Vérité August 2013

ISSUE #6

V é r i t é AUGUST 2013 EDITION

FILM CRITICISM & CINEMATIC DISCUSSION

THE GREAT B E AU T Y And the cinema of excess...

also...

Mikael Marcimain / Philip Kaufman / Atom Egoyan / The Tarnished Angels / reviews / and more...

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Editor’s Letter

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ere we are, six months into our journey – and what time it has been. Things are moving fast, continuously growing and evolving, but we’re refusing to reach for the brake pedal. Very soon we will launch another venture to accompany the magazine – our new blog. Keep an eye on www.veritefilmmag.com over the coming weeks.

We kickoff this August edition with a wonderful article from Elisa Armstrong on a Cannes favourite – The Great Beauty.

Still only 43, Paolo Sorrentino has already delivered some exquisite work. Stylish and confident, his latest sees him return to his native Italy and also reunite with long-time collaborator Toni Servillo, to create what is undoubtedly one of the films of the year.

We follow that with two revealing interviews; the first with veteran Philip Kaufman as he talks with Neil McGlone about his illustrious and fascinating career in filmmaking, from his near foray into the Star Trek universe to how he tackled Kundera’s The

Unbearable Lightness of Being. The second is Call Girl director Mikael Marciman, as he takes the time to chat with Evrim Ersoy about his new, explosive political thriller.

Always aiming to broaden our cinematic scope, we have a feature on Canadian auteur Atom Egoyan as his early filmography gets the Blu-ray treatment via Artificial Eye. And our intrepid festival reporters Evrim Ersoy and Stuart Barr recommend some gems from this year’s London Indian Film Festival.

Rest assured your support for what we are doing never goes unnoticed – and without your continuing readership we wouldn’t be able to do what we love. So, as we pass the half year mark and steam ahead onto that next milestone (and trust us, it’ll fly by), we are holding firm in our obligation to bring you some of the most entertaining and informative criticism available. And looking at the remaining releases over the coming months, I think we’ll be able to promise that.

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Thanks for reading, Jordan McGrath & David Hall

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“Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second.”

Jean-Luc Godard

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Contents Features

Columns

The Sweet Smell of Excess - p8

Depeche Mood - p46

Elisa Armstrong dives head first into Paolo Sorrentino’s new film, and Cannes favourite, The Great Beauty.

Evrim Ersoy continues his expert analysis into filmmakers we should be watching. This month’s Subject: Olivier Marchal.

Reviews The Canyons - p56 What Maisie Knew - p57 Ain’t Them Bodies Saints - p58

The Maverick Spirit - p14 In an exclusive interview, Neil McGlone talks to cinematic icon Philip Kaufman about his diverse and extensive career.

Masters of Cinema - p50

Robert Makin discusses the new Masters of Cinema release of Douglas Sirk’s 1957 classic The Tarnished Angels.

Lovelace - p59 Blue Jasmine - p60 Pain & Gain - p61 The Great Beauty- p62

Responsibility & Love - p20

In Defence... - p54

As his film Call Girl hits UK Cinemas, director Mikael Marcimain sits down with Evrim Ersoy to chat about the Swedish thriller.

Emily Kausalik takes the reins of In Defence... to explain her love for Michael Jackson’s 80s spectacular, Moonwalker.

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Foxfire - p63

Join the Conversation

@veritefilmmag

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THE SWEET SMELL OF EXCESS Paolo Sorrentino’s latest – La Grande Bellazza – is a grandiose Italian epic in the tradition of Fellini and a fin de siècle commentary on the lush excesses of the Berlusconi era.

Elisa Armstrong reports from the party

words by Elisa Armstrong

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t the Cannes Film Festival this year, eyes were on Paolo Sorrentino’s new film, La Grande Bellezza (The Great Beauty), a return to home soil after 2011’s American road-tripping, Sean Penn-starring This Must Be The Place. Sorrentino is something of a Cannes darling, having had all but his debut feature, L’uomo in più (One Man Up), premiere in competition at the festival and winning the Ecumenical Prize in 2011. The reviews were a typical Cannes mixed bag, but the sheer number of ecstatic responses made the film a front runner for the Palme d’Or. Subsequently, many were shocked when it walked away empty handed. However, even sans prizes, this is another triumph for Sorrentino and further evidence that Italian cinema is on the brink of a rinascimento.

Italian cinema has a long history that has taken in the futuristic, comic, neorealist and the spaghetti western. Sorrentino is part of the vanguard of Italian film, managing to acknowledge the

masters who have come before him while forging a new path. With co-writer Umberto Contarello, who also wrote This Must Be The Place and Bernardo Bertolucci’s latest Io e Te (Me and You), Sorrentino refuses to forget about the past, and often acknowledges it explicitly. Sorrentino’s film diverges from the political to a new age of Italian cinema, seemingly critical of the current political situation, while still focusing on the relationship between people and their emotions. Filmmakers like Luca Guadagnino are also combining the past with a new future. In 2009’s Io Sono Amore (I Am Love), a sumptuous film infused with sexuality, Guadagnino tips his hat to Luchino Visconti without too much reverence. Matteo Garrone’s 2008 film Gomorrah depicts the common theme of organised crime in what Peter Bradshaw termed “neo-neorealist” but without the typical clichés of mob bosses, instead focusing of the effect of crime on seemingly common people.

Although it has a history of film that dates back to the early 1900s, Italy truly became recognised

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as a cinematic force after World War II. In 1944, Italian Cinema started a wave that would come to be called Neorealism. Directors such as Roberto Rossellini and Vittorio de Sica responded to the constraints of Fascism by showcasing a new Italy. Partly due to the destruction of Cinecittà, films were mainly shot on location, utilising Italy’s natural landscape. The films also cast non-actors, the idea being that their raw emotion was more powerful than anything that would have to be taught or coaxed or controlled. One of the most recognised films of the era, Roma, città aperta (Rome, Open City), was filmed with limited money, without masses of studio cash in the production or post-production periods, and ends on an ambiguous note. Along with Cannes success and Academy Awards attention, it is considered a unique achievement and a major reason why this relatively small country has such a huge reputation in the film world. Jean-Luc Godard proclaimed “all roads lead to Rome, Open City” and more recently Martin Scorsese said that Neorealism was “the most precious moment in film history”.

Rossellini and de Sica had travelled very different paths. The former had a background in documentary

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work, while the latter had been a comic actor. As Andre Bazin noted, “Rossellini’s style is a way of seeing, while De Sica’s is primarily a way of feeling”. Yet both these styles could coexist quite happily. This work continued for two decades, as the cinematic landscape expanded to include Michelangelo Antonioni, Federico Fellini and Bernardo Bertolucci and a move towards auterism. If Neorealism was an exploration of Italy’s social, political and economic concerns, the move away from this brought lush textures and a focus on emotional behaviour and relationships.

Fellini said, “I feel that decadence is indispensable to rebirth”, and this has been taken to heart with La Grande Bellezza. The film opens with a zoom out of the cannon at Gianicolo ( Janiculum), marking midday. A group of tourists is taking in the architecture of the hill, to the sound of a diegetic choir performing “The Lamb” by John Tavener. One tourist, overcome by the beauty of the architecture, collapses, ostensibly with Stendhal Syndrome. This slow, meandering scene, punctuated by the collapse, is immediately wiped away as Sorrentino cuts to a dizzying party, so drenched with colour, infused with

“Sorrentino cuts to a dizzying party, so drenched with colour, infused with energy and bordering on ridiculous, that it could almost be an advert for Italian alcohol. ” energy and bordering on ridiculous, that it could almost be an advert for Italian alcohol. Straight away there is an explicit reference to the work of Fellini and La Dolce Vita, with a prominent Martini sign fixed in the background, potentially a direct reference to the Martini sign in the party scene with Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg. However the sign is comically large and threatens to overshadow (or, due to the neon, overglow) the rest of the party.

The film is a masterful depiction of the tragedy of middle-age. Sorrentino gives us the 65-year-old Jep Gambardella (a perfect Toni Servillo, whose face is shifting from commedia dell’arte expressiveness to world-weariness, much like Max von Sydow) who, having written a successful novel ‘The Human Apparatus’ in his earlier years, is struggling professionally in Rome. He has work as a journalist (in some ways a more acceptable and pandering way of writing) but faces constant questioning as to the lack of follow up. Like Guido in 8½, the pressure to trump previous success, under the scrutiny of the public and the private, fills him with malaise and forces him to look inward. Later in the film, when Jep is asked

pointedly what he has done with his talent, he is mute.

Even as a great writer, his words have failed him.

This is not to say that Sorrentino is overly reverential to Fellini, as he is also happy to discard the symbols that have come to be known as Fellini-esque. The obvious beauty, Orietta (Isabella Ferrari), is reminiscent of the iconic blondes of Anita Ekberg, Dominique Sanda and even Monica Vitti. However, she is used and forgotten

by Jep almost immediately. Her attempts to please him, and her need for validation, are met not with disdain but boredom. If the object of desire is undesirable, where do you go from there?

There is a reference to Gustave Flaubert in the film. Jep idolises him, but unlike Flaubert’s titular Emma Bovary, does not want to leave his dull life. Rather the commonalities of his seemingly illustrious life have overtaken and dulled him. He is at once a detached observer and yet conversely happy to play a part in the hedonism. Flaubert said, “A memory is a beautiful thing, it’s almost a desire that you miss.” Jep’s young love, Elisa, who is the catalyst for his journey, is representative of that desire, when Jep was young, full of potential and content with life’s sim-

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“What was seen as Italian-cool, all Persol sunglasses and smoky longing looks, has been replaced by black-rimmed prescriptive glasses and malaise.”

ple pleasures. Despite being married to someone else for years, apparently Elisa only ever loved Jep and this forces him to confront his past, work and unrealised future.

In his role as observer but also man of the arts, he is a combination of two of Mastroianni’s characters, Marcello and Guido. Yet this is a man 30 years older than Marcello and what was seen as Italian-cool, all Persol sunglasses and smoky longing looks, has been replaced by blackrimmed prescriptive glasses and malaise. Furthermore, unlike Guido, Jep can no longer surprise and delight with whatever is his next work of art, and no one truly believes he will create another masterpiece. Is a happy ending even possible?

La Grande Bellezza is a child of the thriving Italy seen in La Dolce Vita, where the country, post World War II, was desirable and full of promise. Now we have grown women doing ridiculous jobs and children responding like adults. To this end the film is rather depressing, with Sorrentino using the younger characters as the burden of responsibility and the ones who truly feel the pain.

Another nod to the Neorealists is in the role of the child, often an observer of society who doesn’t contribute as much as the adults, but whose presence is keenly felt. The young people depicted in the film are victims of the older generation’s obsession with youth and energy. Unfortunately they are also the ones to absorb any guilt associated with hedonism and decadence. Sorrentino doesn’t hesitate to show this guilt. In particular, a scene at a party with a 12-year-old girl throwing paint at a canvas while sobbing (and at the end creating a work of conventional beauty), to the entertainment of the party’s guests, exemplifies the juxtaposition. Art just for entertainment’s sake is not enough, until everyone agrees. Not Jep though, who has forsaken this piece to sneak into a church and look at sculptures. Earlier on, Jep views the performance

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of the fabulously named Talia Concept, whose pieces consist of screaming and head-butting a wall, her pubic hair dyed red and shaved into a hammer and sickle. This is done to the delight and amazement of the crowd, but not Jep. He sits alone, early on the film depicting him as sui generis in his ideas about art. When Jep talks to her post-performance, as he deconstructs her “concept” in a few swift moves, she is left in tears.

Later when Jep reveals that he was “looking for the great beauty and I never found it” it is a classic statement that shows his ignorance at that moment. What the film slowly shows is what is simple is beautiful. Jep visits an exhibition where a father took a photo of his son every day. It calls to mind Wayne Wang’s Smoke (1995), with Harvey Keitel’s character taking a photo on the same street corner every day, a reveal which brings another character to tears. Simply shot without fanfare, it is an emotional moment for the viewer, breath-taking and raw.

Furthermore, the funeral of a young character leaves Jep overcome with emotion, much to his surprise. He in turn becomes the classic man-child, and is caught between his past, present and lack of future.

