Take One CFF2013 #3

CAMBRIDGE-FILM-FESTIVAL-REVIEW

In this issue of TAKE ONE we muse on the mise en abyme in Bigas Luna’s Catalan horror ANGUISH; you can read an interview with Gareth Jones, who offers “a whiff of incest” in his “love-quadrangle” drama DELIGHT. You can enjoy reviews from Cambridge’s Young Critics and we take an in-depth look at NOSFERATU, which screens on Saturday with live piano accompaniment.

Since its 1922 release, F.W. Murnau’s NOSFERATU has been subject to as much mythology and folklore as the original vampire legend itself. Illegally and ‘freely’ based on Bram Stoker’s book, Dracula, Stoker’s widow Florence, incensed by financial motivation, won a court order to have the prints and negatives of the film destroyed – by exposing them to sunlight, one would hope.

The film’s own legend is drawn from its ©TAKE ONE 2013 many, often contradictory, analyses, as Editor/Design: Rosy Hunt academics and film enthusiasts try to Deputy Ed: Gavin Midgley make their own mark on its interpretation.

Web Editor: Jim Ross [cont’d on page 5]

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REVIEW

anguish

There's always something special about watching a film on a spectacularly grainy 35mm print, especially when the subject is as gripping as ANGUISH. For the late director Bigas Luna, most known for his erotica films THE TIT AND THE MOON and JAMON JAMON, this rare foray into horror is a psychological delight to tempt any seasoned horror fanatic, old and new.

The story pulls the audience through a hypnotic 90 minutes, focussing on the psychotic bond between mother and her son John, played by Zelda Rubinstein and Michael Lerner respectively.

Lerner and Rubinstein share a telekinetic bond which allows them to communicate whilst carrying out the brutal task of harvesting the eyes of their victims, a motive stemming from John's job as an optometrist. However, all is not as it seems. It transpires that the film is a film with in a film, and the focus shifts to two teenage friends, Patty and Linda, who are in the cinema, watching John and his mother carry out their brutal regime on screen.

There comes a point in ANGUISH when it is debatable what film is being watched.

The prosthetics and gory special effects are shockingly graphic, and the realism required for a horror audience's skin to crawl is retained fantastically. Such examples are exhibited well from John's first kill, plucking the eyes savagely from two unsuspecting victims in their own manor home.

There comes a point in ANGUISH when it is debatable what film is being watched. Whether you're more interested in Patty's breakdown in the cinema whilst watching John and his mother terrorise each other and their victims, or your interest lies with the comical and dumbfounded John from the film within a film. Either way, in both stories the film is darkly humorous; which is a welcome relief from the correspondingly dark messages and acts happening on screen, which are reflected through the darkly lit cinemas in which the film is set.

ANGUISH can be a distressing watch at times. Whilst watching Patty freak, out as many teenage girls would watching a horror film at the cinema, the hypnotising messages conveyed

by Mommy are something more sinister than they seem. This becomes more apparent as the story progresses, and as Patty becomes more and more shaken and disturbed, we learn that there is a killer on our hands in Patty and Linda's story too. [cont’d on page 5]

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INTERVIEW WITH GARETH JONES, DIRECTOR OF

delight

The second instalment of an award-nominated trilogy, Gareth Jones’ DELIGHT guides audiences into universal themes of trauma, love and escapism with a delicate hand and sensitive direction. We spoke to Gareth Jones about the trilogy.

Jacob Z Klimaszewski: What prompted you to write this story and make this film?

Gareth Jones: A number of things, really. I am in the middle of a trilogy which started with a film called DESIRE, and has now gone on to DELIGHT, which is the second stage; and I wanted to do something on a related, but quite different theme. I wanted, as always, to dig quite deep into my own past and into my own feelings, and do something personal, if not autobiographical; because that’s not the way I work, I’m not interested in autobiography.

"I feel quite strongly that there is far too much explicit violence in cinema at the moment."

I feel quite strongly that there is far too much explicit violence in cinema at the moment. It’s not helpful, it’s not healthy, it’s certainly not pretty. I wanted to do something quite different, which is look at the long term effects of traumatic experience and the way that things seem can return to haunt the viewer later on. Now, once I was dealing with that sort of terrain it became fairly clear to me that someone like a war photographer, or in my case a former war photographer, female, not British (although married into a British family and domiciled in this country) – that this was the sort of the person that I ought to be looking at. She did indeed turn out to be the protagonist of DELIGHT. JZK: Do you think that filmmakers should have a duty of care when dealing with representations of violence, particularly those that are based in fact?

GJ: Yes. I do. I think the filmmaker always has a duty of care, and I feel that very often that is not taken seriously enough, and that the most grotesque recreations are made of acts that were horrendous in themselves and sometimes very little better for their recreating. We get so much of this, on the news – graphically, real, instant – straight out of Syria, straight out of Central Africa, and it’s hard enough processing that. I think film ought to be doing something different, and approaching these facts from a different tangent, and enabling an audience to approach them without fear of being re-traumatised for no particular gain. I do not understand what the aesthetic strategy is.

JZK: The film is about to have its UK premiere at the Cambridge Film Festival. What are the audience reactions that you’re hoping for?

