Antiviral

Brandon Cronenberg hasn’t exactly gone out of his way to distance himself from his father’s work here. His first feature has weird medical practices and perverse ideas aplenty. In a world where the hysteria surrounding celebrities has spawned a number of spin-off industries well beyond the racks of gossip magazines, you can buy pounds of lab-grown celebrity meat, celebrity skin grafts, and, in the clinic where Syd March (Caleb Landry Jones) works, get yourself infected with genetically modified exclusive celebrity diseases. Syd’s an effective salesman, trusted in the company, but he’s got a little dirty business on the side, infecting himself with the valuable maladies and passing them on to his underground contacts. Unfortunately, one of the new infections proves to be far more virulent than he expects, and he finds himself a seriously sick and seriously desirable man, with criminal and legitimate interests vying to exploit the strange new superstar virus coursing through his veins. As Malcolm McDowell informs him, ‘I’m afraid you’ve become involved in something sinister’.

If we must make comparisons with his dad’s oeuvre, and, y’know, it’s begging for it, then Antiviral continues in the vein of the 80s Scanners/Brood/Videodrome period, though it lacks their pulpy forward momentum and energy, and takes a while to get going. What it does have is a well thought through look of gleaming white surfaces and strange technology, a lot of woozy discomfiting camerawork and a fantastic sound design that pulses and throbs menacingly, combining to create a queasy subjective experience. Cronenjunior sets out to make you unwell watching his film, and has succeeded admirably: it builds into something truly troubling. He’s aided hugely by the extraordinary-looking Caleb Landry Jones, pale of skin and red of hair, who adds flesh and blood to an intentionally blank and unknowable lead, stripped entirely of past and personal clutter. Good stuff, very promising, though I’d steer well clear if you have a thing about needles – and don’t expect a McDonalds tie-in campaign…..

Mark Stafford

Swandown

Perfectly timed for the arrival of the Olympics, an event even the most hardened Londoners are sick to the back teeth of before it has even begun, this collaboration between artist, filmmaker and restless rambler Andrew Kötting and writer, cultural investigator and psychogeographer Iain Sinclair is a match made in heaven. Kindred spirits who both share a physical and spiritual attachment with the South Coast, the pair first met when Sinclair reviewed Kötting’s Gallivant for Sight & Sound and then maintained a correspondence before collaborating, tentatively, on the filmmaker’s cross-channel Offshore.

In many ways a summation of the themes and practices that have acted as signposts in their respective careers, the film, commissioned as part of Abandon Normal Devices, is a travelogue-cum-odyssey of suitably Olympian ambition as the two fearless explorers and a stolen plastic swan pedalo christened ‘Edith’ (named after the ancient English queen Edith Swan-Neck, whose statue can be seen at the Hastings suburb of Bulverhythe, cradling the dying King Harold after the Battle of Hastings) travel Jerome K. Jerome-style on the waterways of south-east England to the riverside fortress that will become East London’s Olympic 2012 site.

Having aborted several attempts to pen a synopsis, here is the filmmaker himself on the kernel of Swandown: ‘For four weeks throughout the months of September and October 2011 Andrew Kötting and Iain Sinclair pedalled a plastic swan over 160 miles from the seaside in Hastings to Hackney in East London. They drank 84 litres of water, 2 bottles of whisky, 4 bottles of wine and 24 cans of special brew. They got through 8 pairs of sunglasses, a handmade suit, a pair of walking boots and a camper van. Andrew Kötting wore the same clothes throughout. Iain Sinclair was changed regularly. They met all sorts en route, from the hoi polloi to the hoity toity, from the very old to the very young, with the pedalo acting as catalyst and magnet. Sometimes they were accompanied by invited guest pedallers - sage and comics creator Alan Moore, comedian and cultural commentator Stewart Lee, actor Dudley Sutton [who appeared in Kötting's Emile Zola-inspired second feature This Filthy Earth], neuroscientist Dr Mark Lythgoe and artist Marcia Farquhar.’

A liquid road movie evocative of Gallivant, which Swandown frequently echoes, it also conjures the ghost of Herzog’s Aguirre: The Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo, playfully referenced via audio excerpts of Les Blank’s Burden of Dreams. Shots of the two self-confessed ‘codgers’ strenuously dragging their vessel across fields and roads to the next stretch of water add to the Herzogian tone. Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is another frame of reference. I was also, if a little perversely, reminded of John Huston’s The African Queen. For its creator, the endeavour also acts as a tribute to the acclaimed performer, traveller and conceptual artist Bas Jan Ader, who in 1975 was lost at sea attempting to cross the Atlantic in a pocket cruiser. ‘Swandown was always meant to be a homage to him and the ridiculousness of his quest,’ comments Kötting.