“In Rome there’s a constant shifting between sublime and pathetic”, says Sorrentino, echoing Napoleon. Rome proves the ideal setting with its crumbling, ornate Palazzi, even Jep’s apartment has a view of the Colosseum.

Yet this is contrasted with the very modern Botox party that is as lifeless as the faces it injects. Even Ramona, waddling about in an inflatable pool toy, is hilariously out of her depth. This contradiction is helped immeasurably

by Sorrentino’s cinematographer, frequent collaborator Luca Bigazzi. Shot as if on liquid rails, Rome is like a rough diamond: beautiful but with sharp edges, not afraid to cut. Ultimately the film is something of a love letter to Rome and its people. It is as if the film is an

orchestral feast, with no note left unplayed. Sorrentino resides in Rome, having grown up in Naples and therefore has a more objective eye. He calls to mind Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Hilda who said, “I sometimes fancy that Rome – mere Rome – will crowd everything else out of my heart.”

The film is unafraid to poke fun at its current mind-set and the Italian ability to party away depression. Like the Eddie Izzard joke that despite dealing with the horrors of war, “most Italian people are always on scooters going ‘Ciao’”, these Italians don’t need to look into themselves, when they can look so good on the outside. Even with the film being produced by Medusa, a company owned

by Silvio Berlusconi, it is impossible to ignore Sorrentino’s criticism of the Berlusconi era (his Cannes Jury winner in 2008, Il Divo (The Divine), was about real-life Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti who had ties to the Mafia). With Berlusconi as Italian Prime Minister for 10 years, non-consecutively between 1994 and 2011, Sorrentino is without a doubt commenting on the Berlusconismo of Italy, that obsession with sexism and power to the detriment of society and the people.

However, while Berlusconi seemingly cannot look past shiny surfaces, the film does and thrives when it reveals the ugliness behind beauty. Conversely, that which is

ostensibly ugly becomes more beautiful. As one looks closer, that which appears plastic and facile grows with urgency and blossoms beautifully.

The parties that Jep attends are reminiscent of Ettore Scola’s La Terrazza (The Terrace), with the intellectuals communing on a terrace. However, pretensions crescendo to a laughable climax when one character declaims, “I only like Ethiopian jazz”. Sorrentino paints these characters as ridiculous, but saves depth for most of them.

While it appears initially that Sorrentino is utilising the virgin/whore mutual exclusivity with his female characters (there are multiple nuns and the stripper is the female lead), within every character is dichotomy and the power to surprise. Sorrentino has said “I just wait for people to stumble” and every character has a moment to startle the audience. Like the Cardinal, who only has interest in gastronomy, or the young nun who is given Botox injections. It is left to the character of a 104-yearold nun, set apart from the rest, who has seen what Jep’s generation has done and is not impressed. She refuses to participate and is left alone. The final shot of the film, a sweep over the Tiber, is full of promise and beauty. For her and perhaps for Sorrentino too, the city – stripped of fake colour and larger-than-life characters – is more than enough.

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Philip Kaufman

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T H E M AV E R I C K SPIRIT In the first of a regular series of in-depth interviews with some of the world’s finest filmmakers, Neil McGlone talks to director Philip Kaufman – the man who brought The Right Stuff and The Unbearable Lightness of Being to the big screen words and interview by Neil McGlone

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hilip Kaufman is exactly the kind of director to receive a retrospective and guest director status at Finland’s Midnight Sun festival, which has long championed the forgotten creators of cinema; those modest and inconspicuous talents with classics under their belt who struggle to mount new projects in the environs of youth-obsessed production systems. Kaufman’s work prizes the maverick spirit – whether they be mind-expanding literary greats or pioneering explorers, cowboys or astronauts.

In recent years his projects have been few and far between, but he has managed to produce a low-budget horror film called Twisted and the HBO miniseries Hemingway & Gellhorn, showing he’s still wily enough to know where the money lies. Although his filmography isn’t extensive, it is packed with big hitters (he was a writer on Raiders of the Lost Ark) and a number of interesting and significant works, with The Right Stuff regarded as a minor modern American classic and Invasion of the Body Snatchers now seen as a seminal piece of 1970s paranoia.

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Philip Kaufman interview: You spent some time in Europe when you were younger.

Did that have any influence on your filmmaking?

We lived in Florence, where I was teaching mathematics, and we saw Pasolini’s Accatone and I was stunned. The camera in the streets, the life and the look, the faces… and then I knew I wanted to make films. There was something about that that set me off. In America some people think I’m more of a European filmmaker, I mean my background is pure American cinema, but the approach of the Europeans was so anti-Hollywood and that was what America needed [at the time] as Hollywood had become stagnant. Ingmar Bergman was happening, Italy and all the French New Wave was just so thrilling.

Was the New American cinema also an influence?

I saw Cassavetes’ Shadows and then Shirley Clarke’s The Connection. I knew at that point I definitely wanted to do what Pasolini, Cassavetes, Shirley Clarke, Curtis Harrington on the West Coast, the Maysles brothers and very few others were doing. There was no real independent cinema [at that time].

When we started making films there were only about six guys doing that in America but now with Sundance there’s 16,000 films, everybody is making independent films. I came back and with a friend we made the first film in Chicago since, like, the

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silent era and it was a very small world of people struggling to come up with an alternative to Hollywood, because Hollywood was increasingly less relevant at that point. We went back, lived with my parents for a while, and I tried with my friend knocking on doors to try and get a couple of hundred bucks here and there. We ended up raising $40,000 and were able to make Goldstein, which won praise at Cannes.

Your first feature film…

Somebody said it was a little like Renoir’s Boudu Saved from Drowning. I believe Polanski around this time had done Three Men and A Wardrobe, which I hadn’t seen but the idea was that in every generation there is a bum, a hobo, a clochard who roams the streets who maybe is a wise man [and nobody knows it]. [Another] young man has some sense of this bum roaming the streets and ends up trying to find him and becomes himself transformed, but in a lyrical way.

And you ended up taking the film to Cannes, which must have been very different back then?

Yeah, it was great, the first screening of the film was in California and Renoir saw it and said some great things about it. Then there was that first screening in Chicago and Truffaut saw it.

[So] we went off to Cannes. I walked around and met Anthony Mann, who had the biggest film at the festival - The Fall of the Roman Empire - and I had the smallest one. He, in his heart, wanted to get back to making smaller movies. We spent a couple of days just wandering around and he said things like “Do you know what a scene in a movie is? You think it’s like two people yelling at each other, that’s a scene right?” He said: “Gary Cooper on a horse is a scene.”

What then happened to Goldstein?

Some guy bought it and it went to some art houses in New York, Chicago, Boston and Los Angeles and then it was gone.

I had to get out of Chicago if I was going to make movies and I went back to San Francisco, then down to Los Angeles and eventually got the job (contract with Universal on their Young Director’s Programme) for $175 per week.

Around the same time, Altman was doing McCabe and Mrs Miller and there was this new re-evaluation of the western briefly in that period. I’d been under contract and had made two independent films by then. [So] I ended up writing, directing and producing [The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid] for $10,000 and spent a couple of years doing that. I made [it] in, like, 30 days with a young Robert Duvall and Cliff Robertson.

I’d had my cameraman Bruce Surtees go to a museum and get this hand-cranked old camera that gave an authentic prologue to the film and staged [it] in black and white to make it look like old western footage, not precisely at 24-frames-persecond. When they saw that they said to me, “What the fuck did you do?”, “Why did you shoot this in black and white, if this appears on American television people will change the station?” So there are just these coloured backgrounds of maps, just to give the semblance of colour in the background. It was my first Hollywood experience and I sort of got beaten down.

It’s always a battle.

Now we come to The White Dawn, a film that is now quite difficult to see.

“When we started making films there were only about six guys doing that in America but now with Sundance there’s 16,000 films, everybody is making independent films.” with the Inuit. We embarked on a real adventure. Flaherty had done that [before], but I don’t think there had been a film [like it since]. Nick Ray did The Savage Innocents, but the igloos were in a studio in Rome and now we were embarking on this really difficult adventure. Three actors came from America; Warren Oates, Timothy Bottoms, Louis Gossett Jr. - everybody else I cast were Eskimos. It was an amazing experience and everybody loved the film and now there are no prints of it.

There is a negative which cost like $20,000 to put back, which I guess could be printed. There was a print made for a film festival a few years back and then somebody sold it. Hollywood had that habit; they wouldn’t give me a print, they’d rather destroy it, because if I had it and showed it here it might ruin the commercial value of the movie that they’ll never show anyway!

That’s their logical bullshit.

After the debacle over The Outlaw Josey Wales, you were also developing a script for what would have been the first Star Trek film, and working on developing a script for Raiders of the Lost Ark.

I was writing Raiders at the time of Josey Wales, which I also I’d just done The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid and I’d got directed for a couple of weeks. Paramount didn’t know what they had, somebody said they had this TV show and wanted to two scripts at that point from a producer called Martin Ransohoff, one of which took place in Big Sur down the coast and do this feature for about $3m and wanted to do this schlocky the other took place in the Arctic. I chose the Big Sur script to thing. I knew Star Trek and just thought something good read and my wife read The White Dawn. I didn’t like my script could be made out of it. I set it around Leonard Nimoy and I and I asked my wife what she thought of hers. She said “Don’t wanted to use Toshiro Mifune as a Klingon and to do a real read it, because if you read it you’re going to go to the Arctic”. contest in outer space. Then one morning I got this crucial call.

It wasn’t even that good of a script, but it just had enough in it, I’d been writing all night and could barely stand up, and the producer says “bad news, there’s no future in science fiction” it was an adventure, a period film, based on a real story [that] took place in 1896 [in which] three whalers survive. They were which to me is one of the great lines. Then of course six weeks later Star Wars came out. chasing whales, their boat crashed and they lived for a year

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Raiders of the Lost Ark

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

And with Raiders?

How did you get involved with The Right Stuff?

I was developing something with George, we had sort of the parameters of the story, but then I went on and did some other things and other projects. Then four years later I get a call from George and he said, “I’m in Hawaii with Steven (Spielberg) and I’ve told him our story”. He said, “Is it ok with you?” I said, “Yeah it’s great”. I didn’t want to write the screenplay and they brought on board Lawrence Kasdan, and then I didn’t really have anything else to do with it after that.

Chartoff and Winkler, Hollywood producers who had just produced Raging Bull, they sent me William Goldman’s script and Tom Wolfe’s book. I read Wolfe’s book and I loved it and I read Goldman’s script and I didn’t love it. I knew Goldman and we got into some conversations about it and I said, “You have left out ‘The Right Stuff ’; you have left out Chuck Yeager’s character, the very core about what Tom Wolfe’s book is all about”. One thing led to another and he quit the movie. I was almost fired as he was the most important screenwriter in Hollywood. He’s a terrific writer, but he didn’t write the right script for that movie. He tried to make little dramas; he tried to have John Glen going into a Mexican whorehouse to save the astronauts, stuff like that. I was interested in the potential of doing a film that is about a quality that harkens back to what we were talking about earlier: Gary Cooper on a horse.

That goes to the core, the crux of Americana. In some ways The Right Stuff, the film we made, is certainly the longest film ever made without a plot. The plot is the evolution of a characteristic that nobody can ever [define]. It’s a quality that in some ways comes out of Hemingway’s code of behaviour, comes out of the American West, and comes out of laconic people who perform in a heroically modest way. The crux of that was seen in Tom Wolfe’s book in this character called Chuck Yeager, who broke the sound barrier for no money and was unknown by history and yet his personality and his character informed the astronauts, the men who had to fight the

So how exactly did Body Snatchers come about?

At first I didn’t want to re-make it, but then I got interested in the themes. I knew Don Siegel and Kevin McCarthy. I read the book by Jack Finney, which was pure science fiction, and I thought there was something there that I could update, but then I started to see it as more of a variation on the theme.

