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What’s insIde? 2 — today’s picks What’s happening at GFF today 2 — interview: dominik moll The CineSkinny meets the director of The Monk 3 — reviews Patience (After Sebald) ★★★ In Darkness ★★★★ The Monk ★★ 4 — what’s new online The latest news, comments and pictures from the festival 4 — competition Win tickets to see acclaimed documentary In the Family by answering one simple question
gff 2012: song and dance man
Produced by The Skinny magazine in association with the Glasgow Film Festival Editor Designer Subeditors
Jamie Dunn Sean Anderson Becky Bartlett David McGinty
Glasgow Film Festival makes a song and dance over Gene Kelly with a retrospective to mark what would have been the Hollywood legend’s centenary year. Words: Nicola Balkind As a wise woman named Jeanine Basinger once said, “you give your heart to Fred Astaire but you save your body for Gene Kelly.” And save itself Glasgow Film Festival did, right up until this year: the centenary of Mr Kelly’s birth. The MGM man with the superstar gene is honoured as the subject of the festival’s 2012 retrospective. One of the greatest all-round talents of his time, he tap danced his way across tinseltown in roller skates, sang in the rain, and left his American heart in Paris. “Gene Kelly led a one-man revolution in Hollywood that changed the screen musical forever,” explains Glasgow Film Festival co-director, Allan Hunter. “He really pushed the boundaries of what was possible and created a
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uniquely American art form that dazzled the world. “His work has withstood the toughest test of all – the test of time. The films in the retrospective are as joyous and captivating now as the day they were first shown. Audiences are in for a treat with a rare chance to see them in all their glory on a big screen.” Nominated for the Best Actor gong at the 1945 Academy Awards for Anchors Aweigh (20 Feb), Kelly won a special Oscar in 1951 for An American in Paris (19 Feb), recognising his ‘brilliant achievements in the art of choreography on film.’ The GFF retrospective includes both titles, along with On the Town (23 Feb). Scots favourite Brigadoon is screen-
ing on 24 Feb; on 25 Feb you can see it again at St Andrews in the Square along with a very special event: the Gene Kelly Ceilidh. Don’t miss your chance to celebrate a couple of his worthy co-stars, Debbie Reynolds and Donald O’Connor, in the pièce de résistance of this year’s retrospective: a special 60th anniversary screening of Kelly’s immortal classic, Singin’ in the Rain (18 Feb). Come on with the films, I’ve a smile on my face… [Nicola Balkind]
GFF Box Office Order tickets from the box office at glasgowfilm.org/festival or call 0141 332 6535 or visit Glasgow Film Theatre 12 Rose Street, Glasgow, G3 6RB
GFF’s Gene Kelly retrospective runs throughout the festival glasgowfilm.org/festival
sunday 19 FEBRUARY THE CINESKINNY 1
today’s picks
keeping the faith
sunday 19
We speak to Dominik Moll, who brings his adaptation of Matthew Lewis’s classic gothic tale to Glasgow. Words: Jamie Dunn
extraterrestrial
extraterrestrial 20.30 @ CINEWORLD Director Nacho Vigalondo will be attending for an exclusive Q&A following the film, a new take on the classic alien invasion movie.
WET SOUNDS 18.30 & 20.30 @ ARLINGTON BATHS After selling out in 2011, this unique event is back. Located at the beautiful Victorian baths, this sensory experience creates “cinema for the ear”. Featuring live performances by Joel Cahen and La Horrox.
wet sounds
FORT MCCOY 17.50 @ GFT Based on events that happened during director Kate Connor’s childhood, this award-winning feature debut, set in a Wisconsin military base during WWII, stars Eric Stoltz. Connor will be in attendance for a Q&A.
A NIGHT TO REMEMBER 13.15 @ GFT It’s been one hundred years since the RMS Titanic began its doomed maiden voyage. This 1958 classic retells the events of that fateful night. Glasgowborn actor John Cairney will be on hand to answer questions.
a night to remember
Since 1987’s Le gynécologue et sa secrétaire, German born French filmmaker Dominik Moll has only made five features. It’s a more industrious production schedule than Terrence Malick, for sure, but it’s good to have his work back on the big screen nevertheless. Based on Matthew Lewis’s Gothic novel of the same name, The Monk stars Vincent Cassel in a nifty bit of against-type casting as Ambrosio, an orphan taken in by an order of monks as a baby who grows up to become one of their most devout sons of God...and then comes the bodiceripping when a malevolent force enters the monastery. We spoke to the director ahead of The Monk’s screening at Glasgow Film Festival. Did you always have Vincent Cassel in mind for Ambrosio? Each time I write a screenplay I try not to think about the actors during the writing process and I’ve never written a part for a particular actor. But we started to think about who could possibly be Ambrosio, and when Vincent’s name came up I felt that it was a very interesting and intriguing idea, especially because I haven’t seen him in that kind of part – he’s more used to parts where he’s quite physical. This was something much more restrained and I thought it was interesting to take this actor who is so full of energy and bring this energy level down, because the character is someone who puts the lid of religion on all of his compulsions and all of his emotions.
