REVIEW: Boyhood (2014)

Having just seen Lav Diaz’ ambitious but one-note attempt to capture the passing of time with Norte, The End of History, it is interesting (and possibly revealing to those who may feel that cinema is running out of new means of expression) to see another. Richard Linklater’s Boyhood is not as long but it does manage to capture the passage of time more convincingly, since it was filmed over twelve years and the characters onscreen age and change perspectives right in front of you.

It is difficult, awkward and otherwise unrewarding to attempt a plot synopsis of a film like Boyhood since it is only going to lay it out in its barest, least interesting essentials as well as highlight the film’s least exceptional qualities. The film begins in 2002 and ends in 2013, beginning with a six-year old Mason (played throughout by Ellar Coltrane) at school and ending with him on his first day of college. The film documents a childhood that morphs into the beginnings of adulthood via puberty paying particular attention to the people that try to influence Mason and the casual experiences that will make the man.

The film is not solely focussed on Mason, but addresses several different issues and storylines. Mason is not unique and even particularly interesting. The film is impressively laidback – quite a gamble considering how long it took to make – preferring instead to merely luxuriate in the many experiences, the good and the bad, that make up a life. The film is non-judgemental; allowing the audience to make its own mind up about it’s by turns directionless and passionate protagonist. The adults flit around the margins – some are frequently present, some only for a while, others in and out – but they are all fully human, thanks to great performances and a tender and perceptive focus on what really makes people tick. The characters change as time passes – a highly-strung father becomes alcoholic and abusive, a rebellious non-conformist slowly matures and embraces domesticity – but these changes never feel overly contrived or narratively or generically necessary.

Twelve years may seem like too much, even for a 165-minute film, and there is a feeling that the film is more interesting as an experiment than successful at capturing the links between the passage of time and the changing registers of a life, but the film impresses with its honesty and its warmth. And, after all, no one sees their life as an exact documentary record of the previous days, months and years (not even Proust, with his three and a half thousand page opus In Search of Lost Time). The film works like memory – recalling the most significant moments and often missing the contexts. On at least one occasion, Mason dismisses Jim (Brad Hawkins), one of his stepfathers, as a drunken asshole. This may seem unfair to us, since we witnessed, or at least noticed signs of, Jim’s slow decline through financial worries and disappointments and, possibly, post-traumatic stress (the film is too subtle and wise to give simple answers). However, the film is about perspectives and Mason, being a kid, was probably unaware of the things that the adults hide from him.

Several adults try to influence and speak for Mason throughout the film (in fact, one of the film’s major successes is that it imparts a child’s eye view and the viewer may end up viewing the kids with a kind of instinctive trust and the adults with suspicion). The film does not categorize these characters as good or bad influences. One scene between Mason and a teacher is an argument about dreams and pragmatism and will divide viewers La Chinoise-like in terms of whose side they take. Mason ultimately finds the ability and the confidence to make up his own mind, which may just be the unifying theme of the film. Mason searches and finds a voice – not a perfect or entirely mature one, but it is his own. This element of the film, as well as an ending that emphasises openness and possibility, also points to a potential Years 18-30 sequel, which I wouldn’t miss.

Like Before Midnight, Boyhood is a difficult film to review, since it is all about observations about life and relationships and because it is open enough to avoid dogmatism. There is a spirit of John Cassavetes about these films, wherein the story or even an overarching point are somewhat unnecessary and the focus is on reality, human nature and possibilities. Boyhood is packed with nuance and detail and will probably prove to be endlessly rewatchable and new. It is also specific enough to challenge other filmmakers to try their own versions of Boyhood, one that chimes more with their own experiences. If they are as successful and appealing as Linklater’s version, then they will all certainly be worth seeing.

REVIEW: Norte, The End of History (2014)

There is very little than cinema should not do – as an art form, any innovation or experiment ought to be welcomed as an attempt at finding a new means of expression. ‘Slow cinema’ is one such innovation, in which the pace of a film leaves the audience opens to experiencing the quotidian reality of the characters in the film. Put badly, it is cinema with the boring bits left in. Lav Diaz is one of the key exponents of ‘slow cinema’ and his work stretches this idea as far as many of us will comfortably go. Norte, The End of History, at 250 minutes, is one of his shortest films.

A modern re-working of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, the film, set in the northern Philippines, initially follows Fabian (Sid Lucero), a student who has dropped out of law school, having fallen victim to certain socio-political, historical and philosophical contradictions which the law cannot shed light on. He suggests the answer to the world’s problems is a revolution, a real revolution in which the activists carry out violence rather than simply talk about it. His friends do not agree, so, isolated and confused, Fabian embarks on a murderous spree, wholly misdirected and totally pointless. A poor man, Joaquin (Archie Alemania) is imprisoned for the crime, leaving his wife Eliza (Angeli Bayani) and their two children destitute. The consequences of Fabian’s actions play out over a number of years.

The length and the pace will grab the headlines but there is more to Norte, The End of History than its challenging aesthetics. It is worth mentioning, however, that the film is frequently beautiful to look at and somehow hypnotic – time ceases to matter as the film’s images somehow wash over you and you are immersed in a way that makes the drama all the more moving and the violence all the more shocking. There is a certain reality to the film, which a much shorter film could not capture so easily. The weight of Eliza’s everyday life is seen in stark detail, while Fabian’s wanderings take on a powerfully nihilistic feel. A shorter, pacier film will move from plot point to plot point, but Diaz’ film has its own special appeal in the way that he captures life playing out. It is neither exciting nor boring, it just is.

Norte, The End of History delves into the same themes as Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment albeit with a modern and specifically Asian re-reading. The film opens with a discussion of the end of history – capitalism and the West have won – and ends with the question, “What now?” For Fabian, an unfair and Godless world can be changed only by violence. His crime is pathetically misdirected and local and only manages to harm his neighbours. While it only adds to the suffering of Eliza and Joaquin, it devastates Fabian. Eliza and Joaquin have a different view of life, one of work and family and togetherness, a view of life in stark contrast to the laid-back musings of Fabian and his friends. They ultimately survive thanks to their love for each other and their ability to work their way out of their problems. Fabian, however, having got away with murder, is a broken man, wracked by quilt and yet too much of a coward to confess his crime and ensure Joaquin’s freedom. For him, the world is a cruel place and there is no such thing as justice. Equally devastatingly, he has lost any sense of his own self-worth, having become one of the lowest of the low. The film addresses moral, societal, political and philosophical questions – some specific to the Philippines and some of a global nature – and finds answers in a panoramic view of life and time.

