Little White Lies Issue 71 SeptemberOctober 2017

No.71

SEP/OCT ’ 17

£6

TRUTH & MOVIES

THE CALL ME BY YOUR NAME ISSUE

Sta rri ng

Di rec te d by LUCA GUADAGNINO TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET, ARMIE HAMMER, ESTHER GARREL Re lea se d 27 OCTOBER

Luca Gua dagnino’s scintillating follow-up to A Bigger Splash is a touchy-feely sceen romance for our time a nd for all time.

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ave you ever regretted not reaching out to someone, or telling The arrival of a new guest is an annual event in the Perlman household, them how you really feel? Love makes us do crazy, stupid and so Elio, being the good host that he is, welcomes Oliver by offering things. It can inspire bold declarations and uncharacteristic to take his bags up to the bedroom which Elio has temporarily bravery, just as it can strangle us with the fear of rejection. In vacated, then continues his cordial routine by showing Oliver any case, love tends to leave its mark in mysterious ways, and around. But what starts out as yetanother lazy summer spent reading books, in order to fully understand it we mustfirst learn to take the badwith the good. swimming and transcribing music under the hot Lombardian sun quickly turns into a journey of self-discovery and sexual awakening. Based on André Aciman’s 2007 novel of the same name, this beautiful film concerns a brief butlasting romance between a 17-year-old Italian-American boy and a twentysomething American man who is more experienced in Initially, Elio seems blissfully unaware of the chemical reaction matters of the heart but no less susceptible to its sudden, all-consumingthat has already been set off inside him, until an innocent game of desires. The when and where are established with two handwritten subtitles lawn volleyball triggers a deep yearning he simply cannot ignore. that feel like the opening lines of an unselfconsciously earnest teenageLater, when Elio’s mother reads aloud to him from a 16th century confessional. Summer 1983; Somewhere in Northern Italy. It’s here that French Renaissance novel about a knight who worries that his love Elio (Timothée Chalamet) meets Oliver (Armie Hammer), a handsome PhD for a princess might be unrequited, one existential question strikes student who is staying with Elio’s family at their idyllic countryside villa for a chord: ‘Is it better to speak or to die?’ Should Elio express his true six weeks. Dressed in chinos, Converse and a loose-fitting Ralph Lauren shirt, feelings to Oliver or should he keep them bottled up? Does he take a leap Oliver cuts a cool,self-assured figure as heintroduces himself to Elio’s father of faith now or risk living with the question of ‘what if?’ forever? Being a (Michael Stuhlbarg) with a firm handshake and mother (Amira Casar) with a somewhat precocious, somewhat naïve young man, he decides to find out warm kiss on either cheek. what it means to open oneself up to another person.

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LEAD REVIEW

LEAD REVIEW

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“This is a profound study of the different ways people, regardless of their sexual orientation, process complex physiological impulses.”

Emotionally speaking, this is director Luca Guadagnino’s most honest and intelligent work to date, a lyrical, sensuous, aching love story that skips all the usual coming-of-age beats in favour of finding a gentler, less conventional rhythm. There’s none of the brashness of his 2016 Englishlanguage debut, A Bigger Splash, nor the staginess of his previous feature from 2009, I Am Love . Like those films, this one is visually ravishing and filled with erotic motifs – never have such mundane acts as cracking a soft-boiled egg or drinking a glass of apricot juice been imbued with such palpable frisson. (Incidentally,Call Me by Your Name was lensed not by Guadagnino’s regular cinematographer Yorick Le Saux but by Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, whose credits include Miguel Gomes’ Arabian Nights and Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Uncle Boonmee W ho Can Recall His Past Lives and who recently shot Guadagnino’s upcoming remake ofSuspiria.) At one point Elio’s father asks Oliver to help him catalogue a set of slides consisting of ancient Athenian sculptures, which he describes in amorous, homoerotic terms. If this scene causes eyebrows to arch, it’s only because Hammer himself has a body worthy of being cast in bronze. Looking like Michelangelo’s muse, Oliver is a picture of classical masculinity, all firm muscles and impossible curves, and Guadagnino makes sure that it is not only Elio who spends time gazing at his impressive form. Call Me by Your Name was shot on location just a few miles from Guadagnino’s home in Crema, and he makes no attempt to hide the fact that his affection for the period and setting is as strong as his fondness for the characters. Throughout the film Guadagnino adorns the already

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evocative milieu with era-specific pop culture trinkets – everyone rom Phil Collins and Robert Mapplethorpe to Talking Heads and Fido Dido – which presumably must have had some bearing on the director’s formative years. In addition to superficially indulging his own nostalgia, Guadagnino makes several other artistic choices that speak to his personal influences and tastes, chief among them being the use of two wistful ballads written or the film by Sufan Stevens, ‘Mystery o Love’ and ‘Visions o Gideon’, the second of which plays out over the devastating final shot. On a more contentious note, it’s worth noting Guadagnino’s decision not to show same-sex intercourse. When Elio and Oliver do eventually sleep together, we see them clamber onto bed and clumsily undress each other beore the camera drits suggestively towards an open window. It’s surprising that, having spent so long teasing this climactic union, Guadagnino should exert restraint in the moment, though in doing so he arguably preserves the intimacy o the scene. Lust may be the spark that ignites Elio and Oliver’s passionate affair, yet by not explicitly scratching that particular carnal itch Guadagnino further emphasises the universality of his film’s core themes. Like the book, Call Me by Your Name will almost certainly be championed as a vital queer text, but at its most nakedly unambiguous – as when Elio de-stones a piece o ruit with no intention o eating it, or when Marzia (Esther Garrel), the local girl with the long-term crush, makes a kind gesture just to let him know she still cares – the film is a profound study of the different ways people, regardless of their sexual orientation, process complex physiological impulses.

All the while ther e is the nagg ing sense that the summe r – and with it Elio and Oliver’s relationship – is nearing its inevitable end. After Oliver leaves for America, a visibly distraught Elio is consoled by his father, who offers a sage piece of advice t hat doubles as a devastating eulogy for his own squandered want. He tells his son not to bury his pain because, as he so eloquently puts it, to feel nothing so as not to feel anything is a terrible waste. The framing of this scene is crucial, as by cutting from a two-shot to a close-up of Stuhlbarg, Guadagnino encourages us to relect on these wise words not just as they relate to Elio but also our own experiences o love and loss. Maybe you’ll recall the vivid sensation of your fingertips tentatively dancing with another’s, or the lush o nervous excitement which preceded that first kiss, or the mournful, lingering thought of what might have been had you only spoken from the heart. ADAM WOODWARD

ANTICIPATION.

Lu ca Gu ad ag ni no tak es on a mod ern li te rar y cla ssi c. ENJOYMENT.

Jus t st un ni ng. IN RETROSPECT .

A be au ti ful fi lm ab ou t lov e a nd lon gi ng , on e you ’ll w an t (a nd need) to watch again and again and again.

LEAD REVIEW

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THE CALL ME BY YOUR NAME ISSUE

12 – 15

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Invisible Touch

Extra Assignment: A Nos Amours

A conversation with Call Me by Your Name director Luca Guadagnino about how to capture love on camera.

Looking back to Maurice Pialat’s 1983 masterpiece about a teenage girl sewing her wild oats.

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Extra Assignment: A Room With a View

36 – 41 Eat a Peach

An appreciation of the 1985 MerchantIvory classic, focusing on Daniel Day-Lewis’ unique performance.

How fruit and sex have overlapped and intermingled throughout the history of art, literature and culture.

18 – 23 Love My Way

42 – 43 Threads #3

Call Me By Your Name stars Armie Hammer and Timothée Chalamet discuss life and love, while we meet up-and-coming French actor Esther Garrel.

Men’s swimming trunks are placed under the microscope in our column about fashion and film.

44 24 – 33 First Love Twelve tall tales of formative movie love from a selection of cinephiles.

Extra Assignment: A Trip to the Country One of Luca Guadagnino’s key inspirations is given its dues in this loving recap.

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here’s an obvious link between Italian director So in a way, my answer is, of course, I don't take for granted Luca Guadagnino’s breakthrough film and his the necessity of a great chemistry. On the other hand, I would most recent one. 2009’sI Am Love lavished in say that it is my duty as a director to make sure that nothing the erotic potential of food, with the camera falls in the middle between the characters and the capacity sensually gliding down long dining tables of the camera to capture the invisible elements that happen packed with gorgeous edible treats. In his new to be in the performance. I need to make sure that they are

film, Call Me by Your Name , an intense formative love match is oblivious of their own selves. They need to drown in the movie juxtaposed against orchards of over-ripe fruit. In one scene, and in the story. Armie Hammer scoffs down a number of soft-boiled eggs in a manner that’s enough to get any innocent viewer a little hot Is this a personal theory, that it is the job of the actors to under the collar. Perhaps the thing that ties all Guadagnino’sbecome oblivious of themselves? Well, it’s not a theory. I recent movies together – an abstract mission statement of mean, I wish I could have the depth andthe cultural significance sorts – is the he way builds up an erotic ambience around his to create theories. But to answer your question, no, I think that characters, almost making it impossibl e for them to keep their you should find all the ways in which you can communicate desires concealed. He tells great stories, but healso builds the conditions for love to blossom. Call Me by Your Nameis his greatest achievement,

with every single performer that is individual to them. You never speak in generic terms. You must find achannel to make yourself understood. Make sure there is not too much intellect

at stake and that the emotion is natural. And also, you have to a clever and intuitive adaptation of André Aciman’s 2007 enjoy the company of the people you are working with so that novel about a summertime fling in Liguria of the early ’80s. they surrender and allow the camera to make an X-rayof what Young Elio (Timothée Chalamet) transcribes sheet music, is inside of them. reads books and indulges in a course of intense relaxation at his father’s picturesque country estate. Then, one day, Oliver Did you spend a lot of time talking about emotions with the (Armie Hammer), an upstart American academic, rolls up for actors? You can not talk about emotions, because then you a summer internship, and things start to happen. We speak to are basically missing the point of filmmaking. You have to the director about his hand-off, naturalistic filmmaking style orchestrate the elements in a way thatemotions can run free. and how he managed to create a yearning, sweat-dappled That’s more what I’m interested in doing. screen romance for the ages. Do you recall the first time that Armie (Hammer) and imothée T LWLies: Do you believe there is such a thing as chemistry (Chalamet) first met?I met with themin different places and between actors?Guadagnino: That is a very com plex question. at different times. I met Armie in 2010. I had seenhim in David I'm not drawn in by the concept of actors or actresses. That’s something that carries with it the idea of drama, the idea of fiction, the idea of a controlled and constructed world. It’s something completely different from how I see performance

Fincher’s The Social Networkand found him extraordinary. I was instantly attracted to him. I met Timothée in 2012 in New York, and the guy was already such a vivid, feverish soul. I

immediately understood that he was the only candidate, even and how I enjoy feeding a storyline through a movie. I like the though I was not yet the director. Timothée came to Crema emotions unfolding from the performances or the performers. where I live and where we shot the film. He spent a month in

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The Call Me by Your Name Issue

the house in Italy with me and the team in order to build his

to a degree which you get to see the invisible more. The

character. He wanted to understand the environment, work

actors, or as I prefer to call them, the performers, feel

on talking Italian, ride bikes and play the piano. And just a

completely protected and embraced by a quiet force.

week before we started shooting we got Armie. The meeting between them was quite extraordinary because there was a

Another element of this film is how it depicts the sense of

sense of companionship andcamaraderie straight away. It was

I think that it is my job to time passing in a very subtle way.

something that was never contrived. It was quite natural.

decide in advance the sense of time and space. Then every day you deal with the mundanity and the vulgarity of the next

What was your approach to filming bodies in this movie?

problem to be resolved. I wanted to have a sense of laziness

I wanted to have a point of view that was unfiltered and

and the suspension of time that you get from the summer.

absolutely natural. We decided to use one camera and one But when we were shooting I had to resolve a lot of problems. lens. And then there is the fact that it’s the summer, and we need people to be in the mood for summer. The fact that it’s summer leads the characters to be halfnaked, to be more free with their bodies. And we just observed them. There was no specific attitude to thebodies. It’s just that I like to see people behave. I think movies are about recording behaviour without any sort of filter. The bodies on display are the bodies of each and every character, so not just Oliver and Elio. The attitude is such that the camera lingers on them in the way of a natural gaze.

Does this idea of the natural gaze behind the film’s stripped back visual style?Yeah, let’s say yes. It’s how you get to the essence of an idea. And I hope that I can further understand what is really buried in me as a filmmaker. In general, the exuberance of the cinematic language needs to meet a sense of restraint. It’s more about self-analysis than anything else.

The house itself in the film seems like such an important element. I knew the house in advance.It was my dream to buy the house but I couldn’t afford it so I sublimated my desire by using it as the Perlman’s house. And once we had to think of It’s a miracle. Movies are miracles. When they happen to be the movie, the book by André Aciman is set in Liguria which

coherent and then get recognition, it’s kind of a miracle.

is a little different from Lombardia as it’s by the sea. And we I’m not saying that we didn’t know what we were doing, but moved it to a town inside Lombardia as a sort of different take sometimes it is also part of the story that you don’t expect on the idea of the Italian summer

things to eventually happen. I don’t believe if a director tells you that he or she has some grand plan where everything in

Your cinematographer, Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, feels like the amovie has been devised, because it’s an exoticism. It’s not true. Or, to paraphrase Jean Renoir, ‘you must think of tremendous fit with the subject and location of this movie. I felt that Sayombhu had the moral, ethical and emotional

leaving the door open to reality when you're making a movie’.

balance to make this movie the way I had told him it had to be

Otherwise you get into a world of oppression and suffocation.

done. And that's why we ended up working on this movie and also Suspiriaafterwards.

Trip Talking of Jean Renoir, the film recalls his 1936A film, to the Country. Oh yeah of course, that was one of our

You’ve talked about his spiritual side. Was that evident absolute on touchstones. We really looked at that film very hard this film?Sayombhu comes from a different culture. He is a

– such a great movie and still unmatched. I wanted to pay

Buddhist, and his priorities are quite different from those of

homage to a lot of cinema that I love. Also in my imagination

a corrupted westerner. It's quite refreshing to have someone were Renoir, Rivette and Rohmer – let’s put all the Rs who can quite simply express something that you would

together. Add Pialat and Bernando Bertolucci and you have

never talk about, that is so alien to the hyper ideology of the cocktail of influences we used to make this movie capitalism. It's really riveting and it's a great lesson in life. And that, in a way, drives a lot of the atmosphere of the set,

Call Me by Your Name is releseased on 27 October.

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ames Ivory’s stylish and literate EM Forster

Bonham-Carter into a close-up. His approach is halting, his

adaptation from 1985,A Room with a View, is packed

lips are all wrong. His glasses don’t just slip off his nose but

with veteran larcenists who merrily pickpocket one

become somehow entangled and skew-whiff. All the while he

another throughout the film. The mostdelicious and

maintains a chaste hand on Lucy’s shoulder, not so much for

flagrant of these is Maggie Smith as Charlotte Bartlett, the prim

the heat of physical contact, clearly, but in order to steady

and forbidding old-maid aunt of Lucy Honeychurch (Helena himself as he goes in for the worst make-out session of Bonham-Carter). Actors like Judi Dench and Denholm Elliott all time. are also on hand to purloin scenes from the leads. Rupert

His and Lucy’s mumbled half-apologies in the instant that

Graves, as Lucy’s younger brother, even goes so far as to rob follows only increase the already excruciating cringe factor, Julian Sands of his rightfulstatus as the film’s heartthrob, one-

but Day-Lewis is playing this with delecta tion, too, imbuing the

upping him in vigour, charm and boyish prettiness.

scene with something like joy. This is subtle hamming of the

Daniel Day-Lewis, playing Lucy’s prissy, effete, supercilioushighest order. But on top of these perfectlyexecuted tics, Dayfiancé Cecil Vyse, rivals neither as an object of desire in the Lewis somehow adds pathos and heart. The moment comes film - and it is one of the many miracles of his performance when Cecil accepts Lucy’s termination of their engagement, that, at the apex of Day-Lewis’s very masculine, sexually with dignity and composure, hiding his hurt behind the English magnetic beauty, Cecil does not register as attractive. The manners that have come to rescue him like old friends. character can’t be as handsome as the lead, so Day-Lewis At this point Cecil has withstood some brutal home truths makes it his job not to be – and therefore he conceals his from Lucy, who lashes out at himin the anger that she feels for looks behind costume, mannerisms, voice and deportment. herself. Cecil asks Lucy if she will at least shake hands with him Day-Lewis, who reportedly time travelled to turn-of-the- – and this scene functions as a mirror image of the earlier one century England and lived there as a member of the landed

when he requested a kiss, except that this time we understand

gentry for four years in order to prepare for the role, is Cecil Cecil, and his plea is a self-denying one, perhaps the most Vyse: this foolish, pitiable pseud; this preening, pretentious, romantic in the whole film. Day-Lewis performs this soulful, oblivious would-be intellectual.

candid aspect of Cecil so astutely, blunting the mannered

How does he do it? Day-Lewis operates on two registers: edges of the character, marking out all his weariness, and one might be termed ‘subtle hamming’, and one that is

playing, too, a hopeless attempt at saving face in this painful

sincere and deeply soulful. At times he plays bothat once. The

situation. A beautiful coda in which Cecil silently picks up his

hamming is most enjoyable in a scene where Cecil and Lucy

shoes ends Day-Lewis’s involvement in the film, and ensures

walk through a wood together, and share perhaps the most he lives on long after it. miserable, bathetic kiss that has ever been captured on film. For context: Lucy has returned to England tocompose herself

For all Day-Lewis’s brilliance in other films, his acts of transformation – his ogres and heroes – thosecharacters that

after a much-frowned-upon tryst in Italy with the deeply rampage through a film with breathless abandon, it’s always unsuitable George Emerson. When Cecil andLucy take a walk

Cecil who comes to the fore. Something in him at the start of

together, Cecil enquires if he might kiss her – a sizeable error,his career recognised the possibilities in the role. He saw how showing that he is so bloodless and unmasculine as to have to transcend writing, how to forge someonefrom so little. It’s to ask. Lucy consents, and he leans in with closed eyes for a

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an act of generosity and kindness to paint his character that way, to give him so much attention; and togive us so much to

timorous peck on the lips – and then Day-Lewis does heaven

dwell on when we watch the film again to try and work out

only knows what, as the camera accompanies him and Helena

how, exactly, he did it

The Call Me by Your Name Issue

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LWLies: What’s your fondest memory from being on set? that kind of flow where it becomes mindless, sensory and Armie Hammer:If I had to pick one thing it would be the instinctive – that’s happiness.

meals. Luca is a consummate epicurean, and watching how he sensually interacts with everything, it’s like he truly wantsWhen did you fall in love with acting? to fuck everything around him. It makes you enjoy the food AH: When I was about 12, I was living in the Cayman Islan ds, and I more, it makes you enjoy the wine more, the ambience, the saw Home Alone – it looked like the most fun thing in the world. sensations, the fabric, the tablecloth, everything. There was He was in his house, he had miniguns, he had flamethrowers, this one meal we had in a little tiny town called Orzoni, we must have ordered at least a kilo of caviar. We ate caviar and drank ice-cold vodka and had amazing wine from the wine cellar. I recently went back to Crema, where we shot the film, largely to see Luca, butequally largely to go to that restaurant and see Stefano the chef.

he had gadgets, he had booby traps. In my child-like brain, that was acting. It never hit me how real it was until much later when I almost got fired by my agent at the time. She called and said, ‘You’re not working, you’re my only client who doesn’t work, I’m firing you.’ That’s when it became real and more aboutthe work, and allowing fear of failure to be a motivating force.

Timothée Chalamet:Just the memories

of Armie and Michael [Stuhlbarg] and Luca, exploring the town, hanging out, watching films together, getting espresso… There was a family bond that felt especially strong on this film. It was such a unique opportunity to work with a really

TC: When I got to LaGuardia high school, which is a performing arts school in New

York. Prior to that I had done some commercial acting, and when you’re selling products it’s a case

of who can smile the biggest. With LaGuardia everything generous and kind cast and crew. Crema is Luca’s home so we was about acting and reacting and addressing the existential were very much in a Luca Guadagnino film. questions of acting. It became about finding truth in art.

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What does happiness mean to you?

What’s your definition of a great holiday?

AH: Happiness is that headspace where you are so thoroughly

AH: Being somewhere remote enough that when you turn off

content exactly where you are, with who you’re with, that you don’t feel the need to look at your phone, you don’t feel the

your cell phone you are unreachable, and you can unplug and spend time with your family, spend time with yourself, spend

need to look around. You’re there, and you’re still. TC: It’s that feeling of flow. I think you can accomplish flow

time doing nothing, and just enjoy it. When I’m on vacation I like to be hot, I like to be warm enough to sweat – that’s my goal.

doing anything, it can be stapling papers, it can be playing sport, it can be the way you drive a car. If you can achieve

TC: Where you feel like you’re having time off, there’s no

The Call me by Your Name Issue

obligation to do anything and you can just recharge.

How would you describe your relationship with your co-star? experience because we all cried, but we also laughed a lot AH: We have a fantastic relationship, maybe one of the best

more than we cried. We all got together and told stories

I’ve ever had on a film. Timothée is such a special person

about her and she told us stories about each other and it was

in terms of the nature of who he is, and the talent that he

just a really beautiful thing.

possesses, which is just insane. I’m a little older than he is, TC: Um, I don’t know. so there were times that would kinda go, “Hey, listen, I know that you’re gonna do whatever you wanna do, but from my experience I’ve learned blah blah blah...” and he never bristled at anything I said. He’s just a very open, terrific person. TC: It’s a really great relationship. We’ve got a

When did you last see your father? AH: The safe answer is probably two or three months ago.

TC: About two-and-a-half weeks ago. We went to a café in New York; he was about to

real brotherly bond. I really lucked out getting

fly to France and we just had a nice little

to work with such a talented actor, someone

moment before he jumped onthe subway.

I look up to so much. He’s also an amazing husband and an amazing father – he’s 30 and

What’s the last great movie you saw?

I’m 21 so to me he’s like a roadmap of sorts.

AH: The last great, great movie I saw was Apocalypse Now. It’s the only movie

What does love feel like to you? AH: An overabundance of vibrations in your body that all make you want to explode, like your body can’t contain it all.

I have saved on my iPad that’s not a children’s movie.

TC: I just saw Glengarry Glen Ross with my mom and it was awesome.

TC: The definition changes by the day, and what I can think of today as far as what love is to me would be having the

What’s the most romantic gesture you’ve ever made?

security to receive warmth.

AH: I don’t necessarily believe in marriage, at least not the way people believed in marriage 50 years ago, where you

When did you last cry?

got married to have a baby. But the biggest gesture I’ve ever

AH: My grandma, about two weeks ago, she basically called

made was committing to my wife. I was like, ‘I want to marry

all of the grandkids to say goodbye, and to say that she loved

you. I know how much that means to me and I know what

us. She’d been having strokes and she just felt that it was her

I hope it means to you. And then I want to have a baby, I

time. That rocked me to the core, I completely fell apart. I

want to start a family, I want to create an en tire life with you.’

was in the middle of a press tour for Cars 3 and dropped

That’s a very powerful and romantic gesture, I think.

everything to go see my grandma. So, that was an amazing

TC: Um… I mean, you can’t go wrong with flowers

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The Call me by Your Name Issue

LWLies: Do you think you were born into acting?

What preparation did you do for your role as spurned love

I think that it’s a difficult question. I first acted when I

Marzia inCall Me By Your Name ?

was 16, and before that I wanted to be a lawyer. So maybe

Director Luca Guadagnino gave me the script at the end of

there’s something in between acting and being a lawyer

February at the beginning of 2016. I started to see an English

that I have yet to discover. Before that I wanted to be a

coach in Paris because, srcinally, it was going to be English

musician – I played the violin. I guess that’s in the same

language. Then, when I arrived on the set, we started to

sphere? Before that, at the age of ten, I saw a play at a

shooting and Luca said that we could do the dialogue in French.

theatre. I saw this young French actress and thought she

So all the parts were translated. So I learned the whole part in

was so amazing. I wanted to get up on stage with her right

English, then ended up saying it in French. This is actually the

then. That was the first feeling I had. Then, at 15, wanted to

best way ever to learn a new language.

learn, so I went to school. Did you read the novel? Did you do theatre? Never. I would like to, but I’m too afraid of that. I hope to do it some day.

Yes, but only after the film. I wanted to have just the world of Crema, the set world and the crew’s world to deal with. To read it would make things too confusing. I started

Is it scary acting in films?

reading it early on, but then stopped. It’s

Yes, all the time! Both before and after.

such a great book, and Andre was on set.

When I’ve got to do something big the next day I sometimes want to cry. But at the

Did you talk to Luca about your role?

same time, I feel completely comfortable

He started to speak about Marzia the

being scared about my job. I like to be scared. I want to be scared. When I begin a scene and when I start to act, the fear evaporates. So it’s not a problem, it’s just me and my feelings. I think it’s actually quite exciting.

first time we met in Paris. When he gives a character to someone, it’s theirs. All he does is makes the choice. It a reflection of his confidence I guess. I had the responsibility and I could do with Marzia whatever I felt. In the week before the shoot, it was really about looking for their energy within the context of this big house,

How do you feel about fame?

and during this season. Everything personal was my work.

