Format: Cinema

Release date: 7 September 2007

Distributor Yume Pictures

Director: Garin Nugroho

Based on:‘The Abduction of Sinta’ (from the Ramayana)

Cast: Artika Sari Devi, Eko Supriyanto, Martinus Miroto

Java 2006

120 minutes

You could call it long conception, short birth. Garin Nugroho imagined Opera Jawa five years ago, but shot it in just two weeks. Production companies weren’t interested in the idea of a modern day opera based on Hindu holy text the Ramayana and set to the sound of gamelan music. But then Peter Sellars – the man behind the staging of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro in the Trump Tower – decided to commission the film for the New Crowned Hope Festival. The festival, funded by the city of Vienna and curated by Sellars, commemorates the 250th Birthday of Mozart, who himself struggled to get his revolutionary work commissioned.

The intricate planning that Nugroho invested in his idea over those five years is clear in the final product, which is packed with layer upon layer of art installations, folk-inspired dance and constant movement. A series of musical vignettes tell the story of the destructive love triangle between married couple Setio and Siti, and the town bully Ludiro. The couple meet playing the leads in popular Hindu tale ‘The Abduction of Sinta’, but the artistic glamour of their single lives turns into conjugal drudgery after the wedding.

When their pottery business falls to pieces, in steps Ludiro, a long-haired Lothario who woos Siti with his proud masculinity and material wealth. It is a tough decision for Siti; the contrast between the Spartan marital home and Ludiro’s string of sumptuous lairs is clear to see. As Siti entertains the idea of being with him she becomes the focus of some of the most haunting sequences in the film.

But the personal becomes political when Setio’s patience snaps and he instigates a community offensive on Ludiro, whose tyrannical rule over neighbouring businesses – orchestrated by a mob of crab-like Mafiosi – has wreaked havoc on the hearts, minds and purses of the town.

Nugroho broadens the political scope even further by describing the film as a requiem for those who have died through natural and man-made disasters, suggesting that the love triangle of the film symbolises real-life power struggles over land for reasons of religion, natural disaster and greed. The point is made well: like the land itself, Siti rarely crafts her own destiny but allows herself to be the vessel of other men’s desires.

Both she and Setio dance stylised set pieces where their eerie movements convey their deepest feelings. But power-hungry Ludiro – played by one of Madonna’s former dancers – actively teases and taunts in his dance scenes. When first introduced, he appears from behind an animal carcass in his butcher shop to turn his all-encompassing megalomania into a violent, swiping dance routine. He later steps out a strutting flamenco-style dance atop the bar of a smoke-filled jazz joint, which reveals his dangerous allure and the depth of his desire.

In this way, Nugroho proves that a dance, like a picture, can tell a thousand words. In fact, words are where the film fails. For viewers not fluent in the Javan tongue – even those with a steely acceptance of subtitles – the impact of reading the opera lyrics pales in comparison with the sheer joy of seeing the saturated colours of Ludiro’s candle-lit oasis or the graceful coordination of the Javan classical dancers.

The idea of a feature-length gamelan opera is a hard one to accept, especially when it is politically charged and crammed with art installations. But the stunning beauty of the film means Nugroho gets away with it.

Lisa Williams

Format: Cinema

Release date: 21 September 2007

Distributor Momentum Pictures

Director: Quentin Tarantino

Cast: Kurt Russell, Rosario Dawson, Vanessa Ferlito, Zoí­Â« Bell

US 2007

113 minutes

Now released in an expanded stand-alone version after the US flop of the ‘Grindhouse’ double bill (which also comprised Robert Rodriguez’ forthcoming Planet Terror), Death Proof is Quentin Tarantino’s latest tongue-in-cheek homage to genre cinema. After heist movies, blaxploitation and martial arts actioners, now it’s the turn of the 70s exploitation flick to get the Tarantino treatment.

While the Asian-inspired Kill Bill was let down by misplaced ambition and a dismally dull second part, with Death Proof Tarantino is comfortably back on home ground. A cross between a car chase B-movie and a slasher shocker, the film stars the great Kurt Russell (in even more rugged form than in his Snake Plissken incarnation) as the psychopathic Stuntman Mike, who drives around in his sinister car of death in search of female victims. Cue feisty girl gangs, wiseass one-liners, wiggling hot pants, screeching hot rods and mucho unwholesome violence.