However, the film is not without its flaws and these flaws are ultimately down to the film’s aesthetics – it is, after all, difficult to entirely divorce any question of the film’s value from its rigorous and experimental style. Lav Diaz takes 250 minutes to come to his conclusions and yet Norte, The End of History does not extend even as far as Dostoevsky’s novel and Woody Allen’s best and most thoughtful film, Crimes and Misdemeanors. The politics is fairly slight, presumably intended only as the modern-day equivalent of the semi-Nietzschean philosophy in Dostoevsky’s novel whereas the comparisons between Western capitalism with a heartless and exploitative moneylender is obvious. The film is certainly worth seeing and its hypnotic vision of everyday life is interesting and intriguing but it is difficult to feel as if anything more can be gained from this kind of filmmaking. Norte, The End of History has even been accused of being the work of a sell-out, that Diaz’ usual rigour has been watered down for commercial gain (the film is the first of Diaz’ many films to get a UK release). A greater knowledge of Diaz’ cinema may help answer this question, but, taking into account only Norte, The End of History, there seems to be something rewarding and something lazy about Diaz’ aesthetics. It imparts a fascinating and wholly believable vision of everyday life, but it does not do much more than that, paying only surface attention to the ideas it addresses. The pursuit of truth or, at least, a close resemblance to the feel of everyday life is hard to do (and, in a sense, 250 minutes is still far too short a time to properly cover the years that the narrative encompasses) and Norte, The End of History is a little simplistic and one-note.

Norte, The End of History is certainly a film worth seeing. It is a powerful drama, often very moving and thought-provoking. On first viewing, it is interesting, artless, hypnotic, irritating, satisfying and disappointing – far from perfect but a good example of experimental cinema.

SHORT REVIEW: The Paddy Lincoln Gang (2014)

This review appears on The Upcoming website here.

The Paddy Lincoln Gang is a drama about an Irish punk-rock band. Rob McAlister (Dean S. Jagger) is the front man of the band, stuck with a difficult decision to make about the future of the band after a disastrous meeting with a top record label. Steady Eddie (Joseph DiMasso) and Rick (Richard Wagner) – the drummer and the bass player – are getting lazy and uncontrollable and the label have decided to drop the band unless Rob and songwriter Tom (Demetri Watkins) get rid of Eddie and Rick. Rob is also dealing with his own dark past, a past that threatens to explode at any moment.

Not knowing anything about the film is probably not recommended. The film’s opening is reminiscent of a horror film, though the majority of the film plays out as a simple drama. The opening was probably intended to give the audience a sense of unease but, unfortunately, it gives the film an unfocussed feel. Almost the entirety of the film feels like build-up, but the film never really delivers. Instead, the majority of the film is taken up with Rob and Tom’s dilemma – what to do about Eddie and Rick – and the film is merely a tame drama about loyalty and music. It is tacky, full of lines about following your heart and letting the music take control – the kind of self-dramatising typical of films about musicians. Glen Matlock has a rather terrible cameo.

It doesn’t help that an opening monologue establishes that the band members are pretty unlikeable. Eddie and Rick have few character traits beyond their hedonism and misogyny, while Rob is almost entirely passive. Tom is so shy that it is difficult to imagine him hanging around with these people. There is a long sequence in which the band – apparently the hottest new band to break America – is interviewed for television, but it is wholly unconvincing and awkward.

Eventually, there is a twist near the end, which should tie the film together but which instead introduces a totally different – and much more misogynistic – turn to the film. The finished film could be interpreted, begrudgingly, as a story about the pains of the creative process, but really it just seems to be a cheap, tacky drama about loyalty. It is a fairly bland story, messily told with undeveloped characters. The actors are fine, but the film needs a little more thought.

SHORT REVIEW: Smart Ass (2014)

This review appeared on The Upcoming website here.

Smart Ass is a French comedy-drama about a group of students who start a school prostitution ring. It sounds unpleasant and the film is not smart or funny or likable enough to get away with it.

Two outsiders in an elitist school of business, Dan and Kelly (Thomas Blumenthal and Alice Isaaz) decide to adapt business models and economic theories to the art of social climbing. Their idea is simple: pay an attractive woman to go out with you, and immediately your market appeal goes up and you become popular amongst the school’s elite. Their prostitution ring is initially successful, though through the influence of posh boy Louis (Jean-Baptiste Lafarge), their idea becomes too big for the three of them to handle.

The idea is, of course, unpleasant, deeply so, but it is unclear whether or not the film itself knows it. This prostitution ring as business model idea is introduced fairly quickly into the storyline and none of the characters seem to be particularly bothered by it. Equally the women that Kelly approaches all dumbly go along with the idea even though it is very clearly just prostitution and the benefits for them are totally unclear. No one seems to think that the idea is sexist and reprehensible, which leads one to wonder if writer-director Kim Chapiron does either.

Of course, only women become prostitutes and only men become customers – women have beauty on their side, while men have brains and money, as Louis explains to no one’s distaste. The whole thing could be a satire about how cold and inhuman market forces are (the idea of students applying economic theory to their everyday lives is not a bad idea in itself – Alain Resnais applied behaviourist theory to everyday lives to brilliant effect in My American Uncle), but you have to see past a lot of leering camerawork and nude but undeveloped female characters to think that.

There is an interesting idea somewhere in the film, but the script is badly thought out, wholly unbelievable and misogynistic. The actors are fine but no one could breathe life into such utterly unlikeable characters so badly written. The film has been billed as a comedy, but that, like the title change – the original French title La crème de la crème is much more fitting – sounds like desperation.

SHORT REVIEW: Norte, The End of History (2014)

This short review appeared on The Upcoming website here.

There is very little than cinema should not do, any innovation or experiment ought to be welcomed as an attempt at finding a new means of expression. One such innovative filmmaker is Lav Diaz, whose Norte, The End of History, at 250 minutes, is one of his shortest films.

A re-working of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, the film follows Fabian (Sid Lucero), a student who has dropped out of law school, disillusioned with the law. Isolated and confused, Fabian embarks on a pointless murderous spree. A poor man, Joaquin (Archie Alemania) is imprisoned for the crime, leaving his wife Eliza (Angeli Bayani) and their two children destitute. The consequences of Fabian’s actions play out over a number of years.

The film is long, but it is frequently beautiful to look at and somehow hypnotic – time ceases to matter as the film’s images immerse you in a way that makes the drama all the more moving and the violence all the more shocking. There is a evocative reality to the film, which a much shorter film could not capture so easily. The weight of Eliza’s everyday life is seen in stark detail, while Fabian’s wanderings take on a powerfully nihilistic feel.

Norte, The End of History delves into the same themes as Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment albeit with a modern and specifically Asian re-reading. The film opens with a discussion of the end of history – capitalism and the West have won. For Fabian, an unfair and Godless world can be changed only by violence. Eliza and Joaquin have a different view of life, one of poverty, work and family, a view of life in stark contrast to the laid-back musings of Fabian and his friends.

However, Lav Diaz takes 250 minutes to come to his conclusions and yet these do not extend even as far as Dostoevsky’s novel or Woody Allen’s best and most thoughtful film, Crimes and Misdemeanors. The film is certainly worth seeing for its hypnotic vision of everyday life but there is both something rewarding and something lazy about Diaz’ aesthetics. It imparts a fascinating and wholly believable vision of everyday life, but it does not do much more than that, paying only surface attention to the ideas it addresses. On first viewing, it is both satisfying and disappointing – far from perfect but a good example of challenging cinema.

