Ginger & Rosa (UK 2012)

Making one little world an everywhere – Elle Fanning as Ginger

Sally Potter’s new film, Ginger & Rosa is drawing a very different response from critics who have found her artistic style previously inaccessible. It has drawn comparisons with Orlando, her towering adaptation (for an incredibly tight budget, even in 1992, of $4 million) or The Tango Lesson (1997), made with Potter at the central figure as a woman learning about her emotions as well as her dancing skill on an odyssey (‘away’ from the demands of writing and creating) to Paris and Buenos Aires. The sense of escape – the emotional joy of it in that film – could make us forget we are watching something written and created by Potter. Both films demonstrate Potter’s flair with crafting images of lyrical, romantic intensity – so arresting it could be easy to forget the emotional underpinning that music often provides in these and her other films. Even in ones that seem removed from her more mainstream narratives, there is a rhythm in repetition of action or, for example, in the deep musical voice of Celeste Laffont, who muses philosophically on female/feminist and capitalist states in both Thriller (1979) and The Gold Diggers (1983). A contemporary, and friend, of Derek Jarman and working through the politically-activist 1970s through the resistant 1980s, Potter has often been regarded as part of the British art cinema scene rather than a mainstream filmmaker.

Much has been made, therefore, of the mainstream sensibility of this film and foregrounding it as a departure for Potter. This oddly forgets The Man Who Cried which starred Christina Ricci in another coming-of-age drama, similarly focused on an isolated character – a refugee of a Russian pogrom on a quest to find her father (in America). Whilst this latter film followed a conventional picaresque narrative for its main character, including her romance with an uneducated but poetic Romany (played by Johnny Depp), Ginger & Rosa follows its main character through a particular crisis. It could be described as a family melodrama focused on Ginger’s emotional response to a changing relationship with her parents, resulting from their separation. However, set at the time of the Cuban missile crisis, Potter (as writer) brings together the tension of the personal and the political – not only in Ginger’s own political awakening and turning away from home to realise the importance of world events but in the way in which politics is embedded and entwined in her emotional relationship with her father.  I am going to put the context to one side – wrongly I know, because the film animates that period of history and does so most effectively through the persistent sound of the news reports that permeate every private space. When I saw it, another cinemagoer spontaneously talked to me about how it had brought back that whole era really vividly for him. So, I’m turning my face away from the politics, to look at its personal, melodramatic form. Partly because I think Potter explores effectively how the political – truly believed in – can also be as much about personal loyalties and deep-rooted family feeling and this becomes an absorbing tension at the heart of this narrative – not least, importantly, because the playing of it by Elle Fanning and Alessandro Nivola is so incredibly moving. Not often can films let complicatedly good and bad figures remain just that – but Nivola and Potter succeed here. Fanning is drawing Oscar buzz for her performance, and the rawness of her emotions on screen (pretty much carrying a film at 13 years old) are incredible.  Alice Englert, as the apparently more experienced worldly-wise childhood friend, is as finely judged  in what has to be a less showy performance (to prevent the film becoming imbalanced in any way). Shot by Robbie Ryan, Andrea Arnold’s regular collaborator/cinematographer, the colour palette often adds the kind of melodramatic intensity and to express the interiority – I liked to think sometimes (as above) the walls were allowed to turn russet to reflect Ginger’s emotions as well as reflecting an idea of the world she was trying to save. Music, similarly, was actively used in the scenes (rather than remaining a directorial mood-inducing soundtrack) as arising from the characters’ need for expression or comfort  –where their human conversations avoided the confrontations that would force them to let go of the beliefs they needed to hang onto (political or personal).

Potter is used to directing stars (Cate Blanchett and John Turturro joined Ricci and Depp in The Man Who Cried and her innovative Rage – released via mobile phone webisodes in 2009 – included actors such as Judi Dench, Steve Buscemi and Jude Law).  She has a number in supporting roles here – Mad Men’s Christine Hendricks, Annette Bening, Timothy Spall and Oliver Platt. Certain scenes do struggle with the weight of ‘adult’ cross-currents and declarations, but the cast do support (rather than overwhelm) what is a really affecting – and to me as an adult female – true portrait of the kinds of intense friendships born in childhood that can hit the rapids towards adulthood. Its evocation of those unbalanced and intense female friendships was incredibly moving – and was a proper inheritor to earlier women’s pictures in which portraits of women’s relationships were not sketchily or patronisingly conceived. Potter’s films may sometimes issue strong intellectual challenges but in her films there is always a strong romantic consciousness and emotionality (such as in the iambic pentameter-driven Yes (2004)) that does not patronise or render complicated emotions tritely.  Satisfying cinema on many levels – no labels really required.

