about madness and beauty and fury. Dressed by
topically concerned with the persistence of piggish attitudes to women. A subplot involving McQueen, the female body became an unruly
abuses against women than with the novel’s Byron’s sexual exploitation of Mary’s stepsister piece of tech, always threatening to explode or
critique of Prometheanism. While it’s otherwise a Claire Clairmont echoes and exaggerates malfunction: forms were wrapped up, mummy-
conventional biopic hingeing on Mary Godwin’s Shelley and Mary’s scandalous elopement. tight, only to erupt in unexpected directions.
romantic relationship with a feckless Percy As for the famous Romantics’ Walpurgisnacht When McQueen sent models down a runway,
Bysshe Shelley, the film has its #MeToo and at Villa Diodati in the summer of 1816, Mary jaws dropped and things literally caught fire.
Time’s Up moments: Mary is sexually harassed Shelley merely creates nostalgia for the prelude And yet fashion is mostly about money,
by Shelley’s friend Thomas Jefferson Hogg; the to James Whale’s camp Bride of Frankenstein and this film makes no bones about the fact.
anonymous publication of Frankenstein, and the (1935) and Ken Russell’s lurid Gothic (1986). Chubby, normal, cockney Lee McQueen, son
imputation that it was written by Shelley because Al-Mansour’s failure to make it different from of a taxi driver, never had the necessary, so he
he contributed the preface, is an outrageous any other night chez Byron is disappointing. made his way up on sheer chutzpah and hard
sexist violation of her authorial rights. So too is the film’s frequently didactic tone. work, learning skills from old-school tailors,
These contemporary issues work organically God forbid that a modern audience should be then crafting showstoppers out of cheap market
in Emma Jensen’s screenplay, and mesh with the familiar with such icons of Romanticism as fabric spliced with cling film and gaffer tape.
pre-Raphaelite-ish opening scene, in which Mary Mary Godwin, Shelley and Byron. There is a His genius barged through all obstacles. Was
is seen scribbling a gothic tale as she sits by the tendency for the characters to declaim thoughts that it? Another story seeps in around the edges:
grave of her mother Mary Wollstonecraft, author that should have remained subtextual, as when McQueen as a charmer, a magnet for patronage.
of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), at St Shelley patronisingly praises Frankenstein: “It Like a Renaissance guttersnipe with a twinkle
Pancras Old Church in London. Unfortunately, exceeds even what I believed you capable of.” in his eye, he shazammed the wealthy and
Mary Shelley gives its title character little The acting is also simplistic. Douglas Booth’s influential into helping him. “I found myself
agency. After the groundwork for her creation portrayal of Shelley as an irresponsible offering him a place on the course,” Bobby
of Frankenstein is laid by her seeing a frog pretty boy and Tom Sturridge’s execrably Hillson remembers, barely able to say exactly
galvanised at a theatrical phantasmagoria, and flamboyant performance as Byron reinforce why she made room for him at Central St Martins
by a dream she has of the physician John the cliché of the pair as Romanticism’s School of Art. His aunt raided her savings to
Polidori infusing a corpse with life, it takes rock stars. “You have to understand, pay the fees, and why not? He was brilliant –
her a scant minute of screen time, filled with Mary, that I have always loved this way,” even if he was a nightmare to work with.
a montage, to write the novel. This brevity drawls Shelley, expecting her to swallow The film looks gorgeous, of course:
is especially frustrating in the context of his libertine cant. Unfortunately, Elle McQueen’s archive does most of the work.
tiresome earlier scenes in which Shelley and Fanning neither has the gravitas to Forget the pieces that made it on to the padded
Samuel Taylor Coleridge spout their poems. make Mary a serious feminist heroine hangers of the one per cent, we’re here for
Al-Mansour and Jensen adequately nor conveys the novelist’s considerable the adrenaline-washed strangeness of the
address the idea that Mary’s inspiration intellectual bandwidth. In contrast, Bel catwalk shows. Even at this distance, they are
for the Monster’s crushing loneliness Powley espouses the kind of guile and difficult to watch. There was real darkness in
guilelessness that may have been integral McQueen’s hinterland, and he projected it all
Elle Fanning to Claire Clairmont’s rumoured volatility. on to women’s bodies; there’s nothing pretty
about a collection called ‘Highland Rape’, or
Credits and Synopsis one that references surgery and straitjackets.
For good measure, directors Ian Bonhôte and
Peter Ettedgui have added some creepy digital
Produced by Costume Designer Metrol Technology Scannán na hÉireann/ Compton Ross Dr John Polidori
Amy Baer Caroline Koener a co-production The Irish Film Board Emma Jensen Maisie Williams effects – natural forms writhing into life, growing
Alan Moloney with Juliette Films Produced with the Joannie Burstein Isabel Baxter into and over skulls and McQueen’s own face
Ruth Coady ©Parallel Films for Ralfish Films participation of Rebecca Miller Bel Powley
Written by (Storm) Limited/ A Parallel Films HanWay Films, Irish Mark Amin Claire Clairmont – amplifying the sense of impending doom.
Emma Jensen Juliette Films SA/ and Gidden Media Film Board, Film Tom Sturridge Among the interviewees, two voices are
Additional Writing Parallel (Storm) production Fund Luxembourg, Lord Byron
Haifaa Al-Mansour Limited/The British Produced in Parallel Films, Head Cast notably absent. The first is that of Katy England,
Cinematography Film Institute association with Gear, Gidden Media, Elle Fanning Dolby Digital once McQueen’s stylist, wrangler and right hand;
David Ungaro Production Sobini Films Juliette Films, Sobini Mary Wollstonecraft In Colour
Edited by Companies Developed with the Films, Ingenious, BFI Godwin, Mary Shelley [2.35:1]
they parted ways in 2007. The other absence is
Alex Mackie Hanway Films and BFI assistance of Screen Executive Producers Douglas Booth Isabella Blow, who committed suicide, also in
Production Designer present in association NSW, Screen Australia Johanna Hogan Percy Bysshe Shelley Distributor 2007, three years before her most famous protégé
Paki Smith with Filmfund With the support Peter Watson Stephen Dillane Curzon Artificial Eye
Music Luxembourg, Bord of the Film Fund Matthew Baker William Godwin did. It is Blow’s ghost, not McQueen’s reticent
Amelia Warner Scannán na hÉireann/ Luxembourg Isabel Davis Joanne Froggatt shadow, that haunts the film as a vivid, bristling
Sound Mixer The Irish Film Board, Developed with the Charles Auty Mary Jane Godwin
Philippe Kohn Head Gear and assistance of Bord Phil Hunt Ben Hardy spectre, centre stage in the archive at first, but
crowded out of the frame once cash begins
London, 1814. Sixteen-year-old Mary Godwin lives Lord Byron. In 1816, Mary, Shelley and Claire stay at to shower down from global corporations.
with her father William, his second wife Mary Jane, her Byron’s rented villa on Lake Geneva. Shelley learns that No one can be adorable for ever; having
daughter Claire Clairmont and a stepbrother. Mary is Harriet has drowned herself. One night, Byron coaxes charmed the fashion business with his misfit
harangued by her stepmother. Her father sends her his guests, including his physician John Polidori, to perspective, McQueen made sackloads of money
away to stay in Scotland, where she falls in love with write a ghost story. Mary conceives ‘Frankenstein’;
the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Back in London, Shelley Polidori begins ‘The Vampyre’. Mary, Shelley and Claire
but found himself chained to the bottom line
apprentices himself to Godwin. Harriet Shelley, the return to London after Byron rejects Claire. Shelley and trapped by the mythology he had once
poet’s estranged wife, warns Mary to stay away from vanishes. Mary writes ‘Frankenstein; or, The Modern dismantled so cheekily. Old media reports and
him. Mary and Shelley elope, accompanied by Claire. Prometheus’, which is published anonymously. ‘The shaky camcorder footage track the changes
Mary gives birth to a daughter, Clara. It seems that Vampyre’ is published under Byron’s name. Mary and – his body neatened up with liposuction, his
Shelley and Claire may have slept together. Clara Shelley are reconciled when he proclaims Mary’s
mind flayed by paranoia. This nightmarish
dies after a few weeks. Claire begins an affair with literary achievement at a gathering held by Godwin.
metamorphosis screams out of his later work,
REVIEWS
2000, depicting a separating couple squabbling
over custody of their CD of David Gray’s White
Ladder – the album having become such a
sleeper smash that it got its own TV campaign.
An adult lifetime later, this first feature from
Daniel Jerome Gill plays like a long-form
exploration of the same Nick Hornby-ish idea:
that memories from a relationship are inscribed
in the music we discover or share together.
Modern Life Is Rubbish was developed out
of a 13-minute short film of the same name
that Gill made in 2009, which hinged on this
CD-collection-dividing moment of a break- Off-key: Josh Whitehouse, Freya Mavor
up, with Rafe Spall’s music nerd still waxing
lyrical about Kid A’s inner sleeve to his ex, instead Gill’s film takes its title from Blur’s
heedless of the fact that it’s this very navel- quarter-century-old second album, the name of
gazing that fuelled the rot. Gill’s new version which also encapsulates Liam’s earnest, anti-iPod
pads out this situation, incorporating some Luddism. Tellingly, no Blur songs were licensed
of the same dialogue and including the Kid for the soundtrack, and in fact Modern Life Is
Stitch perfect: Alexander McQueen A scene seemingly verbatim. Now running Rubbish takes place an unspecified number of
longer than a double LP, it uses a structure years after Britpop, in that post-David Gray dead
but it can’t really be explored in a film that somewhat similar to Michael Winterbottom’s zone when Britain’s indie balladeers became
wants to sell a kind of pure essence of creativity 9 Songs (2004), in that the rush and later ruin increasingly wet and anachronistic. When
as the secret of his success. The tortured-genius of a love affair are recalled via a succession of Liam finally gets his fame-making moment on
cliché dissolves into tales of feral temper and musical memories – in this case, Proustian stage (with a ballad about liquorice allsorts),
brutal rejections, told by friends reduced to moments brought on by the dilemma of, for it’s by breaking down and crying mid-song.
tears at the memory. A backstory is sketched example, whose copy it is of Blur: The Best Of. Realising what he’s lost in Natalie, he becomes
about childhood abuse and nagging self-doubt; But, from the meet-cute in a record shop, it’s a YouTube sensation as ‘The Crying Guitarist’.
clearly, when he died he must have been very a relationship in which the woman is left to As bystanders, we viewers are given zero
ill. Once, he knew the knack of finding help play sounding-board for a man’s passions and skin in the game of what is a transparently
exactly where and when he needed it, but at opinions. As in the short film, aspiring indie toxic relationship, so it’s dispiriting when this
the end, McQueen seems to have forgotten frontman Liam (Josh Whitehouse) gets to drone breakdown signals an arc heading towards
how or who to ask – or what to ask for. on disparagingly about how best-of compilations reconciliation. Where Mia Hansen-Løve’s
are “shortcuts to enlightenment”, part of his Eden (2014) elegiacally showed the best years
Credits and Synopsis sustained Chinese-water-torture campaign of its similarly music-obsessive protagonist
of boorishly mansplaining music to hapless simply passing beyond his reach, Gill’s film
Natalie (Freya Mavor), who looks on adoringly indulges its hero’s own indulgences, in an
Co-directed by ©Salon Galahad Ltd John Jencks
Peter Ettedgui Production Jay Taylor at first but is soon swimming frantically for extended ode to handwritten notes and physical
Produced by Companies Peter Ettedgui the life raft of her corporate advertising job. media that – being shot in Instagram-ready
Ian Bonhôte A Salon & Misfits Kinvara Balfour
Nick Taussig production in Isabella Marchese ‘Charmless Man’ would have worked, but soft focus – is as hypocritical as it is twee.
Paul Van Carter association with Rangona
Andee Ryder Creativity Capital & Ian Berg
Written by Embankment Films, Credits and Synopsis
Peter Ettedgui The Electric Shadow In Colour
Director of Company, Time [1.85:1]
Photography Based Arts & Moving Produced by Made with the The Curve London, the 2000s. Music obsessive Liam and his
Will Pugh Pictures Media a Distributor Dominic Norris support of the girlfriend Natalie are breaking up and sharing out the
Editor film by Ian Bonhôte Lionsgate UK Written by BFI Film Fund In Colour
Philip Gawthorne Executive Producer [1.85:1] belongings in their flat. Liam barely lifts a hand to
Cinzia Baldessari & Peter Ettedgui
Production Executive Director of Christopher Figg help, underlining the passivity that has created a rift
Designer Producers Photography Robert Whitehouse Distributor in their relationship. As Natalie sorts through their
Darren Williams Patrick Fischer Tim Sidell Norman Merry Picturehouse CDs, we see flashbacks to scenes from their love affair,
Music David Gilbery Editor Peter Hampden Entertainment
Peter Christelis
beginning with their first encounter in a record shop.
Michael Nyman Richard Kondal Samuel Potter
Sound Recordist Tim Haslam Production Designer Simon Laub They attend gigs and listen to records together, with
Stephen Hopkins Hugo Grumbar Charlotte Pearson Daniel Jerome Gill Liam proclaiming the authenticity of vinyl and CDs and
Music decrying the shallowness of the digital experience.
Orlando Roberton Liam is the lead guitarist and singer in an aspiring
A documentary about the life and work of fashion Production Cast indie band called Head Cleaner. They get a no-nonsense
Sound Mixer Josh Whitehouse
designer Lee Alexander McQueen, told via Keith Tunney Liam new manager, but their inability to break through
interviews, archive footage and expressionistic Costume Designer Freya Mavor – and Liam’s consequent difficulty in contributing
digital animations. The film presents McQueen as a Hannah Glossop Natalie financially – begins to put a strain on his relationship
driven genius who turned his demons into clothes Will Merrick
©Modern Life Ollie
with Natalie. Over time, the pair’s lives diverge, as
that shocked and enchanted the cognoscenti. Natalie’s career heads into the corporate sphere.
