| CINEMADAYS report / Nuneaton 2006 |
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| Thursday, 08 June 2006 | |
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The Science of Sleep [5/10] The Wind That Shakes the Barley [6/10] Starter For Ten [5/10] Volver [9/10] Thank You For Smoking [6/10] * Michel Gondry's The Science of Sleep - seen 8th June DIRECTOR Gondry's last picture was Dave Chappelle's Block Party: a raucously enjoyable documentary about a free Manhattan rap/r&b event which was one of 2006's genuine cinematic highlights. It even managed to satisfy those of us who'd rated Gondry's previous release - Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) - to one of the more bafflingly overrated movies of the current decade. The director now returns to the world of narrative features with The Science of Sleep - an uneven affair about a young man struggling to reconcile dreams and reality - which provides further evidence that Gondry's skills are best suited to non-fiction subjects. This is the first time Gondry has made a film based on his own screenplay: Eternal Sunshine, like the director's Human Nature (2001), was written by Charlie Kaufman - who won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for his pains. Kaufman - also responsible for Being John Malkovich and Adaptation - is established as one of the most original, talented and audacious in his field. Gondry, who has long enjoyed similar status in the world of the pop video (especially via his collaborations with Bjork), simply isn't any great shakes when it comes to writing - and it doesn't help that he's chosen to tackle such ambitious material here. The Science of Sleep (the original French title, which translates as 'the science of dreams' fits better) is a post-modern update of the old Walter Mitty story. Our dreamer-hero is Stephane (Bernal), a Paris-based graphic artist whose response to the travails of everyday life is to escape into elaborate fantasy. As well as causing trouble at work, this tendency also stymies the puppyish Stephane's love-life - until, that is, he becomes friendly with sympathetic neighbour Stephanie (Gainsbourg). The similarity in the protagonists' names only hints at the picture's deep fondness for cutesy tweeness - one which threatens to overwhelm proceedings as the Stephane/Stephanie relationship takes on more romantic overtones. The result is a visually-striking film with undeniable moments of sweetness, but which ends up feeling like an overdose of exquisite patisserie. 11th February, 2007 * Ken Loach's The Wind That Shakes the Barley [6/10] - seen 9th June This year's Palme d'Or winner adheres to what we've come to expect from Ken Loach recently (Sweet Sixteen, Ae Fond Kiss): impeccable intentions, bracing seriousness, palpable sincerity and old-fashioned film-making craftsmanship... all placed at the service of a script which, for all its merits, ultimately can't resist going over the top into disappointingly heavy-handed manipulative melodrama. Paul Laverty's screenplay is set in an unnamed (and unspecified) village in Ireland at the start of the 1920s. Confronted by the despicable brutality of the occupying British forces (the various paramilitaries known collectively as the 'Black and Tans') the local lads band together and fight for freedom - ultimately coming together under the banner of the IRA. It's all unashamedly rousing, one-sided stuff, with the British almost entirely brutal thugs in uniform (though, given the recorded historical facts about the Black and Tans, Laverty and Loach could have easily included even more extreme material if they had so chosen). Things become rather more nuanced (and interesting) in the film's (shorter) second section when partial independence has been secured, and the freedom-fighters split into two factions: those favouring the creation of the quasi-independent 'Irish Free State' and those willing to fight on for greater autonomy. This is where the film's real subject-matter comes (belatedly) into focus: the way that occupation can brutalise both the occupiers and the occupied so that, when the latter obtain their freedom, they may emulate (and thus perpetuate) the former's tactics. Laverty dramatises the internecine schism in rather corny fashion, via two brothers (Cillian Murphy, Padraic Delaney) who find themselves on opposing sides. He also chucks in a perfunctory romantic subplot for one of the brothers, whose conclusion ends the film on conventionally tear-jerking note. It's a shame, as there's much to like and admire about The Wind that Shakes the Barley: this is a ripe time to explore the legacies of occupation, and