London Film Festival round-up:October 17

Stephen Puddicombe brings you the latest from the London Film Festival

 - There’s been countless coming-of-age films made over the years, but very few about black teenage girls growing up in France. As director of Girlhood Celine Sciamma says herself, black women are virtually ‘invisible’ in French cinema, while portrayals of them in the media are often negative.

Admirably, Sciamma tells her film from the perspective of a young black girl (Karidja Toure in her first feature film, whose excellent and natural performance carries the film) as she leaves school and joins an all-girl gang. By dramatizing her life in such an empathetic and non-judgmental manner, Sciamma humanises the kind of person who might be frowned upon or mistrusted if passed in the street.

Her life story is also moving and relatable, and does not suffer from being made exotic as some films about ‘others’ in society are guilty of. The politics of being an outsider are inevitably tangled up in the story and are handled very deftly by Sciamma, and makes for a fascinating counterpoint to Richard Linklater’s similar but white male-orientated Boyhood.

 - French house music in the 1990s was undoubtedly an exciting scene to be involved with, but the excitement never quite translates to the screen in Eden. The soundtrack is great, but we never get a sense for the craft and creativity that goes into making the music, nor the thrill of experiencing it in a club.

The characters are all quite dull and difficult to engage with, especially the protagonist (Felix de Givry), whose rise and fall shapes the structure of the film. The usual staples of heavy drug taking, world tours and romantic entanglements are present, but all unfortunately fall a little flat.

- Lisandro Alonso’s latest typically idiosyncratic film Jauja will intrigue some with its strange atmosphere and mysterious symbolism, and frustrate others with its deliberate pacing and thin plot.

That plot involves Viggo Mortensen playing a Danish engineer in Argentina taking part in the Conquest of the Desert, who sets out to find his daughter when she disappears. His search is more L’avventura than it is The Searchers, as dialogue gradually decreases and he is absorbed more and more into the landscape, before the film enters yet stranger territory in the final third.

Alonso shot on location in the extraordinary looking rural South America and manipulates lighting to give everything a stark, dreamy colouring, while the narrow 4:3 aspect ratio gives a great sense of depth to the vast landscape yet disarmingly offers little peripheral vision. It’s beautiful to behold, but any meaning or message is oblique.  

SP

London Film Festival round-up: October 16

Stephen Puddicombe brings you the latest from the London Film Festival

 - Whiplash is one of those great films that takes a very specific subject that most audience members will possess only a very limited knowledge of – in this case jazz drumming – and immerses us so completely in it that for the 1 hour 45 minute duration of the film we’re just as thrilled and obsessed by it as the characters on screen.

The title ‘whiplash’ refers both to the name of a recurring piece played by the conservatoire jazz band and to the sensation of watching it – it jolts us back and forth, constantly playing with our expectations and shifting the balance of power between the characters. Much credit must go to Damien Chazelle for his exhilarating direction, particularly the rhythmic cutting and detailed close-ups he uses during live performances.

He presents jazz as a craft to meticulously obsess over in the quest for perfection, and fascinates in doing so. Characters hear things that our untrained ears cannot pick up, yet convinces in its authenticity.

The sharpest ear of all is that of the band’s conductor Terrance Fletcher (J.K. Simons), whose brutally perfectionist teaching methods and the effects it has on the aspiring drummer protagonist (Miles Teller) forms the crux of the film. Simons gives a virtuoso performance, at times hilarious, at times shockingly cruel, but always brilliantly charismatic. The film doesn’t fall either side of the debate it raises concerning the ethics of his methods, but gives convincing arguments for both, most of all in its astonishing finale – it’s up to us to evaluate the brilliant music it creates and the damage it inflicts, and make our own minds up.  

 - As a German film about a holocaust survivor seeking to integrate herself back into society, Phoenix is inevitably charged with plenty of profound social and political concerns,

Director Christian Petzold approaches the traumatic subject through a premise reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock’s classic Vertigo. Nelly (an excellent Nina Ross), returning from a concentration camp, has undergone reconstructive facial surgery, so much so that her husband (Ronald Zehrfeld) does not recognise her when she turns up at the Phoenix nightclub he frequents. But noting her resemblance to his wife, he offers her a room and moulds her appearance and mannerisms with the outward aim of pretending his wife is still alive and thus being able to sell her fortune, while she, longing for her old identity, plays along.  