REVIEW: Camille Claudel 1915 (2014)

Bruno Dumont is an auteur in a rather extreme sense of the word. While his films are imbued with a developing style that is all his own and with consistent themes, unfamiliarity with his early work may make it harder to fully appreciate his later work. Having seen only last year’s Hors Satan (apparently the endpoint of what was then his stylistic concerns) before seeing Camille Claudel 1915, it is hard not to imagine that one is missing something which will only make sense when one has seen how this filmmaker’s ideas have developed from his debut – La vie de Jésus ­– onwards. One consistent thing between the two I have seen, however, is the Pasolini-like concern with how religion and reality coincide.

Camille Claudel 1915 is a very specific title for a rather specific film. The film largely follows a typical section in the life of sculptress Camille Claudel (Juliette Binoche), who has been placed in Montdevergues Asylum. In her second year at the asylum, Claudel is clearly unhappy, suspicious of the motives of the nuns who care for her and feeling abandoned and imprisoned. Her existence is severely limited and depressing. Her one hope is her brother Paul (Jean-Luc Vincent) who is coming to visit her shortly.

The film is very minimalist – even more so than Hors Satan – focussing almost exclusively on Juliette Binoche’s face in close-up. As a showcase of Binoche’s talents, it is possibly unparalleled since the film spends a lot of time on Binoche’s face as she silently conveys Claudel’s inner turmoil with limited dialogue. The first hour of the film starkly represents Claudel’s life in the asylum, living amongst mentally disabled adults, all of whom were played by genuinely disabled non-professional actors (the nuns were also non-professional actors and professional nurses), cooking her own food, writing letters to people she thinks may help her, praying and just simply sitting and looking around her. The film offers a long hard look at one woman’s imprisonment.

Where the film most clearly represented Dumont’s concerns about the meeting of the sacred and the profane is in the scenes towards the end of the film involving Camille’s brother Paul, a deeply religious and incredibly self-righteous man whose strong beliefs are effectively imprisoning Camille since his refusal to release her is based on his beliefs. Their long-awaited confrontation at the end of the film only represented her entrapment of the more since their conversation is stilted and uncommunicative. Camille complains of her imprisonment and vents furiously about the men she thinks put her there (her former lover Rodin whom she hasn’t seen in twenty years) while Paul can only look on and shake his head.

Another instance in which the spiritual is checked or forced into contrast with reality is in the faces of the other asylum inmates. Dumont trains his camera on their faces – which may or may not feel exploitative depending on one’s point of view – representing either the religious clichés of the holy fool or an instance in which religion is not present and cannot help. In one scene, a nun helped a patient into the church despite the fact that his feet hurt and he has no idea what God or heaven is. The contrast is presumably intended to be similar to that in Pasolini’s Accattone in which a street fight is famously and rather movingly scored with sacred music by Bach.

If the film feels then like a rather slight work, it is because the film intends to be an accurate representation of what Camille Claudel’s life must have been like in 1915, hence the specific title. Two years into an imprisonment that would last almost thirty years until her death – as one incredibly stark note states at the end of the film – we see a Camille that hasn’t yet given up hope, one that still expected to be allowed out of her asylum.

That said, and after only one viewing, it seems that the film may have more to it than simply a representation of imprisonment and a vague interest in the clash between religion and reality. Like Hors Satan, which imagines what a modern day, country-based Jesus or Satan would be like, Camille Claudel 1915 feels like a film that will reveal more with further viewing and a deeper familiarity with the filmmaker’s work. No bad thing, but it means that some further study is required.

A shorter review is available here.

SHORT REVIEW: Keeping Rosy (2014)

This short review appears on The Upcoming website here.

Keeping Rosy is a difficult film to write about, since it is highly recommended that you go to see it without knowing anything about it – and especially without watching the dodgy, tell-all trailer. So be warned, your enjoyment of this film may even be seriously diminished by continuing to read this review.

Charlotte (Maxine Peake) has just been laid off and she isn’t feeling all right. After an unpleasant confrontation with her cleaner Maya (Elisa Lasowski), she is trapped in a situation that will only get worse and worse and there isn’t much of a way out for her. She is forced to do things that she wouldn’t normally do and find the inner strength to escape.

Without giving too much away, Keeping Rosy is ultimately a thriller and it moves along at a great pace, conveying a lot quickly and rarely getting sidetracked. The tension doesn’t flag, and the plot unravels in twists and turns slowly and convincingly. However, aside from being an excellent genre picture, it also works very well as a character study and as social commentary.

Peake gives a fantastic performance, one that holds the film together and what turns it from being an exercise in coldness and cruelty into something really rather moving. Peake is practically never off the screen.

The film begins muted and quiet. Charlotte works in a faceless corporation and finds it difficult to socialise with her colleagues. Her apartment is all shiny surfaces and colourless decorations. The film charts her cold, mundane existence from a distanced perspective. This is a remote, strange world – some excellent early shots of London’s nighttime skyline look distinctly alien. Early on, it seems as if the film will be a brooding look at the loneliness and alienation of our contemporary corporate culture. However, as the film goes on, Charlotte’s compassion breaks through and the film ends up being a rather moving drama. One of the major successes of the film is that, despite the thriller trappings, good as they are, the film never loses sight of the fact that it is a film about Charlotte.

An entirely successful genre picture and a remarkably assured feature film debut from Steve Reeves, Keeping Rosy is taut, very well made and held together by a fantastic central performance and a plot that is never predictable – as long as you don’t watch the trailer.

REVIEW: 22 Jump Street (2014)

It is a well known fact in Hollywood that the bigger, louder and much more expensive sequel to a recent surprise hit is never going to be as good as the original. The sequel will be a quick cash-in and a badly thought out retread of the original – which probably wasn’t that good anyway – repeating all the jokes and plot devices and offering turgid references and cameos pointlessly referring to the original film but without an inch of originality. 22 Jump Street is very much this kind of film, but the great thing about it is that it knows it.

Picking up exactly where the previous film left off, Schmidt and Jenko (Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum) are investigating drug smuggling via internet college. After one big expensive action set piece, it is decided that their best option is to infiltrate a college and find the dealers from the inside – exactly like they did before, which worked surprisingly well. However, once in college, their loyalty to each other is strained when one of them has the time of his life while the other one suffers.

21 Jump Street was a surprisingly good film – up until the action sequence at the end at least – which had fun with the idea that it is a thoughtless reboot of a dead franchise, which no one remembered. The film spoofed the genre fairly well and also had the benefit of actually being funny and quite inventive. The sequel is the same again, but it manages to make a virtue of the repetition, now spoofing not only the genre but also the mechanics of the industry where money is thrown blindly at totally hopeless products and excess replaces talent. And while this set-up may seem to be rather limited and it sometimes seems inevitable that the film will soon run out of steam, it remains inventive and fast paced enough not to outstay its welcome.

