TRIBUNE roundup : ‘TimeCrimes’ [6/10]; ‘Vicky Cristina Barcelona’ [5/10]; ‘King of the Hill’ [7/10]
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TimeCrimes
Spain 2007
Starring : Karra Elejalde, Barbara Goenaga
Director : Nacho Vigalondo
UK release 6th February
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Vicky Cristina Barcelona
US/Spain 2008
Starring : Scarlett Johansson, Rebecca Hall
Director : Woody Allen
UK release 6th February
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King of the Hill
Spain 2007
Starring : Leonardo Sbaraglia, Maria Valverde
Director : Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego
UK release 13th February
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TWISTY Spanish time-travel picture TimeCrimes – essentially a psychological-drama-cum-science-fiction thriller, with deadpan comic undertones – has developed into something of a minor cult favourite on the film-festival circuit over the past year or so, and is set for a Hollywood remake by no less an eminence than David Cronenberg. It's playing at the ICA for a couple of weeks this month, but unless you're a particular fan of this particular sub-genre – an admirer of Shane Carruth's 2004 Primer, for example – you'd be better off waiting for the DVD, or even for United Artists' version. Home viewing has the benefit of allowing the watcher to pause, rewind and replay certain scenes, a distinct advantage given how the plot gradually becomes more and more complicated as it goes along.
That's a common feature of time-travel movies in general – which tend to work best when they keep things relatively simple (Back to the Future) and/or trashy (The Butterfly Effect). Again and again – or rather, time after time – young or inexperienced film-makers come up with convoluted screenplays which only they themselves fully understand, and while the results are often intriguing, they seldom live up to their "high concept" ambitions. TimeCrimes is a classic example, beginning with middle-aged, hangdog Hector (Eljalde) moving into a smart, detached villa surrounded by deep forests, and spotting something odd in the trees that adjoin his property. Investigating, he's attacked by a bizarre-looking individual whose face is obscured by pinkish bandages. He stumbles into a nearby building in search of first aid, where he is (somewhat implausibly) persuaded to take refuge in a large, lidded, Jacuzzi-type contraption. He emerges after a few seconds – to find that he's gone exactly an hour back in time. Complications rapidly ensue.
TimeCrimes benefits from being restricted to a small geographical area, the bosky environs alluringly captured by Flavio Martinez Labiano's limpidly sober cinematography. Eljadle's befuddled characterisation is another consistent plus, keeping things watchable even as the film's events cross the line from teasingly enigmatic to head-scratchingly clever-clever. It's not a bad little calling-card for writer-director Vigalondo, though on this evidence he's most unlikely to develop into Cantabria's Cronenberg.
AFTER three outings in Britain (including the woeful Match Point), Woody Allen now trains his attention on the Catalonian capital for Vicky Cristina Barcelona – a decision largely attributable to the fact that the local government there provided a hefty slice of the budget. While one can't blame Allen, now in his 74th year, for seeking new sources of funding, there's something rather troubling about this development – presumably if the cash is forthcoming, we may find future projects showcasing the delights of, say, Phnom Penh, Adelaide or Gdansk, said locales even maybe making their way into the title.
While Barcelona does look predictably alluring as a backdrop here, the locale doesn't seem to have particularly engaged or inspired Allen's imagination: cultural references (Gaudi , Miro) are the kind of thing anyone might pick up from a fleeting day-trip to 'BCN'. And the fictional story he spins is a decidedly slim affair: a pair of adventurous American friends (Johansson's free-spirit Cristina, Hall's more neurotic Vicky) spend a stimulating summer in the city, both falling under the spell of a swaggering artist-cum-lothario (Javier Bardem, turning on the bedroom-eyed charm) – though the latter is still in thrall to his volatile ex-wife, also an artist (Oscar-nominated Penelope Cruz in full-tilt Latina-spitfire mode.)
