Neil Young's Film Lounge

for this week’s TRIBUNE: ‘Amer’ [5/10]; ‘The King’s Speech’ [5/10]

Amer
Directors: Hélène Cattet & Bruno Forzani

The King’s Speech
Director: Tom Hooper

Reviewing Dario Argento’s Suspiria (1977) for Time Out magazine, Scott Meek said “the movie becomes in effect what horror movies seemed like when you were too young to get in to see them.” It’s a comment that’s entirely appropriate for the experimental Belgian shocker Amer, not least because the picture is primarily a lavishly elaborate and extended homage to the giallo school of intense, lurid, startlingly violent psychological thrillers – popular in Italy from the late sixties to the early eighties – of which Argento (along with Mario Bava and Lucio Fulci) was among the most celebrated exponents.

But whereas Argento and his fellow giallo auteurs gleefully subordinated considerations of plot, characterisation and dialogue as they crafted their absurdist, nightmarishly surreal takes on classic whodunnit, detective and supernatural genres, Amer takes the form a step or two further – becoming, in the process, a hermetic exercise in baroque stylishness for baroque stylishness’s sake.

The results have proved divisive among audiences (there were quite a few walkouts at the Ljubljana screening I attended in November), and intoxicating for quite a few critics during the picture’s tour around the festival circuit. American commentator Glenn Heath Jr praised the debut from writer-directors Cattet & Forzani as “daring, breathtaking, hypnotic… Extreme stylized horror exists within every breath, glance, touch and whisper of one’s life.”

The life in question is that of Ana – played as a child, adolescent and adult by three different actresses: Cassandra Forêt, Charlotte Eugène Guibbaud and Marie Bos. In three sections, we experience intense, traumatic and sensual episodes from Ana’s perspective: a chilling encounter with an elderly relative; a sexual awakening during a trip to the seaside, and finally a return home to the mansion she grew up in, involving a sinister, leather-clad taxi-driver (Harry Cleven). This last, longest section becomes an extended stalk-and-slash affair – but is Ana the predator, the prey, or some combination of the two?

Culminating in a protracted homicide sequence that’s stomach-churningly convincing – and most definitely not for the faint-hearted – Amer is a decidedly full-blooded and uncompromising affair. With virtually no dialogue, the picture is instead told via visuals and sounds – and indeed it’s a fine showcase for the talents of Manu Dacosse (cinematographer), Bernard Beets (editor), Alina Santos (production designer), Jackye Fauconnier (costumes) and, first among equals, Iannis Héaulme’s sound department.

But all of these sterling technical contributions are essentially diversions and distractions from Amer‘s essential hollowness – it often feels we’re leafing through a highly glossy magazine fashion-shoot. And as with so many avant-garde projects, what might have been stunning and incendiary as a short becomes repetitive and frustrating at feature-length – Cattet and Forzani’s self-consciously operatic flourishes are so aggressively over-the-top that they may well inspire giggles rather than the intended shudders and frissons of fear.

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“It’ll be like Mad King George III, only Mad King George the Stammerer!” grumbles George VI (Colin Firth) in The King’s Speech, screenwriter David Seidler thus obliquely acknowledging Nicholas Hytner’s Madness of King George (1993) – the obvious cinematic forerunner for this latest foray into the private lives of Britain’s royals. And the two pictures do share a broadly similar structure, with the monarch’s “problems” being gradually eased by contact with a blunt, no-nonsense ‘commoner’ who insists on a professional – and, ultimately, personal – relationship based on “trust and total equality,” a rather radical and daunting concept for such a hidebound product of the British aristocracy as George VI.

Starting in 1927, when the then Duke of York is reduced to a tongue-tied wreck when making a public speech, the film is mainly concerned with the 1936-7 period when the Duke’s smooth-talking, socially adept brother ‘David’ (Guy Pearce) becomes Edward VIII, only to abdicate within a year and leave his maladroit sibling to take over the throne. With the forcefully eloquent Adolf Hitler making waves across Europe, and with radio becoming a global broadcasting medium, the King’s lifelong stammer becomes a particularly unfortunate impediment – one which he’s only able to overcome thanks to the ministrations of “unorthodox and controversial” Australian speech-therapist Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush.)

Originally written as a play, The King’s Speech is most effective as a series of two-hander chamber-piece scenes involving co-leads Firth and Rush – they’re co-leads, though will be nominated as Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor at the Oscars for reasons of campaigning expediency. And Firth is regarded as a very safe bet to take home the Academy Award – fresh from his nomination for A Single Man last year, Firth now pulls of a double-whammy by playing both a royal, and the sufferer of a crippling disability. He’s solid enough in a showy role – as part of his therapy, the normally tight-lipped King unleashes a volley of swear-words – while Rush provides much of the humour, warmth and energy in what’s otherwise a somewhat stuffy, old-fashioned affair, notwithstanding some touches of ”edgy”, hand-held camerawork from Danny Cohen.

As an unapologetic crowd-pleaser built around the fascinatingly turbulent events surrounding the abdication (Pearce’s Edward displays appropriately snooty swagger), The King’s Speech just about passes muster. To rank it among the most notable cinematic achievements of the year (as will be done when the Oscar and BAFTA nominations and wins are tallied) would, however, be decidedly generous. Lacking the edge, audacity and wit that lifted Stephen Frears’ The Queen above the usual run of dutiful royal-themed affairs, Seidler and Hooper (the latter responsible for the similarly lukewarm Brian Clough biopic The Damned United) never quite get to grips with the causes of the King’s condition – the root of which seems to be his thorny relationship with his stern father, King George V (Michael Gambon).

Their thesis seems to be that monarchy can prove near-fatally deleterious to the individuals themselves – an argument often cited by republicans – but, given the circumstances of the late thirties, the system is preferable to, and can even be a bulwark against, the encroaching forces of totalitarianism. And while George VI may have, as the end titles have it, been “a symbol of national resistance”, at no point do we share Logue’s contention that “this fellow could really be somebody great” (Logue’s personal political viewpoint is never really explored.) And George’s transformation from stuttering oaf to poised head-of-state is, in the end, much too abrupt – essentially the result of his finding a proper ‘pal’ for the first time, and thus a rather soppy and simplistic testament to antipodeans’ easy-going mateyness.

Neil Young
1st January, 2011
(written for the 6th January edition of Tribune magazine)

AMER : [5/10] : Belgium(/Fr) 2009 : Hélène CATTET & Bruno FORZANI : 91m
seen 18th November 2010 at Kino Dvor, Ljubljana (complimentary ticket) — Ljubljana International Film Festival : {14/28}

THE KING’S SPEECH : [5/10] : UK(/Aus) 2010 : Tom HOOPER : 118m
seen 25th November at Empire, Sunderland (press show) : {13/28}