|
FEATHERS
IN MY HEAD
5/10
Des Plumes
dans ma tete : Belgium 2003 : Thomas DE THEIR : 100 mins
WARNING
– CONTAINS SPOILERS
After an unpromising
preliminary voice-over (kiddie narration seldom a good sign) director
De Their socks us between the eyes with amazing first shot: ZAMM! From
underwater and in slow-motion, we see a fish snatched out of the water
by a diving bird. Amazing nature stuff is hallmark of the first section
– no surprise to hear De Their started off as a wildlife documentarist.
In a rural backwater, nature is all around : shades of Terrence Malick
and/or Hukkle as humans
interact with others species.
Also touches
of Bruno Dumont – as in La Vie de Jesus and L’Humanite,
we’re in that Franco-Belgian zone of low-key industry: factories on the
horizon. We aren’t told why this area should attract such an exotic selection
of birds, however – in fact, due to presence of sugar plant. Avian visitors
observed at a distance (through binoculars) by geeky birdwatcher Francois
– who chronicles his various “experiments” in a notepad (tests his resistance
to cold/wet etc). Also observed: small child.
This turns
out to be main dramatic focus. Early stretches effective: ominous tensions
as child ambles around. World of wonder for kid surrounded by creatures
– and hazards. Adults more closed-off: only senile old bloke responds
to child’s cheery greetings. But though images striking, score much less
distinctive: conventional mournful piano stuff. Somewhat arty feel
to proceedings (someone scrutinises a jigsaw that has two pieces missing!).
A flickering lightbulb makes too much noise – only David Lynch can get
away with such gimmicks. Also worrying that the only dynamic character,
a hot-headed scooter rider, is killed very early on.
Then there’s
a second death, and the film changes gear. Focus shifts to mother Blanche
(Sophie Museur), devastated by death of the curious child. Things go downhill
very rapidly for her – and for the audience. She starts having visions
of the boy – her thoughts/fantasies become visible for us. Tangible for
her, as mental instability takes control. De Their includes too many of
these sequences: as with visualised dreams, they don’t ‘count’ in narrative
terms. A capella selections on the soundtrack don’t help (the village
has a male-voice choir) – just as the frivolous title doesn’t match what
becomes a very downbeat film.
De Their seems
to suffer from Lynne Ramsay’s problem in Morvern
Callar: can create moods and images, but can’t sustain narrative
to feature length. Feathers bogs down into repetitive scenes of
Blanche going off the rails. Performance and film become increasingly
mannered – just another slow, arthouse depiction of grief. She does some
gratingly hackneyed ‘madwoman’ stuff – playing with the scummy bubbles
in the water outside the sugar plant; eating very quickly; stumbling into
an unbearably corny, tentative, mute relationship with Francois.
The director’s
eye isn’t enough to get away with some very daft moments – Blanche visits
a supermarket, acts weird, is stared at by shoppers who stand in implausible
neat tableau (though there’s a neat pay-off to this sequence during the
end credits). Ropey score sounds like ‘temp track’ of music from other
films. Low point is a rape scene featuring another unwelcome blast of
the a capella male-voice choir. Ensuing suicide attempt is cliched stuff
– she imagines herself floating off onto the lake on a huge paper boat
(a nice touch), only to be jolted back to life and gasp for air. Picture
feels like a series of shorts cobbled together – some strong moments,
but audience will probably feel too annoyed/disappointed to be carried
along on the emotional tide.
IN
AMERICA
5/10
Ireland
(Ire/UK/USA) 2002 (released 2003) : Jim SHERIDAN : 102 mins
Semi-autobiographical,
semi-successful fable of Manhattan. As in Chocolat,
fact that film is narrated from child’s-eye perspective is used to excuse
all manner of sentimental excess. Hard to be too critical, however, as
film is largely inspired by real tragedy: death of Sheridan’s own young
son – before end titles, dedication to his memory appears (cathartic for
Sheridan, but audience may feel as though they’re eavesdropping on private
agonies).
