Films

Mesmerising period drama, the perils of narcissism and a deranged comedy with “killer style”

WHITE ON WHITE Not many performers in today’s cinema can approach the mesmerising strangeness of Klaus Kinski in his prime, but Alfredo Castro is one of them. The Chilean actor made his international breakthrough as the lead in two flms by Pablo Larrain – playing a disco-dancing sociopath in 2008’s Tony Manero and a morgue worker caught up in the horrors of the Pinochet years in Post Mortem (2010). More recently, his supporting role as a celebrity detective in Argentinian flm Rojo proved that Castro is one of those actors who can just quietly stroll into a flm midway and set your nerves tingling with a sense of irreducible danger.

Castro is in muted mode, but no less galvanising, in White On White – a period drama by Chilean-Spanish director Théo Court. He plays Pedro, a photographer who visits an estate in a remote snowbound stretch of Tierra Del Fuego on the cusp of the 20th century. He has been commissioned by a powerful absent landowner named Mr Porter to photograph his pre-teen bride-to-be Sara (Esther Vega). But when Pedro’s interest in the girl breaks its agreed boundaries, he fnds himself trapped in Porter’s desolate house, echoing with creaks, footsteps and the sound of drunken disorder, and forced to take part in his host’s terrible project – the systematic extermination of the local indigenous Selk’nam people.

With cinematographer José Alayon mapping the surrounding terrain, from bleached-out snowscapes to parched deserts – as well as the distressed chambers of the Porter mansion, every interior a haunted theatre tableau – White On White is at once realist and eerily dreamlike. Along with Castro, there’s strong support from Lola Rubio as enigmatic housekeeper Aurora, while Lars Rudolph, best known as the wild-eyed lead of Bela Tarr’s Werckmeister

Passionate and powerful: Luca Marinelli and Denise Sardisco in Martin Eden

WHITE ON WHITE

Directedby ThéoCourt Starring AlfredoCastro Streaming fromJune30 CertTobe confirmed 8/10 MARTIN EDEN

Directedby PietroMarcello Starring LucaMarinelli, JessicaCressy OpensJune4 Cert15 8/10 Harmonies, turns up in in absolute unbridled form as Porter’s mercurial righthand man – which essentially means you get two Klaus Kinskis for the price of one. The reference to Kinski isn’t gratuitous: in its eerie atmosphere and profound weirding of the colonial past, White On White is one of the few recent flms to approach the troubling ghostliness of Werner Herzog’s great history flms of the ’70s and ’80s (Kaspar Hauser, Aguirre et al). At once landscape study and historical horror story, this is a mesmerising essay on the secret history of early photography, and implicitly on the hidden violence of cinema.

MARTIN EDEN This sumptuous costume adaptation of the 1909 novel by US writer Jack London comes from the last place you’d expect: the shores of the Italian avant-garde. Director Pietro Marcello made his name with flms of an experimental nature – including Lost And Beautiful, a hybrid documentary about the fate of Italy’s rural culture and in which a commedia dell’arte clown trekked across the nation in the company of a rather forlorn bufalo. In similar vein, Martin Eden isanythingbutastraightforward literary

REVIEWEDTHISMONTH

adaptation – jumping between decades in the 20th century, the narrative spiked with inserts of archive footage, as much dreamlike as strictly documentary.

Jack London’s story, originally set in California, is about a young working man who dreams of literary success, inspired by the middle-class girl he falls for. Here the story is transplanted to Italy, with Martin played by the strapping Luca Marinelli, who looks like a simmering movie heartthrob from a bygone era. As Martin struggles to fnd his voice – and engages in debate about the socialist politics of his time – Marcello confronts the novel’s romantic pessimism with the historical realities of a century that London himself never knew. Ample play with anachronism makes Martin Eden into a compendium of Italian flm history, variously channelling Visconti, Bertolucci and Pasolini. Sometimes elusive but always powerful, this is a work of passionate, polemical beauty from a director who is a genuine original.

SWEAT Theoretically, Sweat is as zeitgeisty as they come – although, given how quickly things change in the strange

SWEAT

Directedby Magnus vonHorn Starring Magdalena Kolesniki OpensJune25 CertTobe confirmed 6/10 THE REASON I JUMP

Directedby JerryRothwell OpensJune18 CertTobe confirmed 7/10 DEERSKIN

Directed by Quentin Dupieux Starring Jean Dujardin, Adèle Haenel Opens July 16 Cert 15 7/10

universe of infuencers, this 2020 Polish drama may already come across to insiders like a document of the distant past. For most of us, however, Magnus von Horn’s flm scrupulously dissects a very current social condition – the obsessive self-promotion of online personality. Magdalena Kolesnik plays Sylwia, a ftness guru who peddles her own brand of relentless hey-wow positivism and personal perfection but whose personal life is detached and dissatisfed. Sweat shows what happens when reality – with all its discomfort, imperfection and pain – crashes into the carefully constructed fantasy life.