Like the first film, the main virtue of 22 Jump Street is that it is funny. The meta element is funny and often really rather clever, but the film is not limited to these kinds of jokes. Indeed, one of the biggest laughs (I saw the film in a packed screening), one that totally obscured the next few lines, was entirely down to the direction, Channing Tatum’s timing and a very well chosen sound effect. The film may be mostly low-humour but it is done with such verve and obvious energy that it never feels lazy. Compared to other recent comedies – the unbelievably turgid and vain This Is The End is a recent low point – 22 Jump Street has an incredible amount of energy and a real passion for what it is doing.

The film doesn’t hang together perfectly and it does have its wandering moments and the action sequences are always never as funny as they need to be (when are they ever?), but the film is consistently funny throughout and that is really all one needs. Comedies come under more negative scrutiny than other types of films (and are much harder to review) but if one looks at 22 Jump Street in terms of what it sets out to achieve and how it achieves it, then it is very clearly a real success. Ultimately, its success is down to good timing, good writing, good performances, good direction and, maybe more than all of this, effort.

SHORT REVIEW: Of Horses and Men (2014)

This short review appears on The Upcoming website here.

Of Horses and Men posits that man and beast are closer than they realize and, in a series of bizarre vignettes, sets out to prove as much. The film is a series of near-silent sketches about people and their relationships with their horses and they range from funny to cruel to poignant to downright strange.

The best of the stories is probably the first, in which two randy horses spoil a tentative romance between their owners by pointing out all too clearly what the two humans really want. This supposed symbiosis between the humans and their horses is represented in various odd ways – in one, a young Swedish woman gains her horse’s trust by managing to chase him down while in another, the way a man uses his horse to survive while stuck in a snowstorm is deeply suggestive. It is not entirely clear whether the film believes that this trade-off is particularly fair – the horses would seem to get a raw deal most of the time – and there seems to be a suggestion that this isolated Icelandic community is in a state of decline, since nearly everyone one of them has a petty gripe or engage in some form of substance abuse. The ending is intriguingly ambiguous on these points as the camera pulls back from a fair in which humans are barely distinguishable amongst the horses on show.

Quite what the ultimate point of the film is will remain open to debate and may even be somewhat moot, since the pleasure of the film is simply in the beauty of its photography, the way it captures the dignity of the horses and the film’s wholly unique and unexpected nature. It is enjoyable, challenging and offers an interesting insight into a strange world that is really quite recognisable.

SHORT REVIEW: Knocked For Six/ Save Your Legs (2014)

This short review appears on The Upcoming website here.

Knocked For Six is an Australian comedy about a group of cricketers who go on tour in India. Inspired by true events, the film follows Teddy, the president of an amateur cricket group, who brings his team to India to play in a tournament. Teddy soon realizes that his two best players, Ricky and Stav, are moving on and are now more interested in their families than in the game. Faced with much better Indian teams and with his own players considering the trip a mere holiday away from their families, how can Teddy convince them to win?

The film is based on director Boyd Hicklin’s 2005 documentary Save Your Legs and the story is mildly interesting but wholly unbelievable. Outlandish as the true events may originally have been, Knocked For Six throws in too much and gives itself too little time. We get to know only five of the eleven-man team (the rest feel like extras) and the film stretches itself too far with one Orientalist drug scene and a slightly desperate Bollywood dance number at the end. Elsewhere, the film feels either badly thought-out or heavily cut. The villain, for instance, is introduced over half way through.

Knocked For Six is very much a ‘man child’ comedy and the film has quite a few diarrhoea and vomit jokes thanks to Teddy’s inability to deal with Indian food. These moments aside, Knocked For Six is a reasonably pleasant though overly masculine comedy about men leaving to one side their childhood dreams and becoming reasonable adults. The script is not particularly new and the threadbare story really could have up the stakes much more, but there is a decent feeling of fun and camaraderie about the film that makes it reasonably entertaining.

SHORT REVIEW: Battle Company: Korengal (2014)

This short review appears on The Upcoming website here.

Following on from 2010’s Restrepo, Battle Company: Korengal returns to the same themes and the same soldiers interviewed in the previous film. Korengal repeats Restrepo’s focus on the day-to-day lives of men caught in extreme situations and the effect this lifestyle has on them physically and mentally. As a result, there is little here that hasn’t been tackled before, apart from the fact that the soldiers have since been pulled out of the Korengal valley and can now offer retrospective accounts of the experience, captured here in straight interviews. Much more than Restrepo, Korengal is structured around themes such as the meaning of bravery, the fun of a firefight and the feeling of having to be constantly alert in order to stay alive.

The main problem with the film is the same as in Restrepo. Both films claim to be apolitical and there is little to no engagement with anything unsavoury, which ultimately only succeeds in making the film feel equally culpable. There is a glancing reference to racism when one of only five black men in the company talks about his difficulties but it is not investigated further and is swiftly dropped. Equally troublesome is many of the soldiers open admission that they enjoy shooting people. One firefight sequence is scored with upbeat, exciting music, which feels wholly inappropriate.

The film also fails to offer any insight into the lives of the Afghans that the Americans claim to be protecting. The soldiers’ near total distrust of every Afghan they come across and their joy at shooting at them offers a troubling and indigestible view of Americans at war.

Battle Company: Korengal seeks to avoid politics and get to the truth of soldiers in battle but it’s refusal to engage with the dark side of the soldiers leaves only a bad taste in the mouth.

See also:

Dirty Wars
Lone Survivor

Zero Dark Thirty

IRISH REVIEW: The Company of Wolves (1984)

Neil Jordan’s second feature certainly established him as a filmmaker who wasn’t afraid to try new things and The Company of Wolves is certainly a very different film from Angel. But is it any good?

A Freudian retelling of the Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale, the film begins with a sleeping Rosaleen (Sarah Patterson), who has just stolen her sister’s lipstick. She dreams that she lives in an alternate, fairy tale world. She lives in a village constantly under threat from a large population of wolves who live in the woods. Rosaleen’s Granny (Angela Lansbury) tells her a series of stories designed to make Rosaleen cautious of the woods and the wolves inside, but which are also intended to make her wary for her growing sexuality and potentially predatory boys. Rosaleen takes note of these stories but she also has an independent streak and so when she meets the sinister Huntsman (Micha Bergese) in the woods, she is more intrigued than frightened.

The film is based on a screenplay by Jordan and Angela Carter and takes as its inspiration stories by Carter. Carter’s intention with these stories was to rewrite famous fairy tales from a less conservative and oppressive slant. She found that fairy tales were designed to teach women to fear their sexuality and taught them submissiveness. In her stories, which were loaded with Freudian imagery, the female characters are far from passive and the stories encourage women not to fear their sexuality but to take control of it. Essentially, her stories were modern, feminist version of the ancient fairy tales. The Company of Wolves sets out to do the same thing, and all of the typical elements of the fairy tale are present, albeit presented from a Freudian perspective and with a dream-like feel.