I don’t think about that, because I don’t know what fame means. It’s good to be famous in that you have more choice.

Lover For a How was shooting this film different to shooting

You can do what you want to do. I have more scripts and

Day with your father, Philippe?

requests for roles on my desk, and that’s a good thing.

Oh my God, it’s the opposite. For Lover For a Day, we spent three hours a week for nine months rehearsing, and then on

What movies were you watching when you grew up?

the set we do one take, and one take only. We never do two

At 15 I had already seen all the François Truffaut movies, and

takes, because that’s my father’s method. We talk about our

all of Jacques Demy’s movies. Not all the Robert Bresson movies at that point, but most of them. Maybe I started

characters and the story in that nine months, and then when we’re on the set, we don’t talk at all. We just do it. With Luca

younger than other people on that stuff? I also watch all the

and all his crew, we all talk together, we discuss the scenes and

big commercial movies too. I love cinema, and have done

we analyse the takes to try and work out how we can make it

since my childhood. It’s the thing that connects me to a lot

better. The set is pure energy. OnLover For a Day, there is no

of my friends.

energy. It’s like you’re sitting on a train

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The Call Me by Your Name Issue

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BY AIMEE KNIGHT

Smoky eyes. Cherry lips. Platform heels and legs for days. Actually,

you’re only 5’9, I’d later discover. IMDb isn’t ubiquitous yet. Or maybe it is? I’m seven years old, it’s Christmas Day, and I’ve just fallen in love for the first time. Timothy James Curry. You are the typecast British sex fiend of my pre-pubescent fantasies. Don’t dream it. Be it. Or tell your third grade teacher all about it until she bans you from talking to her. The next few years get pretty weird. Weekday afternoons in the stale public library, memorising your filmography and giffing up an Angelfire website in your honour. Smart money says I’m the only eleven year old in that Rocky Horror roleplay chat room, where strangers from all timezones descend and pretend to be you. When my allotted two hours of Internet Exploring are up, the librarian sends me home. Cross my heart and hope to hear your throaty tones on some after-school cartoon. Come to think of it, I heard you the first time I ever went to the movies. Who but you could Hexxus? For a decade manifest such a sexual smog-monster as I schlepped back to that cinema to see you on the high seas with Kermit and Piggy, get micro-agressive with Lucy Liu,and… do whatever you did inScary Movie 2. I fell asleep. I’m sorry. I’ll hire Clue from the video shop 100 times to atone. Always the BY ROXANNE SANCTO

butler (or pirate, concierge, evil penguin). Never the romantic

lead. But when yourpowers combinewith those of Bernadette I lived in Holland for seven years where I attended an Peters and Carol Burnett, you make the hardest Fuck-Marry-Kill international college. I was around 14 years old when a Dutch scenario a white girl film nerd could dream of. Don’t dream it. friend of mine introduced me to Jan Wolkers’ ‘Turkish Delight’ (Turks Fruit), the only compulsory read he actually enjoyed during his high-school career. I read the book in two days, and have read it at least 20 times since. My friend invited me to watch the movie adaption by Paul Verhoeven. I was terrified this captivating story of the young, broke artist Eric and his intense love for the beautiful, susceptible Olga wouldn’t make the transition to the screen. I feared the obsessive intensity of Eric’s feelings and the complexity of Olga’s eversearching character would somehow getlost. Yet in deploying subtle details, Verhoeven manages to highlight the emotional landscape of Wolkers’ characters in a manner that almost seems to encompass every single word and situation in the book. Turkish Delightwas my first cinematic love, and sparked a fascination for complex relationships . While many of my classmates were going googly-eyed over Hollywood romances with guaranteed happyendings, I sought out the kind of love stories that came with a biting dose of reality – the toxic cocktail of emotions, the raw, deep and profound ugliness and excruciating pain that forms part of what we conceive of as love. Don’t get me wrong; I appreciate soppy moments of unflinching eye-gazing and grandromantic Six gestures but, if you ask me, this quote from the hit series Feet Under sums up the real meaning of love: “Some pretty

little thing catches your eye, and the next thing you know, it’s been 56 years. And you shitall over yourself in a movie theatre, and she’s the only one that’ll help you clean it up. That’s love.”

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BY CASPAR SALMON

It was raining on the Champs Elysees. My parents were accompanying high school students to a showing of The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and, because they couldn't find a babysitter, I was along for the ride, way past my bedtime. The high school students all smoked and seemed unfathomably adult and cool. There was a little girl in the film - pretty. She had a serious demeanour and, like me that night, was just hanging out with adults like it wasn’t a thing. I loved her - for her lack of cuteness, her intelligence, the readiness with which she set out on her adventures with the Baron. I was myself a small, perhaps peculiar child; I longed for the assuredness of the company of adults, and to stop being a child. When I saw The Sweet Hereafter years later I didn't realise the girl in the film, now a teenager, whose maturity and sadness opposed her to the manipulations of adults, was the same little girl I remembered. When the internet came along, I worked out who the girl was; that Sarah Polley had been both. By then I was working out, too, a few things about myself, who I loved and wanted to be. When I fell for Sarah Polley at the age of eight, I was drawn to her out of kinship; I wanted to be her, to be so pretty and BY GREG EVANS

wise. Something about her vulnerability and force of spirit; her bright, open face; her lack of cuteness, somehow, too

Has a song ever made you fall in love with an actor? As bizarre – all of this induced in me a keening towards her that was an as it may sound, it has happened to me. In 2007, The Teenagers,

impulse not of love but of recognition.

a French electro-pop band, released a song called ‘Starlett Johansson.’ No prize for guessing whom it was about I knew who Scarlett Johansson was through films like Lost in Translationand Ghost World. She was undoubtedly beautiful but I didn't feel a connection to the icy and awkward personality shetransmitted on screen. This song managed to change my perception of her almost instantly. It’s a bouncy ballad where three hipsters list various facts about Scarlett. She was born in 1984. She studied at 8th on Broadway. She doesn't believe in monogamy. She was a star. It felt perverse, but learning these intimate details in the context of a creepy love song was, dare I say, arousing, especially to a confused 20-year-old in his first year of university. The song made Scarlett seem like an ethereal being, unlike anyone else on the planet. But somehow I understood her. I was obsessed. From there on, I endeavoured to see all of her movies, a task which forced me to sit through works like In Good Company and The Island. I would buy magazines she featured in, downloaded episodes ofSaturday Night Liveshe presented and I still own the two albums she has released. I even made artwork dedicated to her. Slowly my fandom subsided, but every once in a while my heart flutters again, especially when she stars in remarkable films like Under the Skinor Her. When that does happen I'm always reminded of that song which made me feel like I had a close relationship with an otherwise unattainable person.

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BY MARK ASCH

Report with a braless Cameron Diaz as Monica Lewinsky.

The last day of eighth grade was a half day, and that afternoon my girlfriend and I went to the movies with remember us both rigid in our seats, staring at the screen, as her best friend at the time, who I’ll call Rose, and Rose’s The first date I ever went on was to The Big Lebowski — I

the topless girl bounced in slow-motion on the trampoline. boyfriend, who I’ll call Jack. This was at a strip-mall multiplex This was in eighth grade, when I had a girlfriend for the first where, it was rumoured, a classmate of ours had put his time. Spending time together outside of school, somewhere jacket over his lap and jerked off during Jennifer Lopez’s our parents could drive us and leave us for a meaningful wet t-shirt scenes inAnaconda . We sat boy-girl-girl-boy, in interval of time, also meant taking exploratory first steps as the otherwise empty theatre, and star ted making out during independent consumers of pop culture. (I don’t know why a wego-nowhere dialogue scene sometime after the first or saw Lebowski, I must have read about it in ‘Entertainmentsecond reel changeover. Weekly’.) My girlfriend had already seen Titanic, more than At some point thereafter, my girlfriend pulled away, once, but of course it was still in theatres and, of course, looked we to her left, and may have gasped. There was heavy went and sat in an aisle seat in a middle row, directly in front breathing coming from the other couple, and a frictiony of two retirees whose own frozen gaze I could feel holding sound. On screen, an explosion. There was urgent whispering my arm in place on the shared armrest as Leo paintedbetween the two girls, and then my girlfriend mumbled Kate like one of his French girls. I finally managed to make something in my ear about washing up as she and Rose some moves duringCity of Angels, right after Nicolas Cage scooched over my knees to the bathroom, followed by Jack, [spoiler] gives up his immortality to be with Meg Ryan, butwho leaned in close, holding his hands out in front of his before she [spoiler] gets hit by a truck. body, fingers splayed, and in a voice hushed and triumphant Perhaps the solipsism of hindsight is as potent as thesaid: “I almost popped Rose’s cherry.” I had the theatre to solipsism of adolescence? Yet as I look back on the 1997-myself for two or three minutes. Today it’s a Wal-Mart. 1998 school year from a distance of 20 years, I see more

After the last day of eighth grade, the next time I would clearly than ever an American media landscape steeped intongue-kiss a girl in a movie theatre would be five years later, my and my contemporaries’ hormones. That year, my male my freshman year of college. It was at a weeknight screening friends’ quotation rotation featured the previous summer’s of The Quiet American , an engrossing study of US foreignhit Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (imagine policy arrogance fortuitously released as our military began a classroom full of boys bleating, “Do I make you horny?”a war in which friends from my teenage years would serve. with an insistence verging on despair), and Tim Meadows asI could not have known any of that at the time. For the the recurringSaturday Night Live characterThe Ladies Man , moment, I sat alone in the dark, a week before my fourteenth who, come fall, would re-enact key passages of the Starrbirthday, and I watched Roland Emmerich’s Godzilla.

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BY CHRISTINA NEWLAND

You’re unattainable in every way. You’re a movie star. You were born during the Great Depression. You’re 80 goddamn

A lot of people don’t get it. They say you stopped being a

years old. And that’s all part of the wonderful ridiculous

sex symbol before I was born, though clearly they haven’t seen Indecent Proposal. One of my friends even told me

package. If loving movies means grasping at flickering fantasy – at impossible digital files that suspend actors in time at their

that you were too cookie-cutter and boring to be sexy. She

youngest and loveliest – then you’re an immaculate example.

said, ‘Robert Redford is like a drawing of the best-looking guy Bob, you personify the shiny impossibility of Hollywood. you can imagine.’ As if that was a bad thing. That patrician,

You’re the perfect movie star pinup exactly be cause you’re

apple pie look is precisely the appeal. You were even born

removed and distant. You’re too much the golden boy to be

with a screen name, snow-white and unchangeable: Charles

real. In the same manner as a woman like Angelina Jolie, your

Robert Redford.

looks are not entirely of this earthly domain. Some stars are

Like so many male pin-ups, my personal love for you was

too physically distracting to disappear into a film completely;

forged in the fires of my formative years. In high school, I was the film nee ds to disguise that radiance, or else stitch it into a dark-haired teenager with a clunky ethnic last name, and

the fabric of the narrative, at risk of otherwise ringing false.

your cold blond WASP vibe – a la Downhill Racer - was the

Does Robert Redford go to the supermarket? Probably, but I

perfect type to place on a pedestal. You’re nearly as athletic

can’t imagine him there.

and aloof in The Way We Were – a noncommittal Hubbell to my overly passionate, bookish Katie.

Girls still aren’t allowed to crave and ogle in the same way boys are. In high school, especially, we’re hamstrung by

I know I’ve been Katie, and maybe we’ve all felt like her

social judgements, by whispers. A boy’s hunger is a fact of

in one way or another. Too much and not enough all at once.

his life, and of girls’ lives too. We spend so much of our time

It’s part of being born in a woman’s body, really. I feel her being taught to dodge and deny male hunger. How do we ever

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pain when she flatly says to you: ‘I’m not pretty enough for

find the space for our own? Surrounded by corn-fed dairy

you. I mean, I’m all right. But not pretty in the right way.’

farmers in a tiny upstate high school, intense little women

That kind of self-flagellation has always come hand in hand

with intense feelings were weirdos and sluts. Robert Redford,

with romance for me. Can I even have a crush on someone

you’re the best antidote. The impossible jock who c an’t ever

if I don’t think they’re wildly out of my league? If their very

be guilty of rejec tion, because you’re up there on the screen,

existence doesn’t reinforce my own as somehow lesser?

and I’m down here with the regular folk.

The Call Me by Your Name Issue

BY JAMES LUXFORD

BY JAMES SL

AYMAK ER

For many years my bisexuality was my own personal Voldemort. Bud, the pre-pubescent protagonist of Terence Davies’ 1990

I daren’t speak its name, for fear of what acknowledgment

film The Long Day Closes, subjectively filters his life through

might mean. Then, some time in my twenties in a cinema in the prism of Hollywood cinema. The mundane sensations of Coventry, a first love of sorts literally flew into my life and post-war working class routine: light shifting across a rug after cleared up any ambiguity. The film was Superman Returns , Bryan Singer’s unjustly

sundown; raindrops falling on a cement wall; resting your back against a windowpane; watching a kettle boil. All these things

maligned continuation of the Richard Donner films, which are granted a newfound sense of grandeur when paired with were a big influence on me growing up. I have always adored classical musical cues and sections of Orson Welles’s narration the character and the story of an outsider driven to protect an from The Magnificent Ambersons. Davies’ second feature is an

imperfect planet (often from itself), for no reason other than exploration into the srcins of his own cinephilia. Its aesthetic is it was the right thing to do. Singer’s film combined nostalgia informed by the ways in which films live in our memory – after with an interesting arc about what happens when those we’ve forgotten the specifics of plot, character and incident, intentions are spurned - “The Loneliness of Good” to quote certain textures, moods and images remain. Frank Langella’s Skeletor. In short, I loved it. I still do. As an early adolescent dipping my toe into cinema culture, Then there was the part of the film that I wasn’t expecting: The Long Day Closes spoke volumes to me, perhaps because lead actor Brandon Routh. Rather than the iconic but it explored the significance of popular art to social outsiders somewhat asexual Christopher Reeve, here was all those without framing cinema as a mere source of escapism. Davies qualities I admired portrayed by a new actor who was young instead frames the commercial cinema as being central in and, well, kind of hot. Suddenly every line delivery or shy smile grabbed my attention that little bit more, and the film’s finale

shaping Bud’s identity. In one outstanding sequence, a series of serene overhead pans unite a classroom, a Catholic church

had me unusually invested. Whereas past same-sex attractions and a movie theatre. They tie together the three cornerstones

were always dismissed as admiration or “a phase”, there was of Bud’s adolescent experience. There is no shortage of films no denying this was a full blown crush. It was revelation that that explore an introverted youth’s love for the cinema, but few made things both clearer and much more scary. It would be a are so deeply rooted in a sense of poignancy and exaltation; the few more years until I said the words out loud, but my road to joy of the present moment is coloured by an awareness of the being comfortable with being bisexual started in Metropolis. weight of time passing.

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together, and the job of Reed’s character is to soothe the distressed elephant. These are the scenes I remember most, I was seven years old when I first heard it. A melancholy Reed telling a wounded Lucy that, “it’s all right now, baby. It’s all whisper, smooth and rough at the same time, like fur brushed over,” and, at one pivotal point of triumph, “Well, it’s you and I both ways. The owner of this strong yet comforting voice now, Lucy. Let’s head for the sun.” was Oliver Reed, and the film was Hannibal Brooks, Michael Who knows how our heads work when we’re children? I Winner’s warm-hearted 1968 war drama about a British POW, don't think I wanted Oliver Reed to protect me, and I didn't want Stephen ‘Hannibal’ Brooks, who tries to escape to the Swiss to escape to freedom with him across the Swiss Alps, but I liked border with a zoo elephant called Lucy. him in a way that I’d never liked a movie star before. I liked that It’s maybe no one’s idea of a great movie but, watched again,his cropped hair, facial scar and boat-neck sweater made him over 40 years later, it retains a peculiar power. As accentuatedlook like Action Man, and I liked that amid all the war movie’s by Francis Lai’s sweeping score, the film is essentially a romanceusual noise, death, chaos and betrayal here, it seemed, was a between man and elephant and both Reed and Lucy (Aida Thegood man, with a soothing voice, who would be able to tell you Elephant from Klant’s Zoo, Valkenburg, Holland) play their partsthat “it’s all right now, baby. It’s all over”, and you’d believe him, exceptionally well. For much of the film, the two are aloneeven as the war raged all around you. BY ANDREW MALE

Hayao Miyazaki’sPonyo is an unconventional love story about a small boy and his goldfish. Sōsuke, a five year old human boy, finds, rescues and immediately adores Ponyo, a girlgoldfish hybrid with mystical powers. Instantly and somewhat inexplicably captivated by his interest, she vows - against the wishes of her family and the laws of the universe - to turn human, beginning a tumultuous, elemental struggle. Within a relationship with few obvious commonalities, this film became a shared obsession. She loved the ocean and allof

she was all in. We built pillow forts and watched it repeatedly, diving back into it whenever we needed colourful escape. We bought toys from it, painted the characters from it and even renamed those squidgy orange washing tablets after it. The film contains a fantasy: that two creatures of obvious and insurmountable difference can stay together despite every barrier imaginable. The dissolution of our relationship came not from our differences but from my refusal to accept them, unconsciously encouraging her to reshape herself into an image that matched my world. InPonyo, change in the name of love is transcendent. In Andersen’s story, the same transformation

the impossibly weird creatur es within it. I loved cinema and not much else. Excited at a rare opportunity to share in that, I told her Ponyo was an adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’ s ‘The Little Mermaid’ from the creator ofMy Neighbour Totoro, and

comes at a terrible price. Every step that the mermaid takes on land feels as if she is walking on kniv es. The potency ofPonyo is in its hopefulness, the belief that the power of that core attraction overcomes everything else. I love it. I haven’t watched it since.

BY MATT

TURNER

BY ABBEY BENDER

What would the French New Wave be without first love? The charming stars, fluttering rhythms and stolen glances of the movement have in turn spawned many a cinephile. The New Wave director most preoccupied with first love is François Truffaut. His explorations of love included the romantic trials and tribulations of his cinematic avatar, Antoine Doinel, the love triangles of Jules et Jim (1962) and Two English Girls (1971), and his exploration of his own first love (movies, mais bien sûr), in Day for Night (1973). With Small Change, his breezy 1976 portrait of childhood, Truffaut explored innocent, pre-sexual love to a most poignant effect. In a decade filled with enduring portraits of precocious children, from Tatum O’Neal in 1973’sPaper Moon to Diane Lane in 1979’sA Little

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The Call Me by Your Name Issue

Romance, Small Change stands out for its generous sprawl

of youth, as well as its potent Frenchness – at one point an adorable toddler literally carries around a baguette. While not a film all about first love per se, Small Change, with its soft and sunny ’70s palette and episodic structure, captures the feel of a childhood crush. Truffaut shows innocent dates and first kisses without forcing his young protagonists into a saccharine narrative. The film, largely improvised and featuring a host of non-professional child actors, is like a scrapbook of memories. One of its most enduring images is that of aboy and a girl affectionately gazing at each other as they lean out of a train window. Even if we haven’t felt this hopeful pang, we can appreciate its diaphanous loveliness. Truffaut gives time and space to fleeting childhood connections, and this sensitivity is enduringly easy to love.

BY ELLA DONALD

It’s confirmed as the film progresses, and you only become more absorbed. More glances are stolen and cautious touches

It’s a day like any other, except it is not. You are in a cinema wistfully linger in precious private moments in the shadows. you have sat in countless times before, except today it feels The audience sitting around you may grow restless, reaching different. It starts with a look across a crowded room. The

for stealthy glances at their phones or whispering to the

shared glance only lasts a moment. There is barely a pause, let person next to them, but you couldn’t hear or feel less of it. alone swelling violins to tell you what you nee d to be feeling, but

On screen, they are falling in love with each other, gradually

something shifts inside you. You feel exhilarated and moved, and to mutual disbelief. It’s a miracle they find each other. but also entirely exposed. In a single moment, it’s as though But what is commonly said to be just love is passion, those the film is staring into your soul, revealing something private moments of unfettered desire that spill over when they can and unknown that you thought was destined to remain solitary. no longer be held back. However, it’s in that simple glance, The two people on screen, trapped in unfulfilled lives in 1950s replayed over and over again since sitting in that familiar New York, have little in common with you. But despite that, in cinema on a not-so-typical day, that true love is captured. It’s that single glance across a crowded room on just another day, finding someone who is able to see through the layers for the you feel as though you finally understand something ephemeral

first time, that makes you think the most simple but foreign

and missing until now.

thing – oh, that’s me.

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he time honoured coming of age movie is engineered this bombshell barely registers with Suzanne because this is

so the viewer can project personal experience on the type of brutal spontaneity that has become her creed. She to the young characters as they pummel their way carries on chomping a disc of balon ey. Yet this is also a film about into maturity. The parents serve as a counterpoint, sometimeshow free will can negatively impact others. Her mother, played chiding their offspring for recklessness, or maybe even just as a nagging wraith by EvelyneKer, is in the midst of a protracted lurking in the shadows, dealing with their own tantrums and breakdown, and she blames Suzanne for all her problems. The tiaras, allowing the kids to get on with it. In Maurice Pialat’s calming bliss of lounging naked, chugging cigarettes and applying 1983 masterpiece, A

, the Nos Amours

family is a cauldron of

make-up is cracked when life at hometakes a turn for thebleak. A Nos Amour is that rare teen movie that doesn’t shy away

high-concentratefroideur. The film pinpoints the instant where

a child suddenly realises the lustrous bounty that lays ahead,from violence, both literal and psychological, and some of

just as her malcontent father discovers that he’s coming closethe tussles in the film err close to being unwatchable. Pialat’s to life’s final terminus. Emerging from the fantasy of childhoodcommitment to untrammelled, quasi-Mondo realism means that is seen in the opening moments, where Sandrine Bonnaire’s when Suzanne comes home toa smack round the face, she really

16-year-old coquette Suzanne takes time out from rehearsing adoes get a smack round the face. These scene become more play at a teen summer camp to “perform” for a gallery of maleof a regular occurrence as the film surges on, are chilling and on-lookers. She stands tall at the prow of the boat like a charmblunt, but they also emphasise Suzanne’s pluck, as she is more statue that’s keeping the schooner afloat. One of those warmthan willing to fight back. It’s inferred that her effete brother for her form is older brother Robert.

Robert (Dominique Besnehard) hits and demeans her because

Later, she wanders off to a motorway siding to canoodle he, alongside a string of male paramours, is in love with her.

with her dorky boyfriend, but decides he’s not the one to take

What’s so great about this film is that it isn’t about anything

her virginity – that’s a prize she’ll pass to some rando nutter inobvious. There is no cosy arc. Time passes, wounds are healed a fun pub. Back in Paris, Suzanne stealthily operates around herand then reopened, Suzanne gets engaged but regrets it, her highly-strung family. She doesn’t crave sex like it’s an addiction,father returns during a festive dinner and appears to confirm but is determined to make it a regular aspect of her social life.that the family unit is soon to disband. It’s a story about time’s She thinks that her parents don’t see it, but they do. They seemeandering, unpredictable, always-tragic passage, but it’s also it because they’ve been there themselves, they’ve experiencedabout a specific moment where a child becomes an adult and those clinches, they’ve told those lies, they know the entire a parent is saddled once more with an independence of which playbook of disappointment by heart. Maybe they’re also

they’ve long become bored. Overwhelming sadness becomes

jealous that she’s able to make these snap decisions and she’sthe product of accrued detail, as Suzanne and her father share a master of her own destiny. As parents, as professionals, theythe charred remnants of his corrupted wisdom on a bus to are trapped in limbo.

the airport. This doesn’t adhere to any traditional conventions

There’s a spiritual aspect to Bonnaire’s performance as sheof what a movie should be, and yet it does more than make seems to exemplify some corrupted notion of free will. That banal generalities about how life can be lived. There’s no lesson

freedom results in idle pleasure or beautiful stolen moments,from this film, and yet in its glorious, infuriating entirety says we like an intimate late night powwow with her father, brilliantlyshould be happy that love is a concept that defies definition

played by Pialat himself. He reveal s that he’s planning to walk out on the family, but The Maurice Pialat season runs on MUBI from 4 Sept to 4 Oct

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fter sex, eating is the most intimate thing you can do. It is, after all, the admission of another object into your body, the pursuit of pleasure and survival. It carries with it the risk strawberries and raspberries to improve sexual function, claim (or reward) of that proc ess,changing you forever. pomegranates are good for gynaecological health, and arecent Gastronomy, cutlery, and table manners have study published in Archives of Gynecology and Obstetrics all been developed to distance us from the messy realities of showed that regular apple consumption might enhance the food, but eating fruit offers a uniquely intimate experience. female orgasm. Fruit demands that we get down and dirty with our mouths and Although chemistry plays a role, fruit’s greatest aphrodisiac hands. We pluck it straight from the tree, eat it in the open airpower is visual. Bananas are so phallic it’s no wonder they’re and relish the juice dribbling down our chins. We pull orangesused in sex ed. to show teenagers how to put on condoms. and bunches of grapes apart with our fingers, rip off bits of Split figs and halved grapefruits offer variations on the vulva, peel with our hands, stripping fruit before we put it into ourwhether dark and velvety or pink, puffy and wet. Pomegranates mouths, or bite straight into the skin. We gnaw at stones, pick full of seeds and blood-red juice are a vision of the female out stems and chew around pips. As well as sight, smell and reproductive system. Peaches and apricots are pert, velvety taste, fruit demands more than any other food that we engage buttocks. Plums are testicular in shape, size and weight. Pears our sense of touch. Even if most of our fruits now appear inrecall the curves of a woman’s waist and hips. And melons, orderly rows, wrapped in supermarket polythene, we still eatapples, and tiny, nipple-like strawberries are a catalogue of fruit like randy cavemen. breasts in all their diverse glory. Yet the connection of fruit to sensuality is about more These visual associations between fruit and thehuman body than being at one with nature. From Eve and the apple to Kimhave shaped sexual metaphor on a global scale. Depending on Kardashian’s prodigious use of the peach emoji and Katy Perrythe culture and climate for its specifics, erotic language has talking about the taste of a girl’s cherry chapstick, fruit has beenalways turned to the fruit tree for inspiration. Havelock Ellis, linked to sex for millennia. Fruit is, in fact, the bulging ovariesthe founding father of sexology, described how the Romans of pollinated flowers, and so steeped in symbolism that evensaw sex as horticulture: penises were ‘trees’, testicles were the shortest trip to the greengrocer means confronting years ‘apples’, and vaginas were ‘ploughed fields’ edged with pubic of erotic culture. ‘foliage’. In the Anglophone world, our go-to fruit for all things To start with its practical value, fruit has been used as an virginal is the cherry, since the medlar (a fruit that is only edible aphrodisiac for centuries. Grapes and pomegranates were used when it’s overripe and mulchy) has fallen out of fashion since to fuel Bacchic orgies in Ancient Rome, figs were distributedits sixteenth-century heyday. In contemporary Spain, they use at traditional Chinese weddings and apples were used in figs to describe female genitalia, while Mexico opts for the English love spells during the Middle Ages. The aphrodisiac guava, and Cuba prefers papayas. Italians refer to the penis as a power of fruit might be tied up in years of superstition, but its banana, whereas in Poland it’s imagined as a pear. Something to effects aren’t just mythic. Researchers recommend zinc-filled note before flexing your linguistic muscles on holiday.