Paddy Considine
and Samantha Morton both fine as Johnny and Sarah, a young Irish couple
who relocate (illegally) to New York – though both have been better elsewhere.
Considine always seems to work well with children (Strelniakov in Last
Resort, Shim in Romeo
Brass) and here the show is stolen by Sarah and Emma Bolger as
their kids. Beyond precocious, these two - and never less than totally
believable, effortlessly transcending the ‘Irish moppet’ syndrome of Evelyn,
etc.
There’s one
terrific scene early on in which family visit funfair, and dad gets slowly
suckered into staking all their meagre funds on a con-game – it’s almost
unwatchable as jovial mood spirals into claustrophobic nightmare. Nothing
approaches that level afterwards, though Sheridan captures the maddening
frustration of day-to-day American life fairly well in the early stretches.
Things only become rocky when the requirements of plot kick in, and the
kids make acquaintance of ‘screaming man’ Matteo (Djimon Hounsou) - an
artist neighbour who happens to be a prince from Africa (cue woozy tribal
music on the soundtrack when he comes on screen). Turns out Matteo is
terminally ill. Cue melodramatic finale as Sarah gives birth prematurely
and kid hovers between life and death while Matteo does likewise (grindingly
appropriate “a time to be born, a time to die” from the Byrds on the soundtrack).
Film never
really gets to grips with the experience of immigrant families like the
one depicted here. After tense border-crossing opening, nothing is made
of their status as illegal immigrants – even after they have dealings
with local schools and hospitals. Why don’t they make any contacts with
New York’s huge Irish-American community? Why don’t they live in Brooklyn
rather than crowded, dangerous, pricey Manhattan (Johnny is an aspiring
actor – interesting to see In America as a low-rent, non-satanic
variation on Rosemary’s Baby)? Most pressingly of all, was it really
necessary to have the family’s problems almost literally solved by magic?
End credits feature standard-issue inspirational emerald-isle ballad –
Andrea Corr steps in for Sinead O’Connor, who must have been busy that
week.
For an interview
with star Paddy
Considine click here.
IN
MY SKIN
7/10
Dans
ma peau : France 2002 : Marina DE VAN : 93 mins
In My Skin
is this year's Irreversible
– only those in possession of a strong will and a strong stomach need
apply. At Edinburgh, despite stern warnings that “This film contains images
and explores themes that some viewers may find disturbing”, there was
a steady stream of walkouts as soon as said images and themes started
to manifest themselves. Becauseit's the first stalk-and-slash film ever
made in which the victim and assailant are the same person. Admirers of
Mark E Smith may well recall his lyric from 'The Man Whose Head Expanded'
about someone who "practised cut-up technique, literally, on himself",
Writer-director-star
De Van was the psychotic back-packer in Francois Ozon's See The Sea,
acted in his Sitcom, and co-wrote his Under The Sand. And
she looks like a vampire: pale skin, sharp teeth, a chic nosferatu. Tod
Browning, Carl Dreyer and Terence Fisher would have fought to the death
(and beyond) to cast her as Dracula's bride. The surrealists would have
worshipped her. And she’d have joined in: close-up after close-up lengthy
makes it clear that, if she was chocolate, she'd eat herself.
Her character
Esther isn't made of chocolate, but she eats herself anyway – bits of
herself, at any rate. Esther is a successful businesswoman who cuts her
leg, very badly, at a party one night. At first she doesn't notice – which
is scarcely plausible, given the severity of the wound. Finally she does
notice - and notices that being cut makes her feel good. Cue slow slide
into dementia, as her bosses lose patience and her nice-guy boyfriend
(typecast Laurent Lucas) looks on in bewilderment.
In My Skin
is the latest in a long line of films analysing the French workplace
and its discontents. But this time the journey is very much internal,
full of jarring visualisations in which Esther’s alienated view of her
own body are presented as hallucinatory fact (such as the terrific restaurant-dinner
sequence where her hand appears neatly and bloodlesslt severed).