Pictures Limited Matt Milne
His sister and nephew explain the family dynamic Production Gus After they break up, Natalie begins a relationship
and the history of abuse that shaped his early life, Companies Tom Riley with a work colleague, who invites her on a trip to
while friends, colleagues and patrons testify to his Piccadilly Pictures Adrian Florence. Head Cleaner get a high-profile support gig,
dynamic originality. The film traces his rags-to-riches and Sqn Capital Daisy Bevan
present in association Layla and Liam plays a new track that wins over the audience.
narrative and the toll that success took on him with Lipsync, Jessie Cave Mid-song, however, he breaks down at the thought of
personally. His troubled inner life made it hard for Masnomis and Trail Kerry losing Natalie. Footage of the moment goes viral on
him to forge relationships; addiction and poor health Blazer Pictures a Sorcha Cusack YouTube, and when Natalie sees it she realises that she
– compounded by exhaustion, anxiety, depression Serotonin Films Mary
production Steven Mackintosh
is still in love with him. Liam leaves her a treasure hunt
and the recent death of his beloved mother – led of hidden messages across town, which leads to the
A film by Daniel Lenny
him to take his own life in 2010 at the age of 40. Jerome Gill Ian Hart pair being reunited and Liam declaring his devotion.
exemplified in the Hindu epic The Ramayana, on such atrocities as 9/11, the Madrid train
where dutiful son Shravan Kumar takes his bombings in 2004, the July 2005 London transport
aged mother and father across the country on bombings, the 2015 Bataclan killings in Paris,
a pilgrimage. In real life, the opposite is often the 2016 Bastille Day truck attack in Nice and so
the case, and this is perhaps why Leo McCarey’s on. But as has been pointed out, the jihadists of
classic Make Way for Tomorrow (1937), in which a al-Qaeda and its offshoot and successor Isis have
retired couple are forced to separate after losing targeted, injured and killed considerably more
their home and have to rely on their ungrateful of their fellow Muslims than western ‘infidels’.
children for shelter, has resonated with Indian In particular, it’s often forgotten that for three
filmmakers, resulting in similarly themed films years, from 2003 to 2006, al-Qaeda carried out a
such as Oon Paoos (1954), Avtaar (1983) and persistent campaign of attacks, bombings and
Baghban (2003). In Umesh Shukla’s 102 Not Out, propaganda aimed at overthrowing the House of
based on the play by Saumya Joshi, Bollywood Saud and setting up a fundamentalist state in Saudi
veteran Amitabh Bachchan (the patriarch in Arabia. (This despite the fact that Wahhabism,
Baghban) is the feisty 102-year-old Dattatraya, the ultra-rigid form of Sunni Islam practised in
determined to bring joy back into the life of his Saudi, is widely considered to be the source of
crotchety 75-year-old son Babulal, played by most Islamic extremism. Fifteen of the nineteen
Rishi Kapoor. Dattatraya’s agenda is to remove 9/11 hijackers were Saudi, as was Osama bin
the blinkers of paternal affection from Babulal’s Laden.) The campaign, though largely dormant,
eyes regarding the US-based grandson who has isn’t wholly extinct: in July 2016, Isis carried out
not visited in 19 years and is returning to India four suicide-bomb attacks in Saudi Arabia.
with a view to securing the ancestral property. Man of the century: Kapoor, Bachchan Jonathan Hacker’s eye-opening documentary
The film begins as a flat-out but uneven brings al-Qaeda’s three-year Saudi campaign
comedy, with Dattatraya putting Babulal some of the all-time classics of Indian cinema, into vividly close focus. Remarkably, the Saudi
through a series of tasks intended to trigger including Amar Akbar Anthony (1977) and authorities granted Hacker and his team
nostalgia and reawaken his lust for life. When Naseeb (1981), and the chief pleasure of 102 exclusive access to footage shot by the jihadists
the real agenda is revealed, the film finds its Not Out is seeing them on screen together after themselves, often inside the ‘boot camps’ where
groove and becomes the sort of sentimental decades. Shukla’s direction is functional at their young recruits were trained, and by the
melodrama that mainstream Indian audiences best, often reflecting the story’s stage origins, Saudi security forces charged with rooting them
have embraced time and again. All the main despite the addition of scenes in iconic Mumbai out and defeating them. (Hacker, along with his
players are on familiar territory here. Director landmarks and a swelling background score co-producer Thomas Small, has also turned this
Shukla has previous experience adapting a to indicate emotive cues in case anyone has material into a book bearing the same title as the
stage play with OMG: Oh My God! (2012), and missed them. The actors soar above these film, published in the UK by Simon & Schuster.)
interpreted the Shravan Kumar tale as All Is Well limitations; Bachchan’s trademark deep baritone Throughout, this raw testimony is allowed
(2015), with Kapoor as the patriarch. Kapoor comes to the fore at serious moments, as does to speak for itself; there are no interviews or
memorably played a 90-year-old grandfather Kapoor’s gravitas. They effortlessly riff off one talking-head commentaries. A narrative, placing
in Kapoor & Sons (2016), and Bachchan has another in a manner reminiscent of The Best the events we see in their chronological order,
played several spirited elderly characters, the Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011) or Quartet (2012). is provided by Samuel West, and extracts from
standouts being in Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna And while discerning audiences accustomed the al-Qaeda online magazine Voice of Jihad are
(2006), Cheeni Kum (2007) and Piku (2015). to subtler fare might find Joshi’s script over- read by Tom Hollander. (Hollander was chosen,
Bachchan and Kapoor have also co-starred in the-top, it packs real emotional heft. Hacker explains, “as he’s got a sort of warm yet
slightly brittle texture to his voice which makes
Credits and Synopsis it engaging and dangerous at the same time”.)
Perhaps the most immediately striking
Produced by Ganesh Acharya Dhiru Mumbai, India, the present. Dattatraya, 102, lives in a element of the al-Qaeda training footage is
Umesh Shukla Dharmendra Gohil sprawling bungalow with his 75-year-old son Babulal. that, far from presenting us with the wild-eyed,
Written by Production Amol Valharia
Saumya Joshi Companies Mukesh Hariawala Dattatraya is young at heart and wants to become shaggy-bearded fanatics of popular myth, many
Based on his play Sony Pictures neurosurgeon the world’s longest-living person, while Babulal is of the recruits come across as perversely likeable,
Director of Releasing a grumpy hypochondriac who is set in his ways. despite all the pernicious stuff they spout. At the
Photography International presents In Colour They communicate with one another via their young
Laxman Utekar in association [2.35:1]
assistant Dhiru. One day, Dattatraya announces that very start we meet a youngster called Abdulaziz,
Editor with Treetop Subtitles
Bodhaditya Banerjee Entertainment & he is sending Babulal to an old people’s home. When known as ‘Ali’, from whom his instructor is trying
Production Designer Benchmark Pictures a Distributor Babulal protests, Dattatraya lets him stay, on condition to elicit a statement for the camera. Chubby-faced
Mansi Dhruv Mehta film by Umesh Shukla Sony Pictures that he perform several tasks. These tasks, designed and patently none too bright, Ali is having trouble
Song Music Produced by Releasing UK to make Babulal rediscover his ‘joie de vivre’, include
Salim Merchant Sony Pictures understanding what he’s being asked. “Don’t use
remembering his late wife and the childhood of his
Sulaiman Merchant Entertainment
son Amol. Amol left for the US 19 years ago and hasn’t
such big words,” he pleads, giggling. “I’ll do better
Amitabh Bachchan Films India, Treetop
Rohan-Vinayak Entertainment visited India since, having married without informing if the questions are shorter.” Later we see some of
Lyrics Co-producer: his parents. He is now planning to visit. Dattatraya’s his fellow recruits goofing around, even passing
Saumya Joshi Benchmark Pictures
Hiral Brahmbhatt Executive Producers
final condition is that when Amol arrives, Babulal will the time running wheelbarrow races. Yet these
Amitabh Ashutosh Goswami sever what is left of their relationship, on the grounds are the same blinkered zealots who can pride
Bhattacharya Laxman Utekar that Amol cares only for the valuable real estate themselves on “growing closer to God” in their
Kaifi Azmi that he will inherit. Babulal refuses, threatening to
Background Score sue Dattatraya for the property. Dattatraya reveals campaign to kill and maim innocent people.
George Joseph Cast Their leaders, as might be expected, present
Sound Designer Amitabh Bachchan that he won’t live to see a court hearing, as he has
Sanjay Chaturvedi Dattatraya Vakharia a brain tumour. When Amol arrives, Babulal meets quite a contrast – articulate and well lit, staring
Costume Designer Rishi Kapoor him at the airport and disowns him. Dattatraya and balefully into the camera and proclaiming, “Do
Veera Kapur Babulal Vakharia, Babulal enjoy life together. When Dattatraya dies, he
Choreographers ‘Babu’ not think you can defend yourselves from the
leaves behind an audio recording for Babulal, telling
Feroz A. Khan Jimit Trivedi
him that he should break the longevity record.
soldiers of God.” The results of their strictures
are made horribly, graphically clear in the
REVIEWS
remain as elusive as a definition of how exactly it
relates to reality, it’s evident that television shows
centring on ‘ordinary’ people can do a fast and
forceful job of thrusting awkward social issues
into the mainstream consciousness. Whether
this process can activate material change or is
limited to the brief sensationalising of matters
that demand much more formal and considered
attention remains a moot point – though not
one that receives much consideration in The
Poetess, an earnest but distinctly surface-level
account of a Middle Eastern pop-culture upset.
The Emirati television show Million’s Poet,
produced in Abu Dhabi and funded by the
Abu Dhabi Authority of Culture and Heritage,
is a talent show for poets working in Arabic.
Contestants compete for five cash prizes of up
to 5 million dirhams ($1,360,000) and are judged
on both their writing and their recitation. The
show is tremendously popular across the Persian
Gulf region, outstripping televised football; so
when in 2010 it selected its first female finalist,
Saudi Arabian Hissa Hilal, who then performed
a poem that attacked fundamentalist religious
leaders, a degree of kerfuffle occurred.
The film shows Hilal receiving warm responses
Terror unleashed: Path of Blood from judges and studio audience alike, and
ultimately coming third overall, but emphasises
security-forces footage that’s interspersed with revealing, as Hacker has commented, “the degree the outraged and threatening reaction from the
al-Qaeda’s input. “Just write ‘female child’,” of naivety and incompetence… prevalent among inevitable online trolls and the response of the
instructs an officer at an atrocity site, as the the young Saudi kids in al-Qaeda”. Not that the international news media, which seized on the
broken, nameless bodies are classified before security forces are always much brighter. When story as an example of Arab intolerance of female
being carted away. “Just put ‘Lebanese’ for now.” in 2009 undercover al-Qaeda suicide bomber autonomy. It’s worth noting, of course, that one
Deliberately, the filmmakers trim this footage so Abdullah al-Asiri wangles an interview with does not need to home in on Arab countries to find
that we’re never shown the faces of the victims. security chief Prince Muhammad bin Nayef, women receiving online death threats for asserting
Similarly, though we see something of the we’re told that he has been searched three times opinions in public. Hilal, meanwhile, doesn’t in
maltreatment of a wretched elderly American and that he is observed to be sitting down rather real life wear the burqa that she donned for
captive, Paul Marshall Johnson Jr, under al-Qaeda awkwardly; but no one seems to have sussed her TV appearances, and is generally no
interrogation, the screen cuts to black before the that he has a bomb up his rectum. (Luckily, the
beheading with which the video originally ended. prince escapes with only minor injuries.) Such
At times, the film arouses memories of Chris near-farcical elements only accentuate the horror
Morris’s black comedy Four Lions (2010) in of this revelatory and deeply disturbing film.
Producer Sound Supervisor Page 1 present an OR Adel Alabdulkarim Voice Cast [1.78:1]
Jonathan Hacker Stevie Haywood Media production Narrator Tom Hollander Part-subtitled
Editor Executive Producers Samuel West voice of jihad
Peter Haddon ©OR Media Ltd Mark Boal Distributor
Composer Production Abdulrahman Dolby Digital Trinity Filmed
Chad Hobson Companies Alrashed In Colour Entertainment
Using archive footage shot by al-Qaeda Muslims to enlist. The Saudi security forces, under
militants and by the Saudi security services, the command of Prince Muhammad bin Nayef, step
this documentary traces events in Saudi Arabia up their efforts to detect and prevent the attacks.
between 2003 and 2009, when al-Qaeda militants Several senior militants are killed; younger al-Qaeda
were using terrorism to attack and – as they members, taken into custody, are subjected to a
hoped – overthrow the Saudi government. programme of re-education, their confessions shown
In March 2003, Fahd al-Saadi, a Yemeni member on Saudi television. A US expatriate, Paul Marshall
of al-Qaeda, accidentally blows himself up in a Johnson, is captured by al-Qaeda, which broadcasts
safe house in Riyadh, alerting the authorities to a videos of his interrogation, torture and beheading. In
potential threat. A month later, a shootout takes December 2004, al-Qaeda storms the US consulate
place in west Riyadh between the police and militants in Jeddah, killing guards but failing to break into
commanded by Turki al-Dandani, leader of AQAP the main consulate building. In April 2005, Saudi
(al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula). All the militants forces begin a three-day siege of a villa in the town
escape. Over the next three years, al-Qaeda carries of al-Rass; 14 militants are killed and five arrested.
out bomb attacks at various sites around Saudi Over the next year, most of the militants are killed or
Arabia, killing mainly Muslims, though some of the rounded up, and al-Qaeda activity dies down, but in
attacks target foreigners. It broadcasts propaganda August 2009 a suicide bomber attempts to kill Prince
videos boasting of its successes and exhorting pious Muhammad. The prince survives with minor injuries.