Their unique relationship makes for a fascinating watch, and intelligently explores notions of identity and subconscious wilful forgetting that resonate profoundly in a country so burdened by the holocaust.

- Talking about his first feature length film in a Q ‘n’ A after its first screening at the festival, director Daniel Wolfe described Catch Me Daddy as a British western. And indeed, the landscape – here the Yorkshire Moors and provincial towns rather than the American West – is evocatively captured thanks to some brilliantly expressionistic cinematography.

But unlike a traditional Western, Wolfe’s film – about two young runaway lovers (Sameena Jabeen Ahmed and (Conor McCarron) pursued by one white gang and one South Asian gang - lacks compelling characters and an intriguing plot to hook you in, even when it develops into more of a straightforward thriller than the arthouse kitchen sink drama it had initially seemed to be. As a result we’re left a little disconnected from the film, so much so that the brutal final scene lacks the emotional bite that was clearly intended. Nevertheless, Wolfe demonstrates plenty of talent and great ambition, and with a little refinement could become a household name.

London Film Festival round-up: October 15

Stephen Puddicombe brings you the latest from the London Film Festival

- When Westerns are made these days they’re usually imbued by modern perspectives and post-modern twists on the genre. Not Kristian Levring’s The Salvation, which is instead traditional to a fault – the grubby anti-hero (played by a perfectly cast Mads Mikkelsen), sweeping landscapes, stylised violence, mythological tone, and a leading actress (Eva Green) who, after having her tongue cut off, quite literally has no voice, could all fit seamlessly into a Sergio Leone spaghetti western from the 1960s.

All this is beautifully shot by a director who clearly loves the genre, and the plot – about the aftermath of a Danish settler’s (Mikkelsen) avenging his wife and son’s murder – is straightforwardly entertaining.  It may not have much in the way of a fresh take, but is sure to satisfy genre enthusiasts.

- Set at the end of the American Civil War in what resembles a post-apocalyptic environment, The Keeping Room follows three young women hiding away at an abandoned farm.

From the very first scene an overtly feminist theme is established as the world is presented as hostile towards women, as lustful, cruel men, hardened by the war, prowl the landscape. Augusta (Brit Marling), Louise (Hailee Steinfeld) and their slave Mad (Muna Otaru) are adept at survival, but are pursued determinedly by two runaway solders (Sam Worthington and Kyle Soller).

The pace is ponderous and the tone foreboding throughout, with dark colours and ominous music ensuring a permanent sense of dread. Marling is particularly convincing in her empowered role while there are several moments of real horror, but proceedings could have done with being sped up from time to time.

 - The uproariously funny Wild Tales must surely be one of the highlights of the festival. Argentine director Damian Szifron constructs the film with six vignettes, all bound together by a mischievous, gleefully dark sense of humour.

The opening pre-credits sequence sets the tone – a mundane flight becomes stranger and stranger as the passengers realise the apparently freakish coincidence that connects them, before things go hilariously out of hand until a blackly comic climax.

Szifron takes on such modern concerns as bureaucracy, the super-rich and the fragility of marriage, all with an absurdist’s eye for the futility of people’s resolute efforts to amend what they see as unjust. The results are consistently hilarious, and outline the potential for this particular kind of episodically structured comedies. 

SP

Top 5 Latin Americans Characters

Hispanic Heroes

It is easy to forget that Latin Americans make up the biggest ethnic minority in the United States. In films they are often ignored or secluded to minor supporting roles. And yet, on the rare occasions when a Mexican lead is portrayed, such as in Orson Welles' A Touch of Evil, their characterisation tends to be clumsy and - rather predictably - verging on racist. Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns are usually the worst offenders in this regard.

But, as Bob Dylan famously sang, the times are-a-changing, and new roles for actors from the land of Bolivar, Guevera and erm... Antonio Valencia are beginning to emerge. In a future article I intend to go into this subject in more detail. For now, however, let's treat ourselves to a run-down of the best Hispanic characters in film and television to date.  