There’ve been a couple of versions since then but I’ve not seen them. It’s a good theme. It might well have been about the communist threat, about McCarthy, but for me it was about losing a soul. What is valuable? Donald Sutherland and Brooke Adams, in one of my favourite scenes, they are in his back yard and he is making dinner for her and there’s a kind of gentleness and humour. I asked her if she had a trick, she said she could roll her eyes opposite ways and we put that in the film. Donald Sutherland falls in love with her, but I [also] fell in love with her.

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The Unbearable Lightness of Being

bureaucracy, fight the press, fight for all of the things that keep artists down, that keep everybody down because of conformity and mediocrity. The ad that I put on the film was, “How the future began.” It was about how we got on the other side of the sound barrier and how do you retain a quality that is, in my mind, quintessentially American.

work with [Milan] Kundera, trying to do justice to this great book. But it’s a book in a way that is philosophical and has its own music, and each little chapter dealing with the eternal return. Jean-Claude was very instrumental in this - we extended the story and tried to breathe dramatic life into the material, but at the same time be true to Kundera’s book.

Your European films, do you see them as very separate to your others?

Your last two films have included a relatively low budget horror film and a made for TV mini-series. Is this indicative of where the work lies these days (in light of Soderbergh’s comments about the prominence of TV over Hollywood)?

There is a moment in The Unbearable Lightness of Being where Juliette Binoche has been taking photographs and is developing her imagery and she pulls out a picture of people in the streets of Prague and that picture is a photo of me, my wife and my son in San Francisco and it looks just like Prague. It’s my way of getting into the movie. It was meant to exemplify of what was going on everywhere.

Was 1968 one of the reasons for doing the film?

It was only because Milos Forman had been asked to do it but he couldn’t because he had two children living in Prague and they would have been in danger; you all remember what Prague was like at that time. Then somehow we got into discussions [with] Saul Zaentz the producer. I spent five years doing The Right Stuff and I spent four and a half doing The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I was just going round trying to cast it, trying to work with Jean-Claude Carrière, trying to

I said what Soderbergh was saying many years ago! I spent years developing a Liberace story with Robin Williams which we were trying to get made, but this goes back a decade. The small theatres are closing, there are only the multiplexes, and suddenly television seems more interesting. HBO and likeminded stations have no commercials and don’t do things that movie companies do. Since they did things like The Sopranos, Homeland and all of these things, there’s vitality there. Ideally though I’d like to make films for cinema and I’d like to see them on the big screen.

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With thanks to both Peter von Bagh and James Rocarols

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Call Girl 20

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Responsibility

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Love words and interview by Evrim Ersoy

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ikael Marcimain’s Call Girl is one of the most unexpected hits of the year: a brilliant thriller in the vein of classic Hollywood 70s films such as All the President’s Men and The Conversation, and a scathing critique of the hypocrisy apparent within the halls of power in Swedish society.

Based on a true scandal that shocked Sweden to its core, the film tells the story of two innocent teenagers, Iris and Sonja, who find themselves embroiled in a prostitution ring run by Dagmar Gland.

Mesmerizingly plotted, beautiful shot and boasting one of the best soundtracks in years, Call Girl is sure to catapult Mikael Marcimain’s name onto any serious cinephile’s to-watch list.

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Mikael Marcimain interview: Can you talk a bit about the genesis of the project? Your background has mainly been TV (including some very successful series) - what was it about the script that made you want to make a feature?

In 2008 I got a very detailed treatment from writer Marietta, the whole script was there except for the final dialogue. What attracted me was that the story was both a character-driven drama and a plot-driven political thriller.

It was very close to the skin and rough, but also very visual. I was very touched by the story of Iris and Sonja, the two young girls from the juvenile home who get recruited as call girls. At the same time, the script reminded me of films like All the President’s Men, Serpico and Klute – from the golden age of American film history in the 70s.

I am very interested in the morals and politics in Sweden in the mid and late 70s, a period of time when Sweden was considered as an ideological country, some sort of Utopia with high living standards, a strong women’s movement and a very liberal view on sexuality, with a very strong and sometimes naive belief in politics and politicians. Being born in 1970, I had a child’s point of view on that period and remembered Stock-

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holm as a very joyful place. I guess the film shows the flip side of the coin.

Although the film is epic - both in story and running time - it never feels too complicated, despite the numerous characters and very complex story line. How did you ensure an audience that knows nothing about the scandal would keep up?

I just trusted the script and my own taste in cinema. When I read the script I instantly had a very clear vision about how the film should look, feel and sound. Marietta and I did a lot of research and her drafts of the script were very meticulous. In my series for television I have often worked with a large number of characters. I like that, and the script of Call Girl was full of characters that somehow influence each other, even though some of them never even meet. I strongly believe that when making a film you can’t be afraid and underestimate the audience.

We live in a period when a big part of the movie business is very afraid of complex storytelling, although I think a lot of recent and very popular series for television have proven that the

“The script reminded me of films like All the President’s Men, Serpico and Klute – from the golden age of American film history in the 70s.” audience is not stupid. Films should entertain but also make you think. But of course, you can’t please everybody.

The film seems to be a combination of 70’s American paranoid thrillers and classic European storytelling - what were some of your key inspirations?

I am a big fan of the those paranoid thrillers: All the President’s Men, Klute, The French Connection, Marathon Man. Films that are very rooted in their time, reflections of the society. Also I like Truffaut and Cassavetes a lot. Call Girl reflects my love for cinema from that period.

The music plays an incredible role within the film - it not only punctuates the action but also creates a sense of tension and unease. Could you talk a bit about Mattia Barjed’s involvement and whether you gave him any pointers?

nal mix of the film. With Call Girl we wanted the music to be hard and tough and uncompromising. We wanted it to collide with and sometimes “destroy” the images.

Were you worried at all that you might end up alienating the audience with such a dark storyline? How hard was it for you to strike a balance?

I was not worried. The story is dark and disturbing but also very gripping, emotional and thrilling. It’s a slap in the face. I believed in getting very close to Iris and Sonja and seeing a lot through their eyes. I think many people can relate to that period in their lives, being a young person eager to leave childhood behind and curious of the thrills of adult life, escaping the boredom of youth.

Pernilla August gives an acting masterclass as Dagmar Mattias Bärjed and I are close friends since we started to work - she’s frightening and tender, exploitative and hurt. on How soon is now? – a four part TV series I did in 2006. We What was it like working with such a seasoned actress? work closely and with a lot of freedom. What I appreciate with him is his total understanding of the script and my vision. We also have similar taste in music, which helps a lot.

Mattias came in early and was doing demos as we shot the film, so the music grew in the process of shooting. I like that process. I was in the studio as much as possible during post-production when Mattias and his musicians were recording, and I loved that – it gave me a lot of inspiration for the fi-

It was a pure pleasure. Pernilla is an excellent actress and so sweet and funny. She was very courageous during the shoot and I think we trusted each other as lot. Her character, Dagmar, was very complex and all over the place – a sweet mother, a tough and cold businesswoman, an entertainer. She had to be likable and human and very scary. She did a beautiful job on Call Girl.

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Your exploration of the themes of corruption, hypocrisy and exploitation are universal. The events in the film refer to a specific time in Sweden, but can equally apply to other political scandals all over the world. Was it always your intention to show how the corruption of power occurs all over the history of the world?

The Olof Palme issue - were you at all expecting anything of this sort, considering the film is based on true events? Did it have any effect on the Swedish audience - any animosity towards the film? Would you have changed it if you’d known the big frenzy that was going to occur?

Unfortunately those themes are universal and will continue to happen because of some powerful men’s strong impulses/urges.

Prostitution is probably one of the oldest ‘jobs’ in the world. I have no answers, but the film reminds us of a lot of the problems we have to deal with.

Your next film, Gentlemen and Gangsters, is another That was difficult. The film is inspired by true events, but is not period piece. What is it about events in recent history that attracts you? a documentary. I did not anticipate some of the animosity in the press. The fact that a lot of people think of fictional work as some sort of holy truth surprised me.

The part of the Prime Minister is of course inspired by Olof Palme, but is also a symbol for the political hypocrisy of that time. But it is not him ‘for real’. We (Marietta and I) were not interested in gossip, but much more in the big picture, about the two girls and how they get broken by both the underworld and the institutions and a political system that are supposed to protect them. A lot of people that saw the film after the storm in the media were surprised that the only focus the media had was on one scene with the Prime Minister. This story is obviously about Iris and Sonja; we see the world through their eyes. But I would not have changed anything; I am very proud of the film and think it’s a quite unique one for Sweden. There are very few political thrillers made here that look very realistic and it’s possible that that’s confusing. What is real and what is not? For me, cinema can never be the truth, maybe only resemble it.

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Gentlemen and Gangsters is a much more romantic film. It’s a story about friendship, love and lies, and the backdrop is the Cold War – a romantic thriller about some very odd characters.

It takes place in Stockholm, Copenhagen, Paris, Berlin and Vienna. I think the period is very cinematic. Stockholm is a city that has totally changed since the 70s. The old Stockholm is almost gone, a city where people from all different walks of life used to coexist. Nowadays the city gets more and more generic and focused on consuming. You have to be able to afford living in the centre of the city. I miss the old Stockholm a lot and maybe that’s why I am intrigued by recreating it on film.

Finally, is there anything you’d like the audience to take away from the film specifically?

Having two daughters I would have to say: take care of your children. Give them love and attention.

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Sex Lies & Videotape The Recurring Themes of Early Atom Egoyan words by Jordan McGrath

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onsidering how my relationship with the director’s work has shifted over the years, it’s a peculiar thought that my introduction to – and consequential adoration of – the unusual world of Atom Egoyan was through 2005’s Where the Truth Lies. A slick, noir-ish period piece, it follows the investigation by a young, energetic journalist portrayed by Alison Lohman into the murder of a pretty blonde; highlighting a mystery that suggests her childhood idols, a comedy personality duo played with smug perfection

by Colin Firth and Kevin Bacon, had a part to play in it.

It’s a film I still enjoy unapologetically despite its obvious flaws. The use of competing narrators creates a labyrinth of uncertainty that is – of course – messy at points, but at the same time devilishly appealing.

The seduction of celebrity and the taste of the rich and famous, literally and metaphorically, provides a

gloriously lavish setting for a tale of corruption and misdirection. Dictated by its novelistic structure it is, for Egoyan at least, relatively ‘to-the-point’ cinema.

His beginnings however, were something entirely different.

A master of metaphor and theme, his earlier efforts were fascinating for those audience members willing to dig. Breaking down social barriers, taboos and – at the time – the importance and effect a new technology can have on communication and image; he crafted puzzle-like stories around hollow characters and their endless journey to ‘fill the void’ within themselves. In his debut, 1984’s Next of Kin, Patrick Tierney’s isolated Peter – after watching a videotape of a family therapy session – sees an opportunity to make a difference and takes on the identity of the long lost son of American immigrants George and Sonya Deryan.

Egoyan places Peter in an empathetic place of power, giving him the ability to mould then reconstruct his

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Calendar The Sweet Hereafter

“Egoyan’s films are not so much stories about death, but the life that endures after death. A purgatory where people have to find a way to live after the reasons that made their life worth living are long gone.” false family so they will be able to find their love for each other once again.

Akin to Elias Koteas’ Noah in The Adjuster, an insurance settler for house fires, he swoops into people’s lives at their most vulnerable and hero-like, holding the hands of the victims as they build up their lives once more. Like Peter he is attracted by the control true empathy allows, and fetishizes the experience.

However, where Peter receives personal gratification and a sense of belonging in his quest to fill his personal void, Noah uses it to exist as a guardian angel, allowing himself to be worshipped by these broken individuals, and in some cases using them to satisfy his own sexual desires.

The disconnected soul trying to connect with another is visible in all of Egoyan’s early work, whether it be Michael McManus as the hotel-working gigolo Lance in Speaking Parts, Bruce Greenwood’s grieving father Francis in Exotica or even Egoyan’s turn as the character simply titled ‘Photographer’ in Calendar. It’s the search for something more, clawing and scratching for that spark, which drives his characters. And we watch, observing intently, as they battle against the onslaught of their existence. Egoyan forces his audi-

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ence into being just as voyeuristic as his characters.