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The Call Me by Your Name Issue

he erotic power of fruit emerges not only in risqué slang, but also in the myths on which whole cultures have been built. Eve eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge (most often represented by the apple, whose name in Latin, ‘malum’ also translates as ‘evil’) is the source of srcinal sin that gets her and Adam cast out of the Garden of Eden. After eating, they are so ashamed of their naked bodies that the language of ripeness and rotting associated with female they sew clothes out of fig leaves. In the classical sexuality. Fruit needs to be eaten when it’s ripe or it will spoil world, the pomegranate was linked to Aphrodite, the goddess – cue descriptions of women as ‘past their best’, or ‘dried up’. of love. It symbolised fertility thanks to its countless seeds, andBut this act of consumption, marked by the popping of the supposedly first grew from blood spilled when Dionysus (thecherry or the splitting of the fig, either makes fruit decay a lot god of wine), castrated an androgynous deity called Agdistis faster, or guarantees its destruction when it’s consumed. The because he was jealous of his beauty. image of woman as fruit is pretty damn misogynistic. Fruit’s classical and biblical significance, as well as its sexual

When men are represented as sexualised fruit, male

pleasure is usually more important. Where we lack mainstream attention. Galleries across the globe are littered with hundredsdepictions of men going to town on labial guavas, we’re not overtones and visual allure , have made it ripe for years of artistic

of naked Eves holding apples, offering up fruit and their bodiesshort of women sucking on glossy, erect strawberries, deepfor the viewer’s consumption. Attractive maidservants and boysthroating bananas, or showing off their lingual dexterity by carrying baskets piled high with peaches, or with fruit spillingtying cherry stems with their tongue. While some man-eating out onto the floor, are eroticised as similarly edible goods, theirmight seem dangerous (think Nicki Minaj slicing up a banana in wares displayed as a metaphor for their young, nubile bodies.the Anaconda video), phallic fruit is more often about obvious Fruit, along with the female nude, is one of the pillars on whichblowjob references and pandering to the male gaze. Female sexuality isn’t absent from the realm of fruit art, however. Frustrated with the lack of art depicting the female

centuries of Western art has been built, usually designed by and

for male audiences.

Fruit is also a grimly appropriate metaphor for erotic gaze, in 1972, art historian Linda Nochlin parodied a heteronormative fantasies of womanhood. It’s soft, yielding, nineteenth-century French erotic photo of a naked woman and visibly fertile. It’s linked to childhood pleasures, and holding a tray of apples in front of her breasts, recreating it with unthreatening natural beauty. Like the sugary pet names a male model holding a tray of bananas under his genitals and often reserved for women, fruity images code them as in 2016, visual artist Stephanie Sarley went viral with her NSFW sweet, harmless, and consumable. Little wonder that fruit is a Instagram videos of fruit fingering, gently running her fingers commonplace in women’s fashion. We’re constantly garnished between the segments of halved oranges, lemons and melons, with cherries, watermelon and pineapple, ready to be served before plunging her fingers into their centres to release weirdly up all summer as a poolside desert. More gruesome still is exciting and ejaculatory sprays of juice.

03 9

040

The Call Me by Your Name Issue

s well as having its fair share of

Brown’s 1973 novel ‘Rubyfruit Jungle’ – the title a euphemism

misogynistic overtones, sexualised

for female genitalia – was a revolutionary and bestselling coming of age novel when lesbian heroines were almost

fruit has a pretty racist and xenophobic

history. Linked to ideas of hot climates and uncivilised, voluptuous natives,

invisible. JeanetteWinterson’s Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit

fruit has consistently been used by white people to eroticise and

living in a repressive Christian community. Fruit hasn’t always been celebratory where LGBT culture

dehumanise non-white communities. Van Gogh’s good friend Paul Gauguin

is concerned. The word ‘fruit’ was itself a homophobic slur for much of the twentieth century, with ‘gay cure’ centres

painted numerous Tahitian women, often depicting them topless, and

known as ‘fruitcake factories’ in the USA, and the Canadian Civil Service developing a contraption known as the ‘Fruit

(1985) depicts a young girl who discovers her sexuality while

holding or eating fruit to convey his ideal of an erotic, exotic paradise. African Americans

Machine’ to detect gay people within their workforce from the ’50s to the ’70s. The term has since been reappropriated

were (and, shamefully, still are) depicted as gluttonous

and used from everyday gay slang to the names of club nights

watermelon-eaters. After growing and selling watermelons

to cultural organisations. The Fresh Fruit Festiv al is New York’s

became a way for people of colour to earn an independent living after their emancipation from slavery, a resentful white

annual celebration of LGBT art and culture, and the music organisation Fruitvox works globally to promote LGBT choirs.

population turned the fruit into a racially-charged symbol of

Fruit, in its multiple forms, remains a powerful emblem for black people’s supposed animalistic appetites, childishness the gay community. and uncontrollable desires. But these unpleasant fruit associations could be used and sometimes subverted. Josephine Baker, a woman of colour, cabaret sensation and eventual World War II resistance agent, found superstardom by capitalising on the racist fantasies found in 1920s Paris, and drew enormous crowds by dancing topless at the Folies Bergère in a skirt made of bananas. Carmen Miranda, the Portuguese singer and ac tress,

similarly became a Hollywood musical star in the 1940s by playing up to pan-Latin cultural stereotypes. She was the ‘Lady in the Tutti Frutti Hat’, decked out with bananas on her turban, and bringing the American populace samba, a bare midriff, and a first exposure to Brazilian culture through her fruity performances. Tied to cross-cultural ideas of femininity, exoticism and sexuality, it’s little wonder that fruit has also played a significant role in centuries of LGBT art and culture. Playing on their resemblance to perky buttocks and links to the supposedly hedonistic ‘orient’ they came from, peaches were an important homoerotic symbol in Italian Renaissance art and poetry. Poet Francesco Berni’s 1522 ‘Encomium to

Fruit is awash with cultural, spiritual, and artistic

Peaches’ celebrates the joys of sodomy under a thin veil significance. It is one of the most powerful erotic symbols of fruity imagery. Caravaggio’s 1592 ‘Boy With A Basket of we have. It lets us see sensuality and sexuality in new ways, Fruit’, with his shirt worn off the shoulder and his luminous helps us think about our bodies, and offers us a powerful peaches, is clearly designed to titillate the viewer. Bananas set of metaphors to play with. Still, we should play with also feature time and again in queer culture. American them carefully. The titillating iconography of fruit has often photographer Robert Mapplethorpe’s first published picture come at a high cost: the objectification and degradation was a black and white image of the phallic yellow fruit of other human beings. It's up to today's artists and slipped through a leather keyring, and Russell T Davies’ audiences to keep fruit sexy, while making the most of its 2015 series Banana, named after one of the four categories of the male erection as defined by a group of Swiss scientists,

inclusive and transgressive potential at the same time

explored the lives of a young, diverse group of LGBT people Catherine Ellis is Deputy Editor of The Erotic Review and is in contemporary Britain. completing a PhD on food and sex work in 18th century France Fruit is also a motif of seminal lesbian literature. Rita Mae at Durham University.

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The Call Me by Your Name Issue

A column about clothes and movies by Christina Newland

Threads Illustration by Laurène Boglio

#3: Swimming Trunks rom the days of its inception, cinema has never been lacking in beach babes, surfer chicks and ‘bathing beauties’. Even before the mid-century invention of the bikini, lo ng-stemmed movie stars posed in their swimwear for a fawning (male) audience. Perhaps that’s why it’s worth taking notice when men wear their tiniest swimming trunks in the movies. That type of performative masculinity, with the carefully-displayed male body to go with it, is rare enough to cherish. Maybe it was Johnny Weissmuller – the Olympic swimmer and srcinal Tarzan – who helped begin a vogue for the fit, m usclebound man. He wore a loincloth more often than a speedo, but the result was very much the same. You could find tight-fitting short shorts on Burt Lancaster inFrom Here to Eternity and The Swimmer , or all-American gay icon Tab Hunter in homoerotic beach movie Ride the Wild Surf(1964). Blue waters, languid seaside heat, and a general state of undress all contribute to a sexy mood, but ultimately, it’s Hunter’s decision to put himself out there and wear body-hugging swimwear that defines him as aware of his sexual powers, or maybe even preening for an admiring crowd. A new generation of hunky male pin-ups arrived in the ’70s and ’80s, and often they were more self-assured in stripping down to their smallest beachwear. Richard Gere led the way with his fashion-conscious persona and lush pout –American Gigolo (1980) objectified him from the opening sequences, where he works out at home in nothing but a very small pair of white shorts. The film positions Gere as actively open to the female and gay audience’s gaze, and his stardom would continue in that vein, as an object of desire, for some time. Even the more traditionally masculine types – like martial arts hero Jean-Claude Van Damme – were happy to show off their rippling physiques. Around the same period, the speedo (now a practically verboten item of exhibitionism) became increasingly trendy. The

F

muscles. He certainly brings swaggering heterosexuality to the fore, given that he immediately gears up in camo and war paint before wiping out a phalanx of enemy soldiers. Eventually, the item fell into parody, reaching its nadir with Borat (2006), whose infamous lime green mankini made a mockery of the careful grooming of male bodybuilders. Interestingly enough, cinema provided a modern answer to the speedo in the very same year. In 2006, a mini-sexual revolution happened onscreen in one of the most obnoxiously hetero film franchises of all time: James Bond. In Casino Royale , Daniel Craig saunters out of the sea in a small pair of blue swimming trunks, forever turning the tables of the gaze, and welcoming the misogynistic Bond into a new century – where women and gay men could unabashedly do all the ogling. Craig also started a new vogue for these compact (but not overly revealing) swimming trunks, and the style was subsequently made popular by brands like Diesel and Calvin Klein. These days, men in their junk-hugging swimming trunks are probably more plucked, oiled, and tanned than was ever seen as acceptable in the mainstream of the past. Whereas stars like Tom Selleck and Burt Reynolds once flaunted their chest hair, the au courant style is trimmed or even waxed. Take Zac Efron, the unrealistically buff ex-child actor whose roles in raunchy comedies (Dirty Grandpa, Baywatch) have seen him regularly strip down to practically nothing. In the former maligned film, Efron sports a fetching speedo with a stuffed hornet on the front. His shape and grooming style were once the refuge of a niche subculture – body-building. Now, it’s a popular aesthetic, and as social progress increases, male vanity has had the stigma of ‘feminine’ or ‘gay’ behaviour removed from it. Tanning, body-hair grooming and other stereotypically feminine habits tend to come hand in hand with wearing sexy swimwear.

item first became popular in the early ’70s, worn by Olympic swimmers like gold-medallist Mark Spitz. A famous poster from 1972 sees him wearing his medals and a miniscule stars-and-stripes adorned speedo. As the fitness craze of the ’80s saw ‘manly men’ like Sly Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger popularise the speedo, ordinary folk felt they could get in on the trend too. In Commando (1985), Arnie strips out of his clothes and into a tiny black speedo, revealing an eye-popping display of bulging

There’s something explicitly subversive about the images conjured not only their association with gay desire and pin-up culture, but also simply in their redirection of the camera’s gaze. Whether it’s Channing Tatum donning a neon speedo in Magic Mike or the characters of French erotic drama Stranger by the Lake (2013) in sleek, body-skimming black trunks, we’re not only talking about fine physical specimens. We’re talking about objectifying the male body in ways that can occasionally feel revolutionary 043

ummer lovin’, happened sofast: in Jean Renoir’s told there are no fishing poles to rent. Giggling Madame A Day in the Country, a family’s pastoral outing Defour is a beribboned, tight-corseted coquette, who becomes, for the young daughter, a spiritual remarks upon, and misjudges, the manners of the two and sensual awakening. And then, in a flash, a bittersweet rural labourers wolfishly eyeing her and her daughter. memory of paradise lost. Like the indolent sunny afternoon and illicit summer fling the film depicts, the shoot was

Moody Henri, the less theatrical of the two, and Henriette, the Defour daughter and Anatole’s intended,

interrupted by rain, and remains frozen in time, forever stand out for their lack of affect. As Henriette, Sylvia unfinished. Renoir was unable to complete the planned Bataille is a classic ingénue (though her offscreen short feature in 1936, and the extant 40 minute-cut was entanglements were rather more modern: by this time not exhibited until after World War Two, by which point the separated from her first husband, Georges Bataille, filmmaker was working in Hollywood. Lesser known than she would soon embark on an tryst with the man who La Grand Illusionand Renoir’s high-canonical prewar films would become her second, Jacques Lacan), given over The Rules of the Game, class-conscious sketches which to natural rapture: “An immense tenderness for it all, for double as elegies for worlds on the brink of extinction,A Day in the Countryshows off the same masterful range, as

the grass, the water, the trees.” As she lounges on the grass, Renoir films her close-ups from above; looking up

wry, open-hearted observational comedy shades almost imperceptibly into transcendence, and then tragedy.

into the camera, she seems, like a flower, to be turning towards the light. Monsieur Defour, a shopkeeper on the Rue des Martyrs, When Henri takes Henriette out rowing, the reeds has rented a milk cart to lead his family beyond the walls and willows reflecting vaguely in the sparkling water, the of Paris, to a country inn along the winding Seine. It is a Sunday in 1860, a poignant and finely poised moment in

whole living world feels holy. As she finally allows Henri to lead her ashore, she cries at the song of a nightingale,

history. The changing landscape has ruined the day’s catch for the country folk lunching at the restaurant: “Since the

and then cries again as she finally gives in to his advances and embraces him. Does she cry because this desperate

factory opened, the fish taste like motor oil.” Yet the Defours, members of the emergent petit-bourgeois, taste

pawing is all that comes of her reverie, or because she’s so soon to be called back to work, back to reality?

nothing but novelty as they find themselves with the time and money to spend on a picnicen plein air.

Clouds darken the sky, wind shakes the trees, rain pelts the river, and the years rush by in a few lines of onscreen

Renoir stays close to his source, Guy de Maupassant’s text before a chance reunion crystalises two lifetimes of disappointment and what-ifs.

witty story ‘A Country Excursion,’ but accomplishes the slow fade to pathos with his own sad-clown humanism.

Like other great movies about greatpassions thwarted Performances have a music-hall broadness to them: by cosmic cruelty or human weakness —The Umbrellas of Defour, his checked trousers swelling around his spherical Cherbourg, The Age of Innocence— A Day in the Country belly, pretends to masculine wisdom — “Of course” he flashes forward at the last to weigh a single moment can swim, he blusters, “but I’ve forgotten. I’m too busy of truth against the life whose grain it runs against. now”. He bellows at his assistant shopkeeper and future son-in-law Anatole, a simpering ass with lankstraw-blond hair who whines like an infant, helpless and entitled,when

The film preserves Henriette’s memory – of playtime, romance, youth, grace — as a bubble of mortal possibility, shimmering, for a moment, in the sun

Thu 30 Nov

Tan Dun: The Martial Ar ts Trilo gy With the London Symphony Orchestra

Hear the film-composer’s music in glorious Technicolor, accompanied by footage from the films. Featuring the music from:

Hero CrouchingTiger, Hidden Dragon The Banquet

20 & 21 Sep

Jim Jarmusch Revisited A multi-artist homage to the music that runs through the veins of the cult director’s films Featuring:

Mulatu Astatke Alex Kapranos (Franz Ferdinand) Camille O’Sullivan Kirin J Callinan Jolie Holland

THE CALL ME BY YOUR NAME ISSUE

48-50

Interview: Jane Goldman

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Brimstone

Lucky

73

Strong Island

de Belle

74

Una

52-53 Logan 54-55 Filles

– In praise of Belle de Jour 56

The Work

57 The

Meyerowitz Stories

(New and Selected)

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God’s Own Country

76

Daphne

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Interview: Emily Beecham

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On Body and Soul / Zoology

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In Between

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My Journey Through

59

Wind River

French Cinema

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Beach Rats

81 The

61 Interview: 62

Eliza Hittman

Unrest / The Night is Short,

Walk on Girl

Limehouse Golem

82 Victoria 83

and Abdul

Breathe

84-85 Interview:

Andy Serkis

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Dina / Home Again

86 The

66

Perfect Blue

87

Menashe / Félicité

88

The Road to Mandalay

67 Loving

Vincent

68-70 Shudders

of Pleasure – The story of Hellraiser

Lure / The Villainess

/ London Symphony 90-93 Home Ents

In te rv ie w by

IN PROFILE

TREVOR JOHNSTON

Il lu st ra ti on by

SARAH TANAT JONES

Jane Goldman One of the world’s foremost fantasy writers discusses her work on Kingsman: The Golden Circle and The Limehouse Golem .

he way she tells it, there are three things to remember about Britain’s most bankable screenwriter. She loves horror. She has no problem with violence. But she really doesn’t do sad. Fine then, for Jane Goldman to conceive of the serious mayhem in the first Kingsman frolic where lean, mean killing machine (ahem) Colin Firth rips his way through an entire church full of neo-con maniacs, or a symphony of heads subsequently explode to the strains of Elgar. Just don’t get her started on Watership Down. It’s still too traumatic...

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means changing it. WithMiss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children , the book was missing a third act because the novel was intended as the first step in an adventure. But studios have a certain expectation of a big action finale for that sort of movie, so we had to bring that in.” As it turns out, Goldman’s two most recent adaptations each presented The Limehouse Golem, a novel she’s long cherished their own challenges. For and once even considered buying the rights herself, it was “finding a cinematic key for the essentially literary conceit behind the mystery story, but doing

And yet, it’s typical of her craft, versatility and work ethic that she has two new films in the pipeline. First up is historical shocker The Limehouse Golem, a fact-infused tale of dark doings in the 1880s East End adapted from a revered tome by literary Londonist Peter Ackroyd. Then, by way of contrast, there’s Kingsman: The Golden Circle , an expanded US-set sequel to the alternative-universe espionage thriller she cooked up with her regular collaborator Matthew Vaughn. That brings her total to nine produced screenplays in the past decade since her debut, Vaughn’s madcap fairy tale from 2007, Stardust . It’s a success rate frankly unheard of in Hollywood, and pretty mind-blowing for a London-based female screenwriter when you consider her previous record included stints as a newspaper showbiz columnist, presenting paranormal TV exposé Jane Goldman Investi gates , penning non-fiction how-to titles for teens including ‘Sussed and Streetsmart’, and raising three kids with her husband of almost three decades, the broadcaster Jonathan Ross. Given that many British screenwriters are moonlighting novelists or playwrights transferring their literary chops to the very different demands of celluloid, Goldman stands out as someone who’s in her element writing high-energy modern movie action-comedy . Moreover,

Kingsman: The Golden Circle the storyline it without cheating”, whereas for in Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons’ srcinal comic book was used up in the first movie,The Secret Service. This allowed Goldman and co-writer/director Matthew Vaughn to go their own way in taking established characters like Taron Egerton’s council-estate superspy Gary ‘Eggsy’ Unwin further afield, expanding the mythology to include an American sister organisation The Statesmen, whose members include Channing Tatum’s Agent Tequila and Jeff Bridges’ Agent Champagne. Kingsman as an ongoing James Bond “To be honest, we never thought of My to type franchise, to us it was a ‘Pygmalion’ story, and there’s no sequel Fair Lady,” she explains. “So the follow-up wasn’t about coming up with a new villain and a new plan for world domination, it was about an emotional story we wanted to tell, and something which would be unexpected for fans of the first movie. In some ways, it felt fresh because it was like starting over, but there were already a lot of ground rules. I’ve worked like that before, on X-Men, say, where the character traits and interactions had already seen so many iterations by previous writers. You have to find your way through it.” Surprises are promised, not least the presence of one Colin Firth in the trailer, since he appeared to have been terminated in the first film after the

she’s also proved a seriously dab hand at adaptation – whether it’s Peter aforementioned orgy of violence that was the church-set massacre. In terms Ackroyd, Susan Hill’s classic ghostly tale ‘The Woman in Black’, Mark of carnage, though, was there anywhere else to go? Or is she as desensitised Millar’s comic-book fare including Kick-Ass and the Kingsman flicks, or to bloodletting as the rest of her viewers? “The thing about that sequence is even fitting in with the franchise requirements of X-Men: First Cl ass . that it was actually srcinally much longer. But there always came this point So what does it take to be a good adaptor for the screen? “The in the edit where it stopped being fun, and I’d have these crushing existential language of literature is different from the language of cinema, so it’sthoughts about human suffering and the frailty of life, when the idea was not just about getting the literal meaning across, it’s about conveyingsupposed to be like, ‘Woooo!! Action!!’ I guess it’sall about context, whether the author’s intent,” Goldman says. “Keeping that spirit actually oftenone person exploding isfun, but another person exploding isshocking or scary

FEATURE

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“I have no problem with violence, or people’s heads exploding. But I just don’t do sad. things I find really, really hardSome to watch.”

protective impulse. So when lots of people I knew had had bad experiences or sad. I guess it’s like the definition of pornography – you know it when you writing for film, I fought shy of it. It was really down to Neil Gaiman, who see it.” suggested me to Matthew Vaughn for She continues: “I mean I have no problem with violence, or people’s heads Stardust. Otherwise, I might not have exploding. I love horror. But I just don’t do sad. Some things I find really,put myself forward, and we might not be having this conversation. I’ve said really hard to watch.” This coming from the woman who brought psychotic that to Neil as well, and thanked him profusely.” pubescent Hit-Girl to the screen in Kick Ass. Any specific examples then? That being so, she’s certainly been making her own luck ever since, and “Watership Down. Cannot do it. Traumatised me as a child. And even now asthough she does reckon that “other screenwriters probably want to punch an adult, it makes me sad and angry. It’s brutal, and it’s so fucking sad I can’t me” for being serially produced, she also sounds like a dream collaborator bear it. My children laugh about it now, but for years they didn’t realise that (“I work hard, I meet deadlines, and I don’t complain about stuff”) albeit whenI read thembedtime stories I’d change the ending. They only discovered one with somewhat distinctive habits. Her work HQ is a shed at the bottom later that the ending of The Velveteen Rabbitwas really sad. Everything was of the garden, painted all white inside, with a white desk and a white sofa. fine in my version!” “There is a window, but I can’t see out of it. I’ve also taken to writing lying down, since the long hours are better for my back, and I have earplugs Ironically, such protectiveness is at the other end of the scale from her own in as well. Guess that sounds a bit Altered States, like I’m in a sensory London adolescence in the 1980s, when she and her parents lived conveniently beside a video library. “My folks weren’t all that strict about certification,” she deprivation tank. But I just can’t write in coffee shops.” Driller Killer… While the same conditions might not work for everyone, she’s recalls. “I think we watched everything in the shop, including enthusiastically encouraging when it comes to anyone who thinks they still remember that cover. And my dad was also keen to show me stuff he really liked, includingDirty Harry, Dog Day Afternoon andEraserhead. I can see now have a cool screenplay idea but worry they lack the technical wherewithal. that was a pretty unusual education, but it seemed so normal at the time.“The It technical demands are something that can definitely be taught. There was only later I realised a lot of the stuff I was watching were not the things are a lot of good books out there on structure, so have a look at them, and that other parents were taking their teenage daughters to see.” I’d also strongly suggest trying to reverse engineer some of the movies you Not that Goldman ever imagined having a career in the movies, since really at admire. Watch them again and again, figure out how they work, why this point her idols were more literary, primarily Daphne Du Maurier. She the characters interest you, how the story surprises you. There was a point enthuses about having had the opportunity to adapt the author’s most famous when I’d never written a script, but I love the obsessive tinkering aspect of dark tale, ‘Rebecca’, for Danish director Nikolaj Arcel (which he’s still due it, to and the way it’s twinned with a childish making-stuff-up aspect. I feel shoot once he recovers from a reputedly bruising experience on The Dark lucky to be able to do what I’m doing, because I really like it a lot” Tower), yet for years Goldman resisted the idea of screenwriting, even though she’d racked up experience in other fields. “I’m a very anxious person,” she Kingsman: The Golden Circle is released on 20 September; The Limehouse admits, a little surprisingly. “Clinically anxious. And I have this strong selfGolem is released on 1 September.

