Films

Aretha Franklin tribute; censorship as violence; revolution in Mexico; Sparks’ grand opera; Nic Cage tones it down

RESPECT You expect biopics of musical legends to be awestruck, but this fctionalised life of Aretha Franklin sufers from reverence rather than respect. Starring Jennifer Hudson as the late soul legend, it depicts a woman struggling to fnd her true voice, and then, once she’s found it, to free herself from the oppressive men in her life – her authoritarian preacher father (Forest Whitaker) and abusive husband and manager Ted White (Marlon Wayans). Narratively, it comes across as melodrama, punctuated by earnest confrontations and scenes in which Aretha’s mentors impart sound advice (“Find the songs that move you”). Along the way, it has its share of ‘eureka it’s a hit’ moments: Aretha and her sisters perfecting “Respect” at the piano, “I Never Loved A Man” suddenly taking miraculous shape at Muscle Shoals. It’s in those recreations of great musical moments that it comes alive, from those Alabama sessions, through 1968’s Paris Olympia concert, to the culminating 1972 gospel recording captured in the 2018 documentary Amazing Grace, which is presented here as the triumphant redemptive moment of a profoundly troubled life.

Jennifer Hudson comes across as a touch too glamorous from the start, never quite capturing Franklin’s distinctive combination of gaucheness and grandeur, but she’s nevertheless a winning presence, the expertise and exuberance with which she recreates the great songs at least distinguishing Respect as a superior jukebox tribute. Whitaker is imposing as her very imperfect idol of a father, Mary J Blige has a regally tempestuous moment as Aretha’s adored Dinah Washington, and Marc Maron imparts a welcome splash of humour as an exuberantly wiseacre Jerry Wexler.

CENSOR Long before Saw and The Human Centipede became routine multiplex fodder, Britain’s authorities worried up a

RESPECT

Directedby LieslTommy Starring Jennifer Hudson Opens September10 CertTobe confirmed 6/10

A touch too much glamour?: Jennifer Hudson as Aretha Franklin

CENSOR

Directedby PranoBaileyBond StarringNiamh Algar,Michael Smiley OpensAugust 20 Cert15 7/10 storm over a wave of extreme horror that was reaching the nation’s cinemas – and, with the video boom, its homes. The ‘video nasties’ moral panic of the 1980s serves as background for Censor, the debut from UK writer-director Prano Bailey-Bond. Set in a densely atmospheric recreation of ’80s Britain, Censor is about Enid (Niahm Algar), a young woman working in a thinly disguised version of UK classifcation board the BBFC. Her job is to monitor, analyse and sometimes to trim – or even ban – violent flms, a task she performs with a stern sense of responsibility. Buttoned up, eminently sensible and, it seems, emotionally impervious to the horrors she analyses, Enid is obsessively haunted by the disappearance of her younger sister years earlier. Then her fxation is triggered by a cut-price British chiller… Censor is a flm of playful craf, but also considerable seriousness – and it somewhat sufers from presenting itself so manifestly as a debate on the efects and values of horror and the dangers of repression. A committed genre devotee, Bailey-Bond suggests that the censor’s characteristic activity – cutting – is itself a form of violence and that true madness lies in denying life’s darker dimensions. She and co-writer Anthony Fletcher pursue these themes with considerable wit – “I’ve only trimmed the tiniest bit of the end of the genitals,” says Enid of one flm – while Censor immerses us visually in a world ranging from airlessly drab to nightmarishly lurid.

The flm’s elusive but magnetic centre is Algar’s Enid, her cool containment gradually revealing inner turmoil; while co-starring as a sleazy producer is Michael Smiley, sublimely slimy. Censor is a canny, teasing provocation, although the predictably splashy pay-of somewhat blows the credit of a clever, well-paced build-up.

NEW ORDER Mexican director Michel Franco has previously specialised in lowkey, almost militantly undemonstrative art flms. But New Order sees him in a diferent gear entirely. This is an aggressively hardnosed piece of speculative realism, ofering a pitiless vision of revolution and its afermath.

