for Tribune: ‘AdULTHOOD’ [4/10]; ‘THE EDGE OF LOVE’ [5/10]; SPLIT MEDITERRANEAN FILM FESTIVAL report

Published on: June 15th, 2008

Adulthood
UK 2008
Starring : Noel Clarke, Ben Drew
Director : Noel Clarke
——————————————————————————
The Edge of Love
UK 2008
Starring : Keira Knightley, Matthew Rhys
Director : John Maybury
——————————————————————————
UK release-date: June 20th, 2008
also released this week : Killer of Sheep
——————————————————————————

WITH issues of inner-city youth disorder, knife-crime and gang-culture seemingly ever-present in newspaper headlines, there's no faulting Adulthood – a gritty tale set on the meaner streets of present-day London – in terms of topicality. And Noel Clarke certainly doesn't lack much in terms of ambition – having starred and written 2006's Kidulthood, the 32-year-old Doctor Who graduate now also takes over directing duties (from Menhaj Huda) for this sequel. Just a pity, then, that at present his reach far exceeds his grasp: the film is a hyperactive but strangely plodding and paceless affair which strives so very hard to be "street" and "cutting-edge" and that it often tips over into overwrought histrionics.
   Though essentially an ensemble piece, first among equals is Clarke as Sam, who – as the movie begins – is released from prison after a tough six-and-a-half-year stretch for manslaughter. Having been traumatised by his experiences inside (which we glimpse via colour-bleached flashbacks), Sam is keen to stick to the straight and narrow in the hope of obtaining something approximating a quiet, ordinary life. These goals are stymied, however, by the tough crime-culture that he encounters in his neighbourhood – and by the desire for vengeance harboured by his victim's friends and family.
   Clarke is treading very familiar turf here, as cinema has never had much shortage of tales examining the woes of reform-minded ex-convicts. In addition, we're very much used to seeing – on both big screen and small – chronicles of 21st-century urban dysfunction, especially in the capital's rougher locales. Unfortunately Adulthood fails to ring any kind of new changes, instead relying on predictable plotting, flashy visuals (Clarke, who's no Brian De Palma, seems inordinately fond of split-screen gimmickry) and a grimy aesthetic that feels both hand-me-down and often naggingly ersatz.
   The script, meanwhile, is chockful of zingy street-slang – so much so that much of it may prove impenetrable to anyone much older that its angry, bickering twentysomething characters. On the plus side, it's encouraging to see a depiction of multi-racial Britain in which race is hardly mentioned as an issue by anyone: whatever frictions arise – and plenty of them do – they're seldom, if ever, anthing to do with colour or creed.

SELECTED as the opening night film for this month's Edinburgh Film Festival, The Edge of Love has many of the hallmarks of a successful, prestigious British movie. It's has a period setting – in the 1940s, mainly in a London racked by the Blitz; it focusses on the life of a respected, renowed creative figure – poet, scriptwriter and legendary drinker Dylan Thomas (Matthew Rhys); it stars Keira Knightley – as Thomas's childhood friend and lifelong soul-mate Vera, plus Sienna Miller as his independent-minded wife Caitlin; it's handsomely-appointed in its attention to decor, sets, costumes and production-design, and has no shortage of solid names working behind the camera, including composer Angelo Badalamenti (a frequent collaborator with David Lynch).
   In addition, the story it tells is full of potential, concentrating on the Thomas's torrid love-life, especially their friendship with Vera and her soldier husband William (Cillian Murphy) – while director John Maybury has an intriguing track-record, including Francis Bacon biopic Love is the Devil and underrated science-fiction drama The Jacket.
   There's many a slip between cup and lip, however, and for some reason The Edge of Love – for all its promising elements – somehow fails to come together and make a satisfying, coherent whole. As scripted by Sharman McDonald (who happens to be Knightley's mother), the film never really manages to overcome the feeling that we're peeking, rather pruriently, into the not-so-fascinating sexual lives of the famous and their circle.
   There are effectively only four characters on view, and the film is much more interested in Caitlin and Vera than it is in either of their husbands – more a result, one suspects, of Knightley and Miller's current prominence than for any sound dramaturgical factors. Kicking proceedings off with a glamorous Knightley singing in an London-Underground blitz shelter, meanwhile, is doubly unfortunate – raising memories of both Dennis Potter and last year's big WW2 romance Atonement, comparisons which emphatically aren't to The Edge of Love's advantage.
   It's disappointing to see a director like Maybury, who's capable of wild invention and originality when given his head, on "best behaviour" here – in contrast to the uninhibited passions of his characters, he seems keen to avoid anything that might shock or disturb audiences (or, indeed, BAFTA voters.) Thomas himself famously raged "against the dying of the light" – this drab enterprise sees Maybury and MacDonald, meanwhile, content to merely go gently.

