Alice in Wonderland

In Lewis Carroll’s Alice books, up is down and down is up in a satirical inversion of the real world, of literature, of maths and puzzles. In a suitably Carrollian scenario, I’ve found myself agreeing with the point of view of a right-wing columnist in the Mail on Sunday whose work I normally despise. In Peter Hitchens’s one-paragraph dismissal of Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, he wrote: ‘We live in the age of deconstruction and the post-modern. Burton… appears to have turned [Alice] into Willy Wonka meets Lord of the Rings.’ Unfortunately I think he’s right, and Disney’s new live action adaptation may come as a surprise to audiences familiar with the studio’s 1951 animated version of the story. This is not to say that Tim Burton’s made a bad film, more that this is a missed opportunity.

This new adaptation is both a reimagining of, and sequel to, the Alice novels. I suppose audiences shouldn’t be too surprised that this is a film aimed at older audiences than the single-digit ages the original Disney Alice was made for, as even Burton’s most child-friendly films as director/producer – Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, The Nightmare before Christmas, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – had a level of darkness and subversion to them. However, the delight in whimsy, ideas and neologisms that typifies both the original novels and the Disney cartoon only appears infrequently here, which is a shame because the parts of the film that are faithful to the original story show that Burton could have made the definitive live action version. The Alice adaptation everyone was expecting in the 00s was an even darker sequel based on the computer game American McGee’s Alice – to have been scored by the likes of Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson and directed by Wes Craven. Burton’s Alice is halfway between American McGee’s Alice and Disney’s original. It’s aimed at teens rather than tweens, and it features an early scene showing Alice gored by a razor-mouthed and clawed Bandersnatch, which has an eye plucked out by a mouse wielding a rapier.

While fans of Disney’s original Alice may be dismayed by this Fighting Fantasy approach to the material there are still plenty of lines of dialogue from the original intact and the CGI rendering of anthropomorphic animals – talking horses, frogs and dogs – is the most impressive I’ve seen on screen so far – although bizarrely the CGI rendering of humans on horseback looks like the jerky movements of marionettes, which makes you wonder why they didn’t use real stuntmen. The technical necessities of converting the film into 3D mean there is a lush primary-coloured hue to many of the characters and scenes – except when Burton goes into goth mode and juxtaposes the familiar characters with dark, monochromic backgrounds. However, many scenes have an incongruous roaming camera designed to accentuate the 3D thrills of the cinematic presentation and the conversion into 3D has necessitated the blurring of backgrounds, limiting the tools of wide-angle lenses and long-shots available to the cinematographer. In terms of sets, costumes and characters, Alice is a more rewarding film than the recent Avatar, where the incomprehensible budget was tempered by the very average imagination and plot. Alice, of course, even when made needlessly dark for this adaptation, is fuelled by one of the most outlandish imagination in Victorian fiction and it’s terrific to see this rendered by the latest technology on the highest resolution – IMAX – format possible.

The greatest strength of the film is the acting, with Alan Rickman voicing a louche Blue Caterpillar in the centre of a terrific British-centric cast that includes Matt Lucas, Stephen Fry, Paul Whitehouse, Timothy Spall and Burton favourite Christopher Lee as the voice of the Jabberwocky. While Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter are reasonably entertaining, though perhaps becoming over-familiar and overused in Burton’s films, Mia Wasikowska is a terrific adult Alice, a rebellious debutante and ingénue who becomes a thoughtful woman and reluctant warrior over the course of the film. With such performances, it’s noticeable that the scenes centred around humans – the awful pomp and ceremony of a 19th-century engagement party at the beginning, the hilarious prosthetic-wearing retinue of the Red Queen – are actually some of the best in the film. In contrast, the sword and sorcery subplot shoehorned into the narrative sits uneasily with the original characters.