We’re like Arsinee Khanjian’s heavily pregnant strip club owner Zoe in Exotica, watching through her one-way mirrors as these human vessels try to find something to plug the gaping hole in their soul. A precursor to – and influencer of – Soderbergh’s 1989 Palme D’Or winning effort Sex, Lies and Videotape, Egoyan’s obsession with ‘home videos’ and videotape within his early career is constantly evident - not only with its life-through-a-lens connotations of isolation and aforementioned voyeurism but its effect on memory. When Van’s father begins erasing home videos of Van’s childhood in Family Viewing, replacing them with recorded sexual exploits with his new wife, Van believes it is an attempt to delete the memory of him and his elderly grandmother. Gabrielle Rose’s Clara in Speaking Parts yearns after her dead brother in a video cemetery after an organ transplant operation that saved her life goes wrong. She watches a short clip play over and is over ridden with guilt, similar in the way we’re introduced to the tragic deaths in Exotica of Francis’ wife and child.

Egoyan’s films are not so much stories about death, but the life that endures after death. A purgatory

Speaking Parts

where people have to find a way to carry on after the reasons that made their life worth living are long gone.

The Sweet Hereafter, Egoayn’s seventh feature and his most critically acclaimed, is the best example of such agony. Egoyan, for the first time working without an original script, still manages to instil his personal touch – delicate but cold – as he digs into the sordid secrets of a town shrouded by a tragedy involving a school bus accident and the death of many of the town’s children.

The director has stated that his early films are attempts to dissect fragments of himself at that time, labelling them “emotions so strong that they had to be contained”. They’re pressure cookers of supressed mystery, intricately structured so that when they are ready to reveal the secrets that have been dictating their characters’ actions so heavily; they do so with soul-crushing poignancy. His most personal and experimental project to date is 1993’s Calendar, where we follow Egoyan himself as ‘Photographer’ travelling around his cultural homeland of Armenia with his wife and driver, assigned to take pictures of churches for an upcoming calendar. It’s a revealing look at cultural identity and the importance of personal heritage

and whether having an attachment to your homeland actually shapes your own identity. It’s an exercise to explore and understand the director’s own detachment to his Armenian heritage. Piercing and revelatory; it’s undeniably one of his most memorable efforts.

A Canadian cinema institution himself, Egoyan has evolved with age, his stories becoming more literal than metaphorical – cleaner cut and composed. Gone are the days of youthful ferocity and the weight of mystery; he is no longer turning the camera back onto his personal fears, desires, and inadequacies. That is not to say this is a bad thing. It’s healthy to see how an artist evolves and develops to remain current. It’s just a shame that, as he becomes more objective, he loses his unique voice and subsequently the lasting resonance his earlier work possessed.

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Next of Kin, Family Viewing, Speaking Parts and The Adjuster are OUT NOW on DVD & Blu-ray courtesy of Artificial Eye. Calender is released on 26th August, with Exotica following on 9th September alongside and The Sweet Hereafer.

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Vérité’s Top 5 Films set ‘Up North’

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5.

24 Hour Party People (2002) ‘The worst of times, like the best, are always passing away’ - Michael Winterbottom’s vital, self-aware biopic of Tony Wilson and the birth of Factory Records is an orchestra of Mancunian drawl; depicting arguably the most influential revolution of British music since a band formerly called The Quarrymen performed in Liverpool’s The Cavern Club.

24 Hour Party People is an expressionist painting of sex, drugs and ever-changing rock n’ roll. Against the backdrop of the rise and fall of the Manchester music scene in the late 70s and 80s, Steve Coogan, breathing vibrant life into Frank Cottrell Boyce’s words, delivers a performance of hilarious, dry-witted perfection.

As music biopics go, it’s up there with some of the best. A love letter to Manchester’s musical legacy, including Joy Division’s melancholic masterpieces and the Happy Mondays’ influence on the formation of rave culture, Winterbottom’s highly stylized journey into organised mania leaves a legacy of its own. Jordan McGrath

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4.

Red Riding (2009) Ok, so technically it’s a trilogy, and yes, technically it was made for TV, airing on Channel 4 back in 2009. But Red Riding (1974, 1980, 1983), adapted from David Peace’s novels, is a soul-crushing chef-d’oeuvre; delving not only into Yorkshire’s real-life dark past but wallowing in an epic tale of its own conception.

A generational noir; its novelistic depth, twisting narrative and haunting beauty is enough for me to call it one of the best pieces of cinema this country has produced in the last ten years. An extensive, mouth-wateringly incredible cast deliver the goods in abundance. Analysing how the overall tone of filters through each instalment (directed by Julian Jarrold, James Marsh and Anand Tucker respectively) you are struck by the astonishing control exerted throughout.

With mini-series coming thick and fast and the great Top of the Lake and Southcliffe fresh in our memories, Red Riding could be seen as a barometer to measure the quality of subsequent productions. As of yet, nothing has come close.

Jordan McGrath

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3.

Withnail and I (1987) A trip up to the sunny, and by sunny I mean dark and dreary, locale of Penrith was never going to be a good idea for two loud, eccentric Londoners – but thank God that didn’t stop them as we wouldn’t have had the stone-cold classic that is Withnail and I. Arguably the best comedy of the 1980s, Bruce Robinson’s drug curdling existential marathon is as much a soulful tragedy of accepting adulthood as it is a hysterical look at a hedonistic lifestyle. A film that gleefully delivers new laughs upon each return but also, as I get older, becomes more poignant.

With dialogue that has burned its way deep into moviegoers collective psyche since its debut (a release only made possible by the support of George Harrison no less) its lead duo of Paul McCann and Richard E Grant set a new standard for onscreen male-only chemistry; the epitome of the cinematic yin and yang. Jordan McGrath

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2.

Kes (1969) Of Ken Loach’s formidable body of work his adaptation of Barry Hines novel A Kestrel for a Knave remains probably his best-loved and definitely best-known film.

It has endured possibly because – unlike some of his later, more didactic films – it achieves a near-perfect balance of searing social commentary and warm humanity.

It happens to also be one of the best films made about childhood and exudes gruff, northern wit.

Loach and writer Tony Garnett skilfully avoid the cloying traps of films about childhood by painting the grim realities of life in a depressed northern town in the most direct and unsentimental way possible. As a puny kid, like Billy – in a depressed northern town myself – I saw Kes at school and recognised so many elements that resonated; none more so than Bryan Glover’s brilliantly observed, comically sadistic games teacher who appeared to be based on our own. It would be years later when the political and social undercurrents of the film would come into sharp focus – but I suspect Kes endures because it is ultimately a story about childhood survival and perseverance; the underdog spirit. You don’t have to be Northern to understand that. David Hall

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1.

Billy Liar (1963) Based on journalist Keith Waterhouse’s Lucky Jim-ish novel, Billy Liar retains all the sarcy wit of the young hack’s script and laces it with a bittersweet melancholy that has helped it age better than any of the angry young man films of the era. Its wit and wisdom is the kind you’ll locate in great poets of the north like Bennett, Cocker and Morrissey. Albert Finney was the original choice for Billy Fisher but Tom Courtney aces the role, bringing exactly the right mix of cheek and innate sadness/disappointment. Billy is a legend in his own mind and Courtney’s theatrical training and mimicry suit the quicksilver charms of a jack the lad with ‘BIG DECISIONS’ on his mind; without the wherewithal to do anything about them. A dream chaser who can’t help but sabotage his own opportunities, even when they are right in front of him in the form of Julie Christie’s hot, confident, modern working class girl. I’ve seen Billy Liar a dozen times and have no hesitation proclaiming it the best northern film ever; hilarious and poignant with a freewheeling, bravura style – new wave homages and fantasy sequences ahoy – that deliver a withering riposte to Truffaut’s gobshite about ‘uncinematic’ Britain. David Hall

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T H FESTIVAL G E O N D A words by Evrim Ersoy & Stuart Barr

ne of the most exciting events in the London film calendar, the London Indian Film Festival continues to celebrate independent and daring cinema from the Indian sub-continent.

Building on last year’s strong line-up, the festival presented over 14 premieres as well as masterclasses and interviews with seminal figures from the Indian cinema circuit. Irrfan Khan appeared this year as a special guest of the festival on stage, being interviewed by director Asif Kapadia and discussing his successful career both at home and abroad. The Masterclass by director Adoor Gopalakrishnan was another highlight with the Keralan cinematic master discussing his long and brilliant career.

Bringing a kaleidoscope of new films which challenged the British audience’s preconceptions of Indian cinema and reflecting the unique voices which differ from the Bollywood mainstream, the London Indian Film Festival created yet another brilliant opportunity for the audience to discover the magic and marvel of Indian cinema.

Here are some of our choices from the festival:

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MONSOON SHOOTOUT director Amit Kumar A UK/India co-production, Amit Kumar’s ambitious thriller follows a rookie Mumbai cop (Vijay Varma) who faces a life-altering decision during the chase of an escaping suspect (Nawazuddin Siddiqui). Exploring each action and the resultant consequences, Amit Kumar riffs on the classic alternative universe theories with a sure hand. Whilst the film is not perfect, there’s more than enough on screen both visually and in the script to keep the audience engaged. Visually breath-taking and cleverly plotted, Monsoon Shootout represents a new, more adult brand of thriller coming out of India today and can be counted as a terrific introduction to independent Indian cinema.

BOMBAY TALKIES directors Karan Johar, Dibakar Banerjee, Zoya Akhtar, Anurag Kashyap Comprising four short films, this anthology celebrates 100 years of Indian cinema by bringing together some of its brightest stars both on and behind the screen.

Although the four stories are unrelated, they all touch upon the lives of ordinary India and how these lives were touched by the movies. The film is a celebration of Indian cinema but also a place to celebrate the birth of the new and independent Indian film: the directors, not content with being merely nostalgic, also sow some of their hopes and desires for the industry they love working in.

Anurag Kashyap and Dibakar Banerjee deliver the strongest segments with the stories of a struggling actor (Nawazuddin Siddiqui again!) and a man (Veneet Kumaar) trying to fulfil his father’s dying wish. Whilst the other segments are not as strong as these two, there’s no doubt as to how much passion and love has been poured into this project.

A love-letter and a critique, Bombay Talkies is one of the year’s best Indian films – full of emotion and delight, any fan of Hindi cinema should seek this gem out.

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B. A. Pass director Ajah Bahl A stunning neo-noir, B.A. Pass represents a benchmark for independent cinema in India, tackling a hitherto unseen subject: the sexual power plays between man and women and their consequences.

Mukesh, a fresh out of college boy, is seduced by the older Aunty and she slowly changes him. However the consequences of their actions will prove to be both frightening and unexpected for them both.

Shadab Kamal is spot-on as Mukesh – the mixture of youthful naiveté and unbridled desire going hand in hand whilst Shilpa Shukla as Sarika Aunty smoulders, sizzles AND frightens in the role of a woman who has decided to take the reins in hand.

B. A. Pass does not pull any punches: like its Hollywood counterparts, the tragedies that are visited on the characters are natural occurrences of their actions: nothing feels forced or unnecessary.

Clocking in at 90 minutes, B.A. Pass proves that noir is more than alive and kicking in India. A must-see.

PUNE 52 director Nikhil Mahajan Representing one of the rare examples of Marathi cinema on UK screens, Pune 52 also has the distinction of being as classic an example of noir as you could wish for.

Private Detective Amar (Girish Kulkarni) spends his time chasing adulterous wives while his wife Prachi (Sonali Kulkarni) wants him to be something more than just a cheap private eye. When Amar finds himself embroiled in the case of Neha (Sai Tamhankar) his personal life and his private desire clash in an unexpected manner – setting the scene for a tragic showdown.

Set in the early 90s, during the dramatic finance reforms which rocked India, Nikhil Mahajan’s film may suffer from an over-talkative script but his grasp of noir principles and the way with which they’re applied to the Indian setting is never anything less than impressive.

Both a beautiful example of the genre and a breath of fresh of air for those looking for a break from the usual Bollywood fare, Pune 52 is intriguing, intelligent and a sign of great things to come from this unusual director.

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I Like

To Watch

"When was the last time you saw a movie that really meant something to you?"

