Neil Young's Film Lounge

August 2010 briefs (III): ‘The Secret in Their Eyes’ [7/10] and ‘Dog Pound’ [6/10]

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.The Secret in Their Eyes. : [7/10] : El Secreto de sus ojos (full title El Secreto de sus ojos A.I.E.) : Argentina(/Spn) 2009 : Juan José CAMPANELLA : 129m : {20/28}.
   Oscar-winning page-turner of a political-themed thriller from Argentina, examining how justice can be perverted – and perhaps ultimately enacted – in a fundamentally unjust society. Switching (sometimes confusingly) between the military-dominated 1970s and the more democratic era more than two decades later, it follows a magistrate’s decades-long interest in a brutal murder case - one which yields ramifications that lead to the very top levels of society and the state.
   By now firmly established as one of world cinema’s great leading men, the magnificiently saturnine Ricardo Darín is predictably excellent in the central role - and he’s matched by Guillermo Francella as his hapless, boozy colleague, whose resemblance to Harold Pinter is, given the sinisterly shadowy paramilitary goings-on, perhaps not entirely coincidental. 
   A very slick, commercial, mainstream-oriented adaptation of a novel by Eduardo Sacheri, the cumbersomely-titled Secret in their Eyes isn’t as challenging or edgy as its more high-profile opponents for the Foreign Language Oscar - A Prophet, The White Ribbon, The Milk of Sorrow. Two rather brilliant sequences stand out: a spectacular chase through a crowded football stadium; and, in many ways that scene’s opposite, a tense encounter in a lift. Otherwise Campanella’s approach is strictly MOR, and the picture does loses its way a little in exploring its hero’s complex love-life. But, building steadily from a mundane opening reel to an absorbingly powerful climax, Secret is ultimately a more satisfying affair than its Academy rivals, more successful in achieving what it sets out to do: justice, it turns out, was duly done.
     7.9.10
     [seen at The Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle, 29th August (£7.50).]

.Dog Pound. : [6/10] : France/Canada(/UK) 2010 : Kim CHAPIRON : 91m : {15/28}.
   Having made a spectacular splash with the genre-mashing horror comedy Satan (aka Sheitan) (2006) – one of the last decade’s wildest and most dazzling debuts – young French writer-director Chapiron shifts down several gears for this much more low-key follow-up. A steady, by-the-numbers remake of Alan Clarke’s seminal 1970s borstal TV play (and later movie) Scum - credit for this is, for some reason, tucked right away at the end of the closing credits – it shows once again that Chapiron works very well with youthful ensembles, first among equals this time being TV veteran Shane Kippel as an easygoing drug-dealer struggling to adapt to life inside a tough Montana ‘correctional facility’. 
   The source material is uncompromisingly harsh (Clarke’s scriptwriter Roy Minton recalls his borstal researches as yielding “this sack of fucking misery”) and Dog Pound certainly doesn’t flinch from the nastiness, thus taking its place alongside recent gritty prison white-knucklers like France’s A Prophet and Denmark’s R. Like his youthful heroes, however, Chapiron seems over-careful to be on “best behaviour” here, making a cautiously respectful transition from Euro arthouse to English-language commercially-oriented cinema in the style of, say, Nimrod Antal (who segued from Hungary’s Kontroll to Stateside success with Predators by way of Vacancy and Armored). But Satan showed that Chapiron is capable of much, much better – and while Dog Pound is a disappointment, there are occasional flashes of his prodigious, wayward talent to give grounds for optimism.
     7.9.10
     [seen at Showcase cinema, Stockton-on-Tees, 28th August (£7.20).]

Neil Young