Film-spotting in the City of 222,000 Dalmatians
the 1st Festival of Mediterranean Film: Split, Croatia, 27th-31st May 2008

"HOW the Med used to be!" This phrase has now been used so often about the spectacularly scenic, relatively-undeveloped coastline of Croatia – or rather Dalmatia, to give the specific area its proper title – that it's become something of a tourist-business and journalistic cliche. But it's also true that, among the myriad consequences (many tragic, some happy) of the 1990s Balkan conflict that saw Yugoslavia splinter into its constituent nations, travellers from Britain seemed to forget about places to which, only a couple of decades before, quite a few of them had happily flocked.
   This meant that, for anyone under 30, if they'd heard of Split – the most populous city in Dalmatia and second in Croatia only to Zagreb – then it was most likely in connection either with local football team Hajduk (subject of a conspicuously crazed devotion all over town) or with tennis stars Goran Ivanisevic (the mercurial wild-card Wimbledon champion who had more than one reason to be known as "the Split personality") and his talented protege Mario Ancic.
   This unfortunate state of affairs is comparable with, say, Croatians only knowing York because Judi Dench was from there, or Chester because of Michael Owen. Because Split – which its denizens unblushingly (and with some cause) refer to as The Most Beautiful City On Earth – really is something very special indeed, one of Europe's genuine must-visit destinations.
   At its centre is Diocletian's Palace, built over a millennium and a half ago as the vast seafront retirement-castle for the Roman Emperor. Its "ruins" (most of which remain in astonishingly good condition) have been continuously inhabited since around 800AD: a unique warren of shops, houses, public spaces, hotels, churches and much else besides, still permanent home to over 3,000 human residents and countless black-and-white, semi-feral felines (the Disney-immortalised black-and-white dogs named after Dalmatia are, however, surprisingly thin on the ground.)
   One shouldn't need an excuse to visit Split, but the city's latest film festival – and Croatia must be one of the most film-festival crazy nations in Europe – provides a reason to discover its delights at a late-spring/early-summer time just before the major influx of tourists (including increasing numbers of sun-seeking Brits, relieved to escape the escalating costs of the Euro-zone) really hits.
   This new event – held for the very first time this year – identifies Split as a city of both the Adriatic and the Mediterranean. In practice, however, this proved a loose excuse to bundle together a bunch of movies which happened to come from nations bordering this particular sea. How the compendium Paris je t'aime could be seen as being in any way "Mediterranean", for example, remains quite a mystery – indeed, in future renewals the organisers might consider restricting themselves only to films in which the Mediterranean actually appears, preferably playing some kind of major role in the story.
   It's surely no coincidence that the most consistently interesting and worthwhile strand in the 1st Festival of Mediterranean Film should be the retrospective selection of archive material curated by Tanja Vrvilo, nearly every element of which included and/or addressed the idea and reality of the 'Med.' And how appropriate that the major "find" of the whole festival should prove to be a film made both in and about Split itself: Ivan Martinac's ten-and-a-half-minute 16mm short from 1968 entitled All Or Nothing (Sve ili ništa). A polymath poet responsible for over 70 shorts and a single feature (The House on the Sand from 1982), Martinac – who died in 2005 aged 68 – is little-known even among cineastes: I guiltily confess to never having heard of him before arriving in Split. But if All Or Nothing is any guide, he's truly a lost master of European (and indeed world) cinema.
   It's a dialogue-free enigma, an elusive fragment of samizdat atmospherics set to a pair of contrasting, haunting pieces of music. The title couldn't be more apt: these elliptical images – people sipping coffee and smoking cigarettes, in slow motion, on the seafront; journalists tapping away on typewriters in what looks like the offices of an underground newspaper; ancient city buildings in sunlight and shade – could either be of great political/social significance or "about" nothing but their own mysteriousness. A textbook example of how to make striking, stimulating art with the skimpest of resources, All Or Nothing is at once urgent and ruminative, an intense immersion into a particular time and place that has universal appeal and significance – a miniature masterpiece, in fact.