You can see the pitfalls of telling a story such as this: Sweat could have been moralising and judgemental, or opted to punish its anti-heroine for superfciality. Instead, Von Horn takes us inside Sylwia’s glossy personal microclimate, shows us the daily work she does to maintain the image, then looks at the world of imperfection that she’s trying to escape: a visit to her mother’s fat ofers a mundane contrast to the screaming pink and neon that cloak much of the flm. A streak of studious earnestness is ofset by passages of furious energy, a mounting sense of unease and by a terrifc lead from Kolesnik, who brings out the vulnerability, intelligence and basic humanity beneath all of Sylwia’s anxious narcissism.

THE REASON I JUMP Jerry Rothwell’s documentary takes its title from 13-year-old Naoki Higashida’s memoir – a groundbreaking candid account of the author’s autism. Rothwell’s flm takes Higashida’s insights as the frame for a much broader study of several young autistic people from around the globe. Amrit, from India, turns her perceptions into distinctively styled paintings; Joss, from the UK, hears music in the subliminal hum of electric transformer boxes; JestinafromSierraLeone,whoseparents successfullyfoughtprejudicetosetupaschool forchildrenlikeher;andlifelongfriendsBen andEmma,fromtheUS,whosehavespent yearsunabletocommunicatefullyuntil speechtherapyenabledthemtoexpress theirfeelingsandexperiences.

Rothwellbothsharesthebiographical detailsoftheirlivesandalsousesimpressionistic techniquestoconveyasenseofhowpeoplewith autismnegotiateadailyfoodofdetails.Novelist DavidMitchell,himselfthefatherofanautistic child,co-translatedHigashida’sbookand talkshereaboutitasbeinglikeamessagefrom anotherworldwithdiferentrules.Rothwell’s emphasisonimpressions–texturesoffabric, shifsoflight,rainwateronglass–sometimes givestheflmaslightlysof,vaporoustone, thoughoverallitmanagestoavoidpreciousness andsentiment.TheReasonIJumpismoving,but moreimportantlyitisrevealingandinsightful. Youemergefromitwithasenseofhowthose diferentruleswork–andhowtheflm’ssubjects workwiththem,tenaciouslyandcreatively.

DEERSKIN QuentinDupieuxoncetradedas atechnoartistunderthenameofMrOizo–you mightrememberhis1999hit“FlatBeat”andits video’sthen-inescapablepuppetFlatEric.Since thenhe’scarvedoutatransatlanticcareeras thedirectorofextremelybizarre,sometimes one-jokecomedies–suchasRubber,inwhich therampagingkillerisarubbertyre.

Deerskin–whichpromisestobeDupieux’s long-awaitedbreakthroughoutsidehisnative France–ishismostcontrolledandafecting conceityet.JeanDujardin(TheArtist)plays Georges,amanwhostakeshisentirelifeonthe purchaseofasecondhandbuckskinjacket,then lurksaroundaquietFrenchmountainregion pretendingtobeaflmmaker(largelybecause thejacket’ssellerthrewinavideocameraas afreebonus).Butasthegarmenttakesona controllingpersonalityofitsown,Georges’ guerrillamoviebecomesincreasinglyderanged.

Againstallodds,aseeminglyslenderand preposterousideapaysofforseveralreasons. Firstly,Dupieuxtreatsthepremiseasseriously andmatter-of-factlyasGeorgestreatshisown narcissisticobsession.Secondly,theperformers aregame:fewcomicactorscandoselfregardingcluelessnessaswellasDujardin, whilearthouseregularAdèleHaenelisquite superbashisfoil,anaspiringmovieeditorwho humoursandenableshisfolly.Thenthere’sthe bizarrelylimitedcolourpalette:Dupieux’sown photographymakesthewholeflmlookasifit’s shotinshadesofbuckskin.Aminor,lef-feld pleasure,yetwith–asGeorgespurrs,admiring himselfinthemirror–“killerstyle”.

Martin Eden is as much dreamlike as strictly documentary

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