SWING MY SWING HIGH, MY DARLING : [4/10]
Buai laju-laju : Malaysia 2004 : U-Wei BIN HAJISAARI : 93 mins

The tonguetwister-titled Swing My Swing High, My Darling is the latest big-screen version of James M Cain's debut novel The Postman Always Rings Twice, previously filmed by Pierre Chenal (1939's Le Dernier Tournant with Michel Simon) Luchino Visconti (1942's Ossessione ), Tay Garnett (1946, with John Garfield and Lana Turner) and Bob Rafelson (1981 - Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange). Cain's 1934 thriller is itself an update of Emile Zola's Therese Raquin from 1867, which has also been adapted on many occasions for cinema and TV - Eleanor Yule's 2004 low-budgeter Blinded is the only most recent example, and yet another version (starring Kate Winslet) is currently in production.

So, this isn't by any means a new story. As before, a down-on-his-luck drifter (Eman Manan as Amran) winds up working as odd-job-man an out-of-the-way diner owned by a middle-aged putz (Khalid Salleh) and his attractive, conspicuously younger wife (Betty Banafe). After some initial friction, hot passion soon ignites between drifter and wife - with murderous consequences... The ‘twist' this time is the South East Asian setting - Malaysia is an Islamic country with strict film-censorship not dissimilar to that which constrained Tay Garnett when he made his legendarily steamy Hollywood version. These restrictions don't prove anything like so creatively stimulating for bin Hajisaari, however, whose contributions (direction, script, editing) never rise above a basic level - he also errs by allowing Embie C Noer's jazzy soundtrack to become naggingly intrusive.

And the muzak isn't by any means the biggest problem - instead of being propelled by noirish inevitability, Swing My Swing High comes across as uninspiringly predictable and underpowered in the crucial area of suspense, right up to the confusing final twists. While Banafe is suitably slinky/smouldery as the treacherous, rapaciously ambitious wife (she's called ‘Eton,' which will cause some smirking among British viewers), Manan is rather less than charismatic as the thick-headed drifter. This is an inescapable flaw, as he's very rarely off-screen - it's hard to conclude that he's been cast less for his acting ability than for a passing resemblance to Garnett's leading-man Garfield. This comparison which does Manan, and the film as a whole, no favours at all - like Amran, Swing My Swing High is moderately competent at simple tasks, but fatally compromised by a fundamental lack of imagination and/or vision.

Neil Young
26th February, 2005 (seen at Venster cinema - press show)



SPYING CAM : [6/10] : Frakchi : South Korea 2004 : WHANG Cheol-Mean : 100 mins

Sweatily claustrophobic no-budgeter Spying Cam nabbed Rotterdam ‘05's much-coveted critics' prize - perhaps a little over-generous, given competition such as Takahashi Izumi's rather more coherent, offbeat and accomplished far-eastern chamber-piece The Soup, One Morning and Mercedes Alvarez's hypnotic Spanish documentary The Sky Turns. Both of those rivals overcome soporifically slow starts and build impressively to their powerful finales - Whang's Spying Cam, however, goes the other way: an intriguing opening and strong mid-section gradually unravelling into a disappointing, confusingly smart-alec conclusion.

The tense tale of two men (Choo Heon-Yeop and Yang Young-Cho) holed up - for reasons which only very belatedly become (semi-)apparent - in a pokey apartment, Spying Cam initially concentrates on character-development, with engaging results. "Why don't we make a movie? That's the best way of killing time," suggests one - "Action, not melodrama," agrees the other, keen to avoid the kind of film which consists of people "sitting around talking" and thus "bores the audience to death."

Ironically, Spying Cam itself works best when Whang has the two main characters "sitting around talking," or acting out scenes from the novel one of them happens to be reading - anyone who's seen any arthouse movies in the last two years won't be surprised to find that said volume turns out to be Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment.  When push comes to shove and "action" takes over - the men vacate the apartment and embark on a mysterious, political mission outside - Whang loses his way.

