FREE THURSDAY 14 FEBRUARY THE OFFICAL GFF DAILY GUIDE
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WHAT’S INSIDE? 2 — TOMORROW’S PICKS Five of Friday’s must-sees 2 — INTERVIEW: Whatever Gets You Through the Night. We take a closer look at the music portmanteau. 3 — REVIEWS Lore Populaire Bernie
4 — WHAT’S NEW ONLINE Festival buzz from the World Wide Web 4 — COMPETITION Win tickets to The Road: A Story of Life and Death 4 — PIC OF THE WEEK John C Reilly at the GYFF POPULAIRE
4 — WHAT DO YOU THINK? We pick the best from Twitter
DEAR HOLLYWOOD You just don’t know me anymore, Hollywood WORDS: KIRSTY LECKIE-PALMER DEAR HOLLYWOOD, I’m leaving you. I’ve met someone. Something. It’s over. Do you remember when I went to Paris last year? On my last night in the city, there was a downpour and I stumbled into the dark embrace of Studio 28 in Montmartre. I collided with a strong, silent type in the box office; a film I’d never heard of called The Artist. It reminded me of you, in your youth, at your best. I didn’t tell you when I got home. I know how jealous you can get. Remember Indecent Proposal? You just don’t know me anymore, Hollywood. You expect me to have a brood of female friends who titter about shoes and shriek over cocktails. Your heroines work in media, or with clothes, or with pictures of clothes. They are heterosexual, monogamous, beautiful and dull. Did you know that a French romantic heroine can be happy being a waitress, or a hairdresser, or a whore? She doesn’t need to excuse her lifestyle with apologistic
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aspirations involving secret talents or evening classes. She might have cropped hair and a tattoo on her neck, like Audrey Tautou in Beautiful Lies, or a giant gap in her teeth like Vanessa Paradis. She can be painfully naïve, with the simple ambition to work in an insurance office, for a dashing chauvinist, like Déborah François in Populaire. It turns out, Hollywood, a man may be perfectly desirable even if he isn’t a chunk of smirking, sculpted muscle. He can be balding with sweaty hands, like François Damiens in Delicacy. He might be a dwarf, like Dominique Pinon in Delicatessen. He may even possess the fat, gnarled face of Gerard Depardieu. While you were spending all those hours posing homogenous, supple mannequins like Ryan Reynolds and Katherine Heigl back to back, you forgot that love takes other forms. You may well love if you are middle-aged, as Catherine Deneuve does in Potiche, or if you are gay, as in La Cage aux Folles. You may even love platonically, as Omar Sy and
François Cluzet do in Untouchable. I want to be clear about this, Hollywood. You won’t win me back by commandeering a moped and weaving through traffic. And you can’t just chase people through airport security. There are invasive, unlubricated consequences. If you appear on my lawn in six months wielding a blaring stereo, the only intimacy to be gained will be in the arms of a straightjacket, upon the couch of a mental health professional. You need to learn to move on. I know you’ll be okay, Hollywood. Remember, for every Charlie St. Cloud, there is a Silver Linings Playbook. Yours sincerely, Kirsty Leckie-Palmer POPULAIRE IS THE OPENING GALA OF GFF13 14 FEB 19.30 @ GFT SPONSORED BY LINK TEL COMMUNICATIONS AND NEW ARTS SPONSORSHIP GRANT SUPPORTED BY THE SCOTTISH GOVERNMENT IN CONJUNCTION WITH ARTS & BUSINESS SCOTLAND. HTTP://WWW.GLASGOWFILM.ORG/FESTIVAL/ WHATS_ON/4827_POPULAIRE_OPENING_GALA
Produced by The Skinny magazine in association with the Glasgow Film Festival Editor Designer Digital Deputy Editor
Lewis Porteous Marianne Wilson Nathanael Smith Josh Slater-Williams
GFF BOX OFFICE Order tickets from the box office at www.glasgowfilmfestival.org.uk or call 0141 332 6535 or visit Glasgow Film Theatre 12 Rose Street, Glasgow, G3 6RB info@glasgowfilmfestival.org.uk
THURSDAY 14 FEBRUARY THE CINESKINNY 1
NIGHT MOVIES
TOMORROW’S PICKS THE PUBLIC ENEMY 11:00 @ GFT
The film that made James Cagney a star, The Public Enemy laid the blueprint for all gangster movies to follow and ranks as one of the 30s’ finest. CineSkinny will happily shove a grapefruit slice in the face of anyone who disagrees.