Jovially described by Sinclair as ‘a blend of Benny Hill, Stan Brakhage and Joseph Beuys’, Kötting adopts the role of athlete, fool and visionary, larking about and cheerfully interacting with the flotsam and jetsam of British life. He is both Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. The director suffers for his art, contracting trench foot from his waterlogged boots and a nasty leg infection from a dog encountered en route. Sinclair is cast in the role of the cynical, weary, literary, philosophising wordsmith. Will Self in Shooting Stars in essence. The blend is perfect.

During their journey our intrepid, increasingly stiff-legged Marco Polos listen to the ambient echoes of British culture (historical, literary, political and depicted through Super 8 and archive newsreel footage from the South East Film and Video archive as well as a re-enactment of Shakespeare’s Ophelia as depicted in Millais’s pre-Raphaelite painting) and tune in - like ‘flesh radios’, as Sinclair says, channelling the cultural unconscious - to the secret voices of England today and yesterday. The result is a factual, frolicsome and fun film/text/Dada performance piece that offers an artistically riotous response to the corporate spirit dominating London in Olympics year. As Stewart Lee comments, ‘Iain Sinclair hates the Olympics. He doesn’t think anything should happen in Hackney without his permission’.

The two key points on the Swandown itinerary are its start and end: Hastings (from where ‘Edith’ originates and the actual physical launch point of the trip, a disastrous and inauspicious event hilariously captured on camera) and Hackney, homes to Kötting and Sinclair respectively. ‘The two geographies are intimately connected,’ says Sinclair - ever since a chunk of Hackney’s old artistic-bohemian population moved down to the South Coast, in search of freedom, inspiration and an affordable cost of living. ‘The old Hackney of anarchy and poverty has drifted down towards Hastings, whereas Hackney is now a virtual Wizard of Oz city of supermalls and surveillance. We had the idea of doing an anti-project, against the global corporate entities of the huge projects being done in Hackney in the name of the Olympics.’

Sadly, Sinclair’s commitments force him to abort the voyage before the Olympian Citadel is breached, leaving Kötting to pedal the final leg of the journey alone. The tone of the film becomes ever more melancholy as rural idyll gives way to urbanisation (a river littered with rubbish, frequent shouts of abuse rather than encouragement from passers-by and fellow river-dwellers) and a sporting project ensnared in bureaucracy, security and secrecy. The somewhat downbeat conclusion, however, never for a moment overshadows the project’s impish inquisitiveness and quintessential Englishness. Featuring many of Andrew Kötting’s long-time collaborators, including musician Jem Finer, cinematographer Nick Gordon-Smith and sound recordist Philippe Ciompi, this is an enduring and entertaining male buddy movie the likes of which we haven’t seen before.

Jason Wood

Carr&#233 blanc

Those who cling to wealth and power by forcing conformity, stifling creativity and crushing the very essence of humanity are the faceless dominant evil that exploits the most vulnerable aspect of what it means to be human. It is ultimately our spirit which is, in fact, not as indomitable as we’d all like to believe. Through indoctrination and constant scrutiny we are reduced to lumps of clay. We are moulded in the image our true rulers want to see. They want us tied to the consumption they control. Call them what you like, but they are indeed The New World Order.

And they are winning.

And, worst of all, the loser is love.

And without love, we all become prey.

Harkening back to great 70s science fiction film classics like The Terminal Man, Colossus: The Forbin Project, A Boy and His Dog, Silent Running and THX 1138 - when the genre was thankfully bereft of light sabres, Wookies and Jabba the Hut, when it was actually ABOUT something - Jean-Baptiste Léonetti’s debut feature film Carré blanc is easily the finest dystopian vision of the future to be etched upon celluloid since that time.

The future it creates is not all that removed from our current existence.

Léonetti announces himself as a talent to be reckoned with. This low-budget science fiction film astounds us with its visual opulence. That, of course, is because it’s obvious that Léonetti has filmmaking hardwired into his DNA. NEVER does the film feel cheap or low-budget. Never do we feel like it has structured itself around all the usual budget-saving techniques that so many other first-time filmmakers unimaginatively opt for. Léonetti has wisely, painstakingly chosen a number of actual exterior and interior locations that fit his vision perfectly and work in tandem with the narrative. His compositions are rich and because his location selection has been so brilliantly judicious, he clearly had the time to properly light and dress the images.