Us verses them: Hissa Hilal
REVIEWS
Buirski’s moving documentary on the interracial Sakamoto Ryuichi covers a lot of ground
gang rape of young mother Recy Taylor, in without revealing or even suggesting anything
rural Alabama in 1944, displays commendable surprising to anyone who has followed
ambition. Hymning the bravery and tenacity Sakamoto’s career. It’s in most ways a standard
of Taylor herself and the black women activists TV documentary (Japan’s national broadcaster
who campaigned for her, it’s unafraid to go big NHK is involved), using footage of Sakamoto
(there’s a quart of black history in this pint pot) in his New York apartment – discussing his
or get atmospheric. Around an engrossing base cancer diagnosis, playing his Steinway grand,
layer of family testimony from Taylor’s elderly musing on his aesthetic and environmental
siblings, tangy with veracity about her abduction Campaign for justice: Recy Taylor interests, experimenting with sound, all as he
and rape by six local teenagers, Buirski weaves works on his album async – to frame ‘flashbacks’
new impressionistic images to create a moody still, it hails the campaign’s success in getting a to earlier episodes in his life, including brief
visual setting. Bumping down dark country roads, second hearing as a key event in female black glimpses of his long stint as a member of
stumbling around woods or shotgun shacks, civil rights activism, weaponising the black Yellow Magic Orchestra. His private life was
the camera is alternately prey and predator as a press and making a tidal wave of petitions and evidently off-limits: there’s no mention of
woman in a white dress flees unseen pursuers. letters force an investigation, as Taylor held either of his marriages, or of his reportedly
Expanded beyond the Ken Burns template of fast through intimidation and firebombing. on-going relationship with his manager, with
interview, expert comment and archive ‘kinestasis’, The film uncovers how hard black women whom he has two children. As far as the film is
the film’s novel use of images illuminates the fought for the rights they were denied, and as concerned, Sakamoto lives and works alone.
testimony. Still, the viewer, required to retain in Buirski’s 2011 documentary The Loving Story, Sakamoto is obviously a fascinating subject:
the verbal story thread while the screen hops its through-line is a public battle for justice. his evolution from techno/ambient pioneer to
from Buirski’s misty visuals to a pertinent Since a second grand jury hearing (all white, avant-garde experimenter makes him Japan’s
scene from an Oscar Micheaux ‘race film’, feels local and male) failed to get an indictment, the classically trained answer to Brian Eno, while his
a certain dissonance sometimes. For all this, it’s necessarily muted ending contends that from journey from the theatrics-and-make-up days
the remembered details that sting, Taylor’s father the ashes of this injustice (and the campaign’s of YMO to today’s thoughtful and anguished
searching for her “till his shirt was wet with hard work) grew the roses of civil rights success. neo-classical composer parallels David Bowie’s.
sweat”, the quiet aside that “after they were done Though the film doesn’t sprawl or speculate, its And his readiness to stand up for causes is almost
mutilating her, they played in her body”. Over it reach occasionally exceeds its grasp here, using un-Japanese. But Stephen Schible’s meandering
all, the music is affecting, if a tad heavy-handed, “the struggle for bodily integrity” to yoke the structure brings none of that into focus, preferring
creating a mournful tone that makes the film Montgomery bus boycott to Taylor’s ordeal. Like anecdote to analysis and a grab-bag of film and
smoulder rather than blaze with rage, even when the McGuire book on which it’s based, it fights archive clips to coherence or point-of-view. To
an all-white hearing fails to indict the boys. to make black female resistance visible. It’s a be fair, the reluctance to reach for insights into
Making its one story stand for many, the film battle it wins emphatically, allowing the mid- Sakamoto’s past selves or the ch-ch-changes
includes historian Crystal Feimster and author century history of racial and sexual injustice to he’s been through no doubt reflects a certain
Danielle L. McGuire’s insights on widespread resonate loudly with today’s Black Lives Matter reticence on the subject’s own part, informed by
interracial sexual violence in the Jim Crow and Time’s Up movements. Its triumphant final the new sense of mortality which has coloured
South. This fuelled the energetic campaigning of reveal is Taylor herself, dignified and still battling his recent years. But that doesn’t excuse the sheer
NAACP investigator Rosa Parks’s Committee for in extreme old age: “I can’t do nothing but tell randomness of much of the material presented
Equal Justice for Mrs Recy Taylor. Going wider the truth about what they done to me.” here or the failure to ask any searching questions.
The juxtaposition of a clip from The Revenant
Credits and Synopsis with DiCaprio facing imminent death and
Sakamoto’s quiet musings on how long he may
have to live is glib and borderline offensive.
Produced by Augusta Films LLC Voice Cast A documentary in which Recy Taylor’s elderly siblings
Nancy Buirski Co-produced by Thomas Bernardi recount her gang rape in Abbeville, Alabama, in 1944 Television’s appetite for films like this
Beth Hubbard Transform Films, Inc. Billy Howerton/
Claire L. Chandler in association with and her subsequent fight for justice. Their account is
Hugo Wilson
Susan Margolin Artemis Rising and Tom Gibbs interwoven with audio testimony from Taylor herself.
Written by Matador Content Luther Lee/ There are also interviews with the author Danielle L.
Nancy Buirski A film by Nancy Herbert Lovett McGuire and the historian Crystal Feimster, discussing
Story Development Buirski Jack Kyser
Beth Hubbard Executive Producers Rosa Parks’s campaign for justice for Taylor, the
Dillard York/Willie
Susie Ruth Powell Regina K. Scully Joe Culpepper era’s widespread interracial sexual violence and the
Inspired by At the Geralyn White John L. Payne case’s role in black women’s civil rights activism.
Dark End of the Dreyfous John O. Harris
Street Black Women, Amy Tiemann
Taylor’s assailants’ siblings share their views. The
Cynthia Erivo
Rape and Resistance Mark Trustin Rosa Parks
interviews are illustrated with extracts from ‘race films’,
– A New History CarolAnne Dolan archive material and new impressionistic footage.
of the Civil Rights Derrick Harkins In Colour Taylor was abducted and raped by six white
Movement from Rosa Nick Stuart-Jones
Parks to the Rise Barbara Dobkin
teens. The sheriff failed to arrest them, and Taylor’s
Distributor
of Black Power by Bobby Kondrat Modern Films
house was firebombed. Rosa Parks investigated
Danielle L. McGuire Jack Turner the story for the NAACP, despite harassment, and
Director of Film Extracts helped form the Committee for Equal Justice for
Photography The Blood of
Rex Miller Jesus (1941) Mrs Recy Taylor. A local hearing dismissed the case.
Editor Veiled Aristocrats Petitions, a postcard campaign and black newspaper
Anthony Ripoli (1932) coverage forced Alabama’s governor Chauncey
Sound Ten Nights in a Sparks to open an investigation. The evidence and
Wes Morgan Bar-room (1926)
Donald Hooper The Scar of the boys’ statements supported Taylor’s story, but
Keith McManus Shame (1927) a second grand jury hearing failed to indict them.
Ryan King The Girl from In 2011, following an online petition, the state of
Chicago (1932) Alabama issued a formal apology to Taylor. The 97-year-
©Augusta Films LLC Birthright (1939)
Production The Symbol of the old Recy Taylor appears at the film’s end, explaining
Companies Unconquered (1920) why she continued to talk about what happened to her.
A production of A final credit reveals that she died in December 2017.
Keyboard jungle: Sakamoto Ryuichi
Reviewed by Vadim Rizov link between the two’s seemingly disparate Reviewed by Nick Pinkerton
With the extremely arguable exception of professions. Danielle is interested in the potential I have, I know, seen the first Super Troopers film,
2005’s Sam Shepard collaboration Don’t Come for life deep in the ocean, whose darkness has released in 2001. Like most people who saw it,
REVIEWS
Knocking, for nearly two decades (from 2000’s led the scientific community to write off that I did so as an undergraduate, and like most of
The Million Dollar Hotel onwards) every narrative possibility. “We refuse to value what’s down the people who saw it as an undergraduate, I’m
Wim Wenders feature has been received with there because it’s dark,” she opines. “We want quite certain that I saw it under the influence
critical vitriol and public indifference. It’s a to forget there is darkness in our world.” Her of some substance or another. This may
perversely impressive achievement; while work has implications for climate change explain the totality with which every single
his non-fiction work (especially 2011’s Pina) and survival on the planet, while James’s detail of the movie has drained from my brain,
continues to meet a positive reception, the mission is to focus on the darkness of jihadist as has almost every plot particular of Club
narratives stagger out one after another, landing Islam (which, in this hypothetical context, is Dread (2004) and Beerfest (2006), subsequent
high-profile festival premiere slots despite an apparently an under-discussed topic). Danielle’s productions by Jay Chandrasekhar, Kevin
utter lack of interest. Duly warned, I’d seen none work places her in large bodies of water; Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Paul Soter and Erik
of these late-period works until now, save for James’s story ends with him wading into one. Stolhanske, known collectively as Broken
2004’s Land of Plenty (dreadful as advertised). It may work on the page, but here the Lizard, which I also know I have seen.
Submergence does not make the case for diving in. metaphor is turgid and strained, much like the One’s individual response to Super Troopers 2,
An adaptation of war correspondent J.M. film itself. The dialogue is mealy-mouthed and I suspect, will be determined by the amount of
Ledgard’s acclaimed novel, Submergence begins in often inelegant, as in the commendation from nostalgia one has for Broken Lizard’s heyday, the
medias res, intercutting between ocean scientist one of Danielle’s colleagues that makes perfectly vintage of their inscribed audience being dated
Danielle Flinders (Alicia Vikander), preparing for clear what’s at stake: “We all feel you are close approximately by their pop-culture references –
a deep dive in the Greenland Sea, and journalist to a breakthrough, that would forever change the name of The Wonder Years (1988-93) actor Fred
James More (James McAvoy), being held in brutal the understanding of the dimensions of life on Savage is used as a running joke, and American
conditions by Somali jihadists. Flashbacks show Earth.” Vikander spends much of the film in Uggs, Pie (1999) franchise star Seann William Scott
how the two met at a luxurious hotel in duly thanked as a costume sponsor in the end shows up in the movie’s gonzo dream prologue.
France, embarked on a tony affair credits. The ship her character sails on is named Super Troopers appeared, like American Pie, amid
(copulation in front of a roaring L’Atalante, which may seem like a too-cute a bumper crop of cult US comedies that sprang
fireplace) and agreed to meet again allusion to Jean Vigo’s 1934 classic but turns forth around the end of the millennium – Austin
later in Nairobi. Danielle doesn’t out to be the real name of the vessel provided Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, Office Space,
know James’s real profession, by the Ifremer Fleet, also thanked in the Pootie Tang, Wet Hot American Summer. In contrast
only his cover story as a specialist credits. Such dreary particulars are more to Mike Judge’s sometimes bleakly satirical bent
in bringing water to impoverished emblematic of the film’s sluggish torpor or the absurdist/surrealist inclinations of Louis
areas; when he lands in Somalia and than its ostensible concerns. Submergence C.K. and David Wain, Broken Lizard’s comic style
is instantly captured, she initially could be analysed as a case study in was defined by bro-social, prankish, ball-busting
takes his phone silence for loss of the visibly legible particulars of improv riffing, the sort of thing that’s usually
interest. After a month, she’s the financial mechanisms of called ‘fratty’ – and in this case not unfairly,
not sure what to think. contemporary productions since all the troupe’s members are veterans of
Per its title, Submergence buoyed by carefully leveraged Colgate University’s Beta Theta Pi fraternity.
makes a metaphorical sponsorships, but hardly They seem palpably to enjoy being reunited
taken seriously with on a set again, kicking around bits like an old
James McAvoy regards to its overt goals. hacky sack, and the movie leans heavily on the
assumption that this pleasure will be contagious.
Credits and Synopsis The result is both amiably brainless and,
yes, eminently forgettable. My failure to retain
Produced by ©Backup Studio, Filmförderfonds, In association Cast Maria previous Broken Lizard comedies may have
Cameron Lamb Neue Road Movies, Filmförderungsanstalt, with uFund Alicia Vikander Adam Quintero something to do with my shabby stewardship
Written by Morena Films, Medienboard With the support of Danielle Flinders, Gustavo
Erin Dignam Submergence AIE Berlin-Brandenburg, the Tax Shelter of the of my precious grey matter, but it also indicates
‘Danny’
Based on the novel Production Centre National du Federal Government James McAvoy In Colour a flimsiness in the movies themselves, which
by J.M. Ledgard Companies Cinema et de l’image of Belgium and the James More [1.85:1]
Director of Backup Studio and animée, Provence- Tax Shelters Investors have faded at a much faster rate than those of
Alexander Siddig
Photography Lila 9th Productions Alpes-Côte d’Azur Executive Producers Dr Shadid Distributor their cult contemporaries. This latest gets a great
Benoît Debie present a Lila 9th Region in partnership Pilar Benito Celyn Jones Lionsgate UK
Editor production with the CNC Sarah Johnson
deal of mileage from Canada-vs-US comedy,
Thumbs
Toni Froschhammer A co-production of In collaboration with David Beal Reda Kateb German a vein that has been tapped out by now, as
Production Designer Backup Studio, Neue Atresmedia Cine Andrew Banks theatrical title
Thierry Flamand Road Movies, Morena With the participation Michael Giles
Saif
Grenzenlos
well as a plenitude of pratfalls and low
Jannik Schümann
Music Composed by Films, Submergence of Movistar+ Stephen Bowen Paul comic bits such as Rob Lowe using a
Fernando Velázquez A.I.E., UMedia and with the support Jeff Kalligheri Jean-Pierre Lorit
Production Sound In association with of Instituto de la Buddy Patrick Captain Anctil
Daniel Fontrodona Embankment Films, Cinematografía y las Robert Ogden Marie-Anne
Costume Designer Waterstone, PalmStar, Artes Audiovisuales - Barnum Cambon Bonavita
Bina Daigeler Green Hummingbird Gobierno de España Kevin Scott Frakes Science Officer
Stunt Co-ordinator With the support A film by Wim Lisa Wolofsky Marie-Anne
Philippe Guegan of Deutscher Wenders Dr Andreas Pense Andrea Guasch
The Greenland Sea coast, the present. Scientist Danielle identity as a charity employee specialising in bringing
Flinders prepares for a deep-sea dive to confirm her water to isolated villages, James is transferred to the
bold theories about ocean life. Meanwhile, in Somalia, custody of another group of jihadists, who intend to
journalist James More is held captive by jihadists. kill him if he does not convert to Islam. Danielle and
Flashbacks show how the couple met at a hotel her fellow scientists successfully perform their dive
in France, embarked quickly on an affair and agreed and begin collecting samples of marine life, but their
to meet again soon in Nairobi, where James lives. submersible’s battery goes off. James overhears
Having not heard from James in over a month, Danielle that the location he has been transferred to is close
supposes that he has lost interest in her. After a period to a US forces base and activates a tracker-device
of brutal captivity, James is released into the care chip implanted in a fake tooth. Danielle and her crew
of local doctor Shadid. Danielle’s voyage begins, but successfully activate the ship’s emergency battery and
she requests a week’s stay on the Faroe Islands to ascend to the surface. As US forces arrive and begin
focus on her calculations. Maintaining his assumed bombing the jihadists, James wades into the sea.