Tara (Lindsay Lohan) The Canyons Two heavyweights of 1970s Hollywood have new erotic thrillers out, both released straight to video on demand. But what do Paul Schrader’s The Canyons and Brian De Palma’s Passion have to say about sex, entertainment and the state of cinema in the technological age? words by David Hall

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ow the dust has settled and Paul Schrader’s kickstarter-funded neo noir The Canyons is actually out (through US VoD) many critics and commentators are reading it as a straight death-of-cinema tract; portraying a Hollywood that stopped caring about art long ago and now trades exclusively in lifestyle distraction and multi-platform entertainment. The slasher film that rich-kid producer Christian ( James Deen) is purported to be making clearly interests him not one iota – it isn’t even afforded a film-within-film homage a’la De Palma’s ‘Coed Frenzy’ from Blow Out (1981) – and Christian’s personal preoccupations lie in what sex he can shoot on his mobile phone. Its power players live second screen lives – cosseted, meandering around opulent apartments, connecting online and via social media; exhausted and wary of any human transaction other than fucking and four-ways. The shut-down movie

theatres that open the film (oddly resonant of those cinema based John Hurt voiced piracy ads by way of The Last Picture Show) hammer the point home – as does Tara’s (Lindsay Lohan) above quote when she discusses her ennui with the industry with a friend.

Lohan’s Tara is yoked to Christian; a sociopathic producer with an obsessive protectiveness of her and the sexually hedonistic lifestyle they lead. Ryan (Nolan Gerard Funk) is a hot young actor desperate for a lead role who, with Tara’s help, has the prime role in Christian’s latest venture. But Christian’s surveillance-like tendencies are revealing there may be to Tara and Ryan’s connection than meets the eye.

What makes The Canyons really interesting (as opposed to ‘good’) is the canny use of Lohan and Deen as well as the attempt to make a 21st century noir that deals with the fact secrecy and cover-up (so long the mainstays of the genre) are no longer part of the deal. How do you shoot a noir story at time when

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technology and has all but destroyed the very fundamentals of noir? In The Canyons every transaction is played out through technology. In a world where no one can really have secrets anymore how can you build a noir around the fact that everyone is so easily findable; a few clicks away and brazenly giving up vast amounts of personal info? That the film doesn’t really successfully pull this off doesn’t even matter. In its own lo-fi way Schrader and co writer Bret Easton Ellis’ project is the first TMZ era noir and – even in its flattest, most disengaged passages – there is a spark of life. The Canyon’s not-so-secret weapon of course is Lindsey Lohan. While Deen’s performance is entirely credible, it is Lohan – whose private life has always been messily public – with her bruised Ann Margaret like vulnerability and warmth, who lends humanity to this cold and downbeat meditation.

And what of Passion, Brian De Palma’s return to the psychosexual terrain that bore fruit to his most outlandishly creative and sexually charged works; like Dressed to Kill and Body Double? It too pays lip service to g4 technology and YouTube (!) but where The Canyons feels like a film messily trying to connect with the age we live in, De Palma’s is an oddly chaste thriller with a few modern tech trappings. And while The Canyons doesn’t exactly offer ground-breaking, cutting edge insight (Ellis’ characters inhabit the same

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moral vacuum they always did and still speak the same way), De Palma’s oddly perfunctory helming of Passion has the air of a once hip granddad nipping into La Senza on his lunch break and coming out with something a bit naff and unarousing.

Christine (Rachel McAdams) is the head of a chilly Berlin-based modern advertising agency; a ruthless exploiter of other’s ideas and a bisexual predator with a taste for kinky sex (naturally) and power play. When timid assistant Isabelle (Noomi Rapace, in a cringingly uncomfortable performance) brings a ‘funky’ idea for an ass-cam (!) to the table, McAdams swipes the concept wholesale – repackaging it as her wheeze for corporate kudos. Isabelle’s thoughts inevitably turn to revenge. I won’t reveal anymore about the film’s tricky, labyrinthine plot except to say it takes an age to get going (there’s a lot of uninspired bitchy corporate dialogue) but the final third delivers some prime De Palma gold.

Unlike The Canyons, which aims for a modernist take on neo noir, Passion is resolutely old school. Not that this is a problem per se but De Palma’s treatment is – by his own standards – tepid and bloodless. A remake of the 2010 French thriller Love Crime, the hope was that the old master would add some spice to what was a relatively unmemorable original. But the first half of the film is relatively so sterile that by the

“Having spent a lifetime absorbing Antonioni, Argento and Hitchcock to inform his own ground-breaking and visionary aesthetic, De Palma is now explicitly homaging himself (something he started doing in Body Double). Which in its own way I guess is rather post-modern and meta.”

time the hoped-for histrionics (split screen murder sequences, ear-splitting Pino Donaggio score) kick in you’ve almost forgotten you are watching a film by the man who made Dressed to Kill. By the end of Passion the most fascinating realisation is that, having spent a lifetime absorbing Antonioni, Argento and Hitchcock to inform his own ground-breaking and visionary aesthetic, De Palma is now explicitly homaging himself (something he started doing in Body Double). Which in its own way I guess is rather post-modern and meta.

Passion isn’t a terrible movie, but it’s the first De Palma thriller to feel truly unnecessary. The madness of Body Double, Raising Cain or his underrated Femme Fatale seems a long way off.

If The Canyons is an intriguing funeral for a certain kind of cinema then De Palma’s feels like the end of a different kind of movie. Like the Schrader film it involves sexual power play within the confines of a rarefied industry and uses technology to advance the storyline. Schrader has long been out in the cold as far as the Hollywood execs are concerned but a $30m thriller with De Palma at the helm is something that would’ve been on the slate for any US studio up until very recently. Not anymore. Like The Canyons, Passion was bankrolled by non-Hollywood money and although the gulf in budgets is sizeable, the only way you’re going to be watching either film any time soon, is on the ‘second screen’ of a TV, laptop or portable device – not a movie theatre.

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Policier of truth Olivier Marchal Police inspector turned filmmaker Olivier Marchal brings tangible reality to his procedural French dramas. Evrim Ersoy investigates

words by Evrim Ersoy

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orn as an emulation of Hollywood’s finest film noir, the French ‘film policier’ elevated the genre to high art while its Tinseltown progenitor slowly lost interest in nocturne-dwelling cops and robbers tales.

From Rene Clement’s Plein soleil in the 60s to JeanPierre Melville’s Le Cercle Rouge in the 70s – to Claude Miller’s Garde a vue and Alexandre Arcady’s Le grande pardon in the 80s – countless directors have worked within the genre, gently riffing on stereotypes and playing variations on well-worn tunes. Currently at work within French cinema, uniquely combining personal experience with a distinct understanding of film, Olivier Marchal is one name that stands out from all the rest.

Born in Talence, a southwest commune near Bordeaux, in 1958, Marchal opted to pursue police work over inheriting the reins of his family’s bakery business. Rising

through the ranks, he became an inspector within the crime squad; on the side, he pursued an additional passion and took acting lessons. Dispirited by the violence he witnessed within the department, he resigned and found himself first within the terrorist squad and later joining the police department of the 13th arrodissement of Paris.

While taking acting lessons at the Conservatory of Dramatic Arts, he finally got his first role as an inspector in the 1988 film Let Sleeping Cops Lie. Acting throughout the 90s in short films and TV series, Marchal began to parlay his police experience into writing episodes of popular French crime shows; at this point, his film career began to truly take off. His 2002 directorial debut Gangsters follows Franck Chaievski and Nina Delgado, two undercover detectives of a French special force attempting to identify corrupt members of the Paris Police Force. Franck pretends to be a gangster while Nina

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poses as his prostitute girlfriend; the heat is on when Franck is implicated in a violent diamond robbery involving a missing briefcase and brought in for interrogation.

Like the world it depicts, Gangsters is a brutal film: it’s loud, abrasive and unpleasant – there’s a very thin line between the heroes and the villains. The dialogue between the cops reeks of real life: they complain of low wages, discuss their schedule over endless cigarettes, and lose their tempers with suspects. What differentiates Marchal from his contemporaries is his ability to get under the skin of his characters – call it a familiarity, call it an understanding –whenever his characters speak on screen, there’s an incredible believability to them. His creations consistently have dimension, complexity and soul.

If Gangsters is an introduction to the world of Marchal, his sophomore effort takes tentative steps towards maturity. 2004’s 36 Quai des Orfèvres concerns itself with two cops seeking promotion – Leo Vrinks and Denis Klein. When the police force finds itself befuddled by a gang committing violent robberies without leaving any real evidence, the two cops see their chance to get promoted by solving the case. However, their ambition also signals their downfall and as the two resort to ever-increasingly desperate measures, grave consequences await all involved. Boasting not only a killer script but also a

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stunning cast (Daniel Auteuil AND Gerard Depardieu as Messrs. Vrinks and Klein respectively, as well as some of the best French character actors around), 36 is policier at its best. Even a muddled third act and a limp ending cannot hide the brilliance of Marchal’s writing.

Take for example the opening sequence in which masked men on a motorcycle steal a sign from the side of a police station. Marchal manages to turn the tables, cleverly revealing that the so-called criminals are in fact coppers preparing for a retirement party for one of their colleagues. It’s Marchal’s attention to detail which takes film beyond an average thriller. Petty competition between the leads is explored thoroughly via one-upmanship during the briefing scenes. The logical and tragic conclusion of such reckless behaviour displayed allows Marshcal to portray these cops as they are: ruthless, brutal, flawed and human.

In 2008’s MR 73, Marshcal turns his lens on a lone wolf figure – a police detective obsessed with catching the one (killer) who got away. Daniel Auteuil plays Louis Scheineder – a discredited alcoholic police officer who seems determined to waste the remainder of his days being a laughing stock. However, the release of serial killer Charles Subra by the parole board shakes him out of his stupor and convinces him that the villain will be going

“Although his storytelling is less than pitch perfect, his characters are so compelling that the audience finds itself lost within the rich, gritty world of these beautifully flawed figures. ” after the daughter of one of his victims, affording the opportunity for redemption. From the very start Marchal portrays Schneider as a tragic figure: clichés abound, but Marchal uses them to such powerful effect that it’s hard not to care. Schneider’s first act on screen is to hijack a bus at gunpoint to take him home; the loss of his wife and daughter has left him so broken that none of the complexities of law apply to him. It is when he senses the danger that he really comes alive. Watching Auteuil shake the alcoholic stupor for a different sort of alcoholic obsession, his little tics, his gestures, continually bring to the fore Marchal’s keen eye for human detail; it’s clear he’s drawing from a wealth of personal empirical observation.

Stepping back to the small screen, Marchal’s next project – TV series Braquo – changed the trajectory of his career completely. Upon first glance the programme is yet another police drama. However, Marchal’s writing is so close to reality that the show became a success not only with the general public but also amongst police officers.

Cops purportedly hung posters of the show’s characters in their locker room, identifying with his realistic characterizations. The series became one of the most successful programmes to ever run on French TV and still continues to amaze to this day.

Marchal’s most recent project – 2011’s Les Lyonnais

– shows an interesting twist on what he’s been doing up until this point, focusing instead on a gang based in the south of France rather than on his usual coppers. These aging gangsters, who live by as strict a code of loyalty as their cop counterparts, find themselves having to leave retirement to take care of one of their old friends.

Portraying the gangsters with an unfailing sense of pride and loyalty, Marchal depicts men raised in poor gypsy camps who retained their dignity and honour even throughout their notorious criminal careers. The conflict between principles and loyalty occupies an important part in the script here. If the cops of Marchal’s films are disenchanted and poor, the gangsters are equally troubled.

Surrounded by a new generation who do not understand their code of ethics, they try to somehow keep the peace in their surroundings.

Olivier Marchal is one of the most exciting figures to emerge from French cinema in the past 30 years. Although his storytelling is less than pitch perfect, his characters are so compelling that the audience finds itself lost within the rich, gritty world of these beautifully flawed figures. Drawing from a lifetime of experience, Marchal’s finger on the pulse of the crime beat has afforded him an uncanny ability to create art imitating life. Film policier is, indeed, alive and kicking.