The next time I hear some young filmmaker whining about the ‘challenges’ of their one-set low-budget production I will consider placing them on my list of those who shall feel the wrath of my Baikal semi-automatic Russian assault rifle when civilisation collapses and it becomes one giant free-for-all.

Though Carré blanc shares a specific approach with past work to a genre that can, perhaps more than any other, effect true analysis and possibly even change, there is nothing at all retro about the picture - no obvious post-modernist nods here. It is completely unto itself.

Carré blanc is fresh, hip, vibrant and vital.

Blessed also with a deliciously mordant wit, Léonetti delivers a dazzling entertainment for the mind and the senses.

The tale rendered is, on its surface and like many great movies, a simple one. Philippe (Sami Bouajila) and Marie (Julie Gayet) grew up together in a state orphanage and are now married. They live in a stark, often silent corporate world bereft of any vibrant colour and emotion. Muzak constantly lulls the masses and is only punctuated by announcements occasionally calling for limited procreation and, most curiously, promoting the game of croquet - the one and only state-sanctioned sport.

Philippe is a most valued lackey of the state - he is an interrogator-cum-indoctrinator - and he’s very good at his job. In fact, with each passing day, he is getting better and better at it. Marie, on the other hand, is withdrawing deeper and deeper into a cocoon as the love she once felt for Philippe is transforming into indifference. In this world, hatred is a luxury. It’s a tangible feeling that the rulers would never tolerate and would punish with death.

Indifference, it would seem, is the goal. It ensures complete subservience to the dominant forces. Love, however, is what can ultimately prove to be the force the New World Order is helpless to fight and the core of this story is just that - love. If Philippe and Marie can somehow rediscover that bond, there might yet be hope - for them, and the world. It is this aspect of the story that always keeps the movie floating above a mere exercise in style.

So many dystopian visions suffer from being overly dour. Happily, Léonetti always manages to break the oppressive force of the film and its world by serving up humour. Most of the laughs in Carré blanc occur within the context of tests delivered by the interrogating indoctrinators. In the world of the film, suicide is often the only way out for those who have a spirit that cannot be crushed. One early scene features Philippe as a young teen and another boy his age who have both attempted unsuccessfully to kill themselves (by hanging and wrist-slashing respectively).

Both boys are led into an empty room where smiling corporate lackeys speak to them in tones of compassion. They are both asked to engage in a test to cheer them up. Lying before them is a body bag. The test is thus: which one of them will be first to go inside the bag?

Let us just say that we laugh in horror at what follows. (I wasn’t the only one laughing in the packed house at the film’s premiere screening. A few sick puppies belched out appreciative guffaws.)

Narratively, this sequence reveals that Philippe is clearly an interrogator in the making. The test itself is a perfect way to not immediately ‘waste’ potential ‘talent’ by snuffing them out before seeing what they’re really made of. As the film continues to unspool, some of the biggest laughs and equally chilling moments come from the tests Philippe concocts and metes out to discover those who must be weeded out of society - permanently. Other laughs derive from the odd announcements and pronouncements over the endless loudspeakers.

To Monsieur Léonetti, I offer a tip of the hat for coming up with so many dollops of darkly humorous nastiness throughout the proceedings. They not only offer entertainment value, but are inextricably linked to the world he creates, a world so similar to the one we live in and one which feels just around the corner if humanity does not prevail over the force of a very few.

Love becomes the ultimate goal of Léonetti’s narrative and as such, he delivers an instant classic of science fiction. At the end of the day, the best work in this genre IS about individuality and the fight to maintain the indomitability of spirit.

It might, after all, be the only thing we have left.

Greg Klymkiw

Watch the trailer:

‘Carre Blanc’ trailer from East End Film Festival on Vimeo.

True Love

For low-budget filmmakers, having a tiny cast and only one or two locations is a huge bonus in keeping costs down. This has led to a number of films based on ‘locked room’ scenarios over the last decade and a half. Cube (1997) was an excellent, genre-defining example of this and in subsequent years, Maléfique (2002), Ryûhei Kitamura’s Alive (2002), Saw (2004), Fermat’s Room (2007) and Exam (2009) have explored horror and science fiction variations on the theme. Many of these have screened at SCI-FI-LONDON or FrightFest in the past so this is starting to become a well-worn theme for fans of the genre and regular genre festival attendees.

Enrico Clerico Nasino’s True Love, which screens at SCI-FI-LONDON this month, is another example, but unfortunately, it adds little that hasn’t been seen before. The central premise of a young married couple, kept in separate, futuristic cells and made to answer difficult questions about how much they trust each other under the threat of water, sleep or mobility being removed is strong enough. As a film made by Italians with an American cast and setting, this could have resulted in an interesting exploration of Abu Ghraib/Guantanamo Bay-style interrogation techniques on middle-class suburbanites who experienced the ‘war on terror’ as a mild diversion through their televisions, but disappointingly, this aspect is barely hinted at.