we should never forget that, despite all the laudable achievements of the British down the centuries, its representatives have also been capable of the most shameful behaviour in the name of King/Queen and country. * Tom Vaughan's Starter For Ten [5/10] - seen 9th June As the classic Young Ones episode 'Bambi' so drolly illustrated, University Challenge - with its earnest, uber-geeky contestants and not-so-subtle subtext of class warfare - is a ripe target for knockabout satire. And let's not forget that Robert Redford's 1994 Quiz Show showed how an intelligent cinematic treatment of not-dissimilar subject-matter can yield surprisingly engrossing rewards. How disappointing, then, that Starter For Ten - an adaptation of David Nobbs' novel, chronicling a young man's journey from UC watcher to contestant, via his becoming a student at Bristol University - should be such a blandly by-the-numbers affair. Arriving at Bristol in 1985 to study English Literature, our earnest hero Brian (the suddenly-ubiquitous James McAvoy) soon discovers there's more to life than 'swotting up.' In implausibly double-quick time, he befriends knockout posh-babe Alice (Alice Eve) and the edgily radical-chic Rebecca (Rebecca Hall). Brian's ensuing romantic entanglements prove a considerable distraction for his UC preparation under the stern guidance of twitchy, gung-ho obsessive Patrick (Benedict Cumberbatch). And though he does eventually make it into the avuncular presence of quizmaster Bamber Gascoigne (Mark Gatiss), fate has a surprise in store... In theory, it should be very hard to take against Starter For Ten: much like its tousle-haired, doe-eyed campus-Candide protagonist, the film is puppyishly eager to please and impress. Vaughan serves up a tried-and-tested combination of character-based humour and gentle nostalgia - the latter emphasised by a soundtrack filled with contemporary "indie" hits. But Brian's story - chronicling his rise from humble working-class origins, via the traumatic death of his father, to the hallowed halls of academe, and thence Granada studios - is a touch too predictable at every stage. It's left to Hall, Cumberbatch and Gatiss - plus newcomer Reuben Henry Biggs (in a hilariously sneering cameo as a Cumberbatch's opposite number) - to keep things surprising and/or lively, their vivid 'turns' enjoyably pitched at the level of camp caricature. Debutant feature-director Vaughan should perhaps have pushed Starter For Ten more solidly in that kind of direction: much like his wet-behind-the-ears hero, he's making progress, but has still got rather a lot to learn. [ longer version of this review ] * Pedro Almodovar's Volver [9/10] - seen 10th June They don't allow such vulgar things as bookies on the Cote d'Azur, but if they did then Spanish uber-melodrama Volver would have been a strong favourite to lift the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival back in May. As it happened, Ken Loach's The Wind that Shakes the Barley upset the odds, and writer-director Almodovar had to be content with Best Screenplay and seeing the Best Actress nomination shared among his six leading ladies. To be blunt, he was robbed: while there's no denying the political passion of Loach and screenwriter Paul Laverty's work on 'Barley', their film is decidedly pallid and conventional - forgettable, even - alongside Almodovar's brilliantly-structured hosanna to female solidarity. The plot revolves around Raimunda (Penelope Cruz), an airport cleaner stuck in a cramped city-centre apartment with her teenage daughter Paula (Yohana Cobo) and layabout husband Paco (Antonio de la Torre). It would be unfair to reveal too much of the story here, but Paco ends up dead on the kitchen floor before the end of the first reel. In the wake of Paco's demise, Raimunda and her hairdresser sister Sole (Lola Duenas) return to her rural home-village where elderly locals report sightings of their long-dead mother Irene (Carmen Maura). Initially dismissive of such superstitious talk, Sole is stunned when Irene suddenly 'appears' before her announcing she's returned in order to sort out the problems of the living... Volver ('return' in Spanish) is a somewhat bald title for such a complex, multi-layered film. On one level, it's a delight to see Cruz - first among equals in a flawless ensemble cast - blossoming in such a terrific, full-blooded role: she's unrecognisable as the hesitant, insipid creature who's been appearing under her name in big-budget American blockbusters (and, currently, those L'Oreal bus-shelter adverts.) But Almodovar is the real star here, his sensitive and imaginative direction making the most of