Despite the
odd grisly moment, and the inevitable walk-outs, however, In My Skin
never actually delivers anything truly grotesque. De Van always
seems to be about to show us something awful as Esther’s decline accelerates,
and this adds an electric edge to even the quietest scene. But viewers
expecting conventional narrative closure will be disappointed: towards
the end, we venture further into performance-art territory as De Van retreats
behind split-screen and a rotating camera – culminating in a deliberately
baffling shot which seems to capture Esther in a moment of… what? Transcendental
personal apocalypse? Belated coming-to-her-senses?
The director
has, it seems, by this stage backed herself into something of a cul-de-sac
– or rather entered a state of Repulsion, with Esther a close cousin
of Catherine Deneuve’s shut-in, delusional schizophrenic from the mid-sixties
Polanski film. But there’s no shortage of stuff to chew on (ahem) on this
most graceful and poised of ‘skin-flicks’ – if nothing else, the remarkable
scene in which Esther slowly threatens various parts of her body with
a knife makes In My Skin the first stalk-and-slash film ever made
in which the victim and assailant are the same person.
It all comes
down to issues of control, of course – self-control; the woman asserting
control of her body in an environment that so often reduces her to an
object of male regard (as in Secretary,
scarification is a direct response to reification); and the control of
a director to head down transgressive, dark mental corridors. Because,
while De Van isn’t actually the film’s editor - Mike Fromentin wielded
the scissors - she’s the one who says action… and, of course, the one
who says ‘cut.’
For the standalone
rewrite of this review click here
KAMCHATKA
6/10
Argentina
(Arg/Spain) 2002 : Marcelo PINEYRO : 103 mins
Kamchatka
brings together the two Argentinian performers best known to arthouse
audiences in the rest of the world – Ricardo Darin, the older con-man
from Nine Queens, and Cecilia Roth
from Almodovar’s All About
My Mother. And both get plenty of dramatic meat to sink their
teeth into here, in a film that traces the very painful intersection of
the personal, domestic and political in the aftermath of Argentina’s military
coup in 1976. Darin and Roth play a left-leaning couple who quickly realise
they and their two young sons are in grave danger of being ‘disappeared’
by the military junta, so relocate to a ‘safe-house’ where they plot their
next move – which involves assuming new identities.
For
the older child, this means becoming “Harry” in tribute to Harry Houdini,
whose escapist feats endow him with heroic status for the boy. The focus
is at least as much on the children as the adults – as the opening and
closing narration makes clear, this is a retrospective story told from
his perspective. It’s really about ‘Harry’’s education from his actual
parents, and other figures of authority and experience he meets along
the way – his normal life having come to a very abrupt halt.
Not
a great deal actually ‘happens’ – as in Michael Mann’s The
Insider, the threats from external sources remain shadowy as the
parents always manage to stay a step or two ahead of danger. It’s rather
like what Christian Petzold did with The
State I Am In, although in that movie – which presented a rather
less harmonious family in flight from the authorities – the slow-burning
drama eventually led to a shattering twist payoff. Kamchatka’s
script – co-written by director Pineyro and Marcelo Figueras – instead
relies on implication and inference, including the eventual fate of the
parents. The mood is much more elegaic and nostalgic – though there isn’t
much attempt made to replicate the fashions and hairstyles of mid-seventies
Argentina.
Kamchatka
– whose title refers to the Siberian peninsula which, for the boy,
comes to stand for an impregnable retreat from the world’s pressures –
works very well as an intimate chamber piece on universal themes. Apart
from a slightly over-intrusive score, it’s nimbly handled by Pineyro,
who explores ideas of escape and resistance in an engaging, very heartfelt
manner. Is it, perhaps, his own story, taken from life? If so, this might
explain the slightly episodic, dramatically underpowered aspects of what
is an effective, but sometimes too low-key film.