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Masters of Cinema

The Tarnished Angels In 1957, the king of Hollywood melodrama Douglas Sirk brought William Faulkner’s unloved aviation novel Pylon to the screen. Robert Makin discovers the otherworldly charms of The Tarnished Angels words by Robert Makin

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ublished in 1935 – and sandwiched in between the more revered and seminal Light In August (1932) and Absalom, Absalom! (1936) – William Faulkner’s aviation novel Pylon is still thought of as a lesser work, a cathartic but misguided attempt at mainstream fiction that crumbles under the weight of his lionized classics The Sound And The Fury (1929) and As I Lay Dying (1930).

Due to the controversial sexual dynamics between the lead characters and Faulkner’s raw and unflinching depiction of sordid carnival life, it was pretty much a given that Pylon would escape being optioned for a big screen adaptation. That is until 1957 when director Douglas Sirk, screenwriter George Zuckerman, and producer Albert Zugsmith created The Tarnished Angels, turning what is commonly referred to as Faulkner’s most flawed novel into what he felt was the greatest cinematic interpretation of his written work.

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There was something within the pages of Pylon that resonated deeply with Douglas Sirk, something he couldn’t shake off. From his earliest days as a filmmaker it was a story that he constantly considered for his next project but was always forced to put onto the back burner.

Born in Hamburg in 1900 to Danish parents Hans Detlaf Sierck arrived in America in 1941, after escaping Nazi-ruled Germany, to become Douglas Sirk – the king of Hollywood melodrama. Although All That Heaven Allows (1955) Written On The Wind (1956), A Time To Love And A Time To Die (1958), and Imitation Of Life (1959) have become his most celebrated works, his Hollywood output is surprisingly eclectic.

Sirk would embrace a number of genres before settling on the domestic tragedies for which he would become renowned. These include Personal Column (1947), a London-set film noir starring Lucille Ball on the trail of a serial killer, the curiously titled war film Mystery Submarine

(1950), and the Samuel Fuller-penned crime thriller Shockproof (1949).

But the one film that must raise a few highbrows has to be Taza, Son Of Cochise (1954), a 3-D western starring Rock Hudson as an Apache. This is an entry in Sirk’s creative output that seems to have been skirted over by most film scholars when appraising his career, and I always delight in coming across such moments of sublime ridiculousness when it involves someone so highly praised and respected.

Although commercially successful Sirk’s clutch of mid to late fifties melodramas were initially dismissed by serious critics as mainstream fodder with very little redeeming qualities, often regarded as a kind of cinematic equivalent of a Mills & Boon novel and the primary inspiration for insipid TV soap operas.

It wasn’t until the 1960s when, championed by the likes of Jean-Luc Godard, Sirk gained artistic credibility as his films found a new appreciative audience who were convinced that, beneath the Hollywood sheen was subversive social commentary reflecting intellectual ideals and a heavily symbolic and meticulously controlled visual style.

Sirk reflects a particular approach and pragmatic work ethic towards filmmaking, a belief that if you have complete conviction and respect for the genre you’re working within, no matter how seemingly lowbrow, you can subvert mainstream conventions to express your own intellectual ideas and artistic inclinations. It is a philosophical legacy that could easily take into account directors such as Stanley Kubrick, Monte Hellman, Jack Hill, and David Lynch.

Basically when you’re watching a Sirk movie there’s the distinct feeling that something else is going on beneath the surface and The Tarnished Angels is a perfect example, with one of the more humorous recurring motifs involving clearly visible phrases and signs. During a funeral wake in a French restaurant the phrase “chacun a son gout” (“there’s no accounting for taste”) is plainly seen painted upon a room arch. When struggling journalist Burke Devlin (Rock Hudson) is verbally sparring with his editor there’s barely a moment when one of the many signs hanging in the newspaper office that read “Is it interesting?” isn’t in shot floating above their heads.

Set in New Orleans, The Tarnished Angels follows the exploits of alcoholic hack Burke and his attempts to find a sensational story packed with drama and pathos. It’s a quest that leads him to The Flying Shumanns, a dysfunctional family unit of daredevil pilots who race planes and perform stunts for hungry carnival crowds. Roger Shumann (Robert Stack) is the star of the show, an emotionally callous WW1 hero addicted to the thrills of flying who will stop at nothing to win the constantly hazardous pylon races. LaVerne Shumann (Dorothy Malone) is his beautiful, mysterious and constantly debased wife. Jiggs ( Jack Carson) is the faithful mechanic who holds a flame for LaVerne and worships flying ace Roger. Jack Shumann is LaVerne’s young son whose father could be either Jiggs or Roger. Completely enthralled by their unconventional lifestyle and moral code, and enraptured by LaVerne, Burke indivertibly becomes instrumental in their downfall.

On the other hand it could quite easily be perceived as

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a theological supernatural fable with elements of Greek tragedy and B-Movie Sci-Fi. After all, the producer was Albert Zugsmith who was also responsible for The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) and Sex Kittens Go To College (1960).

The original title Pylon refers to the metal pyramid structures erected to signify the triangular course around which barnstorming pilots would race. But the word pylon derives from the symmetrical columns that would often form the gateway to ancient Egyptian temples that were used for various rituals that signified re-creation, rebirth and the perpetual circle of life, and the idea of pylons forming a gateway to sanctuary and enlightenment was later adopted by Christians when building cathedrals. The circle of life and existence is also represented by the rapidly rotating airplane fairground ride that’s constantly being ridden by the young Jack Shumann.

The title The Tarnished Angels gives the impression of heavenly, otherworldly creatures that have been spiritually stained, corroded by their time on Earth and earthly desires.

In one scene “Devlin” refers to them as “four visitors from a strange, faraway planet”. In another scene Devlin explains

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to his editor: “They’re not human beings, they couldn’t turn those pylons like they do if they had human blood and they wouldn’t dare if they had human brains. Burn them and they don’t even holler, scratch one and it’s not even blood they bleed.”

Could it be that the emotionally detached Roger Shumann is in fact an otherworldly being, an angel fallen from grace and banished to earth, forced to supplement his loss of wings with aviation, desperate to return home, back to his own dimension. The closer he gets to death, the closer he feels to the place where he truly belongs. Only after he has sacrificed himself in order to save other humans, only after he has accepted the love of those around him and come to terms with the human condition, is he finally allowed to enter heaven, ultimately through death on Earth.

His body is never found, leaving an old poster, an icon to be worshipped in his memory.

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The Tarnished Angels is available on August 26th courtesy of Eureka Entertainment. www.eurekavideo.co.uk

“I’ve got the story; I’ve got it in my aching heart.

Do want to know how I got it? By crawling through the dirt and filth and muck and smut. By finding truth and beauty where you’d never expect to find it.”

Burke Devlin (Rock Hudson)

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In Defence...

The Neverland Charms of Moonwalker

words by Emily Kausalik

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hen I was a kid I felt like Michael Jackson and I had a lot in common. His birthday was in August; mine was in August. He was an international pop sensation; I would someday be an international pop sensation. He could spin around really fast and not fall over; I was sure I could do that once I got a little bigger. I used to listen to Thriller on my Walkman and imagine myself dancing and singing along in Michael’s place in my mind’s eye, moonwalking from verse to chorus and wearing fantastic, sequined outfits with anti-gravity shoes.

I think every child of the 80s had fantasies of what life would be like as Michael Jackson. With all the tales of shrines to Elizabeth Taylor, Bubbles the Monkey, building himself a ranch called ‘Neverland’… what little kid didn’t think most of these things were crazy and totally awesome?

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Michael Jackson’s 1988 film Moonwalker is the epitome, the quintessential embodiment of all things Michael Jackson and all things 80s. Its various vignettes loosely tied together by a thread of a plot is reminiscent to The Beatles’ 1965 film Help, but with the glossy, dazzling veneer of the 80s. And because it was the 80s, Jackson made no attempt to hide that this movie was made to extol him.

The first ten minutes of the film aren’t exposition in the traditional sense; they’re ten minutes of an anthology meant to fill the viewer in on Michael’s past exploits. I don’t think this happens because the filmmakers were concerned viewers wouldn’t know Michael’s backstory. Honestly, who doesn’t know about the Jackson 5 and his humanitarian award from Ronald Reagan? What this anthology segment does is remind us exactly how fantastic and strange and wonderful 80s Michael Jackson really is. He could dance the robot better than a

“I don’t know if there is any better textual object to represent the excess, the madness, the self-absorption, and the social growing pains of 1980s America. ” robot, he could sing sweeter and with more soul than people three times his age, he could wear a sequin-covered glove with more authority and whimsy than any other entertainer on Earth.

I don’t know if there is any better textual object to represent the excess, the madness, the self-absorption, and the social growing pains of 1980s America. We wanted it all in the 1980s, and Moonwalker wanted it all too. So it put it all in, because why not? With Reagan’s War on Drugs, Hollywood filmmakers couldn’t resist tapping into the social phobia of drug use. Bugs are scary too, so why not make bugs and drugs a combined metaphor for scary, bad things? With anime series Voltron and Doctor Who hitting American airwaves during the same decade, why not make Michael Jackson into a giant, glowing, outer space robot that comes from a lucky star to save us all from forced heroin injections?

Moonwalker gives you every single thing you could possibly want in a piece of 80s media: a chase scene involving Claymation fans and a dance-off with a Roger Rabbit-styled version of MJ, a Peter Gabriel-esque music video, Joe Pesci, an extended dance sequence with ladies in flapper dresses and gents in pinstripe suits shooting tommy guns, and a story segment with a plot pulled from a D.A.R.E. pamphlet. What ties all of these things together? Michael Jackson, of course. And right when you think you have grasped the artistic message behind the madness, he turns into a giant Cyberman-Voltron-Transformer hybrid to fight a heroin-injecting militia mad man who just wants to ‘get everyone high, man.’

And of course the cherry on top of the proverbial cupcake: a final performance of John Lennon’s Come Together, a simple

and brilliant reminder that Michael Jackson owned 50 per cent of the rights to nearly every Beatles song. Because if this movie is about anything, it’s about Michael Jackson.

By the end of the movie it all makes perfect sense: Michael could dance the robot so well because he, himself, is a robot.

His dancing was magnetic because, again, he’s a robot. And not just any robot: an outer space robot. And where does his power come from? Like Tinkerbell, it comes from kids believing in him.

Moonwalker is probably the most underrated contribution Michael Jackson made to popular culture, but may very well be one of the most important. And no, I’m not being facetious.

A film that cobbles together anthology-style reminiscing of a still-popular pop artist, aurally and visually gloats about his prowess, and has him turn into a robot saviour to rescue young children from an evil drug dealer is like the nexus point of all things 80s. Miami Vice, MTV, and the War on Drugs rolled into a single textual object.

While Moonwalker may make little sense in a filmic context due to excess and very clear attention deficit disorder, it makes up for it by so valiantly putting those things on display.

The narcissism is tangible. Moonwalker makes Michael Jackson exponentially fantastic and strange; truly a being beyond human comprehension with a mastery of physics and gravity unlike any other creature known to mankind. And beyond that, watching a group of incredibly well-trained child actors recreate his iconic Bad video is worth the price of admission alone.

And also provides a visual outlet for our childhood dreams. Or at least mine.

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The Canyons cert (TBC)

director Paul Schrader writer Bret Easton Ellis starring Lindsay Lohan, James Deen, Nolan Gerard Funk

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Review by Jordan McGrath

release date TBC

It seems the attraction of car-crash cinema is still rife within both the film-going public and film critic circles. However, there’s something unique about The Canyons, the new film from Taxi Driver scribe Paul Schrader and acclaimed novelist Bret Easton Ellis, in the fact that their film had been deemed a car-crash well before the audience had even buckled their seatbelt. Many went in with the simple question; ‘How bad can it be?’ not even considering there might actually be some genuinely decent filmmaking on show. Subsequently, The Canyons has quickly become a helpless piñata for critics to line-up and take their swing at.

Casting rehab yoyo Lindsay Lohan and pornstar Lothario James Deen as your leading couple will undoubtedly raise a few eyebrows. However, people seemed to treat it as novelty gossip rather than explore or even discuss what motivations the director had to go in the directions he did. The thing is, The Canyons isn’t a great film. To be honest, I would even have to stretch my definition of ‘good’ to include it but to disregard it completely, like some have done, is utterly mystifying. Schrader and Ellis do have something to say here and at times, it’s very well worth listening to.