THE PUBLIC ENEMY
SOUTHWEST 17:45 @ GFT
Part of the Festival’s Brazilian cinema strand and director Eduardo Nunes’s feature debut, this dreamlike gothic melodrama tells the tale of a girl whose entire life passes within a single day.
SOUTHWEST
POPCORN II: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO 21:00 @ THE FLYING DUCK
Live film scores, dancing and explosions! Come dressed as your favourite movie character, unless that character is Michael Fassbender’s in Shame
AFTER LUCIA 13:45 @ CINEWORLD
A harrowing drama concerning death, grief and bullying. Tense and disturbing, it’s the most fun to be had in the cinema since Salo.
THE LOOK OF LOVE 20.40 @ GFT
Steve Coogan reunites with Michael Winterbottom, this time playing a porn baron in what we at CineSkinny have dubbed ‘Blowing Me, Blowing You (Aha!)’
Director Daniel Warren talks to us about creating the moving image element of groundbreaking cross-disciplinary arts project Whatever Gets You Through the Night INTERVIEW: JAMIE DUNN GLASGOW FILM Festival and Whatever Gets You Through the Night, the hugely ambitious multi-arts endeavor created by award-winning director Cora Bissett in collaboration with Swimmer One, are kindred spirits. Both celebrate creativity across a myriad of media. Great movies are GFF’s bread and butter, but its unique flavour is achieved through the manner in which it has embraced other art forms – artists’ videos, comic books, live scores and, in this year’s edition, video games. So too Whatever Gets You Through the Night, which exist as a concept album, a play combining song, dance and spoken word, and as a film comprising music videos of the performers and bands who contributed to the project. The moving image element screens tomorrow at the Arches. It’s an inventive portmanteau that uses a dizzying array of styles, reflecting the eclectic nature of the performers involved. Emma Pollock’s melancholic ballad Dark Skies is presented simply, with the former Delgado performing to some of the show’s actors in a bare rehearsal space; Eugene Kelly’s jaunty celebration of Glasgow’s favourite post-club stodge, Chips and Cheese, meanwhile, blends footage of Kelly recording the song with woozy vignettes of Sauchiehall Street revelers; and Bigg Taj and Wounded Knee performed their collaboration in front of a crowd of half-cut ravers at the much missed Bongo Club. “There’s a Peter Greenaway film called The Falls; it’s 80-odd chapters and it can be played in any order and it still has a sort of grand narrative over its two or three hours that works no matter what order you play it in,” director Daniel Warren tells me ahead of GFF’s screening. “So that was a kind of trigger for how the film was put together.” The play and album tell a series of stories that take place across Scotland between the hours of midnight and 4am. Warren, too, took the film’s artists across the country to perform in the nocturnal hours. “Wounded Knee, he was working on a scene about Loch Lomond, so we took him there one night to get him to play the music from the show,” Warren explains, “and with Withered
WHATEVER GETS YOU THROUGH THE NIGHT
Hand we wanted to get out of the city and into the Highlands and Islands, so we took him on a tour up to Orkney where we had organised a gig, and went on a bit of a road trip.” Warren found that these unique locations helped enrich the music. “It fascinated me how everything sounded so different in all these places. We got [Withered Hand] to play some songs at Hoxa Head and Italian Chapel, then he played the gig and on the ferry. The songs he played were the final recorded versions that are on the album, but very stripped back, and it was all recorded live on the cliffs, with the wind and the rain. It makes it a bit more immediate.” This intimacy is palpable; it makes the film feel alive, like we’re witnessing a celebration of the creative process itself. This is most keenly felt in the section featuring Kelly recording at the Green Door Studio. “You don’t usually see how a song is put together,” Warren explains. “It was great for me to be able to film the drums, and the bass guitar, and
the organ, and him singing. I was almost able to edit it together like you would on a mixing desk: bring different sounds and levels out and strip it back.” Not every element is as playful as the one featuring Kelly, however. The film closes on a more sinister note, with a nightmarish collage featuring images of war and CCTV footage of street dramas playing out in cities around the world. It’s a bold move that pays off. “Those images started as research on YouTube but I think it’s good to have an element in the film that was quite dark, because night time’s still quite frightening for people; bad things happen at night, nefarious activities. It also makes it a way of making the film global, not just a film about Scotland.” 15 FEB – ARCHES @ 19.00 THE FILM IS FOLLOWED BY LIVE PERFORMANCES FROM RACHEL SERMANNI AND SWIMMER ONE GLASGOWFILM.ORG/FESTIVAL/WHATS_ON/4481_ WHATEVER_GETS_YOU_THROUGH_THE_NIGHT
