Unless you count teenage sleepovers, or people sitting on opposite sides of an otherwise empty red-light cinema, watching porn isn’t normally a communal activity. So why, when Club Des Femmes screened Dirty Diaries (2009) – a collection of porn shorts – during the London Short Film Festival, were people queuing round the block of the Horse Hospital to get in on returns? All kinds of people too: men in trendy specs with their heads held high, bequiffed women holding hands, a Horse Hospital regular on his first date with a new girlfriend – and not one filthy mac in sight.
It could be down to the fact that Times columnist and neo-feminist Caitlin Moran had tweeted about it to her 185,000-odd followers on Twitter. She’s broached the topic of feminist-friendly porn in her best-selling book How to Be a Woman, in which she calls on feminists to make their own porn rather than attempt to ban it. ‘Something that shows sex as something that two people do together,’ suggests Moran, ‘rather than a thing that just happens to a woman when she has to make rent. Something in which – to put it simply – everyone comes.’
Dirty Diaries is inspired by the same school of thought. In fact, the short film that initiated the collection is called Come Together, and is made up of director Mia Emberg and several other women individually filming themselves as they masturbate. It was first shown during the Stockholm International Film Festival and, as Club Des Femmes co-founder Selina Robertson explained before the screening, it shocked certain – primarily male – viewers, who complained about the women not being attractive enough.
This gave Emberg an idea: why not allow more women to redefine porn? With funding from the Swedish Film Institute, she asked other filmmakers to write, star in and direct their own porn films. The best of these form Dirty Diaries, a thrilling bag of sexual diversity that tells us almost as much about the difference between mainstream and feminist views on sex as it does about the difference between government film funding in the UK and that in Sweden.
Opening short Skin is a poetic depiction of two bodies clad in skin-coloured bodysuits making love, filmed in close-up by an observer and set – as are many of the others – to the music of Fever Ray. As the petting gets heavier, scissors are taken to the clothes on the nearly neutered figures to reveal body parts bit by bit. The sex between the man and the woman is tender, reciprocal and, when the mouths are eventually revealed, they are smiling.
More smiles in Night Vision, in which a woman takes matters into her own hand by reaching her climax with a vibrator, while being watched by her male lover. The film ends just as she breaks out into a wide post-coital grin. It’s a cheeky in-your-face to standard porn, where the ‘money shot’ is the man’s domain.
Body Contact subverts even more fixtures of mainstream porn. A woman and a co-conspirator behind the camera seek a man on an internet hook-up site and, after sizing up his genitals on the webcam, invite him over for sex. When he arrives, he’s dismayed to find another woman there to film the encounter and nervously admires the view out of the window before being coaxed into submission. The sex is comical, as the man works himself into an over-enthusiastic frenzy while the woman looks bored and smiles conspiratorially at the camera. It’s feigned, of course, but it feels unnecessarily mean: do two wrongs make a right?
More imaginative is Flasher Girl on Tour, in which a cropped-haired girl treats the audience to an excerpt of her ‘travel diary’ as she visits Paris, indulging in her fetish of exposing herself in public. Bashing down what she declares to be ‘the exclusive right for men to be disgusting in public’, she masturbates in a taxi, flashes out of her hotel room window, and straddles the gushing waters of a public fountain. It’s not sexy. It’s hilarious.
But it seemed that not many people turned up at the screening to be titillated. ‘I’m not here to be aroused,’ says Lucy, an academic. ‘It’s more about being part of a community. I like being in a room with lots of lesbians, bi-women and queer women, and having a good time. In fact, I know lesbian and dyke women who watch male heterosexual porn because they prefer it to lesbian porn.’
‘The films were all really refreshing,’ added Caroline, who specialises in sexuality, spirituality and sex activism. ‘A lot of porn seems contrived. People are really aware they’re being porn stars. This is really fresh.’
So what can mainstream porn learn from the collection Emberg has put together? Robertson puts it well: ‘That diversity, humour and horny real women are as sexy as hell.’
On January 6, short films become the capital’s main attraction as the London Short Film Festival returns to the city’s cinemas and some more inventive settings like the University Tent at the Occupy London Stock Exchange Camp. Now in its ninth edition, LSFF continues to offer an ambitious and winningly broad programme with DIY work by emerging talents providing the perfect counterpoint to its industry events and comprehensive retrospectives of more acclaimed and established filmmakers.
The ICA’s Lo-Budget Mayhem screening promises to be an anarchic assortment with an eccentric hand-drawn animation of Hulk Hogan (Peter Millard’s Hogan), an excruciatingly awkward tale of public transport (Naren Wilks’s Journey on a Bus) and a very strange story of motherhood (Matilda Myszka’s Baby Meat). LSFF’s delight in such offbeat offerings will also be in evidence at the Midnight Movies Nightcap event and Salon des Refusés, a specially curated selection of films that did not make it into this year’s LSFF programme. It’s a fun and original idea that should raise interesting questions about what makes a ‘successful’ festival film.
As with previous editions of LSFF, this year’s programme emphasises the sensory experience of watching films. There are several events dedicated to the interaction between music and cinema and various festival strands that present films selected solely on the strength of their cinematography. Leftfield and Luscious, in particular, promises strong work, such as Jordan Baseman’s The Last Walk, which sets a compelling spoken narrative to meditative abstract visuals. The medium of analogue film is also to be celebrated with showcases of work on 16mm and 35mm film. At the Hackney Picturehouse Attic, Suitcase Cinema will present a selection of Cold War archive footage and Screen Bandita will gather together junkshop and attic finds of discarded, forgotten reels.
London itself is another focus of the 2012 festival with two screenings organised in association with the Museum of London in the Docklands: My Community will present a selection of shorts by young urban filmmakers; and London Lives will explore life in the capital through a varied programme of new works. In the documentary strand, another view of urban life is expressed through Hackney Lullabies, an award-winning short by Japanese filmmaker Kyoko Miyake. The film explores the shared experience of immigrant mothers living in Hackney and keeping their original cultures alive by singing lullabies to their young children. The diversity of voices presented in this warm and thoughtful film is mirrored in the programming of the festival itself. Looking through this year’s calendar of events, it is clear that LSFF aims to present a broad social spectrum as well as a wide aesthetic range. The Amnesty Human Rights Action Centre has organised an event to discuss disability in film while the Not the Skin I Live In strand celebrates Black and Asian stories on film. Female filmmakers are honoured with a dedicated festival strand (which includes an excellent, serious, yet witty call to arms about Nigerian women, Radio Amina) and the special event Dirty Diaries, a showcase of feminist porn films from Swedish filmmakers. This attempt to explore and represent all sorts of subjects and filmmakers makes for a lively and exciting programme of events. LSFF looks set to continue the success of previous years, keeping London audiences engaged and entertained.
It’s been two years since Channel 4 unveiled its ambitious yet patchy Red Riding Trilogy, which was adapted from David Peace’s crime novels, with each of the three episodes made by a different home-grown director. Following a similar principle, the three-part German TV project Dreileben, which screened in the Cinema Europa section at this year’s London Film Festival, was directed by three of the country’s leading filmmakers, Christian Petzold (Yella, Jerichow), Dominik Graf (Germany 09) and Christoph Hochhä;usler (The City Below, Germany 09). This screening may not have been met with the same level of enthusiasm by UK audiences as back in Germany, when the films premiered at the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year, yet Dreileben is a bold, innovative and largely compelling experiment in cinematic storytelling that deserves more attention than it has received during its limited festival run.
Almost more fascinating than the outcome is the initial extensive email conversation between the three filmmakers about film aesthetics, which ultimately led them to continue their heated exchange on screen. ‘The three of us had a long and extremely intensive correspondence on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the DFFB, the German Film and Television Academy Berlin,’ says Petzold. ‘It started off with a discussion about the so-called “Berlin Schoolâ€, which Dominik criticised. According to him we were in danger of compromising our view, our deep and passionate criticism, in favour of a common style, which would ultimately lead to a feeling of artificiality, constraint, and a distrust in communication, in language. We wrote to each other on a daily basis for about six weeks. Suddenly, the DFFB anniversary had passed, but we missed having these conversations, so we continued to meet and to talk, without any recording devices or designated use, until we decided to start this film project together.’
Defined by Hochhä;usler as ‘sibling films rather than a trilogy’, each of the resulting films feels very much like a separate piece of work, although there are more or less obvious plot links and reoccurring characters, similarly to the format of the Red Riding Trilogy. Most importantly, the filmmakers agreed upon a criminal case as the golden thread that binds their individual narratives: the escape of a convict from police custody into a small town called Dreileben. Located in the beautiful yet chilling Thuringia Forest, in the former East Germany, it seemed to be the ideal place for what the directors where trying to achieve. ‘I knew Thuringia from my childhood,’ says Petzold. ‘My mother grew up there, and I made Christoph and Dominik go and visit the area. Despite its proximity to Weimar, the home of Goethe and Schiller, it has always been a very poor area. People didn’t want to live there, they left if they could, and those who stayed told dark stories to each other. We liked that.’ As a consequence, Dreileben draws heavily on the German romantic tradition in terms of its approach to nature – seeing it both as a place of danger and a place of inspiration.