With his customary fetishistic attention to detail, Tarantino lovingly reproduces the rough-around-the-edges feel and general shoddiness of low-budget exploitation fare, down to the scratches, jump cuts and incompetent editing. The wonderfully grainy, sleazy texture of seventies cinema is perfectly recreated, making Death Proof a visual treat in this era of bland technologically-enhanced perfection. Even the women’s skin appears authentically 70s, with that look of real flesh that seems so provocatively sensual in contrast with the plastic feel of airbrushed bodies. While the film looks great, the plot, split into two repetitive parts, is surprisingly clunky and on the thin side. Of course, Tarantino could claim he was simply emulating his 70s models but this is one aspect of the film that actually feels unintentionally sloppy.

As usual, Tarantino’s fetishism means that he reduces the films he draws on to a collection of shiny pop culture artefacts entirely emptied of their original meaning. Death Proof feels like a best-of the genre, meticulously compiled by a geeky film buff stuck in eternal teenagedom. So while Vanishing Point is Death Proof‘s major reference point, all that Tarantino takes from that film is the car – the 1970 white Dodge Challenger, which two hard-ass stunt girls obsess over so much that it becomes a central part of the plot – leaving out the moody desperation and lonely landscapes that made the original something more than just another car chase movie.

However, Tarantino’s revisionist take on the crude sexual politics of the Grindhouse nicely brings the genre into the twenty-first century and makes it fun for the girls too. After the predictable maiming and murdering of some scantily-clad hot chicks, Russell’s unreconstructed macho psycho gets his come-uppance big time when he picks the wrong gals to mess with. The kind of girl who straps herself to the hood of a speeding Dodge for kicks, gutsy Zoí­Â« (played by real-life stuntwoman Zoí­Â« Bell, who was Uma Thurman’s body double in Kill Bill) is more than a match for Stuntman Mike and the film climaxes on an exhilarating, triumphantly old-school (no cheating with CGI here) high-speed car chase. While the sassy girl talk is no more than a collection of sub-Sex and the City clichés, the girl-power action is a blast.

Death Proof is yet another variation on Tarantino’s trademark pop cannibalism. His delirious enthusiasm for cult cinema is infectious – and almost endearing – and while the films he references so lavishly will always be superior to his own, Death Proof is a fun ride through cinema’s louche past.

Virginie Sélavy

Unlike Virginie Sélavy, Ben Cobb found absolutely nothing to enjoy in Death Proof. Read his review here and take sides!

Format: Cinema

Release date: 21 September 2007

Distributor Artificial Eye

Director: Christian Petzold

Cast: Nina Hoss, Hinnerk Schí¶nemann, Devid Striesow

Germany 2007

89 minutes

Written and directed by the German filmmaker Christian Petzold, Yella is an intriguing, suspenseful mystery with a singular clarity of vision. It is constructed like a jigsaw puzzle and each scene cleverly fits together to reveal a film that is much more than the sum of its parts. Winner of the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the 2007 Berlinale, Nina Hoss delivers an excellent performance as the title character – a disillusioned woman desperate to free herself from an oppressive, unsuccessful marriage. Hoss imbues her character with a sombre, haunted quality, perfectly attuned to the subtleties of Petzold’s screenplay.

Yella attempts to flee her threatening husband, Ben (Hinnerk Schí¶nemann), and their failed business venture in East Germany for a new career and a new life in the West German city of Hanover. After a nightmare journey across the Elbe, a promised job turns out to be non-existent, the company that hired her now bankrupt. Through self-interest or sympathy, Philipp (Devid Striesow), a charismatic, ambitious businessman staying in the same hotel, offers Yella a position as his assistant. She soon becomes entangled in the cut-throat world of venture capital, negotiating deals to extend financing to start-up business ventures. But although capitalism forms the backdrop of the film, Petzold isn’t interested in making judgements about the world of finance and big business. These negotiations are really sly, duplicitous games that mirror the very nature and complexity of human relationships.

There is much more to Yella than its plot, and both colour and sound contribute subtle clues to the film’s intricacies. Petzold weaves these aesthetic elements into the fabric of the film, compelling the audience, as well as Yella, to play detective. The palette is composed of luminous, iridescent tones of green and red, with a crisp quality to the colour that evokes a heightened sense of reality. Breaking glass, the sound of rushing water, the rustling wind, bird song: all remind Yella of what she has endured, nudging her ever closer to the truth. She finds herself returning time and again to the river that divides East and West, her old life from her new.