We follow Christian ( James Deen), a trustfund rich kid and major financier of a soon-to-be shot hack n’ slash horror film who, when meeting his newly cast leading man Ryan (Nolan Gerard Funk) for the first time, spends most of their conversation flicking through his phone to find an individual that he and his girlfriend Tara (Lindsay Lohan) can take home that night to join in on their sexual exploits. The very definition of pleasure before business. Unbeknownst to him, Ryan and Tara are ex-lovers who have since rekindled their relationship, sparking a love-triangle that can only end one way… badly.

On paper, it’s a sultry erotic thriller with no delusions grander than its B-movie tropes will allow, playing with all the sex, nudity and bloodlust you’d expect from films of a similar ilk. It’s clunky, the performances aren’t great (not bad though) and it revels in leaning on the stylistic vigour of its director. But what it is underneath, more importantly, is a commentary on the death of cinema. Not so much the theatre experience as the art-form. From a director who’s worked almost exclusively within the independent scene, it’s feels like a telling expose of the end of integrity and the rise of faceless commerciality as we’re subjected to a story of bastardised ‘creativity’ in all its soap opera style glory.

The fact that a potential film hangs like a McGuffin over proceedings, as these abhorrent characters deal with their burning loins and differing LA lifestyles, cements Schrader’s voice. You sense he feels a ridiculousness that these individuals have anything to do with the industry he adores.

And you understand that, although obviously twisted to fit the film’s genre, there’s a shred of truth in his words that this ‘don’t-give-a-fuck-justmake-me-money’ attitude is taking over Hollywood’s independent market.

What Maisie Knew cert (15)

release date 23rd August

Review by Kelsey Eichhorn

I make it a point not to read other critics reviews before I’ve written my own. Yet with What Maisie Knew that proved a difficult task; there’s been a steady buzz surrounding the re-interpretation of the Henry James classic and from the whispers that have reached my ear it seems I’m about to buck the trend.

I really wanted to like this film. And perhaps it suffered from over-anticipation on my part, but the truth is I didn’t like it. Nor did I dislike it; in fact I had what’s probably the worst of all responses to any form of art: I simply had no response to the film at all.

Perhaps that’s unfair – there were certainly scenes of child negligence that made me shake my head in disbelief. There were sun-kissed sequences of tenderness that brought a reassured smile.

Child actor Onata Aprile in her debut turned out a performance the strength and consistency of which I’ve not seen in years and her wide doe-eyes are enough to melt any heart. Yet one performance and some soft indie-lighting does not make a cohesive film, and the truth is What Maisie Knew is a cinematically beautiful film with a tried and tested story that ultimately lets itself down.

In similar fashion to James’ novel, David Siegel and Scott McGehee’s film adaptation aligns its audience directly with the perspective of its young protagonist for the duration of the tale. And the effect is utterly mesmerizing at first – clever camera angles and an inspired fluidity allows the camera to subtly observe Maisie’s response to her world while simultaneously recreating her own perspective. As her utterly self-absorbed parents descend into yet another caustic screaming match, the camera roams seemingly idly to focus on a stuffed animal, or the city lights, or a seemingly mundane piece of furniture as a wise-beyond-heryears Maisie tries her best to shut out the chaos.

But it soon becomes apparent that the aesthetic effect is simply that – an effect, a surface distraction, a beautiful façade covering a film with very little substance. There is infinite potential for complexity in the characters of Julianne Moore and Steve Coogan, Maisie’s erstwhile parents, yet each is so painfully one-dimensional the film becomes boring and predictable.

The young and beautiful pair who play their respective narrative foils, Alexander Skarsgard and newcomer Joanna Vanderham, are equally predictable and so overtly saccharine watching them almost gave me an actual toothache. Even Maisie herself, a character you can’t help but love, doesn’t have quite enough depth and complexity to uphold the poignancy of the story.

While there was little about What Maisie Knew to offend, there was little to excite either.

For such an inherently expressive and emotional medium, the cinematic rendering failed to capture the essence of the tale, such that it left a hollow shell of a narrative. Visually stunning, but hollow nonetheless.

directors Scott McGehee, David Siegel writers Nancy Doyne, Caroll Cartwright starring Onata Aprile ,Julianne Moore, Steve Coogan, Alexander Skarsgård

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Review by David Hall

Ain’t Them Bodies Saints

release date 6th September

cert (15)

director David Lowery writer David Lowery starring Rooney Mara, Casey Affleck, Ben Foster 58

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Texas outlaws and young lovers on the run after a bank robbery goes wrong. A violent act that tears hopeful and naïve dreams apart. A prison stretch followed by a jailbreak and a good-hearted cop who wants to do the right thing, torn between the law and matters of the heart. To make such overtly familiar material fresh and invigorating isn’t easy; especially when your narrative and setting echoes so strongly the debut of one of the most revered filmmakers of the last forty years. But David Lowery’s Badlands-like melodrama is durable and strong; built to last. Lowery may be looking up at the stars (in the magic hour specifically) but his feet are planted on the ground in terms of building and sustaining character mood and motivation.

This aint no Mallick knockoff, it’s got its own beating heart and rhythm.

Bob Muldoon and Ruth Guthrie (Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara) are the young lovers, separated by a disastrous heist that ends with Bob incarcerated and Ruth left at home, holding the baby.

Bobs subsequent escape sets god-fearing Sherriff Patrick Wheeler (Ben Foster) on his tail; Wheeler has investment on two levels – he was injured in the robbery and he carries a torch for Ruth, who he believes would benefit from his love and stability. An intense emotional triangle is set in motion, one, which cannot possibly end well for all involved.

Lyrical is an overused word but one that really applies to Saints. Lowery has captured a genuine poetry here, mining an essence that runs through so much classic American mythology – from Faulkner to McCarthy, Johnny Cash through to Bonnie “Prince” Billy. This is American folklore amplified. Mara, Affleck and the ever impressive Ben Foster give committed (and teary-eyed) performances as the doomed trio. The Texas setting is unspecified time wise – though it is most likely the 1970s. At times the film seems over overwhelmingly sincere but there is an ageless feel to proceedings and a simplicity and directness in the story telling. Lowery keeps things pared–down and stripped back with almost no backstory – a decision that may have been a budgetary one but it suits the film just fine. Lowery perhaps focuses on the atmospherics more than the story sometimes and there will be few surprises unless you’ve happened to miss every lovers-o- the run noir of the last sixty years, but this is persuasive, classical stuff from a new, raw talent.

Ain’t Them Bodies Saints must be one of the most exquisitely shot films of 2013, with graceful 35mm work from Bradford Young and Daniel Hart’s minimal, evocative score adding to the mood and intensity.While these badlands may owe some clear debts to a succession of predecessors, the emotional landscape is Lowery’s own creation. An impressive work and – perhaps – a future American classic.

Review by Jordan McGrath

There a moments in Lovelace, Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s new biopic of the once pinup queen of porn, that are genuinely upsetting.

Tough to watch, grizzly scenes that make you want to avert your eyes to protect yourself from the agony and abuse on screen which, ironically it would seem, many people did during the real-life events the film depicts; dirty secrets in a dirty industry where the cash-cow of opportunity is worth more than the cash-cow itself.

It’s evident early on that Lovelace has an agenda, a single goal which it aims to achieve within a relatively sprite 93 minute runtime – to expose the truth. Or more importantly one version of the truth, going out of its way – rather bluntly – to tell you; ‘This is REALLY what happened’. We follow Linda’s (Amanda Seyfried) journey from humble beginnings through her rise to fame; how she met her husband Chuck (Peter Sarsgaard), the creation of Deep Throat and its instant success.

Where Lovelace excels is in its representation of perceived perception. It delivers what people would think to be her story then turns everything on its head, raising the curtain on the behind-thescenes reality.

In Lovelace, Linda suffers a life of domestic abuse and exploitation and is forcefully thrust into an industry that she didn’t want, a helpless, scared rag-doll surrounded by a world of angry men. Espstein and Friedman’s choice to keep this a low-key affair, to not get too wrapped up in the cultural and societal impact of Deep Throat, but to keep a firm grip on its well-structured scope is a real positive. It’s a personal story with personal consequences, the undiluted raw approach a jolting addition to the sub-genre. It 70s porn setting may, stylistically, draw similarities to Boogie Nights but don’t let that fool you, this story of fame is painted with an entirely different brush. And Seyfried’s performance sells it, as the soul of the piece her vulnerability and pain makes your heart ache. This is a superbly pitched and composed performance and Seyfried’s wonderful ability to emote so subtly, her eyes pools of anguish as her smile lies to the world, gives the film the essential emotional anchor it needs.

The main underlining issue though – and not to let the male characters within the piece off, they’re putrid humans who do putrid things – is that Linda is presented as such an unwilling victim that it becomes a little hard to believe. Sarsgaard’s character, however brilliant his performance, devolves into nothing more than a one-dimensional monster. Strangely, in a way, the more distressing the film becomes the more it loses its dynamic edge.

Given the film’s original goal, many would argue it delivers exactly what it sets out to achieve. As an example of the directors succeeding in their artistic vision, I can applaud Lovelace but as a completely fulfilling narrative, I can’t respond with the same positivity.

Lovelace

release date 23rd August

cert (18)

directors Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman writer Andy Bellin starring Amanda Seyfried, Peter Sarsgaard, Juno Temple, Sharon Stone

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Blue Jasmine cert (15)

director Woody Allen writer Woody Allen starring Cate Blanchett, Alec Baldwin, Sally Hawkins

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Review by Luke Richardson

release date 27th September

Woody Allen heads back stateside to tackle wallstreet yuppies, the financial crisis and all its maddening aftermath with Blue Jasmine. A psychiatrist’s wet dream, it’s also the finest film the New York virtuoso has delivered in twenty years; perhaps ever.

When her philandering business tycoon husband Hal (Alec Baldwin) is caught swindling money and thrown in the slammer, Park Avenue pearl Jasmine (Cate Blanchett) starts to lose her cool. Emotionally exhausted, she stuffs her Louis Vuitton cases with the other exorbitant goods she managed to swipe passed the bailiffs and jets off to San Francisco. She moves in with her adopted sister Ginger (Sally Hawkins), a humble store clerk also trying to make-ends-meet after a financial scam left her indigent. After so many untested years buying into her delusions of grandeur, Jasmine’s opportunity at a modest new lease of life leave her in denial; questioning her sanity and, above all, feeling very blue.

Famous as a jokester, this new, utterly brilliant film sees Woody Allen covering new ground paying homage to the master of destructive melodramas, Tennessee Williams. A Streetcar Named Desire for the 21st century, Allen attacks blue vs. white-collar hubris with acerbic wit and piquancy, while never letting the allegory burden the tortured character study at its centre.

While not as bleak as his Bergman-esque social drama Interiors, Woody takes us to some dark places here; attacking common themes of existentialism, disillusionment and familial disconnect with great vigour. It would be an exasperating watch if not for the stunning lead performance at the movie’s blackened heart. The same gifted actress who has played an elf, The Virgin Queen and Bob Dylan, Cate Blanchett proves yet again to be one of the finest, most transformative actors of her generation. From flashbacks detailing her bourgeois life of yesteryear, to her crazed rambling to herself in the street, Blanchett’s Jasmine commands the screen with a brutal, yet entrancing melancholy.

Even at her most brittle, she can never lose her regal, abstruse elegance. It’s that je ne sais quoi that makes Jasmine’s fall from grace simultaneously pitiable and enthralling.

But the good performances don’t stop there.

British star Sally Hawkins brings some Mike Leigh-style realism as the magnanimous Ginger.

Established as the yin to Jasmine’s maladjusted yang, Hawkins’ nuanced performance deftly surfaces the neurotic disillusions lying dormant beneath Ginger’s Happy-Go-Lucky veneer. Most revelatory of all, Boardwalk Empire’s Bobby Cannavale arrives on screen with effervescent ferocity as Ginger’s ‘grease monkey’ boyfriend Chili. A beer-swilling Stanley Kowalski type, he imbues the animalism of an uncouth labourer in a post-financial crisis with ripe resplendence.