This becomes most evident in the third part, One Minute of Darkness, directed by Christoph Hochhä;usler, which also proves to be the most compelling episode. The film focuses on the investigations by the local detective in charge of the case of Frank Molesch, the escaped murderer, who – if only in the eyes of the detective – may actually be innocent. ‘What I find very intriguing is that we can never be sure about anything,’ says Hochhä;usler. ‘Instead we have to construct reality time and again. And what interested me most about Molesch’s character was the question: to what extent are we the authors of our own destiny, and to what extent do other people have an influence on that? Molesch is an extremely malleable, extremely soft persona, whose entire life has been dictated by his foster mother and external authorities, and I thought it would be interesting to explore what happens if such a diktat no longer exists. Can he actually make use of this moment of freedom? Where does it lead to?’
Hence Hochhä;usler’s episode is told mainly from Molesch’s viewpoint. In one of the film’s most gripping scenes, Molesch, despite his almost brutish actions, enters into a wonderfully tender bond with a young runaway, who also happens to be hiding in the woods. Meanwhile, the police inspector tries to get inside the head of Molesch, in order both to find him and prove his innocence. Shot in the cool and sparse New German Cinema manner, One Minute of Darkness may bring nothing terribly new to the genre, but it still makes for an effective and solid thriller in its own right.
In contrast, Petzold’s Beats Being Dead (the first episode in the trilogy) dazzles on the aesthetic level, but fails to keep up the tension and intensity from start to finish. Petzold reveals very little about the murder; instead, we meet Johannes, a young male nurse, who begins an affair with an immigrant girl from Eastern Europe who works in a nearby hotel. While the hunt for Molesch always remains in the shadow of the film’s main narrative, Petzold decides to concentrate on the mismatched couple as they struggle with life as much as with their young, and doomed, relationship.
Sitting in between the two episodes is Dominik Graf’s Don’t Follow Me Around, in which a police psychologist has been ordered to Dreileben to help the local police in their investigation. Adopting a style that is less cool and detached than Petzold and Hochhäusler’s approach, Graf manages to deftly weave a compelling personal story about two women, who fell for the same lover in the past, into the crime scenario. However, he gets slightly too carried away by his own ambitions for the project, rather than simply sticking with its initial premise.
Taken as a whole, Dreileben might have benefited if Petzold, Graf and Hochhä;usler were slightly less hard-headed filmmakers. There seems to be a potential in their work that is not quite realised, a kind of brilliance that keeps bumping against the same creative blockages. Still, aesthetically and conceptually, Dreileben is an innovative and engrossing, if slow-burning, TV-style crime-drama experiment that often hits a note of genuine mystery and discomfort in its attempts to break away from the narrow scope that has characterised much of recent German filmmaking. It’s certainly worth four and a half hours of your time, even if it’s not quite the triumph that might be expected from each of these three directors.
As with last year’s event, the 8th China Independent Film Festival was an exercise in under-promotion: a schedule that was only available in advance if you had the right email address, screenings in lecture rooms at the downtown campus of Nanjing University, and an opening ceremony at a moderately sized venue that provided sufficient seating for those in the know, but left curious latecomers standing in the aisles. This is not a method of organisation that is exclusive to CIFF, as any independent film festival operating in mainland China has to take such measures due to the inclusion of features that have not been approved by SARFT (State Administration of Radio, Film and Television). 2011 has been a particularly difficult year for such festivals, with the organisers of the Documentary Film Festival China being pressured to cancel the Beijing-based event (which would also have been in its eighth year) due to a tense political climate that coincided with the detention of the dissident artist Ai Weiwei and increased mainland internet restrictions. The 6th Beijing Independent Film Festival went ahead in October, although not without disruption, as the venue had to be changed twice and police presence was reported at the launch event. Representatives of SARFT were in attendance at CIFF, but did not intervene at either screenings or workshop sessions, meaning that the festival ran smoothly compared to its equivalent in the capital. With political conflicts effectively sidestepped, CIFF was able to offer another interesting selection of features, documentaries and experimental shorts, with filmmakers present for post-screening discussions of their work. It could be said that the ‘real’ festival took place at the local branch of Sculpting in Time (a Chinese version of Starbucks that serves alcoholic beverages in addition to over-priced coffee), where the network of directors, distributors, academics and journalists was further expanded.
While the features emerging from China’s independent sector are undoubtedly political, they often avoid sweeping state-of-the-nation surveys in favour of social microcosms to show the effect of national shifts on the family unit or the individual. Zhang Ciyu’s haunting Pear (2010) is a chamber piece concerning a young married couple who are struggling to complete the construction of their new house on a mountain slope; the wife ends up working in a brothel in town to earn the necessary funds and the husband is left to hang around the waiting room of the establishment while she services her clients. Regardless of how much money she makes, the couple can never keep up with the rate of economic acceleration and the pears of the title – the wife’s favourite fruit, which are brought to her in a basket by her husband – are left to rot, much like their dreams of a prosperous future. The eponymous heroine of Song Chuan’s insightful and quietly heart-breaking Huan Huan (2010) is a young village woman who becomes the mistress of the local doctor; she struggles to find her place in the world despite, or because of, a near-constant bombardment of social messages (birth control regulations, labour force drives, state-controlled television news). The turbulent political landscape of the late 1980s is filtered through a nostalgic lens in Shu Haolun’s No. 89 Shimen Road (2010), although reference to Tiananmen ensures that this engaging drama will not receive a mainland release. High school student Xiaoli lives with his strict but understanding grandfather in Shanghai following his mother’s relocation to the United States, and becomes romantically involved with two girls who represent opposing social ideologies; next-door neighbour Lanmi becomes an escort for easy money while classmate Lili is more politically motivated. Shu resorts to some coming-of-age clichés, but this is still an evocative snapshot of youthful uncertainty at a time of social instability.
If the nicely crafted No. 89 Shimen Road represents a middle-of-the-road approach to Chinese independent cinema – a universal narrative placed within a wider political context – then Pema Tseden’s Old Dog (2011) and Jin Rui’s The Cockfighters (2010) exist at opposite ends of the spectrum. Old Dog is a poetic portrait of Tibetan life in which the unauthorised sale of the titular animal by the owner’s son leads his father to retrieve the dog on the grounds that using an animal as a commodity is taboo in traditional Tibetan culture. It’s a thoughtful contemplation on the changing values of Tibet under state reform, with striking long shots of farmland divided by barbed wire and town streets that show slow but steady signs of economic progress. By contrast, The Cockfighters is aggressively commercial, a punchy rural thriller that follows the feud that develops between a youth from a wealthy family and a grassroots family man when the former loses his first cockfighting match to the latter. The narrative device of a destructive game of one-upmanship owes much to the genre cinema of South Korea, right down to the obligatory shaving scene before the climactic showdown, and The Cockfighters certainly makes a gripping bid for international box office viability. Developing links between China’s independent sector and alternative production in other Asian territories were adequately illustrated by Zhao Ye’s altogether gentler Last Chestnuts (2010), which was filmed in Nara, Japan, at the invitation of Naomi Kawase, director of The Mourning Forest (2007). A terminally ill Tokyo woman (Kaori Momoi) wanders the area, searching for her missing son, with only a couple of digital photos as clues to his whereabouts, and is assisted by helpful locals; Zhao conveys the time-sensitive desperation of the mother’s search, although the emotional impact is lessened by unnecessary meta-references to Kawase’s work in the same region.
The documentary line-up also offered a range of approaches to independent filmmaking, from studies of creative culture to self-portraits and undercover reports. Wang Hao’s Seven Days in a Year (2011) documents the responsibilities of an internet-monitoring department in Chongqing, revealing how such restrictions are implemented by low-level state servants who spend the day browsing bulletin boards for negative comments and brainstorming SMS advertising strategies to encourage patriotic feeling. Beijing’s art scene was examined by Zeng Guo in two documentaries, 798 Station (2010) and The Cold Winter (2011). The former provides an account of how a thriving art zone comprised of galleries and studios has evolved from factory space, while the latter follows the unsuccessful efforts of artists to stop the demolition of the art districts that surround the central hub of 798 Station. The Cold Winter shows both the strengths and weaknesses of China’s artistic communities, with everyone committed to a certain ideal, but the movement compromised by a lack of agreement on how to practically realise it. However, as with the features, the most interesting documentaries were those that focused on the individual, exploring past and present Chinese society through daily routine or recounted memory. Wei Xiaobo’s The Days (2010) is a candid first-person account of the director’s cash-strapped lifestyle with his live-in girlfriend Xei Fang; they fight, make love and Wei undertakes various freelance assignments to pay the rent. Xu Tong’s Shattered (2011) follows Tang Caifeng, a woman with a chequered past (involvement in illegal mining and prostitution) who returns to her north-east home town to reunite with her father, a retired engineer who was educated under Japanese rule; Old Man Tang has kept many artefacts of the occupation, but his ‘living history’ is of greater value than the portraits of Lenin and Mao Zedong that clutter the home.