Yella, struggling to escape from her past, is haunted every step of the way by Ben. He follows her to Hanover, stalking her, emerging from the shadows to torment her. She is rescued once again by Philipp, who appears to be everything that Yella wanted from her husband: successful, confident, yet also gentle and considerate. He uncannily guesses that she left Ben because he was a failure, that she could no longer love someone who was ruined financially. Philipp holds a mirror up to Yella, forcing her to confront her desire for a big suburban home, a green Jaguar, a perfect child. She wants what she could never have on the other side of the river, what her husband could never have given her. Ben, like impoverished East Germany, is a ghost-like figure, left behind by those desperate for a better life in the West.

Yella is an almost metaphysical exploration that, frame by frame, spins out an intriguing narrative about the human condition. Petzold meticulously probes beneath the surface of Yella’s life, revealing universal truths about love, desire, greed and regret. It’s an intelligent, well-crafted and superbly acted film that lingers in the imagination long after the final credits have rolled.

Sarah Cronin

Format: Cinema

Release date: 14 September 2007

Distributor: Revolver

Director: Temur Babluani and Géla Babluani

Original title: L’Héritage

Cast: Sylvie Testud, Pascal Bongard, George Babluani, Augustin Legrand

France/Georgia 2006

83 minutes

Before embarking on his Hollywood career with a forthcoming remake of his debut film 13 (Tzameti), Géla Babluani has taken the time to collaborate with his father, noted Georgian filmmaker Temur, on a film set in their home country. The film echoes many of the themes of Babluani’s debut, albeit filtered through a lyrical, far less violent and arguably more mature aesthetic: the father reigning in the son’s excesses, at least until the tense climactic sequence.

The set-up is simple but intriguing: we know the tourists’ intervention is going to lead to trouble, but in what form it is impossible to say. The story unfolds at a deliberate pace, but never becomes boring – the unfamiliar landscape is beautifully photographed and there is a continuous, well-timed ebb and flow of incident and revelation, proceeding inexorably towards a terrible event which nobody even attempts to avert. A sense of tension is skilfully maintained, and as viewers we find ourselves in the same position as the three ambiguous leads: horrified by the inevitability of events, but eager to see how everything will pan out.

The political critique here is inherent and rather obvious. Western tourists fail to understand the cultures in which they find themselves, they are self-absorbed and ignorant, and ignore the struggles and realities of ordinary people in their pursuit of selfish ends. Filmmakers and news gatherers are equally guilty: they exploit such suffering for financial gain. This technique of allying the audience with likeable but morally reprehensible lead characters is also nothing new; there’s nothing here to rival, say, Michael Haneke’s expert viewer manipulation.

The characters remain frustratingly underdeveloped. As the tight-lipped young escort George Babluani essays much the same character as in Tzameti: an enigmatic holy innocent confronted with forces far beyond his control. The three students are amusing but empty, simple caricatures necessary for the plot. The only actors who manage to bring their creations to life are both familiar from Babluani’s earlier film – Pascal Bongard’s Nikolai is pleasingly uncertain, a sad-eyed working man buffeted by circumstance. And Augustin Legrand somehow manages to be simultaneously creepy and loveable as a travelling mute, the only character who ever seems to know what’s going on.

Much like Tzameti, Legacy is an entertaining drama hinging on a brilliant but frustratingly underdeveloped central idea. Both films lack character, and each builds tension expertly before dissipating it in a weak, disappointing final act. More interesting as travelogue than cinema, Legacy is never less than entertaining but never more than adequate.