Instead, the writers and directors have reality dating shows and the Milgram experiment in their sights as the subjects they’re giving an SF twist to. Even then, the science-fictional aspect of the film is minimal, apart from a final scene that adds an eye-catching set piece of gravity working differently in opposite ends of the prison-like environment. [SPOILER WARNING] But this is undermined by a ‘was it all a dream?’ ending, and the nature of the lies they have told each other - adultery, financial trouble - is more suited to romantic melodrama than a death trap thriller. [END OF SPOILERS]

Neither the two main actors or the parts they’re playing are particularly engaging, meaning that the film’s main attraction lies in the more technical aspects of the production. True Love‘s direction, editing, cinematography and sound design are all solid, and for these qualities alone, those involved behind the scenes deserve to work on bigger and better things, but the film overall suffers of a lack of ambition and originality. While True Love isn’t by any means a particularly bad film, for audiences to get the most out of its narrative and visual twists and turns, they’ll need to be unfamiliar with similar narratives that have dealt with these tropes better and with more imagination.

Alex Fitch

Extracted

An excellent science-fiction thriller that, while reminiscent of a number of other films, including The Cell (2000), Identity (2003), Timecrimes (2007) and Inception (2010), improves on all its predecessors by having tight direction, characters the viewer can relate to and a brisk running time that doesn’t overstay its welcome.

US genre TV star Sasha Roiz, reminiscent of a laid-back young Jeff Goldblum, plays an inventor whose device allows a person to experience their own or other people’s memories as an interactive virtual reality environment. To get funding for this, he unwittingly does a deal with a law enforcement agency, who want to use it to investigate whether a supposed killer has committed a murder he claims no memory of. Roiz rushes to get the prototype finished for this initial demonstration. It works well enough in letting him enter the killer’s mind but malfunctions when he attempts to leave, putting his own body into a coma and trapping his consciousness in the killer’s mind for the next four years.

The script explores the morality of the device and the truths and fictions we tell ourselves. While tense and gripping when needs be, the film refreshingly doesn’t feel the audience has to be kept on the edge of their seats throughout, giving the human drama space to breathe. Since the budget doesn’t allow for the eye-boggling visuals of The Cell or Inception, it also avoids the over-familiarity of blockbuster set pieces that its predecessors got bogged down in. And despite the potentially labyrinthine possibilities of the scenario, it tells the tale in a straightforward manner that doesn’t require a scientist with a blackboard to explain the narrative to viewers without a Ph.D.

Indie actor Dominic Bogart portrays a sympathetic junkie and potential killer very well, experiencing his own incarceration in jail while he has another person trapped inside his head, and through the recreation and repetition of his memories, we learn how he has been betrayed and manipulated by the people he loves, throughout his life.

The story includes a twist that makes us doubt the central premise and leaves the plot open for a welcome sequel. This leads to some minor problems I have with the script, in particular: for a film that relies on a certain amount of real-life science, it seems strange that the filmmakers don’t acknowledge until the very end the well-established fact that each time a person remembers something, the memory changes slightly - a fact Roiz’s character seems incredulously unaware of.

Overall, though, a top-notch indie thriller and one that will hopefully find a distributor and a larger audience as soon as possible. Extracted is certainly the best film I’ve seen so far at this year’s SCI-FI-LONDON and its second screening on May 4 deserves to be sold out.

Alex Fitch

Himizu

Directed by Sion Sono, who brought us Suicide Club (2001), and more recently Cold Fish (2010), Himizu is an urgent and topical film. Located in the midst of the devastation in the aftermath of the tsunami of 2011, the film shows a society that is not only physically destroyed but also socially falling to pieces. Fifteen-year-old Yuichi Sumida (Shôta Sometani) lives with his neglectful mother in a boat hire shop. His drunken father only lurches into view when he needs cash and curses Sumida, wishing him dead and reminding him about the time he saved Sumida from drowning, an act he bitterly regrets on account of the insurance he could have claimed. Sumida is also the object of a school girl crush on the part of the hyper Keiko (Fumi Nikaidô) - ‘Am I a stalker? Yes, I am’ - to whom he is (at best) indifferent. The boat house is also a gathering place for a disparate bunch of refugees who serve as a Greek chorus and attempt to help Sumida in his troubles even as he hopelessly pursues his wish to lead an ordinary, normal and boring life.