Due to the political implications of making films outside the system in China, not to mention the problem of securing exhibition and distribution for productions that lack the ‘dragon seal’ from SARFT, it is still appropriate to group such efforts under the ‘independent’ banner. Yet it should be noted that some films in this year’s CIFF line-up, such as No. 89 Shimen Road and The Cockfighters, find Chinese independent cinema moving towards an American independent model by locating their social concerns within recognisable commercial genres, not to mention boasting production values that contrast with the ‘hand-made’ qualities of Huan Huan or Pear. This is not necessarily a problem, as coming-of-age dramas or revenge thrillers with a certain level of social-political context appeal to the international art-house crowd, who regularly watch films that exist on the fringes of the mainstream but still adhere to genre parameters. However, it is hoped that such potential crossover successes will not overshadow more marginal works like Yang Heng’s Sun Spots (2009), a minimalist romance between a bored young woman and a violent gangster that is told in just 31 long takes with no close-ups. Sun Spots polarised audience opinion – some found it to be a patience-tester, others were hypnotised by its deliberate rhythm – but nonetheless generated much discussion due to its formal qualities. On the basis of this year’s CIFF selection, the Chinese independent sector appears to have achieved a balance between artistic exploration and commercial aspirations; these potentially conflicting versions of ‘independent production’ are able to comfortably co-exist, mutually supporting one another due to the difficult circumstances under which both are brought to fruition by their directors. CIFF has also encountered difficulties in terms of accommodating the growing interests of directors and viewers within a limited space and schedule, but like the filmmakers that it supports, the festival has managed to find a measure of freedom within a world of restriction.
To characterise the 36th TIFF, it is probably most relevant to invoke the phrase that seemed to be making the rounds in the press lounge this year: The Austerity TIFF. There were small but clear indications throughout the festival events that economic hair-cutting was the order of the day. Sponsored events were fewer and further between, and the previous year’s more magnanimous gestures were dramatically cropped at this still humongous and prestigious film festival. The big money seemed to be ring-fenced for the impressive Hollywood band-wagon that inevitably arrives for three or four days and sets the city’s residents into a celebrity frenzy usually held in check by their cautious Canadian personae. Come festival time, all restraint is thrown to the wind. This year they had George, Johnny, Madonna, Bonehead – sorry that’s Bono – Francis, Martin, Vigo, Keira, Ryan, Brad et al to rubberneck at.
As for the films themselves, there were the usual number of high-profile premieres of American productions as well as the more interesting hundreds of international features, documentaries and shorts. This report concentrates on films that remain in mind after dozens have slipped into the muddy streams of visual unconsciousness.
I had the privilege of eavesdropping on distributors as they hotly enthused and kept deepening their pockets for the rights to William Friedkin’s Killer Joe, a nasty little number that features Matthew McConaughey – in a career-stretching role – as a Dallas cowboy-cop who moonlights as a very cool and ruthless hit man. He is hired by a bumbling trailer trash family to kill their no-good mama in order to inherit her insurance money – a good example of a staple trope of classic noir being resuscitated and transplanted into a neo-noir (or film soleil, as some would dub it). Friedkin, who knows a thing or two about chase sequences (The French Connection, 1971) treats us to a good one here, and the only criticism that might really be raised is the rather gratuitous stretching out of the final bloodbath. Adapted from a 1993 play by Tracy Letts, the film introduces a fried chicken leg in the starring role as a blowjob recipient – made problematic by the nasty circumstances under which it is delivered. But Killer Joe sees the veteran director William Friedkin in a real return to form of sorts, after several below par outings in the last years. Coen Brothers meet Tarantino.
The coming-of-age adolescent film is well-mined territory and coming up with even a slightly original slant is difficult. Jens Lien in Sons of Norway accomplishes just this by inverting the scenario. The relatively straight-laced 14-year-old Nikolaj (Åsmund Høeg) and his younger brother live with liberal hippy-ish parents. His father, Magnus (Sven Nordin), is a super-energetic eccentric character with yellow crash helmet and crazy souped-up bike to match, who falls into a depression when his younger son is killed. When he snaps out of it, his eccentricity and diatribes against capitalism are heightened and young Nikolaj searches for a way to rebel to gain attention as well as find out who he really is and emerge from young adolescence. Difficult to do when your father approves and encourages all and every kind of rebellion. Nikolaj finds an outlet in neo-punk and The Sex Pistols music. Executive-produced by none other than John Lydon, who makes an appearance in the film, Sons of Norway is in the same vein as Fucking Amal (1998) or C.R.A.Z.Y. (2005) and as such is a charming sleeper that deserves distribution. Another charmer is the Filipino film Fable of the Fish, directed by Adolfo Boringa Alix Jr. (Adela [2008], Chassis [2010], Presa [2010]). Seamlessly stitching together naturalism, magic realism and Filipino folk tales, it follows the travails of the childless, middle-aged couple Miguel (Bembol Roco) and Lina (Cherry Pie Picache) as they move from impoverishment to scavenging for their existence. Lina becomes miraculously pregnant and instead of bearing a child gives birth to a milkfish. She soon becomes a local celebrity but Miguel is humiliated and ashamed, and we see the schism between the two as she becomes happier and full of life and grace while he sinks lower and wants to deny the ‘child’. This satire is played straight and is always sympathetic to its characters, who emerge as good and kindly human beings. A fine achievement and a strong addition to the growing number of quality low-budget films emerging from the Philippines.
In the annual City to City strand, which this year featured Buenos Aires, I took a shining to Pablo Giorgelli’s very slow-burning, poetic road movie Las Acacias – the tale of a hitchhiking woman Jacinta (Hebe Duarte) and a baby who are picked up by a curmudgeonly truck driver, Ruben (Germán de Silva). The story is told mostly within the cab of the truck with little dialogue and no non-diegetic sound – there is just the constant background sound of the truck’s engine. Simplicity and a tutorial in elegant filmmaking that relies on camera work and facial insinuation and gesture rather than an abundance of text (or excessive music for that matter): a strategy often utilised by small-budget filmmakers to compensate or over-compensate for some perceived lack of action or motion in their straightened economic conditions. Las Acacias moves at its own measured pace with the drone of the truck engine and the slowness of the characters in exchanging conversation providing the viewer with the perception of a near real-time experience. Giorgelli is to be commended for his commitment and vision to what might be called ‘slow cinema’. This no-frills, realistic film is a deeply human and humane piece of work, all the more notable and laudable for being the director’s first feature. It was a deserving winner of the Caméra d’Or at Cannes this year, which has been followed by wins for the director at San Sebastian, Mumbai and London Film Festivals.
Las Acacias is released in the UK on 2 December 2011 by Verve Pictures.
Among other Argentine films to feature at Toronto were an interesting pairing from 2011 and 1969. The latter is a little seen Argentine classic, Invasión (Hugo Santiago), which tells a futuristic and fascistic dystopian story of invasion from the rebels’ point of view. It is an allegorical tale about a group of guerrilla intellectuals attempting to halt and reverse the onslaught of an invading force in a city named Aqueila but looking for all the world like Buenos Aires. The script was co-written by literary luminaries Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares and their collective paranoid sensibilities in Invasión presciently anticipate the coming military junta. Invasión has been called an Argentine Alphaville and on this viewing one can see why. Perhaps losing some of its political edginess in current times, this is no less a major work of cinematic art in both the Argentine context and in its obvious adoption of French New Wave and Godardian form and content. And while it is often commented that contemporary Argentine cinema has lost its appetite for engaged political films, an exception to this observation can be found in the Santiago Mitre film, The Student (2011), which takes as its subject the remnants of Marxist and committed socialist politics as encountered by a young bourgeois non-political student, Roque (Esteban Lamothe). His political pilgrim’s journey takes him from apathy to commitment to disillusionment. The same can be said of the arc of his love affair with Paula (Romina Paula), a much more sophisticated and informed political siren. As engaging as the film is, it is difficult to see how it might transcend its obvious Argentine-specific sources and travel outside the country. Nonetheless, a fine pair to see back to back to compare and contrast the socio-political lay of the land.
A noticeable theme in recent European cinema has been the issue of the impact of mass illegal migration upon the shores of Eurozone countries, especially focusing upon the ‘problem’ of Africa. Two such films screened in Toronto explore these issues as they affect small island communities trapped between maintaining history and tradition on the one hand and globalisation and tourism on the other. Color of the Ocean is the story of a Canary Island cop, José (Alex González), whose job is to decide the fate of the hundreds of African boat people who wash ashore onto this idyllic ocean paradise. When sun-soaking bikini-clad German tourist Nathalie (Sabine Timoteo) witnesses the sight of bedraggled and suffering refugees as they stagger ashore, she begins to help out and makes a connection with one of the refugees and his young son. Against the wishes of her husband, Paul (Friedrich Mücke), who wants her to keep out of it, she helps to effect an escape for Zola (Huber Koundé) and his son Mamadou (Dami Adeeri) from the local internment camp. But rather than assisting she unwittingly makes it more difficult for him as he becomes involved with criminal smugglers. As Nathalie gets more deeply involved, she comes to the attention of policeman José and both find that they have issues to address in their own lives as well as making sure their actions will create positive rather than negative change. As the tag line has it, to free someone, you may have to free yourself.