Split International Film Festival (15-22 September 2012)

Resistance inside Diocletian’s Palace: Split International Film Festival 2012

Split International Film Festival , which is in its 17th year, is a fascinating antidote to some of the larger film festival we may be familiar with and defines an area of film culture that can truly argue itself to be alternative. This festival, under the directorship of Branko Karabatić (himself an independent film-maker) seeks to maintain a rigorous adherence to its starting idea – to find films that are truly experimental and challenging in nature, to find film-makers who stay working outside of a system. Film festivals (in the same way as studios or film-makers) can perform a vital ‘service’ in maintaining spaces for a different kind of film culture to thrive, increasingly when the terms ‘experimental’ or ‘independent’ where used in reviews or criticism can have a mainstream feel to them. With Looper opening Toronto, packed with indie cool and arriving to reviews promising intelligent S-F but already with its distribution deal in place, we’re reminded yet again of the tightrope organisations running festivals have to walk between film culture and film commerce.

To stay outside of that category, and to maintain a base for genuinely new and challenging voices generates you neither large funds nor huge audiences. But my small experience of the programme last week in Split revealed that films – sometimes underfunded or small or star-less, or the vision of one person – can deliver real pleasure and surprise and these not necessarily with a lack of finish or sophistication. It is, as it is curated this year, a substantial programme with some beautifully-crafted narratives that are engaging films (easily better than some I’ve seen at much ‘bigger’ festivals. Just as some of the performances given by actors or got by directors put better-funded work to shame). The reach is international (e.g. Germany, Cambodia, Thailand, Mexico, China – to name a few) and it also included seminars relating to the work of artists (e.g. animator Simone Massi) and a collaboration with the Estonian Film Foundation, with a review of that country’s film culture and of its own winter festival, ‘Black Nights’. Tristan Priimägi (Estonia’s representative) commented on the shared experience of countries emerging out of more submerged political identities amongst their geographical neighbours – a statement which received a very warm response from the audience. A Croatian film festival might be pigeonholed (in more Western audiences’ view) by its recent history. Instead, its emphasis couldn’t be more strongly on being an international point of ‘cultural conversation’ and without an insular feel. It has drawn film-makers such as Bela Tarr (who held a series of masterclasses at the festival last year) and Sally Potter who has exhibited her work here and clearly intends to be an intellectual meeting point (more so than a market-driven festival).

Inside Zlatna Vrata (Golden Gate) Cinema

The opening night film from Colombia, Chocó(which had already appeared at the Berlinale) represented the festival’s intentions nicely, with some beautiful cinematography, naturalistic performances and a structure that maintained a tricky balance between the inner and outer consciousness of its protagonist.

The festival’s theme throughout was ‘resistance’. Of the films I saw (also screened at Cinema Karaman in the old town), I’ll add some brief reviews of Chocó, Roman Polanski A Film Memoir, Despite the Gods and The Catch – which, even in a small range, threw up very different ideas of resistance. There are films here that talk about the resistance of cultural differences, modern politics, gender oppression and the importance of finding a place to make your stand. They all pay attention to the particular international culture they arise from. In a town thriving commercially from the cruise ships and sun tourists (me included) with a rich Dalmatian culture, these intelligent films provided an intellectual “cool breeze” (to borrow from Carl Sandburg) as a striking and stimulating counterpoint to the “play of sun-fire” on Split’s antiquity outside. You need to allow extra time to travel up Zlatna Vrata’s airy staircases to view its collection of fascinating film posters and who needs a traditional red carpet when Split’s film festival is staged within Diocletian’s Palace! More details, all in both Croatian and English, can be found at http://www.splitfilmfestival.hr/.

Shadow Dancer (UK-Ireland 2012)

Riseborough and Owen negotiate Friend or Foe in Shadow Dancer

A European co-production, Shadow Dancer appears to hark back to the kind of British political thriller of the 1970s or 1980s, both on television and in the cinema, which can maintain and transfer to its audience an air of paranoia and fear for the entire length of its running time.  That its story is set in Northern Ireland during The Troubles adds a further strong political resonance, particularly for British and Irish audiences, in its representation of its heroine Colette (Andrea Riseborough) and her relationship with the British government contact, Mac (Clive Owen).  This relationship – where he recruits her to spy for the Brits to avoid a devastating prison sentence which will separate her from her young son – is established very early in the film and this piece has no other spoilers (but some detail) about a thriller that does deliver on the narrative twists.