Jaime Escalante - Stand and Deliver (1988)

Edward James Olmos, familiar amongst ardent nerds as Bill Adama from Battlestar Galactica, was nominated for an Oscar when he played real life maths teacher Escalante. In a failing downtown L.A. school, the passionate tutor raises the expectations of his pupils and inspires them to achieve phenomenal results in a rigorous Calculus test. The students do so well, in fact, that the exam board believe the kids somehow cheated. Escalante is not always sympathetic in the film but nobody can deny his determination to do what is best for his class.

 Gloria - Modern Family (2009-present)

She may not be a person of impeccable social standing, but Gloria proved that a Columbian female figure (and what a figure it is!) could be relatable and entertaining to mainstream global audiences. The thriving comedy show has catapulted Sofia Vergara to stardom and a contract which makes her the highest paid woman on American television. The majority of her fortune comes from lucrative advertising endorsements, proving she has a powerful appeal in and outside of her ethnic community. Indeed, it means Jennifer Lopez is no longer considered the only beautiful woman for Latin girls to aspire to.

Pedro - Napoleon Dynamite (2004)

This kid might look forlorn and gormless but he surprises everyone by running for Class President. Does he win? I can't remember; that is not really the point of the film. Dare I say it, Pedro is an ironic character, reflecting a weird perspective on the Latin American identity. Ultimately, the message is to be happy with who you are, however odd you might be. It may not be ground breaking stuff but, like the rest of Napoleon Dynamite, proves exceptionally funny. So do it now, vote for Pedro!

Carlito Brigante - Carlito's Way (1993)

Although Al Pacino is perhaps the most famous Italian American in the world, he was nothing short of wonderful in the role of a Puerto Rican convict. Carlito is the only character who ever thinks rationally in his tragic story and never loses his goodness, even when he becomes embroiled in a series of gruesome events. In the final scene we see things through the unfortunate protagonist's eyes as he is carried into hospital. There is an honest, soothing simplicity to his acceptance of fate. With another actor, Carlito might have become a criminal caricature - another Tony Montana wannabe - but Pacino presents this hapless human as a unique soul, indeed, a thoroughly decent guy.

Gustavo Fring - Breaking Bad (2008-2013)

Ruthless, efficient, unsmiling: the Bolivian meth distributor is a tough person for Walter White to negotiate with. On many occasions he has the upper hand, only to be beaten by bad luck and misfortune. Unlike the other cartel villains from the series, Gus is methodical and exact. He rarely makes mistakes and never does anything without a clear strategy. Most notably, this narcotics entrepreneur has painstakingly established a number of watertight fronts for his illegal activities, including fast-food chain Los Pollos Hermanos, which I am lead to believe makes some pretty good fried chicken. His business is the last place the cops would ever look. He even donates money to the DEA annual fun run, for goodness sake. Once again, one of our listed characters is not a moral exemplar to his ethnic community. Nevertheless, he certainly ensures a memorable screen presence for Latinos, in the same way Tony Soprano represents fundamental Italian American values, albeit in an unorthodox guise.

ST 

London Film Festival round-up: October 10

Stephen Puddicombe brings you the latest from the London Film Festival

 - Considering how much time the average person spends on the internet these days, the lack of movies that show characters regularly fiddling on their phones or browsing on their desktops feels somewhat anachronistic.

Perhaps that’s down to how dull a spectacle it is to watch people staring at a screen, but, through displaying the content of the characters’ devices on the cinema screen for us to see, Men, Women and Children manages to build engaging drama out of instant messenger exchanges and internet searches.

This drama usually involves the strained relationships between the ensemble cast of men, women and children in the film, as director Jason Reitman aims to explore how modern technology is shaping contemporary society. His observations are sound albeit predictable and, despite a distracting voiceover from Emma Thompson and a framing device that strives for a profundity that the film fails to earn, this is a warm, well-acted and gently entertaining affair.

 - In typically art-house fashion, Abel Ferrara rejects the usual traits of the biopic genre in his feature on the great Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini. He intersperses mundane scenes of the protagonist living out his last day with episodic tangents into his creative imagination.