LETTERS
IN THE WIND
6/10
Namehay
Bad : Iran 2002 : Ali-Reza AMINI : 76 mins
Not to be confused
with the concurrent Bulgarian film of the same name, Letters in the
Wind is an incisive mini-feature chronicling the first few weeks of
conscripts doing their national service in the Iranian army. Amini deploys
a matter-of-fact documentary style as we see the motley bunch put through
their paces – there’s no music, but the barracks features plenty of piped,
suitably military tunes including, slightly surprisingly, ‘Colonel Bogey.’
Adding to the slightly old-timey feel are subtitles which translate various
insults as “knavish,” “ruffian,” “rascal” and “dandy”. The only female
presence is a recorded woman’s voice on a dictaphone which one resourceful
conscript smuggles into the remote, icily mountainous camp. The machine
is passed from bed to bed in the dormitory, the men listening to the banal
phrases as if they were the most seductive poetry.
Ennui, of course,
is a fact of life for the soldiers – and, given the lack of dramatic pep
in the first half-hour or so, it also becomes something of an issue for
the audience. Which is why we’re so keen to see Taghi (the resourceful
dictaphone-smuggler) succeed in a trial of endurance the prize for which
is a furlough to the nearest big city. Taghi pulls it off, and we follow
him into town – where, once again, the dictaphone becomes crucial. He
calls up his colleagues’ relatives and plays back various messages they’ve
recorded before his departure – the ‘letters’ of the title. Taghi then
records various street sounds for the benefit of his fellow conscripts
– setting up a bittersweet finale back at base, although, refreshingly,
not quite the one we’re led to expect. It’s a nice touch, typical of what
is a tidy little vignette of a film – even if it does at times feel like
an overextended short.
THE
MAN OF THE YEAR
6/10
O Homem
do Ano : Brazil 2003 : Jose Henrique FONSECA : 116 mins
Flashy hit-man
comedy-thriller from Brazil that rather nakedly wants to be the next Amores
Perros or City
of God. Falls short of the latter, mainly because of the unsatisfactory
dramatic arc. Opening stretches are fast, audacious and funny as a Rio
De Janeiro joe schmoe type named Maiquel (Murilo Benicio) dyes his hair
blond, is mocked by a local street-punk, and responds in a violent manner
that sees his neighbourhood popularity unexpectedly rocket. Before long,
he has a pet pig and two women on the go – and his ‘talents’ bring him
to the attention of big-wigs whose businesses are coming under threat
from the city’s out-of-control crimewave.
There’s a very
serious subtext here – the failure of the police and government to deal
with Rio’s spiralling crime and social injustice (the Bus
174 case is even mentioned at one point, as is City of God’s
Ze Galinha). In Man of the Year, the resulting vacuum is filled
by a private company with Maiquel as its figurehead – which imposes law
and order, and also curfews. Their justice is rough, and it comes at a
price – which only the rich can afford to pay.
Various strata
of Brazilian society are exposed, as Maiquel’s progress brings him into
representatives of business, the police and the church – director Fonseca
and scriptwriter Ruben Fonseca (adapting Patricia Melo’s novel O Matador
– ‘the killer’) bite off rather more than they can chew. Though it
barrels along for a while on breezy energy and invention, the film starts
running out of steam at about the same time as Maiquel becomes disillusioned
with his new-found status as gun-toting vigilante for hire.
The second
hour is notably less successful from the first – things are perhaps never
the same after the unexpected demise of a major ‘character’ (in a distressing
development that will be familiar to audiences who have seen the Australian
comedy-drama La Spagnola.)
And perhaps we’re now getting to the stage where this much-hyped ‘Latino
wave’ of violently self-aware, apparently amoral, urban-hip pictures risks
becoming an over-familiar series of retreads over the same barrio turf.
MY
ARCHITECT
7/10
aka My
Architect : A Son's Journey : USA 2003 : Nathaniel KAHN : 116 mins
Entertaining
documentary in which film-maker Kahn traces the history of his late father
the internationally esteemed Estonian-born, US-raised architect Louis
Kahn. The subtext of so many American fictional movies these days is the
son in search of the father, and here it’s brought right out into the
open. With contributions from the likes of Philip Johnson (a delightfully
acerbic nonagenarian who deserves a movie all to himself), Frank Gehry
and I M Pei, the film is must-viewing for anyone interested in modern
architecture – not least because we get to see so many of Louis Kahn’s
completed works, culminating in his masterpiece Capitol at Dhaka, Bangladesh.