Adapted from his own novel by Tom Bradby (a British journalist who covered the conflict in Northern Ireland and wrote this first novel out of his experiences) It is set at the point at which the peace process of the early 1990s has begun and there is the beginnings of division in the Republican leadership which is likely to set the terrorist element adrift but the political machinations sit very firmly in the background.  This is a drama focussed on the personal dilemmas and struggles of Colette caught between two strong and uncompromising bullies – the IRA and the British Government.  Her fear centres not just on herself but on the safety of her son and it is the fear not just of a terrorist (the opening sequence shows her to be part of that ‘struggle’) but of ordinary people living out their lives within a situation where opposing political forces use their streets as a battleground.  This is not an ideological thriller, then, (although it does draw – for me – on the likes of Defence of the Realm or the television series Edge of Darkness for aspects of a conspiracy drama).  Instead, it’s a story where the most dramatic twists occur through the actions of its characters – actions which are rarely explained through the dialogue but make complete sense to you in the audience.

This is perhaps partly if you are British or Irish and are old enough to remember the context and the cross-currents of the time – but even if you don’t, it really works because this a film that is so impressive in its use of visual storytelling.  The dialogue is exceptionally spare – there is hardly any for much of the opening 15-20 (ish) minutes – introducing the protagonist and her situation.  It tends to the ‘wordless’ throughout – suggesting relationships and ideas through its narrative structure and through the physical performance of its actors.  There is a thoughtful visual repeat which (wordlessly) reinforces the parallels of the Brits and the IRA’s treatment of Colette;  there are odd gestures which encapsulate the attitude of a particular character (I thought Gillian Anderson as Mac’s boss made subtle use of very limited screen time here in this.  Clive Owen plays effectively against his established suave persona without overstating it physically). Of the family, Riseborough is consummate (something you almost begin to expect from her having seen her previous work on television and film – such as The Devil’s Whore on Channel 4 (which is still available through their on-demand service in the UK) and The Long Walk to Finchley as Margaret Thatcher as well as lead film turns in Brighton Rock and part of the ensemble in Made in Dagenham. The camera in this film is not afraid of close-up – and Riseborough knows how to use it because she can entirely inhabit the territory of that character. Aiden Gillen fleshes out a typical activist, hothead stereotype with limited time and Domhnall Gleeson (a rising star – who has just shot a Richard Curtis film and part of the next big Brit-flick in Joe Wright’s Anna Karenina) entirely conveys a youthful, gauche, loving brother who is also an entirely committed terrorist.

Whilst these performances are vital, the film has an understated aesthetic which might hide its incredibly sophisticated – expressionistic use – of production design. The typical browns and sepias of smoke-filled rooms set the historical era of the early 1990s, the drab colours characterise homes that (given the poverty induced by constant, drip-drip conflict) have hardly moved on since the 1970s. (Here, the film made a strong social point without ever drawing it to attention in the script  through the wood-pannelled decor).  Characters are dressed to fit emotional standing and mood.  Framings in close-up have an unsettling (fearful) angle to emphasise effectively the tension of the narrative – nothing has been left to chance to construct a visual look that feels entirely unforced and natural. Visual edits during a funeral scene lay out the distinctions in attitudes in this community – as well as its seething anger at injustice – which informs our understanding of characters later.  Fundamentalism – our popular understanding of it now – haunts aspects of this film. To begin the film on a London tube is resonant of more recent events (certainly for a British audience) and sparks us into questioning  what drives people to commit atrocities – acts which viewed from outside can seem simply cold and contrived and without a human base. Anger is at the heart of this film – what it drives people to do, how it shapes them – with more sympathy and understanding of that emotion than that statement might imply.

Its director, James Marsh, was the Oscar-winning director of Man on Wire the documentary which told the story of Philippe Petit who walked across a tightrope suspended between the World Trade Centre twin towers in 1974. Nothing really joins these two British-produced films by the same director (who has directed both narrative and documentary work before), who also made another historically retrospective documentary in Project Nim, except this extraordinary ability to tell a story that could be about events and really ends up being about the people involved in them. Looking at it simply as a film (and not a politically or culturally charged film) its ability to blend aspects of performance, production design and cinematography reminds me of  Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy from last year.  That film evoked visually the seedy corridors of power to evoke emotionally the pervading distrust of the Cold War spy era within the British establishment itself. This film has a greater degree of understatement in its visual construction which I hope will not mean it is overlooked during awards – simply because this kind of British film-making deserves recognition.