This a film of various beginnings – Carroll, Disney, 21st-century computer games – and endings – an armour-clad Alice in a dark wasteland fighting a Jabberwocky only marginally less scary than Terry Gilliam’s and an invigorated Alice back in the real world, making the most of the British Empire. The first ending closes a world I wouldn’t particularly want to return to, the other one opens possibilities I’d be happy to see Burton explore further…

Alex Fitch

No One Knows about Persian Cats

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Bahman Ghobadi’s exploration into the world of underground music in Tehran is a welcome antidote to the blasé, pedestrian, apathetic state of the music industry in the West. While we gorge ourselves on MP3 downloads and bit torrents to a point where music is seen as a free commodity, made virtually valueless by a virtual world, in Iran, any acquisition, enjoyment or creation of music (especially Western music) is forbidden by the authorities. So as the film follows a couple of indie kids (Ashkan and Negar) trying to form a band by meeting different musicians around the city, they’re not just chasing the rock’n’roll dream, they are fighting for their lives.

No One Knows about Persian Cats is an interesting hybrid of drama infused with truth, although it could easily have been a documentary. The director’s passion for music saturates every frame of the film and he even appears in the opening scene singing in an underground studio, which sets the tone for the rest of the film. Amidst the drama and the perpetual sense of danger, there are some fantastic comic scenes as well as a lot of musical set pieces. At points it seems as if the whole purpose of the film is to showcase various Iranian bands, with the story being secondary. Although a lot of the music is actually quite good, with each new band or musician comes another set piece and another ‘promo video’, which sometimes seems a little obvious. Many of them feature flashing images and scenes of the darker side of city life (especially in the hip-hop scene).

Yet this is conversely one of the most endearing aspects of the film. As Ashkan and Negar explore the depths of the underground scene, they see a surprising array of different genres, and music snobbery doesn’t get a look in. They meet a singer-songwriter with wonderfully poetic lyrics about the struggle for freedom and a heavy metal band who practise in a cowshed as they were forced out of their village; they go to a rave at a house party and meet an indie-funk band who rehearse in a space built on the roof of a building (whose neighbours constantly report them to the authorities so they keep getting arrested).

Encounters with the authorities are par for the course for these musicians. Ashkan and Negar have recently been released from prison and have been invited to play a gig in London but have no band and more crucially, no passports or visas with which to make the trip. It’s hard to believe that their twee, casio-based indie pop would rile up the authorities too much, but the mere fact that they are expressing themselves artistically and touching on subjects outside of the rigorous Iranian dogma means that they have to be very wary. Negar is even more at risk as women are forbidden from singing due to the emotions they can stir.

Things start to look up when they meet local DVD bootlegger and all-round blagger Nader; he introduces them to a forger who can help them with visas and passports. This scene is flecked with gentle touches of humour as the old forger asks Nader for bootleg DVDs of films with more action and less romance. As every commodity is bought and sold on the black market, Nader has a good little niche for himself copying films and music from the West, and he becomes the musicians’ ally in trying to help them both escape Iran and set up a concert in order to raise funds. One of the other really masterful scenes in the film is when he gets arrested and talks his way out of a flogging, prison and a fine with quick-fire dialogue and perfect comic timing.

The film opens up a world that even most Iranians don’t know exists. These indie bands look like they’ve just stepped off the pages of the NME, yet are in constant fear of that knock on the door, and we follow them through tunnels, up stairs, down basements and back alleys as they insist on creating art and having a voice despite the dangers. The dream of going to the West, or in Ashkar’s case, of going to Iceland to see Sigur Rós, seems like an endless struggle when you are constantly looking over your shoulder. Despite all of the obstacles, rock music is still being created in Iran by these rebels with a cause.

This bold and inspiring film was obviously a great risk to make but it is ultimately rewarding for its audience. Recommended for all music lovers but especially to struggling musicians who should know that however tough they think things are, they can’t be nearly as bad as they are for these Persian Cats.

Lucy Hurst

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Lion's Den

A woman wakes up in a trashed apartment, covered in bruises, with deep, painful scratches carved into her shoulder. In the shower, blood streams off her aching body. Still in shock, Julia (Martina Gusman) only realises hours later that two men are in the flat with her – one, her boyfriend, has been stabbed to death, the other – Ramiro, her boyfriend’s lover – is badly injured but still alive. Unable to remember what happened, she’s thrown into jail by the police, where she soon discovers that she’s pregnant.