As interesting as this may sound, it is rather unsatisfying. The Freudian imagery is over-used and dated – films had been drawing parallels with Freud’s writings for years and Jordan doesn’t offer anything particularly new. The film’s symbolism is also heavy-handed. The phrase “Don’t stray from the path” – though taken from the original versions of the Little Red Riding Hood tale – and often repeated by Granny is so clearly meant to represent the rules and limits placed on women in male dominated society that it’s lack of subtlety only causes one to roll their eyes at its every repetition. Granny is here an ambiguous figure – being both loving and restrictive or, in other words, a parent. The stories that Granny tells explicitly link sex with danger, violence and death – and never with love – while the stories Rosaleen tells represent instead the power of women, particularly a story in which a wronged peasant woman somehow turns her rich abusers into wolves – the wolf (usually a symbol of predatory sexuality) presumably taking on a new significance here. This stuff, though interesting in a surface kind of way, is ultimately over-subscribed. In this day and age, how many are truly convinced that red represents a budding sexuality via menstrual blood or that fruit represents sexual organs?

Neil Jordan has claimed that the appeal he finds in the film is not the heavy Freudian symbolism, but instead the simple joys of storytelling. This argument is not wholly convincing but it does point towards the most interesting thing about The Company of Wolves. In the first half of the film, Rosaleen is told stories that are clearly intended as cautionary tales to guide her through puberty and into adulthood – a patriarchal society that is not too interested in raising strong, independent women is evident. But when she starts to tell her own stories, she takes control of her own destiny (such as it is) and reclaims certain desires as her own and not the dangerous evils that she has been taught to avoid. The film then shows the regenerative qualities of fiction, particularly in making up one’s own fictions. The film delights ultimately in making an oppressive story (Little Red Riding Hood) into a story of sexual awakening and power.

None of which particularly works with the jarring ending, in which Rosaleen reawakens from her dream at a point where she has finally become a woman in control (as represented by her becoming a wolf), only to see a wolf entering her room (read the maturation of dream Rosaleen impacting onto real life Rosaleen) and start screaming, horrified. Hardly a feminist ending. Taken together with the fact that while in the original fairy tale Red Riding Hood is either killed or saved by a man, in the film’s version she overcomes a man but nonetheless becomes a wolf on his terms, not particularly on her own. Surely this means that the meaning of the film’s version of the tale is not particularly better than those that came before, since Red Riding Hood is still waiting for a man to act for her in both cases – either to save her or point the way for her passage into womanhood.

Also problematic, and leaving the symbolism aside, is the film’s dream-like style, in which scenes follow on from each other in a off-kilter, irrational way intended to reflect the pacing of (or lack of) a dream. This has also been done before, though here it is very distancing device, which keeps one outside the film rather than inside, like listening to two people who know each other so well that their conversation is impenetrable to anyone else. Like a lot of Neil Jordan’s films, it is very cerebral and not particularly welcoming.

As interesting as the film may or may not be, it feels badly thought out. The ending would seem to be directly contradictory to all that came before and the symbolism is so obvious and so dated that it just isn’t convincing. Nonetheless, it is a fairly original film from a filmmaker who is clearly trying something new, which is something that remains worth celebrating since it is now so rare.

See also:

Angel

Michael Collins

REVIEW: Jimmy's Hall (2014)

Jimmy’s Hall is in may ways a follow-up to The Wind That Shakes The Barley, expanding on that film’s theme about how Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, which ended the War of Independence and brought about the partition of Ireland, was a betrayal of the socialist ideals of the IRA. This version of Irish history remains contentious amongst historians, but The Wind That Shakes The Barley was nonetheless a powerful film about the clash of pragmatism and idealism in war (amongst other things), just like the earlier Land And Freedom. Jimmy’s Hall then is set ten years later – in 1932 – and examines the independent Ireland’s continued betrayal of the left, though at a smaller level.

James Gralton (Barry Ward) returns to Leitrim, Ireland after ten years in America, having fled from the security forces for agitation. Now back, he wants to have a quiet life and help his mother Alice (Aileen Henry) around the house. However, it isn’t long before the local kids – lead by Marie (Aisling Franciosi) – bored by the dances approved by the Church, beg James to reopen his fabled dance hall. Ten years ago, James taught dancing, music and politics before he was forced to flee. Finally agreeing to reopen the hall, James finds himself under attack from his political enemies all over again, including Father Sheridan (Jim Norton) and a local landowner O’Keefe (Brían F. O’Byrne).

Ken Loach’s best films can engage with a political debate in a way that humanises that debate, bringing it down to real terms. Riff Raff very clearly and concisely shows the problems of builders being forced to work on unsafe building sites while also being very funny and moving. Raining Stones shows the lives of long-term unemployed people, their attempts to find pride in their lives, in a way that thoroughly counters the government’s preferred description of them as lazy spongers. The Navigators almost prophetically told us why rail privatisation would be a bad thing. Meanwhile, Loach’s historical films often attempt to represent alternative histories. Jimmy’s Hall then is a film that shows how a conservative priest-ridden Ireland (as Joyce called it) betrayed the people by oppression and the refusal to allow dissident voices in times of turmoil. That James Gralton was ultimately deported from his homeland never to return is shocking, but it is also a little known part of Irish history. The connection between a post-Depression Ireland and a post-Tiger, recession Ireland is easy to make, but Jimmy’s Hall is ultimately a tribute to those who speak out against conventional wisdom and who refuse to be silenced.

The film, then, is one of oppression and is such it is a fairly typical exercise, keeping close to the expected story beats. It is not entirely successful in avoiding its own clichés – we all know, for example, that the chirpiest member of the dance hall will be the one to suffer the most brutal consequences. The other problem with the film is in it’s first half, which jumps back and forward through time, clearly trying to deliver as much information as possible before the action can properly begin, but getting hopelessly bogged down in quick flashback scenes which add little beyond exposition. It gives the film a sluggish and slightly confused feel, which the rest of the film never quite escapes. Ultimately, the film only rarely seems to get right to the heart of the matter – there are a few debate scenes that recall the best scenes from Land And Freedom and The Wind That Shakes The Barley, though here they just don’t work quite so well.

Oddly, Loach avoids addressing Gralton’s socialism all that much. We know that he teaches these ideas because we have been told that he does, but there are very few scenes in which his ideas are portrayed, where they are brought to life. Surely the film would be doing more justice to his ideas if it represented them realistically and empathically for a modern-day audience. Loach and his regular writer Paul Laverty seem to be wary of being criticised as dogmatic, but surely they would only be doing justice to the ideas. Indeed, it is not hard to see why the misleading trailer (which suggests that what Jimmy’s Hall is primarily about, and what the priests oppose most, is simply the dancing – making it look like an Irish Dirty Dancing) was made the way it was, since there’s so little of the politics.