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Logan Lucky Di rec te d by STEVEN SODERBERGH Sta rri ng CHANNING TATUM ADAM DRIVER DANIEL CRAIG Re lea sed 25 AUGUST

ANTICIPATION. One of our all-time favourite directors has come out of retirement.

tensions, a caper film revolving around genteel southern manners and what might charitably be termed as the ‘hillbilly’ archetype, would be about as welcome as a canteen full of watery grits. But this film, Logan Lucky, is directed by Steven Soderbergh, and to call it a work of pin-sharp diplomacy would be both an understatement and a disservice to its blissfully warmhearted depiction of both locals and locale. Soderbergh makes movies with the same grace and subtle magic that Mary Poppins uses to clean bedrooms, and it’s a thrill to have him back in the fold after a hiatus working in television. This one isn’t an overtly political film, as satire is a mode that’s beneath this master filmmaker. But its politics come as a natural byproduct of the way he and enigmatic debut screenwriter Rebecca Blunt plant real, unpredictable souls within familiar bodies. This also isn’t just a case of

The film also brings together an ensemble for the ages, where your favourite character is always the one who’s just been on the screen: Adam Driver, extending an incredible run of top-down screen reinventions, reveals yet another string to his bow as he affects a misshapen southern drawl to play one-armed bartender, Clyde Logan; Daniel Craig gives heart and common sense to his bleachblonde explosives expert, Joe Bang; then there’s Riley Keough as Mellie Logan, a hair stylist and out-of-hours petrol head.Katherine Waterston, Katie Holmes and Seth MacFarlane are all along for the ride, and each brings something unique to the pot. It’s a tremendously funny film, due more to its sustained deadpan tone than the deployment of elaborate set pieces or scene-stealing side players. The film opens on Jimmy Logan explaining to his young daughter Sadie (Farrah Mackenzie) the

a director playing a game of inverting norms and improbable story behind his favourite song, ‘Take types to defy expectation. It’s about combining the Me Home, Country Roads’ by John Denver. Logan visuals, the performances and the way the story Lucky is itself a fictionalised folk tale, a yarn for is told to evolve these potential caricatures into Sadie to eventually spin to her own children, with fragile, empathetic people. underdog fortune-hunters eventually becoming Channing Tatum’s divorced, amiable odd- an unlikely source of civic inspiration. And while the film derives from such a lovable jobber Jimmy Logan is fired from a job digging out sink-holes beneath the Charlotte NASCAR and louche lineage as 1972’s The Hot Rock, 1973’s IN RETROSPECT. speedway for having a gammy leg, something heThe Stingand even Soderbergh’s own exemplary The script, the direction and the neglected to mention on his application form. Out of Sight, from 1998, it also recalls Robert pe rfo rma nce s w ork in con cer t lik e a He needs to make some money, and so concoctsAltman’s scintillating 1975 fresco charting the an elaborate scheme to stiff the event of its ample overlap between culture and politics in the souped-up muscle car. food concession dollars during one ofthe season’s American south, Nashville. With this film too, the showcase contests. south isn’t just a context or a handy backdrop on t’s hard to know what to think of America any The film appears as a southern re-run of which the machinations play out – it is the movie. more. Back in the days of relative normalcy, Soderbergh’s wildly popular Danny Ocean movies, It deals with the myth of trickle-down economics, there was the north and the south, divided with casinos and high-spec bank vaults replaced the transgression inherent in unflagging pride, the by ripe caricatures of effete intellectuals on one with more homefried venues (motor homes, ambiguity of patriotism, the all-consuming power side and hyuk-hyuk’ing, hog-riding yahoos on dive bars, mobile clinics, county fairs) and a less of family, the notion of religion as a crooked but ENJOYMENT. An al l-A me ric an he ist cap er th at overflows with soul and humanity.

I

the other. Now, the battle lines have been at onceintricate methodology. Indeed, there is a lovely, ruggedly workable moral guiding light, and the blurred and hardened. Beliefs are now forged almost farcical element to the mechanics of the role of public relations in law enforcement. But around identity (and not vice versa), almost as ifplot, that eventually develops from a comic-huedit also deals with the ways people keep happiness people feel the need to live up to their own crudegenre movie to a humanist fairy tale. While the alive and the hopeful ambiguity of the American stereotypes for fear of allowing the other side an heist itself is great fun and executed with the elan dream. As Joe Bang’s brother Sam exclaims atone inch. Trigger fingers are itchy, and the conditions and meticulous precision we’d expect from this point, “NASCARis America”.Logan Lucky is about for cultural civil war are fomenting. director, it’s the small, wrap-up coda at the end how American is, in the end, anything you want it And so, it might seem that at this time of high which leaves you walking on air. to be. DAVID JENKINS

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REVIEW

REVIEW

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Words by

IN PRAISE OF…

CAROLINE GOLUM

Il lu st ra ti on by

SARAH TANAT JONES

Les filles de Belle Celebrating the 50th birthday of Luis Buñuel’s salacio us classic,

Belle de Jour .

e are now a half-century removed from Belle de Jour, and what a half-century it’s been. Beneath a sky of free-flying freak flags, it’s easy to forget that clapbacks for “kink-shaming” and prêtà-porter “marital aids” were once the province of backpages and back rooms, shameful brands upon the embarrassed subs and doms among us. In the ensuing decades even capital-C cinema, always a reliable source of visual stimulation, has embraced the stranger chapters of Kraft-Ebbing’s ‘Psychopathia Sexualis’. Since its 1967 release, Luis Buñuel’s tender ballad of a bourgeois housewife’s sexual awakening has become a regular workhorse of the

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frigidity that plagues Severine, but shame and shyness, those arch enemies of pleasure. Flashbacks hint at a possible srcin for Séverine’s predilections, but they don’t linger long. A brief image of her as a schoolgirl receiving a kiss from a much older man only tells half the story. Is Severine’s hunger for humiliation the result of sexual trauma? The film doesn’t bother to speculate because, frankly, it doesn’t need to. All that matters is Séverine’s decision to seek her nourishment elsewhere. Determined to get to the bottom of her particular predilection, she hesitantly calls upon the proprietress of a high-class brothel. Madame Anaïs (played by Geneviève

Breathless European art movie stable, alongside much-seen evergreens like or Pickpocket. This is not to discount the preceding pictures, Buñuel’s wry directorial command, nor star Catherine Deneuve’s compelling performance. Rather it is proof that our collective mores have loosened and our definition of high art has expanded, and in this space a sexy little sub genre blooms. As Séverine, Deneuve projects the image of a perfect lady: the kind of untouchable, well-heeled woman Buñuel returns to again and again. We first encounter her in a horse-drawn carriage, doting husband Pierre at her side (a classically handsome Jean Sorel), as they rattle down a provincial woodland path. But for Pierre’s murmuring about his bride’s “wifely duties” (or lack thereof), you could easily mistake the pair for siblings. Nothing about their body language indicates romantic inclination – their ancient courtship ritual, so familiar to fans of period drama, is stifling in its wholesomeness. But for Buñuel, sly devil, Belle de Jour marks the beginning of the end. His lauded later phase of archly satirical provocations harness his enduring fascination with religious iconography, psychoanalysis, and Dada to belittle the rich by a thousand cuts. That pastoral scene of conjugal harmony is

Page like a velvet hammer) is at once warm and stern, but above all eager to put her virginal discovery to work. They agree on a schedule – afternoons, from two to five – that allows Séverine to juggle her newfound second life. Madame bestows upon Séverine the fittingnom de putain of “Belle de Jour,” for the day-blooming flower. A rocky encounter with Belle’s first client affords Deneuve a chance to do what she does best: toy, cat-like, with her slavish audience. When Belle, still green, resists her Jean – a corpulent, rosacea-dappled candy manufacturer – he takes a rougher tack and belts her across the face. The scene is heavy with the heat of real violence, and difficult to watch, for we love Séverine, and we fear for her safety. A fantasy is harmless, but how will her alter-ego withstand the painful sting of a man’s backhand? We know all too well what happens to nice girls who take a wrong turn. “Her curiosity,” we think, “was too great,” and expect the worst. Fortunately, Buñuel is not content to punish Severine, or lazily attribute her pecadillos to a single, life-changing moment. Instead, he cultivates her perversions like a hothouse flower. After her baptism-by-wallop, she lifts her head, unharmed, in a triumphant gesture that becomes the lynchpin of Belle de Jour’s moral cross-examination. Her golden locks fall away from

only a pretext for the tempest that follows. Snatched from her carriage, stripped to her underpinnings, Séverine is swiftly restrained and – pardon my French – macked upon by a pair of footmen. Her husband, hysterical with ecstasy, barks orders at the servants as they ravage his beautiful wife. Will Belle de Jour descend into an endless montage of subjugation and exploitation? Heavens, no! Just as Séverine’s torment reaches a fever pitch, we are thrust back into her waking life. The disturbing scene was the stuff of fantasy – hers, to be exact – and right away we understand: it is not textbook

her face, revealing a look of rosy euphoria. We bask in the sunshine of her pleasure, content in the understanding that she is safe and satiated. In this moment, Belle receives a different sacrament – a fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, and the realisation that she is naked and human after all. Honest and beautiful, Belle de Jour is a prism that absorbs every viewers’ leering interpretation and refracts it into a thousand dazzling palettes The restoration ofBelle de Jouris re-released on 8 September.

FEATURE

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The Work Di rec te d by JAIRUS MCLEARY GETHIN ALDOUS

Re lea se d 8 SEPTEMBER

ANTICIPATION.

Love a go od pr is on doc , but do we really need another one?

ENJOYMENT.

Holy sm oke s, th is is unl ike any we’ve seen before.

IN RETROSPECT.

Not to so und tr it e, but it ’s a da mn pri vi leg e t o w at ch th is mov ie.

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f four days behind the walls of New Folsom Prison piques your voyeuristic interest, then please do keep reading. The Work follows three men from ‘the outside’ as they join an intense group therapy experience with convicts, many of whom are violent offenders. Unlike most

discrimination. When a former member of the Aryan Brothe rhood is more relat able than a teacher’s aid, it’s clear that the work (that is, the emotional heavy-lifting of therapy) works. But casting judgement is not the point of the programme, nor the film. The directors’ minimal

prisploitation titles, though, this vérité gem isn’t concerned with the daily toil of life on the inside. Nor does it squeeze for details about the crimes committed by each prisoner. Rather, this is a judicious study of the slow, steady and sometime s painful process of rehabilitation. Can inner healing really occur in the cuffs of incarceration? Almost wholl y observatio nal, The Work is intimate, engrossing and immersive – access is seemingly unfiltered. While director Jairus McLeary spent several years building relationships with men in the progra mme, he and co-di recto r Gethin Aldous are all but invisible in the final product. Instead, the prisoners conduct therapy sessions and stand in for traditional interrogators. They start off by establishing the group norms, then drive conversations and embrace vulnerability. Everyone bears the collective emotional toil. And they’re astonishingly good at it.

presence creates space for the viewer to move through this microcosm of masculinity, where tension is palpable and the consequences of every small nuance are shocking. Director of photography Arturo Santa maria (toget her with the elusi ve camera team) harnesses the raw emotion of the room with compassion and respect, transporting us to the intimacy of the sharing circle, or into the thick of a s udden brawl. Two thumping heartbeats captured by lapel mics, or a primal scream from the other side of the room, are sudden indicators of the core issue here: repression. There’s still a lot of work to be done in that realm. The notion of ‘safe spaces’ is so often cut down. The Work proves just how useful such an environment can be, especially for those addicted to the poisonous performance of hypermasculinity . It shows truly brave men confronting gender norms that have hitherto served as

Well, why should n’t they be? This film addresses and challenges pervasive stereotypes about ‘hardened criminals’. The convicts are articulate, both linguistically and emotionally. Some attend weekly group sessions and have participated in this demanding workshop before. They shepherd newbies through distressing talk of family violence, childhood trauma and racial

interior prisons. This sometimes makes for uncomfortable or upsetting viewing, but courage and hope always sit at the forefront of every scene. Perhaps the nicest thing about The Work is its subtle reminder that suffering is relative. While the work is a lifelong trial, this film reminds us that you always have to start somewhere. AIMEE KNIGHT

The Meyerowitz Stories Di rec te d b y NOAH BAUMBACH

Sta rr ing ADAM SANDLER BEN STILLER DUSTIN HOFFMAN

Re lea se d 13 OCTOBER

ANTICIPATION.

Ba umb ac h is tal ent ed but hi s ‘comedy’ sometimes gives us slight acid reflux.

ENJOYMENT.

Oy vey, this is a hoot!

IN RET ROSPECT.

Worth revisiting for the joyous haul of wit and farce.

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aureen, where’s the gourmet emotional baggage that hampers these relations. Danny hummus?” asks Dustin Hoffman and owl-spectacled sister, Jean (Elizabeth Marvel), are as bushy-bearded artist/patriarch, the family losers, while their half-brother Matt (Ben Howard Meyerowitz, as he stares into his fridge with Stiller), a personal-wealth advisor, is pride of the clan. a look of concern.The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Matt still has daddy issues, however, as Howard uses Selected) is Noah Baumbach’s juiciest comedy sincetheir time together to gripe and grumble rather than to 2012’s Greta Gerwig-starring hit, Frances Ha. It is dispense longed-for affirmation. peppered with witty lines and spiced with physical Howard’s issues stem from an early-career burst of antics. Emma Thompson is Howard’s fourth wife,recognition for his art, followed by decades of growing Maureen, a permanently sozzled New Yorker who, atobscurity. Taunting him is the success of a man who was one point, rolls her car ever so gently into a tree. once an equal. Indeed, one fabulous set piece takes place As a fast-paced talkie preoccupied with the at the private launch of this rival artist’s new collection eccentricities passed down through generations and at MOMA. A celebrity, cameoing as herself, politely the damages wrought by family life, the film evokesacknowledges Howard’s existence, and he proceeds to Hannah and Her Sisters-era Woody Allen. Deeper repeat this comically minimal tidbit as an anecdote, down, there are thematic parallels to Wes Anderson’swearing it as a badge of honour throughout the film. The Royal Tenenbaums , with Dustin Hoffman equalling Hoffman is the Atlas, whose acting muscles Gene Hackman’s performance as a ramshackle butshoulder the film’s charming tone. Howard is a crotchety charismatic father figure who boasts refined skillproblem creator, but baked into Hoffman’s physical for pressing his children’s buttons. As Danny (Adamidentity – his small size, lopsided grin, and (in this Sandler) says: “I wish dad had done one big unforgivablefilm) mighty beard – there is soul to his brittle brand of thing that I could be angry about, but instead it’s tiny humanity. Ben Stiller is on top form, delivering a more earnest and contained performance than the tightlythings every day: drip, drip, drip.” ‘Danny’ is the first of the film’s five chapters, andwound neurotics he has played in previous Baumbach is immediately intriguing by virtue of having Sandler collaborations (Greenberg, While We’re Young ). adopting his little-seen sensitive actor mode. Given Although this is a male-weighted movie, there the slew of lamentable comedies that have becomeare no dud characters, and a democracy of humour is synonymous with his name, it is strangely moving tothe currency. The relentless pace of the dialogue is at see him (unforgettable in Paul Thomas Anderson’stimes exhausting, and the tone never really varies, yet this is forgiven when, hours after viewing, you Punch-Drunk Love) tenderly singing duets with his 18find yourself grinning into the ether, remembering year-old daughter, Eliza (Grace Van Patten). This film’s plot is a daisy-chain of comic vignettes,standout hoots from the cornucopia of Meyerowitz crafted to smuggle in back stories and examine thetales. SOPHIE MONKS KAUFMAN

REVIEWS

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In Between Direc te d by MAYSAL OUN HAMOUD

Sta rri ng MOUNA HAWA SANA JAMMELIEH SHADEN KANBOURA

Re lea sed 22 SEPTEMBER

ANTICIPATION.

Pic ked up fe sti val awa rds fro m Isr ael to Toron to, not to men tion a fat wa in Pale stine .

ENJOYMENT.

Bea uti ful ly sh ot wit h a gre at soundtrack and three characters you ’l l w ant to rem ain f riend s wit h.

IN RETROSPECT.

More displ ays of fe mal e fr ie nds hip like th is on screen please. 0 5 8 REVIEWS

sisterhood that forms in fractured circumstances is at the centre of this poignant debut feature from director Maysaloun Hamoud. Following Leila (Mouna Hawa) and Salma (Sana Jammelieh), the film offers an engaging celebration of young and

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become more apparent. This oasis of independence is under a constant threat, from parents with high expectations to boyfriends with a creeping duty towards social conformity which rears an ugly head from under the surface of their superficial liberalism. All three women are creative, intelligent

carefree Palestinian women living in Tel-Aviv, still adhering to lingering traditions that exert control over them. Should they speak Arabic or Hebrew? Should they dress conservatively or wear whatever the hell they wa nt? Do they c are for your opinion in the slightest? The film is an energetic and resounding middle finger to such pressures and stereotypes. Hamoud highlights Tel-Aviv as a space thriving with the rhythm and colour of metropolitan life, a hedonistic playground far removed from the constraints of religious custom experienced by new arrival Noor (Shaden Kanboura). An orthodox Muslim, Noor occupies the room vacated by her cousin in Leila and Salma’s flat, bringing with her a palpable air of concern mingled with curiosity. She is a student of computer science, engaged to a man she does not love. This creates an obvious clash with the freewheeling intoxication,

and joyous, yet exhausted from battles they should not have to fight. The men around them seem intent on tearing them apart like the food they crush with their hands at the table, as if they were ripe grapefruits rather than human beings. Hamoud’s film is concise yet enthralling. It invites the viewer into this closed enclave, but pushes back just as the protagonists start to dance along the metaphorical “in between”. Leila, Salma and Noor are beautifully depicted as individuals, but also as an ad hoc family unit. When trauma strikes, they form the fiercest collective shield and demonstrate the deepest strengths of friendship and protection. Hamoud is bold in her approach to scenes of violence, making the support shown among the three women all the more affecting. The power of the film is clear in its decision to promote female friendship without the need for rivalry, disagreement or division. These women

open sexuality and female camaraderie practiced by her roommates. The apartment becomes a tangible representation of the “in between”, acting as both drug-scattered dancefloor for a happy-go-lucky clique, and a clean, respectable environment in which Noor can cook for her fiancé. As Noor peeks into this vibrant side of lif e, th e limitations by which she is most clearly affected

learn from each other and reject those who expect them to change. The camera rarely leaves their side, preferring to capture domestic personal spaces rather than fill matters out with bustling colour from the wider cityscape. The outside world, with its regressive attitude s, does not win here, b ut the women of In Betwe en, with their cool resilience, absolutely do. CAITLIN QUINLAN

Wind River Di rec te d b y TAYLOR SHERIDAN

Sta rr ing JEREMY RENNER ELIZABETH OLSEN JULIA JONES

Re lea sed 8 SEPTEMBER

ANTICIPATION.

Sicario and Hell or High Water were not perfect, but this could be special with Sheridan directing.

ENJOYMENT.

So me pow erfu l m ome nts , but also misguided ones that leave a sour aftertaste.

IN RETROSPECT.

A ter ri ble sha me to use suc h an interesting setting for such a conventional story.

he third film written by Taylor Sheridan consolidates recurring themes, images and obsessions into a distinctive personal voice. Yet Wind River, the only one that Sheridan also directed himself, might be the dullest of the three. As with the previous two features, this one follows

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who serves as guide to the young woman, and thus practically leads the investigation. Not content with simply reproducing the sexist dynamic between Emily Blunt’s idealistic FBI agent and Josh Brolin’s pragmatic CIA operative from Sicario , Sheridan also makes Lambert into a

a duo of cops working in a specific territory with its own rules, people and conventions. In Sicario, it was the Texan border with Mexico; in Hell or High Water, West Texas. Here, the setting is the Wind River Indian Reservation. There is something immediately exciting about watching a film taking place in a relatively underrepresented and unfamiliar location. By law, Indian reservations are isolated from the rest of America. They are not managed by state government, but rather by the Native American tribes who live within them. These tribes in turn answer to a federal government agency, the US Bureau of Indian Affairs. It is because of this unusual status that when a young woman is discovered murdered on the reservation, an FBI agent is sent to investigate, rather than a traditional police detective. It would have been interesting and srcinal to

‘white saviour’ figure, summarily stripping both Banner and the Native American locals of any real agency in the action. The film attempts to rid itself of this awkwardness by framing Lambert as a stoic hero stuck between the white and Native Ameri can world s. But givin g him such a rich history results in an even stronger imbalance: a particularly uncomfortable scene has him deliver a lengthy monologue about grief to the father of the murder victim, as though a white man could somehow have more experience with loss than a Native American person. Wind River peaks with its pre-credit sequence, in which it still seems as though Sheridan is taking into consideration the poetic potential and dramatic weight of the landscape, its specific history and inhabitants. Yet as the film progresses, Sheridan strips away everything that initially makes it so distinctive, adding artificially dramatic

follow Elizabeth Olsen’s Jane Banner, the young agent straight out of sunny Los Angeles, as she navigates this unknown and unforgiving land. But Sheridan instead opts for a more common and uncomfortable formula, pairing the rookie agent with a local white man. In fact, Banner’s presence only serves to highlight the expertise of Jeremy Renner’s Cory Lambert, a US Fish and Wildlife Service agent

moments and tension that feel tired and irrelevant to life on the Reservation. In much the same way that Sicari o feels empty on closer inspection – having ultimately very little to do with the situation of drug cartels at the Mexican border – the Indian Reservation in Wind River is cheaply used as a shortcut to drama, but never actually comes alive. ELENA LAZIC

REVIEWS

059

Beach Rats Di rec te d by ELIZA HITTMAN

Sta rri ng HARRIS DICKINSON MADELINE WEINSTEIN KATE HODGE

Re lea sed 3 NOVEMBER

ANTICIPATION.

Exci te d to see Hit tm an’s fo llo w-u p to her gre at 201 3 fi lm It Felt Like Love .

ENJOYMENT.

The same, but different. Sub tl e, tra gi c and bra ci ngl y pe rce pt ive fi lmm ak ing .

IN RETROSPECT.

A f il m t ha t ma kes you fe el fo r a guy wit h no fe eli ngs .

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t’s a tremendously difficult thing that secondtime director Eliza Hittman is doing with her affecting new film, Beach R ats . From the outset, that “thing” looks like clear-eyed, unsentimental observation and careful, character-driven storytelling. But she also manages to capture and

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(which is pretty much his default setting), he seems constantly wary of the fact. Through detailed body language, we see his sense of self-hatred evolve, but it never quite reaches the point where a newfound impulse of responsibility takes over. He’s a teenager who refuses to take hol d of his life.

preserve a mood by presenting a subject who stands at a crossroads, utterly bewildered as to which path he should take. Frankie (Harris Dickinson) is a rudderless bro who thinks he’s free to do whateve r he wants. He’s acu tely conscious of the fact that he’s hit a sweet spot in life that comes at the latter stages of an awkward sexual awakening. And this is a time befor e anyth ing even close to adult responsibility hovers into view. Beach Rats presents the walls closing in on Frankie, but the audience only gets to see what those walls look like at the very last moment. Hittman lures us in with glistening washboard torsos and designer ennui, and, without ever resorting to moral judgement, asks the simple question over and over: hey kid, what are you doing with your life? In America, the definition of ‘freedom’ has become a bone of contention between warring political factions. For some it means the ability to do

The film patiently watches as a Frankie flirts with g irls on the beach during the day and cruises gay chat rooms after dark. His fluid sexuality is another marker of his refusal to conform. Even with the shield of a webcam, he lurks in the shadows, wanting to see what he’s got coming to him be fore revealing the goods he’s offering to someone else. And yet, the film is too slipper y and subtle to be solely about “me” culture and the perpetual desire to fulfil pleasures of the flesh. Frankie and his pals are driven by sex and drugs, and theirs is a search for the easiest and most direct route to those ends. Hittman, however, never judges her characters or scolds them for wanting to numb the boredom of plutonic relationships and elegantly wasted street slumming. The film takes an ambivalent look at the locale of Brooklyn, at once a playground of youthful iniquity and a prison full of lost, desperate

whatever you want, whenever you want. For others, it’s a freedom afforded to the individual who chooses to live within a system. In Beach Rats , Frankie seems to be trapped between these two different visions of freedom, unwilling to let go of the former, and hesitant to accept the latter. This non-judgemental film presents growing pains as a natural state of being. Even when Frankie is being a selfish dick

souls. Idle amusements are found in smoke ring competitions at the local vape shop, or at a nautical themed techno club. The emotional wallop that comes as the film ends is hefty and surprising. It’s hard to tell whether Frankie has been wheelspinning for 90 minutes, or if he’s finally broken through to adulthood by reaching that lowest ebb. DAVID JENKINS

IN CONVERSATION...