Lion’s Den, the fifth film from Argentine director Pablo Trapero, could not be further from the exploitation films that characterised the women in prison genre in the 70s. The movie is named for the penitentiary units where women with children are housed during their incarceration. In Argentina, the children are allowed to remain inside with their mothers until the age of four, when they’re removed by the Court and either placed with a relative or in state care.

Julia finds herself in a shockingly decrepit cell. The other mothers are mostly uneducated, peasant women, in sharp contrast to Julia’s rebellious but upper-class character. Trapero captures all the gritty realism of life in prison, but the film also has the feel of a slow-burning thriller – as Julia adjusts to life on the inside, her case pits her against Ramiro (played by Rodrigo Santoro), who accuses her of being solely responsible for his lover’s death.

With her life shattered, Julia struggles with motherhood. Unable to breastfeed after her son, Tomás, is born, she’s helped by her cellmate Marta, who intervenes when the baby’s cries begin to drive the other mothers and children over the edge. Older and more experienced, Marta takes Julia under her wing, eventually leading to a relationship between the two women, who manage to find some small comfort in the confines of the prison.

But the wheels of justice are grindingly and appallingly slow: Julia gives birth and raises her baby behind bars without ever going to trial. As Tomás gets older and approaches the all-important age of four, Julia’s distant, beautiful and unwelcome mother (played by the singer and actress Elli Medeiros) intervenes, returning to Buenos Aires from her life in Paris to take over the role of looking after her grandson, with disturbing and dramatic consequences.

Filmed almost entirely within an existing women’s penitentiary, using real inmates and guards as extras, Lion’s Den is a deeply harrowing film. Martina Gusman, who won the FIPRESCI International Critics’ Prize for best actress, delivers a powerful performance as a determined mother who will do anything to keep her child. While the film, released so soon after Jacques Audiard’s A Prophet, may not be as polished, or as entertaining as the French thriller, it is a more brutal, realistic and morally ambiguous portrayal of life in prison.

Although the film’s ending may seem a little unconvincing, Trapero never offers the audience any easy answers. We never really discover the truth behind the murder, and are left to decide whether a mother’s love for her child is more important than an innocent child’s right to freedom and a life outside prison.

Sarah Cronin

Asyl: Park and Love Hotel

With its moody charm and pale, grainy look, Asyl: Park and Love Hotel (Pâku ando rabuhoteru) offers a marked contrast to the recent wave of ravishing pop films by Tetsuya Nakashima (Kamikaze Girls, Memories of Matsuko) or Mika Ninagawa’s gorgeous Sakuran. Set in the Tokyo suburbs, with most of its sparse action taking place at a shabby ‘love hotel’, Asyl is a slow-burning but ultimately life-affirming debut by Izuru Kumasaka, filmed with a discreet intensity and a feeling of lingering, subtle oddity. Much in the same way as the film’s title plays with the double meaning of ‘asylum’ – as a sanctuary and a madhouse – Izuru attempts to infuse the episodic narrative, which follows four women of different ages struggling with isolation, loss, tedium and the trouble of everyday life, with a sense of purpose that is both enchanting and disturbing.

The main character in Asyl is the grouchy and strict hotel manager, Tsuyako (played by singer-turned-actress Lily) who has been running the unusual love hotel – it has a public park on its rooftop – by herself since her husband disappeared years earlier. However, Tsuyako’s world expands when Mika (Hikari Kajiwara), a 13-year-old runaway with silver bleached hair, enters the free oasis in the city. Guided by the feeling that she has no place else to go after seeing her father with his new family, Mika seeks shelter overnight with Tsuyako. This is the prelude to further encounters between them and two other women at the hotel: Tsuki, a housewife whose daily fitness walk has taken her past the hotel for years until her routine is dramatically altered, and 17-year-old Marika, the hotel’s only regular guest, who actually uses the establishment for its intended purpose, regularly popping in with a different man in tow.

Although the fantastical rooftop location, complete with swings, benches and toys, would provide a suitable playground for an urban fairy tale, Asyl is far from fantasy, as Izuru’s main concern lies in credibly exploring his characters’ motivations. The frequent use of close-ups strikes a fine balance between empathy and observation, without flaunting the women’s emotions or sentimentalising their struggles. In the absence of much dialogue and backstory, Izuru creates a potent degree of sensitivity in his warm, insightful yet sometimes detached depiction of his characters’ actions and reactions.