The Italian director of Respiro (2002) and Golden Door (2006), Emanuele Crialese, covers similar issues in Terraferma, his take on the timely topic. Set on the island of Linosa, off of Sicily, the film focuses on the trials and tribulations of the centuries-old fishing community as they grapple with the realities of the global age. Tensions rise within a family as the patriarch refuses to give in to the new demands of tourism and face up to the harsh realities of depleted fish stocks, while his son and daughter embrace the new realities facing the island. The familial tensions are exacerbated by boatloads of illegal immigrants suddenly appearing on their shorelines. As the fishermen try to uphold an ancient tradition – to rescue anyone in distress upon the high seas – they find it almost impossible not to come to the aid of the struggling refugee families from North Africa. The patriarch and his family’s lives are turned upside down when they find themselves aiding and abetting a young pregnant African woman. The law states that they must turn her in but they are in a quandary about this and have radically different ideas about what to do. A thoughtful and provocative film, it raises questions about the issue without bludgeoning the viewer into siding with one or another of the possibilities articulated in the smart script. Again, the issue of ‘liberal’ tourists, their near-decadent appearance in the world of the local inhabitant and their need to not be subjected to the reality of beaches ‘besmirched’ with desperate refugees are seen in a fair but complicated light. Two thoughtful accounts then, of the same phenomenon, though I lean to Color of the Ocean as the marginally superior film.
The docu-drama Always Brando was a poetic and reflective film by the Tunisian director Ridha Behi (Bitter Champagne [1984], Swallows Never Die in Jerusalem [1994]). A very interesting storyline mixing fact, fiction and speculation, Always Brando is described by programmer Rasha Salti as ‘at once a loving and lucid elegy to the cinema, and the director’s naked, uncontrived meditation on its imperious allure and cruelty’. And that description is little short of the truth. Behi’s film weaves a meditation on his unlikely relationship with Marlon Brando – who unexpectedly and after many years of solicitation from Behi, summoned him to his Hollywood home to work on a script – and Behi’s meeting with a Tunisian actor, Anis Raache, who bore a striking resemblance to the young Brando. This gave the director the idea to make a fictional film about this Brando lookalike and how this opportunity to work on an American movie being filmed in Tunisia deludes the actor into thinking he will achieve fame and fortune in Hollywood. Exploited and seduced by a middle-aged man who promises to cast him in a Brando biopic, Anis is led on a downward spiral that ends in futility and failure. Meanwhile, in real life the idea of a collaboration with the real Brando, which was being worked on in the actor’s Mulholland Drive mansion, came to an abrupt end with the death of the great man. From these fragments from Behi’s life, he has made a film that is ‘specifically tailored to the two Brandos’. This is cinema that is thoughtful and intriguing and shot through with possibilities.
Less thoughtful and intriguing – in fact the biggest disappointment of the festival – was the new quasi-vampire/horror flick Twixt by The Man Formerly Known as Prince (of directors), namely Francis Ford Coppola. In Twixt, Bruce Dern, who is almost always in overwrought and over-acting mode (Ã la Nicolas Cage), plays the part of a local sheriff who has fantasies of co-writing a novel about the mysterious death of a local young girl. He pitches his idea to down-on-his-luck visiting thriller author Hal Baltimore (embarrassingly played by Val Kilmer). When the near-delusional Baltimore has a visitation from the girl’s ghost, the preposterous filmic story commences. As the writer hallucinates and confuses dreams with reality, we are taken on an unwelcome journey with him as he starts hanging out with a resurrected Edgar Allan Poe, who gives Baltimore pointers on the finer aspects of horror writing and detection. I kid you not. Po-faced, or should I say Poe-faced Coppola’s once mentor, Roger Corman, has done far better service to Poe – and the horror genre – than Coppola has here. Corman’s Gothic at least had style and panache. This film is plodding and cringe-inducing and I would have liked to see a dozen young filmmakers split the budget of this real-life horror film between them and see what they would have come up with; surely something livelier and more engaging. And the few minutes of 3D spectatorial (non) glories to be glimpsed halfway through the film and in the inevitable and predictable bloody ending were gratuitous and ill-advised. Not one from the heart then, but one from the faint-hearted. Forget about it.
Last part of our coverage of the 2011 London Film Festival by Mark Stafford, Sarah Cronin, Lisa Williams, Frances Morgan and Virginie Sélavy.
Rebellion
On April 22, 1988, three gendarmes were killed and 30 others taken hostage in a botched operation by independence fighters on the French colony of New Caledonia. In this fictionalised account, Mathieu Kassovitz plays Captain Philippe Legorjus, the leader of a special operations unit who is sent to the island to negotiate a peaceful settlement, only to find himself outmanoeuvred and sidelined by his own colleagues. The latest from the actor-director mixes docu-drama and action thriller elements to create a wrenching, powerful and intelligent film that exposes the arrogance and brutality of the French elite during the 10-day hostage crisis. Kassovitz opens the film with a tableau depicting the final moments of the stand-off, before piecing together a day-by-day reconstruction of how events went tragically wrong; tension builds quickly, immediately immersing the audience in the politically charged story. It’s impossible not to sympathise with the islanders’ struggle to take back their country from the French; the scenes of the Kanak people performing their endangered rituals are extremely moving, while the unfolding actions of the French army are increasingly sickening (the film ends on a particularly grim note). The hostage crisis took place against the backdrop of the closely fought presidential election between Mitterrand and Chirac, with political allegiances and ambition outweighing any real desire for a negotiated end to the conflict. The politicians back in Paris wanted it over before the elections, and the French army, invading a colony for the first time since Algeria, had enough incentives to ensure the rebels – horribly dehumanised in the French media – were violently suppressed. In Rebellion, Kassovitz has created an impressive and gripping piece of genre filmmaking that is also an indictment of France’s colonial legacy. SC
Dreams of a Life
Joyce Carol Vincent’s body was discovered in her Wood Green flat three years after she had died. Documentary maker Carol Morley has attempted to piece the life of this mystery woman together and has built a portrait, not of the ageing shut-in that most people might have imagined from the tabloid reports, but a pretty would-be singer and bubbly social girl who seemed to hang around in other people’s lives and never quite become herself. Fascinating stuff, with brilliantly assembled material that makes you ponder what effect you have on those around you and what impression you will leave behind. It’s a pity that the long, stagey reconstructions just don’t work and seem to strain for an effect that they don’t achieve, because the talking heads quietly reduced me to tears. MS
Dreams of a Life is released in the UK on 16 December 2011 by Dogwoof.
We Need To Talk about Kevin
We Need To Talk about Kevin is a chillingly apt title as Lynne Ramsay’s latest film contains precious little dialogue. Quite a feat given that it is based on the much-lauded novel by Lionel Shriver in which Eva, the narrator, describes the events leading up to her son committing a dreadful crime and reflects upon its consequences. This format would easily lend itself to a verbatim expositional voice-over in a film adaptation but, as was obvious from her 2002 film Morvern Callar, Ramsay knows the power of silence.
That’s not to say the film is noiseless. In fact, it is charged with sounds which, to Eva, evoke that fateful night when she discovered the full extent of Kevin’s crimes. But, rather than rely on dialogue to tell the story, Ramsay brings out Tilda Swinton’s extraordinary abilities as an actress to communicate Eva’s living hell. We see her close her eyes in almost orgasmic relief when a roadside drill drowns the wails of her crying baby, for example, and – when a doctor tells her that toddler Kevin’s reluctance to talk is not down to autism – what you see register on Eva’s face looks suspiciously like a faint flicker of disappointment.
Combined with arresting cinematography by Seamus McGarvey, and disturbing performances from the three actors who play Kevin from infant to teenager, Ramsay’s restraint elevates into poetry what could have, in the wrong hands, been turned into a gruesome misery memoir. LW
We Need To Talk about Kevin was released in UK cinemas on 21 October 2011 by Artificial Eye.