Despite a mildly disappointing denouement, Allen has defied the odds with Blue Jasmine. At 77 years young, he has delivered what is not only the most vital film of his oeuvre, but an anti-heroine so florid, spunky and fascinating that she belongs on the mantle of cinema’s finest creations.

Pain and Gain

release date 30th August

cert (15)

director Michael Bay Review by David Hall

Just in case you were expecting a Bela Tarr tribute or a Rohmer-lite comedy of manners, Michael Bay’s ‘small-scale, personal, independent project’ looks and sounds very much like a Michael Bay film. In fact it may be Bay’s most jacked-up, vulgar and disreputable work yet. The real surprise is that it is also frequently very funny, pointed and undoubtedly his most aggressive, focused, self-aware and interesting film to date. It paints a picture of absolute immorality in typically lurid Bay colours and brash style; an assault on the senses that is also a corrosive portrayal of modern-day greed and stupidity. Bay has found a story that corresponds perfectly with his frame-fucking, take no prisoners aesthetic. At its best, Bay’s genuine style connects with the prevalent mood of the age; speed, intensity, winning – harder, better, faster stronger. At its worst, his inflated hyper-kinetic visual ADD too often dissipates into incoherence and brain numbing repetition. Here, reined in with a by his standards paltry budget, and ably assisted by a mostly amusing and barbed screenplay by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, he delivers a bruising, jocular satire that, while overlong, certainly offensive and very possibly hypocritical, nails the ruthless pursuit of the American dream. As Pain and Gain starts, a caption onscreen tells us; “Unfortunately, this is a true story.” The true life origins of the film are referenced throughout and usually at the most absurd and vulgar points in the narrative. In the 90s three muscle-head ex-cons (the Sun Gym Gang) kidnapped a multi-millionaire in what turned out to be a bungled crime of extortion that went horribly, brutally wrong, resulting in murder and life sentences for most of those involved. Bay and his writers play out this hideous scenario broadly for laughs which may appal many, but there is no doubt they are laughing at, not with, the knuckleheaded culprits. Bay has in the past been accused of celebrating dumbness and jocularity. Here in every way possible he degrades mocks and satirizes the pursuit of money at all cost. There’s no vilification or celebration of crime. Hyperbolic and visually vivid, Pain and Gain sees Bay moving his palette into almost pop art territory. He’s always been adept at creating overwhelming, nauseatingly garish visual landscapes and in Pain and Gain he finally has a potent script to add weight to the grotesque hyperreality. Everything feels stretched, distorted and pushed to the max. The trio of Mark Wahlberg, Anthony Mackie and Dwayne Johnson may be physically heavy but their comic-timing throughout is surprisingly nimble.

Bay’s best films have a sense of playfulness to accompany the spectacle and here, operating on a tighter budget and with compellingly awful (as in shocking not bad) material to work with, he delivers one of the biggest surprises of the year. In 2013 Bay, Harmony Korine and Sofia Coppolla have all made films about modern day excess and narcissism – who ever would’ve guessed Bay’s would turn out to be the funniest, the most intense and perhaps the most truthful?

writers Christopher Markus, Stephen McFeely starring Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson, Anthony Mackie, Tony Shalhoub

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Review by David Hall

The Great Beauty release date 6th September

cert (15)

director Paolo Sorrentino writers Paolo Sorrentino, Umberto Contarello starring Toni Servillo, Carlo Verdone, Sabrina Ferilli

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At Cannes this year two long, self-consciously grandiose films dealt in empirical excess and ennui; punctuated with lavish party sequences and an air of fin de siècle glamour. Both are about powerful men, haunted by unfulfilled promise and thwarted love. But the similarities between Baz Luhrmann’s tacky, ersatz adaptation of The Great Gatsby and this film, which may go on to become director Paulo Sorrentino’s masterpiece, end there.

If Luhrmann’s film is the disappointing entrée, Sorrentino’s is the rich cinematic menu degustation of 2013.

Jep (a performance of wry understatement and elegance from Tony Servillo) is a respected journalist and cultural critic, nearing his august years (in magnificent style); having failed to live up to the early promise of an outstanding debut novel.

As he moves nightly from dinner party to nightclub, strip club to bar, he seems utterly content and sated high on the fat of a decadent lifestyle that he still manages to sustain. But a late revelation results in him musing over a life (half ?) lived and a love lost as he faces up to his own mortality and the Great Beauty that has haunted – and eluded – him throughout his life. Has the excess of a life lived amongst socialites and the wealthy fuelled or felled his talent and promise? Does his deeper understanding of humanity and caustic wit make him less or more alive to the possibilities of love and beauty? Jep’s philosophical odyssey takes place against the backdrop of a Rome shot by with consummate mastery; a modern-day bacchanal, a city of overwhelming spiritual beauty and also glittering, gaudy, botoxed excess.

What is perhaps most remarkable about The Great Beauty is how Sorrentino juggles tonal shifts that would sink a lesser filmmaker. This film is slyly comic and surreal, celebratory and condemnatory, romantic and realist. Visually stunning and bracingly confident, Sorrentino’s film channels the grandiose baroque stylisation of Fellini without ever slipping too far into homage.

For while the ghosts of 8 ½ and La Dolce Vita are sometimes present, this is absolutely a film of its director and time. The Italians have been long masters of film spectacle and yet, even in as rich a film landscape as theirs, the vast shadows of various giants loom heavily over the cinematic culture.

But over the last couple of years, the seeds of a new Italian cinema have been flowering (think of Luca Guadagnino’s sumptuous and stately Antonioni-like I am Love) and Sorrentino, who has been steadily building an outstanding rep (the underrated This Must Be The Place briefly derailed him as a critical darling but people were wrong about that film, just you wait) indicated he could be a modern day addition to the Italian canon, a contemporary to equal the greats. With La Grande Bellazza he cements this position completely. In terms of audacity, ambition and sheer artistic brio this is as good as classical filmmaking gets. Italian excess hasn’t looked or sounded this good in decades.

Review by David Hall

Lauren Cantet is an outstanding French director whose last three films showcase a real insight into human behaviour, an ear and eye for the nuances of characterisation and – in the case of his Palme d’Or winning The Class (2008) – an intuitive knack for working with non-professionals. Quite what has happened then with Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang is something of a mystery.

Perhaps it can be traced to this being Cantet’s first English-language work and becoming lost in translation – because this overlong and earnest adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates 1950s-set bestseller about a tight-knit teenage feminist collective never quite catches fire in the ways it should, despite some impressive work from newcomers Katie Coseni and Raven Adamson.

In 1950s America Maddy (Coseni), our narrator, paints the local small town picture vividly; recounting ritual school-based humiliations and the sleazy sexual overtures of various men folk as a prelude to the formation of an all-girl gang headed up by the spiky and driven Legs (Adamson). Fuelled by pre-60s girl power and eager to empower themselves and the other girls in the town, they form their own secret society – pledging allegiance to the Foxfire cause and wreaking revenge on patriarchal society at large.

The film remains relatively tight and focused in these early passages and there is a sense that Cantet has a handle on the dynamics of this disparate bunch. But the film gets bogged down in overwritten, overwrought melodrama and a messy final act – where the girls kidnap a grisly rightwing patriarch – feels machine-tooled and obvious.

Cantet (working with co-writer Robin Campillo) is at his strongest creating mood and sustaining atmosphere. The 50s trappings are underplayed, the production design by Franckie Diago looks like it was torn straight from the pages of a LIFE magazine shoot, soundtrack choices are unexpected and the early sequences where the girls are menaced by various figures of respectable society are really potent and affecting; lending additional charge to the films’ feminist undercurrents.

It’s in the moments of high drama that the film falters badly. The variable range of acting talent is too easily exposed and the young actors are given way too much to do. This is felt particularly in the dialogue – Cantet places unwieldy swathes of Oates’ original prose into the mouths of his young performers and it sounds stilted and unconvincing.

This is actually the second screen version of Foxfire in the twenty years since the book was first published. The first, in 1996, was an Angelina Jolie vehicle which disappeared without trace. I fear that Cantet’s well-intentioned film may do the same. Though there are things to admire in the film, the Foxfire gang deserved a spikier and more incendiary director with a feel for the revolutionary elements of the narrative – and Cantet’s young cast really needed a more sympathetic and less slavishly respectful adapter of this material.

Foxfire

release date 9th August

cert (15)

director Laurent Cantet writer Robin Campillo, Laurent Cantet starring Raven Adamson, Katie Coseni, Madeleine Bisson, Claire Mazerolle

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Check out the teaser issue of CultTV Times... covering everything from NCIS to anime!

Broadcast the news – the first full issue of Cult TV Times will be available to buy soon at Culttvtimes.com Follow us on : (@CultTVTimes) for the latest news and issue updates For subscription enquiries contact: subscriptions@culttvtimes.com 64

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In the The Double Life of Frame: Véronique (1991)

words by David Hall

I

n Krzysztof Kieślowski’s La Double Vie De Véronique the lives of two identical-looking young women; Weronika and Veronique (one Polish, one French; one a singer, the other a music teacher) are mirrored throughout. Dual life experiences (the women share birthdays and a heart condition) that connect during moments of transcendence or rapture – and only once (and fleetingly) in reality.

Prior to the scene above, Weronika (the more naïve and curious of the two) has left her boyfriend behind and is travelling to Krakow to be with her sick and elderly aunt.

She meets with her father and confides in him that she feels the presence of another; that she is “not alone in the world”. As the train to Krakow moves off, Weronika dreamily gazes out at the passing landscape of her home town as the sun reflects off the train window, illuminating the carriage and bathing it in an autumnal glow. She picks up a small, clear, reflective marble and holds it up to the light.

The view through the marble flips the un-

folding countryside on its axis, inverting the view of her hometown, while small stars dance inside the orb. It’s the earliest example of one of the film’s recurring motifs; seeing the world differently – perception and worldview altered and distorted.

My first viewing of Veronique was at the Manchester Cornerhouse cinema on original release. The cinema was a haven for a budding cinephile who lived far from London. It was my first experience of Kieślowski and that viewing remains burned in the memory. Many things remain vivid; the richness of the film’s palette, its overwhelming intensity, the soaring music and, of course, the near-celestial beauty of Irene Jacob – whose luminous presence dominates almost every frame.

I was perplexed by the film’s fragmentary narrative. Veronique is a puzzle that does not give up its mysteries easily. The director apparently hated the idea of using metaphors to describe art and said; “For me, a bottle of milk is simply a bottle of milk; when it spills, it means milk’s been

spilt.” Not wanting to sound too simplistic, the image above feels the most appropriate when I think about the film; a delicate object, easily shattered, that flips the world upside down and forces the viewer to see things in a different light.

Veronique is truly an illusory work, almost supernatural at times, cinema as physical sensation; lyrical and illogical. It’s much more abstract than the director’s Three Colours trilogy. What is undeniable is the film’s insistence that there is more, both in the physical world we inhabit and the spiritual world that perplexes us.

Kieślowski is long gone (and barely spoken about these days it seems) and I’m a lot older but there’s still a part of me that views life (and film) through that glass prism. I’m still hoping to see those stars and feel there’s something (or someone) out there, higher, more powerful and knowing; that I too am not alone.

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Jordan McGrath

David Hall

Founder / Editor-in-Chief / Designer

Managing Editor

jordanmcgrath@veritefilmmag.com

davidhall@veritefilmmag.com

thanks: Contributors Elisa Armstrong Neil McGlone Evrim Ersoy Robert Makin Kelsey Eichhorn Stuart Barr Emily Kausalik Luke Richardson

Proofing James Marsh

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Image credits: Artificial Eye - 1,8,10,11,13,20,22,23, 24, 26, 28, 29, 57, 62, 63, 67 / Warner Bros - 16, 17, 60 / Paramount Pictures - 17, 61 / Orion Pictures - 19 / Film 4 - 33 / Eureka Entertainment - 50, 51, 52, 53 / The Works - 58 / Lionsgate UK - 59

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