All this may not sound exciting on paper, and Asyl certainly has its flaws: it feels overly long and the pace occasionally flags, while its desire to avoid too much dramatic tension makes it difficult to fully engage with the story. Yet, it is a gentle film, with some wonderful low-key performances and beautifully crafted moments that mark Kumasaka out as a talent to watch. After all, Asyl demonstrates that it is still possible to craft an affecting, unpretentious and quietly entertaining film outside the framework of the pop genre.

Pamela Jahn

Micmacs

After a landmine kills his father and a stray bullet lodges in his brain, leaving him constantly on the verge of sudden death, homeless Bazil (Dany Boon) seeks revenge upon the arms companies behind his misfortunes. Aided by his adopted family, a group of gifted misfits (a crook, a contortionist, a calculator, a cannonball…) based in a Paris scrapheap, he uses their combined skills and some ingenious devices built from salvaged junk to bring two death-mongering bosses to book.

Jean Pierre Jeunet’s Micmacs is a death-by-chocolate layer cake of a film, stuffed with visual invention, intricate set pieces and elaborate machinery. The cast is his usual repertory company of grotesques, clowns and character actors – hello again Dominique Pinon and Yolande Moreau, welcome Julie Ferrier as Elastic Girl, and Jesus, is Marie-Julie Baup playing a clone of Audrey Tatou? The palette is the customary rich mix of greens, yellows and browns, the commitment to delivering what underground cartoonists used to call ‘eyeball kicks’ is present and correct. Jeunet lives to please; physical comedy mixes with wordplay, tricksy camerawork and exquisitely kooky production design; even animation is thrown into the mix. He can’t bear to bore you for a minute, adding more cream, more cherries, more icing…

It’s all just too much. The whimsical, cutesy side to Jeunet and Caro’s first two films, Delicatessen and The City of Lost Children, was balanced out with weirder, nightmarish elements. Micmacs, however, is Jeunet’s whimsy unrestrained; this is hardcore twee, uncut cute. Every character on screen is quirky and eccentric to various degrees of irritation, and the constant visual whizbang stuff never lets the actors interact without some distracting bit of business going on. More damaging, for a film with the arms industry at its heart, is the lack of danger or darkness: while A Very Long Engagement had the horrors of the First World War to tether its more fanciful excesses to earth, here, any distressing elements are wilfully downplayed, so the arms-manufacturing bad guys are obnoxious and immoral, but never threatening or properly evil. The death of Bazil’s father and the institutionalisation of his mother at the start of the film convey no great sense of real trauma or loss. His shooting and subsequent loss of job and home are played for Chaplinesque laughs. Even the bullet lodged in his brain doesn’t seem to affect him that much. The upshot of all this calculated defanging is that any sense of adventure or tension is derailed; the good guys’ victory is achieved at little risk, and the odds against them don’t seem that high. When photographs of landmine victims are used in one scene, or some nasty gun-toting dictators’ henchmen turn ugly, they seem utterly out of place in this candy-coloured dreamland. Jeunet doesn’t seem that interested in the politics or economics of the arms business; it would muddy the waters of his fable, complicate things. He’s sure you’d prefer a big slice of winsome, another helping of good-hearted. Well, it’s a fine-looking confection, but one bite could give you diabetes.

Mark Stafford

Format: Cinema

Date: 29 January 2010

Venues: ICA Cinema and key cities

Distributor: Terracotta Entertainment

Director: Yang Ik-joon

Writer: Yang Ik-joon

Original title: Ddongpari

Cast: Yang Ik-joon, Kim Kot-bi, Jeong Man-shik

South Korea 2009

130 mins

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In Yang Ik-joon’s stupefying Breathless (Ddongpari), gangsters are only marginally more violent than wife-beaters and equally as contemptible. There is nothing glamorous about the outlaws who inhabit the directorial debut of South Korean actor Yang, or about the astounding ultra-violence that punctuates the film. The main character, the psychotic Sang-hoon, and the boys under his command work in parasitic packs, intimidating and beating up unfortunate people because it is the only life they know.