an absolute corker of a script. How rare - and wonderful - it is to find such a combination of style, substance and emotion: a must-see by any standard, Volver is one of the year's very best films. * Jason Reitman's Thank You For Smoking [6/10] - seen 11th June The satire proves somewhat 'low tar' in Thank You For Smoking, which uses the example of a tobacco-industry spokesman to indict modern-day America's addiction to "spin" of all kinds - and writer-director Jason Reitman's intentions (in adapting Christopher Buckley's novel for the screen) are nothing if not political. This gives what is a superficially a very bouncy, fizzily energetic picture a certain degree of underlying seriousness and substance: the lies, half-truths and deceptions so glibly deployed by its anti-hero Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart) in the course of his work are very close kin to the even more dubious evasions, PR stratagems and - ahem - smokescreens which are the modus operandi of the current Republican administration (not that previous White House occupants have exactly been shining examples of openness and candour.) If nothing else, Nick represents Eckhart's juiciest role in nearly a decade - since, in fact, his jaw-dropping performance (in what was only his second movie) as the peerlessly evil and manipulative Chad in Neil Labute's excoriating In the Company of Men. Though (perhaps inevitably) a much more sympathetic - and redeemable - character than the demonic Chad, Nick (who half-jokingly refers to himself as a "Yuppie Mephistopheles" at one point) shares Chad's easy-going manner, smooth tongue and, for the first few reels at least, bombproof self-confidence. He's front and centre pretty much throughout, his copious voiceover detailing how he goes about his nefarious daily business putting the public case for cigarettes, and also how he co-ordinates this with his tricky private life: he's divorced from ex-wife Jill (Kim Dickens) and has only limited access to their precocious 11-year-old son Joey (Hollywood's tyke du jour Cameron Bright), who regards his dad with unalloyed hero-worship. A major departure from the novel (which is reportedly rather harsher in tone), the presence of Joey, which makes the picture yet another American movie about fathers and sons, is clearly intended to humanise Nick and force him to repeatedly examine his conscience. Also acting as prods to his long-dormant morality are his relationship with Heather Holloway (Katie Holmes) an ambitious journalist for the Washington Probe who is making Nick the focus of her next major article, and the actions of a renegade anti-tobacco group who kidnap Nick and give him a taste of his own nicotine-heavy 'medicine'... Reitman - son of Ghostbusters auteur Ivan - is stepping up to feature-films for the first time here after a series of acclaimed shorts, and, while he has assembled a pretty slick product (especially noteworthy: James Whitaker's gleaming cinematography and Shadowplay Studio's very clever opening titles) he hasn't quite yet mastered the long form in terms of scriptwriting: Thank You For Smoking has an episodic, scattershot style which jumps from subject to subject without ever really settling down and getting far below the surface. The results are intermittently amusing - hilarious, even, as when Nick and Joey travel to Hollywood where Nick hopes to persuade hotshot producer Jeff (Rob Lowe) that movie-stars should again be seen smoking on screen (in Reitman's film it's a running in-joke that, despite cigarettes being referred to from start to finish nobody is ever actually seen consuming the product themselves). The Hollywood segment features a show-stopping, scene-stealing turn from OC 'veteran' Adam Brody as Jeff's assistant Jack, whose mellifluous gift of the gab makes even Nick sound tongue-tied. Despite his very limited screen-time, Brody is the standout a high-calibre supporting cast which also includes Maria Bello, William H Macy, Sam Elliott and Robert Duvall - though, having secured such eyecatching names, Reitman doesn't really seem to have much idea what to do with them. It's left to Eckhart to hold everything together - he has to 'sell' the movie to us just as Nick must 'sell' the merits of cigarettes to an increasingly-skeptical public. And for all the elaborate flim-flam and engaging swagger on show, in the end we - just - don't - quite - buy it. Neil Young unless otherwise noted, reviews written 14th-18th June 2006 All films seen at Odeon cinema, Bermuda Park, Nuneaton (UK) - 'CinemaDays' press-screening event (general public not admitted)
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