Tragedy overtakes him, however, and with his chances of normality gone forever, he teeters on the edge of madness, haunted by recurring dreams of apocalypse. Threatened also by the yakuza, who are pursuing his father’s gambling debts, Sumida considers suicide but wants to do something genuinely good that will redeem him before he dies.

Sono’s film is a deeply unsettling view of modern day Japan. It is a society in which the adults have an antagonistic, if not downright hostile, relationship to their offspring. Sumida’s parents are blandly negligent on one side and furiously hateful on the other, but this isn’t simply an isolated case. Keiko interrupts her mother and father, who are in the process of building her a gallows. ‘You’ll use it when we’ve finished,’ they tell her. School is an irrelevance that spouts new age platitudes about hope and individuality while having no real impact on the lives of the pupils. The only sympathetic adults in the piece are the refugees, but they themselves have had their lives reduced to vagabondage that in its precarious vulnerability is not that far from childhood.

Although originally based on a manga by Minoru Furuya, the script was changed at the last minute by Sono to incorporate the tsunami and the subsequent nuclear drama that was played out. Sono took his crew to one of the most devastated areas for some of the scenes. The film was premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September 2011, a mere six months after the tsunami had hit Japan. It treats the aftermath in a tangential manner, alluding rather than depicting. But the whole film is imbued with an out-of-joint surreality, a topsy-turvy universe in which the generations are pitched against each other. There is no sign of authority and every now and then an ominous growling roar is heard as if there is another earthquake on its way, waiting to happen on the margins of the frame. This is a much more serious film than the dark comedy of Cold Fish. Despite the freakishness of the plot, there is a mournful tone that the use of Mozart and Samuel Barber reinforces. This is a satirical and in some ways despairingly angry film. In its privileging of the point of view of the young, Himizu is reminiscent of The Tin Drum (Volker Schlöndorff, 1979). Hope, if it is to come at all, will be brought out by the young kids who play out their relationship in the worst possible conditions and yet have an independence and resilience that will allow them in some way to survive.

John Bleasdale

Pa negre

A man is attacked in the Catalan woods, brutally murdered by a cloaked assailant; his son, in the back of their horse-drawn wagon, is driven over a cliff and left to die. Found by his friend Andreu (a terrific Francesc Colomer), the boy breathes out the name of a ghost in his final moments: Pitorliua.

It’s an incredibly dramatic opening to Agustí Villaronga’s 2010 award-winning adaptation of Emili Teixidor’s novel. Set in the years immediately following Franco’s crushing victory, Black Bread is not just another story, similar to Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), of the Spanish Civil War as seen through the eyes of an imaginative child. While history is important to the narrative, the director cleverly subverts the audience’s expectations, slowly revealing a much more nuanced and layered film, with a disturbing mystery at its core. It’s a gripping, richly textured work, and if the symbolism at times seems heavy-handed, that minor weakness is more than made up for by the twists that the plot takes.

As the film begins to unfold, the audience learns that Andreu’s father, Farriol (Roger Casamajor), and the murdered man were friends and fellow trade unionists, both on the losing side of the war. Was his death some sort of revenge, a score settling? Is Andreu’s father next? In the eyes of the police, the victors, Farriol must be guilty. His only hope is to flee over the mountains and into the relative safety of France, a route many men, lucky enough to escape the purge of the reds, have already taken. Andreu is sent away to live with his grandmother, who is a caretaker for a wealthy family headed by an overbearing matriarch, who will later hold the fates of Farriol and Andreu in her hands. Along with Andreu, his grandmother also shelters his family’s abandoned women and children, including the wild Nuria (Marina Comas), a cousin who lost a hand to a grenade. Although the adults pretend that her father also escaped to France, she knows the much more disturbing truth.

At night, Andreu and his cousins live in a shadowy world of superstitions and storytelling; there’s an air of menace in the dark and gloomy, claustrophobic farmhouse, perfectly captured by Antonio Riestra’s hand-held cinematography. The children, who are outcasts and misfits, paying the price for their parents’ socialism, see intrigue and adventure around every corner. And, in some ways, the children are right: conspiracies and cover-ups are everywhere. But the biggest mystery that Andreu has to solve is how the ghost of a man who is said to haunt the woods, cursed ever since the war, could be involved in the death of his young friend.

Complex questions about guilt and innocence aren’t neatly resolved; Farriol, who still professes devotion to his ideals, is not necessarily the victim he first appears to be when he’s persecuted for the murder by the fascist mayor (Sergi López), who once pursued Andreu’s mother (Nora Navas). And when the story spins in a completely unexpected direction, it’s not even clear that the vicious crime is directly related to the war at all. The truth is that a conflict of that horror and magnitude provides cover for a multitude of sins.