The predictable, not-very-steamy sexual roundelay among the photogenic foursome is, in one of Woody's less inspired touches, accompanied by near-incessant, largely superfluous commentary from an unseen narrator (Christopher Evan Welch). This decision is perhaps both as a nod to Francois Truffaut's Jules et Jim (1962), seemingly the model for the movie as a whole, and as a reverse-homage to the Allen-influenced Whit Stillman, who employed a variation of the device in his own Barcelona (1994) to tell the story of two rather different Americans in the eponymous metropolis.
By stirring memories of Stillman's delightful forerunner, however, Allen simply emphasises his own current inadequacies. Hall is winning and charismatic; Cruz, while hardly turning in Oscar-calibre (or Almodovar-standard) work, provides much-needed energetic; and the script is occasionally diverting and witty. But the pretentiously-monikered Vicky Cristina Barcelona is really a pretty minor affair, providing further evidence of Allen's continuing, seemingly terminal creative rut.
THE ways of film distributors – especially in the UK, especially with regard to arthouse and/or foreign titles – have been a source of mystery and frustration for years or even decades. But it is nonetheless disappointing to see the fine Spanish thriller King of the Hill turn up in just a single British cinema (London's ICA) for just a single 12-screening stretch (Feb 13-22, not including 20th), nearly a year and a half after it premiered at Toronto in September 2007.
A nightmarish psychological thriller that finds fresh angles on familiar-seeming material, it's essentially accessible and straightforward 'genre' fare – and even audiences allergic to subtitles would find it pretty palatable as there isn't very much dialogue. But, as the ICA exposure indicates, it's an enterprise with a fair amount of "artistic" respectability – not for nothing did it win a top prize at last year's Fantastic Film Festival in Amsterdam.
Reporting on that event for this publication, I described the movie as "an absorbingly claustrophobic tale which (paradoxically) unfolds in the great outdoors of the mountainous Castilia y Leon region [of northern Spain]." It's thus the latest in an exeedingly long line of movies warning city-dwellers against venturing into the countryside – most recently and shamefully, the exploitative British variant Eden Lake. Here, the damp hills between Burgos and Soria prove starkly alluring backdrops for an admirably tense and economic affair which recalls American forerunners such as Deliverance and Southern Comfort.
This is a sub-genre whose hapless protagonists find themselves between the crosshairs of unseen assailants' sniper-rifles – here the "moving target" is thirtyish Quim (Argentinian pin-up Sbaraglia), who has driven off the highway into the deep, dark countryside while trying to get over a torrid love-affair. He discovers that his problems have only just started, however, as he and a chance acquaintance, pickpocket Bea (Valverde) flee for their lives through a scenic environment of sinister hostility.
Editing and co-writing (with Javier Gullon) as well as directing, Lopez-Gallego unexpectedly diverges from the established sub-genre template around the hour mark, when the picture's perspective shifts from prey to predator – and the sociological import of the exercise becomes more clear. To say any more would be to to rob King of the Hill of its impact, suffice it to say that Lopez-Gallego clearly has a rather dim view of video-games and their influence upon young minds – and trigger-fingers…
Neil Young
27th January / 2nd February, 2009
written for 5th and 12th February editions of Tribune magazine
TIMECRIMES : [6/10] : Los Cronocrimenes : Spain 2007 : Nacho VIGALONDO : 92m (BBFC) : seen 16th April 2008, Tuschinski cinema (annex), Amsterdam (Fantastic Film Festival - public show, complimentary ticket). original review
VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA : [5/10] : Spain/US 2008 : Woody ALLEN : 96m (BBFC)
seen
(1) Dvorana Doma Sindikata cinema, Belgrade, Serbia; 2nd January 2009 (public show – paid £2.64 approx)
(2) CineWorld cinema, Milton Keynes, UK; 22nd January 2009 (press show – CinemaDays event). original review
KING OF THE HILL : [7/10] : El Rey de la montana : Spain 2007 : Gonzalo LOPEZ-GALLEGO : 88m (BBFC): seen 16th April 2008, Tuschinski cinema (annex), Amsterdam (Fantastic Film Festival - public show, complimentary ticket). original review