Called to border: Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme
limp penis as a miniature speed bag. Reviewed by Kate Stables in devising spinning circles, flowers and
The interplay between the ensemble Now that 90s cinema is old enough, like its pyramids. Diving underwater like a seal, the
is itself cosy and more than a little limp, since fashion, to be termed ‘vintage’, are we seeing camera traces the frantic hard work of looping
REVIEWS
outside Heffernan’s grating, gum-snapping, the nostalgic return of the ‘crisis of masculinity’ chains of swimmers. Sleekly constructed, the
double-dog-dare-issuing Farva, the boys lack truly movie? ‘The Full Monty in Speedos’ is the chirpy film’s deft visual compositions range from the
distinctive, complementary comic personas; tagline for Oliver Parker’s light, low-key comedy number-blizzard projected on to Eric’s face
they’ve been hanging out together for so long about an amateur male synchronised-swimming at his numbing job to a neat cut that makes a
they’ve started to resemble one another. Now in team – although, unlike The Full Monty (1997) or drunken fall at home end in a pool plunge.
their forties, it must be said that they’ve managed Brassed Off (1996), whose performing ensembles Body issues are given only the smallest of
steadfastly to defend their comedy style from any found themselves redundant due to Thatcherite nods (“If you’ve got bellies, don’t suck ’em in, use
risk of ‘maturing’ – but that’s only good news for industrial decline, there are no hard edges here. them”). Well cast and well played if occasionally
those who found it precious cargo to begin with. The Swim Club only combats male ennui: “We’re predictable, Aschlin Ditta’s script presents
just a bunch of middle-aged men who meet up in conversational glimpses of the men’s lives
Credits and Synopsis trunks that are too small for us and make funny rather than effortfully sharing out the narrative
little patterns in the pool,” is the rueful verdict between their various burdens as widower,
of Daniel Mays’s redemption-chasing Colin. divorcee, worrier or cheerful teen thief. The
Produced by Industries and Ursula
Richard Perello Cataland Films Tyler Labine As much self-help club as sports team, they cast, rather like the club, keep the performances
Written by production Mountie Bellefuille provide solace and support when depressed light and level, Rupert Graves’s posh organiser
Broken Lizard Executive Hayes McArthur
[i.e. Jay Producers Mountie Podien accountant Eric (a deadpan Rob Brydon) plunges Luke as amiable as Thomas Turgoose’s pert
Chandrasekhar Charles Stiefel Will Sasso into the deep end. Brydon, who has extensive delinquent Tom. If the film drifts periodically
Kevin Heffernan Peter E. Lengyel Mountie
Steve Lemme Todd Stiefel Archambault
male-midlife-crisis form from TV’s The Trip, into TV-movie stylisation (Eric’s family
Paul Soter Brent Stiefel Rob Lowe adopts a different register here, insecurity breakdown is a convenient misunderstanding),
Erik Stolhanske] Michael Hassan Guy LeFranc
Director of Richard Hassan Brian Cox
prompting camaraderie rather than wisecracking its light touch pays off elsewhere.
Photography Kris Meyer Captain O’Hagan rivalry. He underplays nicely, his pinched, blank Once Swimming with Men becomes a quest,
Joe Collins Justin Begnaud Seann William face transmitting the Groundhog Day boredom with an international competition in Milan, the
Editor Jamie Greene Scott
Spencer Houck David Gendron Trooper Callaghan of work and the unhappiness of an alienated pace (and the bickering) quickens. Compared
Production Michael Hansen marriage. He’s the dramatic device, kickstarting with its 1990s predecessors, however, the stakes
Designer Ali Jazayeri In Colour
Cabot McMullen [1.85:1] and [2.35:1] a story loosely based on Men Who Swim (2010), are low, and jeopardy non-existent. Determined
Original Music a documentary about the Stockholm Art to sidestep melodrama, the film softly unwinds
Eagles of Death Cast Distributor
Swim Gents (who make a skilful appearance the team’s worries – a crush on the coach, a
Metal Jay Chandrasekhar 20th Century Fox
Sound Mixer Thorny International (UK) in the film’s international competition). teenage sporting loss to redeem, Tom’s potentially
David ‘Daveed’ Kevin Heffernan
Alvarez Farva
Nimble rather than broad, Swimming with Men disastrous electronic tag. A smarter successor to
Costume Designer Steve Lemme keeps its comedy strictly sympathetic, even Parker’s tin-eared Dad’s Army (2016), it eschews
Debra McGuire Mac faintly dignified. Rather than dipping into slapstick, shaming or raucous rivalry,
Stunt Co-ordinator Paul Soter
Scott Rogers Foster synchronised swimming’s traditionally hewing to its wry, placid tone. A tale of
Erik Stolhanske female status for cheap laughs, it shows sporting amateurs, underdogs shambling
©Twentieth Century Rabbit
Fox Film Corporation Lynda Carter a 21st-century gender-blind ease about through the shallow end or dodging a
Production Governor Jessman male water ballet. Parker’s montage kid’s turd in a peeling lido pool, it couldn’t
Companies Emmanuelle
Fox Searchlight Chriqui
sequences concentrate on the steep be more English. Full of camaraderie and
Pictures presents Genevieve Aubois learning curve of training community, it’s the polar opposite of
a Broken Lizard Marisa Coughlan
Eric in ‘egg-beater’ legwork, the spiky, relentless male rivalry
US, present day. Disgraced Vermont state troopers and his geometrical flair of, say, Chevalier (2015). In today’s
Farva, Mac, Rabbit, Thorny and Foster are working in male-crisis cinema, it would seem
manual jobs, having been fired from the force after Rob Brydon that kindness is the new black.
a catastrophic ride-along with actor Fred Savage.
However, after going to Canada on the pretext of
Credits and Synopsis
a fishing trip with old boss Captain O’Hagan, they
are offered a second chance in law enforcement – a
redrawing of national boundaries has awarded a Produced by Ben Baird Film and Anyway Chris Reed Ted Michael
small Quebec town to the US, and they have been Stewart le Maréchal Costume Designer Productions Gabrielle Stewart Rupert Graves
selected to set up a new state troopers’ station, Anna Mohr-Pietsch Jo Thompson Developed with the Peter Watson Luke In Colour
taking over from the Canadian Mounted Police. Maggie Monteith support of the MEDIA Ian Dawson Daniel Mays [2.35:1]
Screenplay ©SWM Film Programme of the Norman Humphrey Colin
Tensions soon escalate between the Mounties and Aschlin Ditta Company Ltd European Union Ben Friedman Charlotte Riley Distributor
the troopers – who engage in a war of increasingly Director of Production Supported by the Bastien Sirodot Susan Vertigo Films
vicious pranks – and also between the troopers Photography Companies Tax Shelter of the Adrian Politowski Thomas Turgoose
and the townsfolk, whose mayor, ex-hockey star David Raedeker Dignity Film Finance Federal Government Tom
Guy LeFranc, owns the local brothel. The troopers Editor and Kerris Films of Belgium and the Jane Horrocks
Liana Del Giudice present in association Tax Shelter investors Cast Heather
investigate the source of hidden ‘contraband’ – items Production Designer with HanWay and Executive Producers Rob Brydon Nathaniel Parker
banned in the US but legal in Canada, to be passively Amanda McArthur Umedia a Met Paul Webster Eric Lewis
smuggled with the shift of the border. Rabbit Music Film production in Guy Heeley Adeel Akhtar Christian Rubeck
begins a romance with cultural attaché Genevieve Charlie Mole association with Dylan Williams Kurt Jonas
Sound Designer Shoebox Films, Amp Erik Pauser Jim Carter Robert Daws
Aubois, interrupted when they are kidnapped ‘in
flagrante delicto’. The rest of the troopers ride
to the rescue, encountering the Mounties, their London, present day. Middle-aged City accountant sessions, then appears wearing an electronic tag on
prime suspects in the smuggling ring, en route. Eric is depressed by his life, and paranoid about his ankle. The team hide him from police, who are
Both parties are ambushed by LeFranc, the real wife Heather’s closeness with fellow local councillor seeking him for breaking curfew. Eric quits his job
mastermind. A shootout ensues, and the troopers Lewis. He leaves home after a fight. Befriended by rather than create a dodgy tax-evasion scheme. In
and Mounties, working together, prevail. Genevieve, the men’s amateur synchronised swimming club Milan, teammate Colin is too nervous to perform. Eric
revealed to be working with LeFranc, is exposed at the local pool, he joins them. Performing at a rallies the team, saying they have changed his life.
as an agent of the Ontario Provincial Police. children’s birthday party, the team are challenged Their routine, ending with Tom’s triumphant back flip,
Ill will between the troopers and the Mounties by a Swedish rival to compete in the unofficial World gains second place. Teammate Luke gets together
dissipates briefly after the gun battle, but flares Men’s Synchronised Swimming Championship in Milan with Susan. The Swim Club perform their routine in a
up again with the news that the redrawing of the following month. The team enlist coach Susan dance outside the council offices, as Eric’s romantic
the border has been delayed indefinitely. to train them. Young thief Tom misses vital practice gesture to Heather. He and Heather are reconciled.
REVIEWS
setting up the premise of Terminal: if she kills McCabe referred to the Democratic Republic of
all the hitmen vying to be the main contractor the Congo as “Narnia on acid”. Neither fantasy
for the shadowy Mr Franklyn, she’ll get all his wilderness nor psychedelia really springs to mind,
business. This place like no other is specifically however, when watching his up-close and clearly
a much stupider version of the assassins-only hard-won portraits of individuals enmeshed in
John Wick universe, shot in looming sets Congo’s multiple overlapping and intractable
constructed on location in Budapest, and conflicts. Instead, a variety of documentary
structured by constant quotations of the most approaches is deployed to produce something
famous parts of Alice in Wonderland (“Some say sporadically intriguing but rather less complete
to survive it you have to be as mad as a hatter”). Kill list: Margot Robbie and authoritative than that hubristic title suggests.
Wandering between a limited number of High-ranking army officer ‘Kasongo’ (a
sets – primarily an all-night café and a dingy and McDonagh: the movie that Terminal most pseudonym) and rebel leader Sultani Makenga
apartment – a small group of characters, resembles is Joe Carnahan’s execrable Smokin’ must have been difficult to access, and each has a
mostly assassins, have extremely tiresome, Aces (2009), an endless parade of macho posturing fascinating backstory. Yet the film opts to treat each
inadvertently meaningless conversations, and would-be philosophical contemplation of of them as an odd mix of narrator and interviewee,
killing time until the end, when a number of death. Intentionally or not, Terminal quotes a lending their thumbnail accounts of Congolese
people can finally kill each other instead. line of that film’s unforgivably faux-insightful history the authority of voiceover and presenting
It’s no surprise to read in interviews that exchange between an assassin and his victim: them without corroboration or counter-narrative.
debuting writer/director Vaughn Stein is a big “I’m dying.” “We’re all dying.” One strand of the Their words are backed by collages of news
fan of Quentin Tarantino and Martin McDonagh; absurdly convoluted plot involves English teacher footage, photographs and snatches of reportage,
he’s not half as clever as either at their best, but Bill (Simon Pegg), who’s dying from an unknown which are uncredited and uncontextualised
this kind of film will be very familiar to anyone disease, leading to all kinds of dialogue about death except when the name of a TV channel happens
who remembers the post-Reservoir Dogs boom that aspires towards tough philosophy while to show on screen. Who is that, stating that Congo
of would-be postmodern noir. There are endless actually coming off as absurdly glib. This feigned is “one of Africa’s most chaotic countries”? Are
conversations between characters who self- nihilistic wisdom isn’t just its opposite, but an we to take her words as fact, or as an example of
consciously highlight the unreality of their active insult to anyone who’s ever lost a loved one, media distortion and generalisation? Who are the
situation, sprinkled with Guy Ritchie-style lad or even just contemplated their own mortality. “leaders abroad” responsible for denuding Congo
mayhem (“I’m gonna put you six feet under Trudging to its remarkably nonsensical twist of its abundant natural resources? Ronald Reagan?
the ground, mate”) et al. The neon signage of ending, Terminal (the title referring to both a Or is a still of Reagan intended to represent foreign
Enter the Void (2009) is overtly ripped off for train station and our own final destination – powers in general? Precision matters. In an age of
the opening credits and even for a title card two meanings, clever movie!) alternates wide industrial fake news production, it matters a lot.
reading “three weeks earlier”; the sickly slick shots (mostly canted) and medium and extreme Other interviewees include a battle-scarred
lighting is modelled on Nicolas Winding Refn. close-ups with metronomic regularity; it aims young colonel who boasts to camera of his
If there is such a thing as ‘bro cinema’, this is for style but registers as automated. A vast word own heroism, and two civilians, a tailor and a
both its purest essence and absolute nadir. count normally worth according only to a piece smuggler of gemstones, whose stories are more
The dialogue is clearly meant, judging by the on an actual film worth considering, let alone gently and poetically presented. Individually,
rhythm and delivery, to be darkly hilarious, but the describing for the record, would be needed these sketches have their forceful and moving
actual effect is extreme tedium. Forget Tarantino to detail everything else wrong with it. moments. Collectively, they constitute a showily
chaotic narrative in which certainties are
Credits and Synopsis avoided, barring the trusty truism that western
colonialism is to blame for all that’s awry.