Be the star in your own movie
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REVIEWS LORE
DIRECTOR: CATE SHORTLAND STARRING: SASKIA ROSENDAHL, KAI-PETER MALINA, NELE TREBS
Adapted from Rachel Seiffert’s 2001 novel The Dark Room, Lore presents the dissolution of the Third Reich through the eyes of a teenage girl raised in its midst, her family’s pro-Nazi world view capsized by defeat. The titular protagonist (impressively played by Saskia Rosendahl in her screen debut) is a complex creation – too young to share her parents’ complicity, but having assimilated their anti-Semitic values nonetheless. This mix of innocence and ignominy creates a keen dramatic tension, keeping audience sympathies tentative and in flux. Tasked with looking after her younger siblings following her parents’ arrest, the plot follows
Lore’s journey through occupied Germany – a tumult of grief, guilt and denial pervaded by terrible suffering. With careful poetry, director and co-writer Cate Shortland builds an immersive narrative from vivid, sensory details, lingering on the crunch of eggshells underfoot or the revulsive intimacy of ants crawling on corpses. The result is a stimulating portrayal of an under-examined aspect of Nazism’s terrible legacy. [Chris Buckle] 15 FEB – GFT 1 @ 18.00 16 FEB – CINEWORLD 18 @ 19.00 GLASGOWFILM.ORG/THEATRE/ WHATS_ON/4784_LORE LORE
POPULAIRE DIRECTOR: RÉGIS ROINSARD STARRING: ROMAIN DURIS, DÉBORAH FRANÇOIS, BÉRÉNICE BEJO
Glasgow Film Festival 2013 opens with Populaire , Régis Roinsard’s French take on the Pygmalion myth. Sure to appeal to those with a taste in gendered work environments, vintage tailored dresses, and niche office-sport events, fashion-savy cinéastes have never had it better . The picture stars Romain Duris (Heartbreaker) as Louis, a former athlete with daddy issues, and Déborah François ( The Page Turner) as Rose, his clumsy secretary turned protégé. Scored by a relentless onslaught of typewriter dings, this gleefully predictable comedy unfolds at a brisk pace as the businessman sets about transforming Rose into his ideal of womanhood. Wryly revelling in the film’s misogynistic 1950s setting, Roinsard keeps his women on the right side of revisionist feisty and imbues his charming array of characters with sufficient backstory and room for growth. A gaudy marathon, the unlikely heroine’s journey is kept light and frothy, ideal for opening night. [Nicola Balkind] 14 FEB – GFT 1 @ 19.30 14 FEB – GFT 2 @ 20.15 15 FEB - GFT 1 @ 13.00 GLASGOWFILM.ORG/FESTIVAL/WHATS_ ON/4827_POPULAIRE_OPENING_GALA
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BERNIE
BERNIE DIRECTOR: RICHARD LINKLATER STARRING: JACK BLACK, SHIRLEY MACLAINE, MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY
Indie darling Richard Linklater returns home with Bernie , a bizarre true story of murder and community spirit in a small Texan town. Jack Black (in superb, restrained, creepy form) plays the titular funeral director, unfalteringly chirpy and beloved by all. Bernie befriends Marjorie (the indomitable Shirley MacLaine), a monstrous, not to mention monstrously wealthy, widow who is unwaveringly foul and despised for it. This odd couple
become near inseparable, marking their time together with lavish spending and luxury holidays... until Bernie snaps and offs the old dame. There’s a delicious matter-of-fact absurdity here; the overwhelming strangeness of what unfolds heightened by a lack of sensationalism. While actors portray key players, some real townsfolk offer their accounts to camera. These eccentric contributions of
folksy wit and wisdom provide real colour, and are treated warmly by Linklater when they could so easily have been sneered at. A beautifully constructed, smartly scripted and very funny tall tale of down-home values and darkness in the most unlikely of places. [Chris Fyvie] 15 FEB – CINEWORLD 17 @ 15.45 16 FEB – CINEWORLD 17 @ 20.45 GLASGOWFILM.ORG/FESTIVAL/ WHATS_ON/4644_BERNIE
THURSDAY 14 FEBRUARY THE CINESKINNY 3
WHAT’S NEW ONLINE? THE GOLDEN AGE OF GAMING
The Skinny interviews comedian Robert Florence about Game Cats Go Miaow, his gaming and film strand at the festival. “I don’t really like my own company very much...”
