| from this week's Tribune : review of 'Donkey Punch' [7/10] and Edinburgh Film Festival report |
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| Friday, 18 July 2008 | |
 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Donkey Punch UK 2008 Starring : Nichola Burley, Jaime Winstone Director : Olly Blackburn ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ WELCOME proof that there's more to current UK cinema than gritty realism, costume-dramas and daft comedies, Donkey Punch is an unashamedly commercial, youth-oriented psychological thriller with horror overtones. It's fresher, bolder and more convincing than the countless similar variations on genre themes which Hollywood has produced recently: the accuracy of the script's 21st-century Brit-speak even led American showbiz-bible Variety to complain about "frequently incomprehensible dialogue." Streams of undiluted London patois didn't stop Noel Clarke's overwrought urban drama AdULTHOOD from topping the box-office over here this summer, of course, and Donkey Punch - an auspicious, low-budget debut from director/co-writer Blackburn - is a more satisfying affair in nearly every regard. The latest in a long line of onboard-suspense movies influenced by Philip Noyce's 1989 Dead Calm, it begins in sun-kissed Mallorca with three Yorkshire lasses in their early twenties enjoying an escape from 'rain-sodden' Leeds. They meet a trio of well-spoken young men from the Home Counties, who invite them to party on the well-appointed yacht they're looking after. A few hours later, the group's hedonistic, drug-fuelled excitement turns fatally sour during the violent sex-act (in reality, more urban-myth than actual coital practice) which provides the movie with its title. While this first death is accidental, its repercussions among the survivors ensure there'll be plenty more blood on the decks before the night is over. The freshest aspect of Blackburn and David Bloom's script is that there's no external threat: no slasher, nothing supernatural. It's the extreme and claustrophobic nature of the situation that exposes the well-drawn characters' insecurities and neuroses, eventually tipping them over the edge. This gives the early and middle stages an unexpected plausibility that only dissipates in the final reel. By which point most viewers may be too caught up to particularly care - though in retrospect the picture isn't the most water-tight of thrill-ride contraptions. Editing is key to both suspending disbelief and escalating tension in this kind of material - and while Donkey Punch is a decidedly youthful enterprise on both sides of the camera, cutting duties are left to veteran Kate Evans, whose credits stretch back to the BBC's Tenko in the mid-80s: a rather different tale of British women experiencing peril in hot foreign climes.  HOT ENOUGH FOR JUNE a report from the 62nd EDINBURGH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL There was rather a lot riding on this year's 62nd Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF). Most obvious was the move from the traditional mid-August slot, a chaotic time when EIFF was invariably swamped by all the other festivals (official, fringe, literary, television, etc) unfolding in the city at exactly the same time - which had the by-product of making accommodation scarce and off-puttingly costly. As if this (from my perspective, long overdue) time-shift wasn't enough, there was also the added, behind-the-scenes pressure of EIFF being the recipient of £1.88m in lottery funds from the UK Film Council. The stated intention was that Edinburgh should be come of "major international and national significance..." and ultimately "the world's leading festival for the discovery of new talent - the 'must-attend' festival of discovery." Admirable goals, albeit somewhat ambitious for a which, although long international in terms of its programming and film-maker guests, has long struggled to attract much coverage from overseas press, or many personnel from foreign organisations. I travel to around a dozen film-festivals in continental Europe each year, and whenever I ask fellow attendees (be they programmers, organisers or journalists) if they're planning to visit similar any events in the UK, I might as well be asking if they'll be taking in film-festivals on the outer moons of Jupiter. Still, in the if-you-build-it-they-will-come spirit of Field of Dreams, EIFF is certainly moving in a positive direction in terms of exposure and profile among the wider public. Indeed, the opening night featured on pretty much every UK newspaper the following day, though this was more to do with the presence of stars Keira Knightley and Sienna Miller than the merits of their film, John Maybury's uninspired Dylan Thomas drama The Edge of Love (reviewed lukewarmly on these pages last month). I skipped the red carpet, having caught the picture a few weeks before at a press-show, but managed to catch 32 films (out of a reported total of 142) at this year's EIFF - including a handful of titles from the main retrospective strand, devoted to Jeanne Moreau (who was unfortunately conspicuous by her absence.) I'd describe four of the 32 as exceptional must-sees (including Louis Malle's terrific Moreau starrer Lift