Produced by Williams Miscellaneous D. Todd Shepherd Simon Pegg Raymond Unquestionably, the history of Congo is
David Barron Anthony Clarke Entertainment, Shelley Madison Bill Jay Simpson complicated. By foregrounding his subjects’
Molly Hassell Supervising Bh Ruyi Media Joe Simpson Dexter Fletcher Danny
Arianne Fraser Sound Editor and Subotica Alex Hammer Vince Ben Griffin
often contradictory testimony about it, McCabe
Teun Hilte Nikola Medic Produced in Delphine Perrier Max Irons Toby presumably intends to emphasise that even
Margot Robbie Costume Designer association with Henry Winterstern Alf Robert Goodman those fighting this war are vague on its origins
Tom Ackerley Julian Day Rapid Farms John Jencks Mike Myers priest
Josey McNamara Stunt Co-ordinators Productions Limited Simon Williams Clinton/Mr Franklyn Paul Reynolds and objectives. As a viewer, however, it’s
Written by Gáspár Szabó A LuckyChap Charles Auty Katarina Cas doctor frustrating and ideologically troubling to be
Vaughn Stein Ildikó Szucs Entertainment Megan Forde Chloe Merryweather
Cinematography production Mila Zdravkovic Nick Moran In Colour besieged by assertions that come with no sense
Christopher Ross ©Mr. Lively, LLC A BeaglePug Ted Cawrey Illing [2.35:1] of whether the filmmakers are endorsing,
Edited by Production production Michelle Samardzic Les Loveday
Alex Márquez Companies Executive Producers George Waud young Clinton Distributor exposing or merely airing them. A sense lingers,
Johannes Bock Highland Film Aoife O’Sullivan Jourdan Dunn Arrow Films meanwhile, that McCabe is more interested
Production Designer Group presents Tristan Orpen Lynch Conejo
Richard Bullock Hassell Free Matthew Jenkins Cast Matthew Lewis
in foregrounding his own derring-do than in
Music Productions presents Habib Paracha Margot Robbie Lenny being coherent about Congo. While it must
Rupert Gregson- in association with Viktória Petrányi Annie/Bonnie Thomas Turgoose have been thrilling and frightening to ride with
An anonymous city, present day. Assassin Annie night, dying English teacher Bill walks in and gets the army as it fired on rebels, what does the
contacts shadowy businessman Mr Franklyn and into conversation with Annie. Annie kills Bill, who was footage add to knowledge of the conflict?
makes him an offer: she will kill all the hitmen currently deliberately led her way by Mr Franklyn; the teacher One matter the filmmakers are clear about,
vying for his business if he gives her all his future molested her as a child in the orphanage. Back in the seemingly, is their right to depict the imperilled,
work. In an apartment, assassins Vince and Alfred wait present, Annie and Alfred set up Vince and kill him. suffering or lifeless bodies of anonymous people.
for their target, in a hit contracted by Mr Franklyn. Soon afterwards, Annie kills Alfred. Having completed
In flashbacks to three weeks earlier, Vince and her contract, Annie earns Mr Franklyn’s business. Mr The appropriateness of documentarians making
Alfred are at an all-night station café, where Alfred Franklyn – who regularly disguises himself as Clinton use of such imagery is of course debatable; but in
flirts with Annie, who is pretending to be a waitress – is abducted by Annie, along with her previously a film as unfocused as this one, it’s a particularly
there. Annie brings in Clinton, the station attendant, unrevealed twin sister Bonnie. He is their father; he set questionable choice. If the film intends to be
who plays Alfred a recording of Vince talking to their apartment on fire after their mother witnessed no more precise about Congo than to declare
Mr Franklyn on the phone and agreeing to kill his him committing a murder, leading to the sisters being
partner after their hit is completed. On another sent to an orphanage. The twins lobotomise him.
that it’s a mess, its use of hurt and dead
Congolese can only be sensationalist
REVIEWS
life, when she was plagued by a very visible
struggle with the drug addiction that would
ultimately upend her career. Predictably, perhaps,
the six years since her death in 2012, aged 48, have
led to a more generous, considered appreciation.
Already no fewer than three films have sought to
resolve, each in its own way, the curious question
of her tragedy – not an especially uncommon
tragedy, but no less confounding: how could
a woman of such grace, such beauty, such
unequivocal talent, meet such a grievous fate?
The made-for-television biopic Whitney (2015),
directed by the singer’s Waiting to Exhale co-star
Angela Bassett, arrived first, and on the heels of
Nick Broomfield and Rudi Dolezal’s documentary
Whitney: Can I Be Me (2017) comes Kevin
Macdonald, returning to his documentarian roots
with this deeply sensitive portrait of Houston,
also called Whitney. The two documentaries
naturally overlap, in coverage and in themes; In the eyes of others: Whitney Houston
and in part, the project of unravelling Whitney
Houston is a twinned task, for her life was so: Whitney, at least, makes a more credible Thankfully, the film dwells equally on
hers is a tale as timeless as Jane Eyre and Bertha case than its predecessor for the way Houston’s her natural charisma, her exuberance and
Mason, White and Black Swan. Both films early years determined so much of what would her talent. At one point, an audience is left to
recognise the disastrous split between Houston’s come. It was not just that Houston was born marvel at her acrobatic voice, nimbly crooning
wholesome public persona as an entertainer into a poor family that graduated to the middle the opening lines of ‘I Wanna Dance with
and the complicated woman she actually was, class when she was still young, robbing her of Somebody’ free of music. Unseen footage and
a consequence of celebrity hardly specific to a perceived ‘rawness’ or a realism that she was interviews with the singer showcase a woman
Houston alone. If Whitney bears many similarities either prevented from expressing or unable who, though struggling, was charming and
to Asif Kapadia’s Amy (2015), it is because Houston to translate as a singer. Nor was it as simple as full of spirit, well suited to the spotlight.
and Winehouse shared a remarkably similar the fact that she had been booed at the Soul A host of by now familiar relatives, close
descent, a path paved with fraught relationships Train Awards on the very night she met her friends, celebrities and former employees
with their fathers and husbands, a dense social husband – so often painted as the villain in chronicle her fall. Brown and Houston’s
circle of enablers, and a crushing melancholy her life, he was a man who seemed to possess mother Cissy disappear as the film delves
they sought to quell with drugs and alcohol. the ‘realism’ she may well have been after. into Whitney’s later, darker years; Brown
Where Can I Be Me seemed especially The film suggests, in fact, that all these threads refuses to discuss her drug addiction, and
concerned with the implications of Houston’s stemmed from a theme that had surfaced long the film uncovers explosive revelations –
appeal to white audiences and the most salacious ago. In the early moments of Whitney, several most shockingly, allegations of sexual abuse
elements of her personal life, what Whitney subjects close to the family gush about what a inflicted by her cousin, soul singer Dee Dee
achieves, more admirably, while covering the beautiful child Houston was, and hint at early Warwick, younger sister of Dionne. Friends
very same material – backlash from the black anticipation of a bright future; one begins to to whom she revealed her trauma consider
community early in her career, tumultuous see the origins of a life stalled by immense the way the abuse may have derailed her life,
marriage to singer Bobby Brown, relationship expectation. By the time she became a young while her brother, also a victim, sees in this
with long-time friend and rumoured lover Robyn star, the image of her as a kind of porcelain the roots of his subsequent drug addiction.
Crawford – is something beyond the nature of her doll had stuck, and would continue to trouble These allegations – timely and undoubtedly
prison, a glimpse of the woman herself and the her throughout her journey to ‘authenticity’. critical to her story – are likely to eclipse
interiority she was so often denied while living. Rather than revel purely in her tragicomic other triumphs of Whitney, such as its deft
In his efforts to get to the bottom of her status, Whitney highlights the less publicised storytelling and thoughtful negotiation of
suffering, Macdonald relies somewhat half- tragedy of a woman denied ownership, or rather Houston’s image. But with any luck, what
heartedly on an increasingly trendy convention authorship, of her own image, and so in many remains underneath all the scandal and tragedy
popularised by OJ: Made in America (2016), senses doomed to the imagination of others. is some measure of the woman herself.
which firmly anchors its narrative in a necessary
sociohistorical framework, one that somehow Credits and Synopsis
feels less vital here. A hurried montage
announces the age when Houston’s star rose: Produced by Lisa Erspamer Beat Street (1984) A documentary detailing American singer Whitney
Ronald Reagan makes an appearance, as does Simon Chinn Entertainment and The Bodyguard Houston’s life, from her childhood to her death in
Jonathan Chinn Lightbox present (1992)
Princess Diana; so, too, do familiar images Lisa Erspamer in association Sparkle (1976) 2012. She begins her career singing in her local
of black Americans struggling, battered and Director of with Altitude Film Sparkle (2012) church but attains stardom thanks to her family’s
brutalised. Far more pertinent, and missing from Photography Entertainment a film musical connections. She and her brothers begin
Nelson Hume by Kevin Macdonald In Colour dabbling in drugs during their adolescence. Houston’s
Whitney, is the musical landscape with which Film Editor Executive Producers
Sam Rice-Edwards Distributor
drug use spirals out of control with the pressures
Houston’s sanitised persona was so incompatible: Nicole David
Music Will Clarke Altitude Film of celebrity and her turbulent marriage to Bobby
the rhythm and blues of Houston’s era was Adam Wiltzie Andy Mayson Distribution Brown. Close friends reveal that as a child she
heavily sexualised, and her peers included the Sound Designer Mike Runagall was sexually abused by her older cousin Dee Dee
Glenn Freemantle Zanne Devine Warwick. Houston becomes estranged from her
likes of Janet Jackson and Toni Braxton, who Rosanne Korenberg
embodied a more palpable sexuality, physically ©WH Films Ltd Joe Patrick father after he attempts to sue her, and she neither
Production Pat Houston visits his deathbed nor attends his funeral. She dies
and musically (although the film features Companies Film Extracts shortly after appearing in the 2012 film ‘Sparkle’.
Houston disparaging Paula Abdul’s singing).
A man’s gotta do…: Randolph Scott and Maureen O’Sullivan in The Tall T (1957)
William Friedkin; UK 1968; Kino Lorber; Region A Blu-ray; something Lulu, has even less of a presence. But with mountains in the background) seems less
123 minutes; 1.78:1. Extras: William Friedkin interview. those now quaint references to Fuller’s teashops immediately ominous than Hammer’s Black
Reviewed by David Thompson and Boots Libraries stay, and on the whole – as Park. But Yamamoto (whose filmmaking debut
Arguably all of Harold Pinter’s major plays Friedkin himself acknowledges – it’s a solid in 1957 was as assistant director on Kurosawa
have made their way to the big screen, most record of a fine cast performing a great play. Akira’s Throne of Blood) makes elegant use of
notably Clive Donner’s The Caretaker (1963), Disc: A serviceable transfer, and spooky woods, roads lit by headlights, and
Peter Hall’s The Homecoming (1973) and David Friedkin’s interview is entertaining. eerie sobbing or singing on the soundtrack.
Jones’s Betrayal (1983), the last yet to be released Anyone conversant with the Hammer house
on disc. Like all those films, William Friedkin’s THE BLOODTHIRSTY TRILOGY style will feel at home with these old dark houses,
version of The Birthday Party is faithful to the THE VAMPIRE DOLL / LAKE OF thunderstorms, beautiful female vampires
original – unsurprisingly, given that Pinter DRACULA / EVIL OF DRACULA with bloodcurdling smiles, hapless ingénues,
himself was responsible for all four screenplays. Yamamoto Michio; Japan 1970/1971/1974; Arrow Video; helpful doctors, lurking handymen, and heroes
Friedkin originally saw the play in the USA in Region B Blu-ray; Certificate 15; 85/82/87 mins; 2.35:1. wrestling, mano a mano, with supernatural
1962, four years after its first run in London. Extras: video essay by Kim Newman; stills gallery; trailers. villains. At first glance, the transposition into
That production was famously a disaster, Reviewed by Anne Billson Japanese culture seems to have added nothing
with a rave review from the Sunday Times Since the publication of Kikuchi Hideyuki’s first original to vampire lore, but the films do cast a
critic Harold Hobson coming too late to save it Vampire Hunter D novel in 1983, vampires have dreamlike spell, their subtly off-kilter sense of
from closure, but since then the play has been become such a mainstay of manga and anime otherness making them at once familiar and
frequently revived (and is enjoying packed that it’s easy to forget they’re a relatively recent unheimlich, the very definition of uncanny.
houses in London’s West End as I write this). phenomenon in Japanese pop culture. In an Disc: The new transfer enhances shadow detail
The Birthday Party is exact in its period and indigenous folklore packed with phantoms and and the almost Bava-esque use of colour and
setting – the late 1950s, a run-down boarding monsters, you could get your blood sucked by lighting. Extras consist of original trailers,
house in a bleak seaside town – but its true trees, flying heads or sea nymphs, but it wasn’t still galleries and a video essay in which Kim
subject, the confrontation between authority until the worldwide success of Hammer’s Dracula Newman provides a potted history of Japanese
and weakness, makes it timeless. Stanley is the (1958) that the more urbane European-style horror cinema and the trilogy’s place in it.
house’s only guest, a one-time piano-player who bloodsucker infiltrated Japanese cinema.
believes he has evaded his past until a couple of The influence of Hammer is nowhere more LA CAGE AUX FOLLES
sinister gentlemen call by to torture him with evident than in Yamamoto Michio’s densely Edouard Molinaro; France/Italy 1978; Criterion; Region B
verbal assaults and ambiguous accusations. plotted Bloodthirsty Trilogy, though the Blu-ray; Certificate 12; 91 minutes; 1.66:1. Extras: interview
The ethnic origins of this odd couple – Jewish denouement of The Vampire Doll (1970) owes as with Molinaro, archive TV sketches, clip of Jean Poiret and
(Goldberg) and Irish (McCann) – are very specific much to Poe as to Stoker. A young man learns Michel Serrault in original stage production, interview
in the text, and the casting of Sidney Tafler his fiancée died in an accident. When he goes with Professor Laurence Senelick, essay booklet.
and Patrick Magee endorses that. The house is missing, his sister and her boyfriend go searching Reviewed by Kate Stables
presided over by Meg, wonderfully incarnated for him, and unearth a dark family secret. Edouard Molinaro and screenwriter Francis
here by Dandy Nichols. Stanley is played by In Lake of Dracula (1971), a young woman is Veber infuse dignity and tenderness into their
Robert Shaw, here astutely suppressing the haunted by a childhood nightmare of a golden- adaptation of Jean Poiret’s broad stage farce about
overt menace that pervaded his roles in From eyed vampire, but when other women turn up gay parents masquerading as straight, making it
Russia with Love (1963) and Jaws (1975). with puncture wounds in their necks she begins the best of the piece’s many incarnations. Keen
Friedkin adds very few exterior sequences, to suspect it wasn’t a dream. In Evil of Dracula to give it heart (“My comedies work because I
and keeps stylistic flourishes to a minimum. His (1974), a new teacher at a girls’ school realises have no sense of humour”), Molinaro gives it a
decisions to shift from colour to black and white that he and his pupils are in deadly peril; the conventional staging that grounds it effectively.
when the stage action is lit solely by a torch, and plot echoes Hammer’s Lust for a Vampire (1971) Damping down Serrault’s clowning and pairing
to use occasional point of view shots to heighten with shades of Roger Vadim’s Blood and Roses it with Ugo Tognazzi’s suave irritability gives
tension, are ultimately less effective than what (1960) and even Martin Scorsese’s Silence (2016). the besieged central couple a heartfelt bond,
is experienced in a theatre. Pinter’s screenplay All three films are modern dress (just the one that overcomes even Tognazzi’s patently
cuts little from the stage version, though the occasional kimono) and feature gothic mansions re-voiced performance. Groundbreaking in
its portrait of a gay family, under the spangles
it’s a classic French farce of concealment
(Laurence Senelick is fascinating about this in
the extras). Serrault puts a poignant injured
pride into Albin, alongside the theatricality and
the tutorial in ‘virile’ toast buttering. There’s
an intriguing doubling too, between peacock-
shrieking Albin, and Michel Galabru’s excitable
ultra-conservative politician, enunciating with
deathly pauses his boss’s death in bed with a
black, underage prostitute. The film’s long-lasting
mainstream success however, is less down to
its flamboyant fun, than its prescient portrait of
gay marriage. For all it’s épater les bourgeois 70s
St Tropez daring and cock-shaped curios, what
it’s shamelessly flaunting is family values.