Tom Huddleston

Format: Cinema

Release date: 31 August 2007

Special preview: 30 August 2007, Trafalgar Square, London, 9pm

Distributor: BFI

Director: Franz Osten

Original title: Prapancha Pash

Cast: Seeta Devi, Himansu Rai, Charu Roy

UK/India/Germany 1929

77 minutes

This silent romantic melodrama from 1929 is reissued by the BFI in a nice print, sharp but with considerable depth and subtlety of shade, including some pleasing murkiness. It is an extravagantly beautiful realisation of royal splendour in Rajasthan, inspired by the ancient Mahabharata but looking like what was then the fairly recent past. Anyone expecting an Indian Cecil B DeMille had better look elsewhere. The filmmakers (German director Franz Osten and Indian actor/producer Himansu Rai) deliver an elegant, pleasing, well-organised piece, admirably serious about its subjectmatter (love, desire, power, and especially gambling) but never pretentious or boring. Not a second is wasted nor a false note struck. Even the love scenes, even the children’s roles are acted with a restraint that one scarcely associates with cinematic epic.

I was rather dreading the new soundtrack by Nitin Sawhney, not being a fan, but I am pleased to report that it is mostly excellent. This is Sawhney in full orchestral mode: he proves to be a dab hand at sub-Rimsky orientalist doodling, very much the kind of thing that would have been popular at the time the film was made, and appropriately evocative of the never-neverish world in which the story is placed. The music is episodic but coherent, rich in melody and tone colour: it invigorates the action without ever going too far in dictating the mood – at least until the last fifteen minutes, when Sawhney gives in to the temptation to include some vocal numbers, which outstay their fit as action develops and mood changes.

Peter Momtchiloff

Format: Cinema

Release date: September 2007

Venue: BFI Southbank

Director: Andy Warhol



US 1964-66

Between 1964 and 1966, anyone who visited the Factory would be made to sit for a three-minute silent film portrait. Andy Warhol made nearly 500 of these Screen Tests and as part of their current retrospective of his work, the BFI Southbank are showing a staggering 279 of them.

The Screen Tests feature all degrees of celebrities rubbing shoulders on the celluloid: real stars (Dennis Hopper, Bob Dylan), Warhol’s ‘superstars’ (Edie Sedgwick, Ondine), underground personalities (Jack Smith, Taylor Mead), artists and cultural figures (James Rosenquist, Henry Geldzahler), and at the bottom of the celebrity scale, Factory wannabes. Under instruction to sit still for three minutes, some of the subjects calmly comply, some fidget uncomfortably while others defiantly disobey (Geldzahler undoes his tie, Rosenquist swivels on his chair).

It has to be said, sitting in a dark room watching more or less famous people stare at the screen for three minutes does not constitute the most exciting cinematic experience. In fact, like much of Warhol’s work, the Screen Tests are facile and hollow, and yet it is impossible to deny their perverse appeal. And although they are not as notorious as Sleep, Blow Job or Chelsea Girls, the Screen Tests do offer a striking insight into the slippery, ambiguous nature of Warhol’s art.

As the portraits succeed one another on the screen, watching them feels just like turning the pages of an autograph book. But while there is something of the star-struck fan collecting pictures of his idols here, these film portraits also show Warhol the star-maker at work, fabricating icons by removing what makes them human. By making his subjects sit completely still and remain quiet, Warhol freezes them in a state where they are reduced to pure image. Voiceless, motionless and expressionless, they are the perfect flat surface on which viewers can project their desires.

But through this star-making process Warhol is also constructing his own myth, engaged in a mutually dependent, self-serving relationship with his models: he gives them edgy, artistically-endorsed fame; they make him the ultimate pop guru. The Screen Tests show Warhol creating a world in which he reigns all powerful, the master who can make or break a star, the high priest of cool who decides who’s in and who’s out. Did anyone ever refuse to pose, I wonder? Did anyone, famous or not, risk being left out of Warholian history?

It is a measure of Warhol’s talent as a salesman, as a charlatan even, that no one could ignore him, not even the serious film critics and theorists. Even though he was one of the least inventive filmmakers of the period, his work has been much pondered over. Warhol shot the Screen Tests at 24 frames per second but had them projected at 16 FPS, elongating the viewing time to 4 킽 minutes. Just as in the eight-hour-long Empire, there isn’t much of an idea there. Yet, what would have been slated as shallow and slight in anyone else’s work was interpreted as a radically minimalist statement on duration in Warhol’s films.

A much better adman than he was an artist, Warhol somehow managed to sell his literal reproductions of celebrities as an ironic comment on our culture. Yet his very success, if not his work, exposes that culture for what it is. It is these contradictions that shine through in the Screen Tests. But that’s not reason enough to sit through 279 of them.

Virginie Sélavy