These low-level thugs are an exaggerated version of the men of South Korea, the casual brutality required in their line of work a heightened form of generalised patriarchal abuse. As Sang-hoon says while pounding a wife-batterer: ‘Fathers in this country’s all fucked up. They’re pathetic fucks but when it comes to family, they’re Kim Il-sung.’ The film presents an uncompromising view of a society where the most primitive law of the jungle prevails: fathers hit their wives and children, brothers bully their sisters, men beat up young boys. Although sons may sometimes rebel against the fathers’ rule, they inevitably end up perpetuating the cycle of violence as adults: Sang-hoon, having witnessed the killing of his sister by his father as a child, has become a vicious debt collector for whom violence is the only mode of social and personal interaction. All relationships are exclusively defined by who takes the beating and who gives it, although these roles regularly rotate, as Sang-hoon observes: ‘The fucker who does the beating thinks he’ll never get beat up. But there comes a day when even that fucker gets a beat down.’

And yet, when Sang-hoon meets tough schoolgirl Yeon-hue, it seems that there might be hope of breaking out of this pattern. Their encounter is shockingly unsentimental, disturbing and funny in equal measures; as the spirited Yeon-hue, although clearly physically weaker, will not let Sang-hoon get away with his usual thuggish behaviour, an unlikely relationship develops between them. Both isolated misfits in their own way, they take tentative steps towards each other, always modulated by diffidence and wariness, their spiky verbal duelling hiding their vulnerabilities and traumas until it slowly gives way to something a little gentler, although the most important things are left unsaid.

This achingly fragile relationship and their hesitant, small gestures are one of the film’s pleasures and relieve the unrelenting bleakness of the world depicted. Yeon-hue is a great female creation, sassy and strong, but profoundly real as, weighed down by familial pressures, she tries to find her own path of resistance against patriarchal law. Sang-hoon, played by Yang himself, is a phenomenal achievement and Yang entirely succeeds in eliciting sympathy for a callous, morally compromised man prone to horrifying acts of aggression. Despite its subject matter and harrowing scenes, Breathless is never depressing, partly because it is infused with the fervent energy of a deeply felt anger, partly because the encounter of Yeon-hue and Sang-hoon offers a glimpse of hope, as the two brutalised characters begin to re-invent a different type of relationship. Breathless is a lot more than a film about domestic violence in South Korea: it is no issue movie, but a profoundly singular, devastatingly powerful, intensely personal vision of both the explicit and hidden violence underlying social and familial relationships.

Tina Park

Read Pamela Jahn’s interview with Yang Ik-joon in the winter 09 issue of Electric Sheep, which looks at what makes a cinematic outlaw: read about the misdeeds of low-life gangsters, gentlemen thieves, deadly females, modern terrorists, cop killers and vigilantes, bikers and banned filmmakers. Also in this issue: interview with The Road director John Hillcoat, the art of Polish posters according to Andrzej Klimowski, Andrew Cartmel discusses The Prisoner and noir comic strips!

Format: Cinema

Date: 22 January 2010

Venues: Curzon Soho, Odeon Covent Garden (London) and nationwide

Distributor: Optimum Releasing

Director: Jacques Audiard

Writers: Jacques Audiard, Thomas Bidegain, Abdel Raouf Dafri, Nicolas Peufaillit

Original title: Un prophète

Cast: Tahar Rahim, Niels Arestrup, Adel Bencherif

France 2009

149 mins

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Following up his gripping and much praised drama The Beat that My Heart Skipped (De battre mon coeur s’est arrêté, 2005), Jacques Audiard’s latest effort feels almost like a continuation of that film in many respects. In A Prophet (Un prophète), we are in dark territory again as the writer-director dives into the murky pool of the Gallic underworld once more when youngster Malik El Djebena (played by newcomer Tahar Rahim) is sentenced to a six-year stint in prison and soon becomes embroiled in the gang culture and petty intricacies that preside. The young Arab is forced to align with a Corsican gang, led by César Luciani (a disquieting performance by the ever-excellent Niels Arestrup), and although initially treated with little more than contempt by them, finds himself rising up the ranks through a series of often violent acts.