Disc: Like Albin/Zaza, the Blu-ray transfer buffs
up splendidly, as does Ennio Morricone’s jaunty
score, its rapidly quickening tango suggesting the
farce’s tight turns. An excellent package of extras
includes Senelick’s potted history of drag, and a
chunky extract from the original Paris stage
Ain’t nothin’ but a fang: The Bloodthirsty Trilogy play, filmed for TV, for Cage completists.
HOME CINEMA
A META OF CONSEQUENCE
Two decades on, Olivier
Assayas’s hip, self-conscious
filmmaking comedy is a
sharp-looking cinephile joy
IRMA VEP
Olivier Assayas; France 1996; Arrow Academy; Region
B Blu-ray; Certificate 15; 99 minutes; 1.66:1. Extras:
audio commentary by Assayas and critic Jean-Michel
Frodon; On the Set of Irma Vep, featurette; interview
with Assayas and critic Charles Tesson; interview
with Maggie Cheung and Nathalie Richard; Man Yuk:
A Portrait of Maggie Cheung (1997), short film by
Assayas; black-and-white rushes; theatrical trailer.
Reviewed by Pamela Hutchinson
Olivier Assayas’s experimental cinematic
palimpsest Irma Vep was his unlikely
international breakthrough, even though it
stumbled at the French box office. The critic-
turned-director pointed his camera back at the
movies with this punkish, hip comedy, which
the critic Kurt Halfyard dubbed a “loathe-
letter to the foibles of French cinema”.
The premise is simple, not to say slight.
Washed-up director René Vidal (a world-
weary turn by Jean-Pierre Léaud) has been
commissioned by a TV channel to remake Louis It shouldn’t happen to a Vep: Maggie Cheung in catsuit
Feuillade’s silent serial: Les Vampires (1915-16).
Vidal’s film will be shot in black and white and source, which seems to puzzle the characters as Cheung is presented as an icon of Hong
as a silent, out of respect for its source, but his much as inspire them. Where Vidal approaches Kong action cinema, but a rather odd one, who
reverence only goes so far. His master-stroke Feuillade with veneration for his atmospheric confesses she can’t fight and patiently bats away
of reinvention is to hire a star of Hong Kong effects, Assayas borrows his quick-and-dirty a French reporter’s eager questions about John
action cinema to play the lead character, the practice. Written and shot fast, like Les Vampires, Woo. Cheung, who was later married to Assayas,
anagrammatic jewel-thief heroine Irma Vep. That Irma Vep was filmed on Super 16 with handheld had a more interesting CV than this movie allows,
star is Maggie Cheung, who plays herself – Vidal cameras. Zoé and her film-crew friends watch having already worked with Wong Kar Wai in
says he spotted her in The Heroic Trio (1993), a cinéma militant favourite Classe de lutte (1969) Days of Being Wild (1990) and more to the point,
which he saw while slumming in a fleapit in on TV, while Vidal glugs Coca-Cola and takes played the lead in Center Stage (1991), the biopic
Morocco. Where her predecessor Musidora wore ideas from Hollywood blockbusters, deepening of tragic Chinese silent star Ruan Ling-yu. With
a black body-stocking in 1915, Cheung’s costume the divisions on set. Played by Léaud, of course, her soft British accent (Cheung spent some of her
for this 1990s reboot is a sculpted latex affair, Vidal also provides a link back to the French childhood in Kent) and lack of authority on set,
modelled after Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman get- New Wave – especially Truffaut’s similarly self- Cheung makes for an unlikely action heroine, and
up in Batman Returns (1992). Cheung is no vamp, referential Day for Night (1973). The director a dubious heir to the diva Musidora, but slowly
but a self-deprecating, befuddled fish out of water, hired to usurp Vidal is played by Lou Castel, who she begins to inhabit her character Irma off-set:
buffeted by the harassed and argumentative carries his own baggage – having played a version leaping through windows and stalking through
Parisian crew. As costume designer Zoé (Nathalie of Rainer Werner Fassbinder in that director’s hotel bedrooms in the early hours, looking out
Richard) both takes Maggie under her wing and film-set drama Beware of a Holy Whore (1971). for jewels. A rehearsal sequence reveals that she
falls in love with her, the production falters. Snarky allusions to Hollywood abound, has the requisite “eyes that fascinate”, even if
Meanwhile Vidal, no less infatuated with his including a spurned lover berating her man she’s just going through the motions for Vidal.
star, loses confidence in the project and himself. because she has watched Steven Seagal Irma Vep is a dazzling film, bursting with a
The premise of Vidal’s commission is films while waiting for him, a crime she tangible passion for the best of cinema, as well
hackneyed and avant garde at the same time. The can never forgive. There’s no corresponding as vitriol for its foibles, and so it’s a joy to see it
crew roll their eyes at the idea of a remake, but respect for the French film industry, which restored so smartly here, in a crisp 2K version
a Feuillade reboot is hardly a franchise movie. emerges as staid and unadventurous, with that maintains its essential, often ragged textures.
Likewise, Vidal’s movie appears from the rushes cynically written office scenes bookending Arrow’s package offers a strong supporting slate of
to be a clunker: leaden, and unconvincing. A the film: rarely can insurance have been so extras offering clues to the film’s many influences
replacement is hired, a leftwing relic who in prominently discussed in a meta-movie. and references, including an excellent booklet
turn wants to replace Cheung. But perhaps, essay by Neil Young. On the disc itself, interviews,
following his mid-shoot breakdown, Vidal can This is a dazzling film, a trailer and the unedited rushes for Vidal’s Les
make something more stimulating out of his Vampires are joined by Assayas’s 1997 film about
material – drawing on and scratching the film bursting with a tangible passion Cheung and a half-hour making-of documentary,
itself, in the style of the artist Isidore Isou.
Irma Vep is a cacophony of clashing film
for the best of cinema, as well which like the feature itself has an optional audio
commentary that is really a stage interview with
cultures, beginning with its enigmatic silent era as vitriol for its foibles the director by the critic Jean-Michel Frodon.
Kurosawa Kiyoshi; Japan 1997; Eureka/Masters daughter; her quiet, watchful gravity now and delivered with a lighter, more comic touch.
of Cinema; Region B Blu-ray and Region 2 DVD dual then shows up her mother’s performance as Inspired by the antics of a real-life figure
format; Certificate 15; 111 minutes; 1.85:1. Extras: new self-indulgent and overblown. Her older sister observed by Sautet and his regular collaborator
and archival interviews with Kurosawa; interview with Ruth is played by Roberta Wallach, Eli Wallach’s Jean-Loup Dabadie, the script went through
critic Kim Newman; trailer; booklet note by Tom Mes. daughter, here making her screen debut; her major developments to reassure an anxious
Reviewed by Trevor Johnston caricatured send-up of Beatrice, for the school’s Montand that he wasn’t just playing a man who
Impressive box-office returns for Hollywood drama class, is a tour de force in itself. carried dishes. Alex is seen often in commanding
game-changers The Silence of the Lambs (1991) Shot in Bridgeport, Connecticut (standing form as a head waiter in a busy Paris brasserie,
and Se7en (1995) created the commercial in for Staten Island), the film is adapted from but we learn he is a former dancer and hotelier
context for Kurosawa Kiyoshi to deliver this a Pulitzer Prize-winning off-Broadway hit by who easily charms women into his bed, while
theatrical serial-killer policier, which marked Paul Zindel. Get past the cutesy title, and some his latest dream is to establish a children’s
his international breakthrough. From today’s stage-derived verbosity of dialogue, and there’s amusement park by the sea. Although accused
vantage point, it’s not only one of the key a bleak humour in the portrayal of selfishly by his best pal Gilbert (Jacques Villeret) of being
titles in his filmography, but an unarguable dysfunctional parenting and the damage it can self-centred, Alex’s more vulnerable side is
landmark offering, clearly ahead of the J-horror inflict on offspring. Newman directs soberly and exposed when he falls for Claire (Nicole Garcia),
curve. Perhaps it was too far ahead, since it unshowily: like many actor-directors, he puts his an English-language teacher with an absent lover.
was never theatrically released in the UK and camera almost entirely at the service of his cast. So far so soapy, but what sets Sautet apart
is only now making its home-entertainment The comedy at times turns sour – though from the crowd is the sheer brio of his direction,
debut with this desirable dual-format edition. avoiding sentimentality – but the film ends on a especially in the masterfully choreographed
Perhaps unfortunately, what was pioneering note of hope at least for Matilda, self-containedly scenes in the restaurant (all filmed on a studio set,
back then has been somewhat overworked in taking refuge from her mother’s cruelty in the though a convincingly atmospheric one). The
the meantime, though in Kurosawa’s hands the passion for science that’s been nurtured by a editing is brisk and often surprising; according
soundtrack drone, the shadowy figures creeping sympathetic physics teacher. No surprise to learn to the testimony of his colleagues, Sautet was
in the depths of the frame, and the modern city that, prior to his success as a playwright, Zindel obsessive about removing unnecessary exposition,
as locus of festering unease are not just there taught science at a school on Staten Island. even cutting down his films in projection booths
for superficial effect, but suggest a questioning Disc: A flawless 4K restoration that shows after their cinema release. Deleted material
peek behind the façades of social convention. up the interior of Beatrice’s house in all its included on this disc reveals how he originally
Kurosawa’s signature leading man, the garbage-strewn, slatternly detail. Informative opened the film with scenes of Montand’s life
versatile Yakusho Koji, is the cop on the case commentary from Adrian Martin, but outside of his job, which he then wisely took out
trying to find connections between a series otherwise rather scrappy extras. to launch the audience directly into the frantic
of seemingly random slayings across Tokyo, bustle and acerbic repartee of the restaurant world.
gradually realising that the bloodshed has as GARCON! Disc: An excellent transfer available
much to do with the explosion of repressed Claude Sautet; France 1983; Pathé; Region-free Blu-ray with English subtitles, though these
quotidian yearnings and the disintegration of and DVD; 88 minutes; 1.66:1. Extras: deleted scenes; are not to be found on the extras.
moral coherence as the handiwork of some La fin d’un cycle documentary by Jerome Wybon
evil-genius bogeyman. Certainly, the expert Reviewed by David Thompson THE GRIFTERS
direction gets great mileage from the insidiously Garçon! – the cry that traditionally goes out in Stephen Frears; USA 1990; 101 Films; Region B Blu-ray and
unsettling framing and murk-tastic art direction, French restaurants when you want to summon Region 2 DVD dual format; Certificate 18; 106 minutes; 1.85:1.
but it’s the bone-deep anomie on view – material a waiter – was one of the two films Claude Extras: Making of documentary; booklet (limited edition only).
usually the stuff of Euro arthouse kingpins Sautet made in the 1980s. Situated between his Reviewed by Philip Kemp
like Haneke or Antonioni – that gives the film run of popular dramas dealing with bourgeois With a script by Donald E. Westlake adapted from
genuine substance to go with its highly effective relationships in the 1970s and his final arthouse a novel by Jim Thompson, The Grifters secretes a
frissons. Enthusiastically recommended. successes Un Coeur en hiver (1991) and Nelly et double helping of deep-dyed noir. Stephen Frears’s
Disc: The new Blu-ray transfer copes well with M. Arnaud (1995), Garçon! was on the surface a film – his first Stateside foray – faithfully renders
Kurosawa’s washed-out palette and occasional distinct change of pace, a star vehicle for Yves the pulp-writer’s bleak skid-row world. The plot
low-light filming. Useful supplementary
interviews, including the characteristically
thoughtful Kurosawa and reliably astute critic
Kim Newman, plus worthwhile notes from
Japanese cinema expert Tom Mes contribute
to a mandatory purchase for genre fans.
HOME CINEMA
two women at daggers drawn over a guy. One
of them is (probably) his mother, Lily (Anjelica
Huston), avid and trash-blonde, driven by greed
and terror into a spiral of self-destruction. Dragged
down with her are her son Roy (John Cusack)
and his toothsomely slutty girlfriend Myra
(Annette Bening). The cast also features such
reliable supports as J.T. Walsh, engagingly sleazy
as ever, and Pat Hingle as Lily’s boss Bobo Justus,
an unnerving mix of bonhomie and brutality.
Egged on by a taut, jazz-tinged score from Elmer
Bernstein, the plotting is tight and lethal, keeping
us guessing just who’s scamming who. Much of
the dialogue is drawn straight from Thompson’s The Effect of Gamma Rays… Intimate Lighting
novel. (Myra, describing the guy who inducted
her into con-artistry: “He was so crooked, he could own poetry. It’s a film which excels in its dualities: throwaway moment (for instance, the brief looks
eat soup with a corkscrew.”) Bening, fresh from that of Henry himself, poised between mythic exchanged between a city visitor and a gaggle
playing Mme de Merteuil in Valmont (1989), the promise and real-world disappointment, and that of village women as they march past her car,
non-Frears version of Dangerous Liaisons, channels of legacy, both familial and creative. This notion rakes proudly aloft) seems ineffably profound.