I really have to believe in what I’m doing 100% and that just takes time. dominik moll You seem to have made some changes from the original book. Yes, quite a few. In the book you can feel that Matthew Lewis, the author, really wrote it in order to show the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church and so the character of Ambrosio is quite different in the book from the film because he’s very full of himself, right from the beginning. People really admire him and you feel that his faith is not very strong and that he is mainly interested in the effect he has on people and so when he’s confronted with temptation he doesn’t really resist, he says, “yeah sure, I’ll have that.” I mean, at one point he becomes this guy who wants to fuck all the women around him. I thought it was really enjoyable in the book, but for the film I wanted to show somebody whose faith was real and the fact that he had been abandoned as a child – there was something lacking in his life and that leads to all sorts of tragic aspects. So your film is less of an attack on religion? I don’t think it attacks Catholic faith
at all really. I mean, the point the film maybe makes about faith is that you cannot just fill your life only with faith or only with the love of God. If you do that, something is not quite right. Were there any filmmakers you were thinking of while making the film? There were quite a lot of influences from the silent era, films by Murnau, be it Nosferatu or Faust, which also have to do with someone selling his soul, but also films like Hitchcock’s Vertigo, or Brian De Palma’s Obsession because of their very dreamlike quality. The image style was influenced by Black Narcissus, by Michael Powell, which also has to do with religion. All these films have some quality that gives them quite an artificial look — they are not realistic. That’s why I like them. You don’t seem to be the most prolific of filmmakers. is that by choice or does it just take that long to get the funding etc? It’s true, I make a film every five or six years, and I don’t know, I’d like to do more but it’s not as if I have a drawer full of projects and I can’t find financing. It’s just that I’m quite slow at finding the right idea, and then bringing it to maturity. Sometimes I work on something for over a year and then suddenly I feel I don’t believe in it anymore, so I throw it away and have to start all over again. I really have to believe in what I’m doing 100% and that just takes time. screening 19 feb and 20 feb at cineworld
Be the star in your own movie
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REVIEWS In Darkness Director: Agnieszka Holand Starring: Robert Wieckiewicz, Bennu Fürmann
★★★★ Poland’s foreign language Oscar hopeful is the true story of Leopold Socha (Robert Wieckiewicz), sewer worker and moonlighting burglar, who hid Jews in the subterranean catacombs below Lvov. The original motive is mercantile but he undergoes a long and believable redemptive transformation. What sounds like standard glossy fare is handled with cold candour. Socha profits handsomely for his risk, his malleable morality adapting to prolong survival, while the Jewish fugitives act out of fear and desperation, their worst qualities bared. Veteran director Agnieszka Holand creates a forebod-
ing city under siege from its own citizens. As in Hans Fallada’s Berlin, the enemy is your friend, neighbour, reflection in the mirror. In an uncomfortable accusation, Nazi brutality plays second fiddle to collaborators who enable and allow this horror to occur. In Darkness stands firmly alongside Polanski’s The Pianist, but can only gaze upwards at the soul-stripping masterpiece Come and See; a film it acknowledges with a classically scored scene of shocking carnage. [Alan Bett] screening 19 feb and 20 feb at cineworld
The Monk Director: Dominik Moll Starring: Vincent Cassel, Sergi López, Geraldine Chaplin
★★ Legendary orator and pillar of the church Ambrosio (Vincent Cassel) has his devotion to God thrown into question by the arrival of Valerio (Déborah François), a young woman masquarading as a chap to get closer to him, at his monastary. An encounter with the lovely Antonia (Joséphine Japy) furthers his crisis of faith, and the respected monk becomes increasingly debauched. Matthew Lewis’ bawdy Gothic classic has been crying-out for a suitably baroque adaptation, but, unfortunately, Dominic Moll’s film isn’t it. With Cassel onboard as loopy Ambrosio, everything was set up for a full-throttle, nutso reading of Lewis’ text, but the director has stripped it down, eschewing some of the more overtly supernatural and OTT elements to leave something quite slight; the motivation behind the monk’s ultimate fall is never satisfactorily rendered. An overwrought atmosphere, some nice aesthetic nods to classic horror cinema and the everwatchable, if oddly subdued, Cassel aside, there’s little to dispel thoughts of this as a missed opportunity. [Chris Fyvie] screening 19 Feb and 20 Feb at glasgow film theatre and cineworld