These scenes, which attempt to bring to life Pasolini’s unrealised projects, don’t really feel worthy of the late director’s talents and struggle to fit coherently into the film as a whole. There’s no doubting Ferrara’s integrity – Pasolini’s belief that ‘to scandalise is a right’ is one proudly practiced in his own films – but even the moments intended here to scandalise fall comparatively flat.

The film is at its most watchable when we witness the character of Pasolini unfold, thanks largely to a typically compelling performance from Willem Dafoe that exhibits intelligence, passion and inner-anguish. But the choice to document just one day of his life and the dissatisfying way the scenes from his imagination are rendered means we are never offered much access to his character.

 - Amidst the growing threat of Islamic State in the Middle-East comes Timbuktu, a heartfelt and exasperated plea for humanity over oppressive fundamental religion.

Abderrahmane’s Sissako’s films dramatizes the 2012 occupation of Mali by jihadists, concentrating on a collection of residents in Timbuktu as their enjoyment of basic leisure activities like football, music and socialising are clamped down upon by the new gun-wielding authorities. Rather than embarking on a sombre attack on such oppression, Sissako instead opts to point out the absurdity of the new laws – one fishmonger is perplexed by the new requirement for her to wear gloves despite the necessity for her to handle fish, while two jihadists puzzle over whether singing is a sin when it is done so in praise of God.

The tone is understated throughout which, for better or worse, resists an overly-emotional connection by using music only very sparingly and having its characters respond stoically to their compromised new circumstances. And juxtaposed with the tragedy of the events is Sissako’s beautiful direction, including one particularly stunning single take during the film’s dramatic apex. 

SP

Gone Girl

Lurid murders, deceptions and betrayals, shocking twists – David Fincher is in familiar territory adapting Gillian Flynn’s hit novel Gone Girl. Following an unnecessary remake of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and the ill-fittingly twee Curious Case of Benjamin Button, it’s a relief to see that Fincher is still masterful when it comes to noirish thrillers like this.

As reflected by its two-and-a-half-hour running time – which is nonetheless gripping thanks to a zippy pace and frequent twists – Fincher has been careful to retain as much of the source material as possible, whilst also solving the potential narrative problems of telling the story on-screen.

In the first section of the film, for instance, the contrasting points of view from husband Nick (Ben Affleck) and wife Amy (Rosamund Pike) are depicted through a division of scenes between the present, where he react to her  apparent abduction, and in the past via her diary entries, which document the earlier times of their relationship and marriage. Whereas Amy’s recollections present an idyllic view of love and marriage, it’s clear from Nick’s eerily cold, almost indifferent reaction to her disappearance that this early passion has since rapidly dissolved.

This first part of the film expertly builds tension as suspicion builds over Nick that he may in fact be responsible for the abduction. But this mystery is resolved surprisingly early, and the narrative focus lurches from ‘whodunit?’ to ‘what-happens-next?’, upon which proceedings become more and more melodramatic.

It’s important to remember this melodramatic tone Gone Girl appropriates when considering the question of misogyny in the film. An ungenerous reading of the film would state that it defends men who have been accused of violent crime, whilst redirecting the blame towards women via the worst kind of psycho-bitch, bunny-boiler stereotype.  

But the characters and plot are handled in a far more nuanced way than this reading suggests, while exaggeration and melodrama render it far more satirical than realistic. Instead, the film seems to be documenting a paranoid male fear of empowered women who call him out on his mistreatment of his spouse.

Tellingly, virtually all of the characters who interrogate him are women: the shrewd detective Rhonda investigating the disappearance (Kim Dickens), his twin sister Margot (Carrie Coon), the witch hunt-inducing news network host (Missi Pyle), his mother-in-law (Lisa Barnes), the formidable TV interviewer (Sela Ward). Most are portrayed sympathetically and Rhonda and Margot in particular are drawn as multi-dimensional, so that when Nick utters the line ‘I'm so sick and tired of being picked apart by women’, it sounds too self-conscious on the film’s part to be taken as a sexist stance against nagging women.