While the film isn’t a witch-hunt, it is unsparing in its criticism of the Church. The clergy, on the side of the fascists, sit in judgement on their parishioners, even controlling what they eat - allowing those unfortunates on the losing side only coarse, black bread as some kind of twisted punishment. It’s perhaps not entirely surprising that, in the end, a bitterly disillusioned Andreu chooses the path that he does.

Sarah Cronin

The Devils

Electric Sheep‘s pick of the best filmic events, screenings, festivals and retrospectives in 2011.

The Devils (Ken Russell, 1972 - East End Film Festival, May 2011)

The recent passing of Ken Russell adds retrospective poignancy to the screening of his flamboyant masterpiece, restored to its full glory, at the East End Film Festival in April. The director attended the screening and was given a standing ovation by a rapturous packed auditorium. Vilified by parts of the critical establishment and struggling to find funding in later years, Ken Russell could be as silly and camp as audacious and visionary and we will be paying homage to his anarchic spirit in March next year, to mark the DVD release of The Devils.

Scala Forever (13 August - 2 October 2011)

Electric Sheep was very proud to be involved in Scala Forever, the celebration of the legendary Scala cinema across a range of London venues organised by the Roxy Bar and Screen. We presented a sold-out screening of Thundercrack! (1975, dir Curt Mcdowell, starring and written by George Kuchar), followed by a talk with former Scala programmer Jane Giles and horror maestro Kim Newman on September 20 at the Horse Hospital. The rest of the excellent Scala Forever programme included John Waters, Dario Argento, Russ Meyer and Fassbinder nights, a Turkish Grindhouse evening, a Jack Smith programme, a screening of one of our favourite 60s Italian exploitation films The Frightened Woman, and much more.

Flatpack (23-27 March 2011, Birmingham)

Inventively and energetically curated, Flatpack offers a stimulating mix of offbeat delights, forgotten gems, animation and experimental film in unusual settings, exploring the connections between art, music, history, place and film. Intelligent and fun, it guides audiences through enchanting cinematic adventures off the beaten path. The festival returns from 13 to 18 March 2012.

Theatre Scorpio (Close-Up) + Shinjuku in London (BFI Southbank) - July-August 2011

The summer’s seasons focusing on The Art Theatre Guild of Japan offered a unique chance to see works from the 1960s and 70s Japanese independent and experimental film scene. The Close-Up screenings of Masao Adachi’s cryptic, surreal Galaxy and Katsu Kanai’s delirious dreamscape The Desert Archipelago (1969), the latter in the presence of the director, were particularly memorable nights.

The Dybbuk (dir. Michal Waszynski, Poland 1937 - Kinoteka, 5 April 2011)

Now here’s exotica: a supernatural drama filmed in Poland, on the brink of the Holocaust, entirely in Yiddish, in 1937. You won’t see many like this. Michal Waszynski’s The Dybbuk is as rich and strange an artefact as any aficionado of fantastic cinema could hope for. It overflows with esoteric rituals, customs and superstitions, some of which seem unfamiliar even to the characters on screen: there’s numerology, bits of Kabbalah, odd bursts of song and poetic turns of phrase, mannered acting, and vaudeville schtick. To a decided non-believer, this comes across as a weird little bubble of cinema, both familiar and strange, a film overlaid with real tragedy, created by artists long disappeared, dispersed and destroyed, but one still brimming with life and soul and artistry.

Midnight Son

Electric Sheep writers review the best films seen at festivals in 2011.

Midnight Son (Scott Leberecht, 2011, Film4 FrightFest)

A vampire movie with a melancholy indie feel, Midnight Son was one of the best films seen at Film4 FrightFest this year and is an outstanding feature debut by Scott Leberecht. Jacob is a night security guard with a skin condition that prevents him from going in the sun and who starts experiencing physical changes after he blacks out at work. He meets Mary, a girl who sells cigarettes and sweets outside a bar. They are attracted to each other, but Jacob’s deteriorating condition and Mary’s drug habit conspire to keep them apart. In addition, Jacob starts getting troubling flashbacks of a young woman who was found dead in the underground car park at work. The film uses the vampire motif to evoke the tenderness, heartache and destructiveness of two outsiders’ tormented love. Like Let the Right One In, it is sweet and creepy in just the right amounts. The moody feel, the hazy look and a low-key soundtrack all combine beautifully to conjure Jacob’s strangely detached, dreamlike life in a shadowy, oddly empty LA. Virginie Sélavy

Outrage (Takeshi Kitano, 2010, Cannes)