Magic Mike (US 2012)

Old ‘Pro’ teaching Tricks to the New: McConaughey shows how it’s done

Given it was directed by Steven Soderbergh Magic Mike has immediate credentials as part of independent (‘indie’) cinema, but Soderbergh has always been very effective (in a similar way to Gus Van Sant) at positioning himself within and without the Hollywood mainstream. Independence is an elusive quality – is it financing? is it subject matter? – but it can certainly attach itself to directors. Soderbergh’s body of work is often clearer in moving between different institutional ‘pools’ than others – in a strategy that could be called ‘one for them, one for me’ – rather than remaining in that nebulous region previously called ‘Indiewood’ but often referred to as ‘indie’ by researchers and academics – a third way separate from either mainstream or full independence. The financing – indb.com lists FilmNation as a backer, an interesting hybrid company run by Glen Basner (ex-Head of Sales Focus Features and Weinstein Company – covering two of the indie markets big winners) and Aaron Ryder. They have an eclectic mix of talent ranging from European imports to genre pieces and the more commercial and are financing at all levels in the chain. They scored a massive hit by acting as a sales agent for The King’s Speech and are distributing the Soderbergh film – placing themselves in the tradition of Focus and the early Weinsteins with the variety of products, both US and European. Definitely independent, then, but open to a wide variety of projects.

It was difficult to know what to expect, then, with Matthew McConaughey in one of the roles (who has distinctly not turned his nose up at the most mainstream of Hollywood pay cheques) and not forgetting the teen appeal of Channing Tatum. Did I mention it’s a film about male strippers? Soderbergh’s work veers between multiplexes and arthouse but this was always going to sit successfully in the former with its stars and subject matter.  Tatum’s first appearance showed the film’s knowledge of this; wittily in a film about male physical performance, the film got the whole nudity issue out of the way immmediately (full non-frontal for those who may be concerned) and generated a sharp intake of female breath from a group somewhere behind me in the cinema. That knowingness about film-making – the self-consciousness – is a particular hallmark of Soderbergh, always inviting you to be in on another level of amusement running alongside the narrative.

Soderbergh challenged Tatum during their work together on Haywire to come up with a story related to a youthful interlude spent as a male stripper. Tatum did – and in the Reid Carolin scripted story it has taken flight as a combination of Soderbergh’s ability to channel the cinema of earlier eras, to edit with a strong sense of parallel narrative and of his ability to create, almost immediately, a strong sense of mood and place – how people feel on any given Sunday (or other day) that’s very recognisable and empathic. This film’s mood reminded me of the New York Times review of Kathryn Bigelow’s sufter-heist movie Point Break as a narrative examining the problems a surfing subculture left too long out in the sun – what had appeared subversive, rebellious has become seedy and impure. Similarly, the perks and freedoms of being a male stripper – seen through the eyes of Adam (Alex Pettyfer), the ingenue, at the beginning of the film – become more stale, more corrupted as the film proceeds. Soderbergh’s cinematography changes to match this alternation in mood, more of the expressionistic style of his Oscar-winning Traffic becomes apparent as the film progresses to represent the sinking into excessive drink and drugs as part of the ‘fun’ that can be had in this profession.

What do male strippers mean to most audiences? The women audiences in Soderbergh’s film (as in real life) find the whole process funny and exciting in equal measure. The film makes a fascinating counterpoint to movies where women appear stripping – I haven’t seen Showgirls (and don’t really intend to) but I have seen The Wrestler where Marisa Tomei delivers as much of a great performance in the ‘tart with a heart’ role as Mickey Rourke does as the reinvented wrestler. Here as elsewhere, women are represented (rightly) as oppressed by this economic necessity – and this film about men interestingly manages to capture this same constriction for the male performers. They may be the centre of attention on stage and desirable – but they are living a lifestyle of quiet desperation and with a desire to be able to break out of the stereotype and move away. A version of The Full Monty where the narrative somehow runs backwards.

McConaghey plays the role of the dubious entrepreneur and manager of the strip club, Dallas, with the most confident swagger and as if revelling in his slightly villainous credentials. Having made his money, this actor appears to be enjoying working in these less mainstream parts – although they all seem to demand this particular cool confidence as part of the characterisation and his return to indie brand value. A long time since Thirteen Conversations about One Thing, where more was demanded of him, but this year’s CV is amassing roles from directors such as Lee Daniels (the literary adaptation The Paperboy), Richard Linklater (the delayed release of Bernie with Jack Black) and William Friedkin in Killer Joe.  His performance is laden with irony and camp (see the photo above) but manages not to drift into caricature and to affect the film’s balance between comedy and its more serious messages. This is a simple morality tale – and quite openly schematic in its allocation of the roles of good and corrupt.