In te rv ie w by DAVID JENKINS

Il lu st ra ti on by SARAH TANAT JONES

Eliza Hittman The Brooklyn-based director of Beach Rats explains how she made this ballad of sexual awakening.

Do you mean literally people watching? Yeah When did you develop this interest in the I think I’ve always been people watching, sitting in areas along the water,lives of teenagers? watching cars flow in, people taking short trips to fascinated with representati on of youth on screen, the darkness. particularly with the French New Wave films. I always think of them as not being coming of age Were you always at a distance from these stories, but films about young people coming subjects you were looking at? Alway s into consciousness about who they are, the pain observation. It was odd hours of the night involved in that realisation. Coming of age as and I don’t think people would have felt some beautiful transformation is not what I’m comfortable talking to me about, you know, interested in. I’m more interested in the moments

what different areas of the world they were coming from.

that reflect the world at large.

Did you have a preconceived notion of who you were looking for to play Frankie? I did have Did you interview people in a more formal a preconceived notion but I couldn’t find him! I setting? No, I didn’t do that kind of work. Since the internet emerged, people have used had all these sort of ideas of a young 19-year-old it to explore an exotic and erotic potential, De Niro or something. Harris [Dickinson] was so and a lot of friends started to test the waters still, his voice was so deep and his eyes subdued – around their sexual identity. The world the he was compelling but totally static, whereas a lot character is exploring feels authentic because of other people had put on this macho physicality, it’s a way a lot of people take their first steps wearing muscles shirts and all that. It felt very towards coming out. performed, but what Harris did was very tense and intimate and internal. LWLies:Beach Ratsfeels like the product ofDid you find it a very different experience intense and detailed research on your part. from Is makingIt Felt Like Love , which centres Do you enjoy the writing? Or do you prefer the that the case?Hittman: I would say you’re not on a woman, to making a film that centresdirecting? on I do love the writing, except that the wrong. I grew up in Brooklyn, kind of straddling a man?No, I didn’t. I thought that would be deeper I get into my career the more pressure a more progressive and familiar version of the the challenge to write a male voice – can I I feel to know the whole story upfront, because city, but also a version of the city that’s trapped understand the pressures that exist around you know you have to tell everybody what you’re

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n 2015 we published a list of 50 of the best female filmmakers working today, and Eliza Hittman featured on the strength of her 2013 debut feature, It Felt Like Love. Developing on and enhancing the air of brooding teen ennui in that film, she returns with Beach Rats, a atmospheric character study about a teenager attempting to untangle the raging sexual impulses inside.

in time. I think of myself as somebody who goes back and forth between those worlds and I always have. I went to a very large public high school in the middle of Brooklyn and most of the people I knew were from areas that we shot in. I think a lot of the film explores a cruising world which is a tribute to those areas. I spent time observing the nature of that element of the script.

the character? And the answer is yes. Men obviously write very credible narratives for women all the time, and I think women can write credible narratives for men because, if you have a certain level of understanding about the world then you can create a character that’s an extension of that, regardless of gender.

working on and what you see and that for me is an obstacle. Writing for me is essentially a process of discovery. It’s like taking the discovery and the adventure out of filmmaking and having to know everything before you’ve even found the voice of the character. That type of writing is not as enjoyable as the sort where you sit down, find a compelling person and just work it all out

INTERVIEW

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Unrest

The Night is Short, Walk on Girl Dir ect ed by MASAAKI YUASA Sta rri ng GEN HOSHINO, KANA HANAZAWA,

Di rec te d b y JENNIFER BREA Re lea se d 20 OCTOBER

HIROSHI KAMIYA

Re lea se d 4 OCTOBER

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his is a film about being lost inside your own body. Jennifer Brea had a life of fun and frolics laid out ahead of her. She tramped a path around the world, met people and collected unique experiences in farflung locales. And then everything suddenly slowed down to a halt when she just couldn’t muster the energy to get out of bed in the morning. Then she couldn’t move her limbs. And then she began finding it tough to form anything more than guttural moans. Her body gave up on her. She discovered that she was suffering from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (or ME as it’s more commonly known). It’s a condition that remains a complete mystery – no one knows what causes it, how long it lasts or how it can be cured. At a low ebb, Brea then decided to pick up a camera and document her

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experiences as well as collect personal testemonies from sufferers across the globe. When the term ME was coined, certain wags would refer to it as “yuppie flu”, and the task here is to overturn these glib assumptions. Just 10 seconds of footage capturing Brea walking through her garden and then suddenly slumping to the floor in agony, screaming that it feels like her head is expanding, should really be enough to put paid to any remaining doubters. This is a simple, informative and clear-eyed advocacy documentary that taps into the essential truth of how we are all essentially prisoners in waiting. Though the film is formally a little unexiting, Brea makes sure she captures the extent of the physical and psychological pain she experiences daily, and much of her frustration derives from a lack of information. Plus, she agonises over the fact that she’s hampering the progress of her go-getting husband, who has to spend much of his time tending to her. The film works because, even though it’s specifically about ME, it picks apart the social stigma attached to all forms of illness (and all forms of cure). Through her various case studies, Brea shows how some people are getting it right and DAVID JENKINS others are getting it very wrong.

it shares crew, cast and a creative spark – will be in familiar territory, while those reared on Studio Ghibli and more conventional anime will be dazzled. At once minimal and expres sive, digital yet unmista kably handcrafted, Yuasa and co’s animation style is an invigorating mish-mash, as much indebted to American Saturday morning cartoons and trippy European visual art of the ’60s and ’70s as a nything produced by Japanese studios. Simple scenes are imbued with off-kilter energies, as figures twist and warp in motion, while eye-popping sequences of dancing, dreaming and decadence explode into Carnaby Street colours and super-stylised Saul Bass compositions. It’s wild, it’s frantic and, frankly, it’s a bit much at times, but those who lock into The Night is Short’s eccentric pace and curious point of view will find a new obsession. Luckily for them, they won’t have to wait long for another hit. Masaaki Yuasa’s next film,Lu Over the Wall, was released in Japan a mere month afterThe Night is Short, and will be coming to UK shores by the end of 2017. Count us in. MICHAEL LEADER

ANTICIPATION. La ud ed at Su nd an ce fo r

ANTICIPATION. Di rec to r Ma sa ak i Yuasa ma y n ot be

ENJOYMENT.

ENJOYMENT. Lo oks an d m ove s lik e no

Jen ni fe r Bre a lay s he rse lf ba re on scr een .

other anime feature you’ve seen before.

IN RETROSPECT. ME is th e s ub jec t, bu t th is fi lm to uch es on

IN RETROSPECT.

anxieties connected to all forms

Keep an eye on th is gu y.

its srcinal take on an enigmatic condition.

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REVIEWS

of pyshical and mental decay.

asaaki Yuasa’s vibrant anime, adapted from the novel by Tomihiko Morimi, is an After Hours -like tale that charts one very eventful evening on a college campus in Kyoto. A girl with black hair (named The Girl with Black Hair) is our guide through the night, taking in drinking contests, an open-air book fair, a student-produced guerrilla musical and an all-encompassing college festival. All the while she is pursued, at a polite distance, by an upperclassman suitor, Senpai, who seeks to contrive the perfect ‘surprise meeting’ that, he hopes, will kickstart their romance. It’s a surreal slice-of-life set-up, filled with peculiar characters and local legends, but the film’s unique aesthetic is equally bizarre. Fans of The Tatami Galaxy – Yuasa’s previous Morimi adaptation, with which

a household name (yet), but his resume is strong.

EVERY DAY BAGS AND ITEMS | WWW.SANDQ SANDQVIST UK FLAGSHIP STORE: 79 BERWICK STREE

VIST.NE

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T, SOHO, LONDO

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Home Again

Dina

Di rec ted by HALLIE MEYERS-SHYER Sta rri ng REESE WITHERSPOON, PICO ALEXANDER, MICHAEL SHEEN Re lea se d 29 SEPTEMBER

Dir ect ed by ANTONIO SANTINI, DAN SICKLES Sta rri ng DINA BUNO, SCOTT LEVIN Re lea se d 20 OCTOBER

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his vérité portrait of a courting couple is, at times, a challenge to watch. Dina, a prizewinner at Sundance, follows Dina and Scott, a middle aged autistic couple tentatively embarking on a relationship and ultimately getting married. It would be easy for Dina to be too twee, to push its protagonists into a cloying narrative of inspiration porn, but the film thankfully avoids that route, favouring a collage of moments from Dina’s life which avoids any added commentary. Dina has had an exceedingly difficult existence – a traumatic past of violence and abuse is gradually revealed – and the film presents her as a strong-willed and sensitive woman. Many moments are intentionally mundane: the film opens with Dina at the dentist, and later we see her lounging around

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watching Sex and the City on DVD. On the surface, she could be any suburban woman. Dina’s Pennsylvania hometown is shot in elegantly muted tones, with compositions of lonely looking all-American edifices that recall the paintings of Edward Hopper. The film can at times be uncomfortable: she and her still-virginal fiancé have awkward conversations about sex , and directors Dan Sickles and Antonio Santini have no qualms about allowing the viewer to be a fly on the wall. The film ends on a hopeful note, but there’s something distinctly disorienting about having such an intimate view of p eople who a re too oft en marginalised. The disorientat ion of Dina, the flinching at awkwardness and intimacy, mostly works, and in one telling moment, she enthusiastically discusses her love of reality TV. Dina has none of the brashness of this documentary mode, but she and Scott, with their borderline-painful vulnerabilities sitting right on the surface, are far more engaging to watch than the average reality star. We root for them to be h appy together, while simultaneously feeling discomfort with how close the film places us to them. ABBEY BENDER

endeavours so far include photography and fashion design – both have been disastrous. On the “crazy” night of her 40th birthday, she takes home a twentysomething aspiring director (Pico Alexander, irritating dandy). If this sounds like masterpiece materi al, it doesn’t deliver: drunk, the boy pukes in the bathroom before anything happens. Cut to the morning after, and his clothes have magically disappeared. Immediately, a trio of his filmmaking bros, whose awful-looking short film could apparently get them into Hollywood, move into Alice’s place, after her mother convinces her that living with three hot young filmmakers is definitely what she needs. Pretending to challenge the age-gap taboo, Meyers-Shyer then focuses on the bemusement of all involved. Worse still is how she forcefully builds a barrier between young and old when the romance between Alice and her beau ends after the most trivial argument in film history. Exasperating mishaps follow. It all ends in hugs with a half-baked lesson about friendship, independence and how not to make a romantic comedy.

ANTICIPATION. A Sun dan ce win ner cen ter ing on an autistic couple. Will it be sensitive or exploitative?

ANTICIPATION. Re es e Wi th ers po on rei gni ti ng th e sp ark of love with young, hot filmmakers? Sounds too good to be true…

ENJOYMENT. Not enj oya bl e i n th e t rad it io nal sense, but compelling and elegantly shot.

ENJOYMENT. Ree se doe sn’ t nee d th is , neither does anyone else. Make it stop.

IN RETROSPECT. A p oi gna nt sna psh ot of marginalised lives.

IN RETROSPECT. Go home, you’re drunk.

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he romantic comedy has long been derided for its tendency to focus on the petty problems of well-off, white and beautiful people. H allie Meyers-Shyer’s directorial debut Home Again unfortunately encourages this prejudice, which her own mother (and producer) Nancy Meyers managed to prove wrong with her films. Home Again is a tone-deaf, embarrassing film, memorable only for some hilariously misjudged lines and its all-round incompetence. Reese Witherspoon plays Alice, a draft version of her character from Jean-Marc Vallée’s critically acclaimed mini-series Big Little Lies . She struggles with her divorce and lives with her two daughters in the gorgeous house of her late filmmaker father in California. Her business

MANUELA LAZIC

BODY

FILMSBoutique

Perfect Blue (1997) Di rec te d by SATOSHI KON

Sta rri ng JUNKO IWAO RICA MATSUMOTO SHINPACHI TSUJI

Re lea se d 31 OCTOBER

ANTICIPATION.

Lat e dir ect or Sa to sh i Kon be cam e known for his universe-bending yar ns. Do es hi s re- rel eas ed deb ut live up to his later work?

ENJOYMENT.

Yes, as it turns out. It’s a claustrophobic descent into fan do m, fa me and obs ess io n.

IN RETR OSPECT.

The twisting plot is laced with big questions.

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hen Perfect Blue was first released in the disorientation. Although sympathetic to Mima’s plight, West, some critics couldn’t quite believe Kon is obviously lusting after her too, which brings a a ‘cartoon’ could be so frank in depicting meta-layer of claustrophobic heat.Masahiro Ikumi’s sex and violence. Twenty years on, with Studio Ghiblispot-on soundtrack matches the uncanny atmosphere, having since smashed through any cloth-eyed ideas shifting between tinny, hyperactive J-pop and about the limits of animation, it’s time Satoshi Kon’s ambient mixes of ghostly synths and human cries.

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1997 debut feature was recognised for what it is: a It’s cleverly put together with some gorgeous complex, innovative psycho-thriller. framing, as Kon winds up the tension as the central The struggle at the core of Perfect Blue is a young mystery tantalisingly plays out.Perfect Blue was women’s control of her body and identity in the srcinally planned as a live-action TV series, and internet era, an idea that feels chillingly prescient. despite the abundance of anime’s gratuitous shirtThe film follows Mima, a young Japanese pop idol inripping, it’s a uniquely cinematic work. With his the questionably-named, middlingly-successful band muted, simple animation style, Kon brings film noir’s CHAM!, as she transitions into a grown-up acting sprawling, cramped city into early internet-era Tokyo, career. In doing so, the suited-up industry execs expect where big dreams are contrasted with seedy, dimly-lit her to forcibly replace her infantile public image withinteriors. It’s a seamless link in the cinematic chain racy photoshoots and hyper-sexualised rape scenes. that stretches back from Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 However, Mima’s CHAM!-era superfans aren’t film Vertigo and carries on towards David Lynch’s happy, and as she’s trapped between her old and new2001 mind-bender Mulholland Drive and Darren identities, her psyche becomes increasingly fractured.Aronofsky’s Black Swan from 2010. Indeed,Perfect Disturbed by a threatening fax, Mima buys a hulkingBlue’s similarities to the latter film are too numerous desktop Mac and painstakingly learns how to use the to mention, although Aronofsky has said he “wasn't internet, but what she finds in the new digital world influenced by it”. is even more creepy. From this point on, the film Perfect Blue is a bold debut by an auteur who would reveals its deft touch at slipping seamlessly between go on to revisit these slippery, treacherous cinematic reality, performance and hallucination, until Mima is disoriented and vulnerable – lost in the plotline’s gauzy, dreamlike layers. The innocent ingenue’s dissolving sense of self is a cliché of this kind of psycho-thriller. Yet Kon’s attention to detail means that every scene is riddled with complexity, and the kaleidoscope of viewpoints from which we see Mima creates a nightmarish

Paprika in climes in his better-known feature-length 2006. Tragically, Kon died in 2010 before finishing his final film, which still languishes uncompleted and without funding. This 20th anniversary airing of his debut should help spread the word about this gem, as well as make us more hungry to know what dizzying, dreamlike treat is still hiding in the vaults of his studio. EVE WATLING

Loving Vincent Di rec te d b y DOROTA KOBIELA HUGH WELCHMAN Sta rr ing DOUGLAS BOOTH SAOIRSE RONAN

nyone mounting a new biopic of “the father of modern art”, Vincent Van Gogh, must surely be aware of the fact that they’ve got some tough acts to follow. There’s the vibrant Technicolor psychodram a of Vincente Minelli’s Lust for Life from 1956, with a roaringly-

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Yet it’s hard to comprehend what such arduoustoil is all finally in service of, given the major screenplay issues in evidence. The film’s drama is framed as a mystery, asking questions around the suspicious circumstances surrounding the artist’s death. An opening newspaper headline tells us that Van Gogh

CHRIS O'DOWD Re lea sed 13 OCTOBER

ENJOYMENT. Aes th et ica lly im pre ssi ve, at fi rst .

pained Kirk Douglas centre-stage, as often chewing the scenery as he is painting it. Then there’s Robert Altman’s characteristically shaggy portrait of the dynamic between two brothers in 1990’s Vincent & Theo , adding Method to the madness of the Van Gogh saga. Finally, a year later, came the masterfully subdued (and best) account of the artist’s final days with Maurice Pialat’s straightforwardly-monikered, Van Gogh , starring French rocker Jacques Dutronc in the lead. Yet surely there’s room at the table for one more VGV movie? With Loving Vin cent , the Polish/ English directorial tag-team of Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman bring something new to the table, even while covering familiar biographical territory. Theirs is purportedly the first feature film to be painted entirely by hand, employing a team of over 100 artists to painstakingly tackle each individual frame. For a 91-minute movie that’s

died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in the fields near Auvergne. An appallingly-mockneyed Douglas Booth plays Armand Roulin, the son of a postmaster tasked with delivering one of Vincent’s final letters. He’s not convinced that the troubled artist could collapse into suicidal agony in such a short space of time, and begins questioning those who knew the man in his final days. So we’re introduced to a series of characters, each taken from one of Van Gogh’s works. Roulin meets them, asks them a question about Vincent which cues a flashback of biographical monologuing, before bringing us back to the present-tense where the amateur sleuth moves on to another. And repeat. And repeat. “What I’m wondering is whether people will appreciate what he did,” says Roulin at the end of the film. But Loving Vinc ent seems more concerned with the riddle of his passing than saying much about the artist himself, a ghostly presence in his

IN RETROSPECT. A sen sat io nal ist ap pro ach to the artist’s final days which ultimately illuminates little.

no mean achievement. At 24-frames-per-second, some 130,000 individual paintings make up the film. The effect is undoubtedly impressive. Using a rotoscopic technique familiar to fans of Richard Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly , flashbacks are rendered in black and white (charcoal?) while the present-tense meat of the narrative approximates Van Gogh’s own st yle.

own narrative. It’s a sensationalistic approach – did he shag Saoirse Ronan in that boat? – that sheds more light on the guilt of an opportunistic community than on the man himself. Perhaps that’s the point, but the tedious structure and Wikipe dic dialogue illumi nate about as much as a film that finally says Van Gogh’s art looked a bit like this. MATT THRIFT

ANTICIPATION. The first animated feature film t be entirely painted by hand.

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LONG READ

Words by

NICK PINKERTON

Il lu st ra ti on by

SARAH TANAT JONES

Shudders of Pleasur e Clive Barker combi ned his love of horr or and S&M in 1987’s Hellraiser . We pay homage to this majestic suburban gore aria.

promotional photo from around the time of Hellraiser’s release –its been over 30 years now since its early screenings at Cannes – shows director Clive Barker posing with his Panavision camera. He is a youthful thirtysomething, dimple chinned, sober of expression, and on the top of his right arm, which is draped over the camera’s focus ring, there is a gigantic snail. It’s a silly bit of ‘spooky’ business to distinguish the horror author du jour , but not altogether inappropriate – the movie that Barker was making would leave quite a slime trail behind it. Hellraiser has a particular texture; it’s grotty and soiled and a little abrasive, like synthetic stucco or pebbledash. It’s one of those movies that you can instantly recognise from a single frame. Years back I caught a flash of some nondescript scene on a television at a heavy metal bar and I knew what it was right away, despite then not having seen the movie since adolescence – part of this, I think, has to do with that texture, part of it with the fact that

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‘A Clowns’ Sodom’), and then finally, after Barker and Bradley had moved down to London, The Dog Company. Concurrent with his work in “fringe” theater, Barker was also trying his hand as a filmmaker, producing two non-synch sound shorts, Salome (1973) and The Forbidden (1978), the latter of which introduced the image of a bed of nails pounded into a gridwork pattern. Neither Barker’s film experiments nor his theatre efforts nor his piecemeal work as an illustrator – he contributed one of the variations on John Entwistle’s mug to the cover of The Who’s ‘Face Dances’ – made him much of a living. But when the first of his ‘Books of Blood’ short story collections was a publishing phenomenon, he soon turned his hand to cranking out novels. His second effort in that line, ‘The Hellbound Heart’, published at a slim 186 pages by Dark Harvest in 1986, concerns an amoral sybarite torn to shreds by interdimensional Cenobite demons after using a mystical puzzle

Hellraiser is probably the movie you’re most likely to encounter playing on a TV in a heavy metal bar. It is difficult to describe to anyone under the age of 25 the level of celebrity achieved by a small cache of horror writers in the 1980s. Barker was a household name, as was, for the grade school crowd, RL Stine, and of course both of them lived in the shadow of Stephen King, who never really went away. Before Barker signed on for Hellraiser, King had shown the way to expanding a franchise to multiplatinum delivery, not only licensing his novels for film adaptation faster than he could write them, but sometimes participating in the films themselves. King gives a grotesque, mugging performance as a gormless backwoodsman in 1982’s Creepshow, and handled directing duties himself, after a fashion, on 1986’s Maximum Overdrive. Around the same time Barker was also making his way into features – he wrote the screenplays to 1985’s Underworld and 1986’s Rawhead Rex, both directed by George Pavlou. But his ambitions as a cineaste went back further than King’s. Born in Liverpool and raised near Penny Lane, Barker stayed in the city for university. He was by then pursuing an interest in theatre, particularly that of the transgressive variety, which would pick

box to access a plane of what is purported to be overwhelming sensory gratification. ‘The Hellbound Heart’ would form the basis of Hellraiser – though perhaps “basis” isn’t quite the word, as the timeline suggests that the book was very much written with the idea of a movie in mind. Part of Barker’s stated motive for going back into movies was to prevent low-quality adaptations of his writing being made – he was vocally critical, for example, of Rawhead Rex. By 1986, Barker’s name was enough to command him a budget of just under $1 million from a post-Roger Corman New World Pictures as a first-time feature director shooting a movie absent of real stars. The nearest thing to one is Andrew Robinson, a Don Siegel favorite who appeared in Charlie Varrick (1973) and as the serial killer “Scorpio” in Dirty Harry (1971). Here he switches from nasties to play the ultimate fall guy cuckold, Larry, the clueless brother of the abovementioned pleasure-seeker, Frank (Sean Chapman). The circumstances of Frank’s disappearance are unknown to all but the viewer – we’ve seen him being julienned by the Cenobites in the film’s prologue. Larry moves back into the family abode in the company of his wife, Julia (Claire Higgins), a haughty ice queen whose preferred pastime is remembering the time that she allowed Frank to ravage her. As such,

up the legacy of Paris’s Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol. He would become a central player in a group of creative collaborators which included his pal from Quarry Bank High School, Doug Bradley, who would eventually star as Hellraiser’s dead-eyed breakout creature star, billed as “Lead Cenobite” in the credits but later affectionately nicknamed Pinhead. Barker’s troupe went through several incarnations, always with him at the core: The Hydra Theatre Company became the Theatre of the Imagination which in turn became the Mute Pantomime Theatre (Bradley recalls a production called

she’s overjoyed (and understandably a little taken aback) when a few drops of blood from a moving day accident bring Frank back to life – of a sort. The resurrected Frank, far from the sexual athlete of memory, is a pussmeared hunk of masticated gristle, sequestered in the house’s dingy attic. He will, he explains, need real blood sacrifices in order to fully reconstitute himself. Julia mulls over this moral quandary for all of a minute, but her burning loins carry the day, and soon she’s an old pro at luring podgy businessmen home from yuppie boîtes and leading them upstairs to

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smash their skulls in with a claw hammer. According to Barker, one of the ladies on the set suggested the film should be titled, “What a Woman Will do for a Good Fuck.” If there is a metaphor in all of this for, say, Britain under Thatcher, I fail Hellraiser to track it. In point of fact it’s never actually clear as to where is taking place – Larry makes reference to bringing his wife back to her home turf and Cotton speaks with an English accent, but scarcely anyone else in the movie does, and the London-born Chapman was dubbed in post production at the behest of the film’s backers. (In fact the exteriors for the house where most of the movie takes place were shot at 187 Dollis Hill Lane in northwest London; the interiors were done in Cricklewood.) The dimension of social commentary, which eulogies to the late George A Romero are currently praising his movies for while entirely ignoring what really distinguished him as a filmmaker, is here almost entirely lacking, and the plot is at a minimum. Suspense is nominally supplied by Larry’s imperilment, and then by the threat posed to Larry’s daughter from a previous marriage, Kirsty (Ashley Laurence), who absconds with the puzzle box from Frank and tries to bargain with the Cenobites, promising to offer up her corrupted uncle, who has escaped their wrath, in exchange for her life.

“The Cenobites are a quartet of ghastlies in shiny black leatherette who skip from dimension to dimension practising fatal S&M.”