Arestrup reprises the ambiguous fatherly role, part ogre, part mentor, that he was already filling in The Beat that My Heart Skipped, while Rahim plays Malik with the same sort of nervous intensity Romain Duris brought to the character of Thomas Seyr in the same film. The score by Alexandre Desplat recalls the subtle strains underlining Thomas’s struggle to better himself that the composer had concocted for The Beat. Audiard’s interest in exclusively male environments, evident in the rest of his work, is here exacerbated by the prison setting. Just like Thomas in The Beat, Malik is caught between two worlds, this time defined by racial and ethnic ties rather than familial ones, and succeeds in negotiating his own, individual path between them.

Perhaps it is the familiarity of the theme and of its treatment that lessens the impact of what is otherwise an excellent film. Yet, to be fair to Audiard, the elements that are specific to A Prophet very much matter, especially when considering the climate of racial tension in France. While A Prophet charts a transfer of power from a father figure to the son, from the older generation to the younger, as in The Beat, this time it is also about the victory of an intelligent young Arab over the racist Corsican thugs who despised and mistreated him. And where The Beat deliberately presented a very unglamorous view of the underworld, A Prophet is entirely accepting of Malik’s various criminal activities. In fact, incarceration, although harsh, is paradoxically what gives Malik the opportunities he never had outside as an isolated, illiterate young man with no family and no possessions: opportunities to learn, grow, become someone (even if that’s the leader of a criminal gang) and create ties with the Arab community.

Those who have yet to be captivated by the prodigious talents of the director may find this film a somewhat challenging introduction – there’s certainly more warmth and originality in The Beat that My Heart Skipped and Read My Lips (Sur mes lèvres, 2001) – and at a bum-numbing 149 minutes this sprawling gangster saga is not for those with an MTV attention span. However, there’s a reason why it was so acclaimed at both the Cannes and London Film Festivals (at the latter, it won The Star of London Best Film award): its gritty, realistic portrayal of life within the brutal corridors of prison is thoroughly riveting and makes another impressive addition to Audiard’s growing filmography.

Toby Weidmann & Virginie Sélavy

Format: Cinema

Date: 1 January 2010

Venues: Renoir (London) and key cities

Distributor: Artificial Eye

Director: Gerardo Naranjo

Writer: Gerardo Naranjo

Original title: Voy a explotar

Cast: Juan Pablo de Santiago, Maria Deschamps

Mexico 2008

106 mins

Gerardo Naranjo’s third feature, I’m Gonna Explode (Voy a explotar) is an infectious, stylish take on the classic theme of young lovers on the run. Roman (Juan Pablo de Santiago) is the son of a congressman with a penchant for murderous fantasies; kicked out of his private school after his incriminating diary is discovered, he winds up at the same middle-class high school as Maru (Maria Deschamps). She’s bored and detached, desperately looking for some kind of meaning in her seemingly pointless life. The connection between them is instantaneous, and they quickly decide to run away together; in Maru’s words, spoken in a voice-over, ‘Two kids disappear, and it’s an adventure’. While they dream about going to Mexico City, their rebellious, yet quaintly domestic fantasy is played out much closer to home, where they can keep a mischievous eye on their concerned parents.

Maru and Roman’s rebellion has a childlike quality to it; they’re caught up in the excitement of skipping school, not answering to authority, getting drunk on tequila and wine. But also mixed up in their new-found freedom is the flush of first love, and a growing awareness of their sexuality as their platonic friendship evolves into something much more intense. The film is scattered with beautiful, wordless moments that capture their feelings for each other: in one perfect shot the camera rests on Maru’s face as she stares intently at Roman, a subtle half-smile on her face hinting at her desire.

Maru’s thoughts, voiced in her diary, reveal her belief that they were destined to meet; that finding a twin in Roman has given her something to live for. But Roman is less idealistic, more narcissistic, with a desperate edge that she lacks. As their parents and the police inch closer to finding them, he’s forced to reconcile his feelings for her with his own instincts for self-preservation. Ultimately, a childish obsession with guns and an inability to know when to stop running lead to a devastating chain of events that shatters their naïve pursuit of freedom.