The initial setting is a wedding party in the pampered bubble world of Mexico City’s super-wealthy – who show their contempt for have-nots when a former employee arrives in

REVIEWEDTHISMONTH

NEW ORDER

Directedby MichelFranco StarringNaian González Norvind,Diego Boneta OpensAugust 13 Cert18 8/10 ANNETTE

Directedby LeosCarax StarringAdam Driver,Marion Cotillard Opens September3 CertTobe confirmed 6/10 PIG

Directed by Michael Sarnoski Starring Nicolas Cage, Alex Wolff Opens August 20 Cert 15 6/10

desperate need of money for his wife’s emergency operation. Only Marianne (Naian González Norvind), the bride, shows concern and goes to ofer help – but drives straight into a scene of social chaos, while unaware of what is happening at the house she has just lef.

With a distinct favour of JG Ballard, New Order’s apocalyptic vision holds out little hope for anyone: its handful of sympathetic individuals invariably sufer for their compassion, as the authorities use the disturbance for their own ends. The flm has been hugely controversial, both in Mexico and America, with critics attacking it as socially irresponsible at a time when it might seem retrograde to suggest popular protest might have dangerous repercussions. True, the flm could be seen either as a vision designed to chill the blood of the privileged, or as an expression of bourgeois paranoia about the working class – but its provocative power lies in its ambivalence. In any case, the flm is harshest in its critique of established ruling classes and authorities. You only have to imagine New Order remade in Beverly Hills, or Kensington, to get a sense of how troubling, and of its moment, it really is.

ANNETTE Afer waiting decades, Sparks’ Ron and Russell Mael have fnally made it to the big screen in a dazzle of grandeur and glory – not just as subjects of Edgar Wright’s joyous portrait The Sparks Brothers, but as co-writers and composers of a bizarre fantasy confection by elusive French director Leos Carax. Annette isn’t so much a musical as a piece of modern grand opera – a dark romance about a famed soprano (Marion Cotillard) and a tormented up-and-coming comedian (Adam Driver). Happiness seems to be theirs – but when their passion and pain erupt one stormy night at sea, Annette heads into the turbulent realms of high tragedy,withastreakofthesupernatural.

Annette is full of famboyant ambition, with unmistakeable shades of the hallucinatory strangeness of his last flm, Holy Motors – notably in a beautiful scene where Cotillard steps from a theatre stage into a dark forest. But there’s also a great deal of overstatement (not one but two extended stage routines by Driver’s comedian, who really does have angst in his pants) and some out-and-out cinematic bombast. Sparks fans hoping for the duo’s usual exuberance and dandyish wit may be disappointed by a score that shows their melodic invention only in fashes, the lyrical sharpness oddly muted. There’s a fabulous prelude featuring the Maels, Carax and assembled company, but the flm never recaptures its brio. Cotillard is underused, while Driver’s agonised wild man shows this usually riveting actor disappointingly of-key. You won’t feel short-changed either for strikingly artifced images or for sheer eccentricity, but overall, Annette is an oddly joyless folly.

PIG There’s little in contemporary cinema that you can absolutely rely on – except the knowledge that, whatever the flm, Nicolas Cage will at some point rev the chainsaw, fguratively or literally, to 11. Cinema’s most spectacular overactor, he can be relied upon to push it – which is why Pig has struck some critics as a revelation.

In Michael Sarnoski’s drama, Cage plays Rob, a hirsute hermit living in a forest where he hunts for fne trufes with the aid of his trusty pig. One day the beloved creature is stolen and Rob heads to the city to retrieve it. Pig seems to promise a familiar Cage retribution scenario – a baconmotivated bloodbath is surely in the ofng – but works out rather diferently. Notwithstanding a brutal showdown in the bizarre setting of a secret subterranean realm beneath Portland, Oregon, Pig is neither an action movie nor even really a thriller. Rather, it’s a philosophical reverie on identity, memory and what really matters in life, with ragged Rob – resembling a shaggy, bloodcaked Old Testament prophet – confronting the materialism of the urban cuisine scene.

It’s a singular flm, starting on a note of distinct visual beauty, steeped in forest dark, but it’s a little knowingly of-beat, not least with its culinary chapter headings (‘Rustic Mushroom Tart’). It’s a stretch to imagine that Cage in solemn, slowed-down sotto mode represents newfound subtlety – his performance is still a displayofhigh-levelabsurdity,evenifmuttered ratherthanshrieked.Asomewhatmorose,selfimportantflm,ifbynomeansatotalporker.

It’s in the recreations of great musical moments that Respect comes alive

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