In absence of these qulities, Hellraiser focuses on devising images designed to induce a combination of wonderment and sheer, visceral disgust, from the various flayed Franks to the simple but effective scene of the meat of a human hand being ripped open by a rusty nail. Barker is an outspoken admirer of the Italian gore director Lucio Fulci, and in such moments, it shows. Horror is, like science fiction, a genre where the make-up effects person can be a matinee star, andHellraiser elevated Bob Keen to something close to Tom Savini-level celebrity among the ‘Fangoria’ set. It was Keen who helped create the different skinned Franks – played by actor Oliver Smith, chosen because he was enough of a weedy ectomorph to still appear stripped down beneath built-up layers of heavy makeup. The raw, gore-damp Frank recalls certain Florentine medical illustrations or Honoré Fragonard’s 18th century ‘écorchés,’ prepared cadavers stripped of skin still on display at the museum that bears his name in Paris. The image of the skinned man is one that Barker had visited before in bothThe Forbidden and his 1981 play ‘Frankenstein in Love’, billed, asHellraiser might have been, “A Grand Guignol Romance.” Frank’s rebirth from beneath the attic floorboards is a sickening, stately set-piece, quite on a par with anything in David Cronenberg’s The Fly or John Carpenter’s The Thing, movies which pushed analog visual effects to the limits of their viscous possibilities. Barker and Keen’s other indelible creations were, of course, the Cenobites themselves, a quartet of ghastlies in shiny black leatherette who skip from dimension to dimension practising fatal S&M. They are led by Bradley, who

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had first played a somewhat similar judge, jury and executioner character called The Dutchman in Barker’s 1973 playHunters in the Snow. Some of Barker’s ideas didn’t come to fruition. He toned down Julia’s thirsty flashback, which plays slightly camp as is, from a freakier srcinal, doing due diligence for the censors, who apparently saw nothing overly alarming about the film’s catalogue of methods for shredding and pulverising the human form. He’d wanted an srcinal soundtrack from Coil, the electronic duo comprised of John Balance and former Throbbing Gristle member Peter Christopherson, a far from radio-friendly couple who’d released an album called ‘Scatology ’ and trafficked in imagery rich with sexual deviance and body horror. ( Hellraiser’s discourse with the visuals coming out of contemporary industrial music cannot be overstated.) Instead he got Christopher Young, whose credits included Tobe Hooper’s Invaders from Mars and A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge – and in fact Young more than acquitted himself with his more traditional orchestral score, including the darkly roiling theme. Despite these imposed compromises, including the disorienting nonspecificity of the film’s setting – who could possibly think it was a liability to set a haunted house movie in England? –Hellraiser was a massive hit, making the stuff of hardcore kink subculture into a suburban Halloween costume. Barker, discussing his srcinal conception of Pinhead, has mentioned the influence of Catholicism – Pinhead’s get-up suggests a combination of butcher’s smock and cassock; the nails driven into his face at even intervals, some strange ritual of penitence; and his bearing is that of an undead Torquemada. Also influential was Barker’s predilection for BDSM – as a young man he contributed an illustration to the periodical ‘S&M’, the publication of which led to charges of obscenity against the magazine, and the author, who is openly gay, has been known to drop references to leather and muscle bars like Los Angeles’ Faultline into interviews. (Remembering the leather club scene in fellow Liverpudlian Terence Davies’ 1980 Madonna and Child, one wonders if the two ever crossed paths…) Sadomasochistic subtext in horror cinema is nothing new – you can trace a lineage through Edgar G Ulmer’s The Black Cat , Mario Bava’s The Whip and the Body and Hitchcock’s Frenzy, right up to the present day. It’s this connection which caused the perspicacious Parker Tyler, in his 1947 volume ‘The Magic and Myth of the Movies’, to write, discussing the critical prejudice against horror films: “It may be conventional to have contempt for those adults childish enough to shudder with pleasure at the sight of a lovely, seminude woman helpless in the arms of an irresponsible and repulsive synthetic man. But the obscure processes of sadism are certainly not contemporary news.” It was unusual, still, for a horror film to draw so heavily on the actual appurtenances of kink culture, as Hellraiser does: the subtext has become text. To hear Barker tell it, the popular success of Hellraiser wasn’t so much a great leap forward but a continuation and confirmation of the work he’d been up to in the obscure trenches of short films and theatrical productions. “Doing a low-budget movie in a house in Cricklewood is the equivalent of the eight-quid play,” he told interviewer Peter Atkins. “I’d go further; low-budget moviemaking is fringe theatre, except that you can actually get the audience numbers I always wanted us to get. It’s what fringe theatre claims to be and so often isn’t – non-elitist, populist.” And Hellraiser does put on quite a show for the punters – while thin on plot, what it offers, like Barker’s Lord of Illusions in its better moments, is the solemn majesty of ceremony, a sense of awe at the awful possibilities of the body in restoration and unjoining. Despite its moments of neophyte clunkiness, Barker’s film conveys a keen understanding of magic and myth, and its shudders of pleasure are undiminished Hellraiser: 30th Anniversary is released on 30 October.

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Brimstone Di rec te d by MARTIN KOOLHOVEN

Sta rri ng DAKOTA FANNING GUY PEARCE KIT HARINGTON

Re lea sed 29 SEPTEMBER

ANTICIPATION.

Sa dom aso chi st ic pe rve rsi on and Dut ch rel ig io us zea lo try in th e Old West. Okay.

ENJOYMENT.

Boi led dow n t o 90 mi ns th is would be a low three, but at ’roidbursting 148 it’s gotta be a…

IN RETROSPECT.

So me nic e ing red ie nts , bu t all pla ced to ge th er, ta ste s pre tt y fo ul.

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he tall, one-eyed preacher in the long black coat strode slowly to the altar, the cold jangle of his spurs the only sound to be heard in the spartan chapel. His lean face is wind-ch apped and weather ed. He was handsome once, but his features have long been hardened

Guy Pearce is the preacher who arrives into a town of black bonnets, pale, insular northern European settlers, pig farms and fiercely-styled neckbeards. It soon becomes apparent that his biblical ire is specifically directed at Dakota Fanning (mute) and her adoptive family (unremarkable, disposable). Fanning-

by the evil of men and the fury of his own belief. Surveying the parishioners, he begins his sermon in a voice that is at once beguiling and unyielding. “Beware of false prophets…” It’s impossible to know if the script for Martin Koolhoven’s Brimstone starts with those exact lines, but these things usually do. It’s a badass opening that works for everything from Delta blues songs and loopy Manga comics to humdrum video games. And while it may be a little hackneyed and sophomoric, it sets the board out nicely and allows for some blustery monologuing. It’s a scene that’s fun to write and to watch, as well as being catnip for prop-gnawing actor-types. The trouble is, when the sermon is over and the church doors open, scenes like these cease to write themselves and the heavy loads of plot, motivation, structure, characterisation and world-building are added to the saddle-bags.

Pearce, naturally, have a long and turbulent history that is recounted through a series of portentously intertitled chapters that unfold back through their violent, God-bothered relationship. This backward-spooling structure is nothing especially innovative (Pearce himself has red-hot form in the genre in the shape of 2000’s Memento) but here it adds significantly to the plotting and gifts our central pair a mystique that they – ultimately – do not deserve. Pearce is swiftly revealed to be nothing more than a sexually-maddened religious nut (who morphs from boiling-point puritan to omniscient boogeyman at the drop of a broad-brimmed hat) and Fanning an innocent turned ingenious survivor who will do anything to escape the bloody orthodoxy of her tormentor. Does that make Brimstone a Miltonian spin on feminist emancipation, or just a slasher movie with frock coats? The road to hell is rather famously paved with good intentions, and for all of Brimstone ’s Promised Lands,

The film doesn’t wholly buckle under these demands, but neither does it ever truly steady itself enough to set off in an entirely consistent, distinctive or credible direction. Its whopping 148 minute runtime feels less suggestive of grand ideas or epic scope than of the filmmakers’ hope that if they keep the cameras rolling, inspiration will spring from behind a rock.

Solomonic wisdom, sacrificial lambs, Infernos and desert wanderings, it is fundamentally little more than a well dressed, handsomely conceived theo-thriller with ideas – some of them decent, but all of them familiar – a little above the station of a crazed revenger. If you have a tiny gap in your rootin’-tootin’ Rolodex between , this Deadwood and The Assassination of Jesse James… will slot right in, never to be used. ADAM LEE DAVIES

Strong Island Di rec te d b y YANCE FORD Re lea sed 17 SEPTEMBER

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ate on a spring evening in 1992, in the parking accounts of personal heroism. The film steadily undoes lot of a Long Island body shop, a 24-year-old the faceless victim cliché, justas muchas itstrips away the man named William Ford was shot dead by a absurdity of the ‘scary black man’ narrative. 19-year old mechanic, Mark Riley. William was black There’s a sinuous internal rhythm toStrong and unarmed. His killer was white.Strong Island, Island, and every stylistic feels like it has been fully directed by William’s younger brother, Yance Ford,considered. It avoids showering too many facts on

ENJOYMENT. A har row ing , raw experience with a deeply intelligent internal rhythm.

is a document of that murder and of the family that the audience all at once, carefully withholding pivotal fractured in its wake. In spite of no evidence to suggest pieces of information as a way to develop the drama. that Yance’s brother was dangerous, a Grand JuryAs Yance tries to make sense of the unfathomable, he determined that the homicide was an act of self-defense. becomes both filmmaker and subject, eyes brimming with determination and pain. The larger implications According to them, no crime had been committed. The case didn’t even make it to trial. of this injustice are never lost on Ford, who builds the In his documentary Strong Island, Ford offers autobiographical details ofhis family life asinextricable a remarkable, incisive examination of his own from the history of American racism. His parents family history, harnessing a long-gestating grief and srcinally hailed from Charleston, South Carolina, channelling it into an emotionally draining but vital where they left the Jim Crow South and worked their piece of work. Building from his parents’ meeting way up to the middle class suburbs of New York. and marriage in 1965, Ford uses intimate interviews But racial animus was never far behind. The Ford alongside joyful family photo album inserts. Speaking family were determined to raise their children in an to his mother, sister and close family friends, he gives environment where – in Mrs Ford’s words – “character, a sense of the close-knit happiness of the Ford family not colour” mattered most. But in light of dozens more – before the staggering trauma inflicted on them cases involving the deaths of unarmed black men, the by William’s murder. The film balances the delicate details of William Ford’s story are tragically familiar. world of personal bereavement with a methodical Yance and William’s mother, Barbara – a lifelong examination of a broken justice system. It takes an educator – is in many ways theemotional anchor of the

IN RETROSPECT. Esse nti al , dev ast at in g vie win g. Ford mak es th e pe rso nal deeply political.

film. Interviewed in her kitchen over long periods, she unswerving scalpel to the finer details of the case. Using startling close-ups of his face in direct is articulate, warm, and insightful. “I did William a great address to the camera, Yance’s confessional and frankdisservice raising him the way we did,” Barbara says. ng fear or doubt about race musings punctuate the film’s narrative. Near the She’d always avoided instilli beginning, he says, “I’m not angry. But I’m also notinto her kids. She never asked them to be mindful or willing to allow someone else to get to say who William cautious of other people’s racism. How heartbreaking was.” Instead, we see the real man, sketched through that her philosophy could ever be perceived as diary entries, photos, anecdotes and even surprising unwise. CHRISTINA NEWLAND

ANTICIPATION. Pre sci ent do cum ent ar y fi lmm ak ing fro m a fam il yoriented perspective.

REVIEWS

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Una Di rec te d by BENEDICT ANDREWS

Sta rri ng ROONEY MARA BEN MENDELSOHN TARA FITZGERALD

Re lea sed 1 SEPTEMBER

ANTICIPATION.

Mara and Mend el soh n p lus Harr owe r’s pl ay pro mis e something explosiv e.

ENJOYMENT.

Tense and challenging, but only fi tf ull y e nga gi ng.

IN RETROSPECT.

If onl y it di dn’ t sho w all its car ds so early...

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na was groomed by her next door neighbour Ray as a young teenager beore being whisked off to a seaside motel room on an ‘adventure’ and then being abandoned. As Una, Rooney Mara is brittle, confrontational and hidden behind a curtain o dark hair. She is roguishly

voyeuristic and needlessly expositional. But th ese often feel empty, as in Andrews’ hands, Una reveals all its secrets in the opening scenes, to an extent there remains little little reason to watch the following 85-or-so minutes. In expanding the narrative into his own bounds

handled by Ray (Ben Mendelsohn), having turned up to his anonymous warehouse in search o answers. This single-location, hothouse play about being haunted by a past that will not wash away was a trap for first-time film director Benedict Andrews. When transposing David Harrower’s text rom the stage (known as Blackbird in that orm) to the screen, he had two options, and both were riddled with ris ks. The first option is to leave it as a stark, 90-minute conrontation that gradually revisits decades o pain and conusion in a sterile break room. This would have undoubtedly elt absurdly confined and possibly contrived. The second is Andrews’ eventual choice and what makes Una a film that is nauseatingly tense to witness but devoid of any kind o driving tension. He opens out the play, allowing the emotions and story to spill out of the room. It oten achieves the opposite effect to creating

but still retaining enough, Andrews loses the mystery o the play. The discovery o what exactly happened to Una is, in Harrower’s text, revealed through vague anecdotes and ofand comments that gradually sink under the skin in a sickening realisation. “Are you allergic to me?”, asked by Una when Ray starts rubbing his eyes, is a memorable one. As a fi rst time director rom theatre, Andrews makes the mistake o rendering the film flat by relying entirely on dull medium shots, adding a slight tilt when wanting to show some contrast in the power relationship – Una’s first glimpses of Ray sees a camera tilt down to look at her as she looks over the back o the chair. But while Andrews’ visuals are unengaging, he is undeniabl y adept at directing Mara and Mendelsohn to generate the crucially unpredictable atmosphere o the film. At times, it i s so shockingly intense t hat i t has the power to rip to tatters in an instant as it rattles with

something more cinematic and finely drawn, that explores the wide-reaching effect Ray’s abuse has had on Una. The spaces or exploration exist, the film having expanded the cast rom two to 20 (Ray’s loyal employee Scott, played by Riz Ahmed, being one o them) to manuactu re some additional complications: along with flashbacks to Una’s adolescence, which oten eel uncomortably

frayed nerves, hairline cracks that gradually expand under the pressure until they finally shatter. It’s as brittle as the metaphorical glass box Una finds hersel confined in, unable to escape while Ray disappears behind a new name and a cavernous warehouse. “The only thing I didn’t lose was my name,” Una says. If you look closely, you can see the cracks beginning to form. ELLA DONALD

God’s Own Country Di rec te d b y FRANCIS LEE

Sta rr ing JOSH O’CONNOR ALEC SECAREANU IAN HART

Re lea se d 1 SEPTEMBER

ANTICIPATION.

Farmi ng ha rds hi p, ga y s ex, Ro ma nia n m ig ran t. .. .i s th is jus t a box-ticking exercise?

ENJOYMENT.

Sta rts of f wit h fam ili ar gr ung y nat ura li sm, th en ge ts sensual, emotive and spiritual.

IN RET ROSPECT.

You’ll find yourself getting teary a week later – a potent, haunting meditation on the s oul-stirring significance of being open to love.

t’s just about the greatest two-word line of dialogue you could imagine. Johnny, our abrasive, troubled, twenty-ish Yorkshire farmer, has just buggered some lithe young chap in a horsebox. No apologies for using that word either, since this is an act of aggression and domination. Still, the

I

lot more sensual. He might at first seem a bit too good to be true, yet in expressing his nurturing instincts towards another man in a way which would never have been possible in his homeland, this wise traveller opens up whole new vistas for the emotionally closed-in protagonist. Indeed,

victim wonders if ‘we’ could go for a drink sometime, and gets a brusque slap-down for his pains. “No we” says Johnny, and at this stage in the proceedings that sums him up precisely. So far as family, friends and everyone else is concerned, he’s a scrunchedup ball of scorn, bitter at struggling to keep the farm afloat while his ailing old dad keeps telling him what to do. And Josh O’Connor’s compelling central performance gives it all to us unvarnished and raw. Then we see him alone with one of the family’s cows. Softly-spoken and genuine in his concern, even while he has a plastic-wrapped arm elbow-deep in her behind. Evidently, there’s tenderness lurking within his gruff exterior, but will it ever emerge from behind the wall of bitterness he’s put up between himself and the world? Ten minutes in, and with masterly economy, first-time writer-director Francis Lee has set up a drama of universal resonance within a highly specific

what’s quite magical here, is the way in which a film so seemingly austere and undemonstrative in its washed-out colour and no-frills camerawork, uses sparing means – the primacy of touch, a glint of sunlight, flowers on a kitchen table, the ecstatic drone of A Winged Victory for the Sullen’s stealthy score – to convey the sudden blessing of love. To show us and Johnny how its dizzying, transformative vulnerability, can bring life even more alive. For all the way in which the subject matter apparently touches onvery publicissues (theeconomy of the land, LGBT rights, post-Brexit attitudes), in essence the film is absolutely intimate and personal, shaped by marvellously believable performances and ultimately achieving a heart-rending authenticity. Taking characters and audience alike on a soulstirring journey, in British cinema terms, it’s surely a throwback to the era of autobiographical trilogies of Terence Davies and Bill Douglas – films which

local landscape. Furthermore, there’s something utterly archetypal about the way a stranger entering this environment proves the catalyst to move everything forward. Gheorghe (Alec Secareanu) is a wily Romanian migrant, taken on as a hired hand, who’s a dab hand at lambing, knows his way round a dry-stone wall, and, more importantly, transmutes Johnny’s sexual advances into something a whole

start out with their feet on the ground yet reach to the heavens. For fortysomething writer/director Lee, it’s an outstanding achievement, perhaps the strongest British début since Lynne Ramsay’s Ratcatcher . No doubt about it, there’s a lifetime’s craft, wisdom and tears packed into this eloquent statement of emotional and spiritual possibilities. TREVOR JOHNSTON

REVIEWS

075

Daphne Di rec te d by PETER MACKIE BURNS

Sta rri ng EMILY BEECHAM GERALDINE JAMES TOM VAUGHAN LAWLOR

Re lea se d 29 SEPTEMBER

ANTICIPATION.

Could a new star be born in the lead of this low-key character piece?

ENJOYMENT.

Yes she could, even though the fi lm it se lf ha s so me ni gg les .

IN RETR OSPECT.

A wor k (a nd a pe rfo rma nce ) th at matures in the mind.

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REVIEW

L

ondon is currently playing host to a rash of crimes where young teenagers toss acid in to the face of random strangers as the prelude to a theft. On the news, anchors describe how these attacks result in “life-changing” injuries, emphasising that, in an instant, fate can deal you the

She works in a restaurant where all the staff wear muslin aprons, but only so she has the cash to go out and get drunk when her shift is over. Smoking numbs the pain of her loneliness. She has acquaintances rather than friends, and human contact comes in the form of watchful randos, like an amourous

bummest of bum hands. Peter Mackie Burns’ soulful debut feature Daphne explores a similar conundrum, as it follows a young, single, bewildered woman as she witnesses a stabbing in an all-night off licence. One moment it’s tipsy revelry and basking in the romantic glow of twinkling street lamps, the next it’s the insta-sobering moment where you’re clutching a man as he bleeds out on the deck, requesting to glimpse a grubby photograph of his children before he potentially shuffles off. How can a person just carry on regardless after this shot of high trauma? This is the kind of fragile, high-wire character piece that lives or dies on the strength of its lead performance, and luckily Burns has drafted in relative newcomer Emily Beecham as the eponymous heroine. Actually, “heroine” isn’t exactly the right term to describe Daphne – she’s more of an impetuous focal point who, on the wrong side of 30, i s locked in a constant tailsp in.

bouncer or the delivery guy of the local Indian takeaway. Daphne is not a likeable or endearing character in any sense – you want to shake some sense into her. But Beecham works hard to make sure an empathatic core is visible through the mire of confusion and narcissism. She’s not a bad person, she’s just a lost person who’s finding it very tough to be good. Her long night of the soul comes after one of her customary drink-ups where a quick nip into a shop for fags leaves her with weeping existential scars. Yet this is no conventional epiphany, as it sends Daphne even further down her furrow of solitude. Her depression has reached a dangerous low that borders on the nihilistic. The brooding negative emotions are brought to life by the srcinal and atmospheric depiction of a city that’s anonymous, mysterious and shorn of iconic landmarks. If the film has any issues, it’s that some of the interactions err on the synthetic – they

Her dominant trait is that she always says yes until you give her just one small reason to say no. She’s impulsive, but only in the company of like-minded souls. Self-doubt and sensible behaviour lead to instant rejection, as if she can’t abide the residual responsibility of others. It’s like she can only feel happy if she is able to see other people making all the same bad decisions that she is.

feel too much like visual representations of words on a page. There are numerous meet cutes that come to nothing, and there’s the feeling that Burns is trying too hard to achieve a free-flowing naturalism through carefully calibrated performances. But it’s Beecham’s combustible, subtly alienating and hopefully star-making central turn that gives this flighty film its wings. DAVID JENKINS

IN CONVERSATION...

In te rv ie w by DAVID JENKINS Illustration by

SARAH TANAT JONES

Emily Beecham The star of Dap hne talks likable characters, Fle aba g and seeing Nicole

about telling the truth and being honest about relationships and character dynamics. I think growing up in quite a repressive town I really responded to seeing that reflection of reality. And that’s what I love about film and theatre st ill: the way they expose truths and explore life. What was your training? I went to LAMDA which is a theatre training school and then went straight into film and television, so I had to

Do you have to see yourself in a character for there to be a connection? Maybe there just has to be an understanding. If you don’t get why your character is doing something you can’t make it work. This sense of understanding also makes it more enjoyable and fun. It allows you to be more creative. How do you feel about the idea that Daphne is unlikable? Does that make the character

harder to play?I like her abrasiveness, but some of the press reactions had been a bit Are they entirely separate disciplines? similar. I’m friends with Phoebe WallerThey’re star is born in Daphne, a delicate, very different. But then it’s very similar as well. Bridge who did Fleabag and we’d both been London-set character study about It’s just a different system. With theatre you’remaking them at the same time. I think the a young woman who vents her running the whole play and you can get lost inthat, characters have similar traits. With that, some depression in a number of bizarre ways. Emily but when you’re doing film it’s so split up and to hitpeople really connected to the character and Beecham delivers a thrilling turn in the tile role, your mark is very technical. Film is smaller. Whenreally loved her, and there were others who I first started out in film I was told to be smaller. were offended and asking why this character capitalising on a career working in theatre, film and television – she is currently installed as fan I was too big. deserved to be on the screen. I don’t think favourite The Widow in Into the Badlands. characters have to be likeable. Everyone is As in too extrovert? Yeah. In theatre, you have good and bad. LWLies: Was there a moment in your life to be larger. And then you have to bring it down where you decided you wanted to be an actor? Yes, and that’s actually or its really unnatural. But yeah it’s different so Is Daphne a tomboy? now when I have a theatre audition I’m told to one of the things I loved about her. She is Beecham: I think my mum took me to see theatre and, um, I saw ‘The Blue Room’ when I make it bigger, and that feels huge to me now. genderless in a way. I’m actually reading some was 13 which was probably an inappropriate age more interesting scripts now since Badlan ds to watch that. Had you done anything like Daphne before?No. and Daphn e, but yeah, you do read a lot of I always wanted to do an independent film. It’s girlfriends and women who are, you know,

Kidman in the nude.

unlearn all of that.

A

Was that the Nicole Kidman one with lots such of a reflection of reality and it’s not shackled supportive and lovely and vulnerable. They’re nudity? Oh my god. I know… to commercial concerns. On an independent film always the same traits, over and over. You you can make almost any choice you want. With feel pressured to be an attractive character. And you thought, ‘I wanna do that’? I just liked more commercial shows, likeInto the Badlands, You tend to feel that what these people want the, um… I watched Michael Winterbottom’s they want something so specific. There’s no – what producers want – is a cut-and-dried Wonderlandon television when I was quite young leniency in that, but withDaphne its completely loveable character and nothing more. And it’s as well, and I think they both had a big impact the opposite and that’s what I’m drawn to – as a just not that interesting. An d it’s cert ainly n ot on me. With theatre, everything is exposed. It’s viewer and a participant. very r eal. D aphne’s dif ferent. As is Fleabag

INTERVIEW

077

On Body and Soul

Zoology

Di rec te d b y ILDIKÓ ENYEDI Sta rri ng GÉZA MORCSÁNYI, ALEXANDRA BORBÉLY,

Di rec ted by IVAN TVREDOVSKIY Sta rri ng NATALYA PAVLENKOVA, DMITRIY

RÉKA TENKI Rel ea sed 22 SEPTEMBER

GROSHEV,

IRINA CHIPIZHENKO Re lea se d 29 SEPTEMBER

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stag trots slowly, majestically through a snowy woodland glade and sets its glistening eyes on a nearby doe. The two animals encircle one another, getting close but never quite connecting. Then suddenly, paff, it was all a dream. The twist is, this nocturnal vision was being formed in two minds at the same time: one belongs to Endre (Géza Morcsányi), an awkward, middle-aged factor y foreman with one working arm;the other is Maria (Alexandra Borbély), a young, quietly intense quality tester. Maybe the imagery that connects their inner consciousness is a result of the fact that they work in an abattoir and are in constant close quarters to mechanised animal slaughter – innocent creatures being sliced to pieces. Or, perhaps, they have a morerobust psychic connection that can’t be quantified?