When defending herself against accusations of misogyny, author of the novel Gillian Flynn (who also wrote the screenplay) explains how she has ‘grown quite weary of the spunky heroines, brave rape victims, soul-searching fashionistas that stock so many books’, and ‘mourns the lack of female villains’. It is certainly refreshing to see a woman given license to behave as villainously as, say, Kevin Spacey in Fincher’s Seven, yet she still retains certain clichéd traits that have burdened female characters for years – she twice resorts to the problematic ploy of faking sexual assault, while her motives are defined entirely by her relation to other men. 

It says a lot for the layers in Gone Girl that this question of misogyny is just one of several issues asking to be picked over. There’s a wry satire of media circuses and the way broadcast journalists like Nancy Grace work, and of course the institution of marriage and the delusions that surround it is a very prominent theme. With so much to ponder over after leaving the cinema, there’s plenty of substance to back up the glossy style and crowd-pleasing thrills. 

SP

Slurms McKenzie and the Ultimate Sacrifice

“Party on contest winners, party on.”

Slurms McKenzie gave everything a giant slug had to offer. He partied on, and he partied out. He died as he lived, lost in the hedonistic buzz that can only come from boogying on down.

Slurms McKenzie and his 'party girls' in happier times.

I am, of course, talking about the moment in the last episode of Futurama’s first series where Fry, Bender and Leela visit the Slurm factory, only to discover the drink company’s dark secret. The Slurm corporation’s groovy mascot, Slurms Mckenzie, saves the gang by blocking the evil Slurm queen from the last escape route. Alas, it was to prove a suicidal mission.

As the heroic Slurms dismisses his ever-faithful bikini-clad party girls, we are reminded of Futurama’s most special qualities. That is, in a matter of nanoseconds, it can twist its audience’s emotions from laughter, to sadness, and return to hilarity without a line of script out of place. Indeed, Futurama is as poignant a comedy as there has ever been on television, film or the theatrical stage. On occasions, Matt Groening and his team of writers made Checkhov and Mamet look like happy-go-lucky types. Any fan of the show who says they have not welled up at least once with tears is a bad liar.

Who could forget the heart-breaking epilogue to Jurassic Bark (S4 ep7), where we see Fry’s loving pet dog, Seymour, live out his last years waiting in vain for his master’s return? Or how about the moment Zoidberg misses his only chance to find a mating partner and witnesses his species perish on his home planet’s shallow shores? If I wanted to bore you, and depress your sensitive souls, I would list the plethora of similarly elegaic points in the animated show’s fifteen years of existence. Yes, you heard that right; it’s been fifteen years since the world was introduced to Bender and Professor Farnsworth! They have certainly aged well.

Aside from Slurms McKenzie’s last stand, my most abiding memory of Futurama’s hidden emotional depths is from The Devil’s Hands are Idle Playthings (S5 ep15). Fry attempts to impress Leela by playing an instrument which projects story images into the air. To master the musical device, the buffoonish everyman steals the hands of the robot devil. But when the devil threatens Leela, the treachery is revealed and Fry is forced to return the limbs and lose his rhythmic gift. Our defeated hero is dejected, until Leela insists Fry finish his romantic song. Without the devil’s skilful hands, the resulting tune is basic and childish. Nevertheless, Fry’s love for Leela is achingly clear in his sincere projection, stripped to its basic tenderness, and free of flashy gimmickry (see below).  In the context of the show, the sentiment is a truly beautiful summary of Fry’s ceaseless goodness. Ross and Rachel, Sam and Diane: none had a moment in their long flirtations which match this bittersweet note. It was to be a fitting dampener to end the show’s original run – the next new episode was not aired for five long years.

For a show that started out as a spin-off to The Simpsons, Matt Groening’s second child has achieved more than anyone could have expected, even arguably surpassing its older sibling over the last decade. For a cartoon too, it has led the field with pathos-driven stories, suffused with broad humour and relatable characters, even if they are some of the biggest freaks in science-fiction.

 

How did Futurama reach this level of brilliance? Well, it used the same techniques as Shakespeare, obviously. Inverting the usual genre tropes, their comedies are stuffed with tragic characteristics. As Jack Lemmon said in his interview with the Actor’s Studio, it is easier to make audience’s cry than laugh, but the biggest challenge is to inspire both reactions at the same time. As I hope you will agree, I believe Futurama found that magic time and time again.

ST