Takeshi Kitano returns to the cut-throat world of the yakuza for the first time since Brother (2001) with this darkly humorous thriller. Outrage concerns a misunderstanding between two organised crime syndicates that becomes a feud, then a fully-fledged war when neither side is willing to back down. Scenes of torture and murder ensue, as enforcer Otomo (Kitano) finds himself caught in the middle of a rapidly escalating situation that causes shifts in organisational structure. Outrage delivers all the grim laughs and sudden violence that one would expect from a Kitano crime saga, but also serves to comment on the gradual legitimisation of the underworld as bosses have business meetings and subordinates await instructions in anonymous ‘company’ offices, while the killing of civilians is strictly forbidden. Codes of honour are frequently cited, but this is a fiercely modern world where such traditions are reduced to sake toasts and conveniently forgotten when an opportunity arises for advancement in the ranks. Kitano seems to have lost his status as an essential international auteur of late - Outrage has been relegated to a direct-to-DVD release in the UK - but this typically cool genre exercise is one of the best entries in his considerable yakuza canon. John Berra

Keyhole (Guy Maddin, 2011, Toronto)

What’s not to love? Blending Warner Brothers gangster styling of the 30s, film noir of the 40s and 50s, Greek tragedy, Sirk-like melodrama and odd dapplings of Samuel Beckett’s Endgame and Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit, it is, like all Maddin’s work, best designed to experience as a dream on film. The elements concocted in Keyhole to allow for full experiential mind-fucking involve the insanely named gangster Ulysses Pick (Jason Patric as you’ve never seen him before - playing straight, yet feeling like he belongs to another cinematic era), who drags his kids (one dead, but miraculously sprung to life, the other seemingly alive, but not remembered by his Dad) into a haunted house surrounded by guns-a-blazing. Keyhole is, without a doubt, one of the most perversely funny movies I’ve seen in ages and includes Maddin’s trademark visual tapestry of the most alternately gorgeous and insanely inspired kind. But as in all of Maddin’s work, beneath the surface of its mad inspiration lurks a melancholy and thematic richness. All the ghosts of the living and the dead (to paraphrase Joyce) populate the strange, magical and haunting world of Keyhole - a world most of us, whether we want to acknowledge it or not, live in. Greg Klymkiw

The Glass Man (Cristian Solimeno, 2011, Film4 FrightFest)

An excellent mid-recession British take on one of David Fincher’s finest movies (I won’t say which one or you’ll get the twist immediately), The Glass Man concentrates on the travails of Martin (Andy Nyman), a businessman who has been fired from his job for an unknown reason; the film implies some kind of whistle-blowing. With a mortgage to pay and a lifestyle he and his wife have become accustomed to, he has been lying to her about still going to work for some time and amassed crippling debts when a hitman (James Cosmo) comes to his front door and gives him a choice between becoming his accomplice for the night or waking up Martin’s wife and… A belated addition to the ‘yuppie in peril’ sub-genre that flourished briefly in the mid-1980s (Into the Night, After Hours), The Glass Man‘s relentless atmosphere of impending doom and Nyman’s constant nervousness about unarticulated peril keep the audience transfixed even though not a lot happens on screen for much of the running time. A terrific directorial debut by Cristian Solimeno, who proves himself to be an actor’s director, in a film dominated by the interaction between Nyman and Cosmo, judged exquisitely well. Alex Fitch

Once upon a Time in Anatolia (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2011, Cannes)

The winner of the Cannes 2011 Grand Prix, Once upon a Time in Anatolia (a nod towards Leone) stands as one of acclaimed Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s finest achievements. With a filmography including Uzak and Climates this is no small feat. Full of piercing insights, dark humour and a finely tuned wit, this is an epic and rigorous tale of a night and day in a murder investigation. Beautifully photographed in the Anatolian steppes by Gökhan Tiryaki, this meticulously constructed police procedural concerns bickering police and prosecutors grimly locating a buried body following a local brawl and a hasty confession. As the corpse is exhumed, many long-buried thoughts and fears are disinterred in the minds of the hard-bitten lawmen, one of whom happens to bear a passing resemblance to Clark Gable. Replicating the ebb and flow of human life, Once upon a Time in Anatolia unfolds like a fascinating game of chess with clues and gestures ambiguously revealed. A film interested in the concept of truth, and the manner by which we arrive at it, it is fascinating and flawless filmmaking. Jason Wood

Killer Joe

Killer Joe (William Friedkin, 2011, Toronto)