It's just as well he can rely on Yang's powerhouse performance (as the more brutish of the pair) which pretty much keeps the show on the road as it encounters some rocky final-act terrain. Though his character's brutish actions manage to decisively alienate the audience' sympathies not far after halfway, the compelling Yang's portrayal of insecure machismo is main reason for seeking out this ambitious but underdeveloped drama - whose notably lo-fi shaky-video cinematography will probably ensure future exposure on the film-festival circuit rather than commercial distribution. Responsible for production, script, camerawork, editing and script as well as direction, Whang is clearly a name to watch... although animal-lovers will hope that, despite being already in his mid-40s, he grows out of his unfortunate fondness for on-screen insect-squishing

Neil Young
26th February, 2005 (seen at de Doelen centre - press show)



FATHERLAND - A HUNTING LOGBOOK : [6/10]
Vaterland - lovecky denik : Czech Republic 2004 : David JARAB : 94 mins

No connection to the Robert Harris bestseller of similar name, this Fatherland is a rural-gothic black-comedy chiller in which a family of obnoxious Czech haut-bourgeois (led by Hollywood refugee Karel Hellboy Roden) hunt a bizarre, possibly mythic species in the mountains near their former ‘ancestral' home. Feature-debutant theatre-director Jarab's script features copious narration, and has a distinctly literary feel: fans of authors like Jorge Luis Borges and Magnus Mills will be familiar with this idea of creating a world a degree off-kilter from our own, complete with its own rules, creatures and vocabulary.

We're never quite sure about the nature or function of what the English subtitles translate as ‘slaughterns,' ‘skeleters,' etc, but this helps to create an ominous mood of bygone, nightmarish weirdness - Jarab ensures we don't miss the fact that one of the characters' bed-time reading is a volume entitled Der Surrealismus. In cinematic terms, if the hostile, vaguely sub-human peasantry recall the benighted villagers so beloved of Bela Tarr, the ‘aristocrats' affluent boorishness makes them distant (inbred?) cousins to the affluent, solipsistic Danes from Festen, or Christopher Lee's Lord Summerisle from The Wicker Man.
And while we've seen this kind of central-European fly-buzzing rural claustrophobia several times before (most recently in Attila Janisch's Hungarian variant After the Day Before), Fatherland is sufficiently accomplished, oddball (listen out for the Portuguese!) and - on the allegorical/political level hinted at by the title - stimulating to establish a character of its own, even if the pace flags somewhat after as the truth about the hunters' quarry is revealed. All gong and not much dinner? Perhaps. But the intriguing tones produced by Jarab and company - and the soundtrack's poundingly dramatic drumbeats are pretty striking - will, for many, make this Hunt a rewarding expedition.

Neil Young
26th February, 2005 (seen at Venster cinema - press show)



THE WORLD : [6/10] : Shi jie : China (Chi/Jap/Fr) 2004 : JIA Zhang-ke : 136 mins

Orbis sufficit? though overlong and somewhat unfocussed, The World is - just about - enough. Writer-director Jia has won critical acclaim and film-festival awards worldwide for his first three features Pickpocket, Platform, Unknown Pleasures (each set in his native province of Shanxi). And this has evidently emboldened him to attempt this rather more ambitious project, set in a district of his adopted city of Beijing: quite literally taking on ‘The World,' in fact.

The "World" in question is a real-life landscaped theme-park in which many of the world's most famous landmarks are reproduced in slightly-reduced scale. It's not easy for China's increasingly-affluent citizens to obtain permission for foreign travel, so the ‘World Park' offers a simulacrum alternative - an illusion of globetrotting freedom, perhaps. Jia uses this as the elaborate backdrop for what is essentially a very old-fashioned behind-the-scenes showbiz tale - his focus is mainly on vivacious dancer Tao (Zhao Tao, appealingly lively) and her fellow workers, showing how they juggle their professional and romantic lives against some remarkable, incongruous backgrounds such as the Pyramids, the Big Ben, downtown Manhattan and the Eiffel Tower...

Ah, the Eiffel Tower. The Eiffel bloody Tower. Not even in a film made in the real Paris, by the most avid Paris-o-phile, would you get quite so many shots of the Tour Eiffel as Jia crams into his lengthy movie: it's as if he can't get over having the chance to use the damn thing, and does his best to incorporate it at least once into every sequence. The cumulative result is a little like being in the company of a pleasant, senile relative who keeps pointing out of the window and telling you, over and over again, "Did you know... they have an Eiffel Tower... here, in the middle of Beijing!" Eventually even the most patient listener/viewer will eventually snap and exclaim ‘I get the messsage, grandma!'

The World Park, while far from unique (Europe boasts numerous ‘Minimondus' attractions) is clearly a terrific gift for any film-maker - so much so as to place an onerous burden on the lucky recipient: they have to come up with cracking material in order to do it full justice. Jia (who has seemingly obtained access-all-areas clearance) doesn't quite prove up to the task. He comes up with some ecstatic moments, Altmanish many of them involving the spectacular dance-routines performed by Tao and company, and he has a beguilingly off-beat sense of humour - both visual and verbal - which makes The World consistently watchable. For example, this must be the first (and only?) film to feature a 9/11 ‘joke' which the audience doesn't feel uncomfortable laughing at (unlikely as this may sound, it'll make perfect sense if you see the picture.)