There is something stilted and badly thought out about Jimmy’s Hall, possibly something to do with the fact that most of the script is speculation. Even the performances, rare for Loach, suffer, with Ward having little to fully get his teeth into and others, like Aileen Henry, left looking lost. The romance between James and Oonagh (Simone Kirby), an invented character, is shockingly awkward and by-the-numbers for Ken Loach – the man who made My Name is Joe. The best scenes are few and far between and are almost always too short and fail to dig far enough beneath the surface. The film lacks a forward momentum until its final moments, a surprise when one remembers not only the pace and energy of the recent The Angels’ Share and Laverty-scripted Icíar Bollaín-directed Even The Rain but also the passion and the force of those films’ political argument. Jimmy’s Hall is moving, especially towards the end, and it does make you angry – just as every Ken Loach film should – but, sadly, it just doesn’t seem moving or angry enough.

See also:
The Spirit of '45

SHORT REVIEW: Camille Claudel 1915 (2014)

This short review appears on The Upcoming website here.

It may be advantageous to be familiar with Bruno Dumont’s cinema before one goes to see Camille Claudel 1915 since his work seems to be extremely personal and his style seems to have developed into one that novices may not fully appreciate.

The film starkly represents a limited though typical period of time in Camille Claudel’s (Juliette Binoche) near 30 years imprisonment in an asylum attended to by nuns. For the first hour of the film, we watch Claudel sit, eat, pray and cry, waiting for the promised visit from her brother Paul (Jean-Luc Vincent), who may get her out of there. Binoche’s believable and restrained performance – she is given very few lines and has to convey a lot with only her face, filmed in long close-ups – powerfully tells of her feelings of entrapment and abandonment.

Meanwhile, Dumont mixes the sacred and the profane by focussing on the faces of the inmates of the asylum (played by disabled, non-professional actors) in a way that is meant to convey the clash between an all-too human reality and a somewhat irrelevant religion. Indeed, when the strongly devout Paul does arrive, Camille and he speak at cross-purposes and it becomes all too clear that Paul has religious reasons for keeping her locked away.

The film is a moving and esoteric depiction of a woman’s long imprisonment held together by a strong central performance from Binoche. Its stark treatment is presumably intended to convey God’s silence and the incongruity of religion and the reality depicted. It is slow, minimalist cinema similar to Bresson in style and Pasolini in theme. Though powerful and artistic, it may appear extremely slight and will probably mean much more to those familiar with Dumont’s previous films and those willing to give it more than one viewing.

A longer review will appear on the website closer to the film's release.

And for a short review of Dumont's previous film, Hors Satan, see the 2013 Round-Up.

IRISH REVIEW: Intermission (2003)

Though it would obviously be foolish to claim that Intermission owes more of a debt to something like Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia than to films like Pulp Fiction and Snatch, Intermission is nonetheless much more a film about people than it is a self-consciously stylish showcase for violence and other things that its director finds cool. Director John Crowley and writer Mark O’Rawe (the not as successful Perrier’s Bounty) feature a variety of interlinking characters and plotlines but they never forget that the film is ultimately just about people trying to get by in life and love.

Small-time thief John (Cillian Murphy) decides to test the sincerity of his girlfriend Deirdre’s (Kelly MacDonald) feelings for him by breaking up with her. This all backfires when she is left broken-hearted and shortly afterwards takes up with a married man Sam (Michael McElhatton), who leaves his wife Noeleen (Deirdre O’Kane) devastated. Noeleen is encouraged to go out and try to find another man. Meanwhile, John’s love-starved best friend Oscar (David Wilmot) becomes increasingly depressed and his other friend Mick (Brían F. O’Byrne) is left unemployed when a small boy (Taylor Molloy) throws a rock through the front windshield of his bus, resulting in a remarkable crash involving Deirdre’s mother Maura (Ger Ryan) and sister Sally (Shirley Henderson), which sparks the interest of a documentary crew led begrudgingly by Anthony (Rory Keenan) who would much rather be filming the tough life on the streets of policeman Gerry Lynch (Colm Meaney) Gerry has it in for local hood Lehiff (Colin Farrell), who may have a proposition for John and Mick.

Intermission is a reasonably convoluted film but it doesn’t let itself get too bogged down in exposition. It is primarily the story of John and Deirdre with additions from a supporting cast, who have their own problems, some not as interesting as others but there is a general feeling of a close-knit community in an optimistic post-Tiger Dublin. If it isn’t the most taut plotting, it is forgivable since life is never simple and because the film romps along at a nice pace and a likable and easy-going tone. Cillian Murphy and Kelly MacDonald do well, but their parts are somewhat underwritten to make room for all the other characters, many of whom are very good. David Wilmot has a larger role here than many of his more recent roles and proves to be a very likable presence, as does Brían F. O’Byrne, Michael McElhatton and Deirdre O’Kane. Colm Meaney plays his typical role, the hard man who doesn’t realize how funny he is to other people, but he does it well here thanks mainly to a good script – something clearly missing when he took on similar roles in Whole Lotta Sole and A Belfast Story. Colin Farrell gets a great opening (with excellent use of ‘Out of Control’ by U2 – so exciting for an Irish film at the time and now, in retrospect, so optimistic) but he is surprisingly kept largely to the background until towards the end of the film.

What is so likable about Intermission though is the fact that it avoids the cool style and ‘funny’ violence that was so in vogue at the time that the film was made, preferring a light tone and a hand-held feel, making it a film about people, not trendy pop culture references, crime and violence. It is, more than anything else, a comedy and a rather funny one at that, though it is one that doesn’t avoid the more harrowing and gritty side of life on the streets of Dublin – the mean streets, as Meaney’s Lynch prefers to call them, though only to heighten his own hard-as-nails image.

As the film plays out, it becomes unclear what exactly the unifying theme behind the whole thing is, but by then, it also ceases to matter. It ends up being a small and really rather charming film – not wholly successful but certainly good enough – a pleasant surprise given the poster that was very suggestive of Trainspotting and Snatch. In the end, its primary value is that it is entertaining, full of good performances from a whole pile of recognisable faces (I didn’t even mention Tom Murphy, Conleth Hill, Laurence Kinlan and Ruth McCabe). It is mostly light, fairly unexpected and quite a bit of fun. And with a major stunt that was said to be the most expensive thing in Irish cinema at the time.

SHORT REVIEW: Miss and the Doctors (2014)

This short review appears on The Upcoming website here.

Miss and the Doctors (Tirez la langue, Mademoiselle) is a comedy-drama from French writer-director Axelle Ropert. A love triangle story, it is about two brothers, Boris and Dimitri (Cédric Kahn and Laurent Stocker) who are both doctors and who share a practise in Paris. Independently of each other, they both fall in love with a young woman Judith (Louise Bourgoin) who has a diabetic daughter (Paula Denis). Ropert traces these developing relationships and the complications that ensue.