to the Scaffold from 1958) with a further six as 'should-sees' - and nothing especially disastrous among the remainder. A rock-solid score-card, all told, especially given the fact that the fest's artistic director Hannah McGill and hard-working team had only 10 months to assemble their selections. My tally of 32 doesn't include Shane Meadows' superb miniature Somers Town, which I've been raving about since February's Berlin Film Festival (see Tribune of March 5th). I was delighted to see the film - chronicling the friendship between two teenagers in a scruffy corner of north London - pick up the prestigious Michael Powell Award for Best New British Film, and this can only boost its commercial prospects when it's released August 22nd. Then again, Meadows - whose fifth feature Somers Town is (following his box-office success with This Is England) - can hardly be classed as a "discovery." Indeed, while the festival showcased decidedly promising debuts from British documentarians Gideon Koppel (beautifully-composed rural chronicle sleep furiously) and the double-team of Corinna Villari-McFarlane and Robert Cannan (Three Miles North of Molkom, a riotously enjoyable peek at a Swedish new-age gathering) none of the directors responsible for my three standouts among EIFF 08's non-archive titles is anyone's idea of a spring chicken. Terence Davies - whose wonderful, eruditely acerbic Liverpool love-letter Of Time and the City (UK release 31st October) was so presciently heralded in Tribune's EIFF preview a couple of weeks back - is 62. Werner Herzog, responsible for the single most entertaining, hilarious and visually stunning movie in the festival, Antarctica documentary Encounters at the End of the World, is 65 (and gearing up, believe it or not, to direct Nicolas Cage in a Hollywood remake of Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant.) And Jeon Soo-il, whose With A Girl Of Black Soil is the best film I'd seen at any EIFF since Meadows' Dead Man's Shoes in 2004, is 49. Jeon (as in many east Asian countries, Korean surnames come first) has made three features before this - The Bird Who Stops in the Air premiered at the prestigious Venice Film Festival in 1999; My Right To Ravage Myself (2003) and Time Between Dog and Wolf (2006). I must confess to never having heard of him before arriving in Edinburgh, and I attended the Saturday-morning press-and-industry screening knowing zero about his film - which I mistakenly presumed to be yet another of the dark thrillers which Korean cinema so regularly produces. The film is, however, a stark and austere slice of social realism about lone father Hye-Gon (Jo Yung-jun) father and his two children, set in the mountainous coal-mining region of Kangwon. When Hye-gon loses his job in the coal-mine which provides the area with most of its employment, he hits the bottle and enters a rapid decline. It falls to his eight-year-old daughter Young-Lim (Yu Yun-mi) to look after her dad, herself and her slightly older brother Tong-Gu (Park Hyun-woo), who suffers from learning difficulties. Young-Lim proves resourceful, decisive and inventive - but her actions yield dramatic consequences for all concerned. After a somewhat slow start, With a Girl of Young Soil gradually builds to a pitch of quite remarkable intensity - a portrait of a particular area's touch socio-economic circumstances, and simultaneously a piercing chamber-piece of family dysfunction. The cinematography of Kim Sung-tai is unobtrusively brilliant - a symphony of coal-blacks and snow-whites, and diminutive debutante Yu is simply one of the great child performances in cinema history. On this evidence, writer-director Jeon - who completed his film-studies in Paris - is the latest, and very possibly the most talented, of a particularly strong wave of Korean filmmakers, and deserves at least as much acclaim as his more award-garlanded and critically-esteemed countrymen such as Kim Ki-duk (Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter... and Spring), Bong Joon-ho (The Host); Park Chan-wook (Oldboy); Hong Sang-soo (Woman is the Future of Man) and Lee Chang-dong (Secret Sunshine.) It's no accident that there are so many strong Korean film-makers right now, by the way. This is one of the very few countries where homegrown product regularly outgrosses Hollywood imports at the box-offices - not least because of a quota system which ensures that even multiplex screens aren't swamped by foreign blockbusters. Who knows whether such a system would work over here? But it would certainly give a boost to commercially "tricky" UK fare like Kenny Glenaan's lyrically gritty Summer (whose star Robert Carlyle won the award for Best Performance in a British Film.) Things are even tougher here for non-commercial fare from overseas, of course - but if the British arthouse network means anything any more, it simply must find room for a genuine masterpiece such as With A Girl of Black Soil. Neil Young 8th July, 2008 full Jigsaw Lounge coverage of Edinburgh I.F.F. 2008 is indexed here  DONKEY PUNCH : [7/10] : UK 2008 : Olly BLACKBURN : 99m (BBFC timing) : seen CineWorld cinema, Great Park, Birmingham : 7th June 2008 (press show - CinemaDays event) |
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