The Kid with a Bike
Another fine film from the Dardenne brothers, who seem to have a way of making low-budget films about people from the wrong side of the tracks that just don’t run along the same rails as others. Nothing here harangues us about ‘issues’ in society. It’s just the story of Cyril, the hell-on-wheels 11-year-old of the title. Living in a children’s home, but escaping to pursue the dad who put him there at every given opportunity, Cyril’s single-minded, resourceful zeal blinds him to the fact, evident to all others, that his father is a bit of a shitbag. Still, somebody up there must like him, because one of his misadventures throws him into the arms of Samantha (Cécile de France), who agrees to take on the little terror on weekends. Is it possible that she can help Cyril to save himself from the world of pain he’s so energetically chasing? There are no ostentatious camera set-ups or performances here, just lean, intelligent filmmaking that finds the best way to get to the heart of scene after scene. For my money, it’s not up there with L’enfant (which just seemed to have more going on), and I kind of wonder how long the Dardennes can repeat a winning formula. But hell, this is great stuff. MS
The Monk
The Monk
Matthew Lewis’s sulphurous Gothic novel adapted by Dominik Moll, director of the wickedly brilliant Harry, He’s Here to Help, with Vincent Cassel in the role of evil monk Ambrosio: it sounded terrific on paper, but the film did not quite live up to expectations. To be fair to Moll, it is a very difficult novel to adapt: narratively labyrinthine, it relies on the intricate echoes and contrasts between its different strands to create depth and resonance; forced to concentrate on one story, the film feels strangely bare. In keeping with the nightmarish quality of Gothic novels, Moll has gone for a dreamlike, artificial world, which sometimes works (the addition of the mask for the character of Valerio is eerie and chilling; Ambrosio’s recurring dream, which is not in the novel but perfectly fits with its spirit, is strikingly evocative), but too often descends into cartoony Gothic clichés (night outings to the cemetery, gargoyles, thunderstorms, etc.). Vincent Cassel is great as the conflicted monk battling repressed desires, and both he and Moll clearly give their all, but the result of their efforts is oddly paced, narratively meagre and stylistically overwrought. VS
Natural Selection
Amiably filthy road trip, as a childless Christian wife (Rachael Harris) tracks down the junkie fugitive fruit (Matt O’Leary) of her husband’s sperm bank habit, after hubby has a stroke while, well, having a stroke. It’s pretty familiar American indie comedy stuff as the odd couple learn from each other, and you can kinda predict where it’s going most of the time, but the central performances are fine, it makes you care, and the dialogue is foul-mouthed and funny. (‘Maybe we can go see a unicorn take a shit made of lullabies.’) I liked it a lot. MS
Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai
Last year, Takashi Miike remade a little-seen 1963 samurai film by Eiichi Kudo, 13 Assassins, which was undeniably a lot of fun, but uncharacteristically conventional for the director, both in its filmmaking style and its attitude to the traditional values of the samurai. Puzzlingly, this year Miike has directed a 3D version of Masaki Kobayashi’s acclaimed 1962 Harakiri (Seppuku), a virulent, powerful indictment of the hypocrisy of Japan’s feudal system and the samurai’s code of honour. Miike is clearly going through a chanbara phase, although he seems a bit unsure of where he stands in relation to the samurai tradition. This may explain why Kobayashi’s searing condemnation of the samurai’s rules of conduct as empty, rigid and inhuman is blunted in the dialogue and weakened by lethargic direction and melodramatic excesses in Miike’s version.
When Miike doesn’t water down the original film, he simply reiterates it. The story of a poor ronin, whose request to commit ritual suicide in the courtyard of a prestigious family’s house conceals a desperate act of revenge, is told through exactly the same series of flashbacks as in Kobayashi’s film. The striking image of the ronin kneeling down in the courtyard surrounded by the almost geometrically positioned samurai simply repeats the exquisite compositions of the earlier film.
Visually, Miike adds 3D, which has the effect of making the colours dull and dark while being completely superfluous, given that there is little action. The most striking 3D scenes are those that show beautiful autumn leaves in the foreground against stony walls in the background, snow falling in the feudal house’s courtyard, and the credits rolling in front of the house’s symbolic samurai statue. Nice, but hardly indispensable. Which is a fairly accurate description of this pointless remake. VS
Shock Head Soul
It’s beautifully shot, and I love the typewriter jellyfish manifestations, but Shock Head Soul renders what seems to be a fascinating psychological case study into an achingly serious, ponderous trudge. It offers no compelling characters or observations of note and I found myself, after half an hour, wanting the whole thing to just shut up, which is possibly not the compassionate reaction to mental illness that the filmmakers were aiming for. Maybe I’m too stupid, too stupid to understand. MS
Mosori Monika
Intimate Visions: Films by Chick Strand
While the LFF closing gala screenings took place on the other side of the river, there was a tiny audience for the NFT’s programme of six films made between the 1960s and 1980s by Chick Strand, the Californian experimental and ethnographic filmmaker who died in 2009. It was a rare chance to see Strand’s work, and we got to sample a few different facets of it, from found-footage pieces that make use of archival material to her poetic, intimate approach to ethnographic filmmaking. The witty and, in the case of Loose Ends(1979), sometimes disturbing montages of old film and audio – in which sound and vision are juxtaposed in a way that recalls the darkly funny audio-visual collages of People Like Us – have dated less well than Mosori Monika (1970), a dreamlike, compelling portrait of a missionary settlement in Venezuela with conflicting voice-overs from a Catholic nun and an indigenous woman. Meanwhile, Artificial Paradise (1986), shot in Mexico, is both a gorgeously tactile, hypnotic piece about human and animal bodies in motion and in close-up – dancing, running, riding – and a comment on the exoticisation of those bodies: an example of having one’s cake and eating it, perhaps, but it’s spellbinding stuff. Strand’s feel for physicality and use of found footage are combined in Angel Blue Sweet Wings (1966), in which a male dancer whirls in the sunshine to the sound of Aretha Franklin’s ‘Doctor Feelgood’, while lights and sequins pulse in joyful sympathy, articulating a feminist vision that’s as sensual and playful as it is critical. FM
360
It’s always nice when the bad guys in an ensemble film neatly take themselves out of the picture, isn’t it? Saves you having to, ooh, I don’t know, write something that might actually happen in the real world. Fernando Meirelles’s latest features a host of fine acting talent (Hopkins! Weisz! Debbouze! That bloke out of The Baader-Meinhof Complex! ummm… Jude Law!) and puts them to work in a series of interlocking scenarios based around travellers from Vienna, London, Paris, Denver and Phoenix. I’d be lying if I said it had nothing going on, with this many characters and stories something was bound to click, and the dissolves and transitions are inventive, but really, this is tossycock of the first order. Tossycock, I tell you! MS
Target
Mentions of the Strugatsky brothers and Tarkovsky in the LFF write-up on this futuristic Russian tale were enticing, but Target turned out to be a pompous sci-fi soufflé, philosophically fluffy, insipid and indigestible. The story follows members of the Russian media and political elite as they seek to obtain eternal youth by travelling to a remote, abandoned astrophysics base and exposing themselves to the cosmic rays channelled into its central well. But the experience is so intense that its consequences are extreme, in a manner both positive and destructive. Unlike its illustrious predecessors, the self-important and portentous Target offers strictly no insights into the human condition, and no ideas of any interest about the future or the universe over its sprawling two-and-a-half-hour running time. The wide screen attempts to convey an epic feel, the sun’s rays over the ‘target’ in the barren landscape are meant to be humbling, the urban settings are as slick and modern as in Hollywood science fiction, and the whole is entirely empty and soulless. And then there’s the sex. Laughably bad sex, made worse by startling outbursts of bombastic music, in case the audience did not quite get how passionate it all is. And in a couple of instances, even dodgy sex, in which the women are barely consenting. This is one Target that is way off the mark. VS
Asshole
With its punkety rockety /sex ‘n’ drugs/ monochrome on the scuzzy streets milieu, Gandu/Asshole kind of put me in mind of the Cinema of Transgression flicks of the 80s and 90s. Most of those films, however, ran for 20 minutes tops. Gandu runs for 89, which is a long time to spend in the company of an unbearable, un-pretty solipsistic douchebag, who smokes smack, nicks money from his hooker mom’s clients, and bemoans his fate as a would-be hip hop star in an Indian backwater that has no need of one. It all looks like photo spreads from Vice magazine, or Dazed and Confused, there’s some of yer actual unsimulated sex, and a datura trip and all kinds of Daily Mail baiting whatnot, but it was only while reading the notes in the programme that I realised that the mother character was supposed to be his mother, which pretty much sums it up. Has its moments, visually and musically, and it has energy to burn, but at the end of the day, it’s bollocks. MS
The second Zipangu Fest, celebrating the best of cutting-edge and avant-garde Japanese cinema, will be held at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts and Café Oto from November 18 to 24, before moving to venues around the UK. The festival will showcase a selection of Japan’s finest features, documentaries, shorts, animation and experimental films. This year, it includes a strand exploring sound and film, which is previewed below by Eleanor McKeown and Tom Mes.
KanZeOn (2011)
KanZeOn begins on a tranquil note. A young Buddhist priest kneels, softly chanting while the camera produces languid shots of the temple’s interior. The calm is punctured when he leaves the floor, picks up a set of headphones and starts spinning hip hop records on a set of decks. It is one of many magically strange scenes that make up this thought-provoking exploration of links between Japanese Buddhism and sound.