Axelle Ropert adopts a very muted, elliptical and somewhat distant tone. The plot plays out through a series of coincidences, which seem to be intended to stretch our disbelief, and moments that could have been fruitfully played for either comedy or drama occur off-screen. We are shown very little detail and when Boris and Dimitri both fall for Judith, we are never sure why. There is a suggestion that Boris and Dimitri may be so in need of a romantic relationship that they don’t care who they fall for, but this comes to nothing. And while it does initially seem that the film does have some kind of a strategy, that all will make sense as the film goes on, a totally flubbed ending ultimately suggests that the confusion is simply down to bad filmmaking.

The film is passable, but it is rather vague and more than a little stiff. The three lead actors suffer with under-developed characters and the script offers ample backstory but no real development. The direction is fine though some scenes seem badly thought-out, such as one key scene’s odd focus on a goofy organ grinder, who seems important but turns out not to be. Ultimately, the film has little going on, beyond a very traditional story told lethargically.

SHORT REVIEW: Seven Streets, Two Markets and a Wedding (2014)

This short review appears on The Upcoming website here.

Seven Streets, Two Markets and a Wedding is a compilation of ten short archive films of London from between 1930 and 1980 – a mixture of rediscovered public information films and amateur footage.

The film is primarily a nostalgic affair, with each film introduced by modern footage from the same location. While the archive footage is vibrant, full of people and activity and often hand-held, the modern shots are tightly framed, steady, full of mundane naturalist sounds (sirens, alarms, traffic) and sparsely populated. Quite why the modern age is best represented by the techniques of ‘slow cinema’ is never quite addressed, nor is the question of why any of this archive footage is so nostalgic. The film prefers to merely show old footage and offers no contexts or opinions. As it is then, the film is merely a hodge-podge of old footage and is of little interest beyond some initial curiosity value.

The most interesting film is These Can Be Yours, a road safety film from Wembley Road Safety Council, a hopelessly dated and turgidly edited film that suggests that the most damaging consequence of a woman getting run over by a motorcycle is that her daughter will have to cook for her picky husband, who would much prefer his wife’s cooking. Similarly, her son’s attempts to help out in the kitchen will only lead to disaster – smashed dishes being worse than a smashed leg for a woman. Though amusingly archaic, it does lead one to wonder why this rather conservative project views such sexism with nostalgia.

More suffocating than nostalgic, Seven Streets, Two Markets and a Wedding offers little of interest, beyond certain observations such as: ‘People seem so ill at ease when faced with a camera in those days.’ But with no unifying theme, the film is ultimately dull.

REVIEW: Fading Gigolo (2014)

Fading Gigolo is a film in which a soon to be impoverished man, Murray (Woody Allen), suggests to his friend Fioravante (John Turturro) that he become a gigolo, since Murray has already found some clients willing to use such services (Sharon Stone and Sofía Vergara). Fading Gigolo is not even nearly believable, but it is clear that this is not some kind of ballsy defiance of story-centric American cinema though less clear whether it is extreme narcissism or just simply unfocussed, unsure filmmaking.

There is also a storyline involving Fioravante’s burgeoning love affair with the widow of a Hassidic Rabbi, Avigal (Vanessa Paradis, playing the widow, not the rabbi). Fioravante brings Avigal out of her shell, but their relationship becomes complicated when Dovi (Liev Schreiber), who works for Shomrim, a civilian neighbourhood watch group, and who himself loves Avigal, begins to investigate Fioravante.

Fading Gigolo suggests first of all that Sharon Stone and Sofía Vergara would need to pay for sex. Then it suggests that they would willingly pay rather a large sum for sex with John Turturro – which is more odd since Turturro wrote it. This wasn’t such a problem since other films require a much greater stretching of one’s sense of disbelief – Spiderman, for instance. This isn’t a particularly overwhelming problem and it is easy to ignore if one decides not to be bothered by it. Indeed, this degree of male wish fulfilment is something of a staple in American comedies anyway, as Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill and, even, Woody Allen films show.

The real problem with the film as far as its storyline is concerned is that it doesn’t seem planned in any way. In the opening moments, characters are introduced badly – as if Turturro’s main concern was avoiding bad exposition. Two characters (presumably Avigal’s children) are introduced without any context whatsoever – they don’t even seem to be in the same room as the action of the previous scene and they say nothing that suggests who they are or what their connection is with the rest of the film. Indeed, it takes a long time for Avigal’s role in the film to become clear and even then it seems unsure. Avigal visits Fioravante, presumably to use his services since Murray has set up the meeting, but all of a sudden it turns out she is only there for a massage, which Fioravante seems to have been expecting and is also fully capable of providing. Soon after they are in love. But it doesn’t seem to make any sense and it certainly doesn’t bare any relation to the whole ‘Fioravante as gigolo’ storyline. On top of that, Dovi never properly investigates Fioravante and he never finds out that he is a gigolo and neither does Avigal, so it all seems to go nowhere. Instead, Murray is investigated, arrested and tried but by then Turturro has introduced a whole new character (played by Bob Balaban) to sort everything out. Then Avigal declares her love for Dovi, without any prior indication that she even liked him and despite all of his rather unsavoury actions. Fading Gigolo feels like it never had more than one draft, the result of a writing exercise in which two outlandish and incompatible storylines are given and the writer has to make do as well as he might – one used, presumably, to teach them that there are limits to their abilities, a lesson John Turturro may not have appreciated.

All of that said however, Fading Gigolo is a comedy and since when did comedies have to make sense. Airplane and Monty Python and the Holy Grail certainly don’t. But both of those films are funny and Fading Gigolo isn’t – not once. The primary focus (initially at least) of the film is on the comedy between Fioravante and Murray, which is good but a little too much like a cheap Woody Allen imitation than the real thing. Casting Woody Allen here is a coup, but it doesn’t really work in the film’s favour since it only invites comparison to films that are much better. There is a secondary focus on Fioravante’s squeamishness about being a gigolo, although this is dropped almost immediately during his first encounter with Sharon Stone’s Dr Parker. All of a sudden, Fioravante is surprisingly good at being value for money. In fact, he’s suddenly an expert – hardly a fading gigolo at all. Then, Turturro decides that Fading Gigolo is a romantic film after all and he drops these scenes for a New York-advertising, sensual kind of filmmaking that is at odds with all of what has come before. The aforementioned massage scene goes on for much, much longer than it really needs to. And just as before Fioravante had suddenly become an expert gigolo, now he just as suddenly becomes an expert masseuse and an expert cook – neither skill established earlier in the film. It is hard not to wonder if the whole thing isn’t just some kind of vanity project from John Turturro, who just wanted to make a film in which he starred as a hyper-capable, incredibly knowledgeable and extremely cultured romantic lead, who gets to have all sorts of love scenes with a variety of attractive actresses.

Fading Gigolo doesn’t make much sense and it is laughably narcissistic in a way that could be forgiven if it wasn’t so unashamedly so. But its major crime is that it isn’t funny when it really could have been. It is a film of wasted potential, with an awkward, lazy tone and no fully developed characters.