Gloria Grahame, who she would later portray of legacy reverberates throughout the sequels, Passer had previously co-scripted his
in Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool (2017). Martin which are concerned with the intersection of schoolfriend Milos Forman’s early films, and
Scorsese, producing, speaks the brief voiceover Henry’s art and life during protracted spells of he applied similar methods here – notably the
intro. And as might have been predicted from absence, with the focus shifting to Fay and his son near-exclusive use of non-professional actors,
his feature debut, the private-eye spoof Gumshoe Ned, both struggling to emerge from his shadow. in this case picked more for musicianship than
(1971), Frears proves a master of the noir idiom. With their singular aesthetic and repertory acting experience. (The central set piece, in which
He deservedly picked up an Oscar nomination company of actors, Hartley’s films have always Eine kleine Nachtmusik is shredded by a quartet of
for the film, as did Huston, Bening and Westlake. felt of a piece, and while the sequels work as decidedly varying competence levels, is rendered
Disc: An impressively cleaned-up restoration. distinct, melancholic reflections on the themes more comically effective by the fact that they
Sole but highly worthwhile on-disc extra is a of Henry Fool, they also demonstrate Hartley’s are clearly playing it for real.) Along the way,
72-minute making-of, featuring new interviews increasing engagement with larger American hearts are unburdened, ambitions thwarted and
with Frears, cinematographer Oliver Stapleton, ideas, such as post-9/11 malaise in Fay Grim and home truths conveyed, but Passer’s touch is so
editor Mick Audsley, executive producer Christian evangelicalism in Ned Rifle. The former, light throughout – as the Mozart should have
Barbara De Fina and co-producer Peggy Rajski. a brilliant Rivettian anti-thriller, in which Fay been, if played properly – that nothing ever feels
goes to Europe at the behest of the CIA in search didactic. Had he never made anything else, his
THE HENRY FOOL TRILOGY of Henry’s notebooks, was a bold new direction mark on film history would still be indelible.
HENRY FOOL / FAY GRIM / NED RIFLE for Hartley in 2006, whereas the latter, an Oedipal Disc: A substantial advance on Second Run’s
Hal Hartley; USA 1997/2006/2014; Possible Films; Region black comedy which sees Henry’s son (Liam old DVD, the newly high-definition picture
1 DVD; 341 minutes; 1.78:1. Extras: documentary, Making Aiken) on the path of vengeance, brings Hartley is now spotlessly clean, and the subtitles are
Fay Grim or How Do You Spell Espionage? (2007); promo back full circle to the disaffected suburban more thorough. The booklet recycles an essay
clip: Some Days in April (2014); optional English, Spanish, teenage wastelands of his breakout films. by Phillip Bergson, with Trevor Johnston
French, German and Japanese subtitles; booklet with Disc: There are two making-of documentaries on now adding much valuable contextual detail,
rare production photos, new essay by Tom McSorley. the sequels, as well as a copy of Hartley’s related especially about the music. A 2005 interview
Reviewed by Craig Williams LP After the Catastrophe. The box-set is available with Passer includes the sobering revelation
His seventh feature film, 1997’s Henry Fool to order direct from www.halhartley.com. that the sadness in lead actor Karel Blazek’s
remains Hal Hartley’s richest, most rewarding eyes was most likely related to the leukaemia
picture. Following his celebrated early movies, INTIMATE LIGHTING that would kill him six weeks after filming
including his debut The Unbelievable Truth (1989) Ivan Passer; Czechoslovakia 1965; Second Run; finished, something he had kept to himself.
and the outstanding Trust (1990) – arch, erudite Region-free Blu-ray and DVD (separate releases);
stories of young love in suburban Long Island – Certificate PG; 74 minutes; 1.37:1. Extras: short IT’S THE OLD ARMY GAME
Hartley embarked on a trio of transitional features film A Boring Afternoon; interview; booklet. A. Edward Sutherland; USA 1926; Kino Lorber; Region A
which broadened his thematic outlook and set Reviewed by Michael Brooke Blu-ray and Region 1 DVD (separate releases); 75 minutes;
the foundations for Henry Fool and its sequels, Despite the excellence of the likes of Cutter’s Way 1.33:1. Extras: organ score by Ben Model; audio commentary
Fay Grim (2006) and Ned Rifle (2014). Parental (1981), Ivan Passer arguably never surpassed the by James L. Neibaur.
legacy and lost innocence, the two ideas at the films that he made in his native country and Reviewed by David Thompson
heart of Simple Men (1992) also inform Henry language. Both of them, with a total running- W.C. Fields is surely now a remote figure,
Fool; the appropriation of genre elements into time of less than 90 minutes, are presented here. his films rarely if ever shown on television.
the Hartley milieu seen in Amateur (1994) and A Boring Afternoon (1964) adapts a Bohumil It seems more likely that the silent comics
the structural ambition of Flirt (1995) serve as Hrabal story about a pub on a sweltering Chaplin and Keaton will persist in the general
important stylistic touchpoints for the sequels. Sunday afternoon, its habitués playing subtle imagination, their supreme visual qualities
The first instalment opens with Henry games of one-upmanship with each other; their overcoming the barriers of period dialogue
(Thomas Jay Ryan) arriving out of the blue one manoeuvres are charmingly underscored by and attitudes. Fields, a popular vaudevillian
day in the Queens home of siblings Simon (James folksongs unselfconsciously sung by a quartet of before he entered the movies, successfully
Urbaniak) and Fay Grim (Parker Posey). Henry female card-players in the corner. It’s the perfect straddled both the silent and sound era. From
– described in Tom McSorley’s booklet essay as amuse-bouche for Passer’s only Czech feature, a the former only about half of his films survive,
“part Byronic satyr, part Bukowskian anti-hero” little miracle of a film that takes a seemingly this one in remarkably good condition.
– is putting the finishing touches to his multi- inconsequential subject (two old friends reunite In all his work, it’s Fields’s misanthropic and
volume “confession” (“It’s gonna blow a hole right for a country weekend) and applies such a anarchic persona that dominates, and It’s The Old
through the world’s own idea of itself”), and he Renoiresque generosity to all its characters, Army Game was largely forged out of comic
sets out to inspire binman Simon to compose his principals to one-shot bits, that even the most routines he had honed on stage, some of
HOME CINEMA
backseat to extraterrestrial machine in Kubrick’s
movie, the car is the real star of Demy’s.
The film’s story, such as it is, is set in motion
when George (Lockwood), a trained architect
who’s dropped out of the rat race to leech off
his actor girlfriend in South Bay Los Angeles
while living under the shadow of the Vietnam
draft, almost has his green 1952 MG TD Midget
repossessed from under him by men from the
dealership – a death sentence for an Angeleno.
He peels out in search of a loan to pay off what he
owes, but is instead ensorcelled from the straight
and narrow path by a beautiful woman in a white
1968 Mercury Park Lane convertible. The woman
is played by Anouk Aimée, reprising her role
from Demy’s Lola (1960), the onetime cabaret
girl now a little older and a lot sadder, posing
for paying customers in the eponymous peep-
show storefront. From here we get a bit of rueful
romance and existential angst and an extended
appearance by the band Spirit, but the real
accomplishment of the movie is capturing the
slightly melancholy, solitary pleasure of drifting a Birdman (or the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance): Hakan Hagegard and Irma Urrila in The Magic Flute
day away in an automobile, its series of sweeping,
swoony car-mounted long takes combining to of the power-struggle between Capone and makes explicit what was only touched upon
give LA the sweetest city symphony that it ever ‘Bugsy’ Moran, complemented by an omniscient on stage. Gore Vidal’s script, spinning the one-
received. Rolling along, George at times seems narration which tells us who everyone is, where act play into a series of tense confrontations,
as much chauffeur as character, though he they came from and how, where and when they has a deft ventriloquism that defies you to spot
does get to voice something like Demy’s thesis: will eventually die. An opening caption insists the joins. A Southern Gothic exploration of
“To think some people claim it’s an ugly city that everything is solidly factual, although predation, paedophila, quasi-incest, repressed
when it’s really pure poetry, it just kills me.” Capone’s revenge murder of aspiring Mafia memory and a little light cannibalism, it’s
Disc: Not much in the way of add-ons for this boss Aiello on a train is actually invented. unabashedly operatic in tone (Mankiewicz called
one, but the image is sharp and true and when Jason Robards, Ralph Meeker, George Segal Elizabeth Taylor’s final truth-drug revelations
it moves you can feel the wind in your hair. et al are all splendid in leading roles, but the “an aria”). Pitching Katherine Hepburn’s
eye goes to Corman regulars in bit-parts: Dick gloriously theatrical monster-mother against
THE ST. VALENTINE’S Miller, Leo Gordon and Jack Nicholson. Plus, of Taylor’s writhing Method neurosis, it tackles
DAY MASSACRE course, Barboura Morris in the opening scene, the language-centred claustrophobia of the
Roger Corman; USA 1967; Powerhouse/Indicator; Region Corman’s perennial screaming witness to horror. original by doubling down rather than opening
B Blu-ray; Certificate 15; 100 minutes; 2.35:1. Extras: brief Disc: Excellent 4K transfer. Odd that nobody in out. Against their highly strung speechifying,
Corman interview; discussion of the film by Barry Forshaw; the extras mentions the next-best movie depiction neuro-psychiatrist Montgomery Clift’s calm,
discussion of uncredited narrator Paul Frees’s career by Ben of the massacre: in Wilder’s Some Like It Hot (1959). reactive performance provides welcome ballast
Ohmart; Super 8 home-cinema digest version; theatrical (in an interview included as an extra, assistant
trailer, booklet with new writing by Neil Sinyard and reprinted SUDDENLY, LAST SUMMER editor John Crome gives good insights into
writing from Corman, Philip French and Tom Milne. Joseph L. Mankiewicz; USA 1959; Powerhouse/Indicator; how his on-set fragility was overcome).
Reviewed by Tony Rayns Region-free Blu-ray; Certificate 15; 114 minutes; 1.85:1.; Extras: Oliver Messel’s overwrought art direction,
Made on Twentieth Century-Fox’s coin in interviews with Mankiewicz (1990), assistant editor John underlining the themes of predator and prey with
between The Wild Angels and The Trip, this Crome, continuity supervisor Elaine Schreyeck; Elizabeth a lushly death-tinged jungle garden and a snake
was Roger Corman’s first film for a Hollywood Taylor on Montgomery Clift (1966); Gary Raymond on pit of an asylum, is sumptuously shown off in
major. He was so shocked by the slowness of Suddenly, Last Summer; Michel Ciment analysis of the this 4k version. So are director of photography
the large crew and by mysterious below-the- film; theatrical trailer; Dan Ireland trailer commentary. Jack Hildyard’s atmospheric monochrome
line studio costs that he immediately reverted Reviewed by Kate Stables compositions, alternating pale blazing heat and
to low-budget indie production; it also rankled Mankiewicz’s rich and lurid rendering of shadowy interiors, Hepburn’s witchy white garb
that Richard Zanuck talked him out of casting Tennessee William’s psychological melodrama playing off Taylor’s dark silhouette. As critic
Orson Welles as Al Capone. But Corman enjoyed Michel Ciment points out in his excellent analysis,
having a decent budget and recycling sets despite the heroic length of the monologues,
built for Hello Dolly, The Sand Pebbles and The Mankiewicz is far from a mere ‘dialogue director’
Sound of Music, and he relished the chance to go here. Positioning a suicidal Taylor in a zoo-like
beyond what he’d done for the gangster genre confrontation with asylum inhabitants, or
in Machine Gun Kelly and I, Mobster (both 1958). blending her anguished face into the blazing,
Corman fans were nonplussed by the film fractured footage of the finale, he created some
from the day it opened (just before Bonnie and of the most startling images of his career.
Clyde) because it approaches modern horror Disc: A transfer that is ravishingly easy on the
from the opposite direction to the one he took eye, capturing the fleshy detail of a Venus flytrap
elsewhere. There’s no neo-expressionism, there or the regal twists of Hepburn’s throne-lift. The
are no arthouse flourishes in the camerawork fat package of extras is heavy on crew memories,
and there are no twisted Freudian backstories. but features a playful Mankiewicz hitting a
(Also: fake snow rather than fake fog.) Instead French interviewer’s questions out of the park.
there’s a quasi-documentary objectivity and Ciment’s impressive analysis of everything from
an almost diagrammatically clear exposition The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre scabrous themes to set design is, as ever, spot on.
TANAKA KINUYO
BOOKS
Shintoho to step into the director’s chair herself. SILENT FILM COMEDIENNES Hennefeld so deftly throws the emphasis on to
Responses to the public announcement, made strands of early cinema that are underexplored or
just prior to the release of her debut Love Letter in have been explained away elsewhere. With D.W.
1953, were disparaging. Many saw the move as a By Maggie Hennefeld, Columbia University Griffith, Hennefeld first rescues the director’s
publicity stunt aimed at distracting attention from Press, 384pp, ISBN 9780231179478 slapstick efforts from the dustbin of critical
the declining post-war status of an actress now Reviewed by Pamela Hutchinson oversight, then moves to debunk the “myth
seen as specialising in mother’s roles. Some might Long represented as a male domain, slapstick of male authorship by revealing the repressed
find this criticism odd in light of the fact that her comedy of the silent era was in fact home to places of slapstick comediennes as counter-
most iconic appearances, as far as international many female performers, and even directors. authorial forces in his filmmaking”. Mabel
audiences are concerned, were from around this Growing interest in the role of women in Normand, heroine of many a Griffith comedy
time, in Mizoguchi’s The Life of Oharu (1952), Ugetsu early cinema has prompted the celebration also appeared in the director’s melodramas
Monogatari (1953) and Sansho the Bailiff (1954). and recognition of these women, their skills and in those films, thanks to her “corporeal
While certain directors who had worked with and their popularity. Maggie Hennefeld’s unruliness”, embodied the former of two female
her rallied behind the decision, including Ozu, rich and provocative book, Specters of types identified by the director: the voluptuary
who had co-written the script that would later Slapstick & Silent Film Comediennes, carries us and the spirituelle. The slapstick comedienne
become Tanaka’s second film, The Moon Has several steps further in our understanding takes her place in opposition to the waif, typified
Risen (1955), Mizoguchi himself, with whom of a pivotal period in cinema history. for Griffith by the ethereal Lillian Gish.
she had been romantically linked, damningly Hennefeld takes the early and transitional The third part of the book is devoted to
proclaimed: “Kinuyo does not have enough eras as her subject and investigates how actresses “Slapstick Politics” and the meanings and
brains to be a film director.” It seems to have performed slapstick on screen for a variety motives of films that dealt with the campaign
been enough to put paid to their working of audiences and with a range of strategies. for female suffrage. These range from whimsical
relationship, with A Woman of Rumour (1954) Along the way, she posits a refreshing and affairs imagining a topsy-turvy world run by
the last in their series of 15 collaborations. productive new approach to transitional women, such as When Women Win (1909),
Tanaka’s importance as the first woman in cinema, and challenges received ideas about to more vicious attacks on the campaigners
Japan to sustain a directing career has resulted the development of narrative film and screen themselves, including the notorious depiction
comedy. She makes time to explore the value and of a male chauvinist fantasy Milling the Militants
Tanaka will be most familiar purpose of laughter, to reappraise D.W. Griffith’s (1913). The import of “cartoonish abuse
early comic work and to examine the political inflicted on suffragette bodies” is clear, but the
through her roles for Ozu and impact of suffragette comedies. Hennefeld’s intended response to carnivalesque fantasies of
Mizoguchi, but these reveal just opening argument is that the corporeality
of female comics shaped the development
matriarchal authority can be less clear: should
they, asks Hennefeld, “provoke disciplinary
one facet of her screen persona of the fiction film: “Slapstick comediennes mockery, or revolutionary laughter”? Perhaps
are the specters of our earliest film histories.” neither, and both, as “nonsense” is one way to
in analogies with her Western contemporary And it all begins with exploding domestics. navigate a period of social and political turmoil.