A welcome return to some sort of form for Friedkin, who has not soared of late. This neo-noir tale of trailer trash who hire a moonlighting cop/hitman to bump off their own mother for her insurance policy - the plan of course goes completely tits-up - is an over-the-top delight with Matthew McConaughey playing against type as the cop/hitman. The weirdest fried chicken leg blowjob you will see this (or any other) year. Beats this year’s efforts by other veterans like Woody or Francis. James B. Evans

Without (Mark Jackson, 2011, London Film Festival)

The debut from writer-director-editor Mark Jackson, Without 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. As the film unfolds, Joslyn’s charming, seemingly innocent character begins to evolve into something deeper and darker. 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. Sarah Cronin

Shame (Steve McQueen, 2011, Venice)

Steve McQueen’s second film, after his astonishing debut Hunger, surely places him at the forefront of British cinema. Despite McQueen’s day job as a renowned video artist, there is no tricksy-ness to his film, no radical inventiveness. Rather, his images reveal his artistic validity by dint of patience. Shots are held. We don’t watch this film, we stare at it. The tale itself could easily be a soap opera melodrama: Brandon (Michael Fassbender) is a successful urbanite living an almost antiseptically perfect life in Manhattan, which is put at risk by his compulsive sex addiction and by a visit from his messy (but altogether more conventionally promiscuous) sister, Sissy, played with thrift store charm by the ubiquitous Carey Mulligan. So far, so sensationalist, as we see the would-be Michael Douglas being serviced by high-end prostitutes, prowling the streets and bars, and masturbating with painful frequency. His inability to look at a woman without immediate sexual desire makes his sister’s visit uncomfortable, if not dangerously complicated. This is not only sex without love, it is sex that is mutually exclusive to love, the opposite of intimacy. And yet, at the same time, as Hunger eschewed straightforward political argument, so Shame, despite its title, avoids a merrily reductive morality. Fassbender’s performance is at once comic and tragic, ferocious and sensitive, strange but remarkably common, the brutal buffoonery of the male face in orgasm. John Bleasdale

Carré blanc (Jean-Baptiste Léonetti, 2011, Toronto)

Harking back to the great 70s science-fiction film classics, Jean-Baptiste Léonetti’s debut feature Carré blanc is easily one of the finest dystopian visions of the future to be etched upon celluloid since that time. The tale is, on its surface and as in many great movies, a simple one. Philippe and Marie grew up together in a state orphanage and are now married. They live in a stark, often silent corporate world bereft of any vibrant colour and emotion. Philippe is a most valued lackey of the state - he is an interrogator-cum-indoctrinator. Marie is withdrawing deeper and deeper into a cocoon as the love she once felt for Philippe is transforming into indifference. In this world, though, hatred is as much a luxury as love. Tangible feelings and simple foibles are punished with torture and death. Indifference, it would seem, is the goal. It ensures complete subservience to the dominant forces. Love, however, is ultimately the force the New World Order is helpless to fight and it is at the core of this story. If Philippe and Marie can somehow rediscover that bond, there might yet be hope - for them, and the world. It is this aspect of the story that always keeps the movie floating above a mere exercise in style and makes it an instant classic of science fiction. Greg Klymkiw

Sons of Norway (Jens Lien, 2011, Toronto)

A little curiosity from Norway about the growing pains of Nikolaj, whose eccentric father encourages his adolescent rebellion, which erupts full force with his discovery of the Sex Pistols and neo-punk. Better than this plot outline sounds, the film is touching and offbeat without trying too hard (see The Future review). If you liked the Norwegian film Fucking Amål, this is for you. It was executive-produced by John Lydon, who also has a small but key role in it. James B. Evans

Night Fishing

Best short: Night Fishing (Park Chan-wook and Park Chan-kyong, 2011, London Korean Film Festival)

The most innovative short of the year was the star attraction of the shorts programmes at the London Korean Film Festival, Night Fishing, a collaboration between Park Chan-wook and his brother, Park Chan-kyong. Steeped in Korean folklore and traditional religion, the film passes through three distinct atmospheres. It begins with a stylish musical prologue with a jerking, twisting front man and his band performing amid colourless reed beds. The camera soars away to a lone man sitting on a riverbank, his fishing rod primed and tinny radio playing, and the film takes on the air of an ominous horror film. Then, in a gloriously unexpected twist, the film makes a high-energy ascent into a colourful cacophony of mournful wailing and religious chanting. It is a strange journey, even more so because of the way in which the film was made: every single shot was filmed on an iPhone 4. It would have been a bizarre, beautiful film regardless, but the technology creates further interesting effects as the camera flips 360 degrees or shoots the fishing scenes in grainy night vision. Eleanor McKeown