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Ildikó Enyedi’s intriguing and srcinal film (herfirst of the 21st century) examines this eccentric workplace relationship as it evolves from an uncomfortable acquaintance to the moment these two oddballs realise they may be part of something deeper. Yet the director grounds this potentially fantastical tale in the trappings of the mundane everyday, more interested in gauging how behaviour alters in public and private spheres. Enyedi isn’t interested in building up a mythology or contriving a reason for it all, instead drafting the idea as ametaphorical marker of unlikely associations. The film’s second half offers a bold and bleak vision of depression caused by stifled feelings – the idea of not being able to amply express an emotion that’s locked inside. Endre is a sad-sack who believes that he could never be physically attractive to a person of the opposite sex, while Maria has pre-existing issues which prevent her from acting on impulse. Enyedi trips through these inner and outer lives, skipping from elation to devastation in the space of an edit. She seems completely enraptured by the infinite complexity of human biology and the crooked architecture of the mind. DAVID JENKINS

reaction to her tail draws her out of her bleak shell and, after a slightly drunken, brilliantly composed sledding session, their companionship is set. Russian writer/director Ivan Tvredovskiy allows the restraint of his characters to build up a sense of hair-trigger tension until animalistic impulses take over. Ongoing gossip among the townsfolk about this “witch” with nefarious abilities is also manipulated brilliantly, keeping the blend of fantasy and oppressive social views relevantly intertwined within the narrative. Natasha’s gradual acceptance and eventual fear-mongering to create a sense of self-empowerment commendably shows the extent of her growth throughout the film as well.Credit must be paid to Pavlenkova’ s performance as the repressed recluse. She throws herselfnto i the role head on, leaving it all on screen. It is no wonder the di rector brought the Russian actress back after working with her on his first feature, the well-received 2014 film, Corrections Class. Out of the blocks with two strong showings already, Tvredovskiy’s young career has shown great promise and has us all eagerly awaiting his prospective work.JOSH HOWEY

ANTICIPATION. Sna gg ed th e to p pri ze at th e 201 7

ANTICIPATION. Tverdovskiy’s new feature combines

ENJOYMENT. Mad, si ngu lar and he art -

ENJOYMENT. A c our ag eou s perf orm anc e a cco mpa nie d by a

stirring in a way that’s hard to comprehend.

horribly realistic human tail dangling from beneath her skirt.

IN RETROSPECT. Let ’s ho pe th e wai t fo r Enye di’s

IN RETROSPECT. Mana ge s to te ll th e st ory of a

next film is a little s

woman growing a tail with

Berl in Film Fest iva l f rom Werne r Herzo g’s jur y.

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REVIEWS

horter .

fter growing a grotesque, fleshy tail, a lonely, middle-aged zoo administrator’s journeys from obscurity to infamy unfolds in the Russian fable, Zoology. It would be easy to get lost in the tail end of the narrative but there is much more subtle emotion to be found throughout. With a modest 91-minute runtime, the film’s thought-provoking depth manages to sustain the lightly bound plot. It delivers a piercing social commentary on inner beauty over outer vanity through metaphors depicting public perceptions of gender and sexuality. There is a joyous and often-unorthodox relationship formed between central protagonist Natasha (Natalya Pavlenkova) and her handsome radiologist, Peter (Dmitriy Groshev). His kindness and nonchalant

fai ry tal e nar rat ive s wit h b ras h mo der n r ea lit ies .

sad and memorable conviction.

ukjewishfilm.org

My Journey Through French Cinema Di rec te d by BERTRAND TAVERNIER Re lea se d 15 SEPTEMBER

ANTICIPATION. A p ers ona l jou rne y through French movies. With Bertrand Tavernier.

ENJOYMENT. At do ubl e t he len gt h, th is wou ld

still be too short.

IN RETROSPECT. An il lum ina ti ng hym n t o fi lmm ak ing and ci nep hi lia .

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F

or cinephiles of a certain age, there was perhaps no more treasured possession than a well-worn VHS copy of Martin Scorsese’s 1995 documentary, A Personal Journey Through American Movies. A treasure-mapof the filmmaker ’s formative influences, many almost impossible to see in those

serve to send you back to the works in question with fresh eyes, his acute formal readin gs ofte n accompanied by a dismantling of established truths. So while we get an extended reading of the function of Renoir’s lateral camera movements within the context of a scene (“A rea ction against

pre-golden age days of home video, it offered innumerable pick-your-poison grail-quests for those of us yet to know our Budd Boetticher from our Delmer Daves. Just two years older than Scorsese, Bertrand Tavernier was too young to come of age as a filmmaker during French cinema’s most widelycelebrated époque, the New Wave. He was, however, present for its inception – whether hanging with Truffaut on the set of The 400 Blows or cruising through the streets of Paris with Jean-Pierre Melville as he extemporised on the two categories of film (“crap” and “masterpiece”) from behind the wheel. Tavernier’s route from young cinephile to critic to filmmaker was a familiar one, and serves as the structural backbone for his own personal journe y through French movies in this essen tial documentary. Where Scorsese cast his net wide,

his father’s attempts to abolish depth of field”), we also get a dism issal of his self-procl aimed improvisatory skills on a celebrated sequence-shot, alongside Jean Gabin’s barbed characterisation – “As a director, a genius; as a person, a whore.” While Tavernie r’s perso nal relati onship s with many of the filmm akers in quest ion help to humanise through a fascinating succession of anecdotes, his critical idiosyncrasies (“With time I came to feel Bob le flamb eur was overrated”) never stray far from the affectionate. He offers an extended defence of Marcel Carné – “The only director incapable of writing a scene. And yet the films exist, and some of them are masterpieces.” Tavernier’s own thrill in the sense of discovery is channeled through technical know-how, his evangelism for “the prince of fringe directors,” Edmond T Gréville, say, guaranteeing a bee-line made for his little-known, “staggeringly bold studies

largely charting the psychological impact his filmmaking heroes had on an impressionable mind, Tavernier takes in a mere dozen over the course of his 192 minutes, generously apportioning time to illuminating technical commentary and digressional, first-hand myth-busting. Even if you’re familiar with many of the films under discussion, Tavernier’s pointed analysis

of sexual impotence.” Menaces from 1938, starring a masked, crippled Eric von Stroheim, can only take the top-spot on countless to-see lists as a result. If the film is by no means comprehensive, one can take comfort in the promise in the credits of a second part to come. On the evidence of this essential hymn to filmmaking and cinephilia, it can’t come soon enough. MATT THRIFT

The Limehouse Golem Di rec te d b y JUAN CARLOS MEDINA

Sta rr ing BILL NIGHY OLIVIA COOKE DOUGLAS BOOTH

Re lea se d 1 SEPTEMBER

ANTICIPATION.

We loved director Juan Carlos Med ina ’s pre vio us fi lm Painless .

ENJOYMENT.

Low so ci ety, hi gh go th ic , mi d o rga sm.

IN RETROSPECT.

Twisty theatrical vision of Victorian vice and injustice.

W

e hear the murmurings of an audience, then we see curtains open, and actor Dan Leno (Douglas Booth) appears on the stage, dressed as a woman and promising to begin at the end. What follows is a cinematic rendition of something like the play’s content: Elizabeth (Olivia

Told in a series of interlocking flashbacks that form a mosaic of both Elizabeth’s troubled past and of London’s rich underbelly, and presenting its own grisly precursor to Jack the Ripper, The Limehouse Golem is a whodunnit that carves up Victorian society to both comic and tragic effect. And like any good

Cooke), a former actress, discovers her husband, pantomime, it comes with enough variety to please the playwright John Cree (Sam Reid), dead in everyone in the audience. As its Grand Guignol and his bed, and is placed on trial for his poisoning, penny dreadfulness unfold in the dockyards, back with the threat of the gallows hanging over her. alleys, gin houses and opium dens of a corrupted Yet what is important here is those first sights and capital baying for blood (and that enjoys a good show), sounds, framing everything that follows as part of a the film’s commitment to anatomising a marginalised spectacle for an audience (which it is). For, adapted demimonde oppressed either for its class, ethnicity, by Jane Goldman from Peter Ackroyd’s 2012 novel gender or sexuality might almost earn it the label of ‘Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem’, this film is a Marxist. The presence of Marx himself as a character, bravura music-hall gothic, with all of 1880s London representing both persecuted Jewry and the its theatricalised stage. proletariat, ensures that there is a solid ideological Closeted Inspector John Kildare (Bill Nighy) is scaffold from which to hang the film’s social concern set up by his superior, in what is a piece of political with the overlooked underclass. Even Elizabeth theatre, to fail in investigating the latest grisly human herself is regarded as doubly tainted,being of low birth tableau left by the serial killer dubbed, indeed self- and merely a woman. Her mistreatment by so many dubbed, ‘the Golem’. He finds in the British Library alies at the heart of the film. handwritten diary/confession which could only have Director Juan Carlos Medina (resonsible for been penned by one of the four men who had visited 2012’s Painless) mounts an onscreen drama in which the reading room at that time: John Cree, Karl Marx marriages are sham, murders are stage-managed, (Henry Goodman), scholar George Gissing (Morgan Watkins) and self-made actor/impresario Dan Leno. Connecting this case to Elizabeth, Kildare sets about proving her innocence, even as Elizabeth’s own life story – of abuse, neglect, exploitation and eventual celebrity on the boards – also turns out to be the subject of the late John’s failed play Misery Junction, in which Elizabeth would star as herself.

and only myths and legends are realised. By the time the end of this twisty, topsy-turvy narrative has caught up with its beginning in a world of illusions and performances, nothing seems the same any more, all roles have been reversed, and the script has been rewritten several times to centre, elevate and immortalise the Victorian age’s bit players. ANTON BITEL

REVIEWS

081

Victoria & Abdul Di rec te d by STEPHEN FREARS

Sta rri ng JUDI DENCH ALI FAZAL EDDIE IZZARD

Re lea se d 15 SEPTEMBER

ANTICIPATION.

So un ds fas ci na ti ng bu t cou ld be condescending.

ENJOYMENT.

How Qu ee n Vic to ri a go t he r g roo ve ba ck !

IN RETROSPECT.

La ug hs an d mel an cho ly aplenty but the relationship between Victoria and Abdul is over romanticised.

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uring the last 15 years of her life Queen Victoria found companionship with an Indian servant named Abdul Karim. He caught her eye at the Golden Jubilee celebrations of 1887, cutting an appealing figure in court and making her all a-quiver when he kissed her feet in admiration.

and official meetings. In the early stages of the film, Dench plays her as a commanding woman on autopilot, still grieving at the death of her husband and the relationship with John Brown still weighing heavily on her mind. She’s almost grey in appearance. Yet the Queen’s friendship with the Munshi

The Queen nicknamed Abdul her Munshi (a Persian term for secretary), and as their relationship developed, the pair spent many hours together writing in journals and learning one another’s native tongue. His photo hung just below that of another faithful servent, John Brown, and though he was held in high esteem by the Queen, lavished with various awards and honours, her household continually tried to discredit him. Their fascinating and tender relationship is captured with charm and humour in this lovely new feature. Director Stephen Frears and screenwriter Lee Hall blend the bureaucratic hysteria of political sitcom The Thick of It with the light-heartedness and sentiment of films such as Philomena or the Mumbaiset romcom, The Lunchbox . Judi Dench reprises her role as Queen Victoria (one she last played in Mrs Brown some 20 years ago) and Ali Fazal’s eyes twinkle with the milk of human kindness as her loyal

flourishes and Dench builds a mischievous, sparkly warmth and scathing wit into her Victoria. Surrounded by a phalanx of arrogant offspring and toadying staffers, the Queen’s unhappiness is eased by the presence of her Munshi. Eddie Izzard plays Bertie, Prince of Wales, as a spoiled, jealous child who is hungry for power. The household’s opulent feasts, ingrained snobbery and openly racist attitudes are cruel, and are paraded as such. No one gets off lightly, as even Victoria’s more frilly behaviour is called out during a singing session with Giacomo Puccini (Simon Callow) and Abdul’s ambition and love for British culture takes precedence over his Indian heritage. The loneliness of later life and the depression it brings with it, as explored recently in Bill Condon’s Mr Holmes, is touched upon but there is an air of pomposity when Victoria confides to Abdul, “We are all prisoners.” It’s fair to examine how Victoria’s

confidante. The filmmakers note that, even though this is based on a true story and adapted from a book written by Shrabani Basu, they do take some artistic license with the telling. The film doesn’t sugarcoat the physical condition of the Queen in her later years – the viewer witnesses her squishy, still snoring body being rolled out of bed by her staff ahead of a strict regime of responsibilities

standing in life left her feeling isolated but it’s a naïve leap too far to compare the life of impoverished men forced to leave their homeland and work for the Empress of India to her privileged lifestyle. For the most part, though, Frears and co. poke fun at the monarchy and do a decent job at presenting the complex relationship between India and England. KATHERINE MCLAUGHLIN

Breathe Di rec ted by ANDY SERKIS

Sta rri ng ANDREW GARFIELD CLAIRE FOY TOM HOLLANDER

Re lea sed 27 OCTOBER

ANTICIPATION.

Ever yth in g abo ut th is screams awards bait.

ENJOYMENT.

Melo dra ma do ne pro pe rly, pow ere d by a pa ir of outstanding performances.

IN RETROSPECT.

The start of an exciting new chapter in the career of Andy Serkis.

t’s poetic that someone like the great Andy Serkis would make such a sensitive and unsentimental film about human paralysis, considering that much of his professional career has been driven by understanding the impulse behind how and why people (and animals) move their

I

fact that everything on screen feels precisely judged and carefully weighted. Andrew Garfield offers further evidence that he may be the UK’s greatest young actor, channelling Robin’s morbidly wry outlook without ever tipping over into cod i nsincerity and arrogance. Claire Foy, meanwhile, delvers an

bodies. In the 2010 film Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll he played avuncular punk idol Ian Dury, a figure who was partially disabled by polio but who rebelliously cultivated career and family regardless. With Breathe he shifts behind the camera, but his experience and knowledge of the virus and its effects are palpable. Heartbreaking, even. This doleful, three-hankie weepie tells of one Robin Cavendish, chipper tea trader and full-bore posh knob who, at the end of the 195 0s, contracts polio while in Africa and is left paralysed from the neck down. His life hangs by the thread of an omnipresent respirator whose comforting oscillations become the constant soundtrack to his continued existence. At first he wants to die because society, technology and capitalism have no place for those in his condition. He is wracked with torment and sees no future for himself. His doting wife Diana sees otherwise, and dedicates her days to extending and improving

extraordinary, piercingly subtle turn as unflappable spouse Diana. She embodies this paragon of humane compassion down to the last follicle, never making it feel too obvious that her eternal pluck is a mere smokescreen for more doom-laden feelings. The darkness and light exist within her simultaneously, and they are visible whenever she is in the frame. It’s a remarkable feat of subtle, candid expression. But it’s not just the performances keeping this ship afloat. As a debut director, Serkis presents himself as a filmmaker who searches for the one thing that matters in every scene. He maintains an awareness of everyone and everything in a room or location, generating an atmosphere that’s lived-in rather than cold and artificial. And it’s not just a procession of longing glances and warm banter: one brilliantly handled, clock-ticking suspense sequence sees the family dog nudge the respirator plug out of the wall while Diana tends

Robin’s apparently hopeless situation. Yes, it doesn’t read like much more than a conventional disease-of-the-week movie where an irrepressible will to survive (plus an infinite stock of human empathy) lays low the misfortunes of a crushing ailment. And Serkis accepts this formula, to a degree. YetBreathe succumbs to few of the mawkish pitfalls of this dubious sub-genre, mainly down to the

to their toddler, Jonathan. It does lose some steam when it moves a way from the intimate husbandwife dynamic to fill out more mundane (albeit important) biographical matters. And the score by Nitin Sawhney is seven flavours of gloopy syrup. Otherwise, this is a well-oiled and finely-calibrated machine. Hold on to your flat-caps come award season. DAVID JENKINS

REVIEWS

083

IN CONVERSATION…

In te rv ie w by DAVID JENKINS

Il lu st ra ti on by SARAH TANAT JONES

Andy Serkis The master of motion capture discusses his inspirational directorial debut, Breathe – a love story about polio.

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n his most high profile movie roles, actor Andy Serkis is usually seen hiding underneath a pristine digital veil, maybe playing Golum in the Lord of the Rings movies, or King Kong, or more recently, enlightened ape Caesar in War for the Planet of the Apes . You don’t get to see him in Breathe either, but this time it’s because he’s behind the camera, directing the story of polio sufferer-turned-disability activist, Robin Cavendish (Andrew Garfield), and his eminently stoical wife, Diana (Claire Foy). We spoke to the actor about his auspicious and surprising debut feature.

We shot Jungle Book, and And yetBreathe has been completed first. then for lots and lots of reasons – post-production being extended and so forth – there was a hiatus, and obviously the Disney movie was happening, so we decided that we’d go and speed into Breathe. What happened was we ramped up very quickly, Andrew Garfield and Claire Foy came on board, it sort of all fell into place in a matter of weeks.

The spectre of death hangs over the entire film – was that a tough concept to capture? What I really loved about the story was that it’s about LWLies: How did you first hear the story of Robin Cavendish? Serkis: pioneering souls. A man takes a chance and lives life to the full, but he Well it’s quite an extraordinary tale really. Jona than Cavendish is my is always two minutes away from death. He created a life outside of the producing partner and fellow founder of the Imaginarium studios. Robin hospital system and no one had ever done that. was his dad. So, it’s a very personal tale. Not only that, Diana – Johnathan’s mother – has actually become very close friends with me and my wife Although it does focus on Robin and Diana, it’s very much a celebration because we inadvertently bought a barn out in Oxfordshire, in the same village that this entire story took place. So, it’s a rather extraordinary set of coincidences.

of the group dynamic. I pushed that aspect because it reminded me of the film Man on Wire, with the cabal of people who surrounded Philippe Petit to spring a wire between the Twin Towers. It was like their lives became completely validated by this act. From talking to Diana Cavendish and Why did he choose William Nicholson to write this very personal all story? the family, it seemed like they were doing this for Robin. They were Jonathan has been wanting to make this film for about ten years or so, and pulling off something incredibly daring, risky and Heath Robinsonian, put before we got together and set the Imaginarium up, he was working with Bill together with nuts and bolts to enable this man to become a “responaut”, Elizabeth: The Golden Age. He had plans to make which is what all people were called who lived outside of hospital. Nicholson on, I believe it was this film and he was looking for a writer. He went to Shadowlands see in the theatre, and then he realised it was Bill who had written it. He said, ‘if everInI Sex & Drugs & Rock & Rollyou played Ian Dury who suffered with Shadowlands to write the Polio in his younger life – was there any kind of overlapWell there? get to make this film I want the person who wrote it’s screenplay’. So he took Bill out for lunch and the story goes that he said, ‘Look interesting you should say that, because when I read the script it didn’t I’ll tell you the story and see if it interests you’. Apparently Bill loaded up a actually occur to me, but of course looking back the polio connection is forkful of food and went to put it in his mouth and it never got there. So Bill said, obvious. I did have an understanding of that world and that period, and specifically how polio was dealt with during the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s. So ‘Okay, I really want to write this, but I’ll write it on one condition: that you don’t yes, there definitely was a connection there. I’ve sort of grown up with pay me for it and we just make it ourselves and then we can control it.’ disability in that sense. My Mum taught lots of children with polio and And so how did youfind your way into the director’s Jonathan chair? and spina bifida. And also my sister contracted MS about 15 years ago. I had started working on a screen version of Animal Farm and I said, I just think to myself now, people have a tough time getting around if ‘Look, I really would like to make this’. He just said, ‘absolutely, let’s do it.’ We’d set the Imaginarium up as I’d just come back from directing the second unit on The Hobbit for 200 days, which was sort of my directorial learning curve, really. We were out in South Africa on recce for Breath e when we found out that I was going to be directing Jungl e Book , so we sort of put Breath e to one s ide. We decided that it’d be really very good for us, t he I maginariu m, an d fo r mys elf as a director to ta ke on Jungl e Boo k, and then we’d return to Breathe afterwards.

they’re wheelchair bound in 2017 – how on earth did these people manage to survive outside of the hospital when they were kept there, incarcerated, away from public view and were not considered equal members of society? And when we talk about disabled rights now, we still have a way to go obviously, but things changed radically in those years. So all of those aspects were what interested me about the film, as well as it being a beautiful love story, which it is. It’s an incredible story of true love. And I mean really, truly, true love

INTERVIEW

085

The Villainess

The Lure

Di rec te d b y JUNG BYUNG-GIL Sta rr ing KIM OK-BIN, SHIN HA-KYUN, SUNG-JOON Rel eas ed 15 SEPTEMBER

Di rec te d b y TOMAS LEACH Rel ea se d 8 SEPTEMBER

“P

eople like adventure. They like to be part of the mystery of the unknown.” Hidden within art dealer and author Forrest Fenn’s novel, ‘The Thrill of the Chase’ is a short poem purportedly leading to a treasure buried somewhere in the American Southwest, each of its nine stanzas offering a separate cryptic clue. Tomas Leach’s The Lure explores the varying psychological drives that compel thousands to obsessively search for this haul, as well as delving into the motivations of their ringleader, Fenn, a masterful creator of myth and mystery and a gift of a documentary subject. In between hunks of context provided by interspersed news segments and suitably enigmatic statements from Fenn, Leach layers beautiful

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landscape cinematography over his conversations with the hunters. Transforming what could be a rudimentary talking heads documentary into something a little more cinematic, the visuals convey a sense of the spectacular terrain that initially draws the searchers to this quixotic pursuit, while his interviews probe further into their psyches to find what fuels them to keep coming back. Leach’s conclusion is too obvious. What connects those struck by “gold fever” is not really the contents of the chest but the sense of purpose the search provides. These lost souls are all looking to fill a particular void. The Lure lacks focus and the testimonies can be ambling, yet there is something quietly tragic about the film, not just in the obsessive conviction of looking for something that may not even exist, but also in the cult of personality that exists around Forrest Fenn. His claimed obsession with storytelling seems to be a cover for a more primal desire for fame and legacy, and ultimately for control. When asked why he buried the treasure, he says: “I’m the only person in the world who knows where it is. That’s powerful.” MATT TURNER

this high security, high spec stockade during her latest (abortive) escape attempt. Flashbacks to an idylic past add to the film’s intensity and flesh out Sook-hee’s dramatic backstory. These interludes can be repetitive at times, but they have a tempering effect: the more hushed, sentimental scenes with her new family are essential to catch the breath between the bouts of mayhem. One highlight sees Sook-hee, dressed in a wedding gown, completing a new mission in the venue’s rest rooms and missing the target, a man who reminds her of past love Joong-sang (Shin Ha-kyun). This surprising romantic sub-plot appears like an interesting new twist, but it isn’t. Instead it feels hurried and more like a cheap device, leaving details overlooked and leading to an inevitable and upsetting climax. Still, it’s the amazing fights and precisely-executed choreography which make up for the sh aky storytelling: whether it is a battle with swords, a night motorbike chase or an axe clash in a bus pelting at full speed, there are undoubtably great moments here. As a whole, though, it doesn’t work quite so well. CLAIRE LANGLAIS

ANTICIPATION. Tomas Leach made a feature doc about Sa ul Lei te r and so me dec ent sh ort s, but not hi ng maj or.

ANTICIPATION. So uth Korea com bi nes fe mme -as sa ss in ant ics wi th lon g ga me reve nge .

ENJOYMENT.

ENJOYMENT. Som e gre at sce nes and we’ re made to root for Sook-hee’ s happiness.

Ecc ent ri c c har ac te rs, be aut ifu l s cen ery. IN RETROSPECT. Visuals good, subject conclusions a little simplistic.

0 8 6 REVIEWS

compelling but

he price of freedom is staggeringly high in Jung Byung-Gil’s enjoyable action thriller The Villainess , as an elite killer trained since childhood and who later serves Korea’s Intelligence Agency has to fight for life and liberty. The film’s opening scene – which is partly filmed first-person POV – introduces Sook-hee (Kim Ok-bin) who, during a ferocious fight sequence, defeats a large crowd of armed men. This offers a direct and bloody precursor of things to come, as well as cementing our heroine’s badass credentials. Sook-hee is arrested and handed to the nefarious Intelligence Agency where she is forced to hone her killer craft alongside other trained assassins. But she still desperately wants out, and so takes us on a tour of

IN RETROSPECT. Plo t lo gi c i s swe pt as id e in fav our

of big action set pieces,

Menashe

Félicité

Direc te d by JOSHUA Z WEINSTEIN Sta rri ng MENASHE LUSTIG, YOEL FALKOWITZ,

Dir ect ed by ALAIN GOMIS Sta rri ng VÉRO TSHANDA BEYA MPUTU, GAETAN CLAUDIA,

RUBEN NIBORSKI Rel eased 3 NOVEMBER

Re lea sed 20 OCTOBER

PAPI MPAKA

F

ancy a rare, Yiddish-language venture into the hermetic world of New York’s Hasidic community? This fiction feature debut of documentary filmmaker Joshua Z Weinstein is a tender c haracter study less interested in questions of politics or ideological scrutiny than in offering a nuanced portrait of its singular cultural milieu. Weinstein’s simple approach is seen in the film’s opening shots, singling-out his eponymous protagonist (Menashe Lustig) from the outskirts of Borough Park’s crowded melting-pot. With his lackadaisical approach to the formalities of attire, Menashe’s role as black sheep within the community is apparent before he even opens his mouth. Menashe is struggling with the constrictive impositio ns of orthodoxy.