   Vrvilo's other gem is much better known – indeed, it's often referred to as the classic of Arab-language cinema. Tawfek Saleh made The Dupes (al-Makhdu'un, also known as The Deceived) in Syria in 1972, but it's about Palestinians trying to get from Basra in Iraq to the supposed "promised land" of Kuwait. The tale of three desperate men (of differing ages and social circumstances) who entrust themselves to a truck-driving people-smuggler, it takes forever to get going, lengthily interpolating – in jumbled, hard-to-follow, non-chronological fashion – each of the quartet's unfortunate backstories.
   The second half is another matter entirely, however, a tense and claustrophobic nightmare as they must endure spells in a roasting-hot water-tank as their driver negotiates the wildly inhospitable terrain, not to mention the frustrations of bureaucracy. The ending packs a considerable punch, and the film's evocation of blistering heat was aided by the soaring temperatures in Split plus the lack of ventilation in the quaintly charming 'Golden Gate' cinema (located within the Palace structure and set up in the 1960s by, among others, Ivan Martinac) on the afternoon of the screening. No such problems at the festival's other main venue, just along the coast at the concrete-jungle resort of Bacvice, where an outdoor 'Summer Cinema' did unexpectedly roaring business every balmy night.
   Among the open-air hits – and one of the stand-out new titles in the competition section – was the deft French comedy I Always Wanted To Be A Gangster (J'ai toujours reve d'etre un gangster) by Samuel Benchetrit. Comprising four wry tales – and an epilogue – lightly intersecting at a roadside cafeteria, the multiple story-strands, lowlifey characters (the coyly-unspoken title could apply to nearly all of them) and popcultural dialogue references give proceedings a Tarantino-ish air. The tone of freewheeling, deadpan absurdity and crisp B&W cinematography, meanwhile, nod more to Messrs Kaurismaki and Jarmusch. But the picture has enough offbeat charm, off-kilter humour and unassuming class to be much more than merely a collage of references, borrowings and in-jokes.
   The jury – in, appropriately, a "split" decision – preferred a different, rather more serious example of current Francophone cinema, Julian Schnabel's Oscar-nominated The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (released in the UK several months ago). If I'd been in their shoes, however, I might well have opted for yet another movie made with French argent: the Algerian-Gallic co-production The Yellow House (La Maison Jaune) by writer-director Amor Hakkar.
   It's the kind of slow, sensitive, ethnographic affair which usually isn't my tasse de the but, for some reason, I found myself rather pleasingly beguiled this time. This is the simple, straightforward, unadorned tale of a vegetable-farming family in rural Algeria who suffer a sudden tragedy when the eldest son, a national-service "draftee", is killed in a road accident. The father drives off on his Lambretta wagon (inadvertent shades of The Straight Story?) to collect the corpse from the nearest large town; the body is retrieved and duly buried; the lad's mother goes into a depression, her husband tries to bring her out of it. Painting their house yellow (on the advice of a bemused pharmacist) doesn't do the trick – if only the mother could "see" her son for one last time… Luckily, there's a videotape which the soldier shot not long before his demise – and now all the father has to do is work out a way to watch it. Not an easy matter sans TV, VCR or electricity. 
   Hakkar – who also plays the ageing father with much stoic dignity – manages, with the deployment of a very dry, faint kind of humour, to keep the tone of his film elegaic and mournful rather than morbid, and he also succeeds in spinning a wisp of a plot out to featrue length. Indeed, the lack of melodramatic event (nearly all the major developments occur offscreen) ends up an advantage rather than a minus: this is a low-key fable about the value of insistence and persistence, which speaks volumes using the gentlest of voices.

Neil Young
10th/11th June, 2008

written for the current issue of Tribune magazine


Jigsaw Lounge's daily dispatches from the Split film festival are here

ADULTHOOD : [4/10] : aka AdULTHOOD : UK 2008 : Noel CLARKE : 99m (BBFC timing) : seen CineWorld cinema, Great Park, Birmingham : 6th June 2008 (press show – CinemaDays event)

THE EDGE OF LOVE : [5/10] : UK 2008 : John MAYBURY : 111m (BBFC timing) : seen CineWorld cinema, Great Park, Birmingham : 7th June 2008 (press show – CinemaDays event)