Ida Lupino. While her directing work is an In a rash of trick-enhanced films such as Hennefeld’s book concludes with a call
acknowledged aspect of her life in film, the six Mary Jane’s Mishap (1903) – one of the many to “make visible the forgotten histories of
films she made between 1953 and 1962 are not British films discussed – or The Kitchen Maid’s feminist social struggle and of women’s
easy to see. Even in Japan they are rarely screened Dream (1907), female servants combust, or cultural visibility”. Rather neatly, Specters
and little discussed, perhaps because the woman are dismembered (or both) in the kitchen. of Slapstick offers an engrossing and
that formed the focal point of so many works Hennefeld argues that this is a reflection of both a energising example of that very work.
by other directors remained conspicuously concerning real-life danger brought about by the
absent from the screen in her own films. Victorian fashion for hooped skirts (“crinoline In the popular film ‘Daisy
The final chapters attempt to remedy this conflagrations”) and the dangerous clash of the
critical lacuna, which Irene González-López female body with technology (the housemaid Doodad’s Dial’ Florence Turner
and Ashida Mayu attribute to the apparent
lack of any distinct or cohesive visual style or
and the domestic appliance/the actress and the
film camera), a creative collision on the path to
mugs away as Daisy, a housewife
ideological message and the differing genres the formation of narrative cinema. In the popular keen to enter a face-pulling contest
and historical settings they take place in. British film Daisy Doodad’s Dial (1914) Florence
Nevertheless, the authors do argue justifiably Turner mugs away as Daisy, a housewife keen
that Tanaka’s early directorial offerings mark the to enter a face-pulling contest. Daisy grimaces
emergence of the first female gaze at post-war further when she first contracts a painful
Japan. It is doubtful that a film like Tanaka’s The toothache, and is then arrested for clowning
Eternal Breasts (1955), based on the poet Fumiko in public. Alone in her bed and tormented by
Nakajo’s autobiographical account of her final nightmares, she is haunted by superimpositions
years with breast cancer, would have been made of her own distorted features. Similarly, when
with the same sensitivity and authenticity by Mary Jane is forced up the chimney following
a male filmmaker. Ayako Saito’s analysis of a kitchen explosion, her dismembered limbs
Tanaka’s handwritten notes on the shooting rain down to earth only to reassemble in
scripts for this film and for Girl of Dark (1961), ghostly form so that she can haunt her own
both of whose screenplays were written by gravestone (etched with the grim joke “rest in
another woman, Tanaka Sumie, puts forward a pieces”). For Hennefeld, the destruction and
strong case that she was certainly not reliant on reconstruction of female bodies in this strain
falling back on the talents of others in staging of comic cinema represents the growing pains
and shaping the cinematic form of her work, of the medium itself: “comediennes’ wayward
imprinting her identity on the films she directed bodily gestures perform the inconsistency
as much as the films she appeared in. and incongruity of films from this period”. Daisy Doodad’s Dial (1914)
09
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READERS’ LETTERS
Letters are welcome, and should be
addressed to the Editor at Sight & Sound, LETTER OF THE MONTH
BFI, 21 Stephen Street, London w1t 1ln
Email: S&S@bfi.org.uk A HIGHER CALLING
THE HATEFUL EIGHTIES
I was a teenage cinephile during the 1980s, and
read the superb S&S retrospective on that decade
with interest and a certain sense of déjà vu (‘The
other side of 80’s America’, S&S, June). As Nick
Pinkerton writes, “History repeats itself – well,
sort of.” The blockbuster summer of 1989 –
and Batman in particular – was a harbinger of
what was to come. 1989, however, was also the
year of sex, lies, and videotape and Do the Right
Thing. Tarantino lay just around the corner.
Nick James’s candid mention of “young
audiences with different priorities” (Editorial,
S&S, June) also felt familiar. An article in the
The Film Yearbook 1986, ‘Turning the Teen Tide’,
looked hopefully to a future where that – then
hugely influential – demographic didn’t shape
the cinema. Observing that Spielberg hadn’t had a
recent mega-hit, it suggested, “Perhaps Hollywood
is escaping from the dominance of teen taste.”
It’s easy to forget that the 80s were a difficult
time for the cinema worldwide – arguably
harder than today. It would be nice to see “a The Ken Burns and Lynn Novick interview The problem is the all-too-easy leap to the
rebirth of cinema as an artform that astonishes (Sight & Sound, May) provided a great insight use of the phrase ‘common denominator’,
people”. It could yet happen if filmmakers into how they do what they do. However, with its inference of lowest common
embrace the present instead of looking longingly I was disappointed that it at times took a denominator, which Ken Burns picks up on.
back at an imagined past that never was. rather clichéd, predictable and snobbish And forgetting that the purpose of a piece
Will Goble Rayleigh, Essex approach to the film experience. Interviewer being created is to inform or entertain, not
Eric Hynes says, “Going in the direction create the ‘Gosh, aren’t I clever’ effect.
AND ‘THE BEAST’ GOES ON of mass consumption might sound like Can I suggest to readers and reviewers that
I agree with Philip Kemp’s comment in his review appealing to a common denominator. You there is such a thing as a highest common
of the film Beast (S&S, May) that the ending lets are doing something else, which is much denominator. Try telling Hitchcock, Ford or
it down badly (spoiler alert!). Moll and Pascal more sophisticated and takes a lot of indeed Mozart and The Beatles that you can’t
are seen affectionately kissing just before their work.” And he asserts that the challenge be popular and good. And never tell a magician
car crashes – after which Moll crawls out of the is “to get people to realise the complexity that how he does it is the raison d’être of a trick.
car to strangle the injured Pascal. There seems and artistry of what they are watching”. Pete Watkins Collingwood, New Zealand
no logic to her change of attitude. It does not
help that the sensitive-looking Johnny Flynn
was never believable as a killer. see that month: L’Amant double, Lean on Pete and seem more human. Their attitude suggests that
Trevor Brown York A Quiet Place. It really does give your readers a film as a medium is more important than what
dilemma regarding the films they are thinking it is used to record: the tail should wag the dog.
REFERENCE SHOTS about going to see. One could wait until after Hugh Parkin Gloucestershire
I recently saw two splendid BFI-supported seeing the film to read the review, or obtain
films and was particularly interested to reviews elsewhere. I’m increasingly resorting to SLEEPING BEAUTIES
see the final shot/sequence in each. the latter, making me question why I keep buying I enjoyed Elena Gorfinkel’s article ‘Somnolent
The prolonged last shot of Andrew Haigh’s your magazine. Could you ask your reviewers to screens’ (Wide Angle, S&S, May) and would like
Lean on Pete seems to be more or less a direct be more sensitive about revealing plot twists or to suggest a couple more entries to the canon of
tribute to François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows remove them before they get to the newsstand? sleepy cinema. In Rodney Graham’s film Halcion
(1959), minus the seaside and freeze frame; while Oliver Charles Surrey Sleep (1994), the artist is seen knocked out by
in its intensity, the final sequence of Michael powerful sleeping pills, dozing in satin pyjamas
Pearce’s Beast bears a striking resemblance to FORBIDDEN COLOURS? in the back of a mini-van as it’s driven around his
the confrontation between Gregory Peck and Luke McKernan (Primal Screen, S&S, April) and hometown. And in Guy Maddin’s My Winnipeg
Jennifer Jones at the end of Duel in the Sun (1946). Clyde Jeavons (Letters, S&S, May) are outraged by (2007), the drowsy protagonist/narrator has to
These were unremarked in your reviews and the idea of colourising black-and-white archive “film his way out” of Winnipeg, “the sleepwalking
interviews, so perhaps I’m just being fanciful, footage. Jeavons says the practice “suggests capital of the world”. Interestingly, in both cases,
but I’d like to think there was some knowing an arrogant disregard for film history and sleep is connected to the past, and home.
input in at least one instance, if not both. aesthetics”, and McKernan thinks that colourising François Levy Montreal
Michael Hudson Sheffield news footage “does not bring us closer to our
Additions and corrections
ancestors; it increases the distance between us”. June p. 58 L’Amant double: Certificate 18, 108m 19s; p. 59 Anon:
SPOILING FOR A FIGHT The arrogance is on their part, trying to impose Certificate 15, 99m 58s; p.64 The review of Edie was written by Elena
Lazic, not by Trevor Johnston as stated; p. 66 Filmworker: Certificate 15,
As a long-time Sight & Sound reader I am their academic approach to history. With due 93m 54s; p. 69 Mansfield 66/67: Certificate 15, 85m 22s; p. 71 My Friend
continually irritated by the number of spoilers in attention to contemporary sources, colourised Dahmer: Certificate 15, 07m 25s; p. 71 New Town Utopia: Certificate 15,
your reviews section. In the June issue I counted actuality can give a picture of the past far more 81m 8s; p. 77 The Strangers Prey at Night: Certificate 15, 85m 12s; p. 56
That Summer: Certificate PG, 80m 11s; p. 78 Truth or Dare: Certificate
six out of a possible 32 films. That’s nearly 20 ‘real’ than black and white can ever be; far from 15, 99m 57s; p. 80 The Young Karl Marx: France/Germany 2016; p. 81
per cent and 100 per cent of the films I hoped to creating a barrier, it makes the people filmed Zama: Certificate 15, 114m 40s
WITCHFINDER GENERAL
The bloody violence that closes roundhead Richard Marshall (Ian Ogilvy), seeks cries echo around the walls as if the building was
revenge and gives chase to Hopkins and his designed to amplify the sounds. The characters
Michael Reeves’s visceral horror accomplices, but is captured along with Sara. are not simply in pain but simultaneously
film is destined to haunt its Reeves opens the final scene of his film with confronted by their own reaction to the torture.
a framing shot of Orford Castle, and the couple It could be said that because the couple
protagonists long into the future being led up the hill towards it in silhouette are ultimately saved, the ending is not
before being dragged into its dungeons. Through entirely pessimistic. But Reeves knows that
By Adam Scovell the weight of its very real history, the building violence carries reverberations, that the
Orford Castle sits at the edge of the coastal seems to resist the artifice of the fiction. Perhaps pain will continue after they have escaped;
village of the same name in Suffolk and was this is why Reeves selected it and why the rest scarred for life with unseen wounds.
constructed under the orders of Henry II in of his film generally feels rawer than most other In the final scenes Richard’s men arrive and
the late 1100s. The keep still stands as a fine horror films of the 1960s, spared some of the fight their way down to the dungeon, providing
architectural achievement but is one also camp theatrics that were common to the genre a distraction that allows him to escape. He sets
connected with the area’s folklore. Legend has at the time. Even Price is on his best behaviour, upon Hopkins in a frenzy with an axe, but one of
it that the Wild Man or Merman of Orford – a trying to keep hidden the fraught relationship the soldiers puts the witchfinder out of his misery
seemingly unearthly creature who was caught he had with the director throughout. with a flintlock pistol, depriving Richard of his
by local fishermen – was imprisoned and Sara’s torture begins, and Richard is forced to revenge. While Hopkins is spared his final agony,
tortured within the castle’s walls for months watch. The test of witchcraft is impossible to pass the couple’s anguish will continue. Over the sorry
on end, without saying a word. It is with this – screaming at being burned by a scalding metal scene, Sara screams more and more. Reeves shows
resonance that the shockingly brutal ending cross supposedly reveals occult tendencies – and the castle’s steps and rooms again as the cries
of Michael Reeves’s Witchfinder General (1968), death feels like a foregone conclusion. Unlike reverberate, even over the freeze-frame shot and
filmed in the same tower, gains a disturbing most of Reeves’s influences – the bright, bloody the final credits with their pleasant ‘Greensleeves’-
layer of mythic history. Seemingly miles away shootouts of pre-1970s Sam Peckinpah and Don style music by Paul Ferris. The space knows pain.
from every other location in the film, Reeves Siegel – the action here is difficult to watch. The There are undercurrents here connecting
clearly chose the setting for the culmination blood might have the lurid, gloopy unreal quality folklore and history to this final scene, the
of his film with a care and attention that feels of poster-paint, but the characters’ reactions Merman’s ordeal echoing through the years.
at odds with the visceral chaos on display. make it unbearable. The pain here lingers and the Hopkins may be dead but the violence he
Throughout the film, the witchhunter Matthew unleashed lingers like a disease, spreading
Hopkins (Vincent Price) has been roaming East Unlike most of Reeves’s influences from person to person. The true horror of the
Anglia indulging in sadistic violence, especially scene is not the narrow escape for our heroes
towards women, under the guise of religious duty. – the bright, bloody shootouts of or even the brutal violence – so brutal that
His sadism led him earlier to the household of
Sara (Hilary Heath), who was raped and tortured
pre-1970s Peckinpah and Siegel – the BBFC cut the scene savagely – but in the
realisation of what the constant circularity
before her father was murdered. Her lover, the the action here is difficult to watch of violence can do to us all in the end.
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