The experts also serve to put Louis Kahn’s work into its correct historical
perspective – sketching in a context which Kahn Jr isn’t equipped to provide.
But even non-aficionados
of the subject will probably find plenty to keep them interested here
– the scenes where Nathaniel Kahn interviews his own mother (who never
lived with Louis Kahn) and, separately, her sisters, are respectively
touching and hilarious. More peripheral figures also provide good value,
including a cabbie who drove Kahn around his adopted city of Philadelphia,
and a Bangladeshi passer-by who confuses Louis Kahn with Louis Farrakhan.
The film successfully
presents Louis Kahn as a visionary whose idea were far ahead of their
time, so devoted to his craft that his private life dissolved into an
ongoing chaos. Nathaniel Kahn, while a competent enough documentarist,
is clearly nowhere near the same league in terms of the mastery of his
craft – and he knows as much, incorporating footage where he’s made to
borderline buffoonish (his prayer hat keeps blowing off at the Wailing
Wall in Jerusalem; he’s startled when the fog-horn on the ‘Music Barge’
his father designed unexpectedly starts up).
Where Kahn
Sr was remorselessly, instinctively innovative, Kahn Jr falls back rather
too often on the well-worn cliches of the documentary trade – luckily,
the subject matter is strong enough to compensate for the conventional
manner in which it’s told. It is annoying, however, that he incorporates
so much tangential material that there’s only ten minutes at the end to
savour the glories of Kahn’s Dhaka buildings. When a local eminence is
informed about the necessarily fleeting nature of the Capitol footage
within the whole movie, he blurts “Then I think the film is very useless!”
He’s way off the mark, of course – but you do understand where he’s coming
from.
NED
KELLY
4/10
UK (UK/Australia)
2003 : Gregor JORDAN : 110 mins
Plodding hagiography
of the 19th century antipodean icon. A world away – in every
respect – from Jordan’s last movie, the flip, wannabe-iconoclastic Buffalo
Soldiers, this is a grindingly old-fashioned biopic that elevates
Kelly (Heath Ledger) into an implausible shaggy-saintly combination of
William (Braveheart) Wallace and Robin Hood: “I won’t take this
injustice” he rants through his increasingly bushy beard.
Ledger isn’t
a bad age fit for Kelly, who died young, but he struggles a little with
the Irish accent (Kelly was born in Australia among a dirt-poor family
of recent immigrants). Much stronger performers like Geoffrey Rush (as
his steely colonial nemesis) and Naomi Watts (aristocratic love-interest
– an invented character) are wasted on the sidelines – and the less said
about Rachel Griffiths’ bizarre cameo as a “Scottish” woman, the better.
Sappy flavour-of-the-month Orlando Bloom, meanwhile, turns in yet another
lukewarm, forgettable performance as one of the cheeky, chirpy Kelly gang
(“knoights in shoinin’ armor!”).
Klaus Badelt’s
“inspirational” music seldom lets up, all the way to the bullet-ridden
conclusion as Kelly grunts, bellows and trudges his way towards martyrdom
(“Wasn’t this about protectin’ the ones I loved?!”, etc). It’s all thoroughly
one-note, by-the-numbers stuff, simplistic in its stark division between
its goodies and baddies – and didn’t anybody notice that all these penniless
scruffs have such gleaming complexions and teeth?
films seen
at Filmhouse, Cameo and UGC cinemas, Edinburgh, between 12th
and 23rd August, 2003
Edinburgh
Film Festival
reviews written
15th September, 2003
For the full
list of every Jigsaw Lounge reviewed film at this 2003 Edinburgh Film
Festival click here
by Neil
Young
-
|