NO PENIS REQUIRED
Glasgow Film Festival features films from an array of exciting female directors. The Skinny has picked five of the best to look out for. tinyurl.com/GFFwomen
tinyurl.com/robertflorence
GLASGOW SHORT FILM AWARDS
The Glasgow Short Film Festival showcased an impressive array of film making talent this year. The awards for the festival are on the GFF website. tinyurl.com/shortawards
SCREEN GEEKS
The team over at Screen Geeks get excited about the premieres at Glasgow Film Festival, and highlight some of its key events. tinyurl.com/screengeeks
SCREEN DAILY
Opening night film Populaire gets a glowing review from Screen Daily, where Lee Marshall says that “the chemistry between the two leads is positively nuclear.”
CINESKINNY
To be kept up to date with all reviews and features on Glasgow Film Festival, head to theskinny.co.uk
FESTIVAL CLUB Join us at our new Festival Club! Open every day, 12noon till late. Come along for free talks & live DJ acts.
SARAMAGO TERRACE BAR, CCA, 350 SAUCHIEHALL STREET
tinyurl.com/PopulaireReview
PIC OF THE DAY
QUIZ TIME GIVEAWAY! MARK ISAACS’ new documentary The Road: A Story of Life and Death is a compelling look at ordinary people who do extraordinary things, while Rob Savage’s Strings is the already acclaimed work of an astonishingly talented teenager. We’ve six pairs of tickets to give away for each of these GFF favourites, with screenings on both Friday 15th and Saturday 16th. To stand a chance of winning just answer the relevant question below. Q1. The A5 Road extends from London to which town in North Wales?
Please send your answers to competitions@theskinny.co.uk with whatever film you wish to see in the subject line. The competitions close at midday on Friday and the winners will be notified by email. For full terms and conditions, visit theskinny.co.uk/about/terms. For further competitions, please refer to The Skinny’s website.
JOHN C REILLY MEETS THE GYFF
WHAT DID YOU THINK? THE BEST TWEETS @FILMFAN1971 So, Populaire (opening the Glasgow Film Festival on Thursday) is basically the perfect Valentine’s Day film. Don’t miss it. #GFF #CINESKINNY
@ROBERTFLORENCE If the gaming strand goes well enough at GFF this year I might try to sneak a live RPG session in next year. Call of Cthulhu or something. #GFF #CINESKINNY
@GHAYWAN #LORE, almost runs like a sequel to THE WHITE RIBBON. A brilliant study of the psychological aftermath of holocaust. #GFF #CINESKINNY
@SCOTTISH DOCLNST Pablo’s Winter is an “assured and elegant portrait” says Sean Welsh - UK Prem @ glasgowfilmfest #GFF #CINESKINNY
@GREGMCHUGH Big thank’s to everyone that came along to the #gyff #freshmeat q and a last night. Hope all who stayed for “Bueller!” Had a ‘diamond’ time. #GFF #CINESKINNY
@OLIVIAPINNOCK Having just watched the beautiful and charming Populaire, I have decided I want to live in a French film.#GFF #CINESKINNY
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PHOTO: NEIL DOUGLAS
Q2. One of String’s main characters is an exchange student. What country is she from?