REVIEW: Frank (2014)

Is it easier to make a ‘fun’ film than a dark and serious one? And if a filmmaker is good at making a particular type of film, is it a bad thing for them to try something new, to take a risk and make something totally unlike anything that they have done before. As with Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master – or, at least, as it appears – is the weight of expectation sometimes just too much for a working filmmaker to bear? In my review of What Richard Did, I wrote that Lenny Abrahamson was “Ireland’s most important living filmmaker.” A big statement and, on balance, a deeply unhelpful one – isn’t it better after all to have a range of interesting voices than a single “most important” one? Whether Abrahamson was afraid of being typecast – I suppose directors can be typecast too – as the director of low budget dark dramas or he just wanted to have fun, the result is Frank – one of this year’s most pointless films.

Jon (Domhnall Gleeson) is trying to get into music but he doesn’t really have all that much talent. He ends up joining a band, the unpronounceable Soronprfbs, headed by Frank – a damaged man in a giant papier-mâché head (played by Michael Fassbender). No one else in the band (including Maggie Gyllenhaal, Scoot McNairy, François Civil and Carla Azar) likes Jon very much. They go to Ireland and live in a remote cabin for almost a year in order to record an album. Jon films the process on his phone and his videos become popular on Youtube, which thrusts the band into the limelight. But are they ready for it?

Some have said that Frank is the kind of film that half the audience will love and the other half will hate, though that is overly simplistic. Some certainly seem to love it and others will certainly hate it, but my own reaction was merely initial disappointment followed by boredom. For me, it was deeply uninteresting, it wasn’t funny or engaging. It is one of those heavily ironic films that seem to enjoy their own company – not unlike Wes Anderson films – and smugly disregard the audience, secure in the knowledge that someone somewhere will love it and be vocal enough about it to make it a cult film. Frank is one of those films that will be trendy and might even be talked about in almost religious terms twenty years from now – like The Big Lebowski is today. All the naysayers who saw it when it came out and who didn’t get it will be stuck with some kind of old conservative label – their reviews quoted ironically in the same way that Pauline Kael’s negative review of Star Wars is now a T-shirt. All of that sounds bitter so suffice it to say that Frank is one of those films that has nothing much to say about anything, doesn’t go anywhere interesting and doesn’t bother to make you care.

Those who will love Frank have probably already made up their minds about going to see it, though I wonder if Lenny Abrahamson was the deciding factor for many of them. It is probably just as well because there is very little of what made Abrahamson’s previous work so good. There are no interesting characters. The comedy falls flat and the drama is only semi-successful at the very end of the film, in which the re-formed Sonorprfbs play one last song as Jon looks on. It is a decent conclusion to a film that spent the previous ninety minutes wondering around, looking for an idea and a point. Ultimately, the film is about how we tend to deify artists, how fandom (and social media) can exaggerate aspects of an artist’s life and work beyond all proportion – Kurt Cobain is a good example as is (I suppose) calling Lenny Abrahamson “Ireland’s most important living filmmaker.” So Frank, then, is an intentionally poor film designed to make Abrahamson’s life a little easier. Maybe. Probably not. But Frank leaves you with very little else to think about.

For me, music films don’t tend to work. You probably have to be in a band or at least have some kind of ambition in that direction to fully appreciate Almost Famous (its just OK) or that other terrible film now gaining a cult following (these days films don’t wait twenty years to become rediscovered gems) Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. Frank has nothing interesting in it and it isn’t as funny or as emotionally involving as it might think it is – assuming any thought went into it whatsoever. Taken as a whole, it is just gibberish, unfocused and annoying. It isn’t a film I hate, it’s just one that did absolutely nothing for me. Which is a pity because I really like Lenny Abrahamson’s other films – whether they are millstones or not.

REVIEW: As If I Am Not There (2010)

As If I Am Not There is the tough, surprisingly mature feature film debut of Juanita Wilson, which certainly suggests that she will be one to watch. Ireland’s entry for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, the film is a rough and uncompromising story about women forced into sexual slavery during the Bosnian War of 1992-5. The film is based on true stories told during the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague.

Samira (a powerful central performance from Natasa Petrovic) is a schoolteacher from Sarajevo who takes a job in a small country village. Fairly quickly, the village is overrun by Serbian soldiers who shoot the men and kidnap the women. Kept initially as labourers, Samira and a few other women are taken into a hut and used as sex objects by the soldiers. The film follows Samira’s suffering and her ability to survive.

Though it is odd for an Irish filmmaker to make their feature film debut about crimes against women during the Bosnian War, based on actual testimony and on a novel by Slavenka Drakulić, As If I Am Not There almost immediately defies such doubts with its clear sense of purpose and its mature handling of truly horrific subject matter. Though the events depicted in the film are unremittingly bleak – ethnic cleansing and systematic rape – the film is powerful in its bravery, its refusal to avoid difficult truths and in the humanity of its protagonist. If you don’t know anything about the film, the course that the story takes is shocking and although most of the film’s horrible moments occur off-screen, the pain and suffering is conveyed expertly with restrained camerawork emphasising the inescapability of the situation. The war is visible only in the distance – smoke rising from a distant village and the repetitive rattle of faraway machine gun fire – and often seen through the windows of the so-called ‘women’s room’ where the majority of the film takes place. Juanita Wilson directs the rape scenes very well, emphasising their horror without unnecessary detail, focussing almost entirely on the face of the victim. Samira’s disassociation from her rape – which gives the film its title – is much more effective and respectful than a handheld camera swooping around the set trying to capture every horrible, clinical detail. As If I Am Not There is not about the violence and the horror; it is about the human victims – all women – and about their struggle to come to terms with what is happening to them. Juanita Wilson displays an incredible honesty, respect and tact in her treatment of the women’s ordeal.

Natasa Petrovic is fantastic in the central role, showing as much pain and anguish but also is much defiance and bravery as would be believable – its greatest success is that it feels wholly natural; it never feels like a performance. She is not so much a hero in the film as a traumatised woman who is able to survive. The film’s stark conclusion, showing her attempts to get used to a normal life and deal with her pregnancy by one of the soldiers, is all the more powerful since it realistically represents the consequences of such traumas without needing to tone them down for a happier ending. Juanita Wilson is too good a filmmaker to attempt to suggest that anything positive will come from these experiences – preferring instead to show the damage and the sense of life going on. If Samira is ultimately heroic it is because she copes and because she survives.

As If I Am Not There is powerful cinema and a very moving drama, but it is also a responsible retelling of real events and a respectful representation of what women went through during the Bosnian War – or any war for that matter, since the film largely avoids specifics. Juanita Wilson is sure about the purpose of the film, and it moves quickly and fearlessly into dark but important territory. It doesn’t trivialise and it doesn’t suggest that anything particularly good or positive can come out of such situations, but it is a story that needs to be told. As If I Am Not There tells it with respect and integrity.