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Not that he – nor Weinstein – show any inclination towards wider questions of modernisation; Menashe just wants to be left to get on with things on his own terms. Recently bereaved, and with his son being cared for by his late wife’s implacable brother while he struggles to hold down a convenience store job, Menashe’s attempts to regain custody as a single father are out of the question. As he half-heartedly goes through the motions – at work, on an excruciating date – this loving and wellmeaning but all too fallible father slowly edges towards compromise and responsibility. Weinstein lays out the endless cycles of social and cu ltural ritual with a documenta rian’s eye for detail. The close, handheld camera illustrates Menashe’s increasing lack of breathing room as it passively negotiates the cramped apartments and claustrophobically populated frames. If there are some narrative contrivances they’re minor quibbles in a film as sensitively performed as it is directed. With such remarkable access gained to a notoriously closed-off community, it’s a worthy addition to the ranks of New York stories rarely seen or told. MATT THRIFT

Often, background details fall away as she fills the shallow focus of the frame, her single-minded determination overcoming all else as she attempts to make money for her son’s vital operation. This is just one way in which the cinematic canvass is put to its fullest use by Céline Bozon’s buoyant cinematography, which never slips into the televisual despite the film’s naturalistic style. Unfortunately, the film loses some of its urgency as it passes the half way ma rk and shifts into a languorous third act. The script makes an admirable effort to strike a more pensive tone, but it fails to build on the emotional resonance of earlier sequences. As such, the editing loses its taut structure and some sluggish scenes outstay their welcome. And yet, the film thankfully finds its feet again with a tender denouement. Uncovering the realities of urban life in modern central Africa, in both its joys and its sorrows,Félicité pays tribute to the warmth and determination of a people in a rapidly developing society. Despite the harrowing events depicted, this is a film with a clear affection for its subject. The results are often unsavoury, always exciting, and ultimately irresistible.MARK ALLISON

ANTICIPATION. A r are gli mps e a t life inside New York’s Hasidic community.

ANTICIPATION. Dir ect or Ala in Gom is ’ fo urt h fe ature won the Grand Jury Prix at the Berlin International Film Festival.

ENJOYMENT.A s ens itive , nua nce d por tra it of a man’s struggle to regain custody of his son.

ENJOYMENT.An ove rlo ng but pow erfu l dep ict io n of life, love, and loss in the city of Kinshas a.

IN RETROSPECT. De cep tivel y sli gh t, Weins te in documentary backgroun d pays dividends in his fiction debut.

IN RETROSPECT. This emotionally affecting

espite the emphasis of the film’s title, the true star of Félicité is the city of Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Rebublic of Congo. This is not merely the story of a woman’s struggle against poverty and tragedy, but a chronicle of her hometown, and director Alain Gomis has crafted a vivid depiction of life in the central African megacity. Throughout the film, the director adopts a wholly realistic aesthetic; this is a world of broken refrigerators, television soap operas and lively street bars. It’s an immersive environment which lives and breathes as convincingly as the human characters. Actress Véro Tshanda Beya Mputu is a near-constant presence as the eponymous star, and the camera follows her with a loving closeness.

story distinguishes itself with a well-realised sense of place. REVIEWS

087

The Road to Mandalay

London Symphony

Di rec te d by MIDI Z Sta rri ng WU KE-XI, KO CHEN-TUNG, KAI KO Re lea sed 29 SEPTEMBER

Di rec te d b y ALEX BARRETT Re lea sed 3 SEPTEMBER

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llegal Burmese immigrant Lianqing (Wu Kei Xi) has crossed the border into Bangkok in search of freedom and opportunity. Instead, she is met with unemployability, desperation and loneliness, her fate seemingly futureless. Directed by Midi Z, whose oeuvre expands from features (Poison Ivy) to documentaries (City of Jade), Road to Mandalay is an honest depiction of the wearisome struggles of immigration, laced with surrealist thought. Characters are trapped in repetitive routines, eating noodles, labouring in factories and kitchens, before returning to cramped living conditions and shared beds. Matching this stasis is Tom Fan’s camera that rarely leaves the master shot, limiting movement within a singular frame,

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and placing the viewer as a motionless bystander. Authentic dialogue heightens this naturalism, and reads as though taken straight from the home of Burmese immigrants. In contrast to the stillness, discolouring rooms and pale green landscapes, is the whip speed of the city and its vibrant flashes of yellow lights and twinkling skyscrapers. The disparity works to underline a glaring class divide and how far reaching our protagonist’s dreams for betterment are. Flirtations with prostitution app ear to be her onlyway forward and it’s at these moments of utmost psychological dread that the film’s most surreal scenes come out to play. On the backdrop we have a slow-burning romance between Lianqing and Guo (Ko Chen-tung), a man whom she meets crossing the border. Endearing and humble, Ko Cheng-tung‘s performance has us rooting for Guo as he seeks to do what he can to help. Their intimacy goes no further than a brush of hands, and words are often left unspoken, leaving their dependency on one another in a state of unnerving ambiguity, unknowingly on the edge of danger.COURTENEY TAN

editing appears random, as if we’re watching a photo slideshow of dismal cityscapes, but then a subtle through-line emerges. Barrett daisy-chains from one subject to the next sometimes through literal links (shots of paper rubbish on the street connect to a newspaper print shop) but sometimes just through the formation of the visuals. As with early classics like Dziga Vertov’s The Man With a Movie Camera or Walther Ruttmann’sBerlin: Symphony of a Great City, Barrett too subtly meddles with the boundary between documentary and fiction. There’s an element of scripted reality to a couple of moments involving people captured reading on the Underground or relaxing in a park. James McWilliam’s superb score tips a hat to the churning, looping likes of Michael Nyman and Philip Glass and lends the film a driving sense of momentum. There’s a chapter which focuses on the more commercial aspect of the capital which is less interesting, while sub-culture, nightlife and diversity (London’s alternative scene) don’t get much of a look in. But, as it promises in an opening inter-title, thisis very much a film with oneeye on the past and the other on the future.DAVID JENKINS

ANTICIPATION. A T ha i art ho use of fe ri ng mak es it s way to the UK.

ANTICIPATION. Lon do n g ets rea dy fo r it s c lo se- up.

he “symphony” film is a form which harks back to cinema’s earliest days. These convulsive visual collages offered portraits of cities or landscapes, and often arrived with suitably dynamic orchestral scores. Filmmaker Alex Barrett has decided to exhume this obscure mode for a new generation. Crucially, he has attempted to recapture exactly what made these films great in the first place rather than souping-up the template for modern eyes. London Symphony attempts to emulate the experience of watching a movie from the silent era, and it works to achieve that aim by presenting its images in crisp monochrome. The film is split into four segments, each of which covers a broad aspect of cultural life in the capital. Initially, the

. ENJOYMENT. There’s a calming yet suspenseful rhythm to watching characters with an ongoing fear of deportation.

ENJOYMENT. A r ap tur ous , com pel lin g and inventive snap shot of t he British capital.

IN RETROSPECT. A l aye red fi lm th at dem an ds di scu ssi on and analysis from its viewers.

IN RETROSPECT. Sma ll iss ues asi de, Bar ret t ha s pul led of f a b ol d e xpe ri men t.

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bristolcollege green cambridgesidney st edinburghrose st glasgowunion st & byres rd londoncovent garden manchesterbrown st nottinghambroadmarsh shopping centre oxfordgloucester green

Carnival of Souls Di rec te d by HERK HARVEY Sta rri ng CANDACE HILLIGOSS FRANCES FEIST SIDNEY BERGER

1962 Rel ea se d 23 OCT

Blu- ray

Eight Hours Don’t Make a Day Di rec te d by RAINER WERNER FASSBINDER

1972

Sta rri ng GOTTFRIED JOHN HANNA SCHYGULLA LUISE ULLRICH

OUT NOW

Blu- ray

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he annals of horror history seem to point to George A Romero’s seminal 1968 zombie tear-up Night of the Living Dead as heralding a new dawn of serious, socially-engaged screen shockers. Back in good ol’ 1962, veteran of the “industrial” filmmaking circuit, Herk Harvey, took a two week holiday and returned with the sui generis classic, Carnival of Souls, in the can. And if it looked like a quirky, shot-on-the-lam melée of spooky arcana back then, it certainly doesn’t now. In fact, it’s a film that seems to have more in common with the European school of modernist alienation – directors like Michelangelo Antonioni or Alain Resnais – than it does Hollywood’s trove of gothically inclined monster movies. The film starts in the greatest way imaginable: an ad hoc rural drag race that results in multiple deaths. Demur church organist Mary (Candace Hilligoss) miraculously survives the wreckage and heads into the depths of rural Utah to take up a job tinkling the ivories for The Lord – even though she’s a non-believer. A mysterious pavilion sitting off the highway seems to be summoning her, as does a ghostly effigy of a pandaeyed gent with slicked back hair. With maximum economy, Harvey wrings out a series of visually dazzling set pieces as Mary appears to be beset

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on all sides by macabre happenings. This crisp restoration version from Criterion offers a vital upgrade from the scuzzy public domain options of yore, and really gives the feeling that the film straddles both high and low cultural castes. Though much of her performance revolves around running and screaming, the ice-blond Hilligoss (whose screen career sadly never took off) is a dead ringer for Monica Vitti, a glamourous detail etched against the vast barren, landscapes of Antonioni’s Red Desert.

idea which ties everything together is the question of how people make decisions and then execute those decisions. It doesn’t dwell so much on the emotions, but is more interested in the communication and the rationale. And, as a bonus, you get to witness a scene in which Fassbinder muse Hannah Schygulla engages in a conversation with Jochen’s sister while scoffing down cinema’s most gigantic bratwurst. This vital set from Arrow Films marks the first official release of the show, and arrives with the usual panoply of minutely researched extras.DAVID JENKINS

DAVID JENKINS

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REVIEWS

reat yourself to what will surely be one of the great home entertainment rediscoveries of 2017 – a brand new restoration of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s little-seen 1973 “family serial” which, miraculously, stands tall alongside much of the director’s other iconic film work. This five-part opus is fast paced and devilishly funny, accompanying us into the lives of an extended working class Cologne family and then monitoring their daily toils and triumphs. At the centre is Gottfried John’s tenacious machinist Jochen, who comes into his own on the factory floor and is always looking for ways to improve the lot of himself and his co-workers. His clashes with the management are moments of high drama, and the fallout is then raked over in the company showers. His grandmother (‘Oma’, played by Luise Ullrich) meanwhile strives to rekindle a sense of youthful fun in her twilight years, hooking up with a new man, renting an apartment and even attempting to open a creche. The film plays like a sprawling, artful soap opera, flitting between plot strands with the utmost ease and presenting characters who throb with compassion. Even the antagonists, like Kurt Raab’s conservative patriarch, is allowed to have a heart beating in his chest. The simple

Paradise Alley

Di rec te d b y

Life is Sweet

1 978

SYLVERSTER STALLONE

Sta rr in g SYLVERSTER STALLONE LEE CANALITO ARMAND ASSANTE

Di rec ted by

1990

MIKE LEIGH

Re lea se d 4 SEPT

Blu- ray

Sta rri ng JANE HORROCKS ALISON STEADMAN TIMOTHY SPALL

Re lea se d 18 SEPT

Blu -ra y

H

ere’s a quiz question for you: what did Sylvester Stallone do after being catapulted to fame on the back of 1976’s Rocky, but before he took the director’s chair for Rocky II in 1979? The answer is, he wrote, directed and starred-in 1978’s bizarre, rambling wiseguy comedy, Paradise Alley. It follows three brothers as they duck and dive their way through the grubby streets of New York’s Hell’s Kitchen in 1946. By strange quirk, one of the brothers is a monosyllabic, emotionally retarded prize fighter, but he is played by human hulk Lee Canalito rather than Stallone himself. Sly instead gives himself the role of Cosmo, the fast-talking huckster with the golden loop earring, barrow-boy cap and a glint in his eye who gets all the good lines, all the fine women and is front and centre in all the big emotional sub-plots. He even gets to croon the main theme over the opening credits, a horrendous jazzy caterwaul which doesn’t bode well for the ensuing mayhem. All told, the film is scrappy and shrill, but Stallone certainly does have an ear for street lingo and era-specific slang. And, perhaps more impressive, he manages to couch this dialogue in settings that feel authentic enough for it not to sound artificial or corny. The loose story follow’s Cosmo’s rivalry with Kevin Conway’s Stitch and takes in the underground bare-knuckle

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boxing circuit, with each party attempting to stiff money out of the other. It makes for a fascinating piece of early Stalloniana, particularly its interest in the small man pulling himself to the top by hook or by crook. There’s also a moving sequence involving over-the-hill pugilist Big Glory (Frank McRae) as he weighs up the value of his life now that his days in the ring are numbered, if not over. Throw some slapstick involving a pet monkey and Tom Waits into the mix, and you’ve got yourself a potent (if not altogether palatable) carafe of movie-flavoured cocktail. DAVID JENKINS

Leigh overdid it with the grotesque caricatures, but with this one he gets the levels just right. Asusual for the director, the performances are amped up for comic effect, with Spall in particular going full-pelt silly with his oafish Aubrey. Yet this subtle melding of very theatrical, overly-projected acting and glum kitchen sink social realism somehow works, sprinkling a certain cinematic fairy dust over the dilapidated terraces of London’s suburb. This new restoration from the BFI comesloaded with new writing and extras. DAVID JENKINS

erve up a nice hearty plate of liver in lager, and perhaps a side-dish of tripe soufflé or pork cyst, and witness once more Mike Leigh’s grimy, serio-comic fresco of early ’90s working class upward mobility. These inedible dishes are found on the menu of The Regret Rien, a new fine dining venture by Timothy Spall’s pseudo-spiv , Aubrey, who attempts to second guess the adventurous palettes of monied north Londoners and fails spectacularly. The titleLife is Sweet is ironic, as the characters here are all trapped by status, by poverty, by health, by lack of education. But their happiness is never fully quashed by these dire straights. The film isgentle a celebration of family and friendship, and the way that conversation and confession are the best way to sooth the ills of existence. The main focus is on the Wendy (Alison Steadman) and Andy (Jim Broadbent) – her the chipper matriarch who snags a waitress job at the doomed Regret Rien, him a self-starting chef who’s decides to buy a clapped out burger van and likes a relaxing tipple whenever he can get one. Their daughters are Nicola (Jane Horracks), a cranky anorexic who treats her condition with glib abandon, and Natalie (Claire Skinner) the only family member with her head fullyscrewed on. In 1988’sHigh Hopes,

REVIEWS

091

It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World Di rec te d by STANLEY KRAMER Sta rri ng SPENCER TRACY MILTON BERLE ETHEL MERMAN

1963 Rel ea se d 4 SEPT

Blu- ray

The Big Knife Di rec te d by ROBERT ALDRICH

1955

Sta rri ng JACK PALANCE IDA LUPINO ROD STEIGER

OUT NOW

Blu- ray

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his is a movie that really shouldn’t work. And further to that, it should exist as a quaint museum piece – a bloated, pre-hippy chase comedy which showcases the lurid excesses of the 1960s. Filmed in SuperCinerama at a pitch way beyond fever and bringing together a cast of thousands, Stanley Kramer’s 1963 film is a maddening folly, but somehow, feels completely unique. An escaped robber launches his car off a mountain road. A gaggle of concerned bystanders try to save him, and in the throes of death, he reveals that $350,000 cash is buried in Santa Rosita Park underneath “a big W”. Unable to devise an acceptable way to split the loot, the race is on, as the likes of Milton Berle, Terry-Thomas, Ethel Merman, Phil Silvers and Mickey Rooney make a mad cross-country dash to claim the prize. It’s completely ridiculous and shrill, and endemic of a brand of glossy, anarchic ’60s comedythat’s not actually very funny. It’s basically an ensemble of ham actorsdriving a variety of commercial vehicles (land, air and sea) going “oooh-ooooh-oooh!” for the best part of three hours and 20 minutes. But there’s still something completely compelling about how the stories intertwine, and it somehow manages to emulate the dramatic experience of watching a great sporting event.

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The reason it works is that it’s completely unsentimental, and every single character (bar Spencer Tracy’s straight-arrow cop) is driven by pure, untarnished greed, to the point where their lives become wholly expendable. Upon its release, the film was trimmed down at the behest of producers, and much of the excised footage was badly damaged. This Criterion edition presents the film as close to its srcinal cut as possible, occasionally using stills to illustrate scenes where a soundtrack still exists.

giant cogs. Whether Charlie deserves to get crushed is the question at hand. Is it enough to want to reject the cynicism of mass-produced trash art, even though you’re a product of that trash? Or, when the worker attains a meas ure of power, s hould the corporate head then softly nurture the monster he’s created? It’s loud, brash and nasty to the marrow, and you’d have to be very naive to say that little of this applies to the Hollywood dream factory as it stands now.

DAVID JENKINS

DAVID JENKINS

092

REVIEWS

his rancidly bitter film is about the double-edged sword of having a job for life. In this instance, the job happens to be high in the lap of luxury as a Hollywood matinee idol. But what about when all the canapés and oil massages and toadying bottom feeders become too much, and you just want to claw back a tiny sliver of integrity? Robert Aldrich’s hysterical and claustrophobic screen adaptation of Clifford Odets’s play sees Jack Palance as Charlie Castle, a fully signed-up studio star who locks horns with utterly insane studio boss Stanley Hoff (Rod Steiger) when the former hesitates when agreeing to extend his stifling contract. Hoff punches out insipid genre dreck, and Charlie wants to switch things up, not least to earn the respect of his discerning, empathetic wife Marion (Ida Lupino), who already has one foot out the door. It’s a synthetic film about a world of make believe, with Steiger in particular not so much chewing the scenery, as tearing it down and transforming it into a 12-course banquet. As a way to keep Charlie in the fold, things get very nasty very quickly, and the sense of rancour runs deeper than just the catty barbs. In the end, the corporate machine always wins as the worker ant is crushed in its

Return of the Living Dead 3

See No Evil

Di rec te d b y BRIAN YUZNA

1993

Di rec ted by RICHARD FLEISCHER

Sta rr in g MELINDA CLARKE J TREVOR EDMOND KENT MCCORD

OUT NOW

Sta rri ng MIA FARROW DOROTHY ALISON ROBIN BAILEY

Blu- ray

1 97 1 Rel ea sed 25 SEPT

Blu -ra y

I

f ever there were a cautionary tale about the advantages of wearing a crash helmet while riding a motorcycle, it’s Brian Yuzna’s 1993 revisionist zombie flick,Return of the Living Dead 3. Loved-up Gen-Xers Julie (Melinda Clarke) and Curt (James T Callahan) are, like, totally bored of just hanging around roadsides and pouting. They need a thrill to take their relationship to the next level, and so hop on his hog and high tail it down to his father’s off-the-grid military science facility. There they watch from the rafters as corpses arereanimated with the help of the noxious gas Trioxin. Dashing from the scene, the pair take a tumble (sans helmet!) and Julie is a-goner. Almost as a knee-jerk reaction, Curt lugs her body back to the lab and reanimates her corpse – consequences be damned. Dan O’Bannon’s sublime series opener, Return of the Living Dead , recalibrated the workhorse saga as a classic farce, while Yuzna opts for something entirely new – fusing stock zombie mayhem and splatter with a very sincere gothic melodrama. Clarke is superb as the wannabe bad girl who evolves into a zombie dominatrix, replete with kinky fetish-wear and various sadomasochistic accoutrements buried into her rotting flesh. Borrowing the idea from Romeo and Juliet of lovers

I

n 1971, two films were released by the American director Richard Fleischer, both of which present England as a cess pit of violence and iniquity. First was the symphonically seedy serial killer drama 10 Rillington Place, and later, there was See No Evil, whose centrepiece is a sequence in which a blind, screaming Mia Farrow tools about in a gigantic clay pit. The latter has received the deluxe Blu-ray treatment care of the excellent Indicator label, continuing their project of unearthing and contextualising under-appreciated B-movie gems. The antagonist in this garish thriller set in and around Wokingham, Berkshire is a pair of cowboy boots emblazoned with white stars, and their wicked wearer isn’t revealed until the final scene. His sworn enemy, however, is the well-off Rexton clan and their niece, Sarah (Farrow), who was blinded as the result of a horse-riding accident and is the type of effete soul who would get blown away in a soft wind. Fleischer doesn’t dally when it comes to doling out the nastiness, and blood is spilled with a shocking quickness. The director isn’t really interested in offering a serious exploration of the experience of blindness, instead using it to enhance his brutal set pieces and draw out the extent of

whose connection transcends mortal bounds, a sub-plot involving the army’s desire to militarise these brain-chomping zombies eventually makes way for a grand romantic gesture which also stands as a perfect expression of ’90s emo nihilism. As with films likeSociety and Bride of Re-Animator (both from 1989), Yuzna proves himself a filmmaker more interested in big, bold ideas than plot logic or realism. It’s a fascinating adjunct to the zombie genre rather than a great film in its own right.

punishment levelled on our hapless heroine. While it perhaps falls short in the empathy and psychology stakes, the film does offer a fascinating counter view of the quaint English countryside: here it’s envisioned as a grey-brown hellscape littered with criminals and perverts, all looking to blame any problems on a local enclave of “Gypos”. It’s by no means top-tier Fleischer, but it’s an example of a director who cuts to the quick when it comes to milking a hackneyed gimmick for all its cinematic worth.

DAVID JENKINS

DAVID JENKINS

REVIEWS

093

Insyriated

On the Road

Di rec te d b y PHILIPPE VAN LEEUW Sta rri ng HIAM ABBASS, DIAMAND BOU ABBOUD,

Di rec ted by MICHAEL WINTERBOTTOM Sta rri ng LEAH HARVEY, JAMES MCARDLE,

JULIETTE NAVIS

SHIRLEY HENDERSON

Re lea sed 8 SEPTEMBER

Re lea sed 29 SEPTEMBER

I

magine you had no running water, no electricity, no food and your only access to the outside world was guarded by a rooftop sniper. This is the unfortunate reality for most civilians currently surviving in Syria and its an environment director Philippe Van Leeuw captures in tremendous detail in his new political drama Insyriated. Set in a single apartment in Damascus over the course of a single day, it stars Hiam Abbass as Oum Yazan, a fierce mother constantly fighting to ensure her families safety. The film focuses on the strength and determination of women in a genre often dominated by men. The only male characters are an elderly gentleman, a young boy and a confused, love-stuck teenager, none of whom are equipped to protect a whole household.

B

It’s a haunting portrayal of one family’s fight to survive and it offers an compelling depiction of domestic life and the impact of an ever encroaching battleground. Leeuw and cinematographer, Virg inie Sur dej tur n a shor t cor rido r, smal l rooms and a sing le balcony overlooking the carnage into an intensely claustrophobic atmosphere. The film showcases the physical and emotional conflict people have to go to just to make it through the day, with the threat of death a constant. Though there are some moments where the tension begins to flag, but the film quickly picks up the pace with the use of a literal explosive soundtrack and a particularly frightening scene in which two very dangerous intruders make their way into the apartment. The threat is only moderate until this point, but it reaches its pinnacle in the final scene as its protagonists venture outside to save an injured party, despite the sniper threat established earlier in the narrative. Feeling a little bit more like a documentary than a work of fiction, Insyriated is a m emorable, reformula ted war movie.

are even close to being interesting. The wisp of a story is hammered out over two hours which become incrementally more excruciating. At 30 minutes, you could see this working as an innovative press kit or DVD extra. But as it stands, you’re left to watch what feels like the same ten minute segment repeated over and over over. On the evidence of the throngs of hyperventilating teenie-boppers who chant along to every lyric from the front row, Alice Wolf certainly have their superfans. But if you don’t care for their chugging brand of emo-inflected rock, then this is going to be form of sustained audio torture. Elsewhere, we have Leah Harvey and James McArdle flashing tentitive glances at one another, and their soft rapport develops into icky (and very dull) love patter and, eventually, grinding hotel sex. When the tour winds to a close, it’s clear that you’re supposed to feel the pangs of heartbreak as everyone heads off to brighter climes. Frankly, we were over the moon to be rid of these wet dullards. Props to Winterbottom for at least trying something new, but this one fails on just about every level.

LOUISE BUSFIELD

DAVID JENKINS

ANTICIPATION. A f il m s how cas ing wha t it s l ik e t o

ANTICIPATION. A f ea tur e- len gt h tra wl ac ros s

ENJOYMENT. Sus pe nse ful and som et ime s

ENJOYMENT. Att emp ts som et hi ng a lit tl e

uncomfortable viewing.

different, but runs out of

IN RETROSPECT. A h ar row ing wat ch wit h an int ens e

IN RETROSPECT. The second hour is unbearably,

fi nal sce ne

almost comically dull.

live with war.

ritish director Michael Winterbottom is occasionally referred to as an anti-auteur in that he has no recurring stylistic tics and there are no subject areas towards which he repeatedly gravitates. On the Road marks his attempt to hit refresh on the time-honoured concert movie, fusing together an improvised romance between two actors (playing a roadie and a PR) and documentary tour footage of North London indie quartet, Alice Wolf. Usually, it’s his smaller, lightly experimental films which are his most satisfying – the time-laps e family saga of 2012’s Everyday, his lopsided literary adaptation A Cock and Bull Story , or the blokey bants of The Trip and its sequels. This one, however, feels DOA upon arrival. On a very basic level, neither the fictional nor real characters

Great Britain with a

middling indie band. Okay…

steam very quickly.

REVIEWS

095

TRUTH & MOVIES

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