The documentary follows three individuals in Kyushu: Akinobu Tatsumi, the hip hop-loving priest; Eri Fujii, a master of the Sho, an ancient bamboo instrument that mythically mimics the cry of a Chinese phoenix; and Akihiro Iitomi, a jazz-loving performer of Noh theatre. Divided into elliptical segments, the film switches between the three musicians as they perform their art and discuss what sound and music mean to them. The beautifully filmed sequences leave behind strong images, from the shadow of beat-boxing Tatsumi reflected onto perfect turquoise river water to the inspired performance of Fujii, set against a backdrop of crashing waterfalls. The sounds of nature and human endeavour combine to create exquisite duets. The languorous pacing allows the audience to absorb these fascinating combinations and contemplate the part that music and everyday sounds might play in their own lives. Accompanied by a discussion between SOAS lecturer Lucia Dolce and filmmakers Neil Cantwell and Tim Grabham, the Zipangu festival screening should provide a thoughtful insight into the role of sound in Japanese society and religion. EM
Listen to directors Neil Cantwell and Tim Grabham discuss the film + Tatsumi Akinobu give a performance of his Buddhist chanting and beat-boxing skills on the Electric Sheep’s I’m Ready For My Close-Up radio show on Resonance FM 104.4, Friday 18 November, 5-5:30pm.
We Don’t Care about Music Anyway (2009)
Those who care as much about music as about movies will find a rich harvest at Zipangu again this year. Not least in the shape of We Don’t Care about Music Anyway, Cédric Dupire and Gaspard Kuentz’s rather fascinating documentary on some of the leading lights of Japan’s noise scene. Alternating a round-table discussion between the participants with their individual performance pieces, the film is less radical in its form than Kikoe, Iwai Chikara’s documentary tribute to the great Otomo Yoshihide from three years ago – not to mention Ishii Sogo’s pivotal film on German noise pioneers Einstürzende Neubauten, Halber Mensch (1986) – but it is all the more accessible and emphatic as a result. The debate/performance structure conveys the theory and practice that inform the divergent methods of these musicians. The sparse set-up of the round-table talk contrasts greatly and effectively with the more exuberant mise en scéne of the performance pieces, which see the participants at work on scrap heaps, in underground tunnels, in ruined buildings and – in the most eye-catching sequence (which also provides the film’s main promo visual) – on the beach. Those looking for a history lesson or a broad overview of Japan’s noise scene will be left wanting, since the focus of We Don’t Care about Music Anyway is firmly on the small group of featured artists. As a brief immersion, however, it is a genuine delight. TM
Enter the Cosmos: Takashi Makino Special (2004-2011)
As part of its exploration of Japanese sound and film, the Zipangu festival will be screening a showcase of three films by acclaimed experimental filmmaker Takashi Makino. Makino’s films provide bizarre journeys through enigmatic soundscapes, composed of various sonic textures from the dislocated organ of a carousel to discordant piano notes and extreme feedback. The whir, crackle and drone of machines are accompanied by the imperfections of film and pixelated distortions of video. The visual scale is vast and the pacing is slow, like a 45rpm record set to 33rpm.
The first work, Intimate Stars (2004), provides the most recognisable sounds and visuals of all the films with occasional glimpses of vaudeville performers and fairground rides. The film offers representations of both exterior and interior landscapes as shots of branches and rushing skies segue into images so enlarged as to be wrought into completely abstract forms. The later films to be screened show an even greater exploration of abstraction. Elements of Nothing (2007) and In Your Star (2011) take the audience on trips through different emotional states and immersive sensations from the peaceful plucking of strings to uncomfortably intense feedback. Not for the faint-hearted, these bold, challenging, extreme odysseys provide a fascinating introduction to Makino’s work. EM
Coming soon: Comic Strip Review of Abraxas, about a ex-punk musician turned Buddhist monk.
Mark Stafford, Thomas Grimshaw and Virginie Sélavy report on the hits and misses at this year’s Raindance Film Festival.
Dick Night
Months after being jilted at the altar, Rachel (Jennifer June Ross) has become a reclusive slob, surrounded by mounds of takeaway pizza boxes and unopened wedding gifts in her isolated home. An intervention by her mother shakes her up, but she decides that the only way to truly get over this hump is to get laid, pronto. She invites a likely candidate to come over but nothing runs to plan, the wrong people keep turning up at her door, a pizza delivery guy, an over-protective friend, her ex, a weird girl and, eventually, a horde of would-be vampires…
Andy Viner’s debut is an object lesson in making the most of limited resources (a house in the desert, a committed cast, a vehicle or two). It’s oddly constructed, being about 80% sex farce to 20% horror movie, pretty rough around the edges, and Viner doesn’t seem especially committed to having everything wrap up and make sense, but for the most part it works. It’s pretty funny and breezes along on ramshackle charm, as Rachel’s would-be seductions continually turn into discussions of her marital woes, and the vampires are motivated by a desire to join Team Edward in the Twilight franchise. What can I say? It’s fun! MS
War Games
War Games is the latest addition to the sub-genre of the survival horror film. Whereas films such as the classic Deliverance or the recent Eden Lake utilised the genre to throw up politically charged issues, War Games can make no such claim and exists purely as an exercise in cheap thrills. However, there is also a lot of fun to be had in this tale of young paintballers entering into a deadly game of cat and mouse with a trio of deranged military types. With little justification for their actions, except that shooting dogs just ain’t no fun anymore, the antagonists are painted in very broad strokes, delivering portentous monologues in a mixture of disparate European accents. The heightened display of tropes and stereotypes actually plays to the film’s advantage and creates a slightly innocent 1980s feel, eons away from the torture porn of Eli Roth and co. That’s not to say that the film doesn’t offer up its fair share of blood and guts, but it tastefully opts out of any sadistic voyeurism. The weakest links are undoubtedly the film’s young, peppy protagonists, who blur into one singular unit with slight gender variation. Despite the flaws in the plot and characterisation, War Games has a sly cheekiness that paradoxically wins you over to its way of thinking. Directed thick and fast by Italian music video director Cosimo Alemà, it makes great use of limited locations; the forest is a wonderfully labyrinthine nest that helps to compound the palpable sense of danger. War Games is by no means a defining horror film, but it does exude a perverse frivolity and has a lot of fun with its genre stylings. TG
The Box
The Box approaches the Yugoslav conflict from a seemingly quirky, tangential angle that makes the film all the more powerful. Serbian director Andrijana Stojkovic observes the beginning of the Bosnian war in 1992 through the lives of three young men who work in removals, packing the possessions of one ambassador after another as all diplomatic staff leave Belgrade. Billy is a football fan, Cvrle a musician with ambitions to be an international rock star, Vladan a gifted student trying to leave the city to study in the Netherlands. Shot in beautifully stark black and white with austerely composed images, the film cuts between their lives and documentary-style interviews with them and the various diplomats they work for. This device helps build a part humorous, part-poignant picture of the different, sometimes highly contrasting ways in which the conflict affects the lives of the young men and their foreign clients, shaping a subtle critique of Western powers. Strikingly original, intelligently written and visually accomplished, it was a definite highlight of the festival. VS
The Enemy
Serbia offered another interesting take on the conflict with The Enemy, a horror-tinged thriller set a week after the end of the Bosnian war. The film opens with a brilliant credits sequence that starts in total darkness; sounds are heard, then light shines through, revealing that a wall is being broken down, and a man appears, smoking calmly, inside the dark cavity. He is rescued and taken back to the Bosnian soldiers’ isolated headquarters in an abandoned house. Naming himself only as Daba (a nickname connected to the fact that he limps), he is an odd character who smiles enigmatically at everything, smokes and never seems to eat, unnerving some of the most unstable soldiers, who start to believe he may be a malign, supernatural being. As the soldiers wait impatiently for the order to go home, paranoia, distrust and superstition fuel a dangerously rising tension. Filming in muted, almost monochrome colours, director Dejan Zečević creates a convincingly claustrophobic atmosphere, although the unnecessary, overly verbose literary and religious references weaken the narrative. The film is most successful in the way it uses horror elements to comment on the absurdity of war; the narrow perspective of the soldier, who only sees his corner of the war and not the bigger picture; and the idea that the enemy is inside, which is particularly powerful in the context of the Bosnian war. Remaining ambiguous to the end, The Enemy offers a great take on the figure of the interloper, whose mere presence reveals hidden feelings in the other characters and changes the dynamics of the group. VS
X
Cameramurderer
An isolated Bauhaus-style home deep within a maze of lakes and grasslands somewhere in Hungary: some local children have gone missing, and a creepy video has been posted on the web that appears to show their pursuit and sadistic murder. This is probably not the best time for two couples to enjoy a few days of wine and socialising, a short walk away from the possible crime scene. As the police helicopters circle, tensions within the house mount and suspicions form. Could one of them be responsible for the horrendous crime? Robert A. Pejo’s film is essentially a four-hander play, albeit one with a well-used location. While the shifting allegiances and antagonisms within the group are well handled and performed, I was never especially surprised by any developments in the story. None of the characters are particularly engaging. And anybody expecting a film with this title to do much with the camera, or play with point of view, will be disappointed. Meh. MS
Kingdom of Survival
In his latest documentary, director M.A. Littler sets out to uncover the multiple strands of dissidence still alive in the United States today, seeking out interviewees as diverse as Professor Noam Chomsky, outlaw historian Dr Mark Mirabello and gonzo journalist Joe Bageant. While the individual interviews are genuinely compelling, presenting a roster of passionate and articulate speakers, with Chomsky and Mirabello offering the most insightful critique of the United States entrenched capitalist system, the lack of narrative provides few key links between its commentators, and as a result the film feels episodic and unfocused. Littler himself supplies the only bond between these disparate elements. Driving from subject to subject, Littler, in regular interludes, mythologises and eulogises those who live outside the system and laments the scarcity of people keeping the outlaw ideology alive. However righteous his attempts might be though, his beat-poet, cowboy persona often threatens to derail the admirable attempts of his subjects, making him appear self-conscious and smug. That said, the film does offer a genuine attempt to present a complex subject matter in layman’s terms without losing the potency and complexity of its inherent ideology. TG
State of Emergency
There’s been an explosion somewhere outside a small town in Middle America, and something is in the air that’s turning normal people into crazed killers. We follow Jim as he loses his fiancée and tries to survive, first on his own, and then after hooking up with three other survivors as they hole up in a warehouse and try and stay sane, uninfected and breathing.