GJ: I hope that people will find it a good night out, above all! Because, despite the fact that we’ve spoken very seriously about the film – it is, effectively an accessible and, I think, entertaining love story between an older woman and a younger man. Or you could say it’s a love story between one woman and three men [...] It’s a very tight love triangle, or quadrilateral, if you like.

Meet director Gareth Jones at the screening of DELIGHT, at 6pm on Saturday 28th September at Cambridge Arts Picturehouse.

read full interview at takeonecff.com 3

SPECIAL FEATURE

young critics

JUST BEFORE LOSING EVERYTHING This prize winning short film, directed

by Xavier Legrand, is both a heartpounding and heart- wrenching tale of a family struggling to hold it all together.

JUST BEFORE LOSING EVERYTHING is a stunning piece of storytelling, and although it starts off slowly, it later throws you right in with its characters and commands you to feel.

At first the viewer is presented with very little, and many important questions arise. Yet, just as you discover the answer to one of these questions, a thousand more take its place, keeping the suspense of this short and thrilling emotional roller coaster very much alive.

One thing that really hits home about JUST BEFORE LOSING EVERYTHING is how true this story is to hundreds of lives, and to those whose stories never usually get told in this fantastic and sincere style. The very distinct lack of a musical score, as well as the fact you can hear numerous menial sound effects usually taken out of film, give an almost documentary-like feel to the short.

The use of numerous well-placed point-ofview shots, and the fact that the story plays out almost in real time places you right there in modern day France with Miriam – played incredibly and genuinely by Léa Drucker – and her children, who are also played by extremely talented young people. The acting is phenomenally realistic and brings a feeling of genuine concern to the viewer, which remains long after the silent, simple credits have finished rolling.

- Kirstie Mather

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UNMADE IN CHINA UNMADE IN CHINA I have never seen a Gil Kofman movie before, and I thought that this was going to be an academic look at Chinese censorship: it’s not.

UNMADE IN CHINA follows director Kofman as he attempts to make the thriller CASE SENSITIVE, but due to many production and translation problems, the project becomes harder than he expects. This film is pure genius, with a comedic sense similar to that of THIS FILM IS NOT YET RATED and, while it was not the educated look at Chinese censorship I anticipated, it was a hysterical look at a botched production.

I can say that without a doubt that this was one of the funniest movies of the past 5 years: Kofman’s throbbing forehead vein as the pressure mounts, and the awfully dressed fashion designer had me and the rest of the audience in hysterics. A lot of the conversations between the production team range from brilliant immaturity to fantastic wit. Gil himself, who is also a playwright and photographer, was a very likable and engaging screen presence and as the film progressed I really started to get behind him. The others who were involved in the production were also entertaining to watch – but for many of these, it was for far different, sometimes darker, reasons.

I can guess that this will be one of my favourites of the entire film festival, UNMADE IN CHINA is bursting with character, charm and an unmatched wit – it’s a must see.

- Rory Greener

[cont’d from page 2] As the film cuts between watching John, and watching Patty watch John, it’s evident how much thought Luna has put into crafting ANGUISH into such a thrill ride. As John enters a cinema of his own, we the audience become more and more sceptical and suspicious.

As the mystical bond between John and his mother starts to bend and break, the cinema murderer in Patty's story reveals himself to be nothing short of psychotic either. The film has been crafted expertly to show the parallel interests and motives of the cinema killer and the relevance of his actions to what is being screened. [cont’d from page 1] The vampire Nosferatu has been seen as a representation of the Nazi party – a prescient warning, the monster parasite sucking the blood from the virginal Weimar Republic – but also as anti-Semitic. The exaggerated make-up and features of the vampire give him an appearance not indistinct from the loathsome caricatures of Jews of that era.

However, Murnau’s deliberate decision to set the film 50 years earlier than the book gives a medieval atmosphere, and the Great Death of Wisborg, referred to in the film only, lends associations of the plague.

The spiritual becomes separated from reality and we are lost.

As John enters a cinema of his own, we become more and more sceptical and suspicious.

With ANGUISH Luna highlights a social issue applicable to modern day in that media is often held accountable for violent behaviour, as though it is a brainwashing tool. Although Bigas Luna offers many layers of interpretation, ANGUISH is still at the end of the day, a horror film. Whether it’s the skin crawlingly creepy voice of Rubinstein, or the eyes carved out of the sockets that cause the shudders, ANGUISH is thoroughly enjoyable.

- Jack McCurdy

Jews were blamed for the outbreak of the Black Death, and were considered demonic in the Christian world. Nosferatu as a pervasive influence from the east? Or from the west?

Is the vampire the incarnation of the Allied Powers who, at Versailles, drew up the treaty which bled the fledgling democracy of the German republic dry?

- Steve Williams

read full feature at takeonecff.com

(c) Danny Davies 2013

Take One is an independent film magazine and website run by volunteers. Visit www.takeonecff.com to comment on our reviews, interviews and features; stay in touch all year round via fb.com/TakeOneCFF and @TakeOneCFF.

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Quote reference “Take One CFF” to buy a high quality A5 print of any of 8 superheros from Batman to Aquaman, for £6 +P&P. http://www.etsy.com/shop/PJMillustration