But many of Jia's innovations and improvisations don't quite come off - the intrusion of clumsily animated sequences whenever anyone sends or receives a text message on their mobile phone, while not uncharming, feels like a grafted-on affectation. And the overall story itself is flimsy, repetitive and diffuse - too many inconsequential scenes - while the final, downbeat twist is quite thuddingly unsatisfactory, bringing the picture to such a gratuitously bleak, soberingly sudden halt that many ‘visitors' to Zia's ‘world' might hesitate to recomment the ‘ride' to other potential ‘customers.'

Neil Young
26th February, 2005 (seen at Venster cinema - press show)



9 SONGS : [6/10] : UK 2004 : Michael WINTERBOTTOM : 69 mins

Winterbottom's last film - the intriguing, globetrotting sci-fi misfire Code 46 - left many people cold because they didn't detect any ‘chemistry' between mismatched stars Tim Robbins and Samantha Morton. No such complaints will surely be levelled at this follow-up, however: because that really is leads Kieran O'Brien (Andy from Burn It) and (newcomer) Margot Stilley up there having real sex on screen, on numerous occasions, in a film that chronicles the short-lived, turbulent but convincingly passionate affair between their characters Matt and Lisa in late 2003.

This explicitness has been a talking-point ("is it porn or is it art?") ever since the premiere at Cannes last May, and the film's distributors will undoubtedly be keen to whip up as much controversy as possible with the box-office returns in mind. But there's much more to 9 Songs than a few sweaty moments of full-frontal penetration - and if, say, Monica Bellucci and Vincent Cassel got down to business in a picture called, say, Neuf chansons, it's unlikely that quite so much fuss would have resulted.

As the title indicates, the film is at least as much about music as it is about sex: like many London-based young people, (northerner) Matt and (American) Lisa are avid gig-goers, and Winterbottom rather audaciously incorporates nine complete performances in from Elbow (Bury's finest perform ‘Fallen Angel'), Franz Ferdinand, the Von Bondies (easily the pick of the bunch with an electrifying ‘Cmon Cmon'), Super Furry Animals, Primal Scream, the Dandy Warhols, a classical interlude from Michael Nyman, plus two bookending tracks from Black Rebel Motorcycle Club.

A rare lapse of judgement from Winterbottom, that BRMC double-header - out of all the acts we see, they are the ones who have most quickly fallen out of fashion. But this emphasises just how much 9 Songs stands as a time-capsule of its era, documenting the minutiae of everyday life (listen to the submarine friction-squeaks when Matt and Lisa move around in the bath) in a rough-edged, appealing manner that transcends the potential gimmickry of Winterbottom's improvisation-led, DV-filmed, no-artificial-lighting technique.

And there's more: as well as the widely-publicised sex and the well-chronicled music, there's another level to 9 Songs which it's easy to overlook: the whole story is being retrospectively narrated by Matt, at some future point, as he flies over an infinity of snow as part of the British Antarctic Survey. Though the dialogues between Matt and Lisa are unscripted, Winterbottom has written some metaphor-heavy ruminations for Matt - earning himself his first screenplay credit since his 1995 debut Butterfly Kiss in the process. This puts everything we see in a different light: rather than an objective record of a relationship, 9 Songs is explicitly only one side of the story - perhaps this is why, while Matt is blokeishly likeable throughout, Lisa's quirky kookiness ends up grating on our nerves as well as his.

Winterbottom's ‘workaholicism' has yielded twelve features in the decade since since Butterfly Kiss, and by this stage he unsurprisingly knows exactly what he's doing - 9 Songs may not be quite up to the level of 24 Hour Party People (in which O'Brien played Nathan McGough) but it's a commendably innovative and uncompromising piece of work. Not to mention short - even if that running-time of 69 minutes looks suspiciously like a too-convenient double-entendre. Some critics on the festival circuit have apparently considered taking a stopwatch into the screening to check the length - but that, surely, would be somewhat anal.

Neil Young
26th February, 2005 (seen at Cinerama cinema - press show)
originally rated 7/10, but downgraded after further reflection, 10th Oct 2005


click here for reviews of Rotterdam films seen on the next day (31st January)

click here for full alphabetical list of features seen at Rotterdam '05

official site : www.filmfestivalrotterdam.com