Naranjo, who studied film at the American Film Institute alongside another rising talent, Azazel Jacobs, whose Momma’s Man was released in May, lovingly pays tribute to the films that helped inspire I’m Gonna Explode. There’s an unmistakeable fondness for the aesthetics of the nouvelle vague, with Godard’s Pierrot le fou (1965) an obvious inspiration, while the composer Georges Delerue’s music from Le Mépris (1963) also features on the eclectic soundtrack (along with bands like Interpol). And as the bond between Maru and Roman grows deeper, Tobias Datum, the director of photography, borrows a few iconic shots from Badlands (1973), his camera lingering on close-ups of blue sky and wild flowers, reflections on the fleeting beauty of young love.

I’m Gonna Explode is a beguiling, yet tragic love story, told with a very modern, pop sensibility. While the film is a little rough around the edges (the handling of the plot is a little clumsy at times), it marks Naranjo out as a unique filmmaker in the Mexican new wave.

Sarah Cronin

Format: Cinema

Date: 11 December 2009

Venues: key cities

Distributor: Revolver Entertainment

Director: Jim Jarmusch

Writer: Jim Jarmusch

Cast: Isaach De Bankolé, Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, John Hurt, Gael García Bernal

USA/Spain/Japan 2009

116 mins

A contemporary director who continually engages with figures on the margins of society and the gaps and pauses that form the backbone of ordinary life, Jim Jarmusch is regularly cited as the most influential American independent filmmaker since John Cassavetes. Infused with a cinematic sensibility that stretches way beyond US borders, Jarmusch’s cine-literate films can be further characterised by their minimalist aesthetic, their relative disinterest in genre, their economy of narrative, character and dialogue, and their continuing curiosity with colliding cultures and communication issues. Resisting studio benefaction to work entirely without compromise (the Weinstein-funded Dead Man proved an unhappy alliance), Jarmusch scored his biggest commercial success with 2005’s idiosyncratic Broken Flowers.

Aggrieved by suggestions that working with a starry cast was a conscious attempt to broaden his audience, the director, whose work has always been actor-led, has extended his repertory acting company with his newest feature, the enigmatic The Limits of Control. Set largely in the striking and varied landscapes of contemporary Spain (both urban and otherwise), the film has been described by Jarmusch as his attempt to remake John Boorman’s Point Blank via Jacques Rivette and Michelangelo Antonioni. Reaction has thus far been lukewarm, with a cacophony of hostile notices chastising Jarmusch for veering into wilful obscurity and, gasp, outright pretension. Variety’s Todd McCarthy described the film as ‘a self-indulgence’ that ‘approaches self-parody’; patience-testing and vacuous was his final summation.

Marshalling actors including Isaach De Bankolé (in their fourth collaboration), Bill Murray (their third), Tilda Swinton and John Hurt (their second), Gael García Bernal, and Luis Tosar, Jarmusch certainly seems to have kicked against the perceived conventionality of Broken Embraces, making an elliptical and deliberately awkward hit-man ‘thriller’ that is as extreme an art film as you are likely to see all year. Retaining a trademark and playful interest in coffee and cigarettes, it begins with a quote from Rimbaud that gestures towards a derangement of the senses, and that is precisely what The Limits of Control proceeds to offer as it follows a mysterious loner (De Bankolé) whose activities remain meticulously outside the law. The sharply suited man is in the process of completing a job, yet trusts no one, and his objectives are not initially divulged. His journey, paradoxically both focused and dreamlike, takes him not only across Spain but also through various states of perception.

Beginning as a 25-page story that was expanded as the shoot progressed, The Limits of Control certainly requires a leap of faith and a degree of patience on the part of its audience, but it is undeserving of the vitriol that has been thrown at it. Beautifully shot by Christopher Doyle, it is an audacious and intuitive work that slowly worms its way into the viewer’s consciousness as repeated codes and meanings slowly reveal themselves. As with any off-road journey, the film takes a few wrong turns and the motif of Paz de la Huerta appearing in various states of undress, though explained within the narrative (her character is credited as ‘The Nude’), feels lurid and unnecessary. Perhaps best approached and enjoyed as an interesting excursion, Jarmusch’s twelfth feature as director suggests a continued desire to defy expectation and grapple with the possibilities of the medium. In an era of rampant complacency, he’s to be admired for refusing to abandon his principles.

Jason Wood