The early sequences of State of Emergency where Jim, in some abandoned stables, tries to make sense of what has happened, attempts to summon help and deals with an unwelcome intruder, clearly show that Turner Clay can assemble a suspenseful scene and create an atmosphere of eerie desperation. His creeps are pretty creepy, standing like scarecrows until they burst into snarling life, and, in an intriguing moment, one of them even talks (‘I’m looking for my daughter…’) But, for Christ’s sake, Mr Clay, you simply cannot make a zombie movie this straightforward and simplistic this late in the day, in this saturated sub-genre. Surely any filmmaker paying attention and raising money should realise that they have to ring a few changes, twist a few clichés, do something strange or difficult or alarming to lift themselves out of the shambling horde. State of Emergency‘s characters are dull, the dialogue is flat and perfunctory, and there is none of the subversive socio-political business that makes the key living dead films interesting. What’s the point? MS
X
Best seen as a piece of shameless exploitation, X is an Australian thriller set in the seedy, dangerous world of sex workers, corrupt cops and junkies in King’s Cross, Sydney. We have Holly, a high-class whore, pulling off one last job before she flees to Paris. We have Shay, a teenage runaway trying to survive her first night as a hooker on the mean streets. And we have a suitcase full of something that various nasty bastards are willing to kill for. Go!
X is gritty, glossy and grim, there’s plentiful use of split-screen, constant ambient noise and a general feeling of audio-visual overload, as Jon Hewitt takes us up and down the social scales of prostitution from a sex show for Chardonnay-sipping suburbanites to smack-addled wretches cowering in love motels, waiting to be raped by the owners. There’s an ever present sense of the vulnerability of tough women. It’s exhilarating and shocking in places, moves like a freight train, and has nothing especially original to say about its sordid little world. Still, the old ‘torn-from-today’s-headlines’ sensation-seeking aesthetic means that you’re unlikely to be bored. It fits a lot into 85 minutes, and ends on an ambiguous note that doesn’t leave you feeling cheated. MS
Visiting the Barbican for a special screening of Lipsett Diaries (2010), Theodore Ushev’s much-praised 15-minute film about experimental filmmaker Arthur Lipsett, it was easy to forget the iconic concrete labyrinth was playing host – for the first time – to the London International Animation Festival. The monthly programme had a lonely, rather perfunctory, paragraph of blurb while the majority of the milling crowd seemed to be there for a new production of South Pacific. As I waited patiently outside Screen 1, I saw with some relief that word had clearly spread about LIAF as a large, high-spirited crowd streamed out of the festival’s British Showcase screening. Perhaps the throng was all showcased filmmakers with friends in tow; still, the lively festival-goers created a welcome buzz and, while many did not stick around for Lipsett Diaries, those who did attend (and the number was respectable) were rewarded for their attendance; the event was another example of thoughtful programming from the LIAF organisers.
Lipsett Diaries could easily have slotted into one of the festival’s regular screenings, lost amid the roster of impressive shorts; instead, it was used as a catalyst to introduce Lipsett’s work and as an ending to a comprehensive retrospective of Ushev’s work to date. It is certainly Ushev’s best film, although his animations have displayed technical virtuosity from the beginning. His first work – The Man Who Waited (2006) – re-tells a Kafka short story through a rapid, claustrophobic edit of images, hand-drawn in the style of German expressionist woodcuts. The fast pacing of Ushev’s filmmaking – something shared with Lipsett’s – is a real strength, and the retrospective included several shorts influenced by 20th-century art movements obsessed with mechanism and speed: constructivism, futurism and vorticism. Tower Bawher (2006) followed this pattern and re-trod a path pioneered in Russia at the start of last century. There was nothing new about the montages of newsprint, geometric blocks, architectural towers and saluting hands but the computer-generated speed did add a certain freshness to the images.
That Soviet typography and striking images appeal to Ushev should come as no surprise, given his background as a graphic artist. I saw a continuation of this profession in his filmmaking: not only in his use of striking aesthetics but also in the way he fits images to his films’ subjects, almost as if working to a brief. In the Q&A following the screening, he spoke of serving a concept; the key was making ‘a film, not my film’, he said. While commendable in many ways, this approach creates a certain passivity in his filmmaking; the image is applied to, and therefore at the mercy of, the text or idea. For me, the overly cutesy narration of Tzaritza (2006) made a sweet tale about families separated by emigration more throwaway and saccharine than it needed to be. It seems that Ushev creates his best films when working with rich personalities that provide a strong voice. As a case in point, Yannick Nézet-Séguin: No Intermission took an interview and performance by the eponymous conductor and created beautiful glowing visuals: lively flashes of Nézet-Séguin’s animated face and hands appear from extreme blackness to tame and direct an invisible orchestra.
Lipsett Diaries provided another strong voice and portrait of the creative spirit. The film was born out of discussions with fellow filmmakers, a series of talisman coincidences – including the discovery that Lipsett had previously lived in Ushev’s first apartment block in Montreal – and a script by writer Chris Robinson. Divided into three separate segments, the narrative tells Lipsett’s story, from a difficult childhood to his death. An exceptionally talented filmmaker, Lipsett created several astonishing shorts in the early 60s and committed suicide just before his 50th birthday. Composed of hundreds of acrylic paintings, the film’s animation is intense and extremely delicate, borrowing from the visceral style of Francis Bacon and Goya’s later paintings and occasionally nodding to Pop Art. These images play out as filmmaker Xavier Dolan narrates snatches of text and builds up an insight into Lipsett’s inner turmoil. It is only at the end of the film that the audience is told that Lipsett’s diaries were never found and that the film is a fictionalised account, using narrative texts from Lipsett’s shorts.
The non-linear approach of assembling text and images mirrors Lipsett’s own filmmaking technique, which cut up dialogue – often passages of cultural criticism – and playfully juxtaposed the words with images of everyday life, either shot by himself or his contemporary filmmakers at the National Film Board in Canada. The editing skills displayed in his debut film, Very Nice, Very Nice (1961), brought Lipsett to the attention of the Academy and also that of filmmakers such as Stanley Kubrik (who asked him – unsuccessfully – to work as his editor). Lipsett was a master of editing but, more than that, he offered a delightfully skewed way of looking at the world, which cuts through the noise and commercialisation of our normal existence. His work goes beyond surrealism’s random juxtaposition of images and, while it uses the everyday, it is not quite Pop Art either. Lipsett’s work does not propel commonplace objects to the position of High Art in such a straightforward composition; instead, it uses everyday experience to comment upon cultural criticism, political theory, religious belief and social observation. The strange juxtapositions of images are sometimes used to directly contradict the rhetoric being espoused and, at other times, to point out the futility of trying to contain and define the human experience in words. The grand theories are interrupted by phone calls, cut off in mid-stream and shown disintegrating into unintelligible burbles and nonsensical noises. The films create a collage of competing voices, snippets of text straining to make sense of the world.
There is despair in Lipsett’s shorts but there is also warmth and humour; traits that were slightly lost in the script for Lipsett Diaries, which preferred to emphasise a darker, more straightforward narrative of the artist as tortured soul. Lipsett’s work is full of humanity – laid bare for the audience in his every choice of image – and it was wonderful to sit in the Barbican watching his early shorts unfold on the big screen. For bringing Arthur Lipsett to new audiences, to the organisers of LIAF and the makers of Lipsett Diaries: bravo, very nice, very nice.
Sarah Cronin and Pamela Jahn report on the London Film Festival as it enters its final few days.
Headhunters
A slick thriller with hints of B-movie horror, Norwegian director Morten Tyldum’s Headhunters is an entertaining adaptation of Jo Nesbø’s bestselling crime novel. Aksel Hennie plays Roger Brown, a man who – on the surface, and despite his insecurity about his height – seems to have it all: beautiful wife, stunning home, flashy car. But none of this is really paid for by his job as a renowned headhunter. Instead, Roger is also an art thief, whose wealthy, high-powered clients are all potential victims, including Clas (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), an extremely successful executive with chiselled good looks and an inherited Rubens. While some of the early twists in this classic heist film might be predictable, the film soon shifts into some unexpected directions, as Clas turns out to be a terrifying opponent who mercilessly hunts Roger down, completely upending his life.