patience (after sebald) Director: Grant Gee Starring: jonathan pryce (narrator)
★★★ The literature of W.G. Sebald is an allusive and elusive subject for a documentary, his work consciously difficult to categorise. Early in Patience (After Sebald), publisher Christopher MacLehose recalls the author’s rejection of pigeonholes. “I want fiction, I want biography, I want travel, I want history… don’t put me in a box – I want to be in all the boxes,” Sebald reportedly protested, and Grant Gee’s
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“
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ambitious documentary attempts, with some success, to follow suit. Patience is at once an arthouse essay, a literary documentary, and a set of unconventional ‘reader notes’ for Sebald’s novel The Rings of Saturn, in which a walking holiday through East Anglia becomes a hub for ruminations on historical and geographical identity. By transmuting the author’s literary style into an approximated filmic equivalent,
Gee makes clear his admiration for the writer, and while Patience’s respectfully meandering gait (through both the Suffolk countryside and Rings’ themes) lacks incisiveness, the combination of layered chiaroscuro photography and source-text readings is memorably evocative. [Chris Buckle] screening 19 Feb and 20 Feb at cineworld
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gff opening gala
lynn shelton (centre) with gff directors allan hunter and allison gardner
photos by stuart crawford
what’s new online QUIZ TIME festival review Alistair Harkness of The Scotsman discusses some of GFF’s films, including Silver Tongues, which he describes as “cold, bold, strange and intriguing.” Even higher praise for The Kid with a Bike, which is “unmissable.” http://bit.ly/scotsmanatgff
and how the festival circuit helped him realise his vision. http://bit.ly/simonarthur
harping on Experimental musicians Serafina and Sam Steer talk to Rosie Davies on the GFF blog about zombie harps, their favourite movies (“films with kissing in”), and who would play them in a movie (Leslie Neilson). http://bit.ly/steerinterview
Follow the link below or scan our fancy QR code with your smartphone. theskinny.co.uk/cineskinny
cineskinny You can find all our reviews, previews, and interviews online at theskinny.co.uk
simon says In an interview on Shallow Raves, Silver Tongues’ writer/director Simon Arthur discusses his inspirations for the film,
win tickets Writer/director/star Patrick Wang’s In the Family is a detailed, unerringly authentic personal drama hailed as one of the best American independent films of the past year, and has earned him comparisons with John Cassavetes and Douglas Sirk. Wang stars as Joey, the partner of schoolteacher Cody (Trevor St John) and joint father of Cody’s six-year-old son Chip (Sebastian Brodziak). When Cody dies, his sister uses an old will to claim custody of Chip leaving Joey out in the cold struggling to gain recognition of his part in the boy’s life. We have a pair of tickets for the 5.15pm screening on Monday 20 Feb at GFT 2. To enter, head to www.theskinny.co.uk/competitions and answer the following question...
did ❝ What ❞ you think?
Q. Who is the star of In the Family? Competition closes: 10am Monday 20 Feb Winners will be notified on Monday morning. For full terms and conditions, go to theskinny.co.uk/about/terms
SIX OF THE BEST FROM TWITTER tweet us @skinnyfilm
claire stuart @beewaits Ozwald Boateng film "A Man's Story" screens at @ glasgowfilmfest today,brilliant doc following Boateng over 12 years.Loved it. #gff12
@domhastings Sitting in the 3rd row of a cinema watching a gig is a strange experience. The @ glasgowfilmfest launch is impressive though.
corinne oh @misscorineoh So much fun live music from @woodenboxband and @ DJbillywoods at #GFF12 Opening Gala last night! Ears still ringing! @glasgowfilmfest
bouton d’or @clairebouton Your Sister's Sister is the loveliest film I've seen in quite a while. Great start to @glasgowfilmfest !
@grantlauchlan Just saw the @glasgowfilmfest opening night film Your Sister's Sister. A witty, charming indie flick feat my fave actress Emily Blunt - 4/5
omar zingaro bhatia @zingaro @glasgowfilmfest A truly dazzling opening tonight. Adored Your Sister's Sister.
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