Some of the plotting does not hold up to close scrutiny, and sympathising with Roger is a stretch (he’s a womaniser as well as a thief), but it’s a well-executed, well-acted film that has enough going on to make it a fun watch. Occasionally gory, sometimes silly, it’s a cut above the usual crime caper. SC
Sleepless Nights Stories
Jonas Mekas’s latest offering is a weird and wonderful mix of short-film montage, essay and film diary that emerged out of a jet lag-induced insomnia. In 20-odd episodes, inspired by the tales of One Thousand and One Nights, the tireless Mekas strolls through the night, meeting old friends and random acquaintances and listening to their stories. Many of the people who appear in front of his shaky digital camera are prominent artists, including Patti Smith, Harmony Korine, Louis Garrel, or a lovelorn Marina Abramovic, who shares her inner feelings with the 88-year-old filmmaker. The more stories, both intimate and eccentric, the film reveals, the more it becomes clear that there is more than one Scheherazade at work here. The episodes, which are introduced by sometimes hilarious, sometimes philosophical, sometimes plain weird intertitles, build a series of devices to avoid desperation and death. But most importantly, what becomes manifest is the fact that sleepless nights don’t pass without a certain amount of alcohol. Mekas drinks, his friends follow suit and the camera totters, suggesting that you are better off picking up a glass of wine (Mekas prefers red) before going into the screening too, to be able to fully chime in with the admirably free spirit conveyed on screen. PJ
Shame
One of the most talked about films at this year’s festival, Steve McQueen’s Shame could have been a great movie. His follow-up to the acclaimed Hunger, it stars Michael Fassbender as Brandon, a man who is pathologically addicted to sex, filling his need with an endless stream of pornography and prostitutes. His (outwardly) tightly controlled, orderly life begins to unravel when his sister, Sissy, played by Carey Mulligan, appears at his immaculate, minimalist flat, begging for a place to stay. While Fassbender puts in a terrifically compelling performance, Mulligan is given much less to work with – her character is the ditsy, manic-depressive blonde, needy and demanding, desperate for attention, leaving endless messages for men that she’s slept with, not understanding that all they wanted from her was sex. While she has a few great scenes – and one in particular, already notorious – her character is a cliché that’s been seen and done before. Predictability is the problem with the film as a whole. The nearly wordless opening and closing scenes that bookend the film are incredibly powerful, but there are times when the dialogue is frustratingly flat, and the depiction of corporate New York and its club scene are too reminiscent of the early 90s and American Psycho. There is real tension in the tormented relationship between Brandon and Sissy, while his uncontrollable, violent outbursts are a shock, but the screenplay just isn’t quite strong enough to make the whole a truly remarkable film – what’s frustrating is that it comes so close. SC
Walking Too Fast
Following hard on the heels of Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s The Lives of Others, slow-burn Czech psychological thriller Walking Too Fast offers an equally compelling, if less original, glimpse into lives under a communist regime before the fall of the Iron Curtain. Set in Czechoslovakia in the early 1980s, the film draws heavily on the story of its predecessor: troubled agent Antonín Rusnák (Ondrej Malý;) is a loyal, and consequently savage, henchman of the official state security service, whose brutal façade starts to crumble as he develops an obsession with Klára, the young lover of the persecuted dissident Tomáš, whom Antonín attempts to force into emigration. Antonín’s motive, however, is less an urging romantic desire than a desperate attempt to overcome his inner struggle and despair, which makes his character thoroughly unlikable but, at the same time, more interesting and powerful. In fact, his gradual transition from faithful servant to ruthless maverick, who, in his pointless attempts to win Klára over Tomáš, gradually starts to fight on all fronts, is where the film is most gripping. Although the pace lags slightly towards the end, Malý; delivers a solid performance as the cold-blooded spy going astray, and thanks to the chilling electronic score and apt cinematography director Radim Špaček has crafted a film that is both absorbing and subtly unsettling in its own right. PJ
Without
Without
The debut feature from writer-director-editor Mark Jackson, Without was a personal highlight at this year’s LFF. It features an outstanding performance from newcomer Joslyn Jensen as an unstable young woman who’s secretly coping with a terrible loss. Joslyn takes a job on an island off the coast of Washington State, caring for Frank, an elderly man in a near-vegetative state who’s confined to a wheelchair. The set-up – it’s just the two of them, alone, in a remote house in the woods – suggests a thriller, but the suspense and mystery really revolve around her perilous emotional state. There are lots of (sometimes disturbing) comedic moments in the film, but as it unfolds, Joslyn’s charming, seemingly innocent character begins to evolve into something deeper and darker. Her transformation is mesmerising; her treatment of Frank at times shocking. The director hints throughout the film at her reasons for taking the job, but never gives away too much at once, leaving it to the audience to try and piece together the rest of the puzzle.
Jessica Dimmock and Diego Garcia’s cinematography is superb; much of the film is shot with a shallow depth of field, lending a rich, soft-focus look to the visuals, while the warm hues contrast with the darkening tone of the film. It’s a remarkable, original feature that will hopefully get the recognition that it deserves. SC
Restless
Gus Van Sant’s latest film seems like an unlikely choice for the director: a very twee romance about two adolescents who fall in love while coming to terms with both life and death. Enoch (played by Henry Hopper), struggling to cope with the loss of his parents in an accident, likes to crash funerals dressed in gothic attire. His best friend is Hiroshi, the ghost of a kamikaze pilot (why, I have no idea); they like to play Battleship together, but the pilot always wins. Annabel (Mia Wasikowska) is dying from a brain tumour, although she keeps this information to herself when she first meets Enoch at the funeral home.
It’s a classic teen love story, complete with the tragic but uplifting ending and added quirkiness. The problem is that the evolution of their romance is so sickeningly sweet it’s exasperating to watch, while their world is made up of elements from a nostalgic past that lends a painfully contrived air to the film (perhaps trying to recreate Harold and Maude for today’s generation, but failing). She reads books on Darwin and birds, they play Operation, and Enoch toys with a slinky while waiting in the hospital for news from Annabel. They’re completely removed from reality, and the result is that the film has little resonance, or anything believable to say about weighty subjects like love and death.
But despite the film’s serious flaws, I think it will have an audience: it’s the perfect sleep-over movie for tween girls who are too cool for the stuff that passes for romance in Hollywood, and not yet cynical enough to reject screenwriter Jason Lew’s blatant tugging on the heartstrings. SC
Restless is released by Sony Pictures in the UK on 21 October 2011.
Crazy Horse
For his 39th film, Frederick Wiseman has taken a close look behind the scenes of the famous Parisian cabaret club, which, since its foundation in 1951, offers a burlesque show billed as celebrating both beautiful women and the art of the nude. After a first glance into the dressing rooms, a gently moving camera follows a couple of catchy on-stage performances. However, much as in La Danse, in which Wiseman observes the dancers and choreographers of the Paris Opera Ballet as they break the most complex movements down into their component parts, the director’s primary interest here remains in revealing the hard work needed for choreographer Philippe Decloufé and his ensemble to revive and sustain the success of the show. Wiseman records the long, tiring hours of practices, staff meetings and heady discussions about lighting design and budget constraints, and costume-fitting sessions followed by more rehearsals and repetition. Working precisely with the curiosity of an anthropologist and the eye of an aesthete, Wiseman manages once again to achieve what any ordinary observer would fail to do: making the boredom of routine work captivating. Enriched by footage of the ensemble’s most compelling on-stage acts and moments of casual beauty, Crazy Horse is a vibrant, fascinating celebration of dance as a multi-faceted art form. PJ
She Monkeys
Nominated for the Sutherland Trophy at this year’s LFF, She Monkeys is an intriguing debut from Swedish filmmaker Lisa Aschan about the intensely competitive relationship between two young women teetering on the cusp of adulthood. Emma dreams of joining the local equestrian acrobatics team, practising diligently in her sparsely furnished bedroom in the house that she shares with her precocious seven-year-old sister Sara and their father (we never learn what’s happened to their mother, although her unexplained absence is clearly a disturbing factor in their lives). When Emma succeeds in making the equestrian team, she’s befriended by the attractive, worldly Cassandra. It’s soon clear who is in control; Cassandra is a bully, and the prank that she plays on a young man who’s interested in Emma is painfully cruel. But a fatal moment of vulnerability on Cassandra’s part leads to a twist in their power struggle, and the discovery that Emma is perhaps not as innocent and vulnerable as she first seems.
It’s an original retelling of the coming-of-age story, but what makes She Monkeys so remarkable are the performances delivered by the non-professional actresses, Mathilda Paradeiser, Linda Molin and Isabella Lindquist, who is simply astonishing as Sara, a child far too young to be grappling with her sexuality. It’s a compelling, disquieting watch that earned Aschan the top narrative prize at the Tribeca Film Festival. SC
A Deviant View of Cinema – Features, Essays & Interviews