As the man in the centre of the moral and personal dilemma, Channing Tatum is also moving in an unexpected career direction through his second collaboration with Soderbergh (who worked with George Clooney as producing partners for a number of years, as well as regularly with Matt Damon as an actor). Soderbergh does manage the star ensemble effectively – making the dynamics work equally between players of different star ratings (Full Frontal is one of his films which is an underplayed pleasure for that). Soderbergh has come near the subject matter of workers in some level of the sex industry in The Girlfriend Experience – which makes an interesting counterpoint to me because that film had a deliberately unerotic and flat quality (its digital shooting enhanced this I think) in dealing with life of a call girl. This is a movie, though, about how ‘whoring’ themselves affects the men who do it – a film with a strong moral centre, provided schematically by the character of Adam’s sister, Brooke, and her clear disapproval and anxiety and ultimately conventional moral lessons. There was nothing new to Magic Mike – Paul Schrader’s American Gigolo was in the background – but a confident hand could blend the very different tones and filmic styles into a cohesive watch. The sequences in the strip club are quite brilliant – and very funny – even without Tom Jones (You Can Keep Your Hat On) on the soundtrack. Carolin and Tatum’s own company, Ironhorse, has a Magic Mike 2 in development. Never say independent production turns its nose up at a sequel.

Haywire (US 2012)

Room Service – Soderbergh Style

I’ve been made aware recently that not everyone regards Steven Soderbergh as a genius. Before I argue the case, and using Haywire, I will admit that flicking onto Ocean’s Thirteen a couple of nights ago did make me acknowledge the other side of the argument – even when this was the film that recouped the franchise after the bastard middle child that was Ocean’s Twelve had been let loose on an indulgent public. O13 has all those elements of slick plotting and Rat Pack glamour without quite the soul of a good movie. This from the man who was the instigator of the 1990s independent cinema boom with his debut feature sex, lies and videotape and therefore perenially associated with a form of filmmaking that is all about soul on minimal budgets. Soderbergh is a master of the ‘one for them, one for me’ system of making films – after he experienced several years in the wilderness after his second and subsequent features failed to hit the mark as that elusive quality of ‘indie’ yet ‘commercial’ – the monster he was involved in creating. Schizopolisis the love letter to audiences that means Soderbergh (for me) never has to say he’s sorry.

On first glance, Haywire might appear as the ‘one for them’ option. It’s in a mainstream genre; it stars Gina Carano as a ‘kick-ass’ female action star – a popular generic twist already well established by Angeline Jolie. so Carano should be Matrix-kicking at an open door. She does – with aplomb – but within a far classier product that recalls Soderbergh’s capacity with reinvention of genre (as in his comeback crime thriller Out of Sight) and his cineaste love of those late 60s and early 70s complexities. Reviews have discussed the ‘real’ violence on screen – performers visibly hurt/winded during fight sequences or stunts – and the opening scene suggests this kind of action is going to be relentless. In fact, what Soderbergh constructs (as his own cinematographer and editor – check out the regular pseudonyms) is a series of raids or attacks, long set pieces that spend more time crafting tension than releasing it spectacularly. It recalls some of the ambience of The Limey – setting, music and the camerawork which, despite its very phycsical action, instinctively sends me back to the great 60s heist movies rather than more obvious models. Of these, Carano’s character is immediately reminiscent of Jason Bourne – but we are not in the situation of the agent gone rogue/on the run to discover that the government structure is not to be trusted. We are already in post-belief world of sub-contracted, privatised assassinations – the issue of whether Michael Douglas’s American official is to be trusted never seems to be in play.

It’s a great genre piece – a modern action flick. As ever, Soderbergh’s handling of it means that it’s The Thomas Crown Affair, perhaps even Rififi (albeit cinematographically so different) I want to return to (as well as the obvious references to Point Blank and Get Carter that have featured in review). Perhaps if only to work out whether it’s Ewan McGregor or Michael Fassbender who best captures Faye Dunaway’s indeterminate duplicity(!). Gina Carano has already convinced me that she might be a reasonable replacement, more generally, for Steve McQueen’s relatively silent and unreconstructed brand of hero.

Trishna (UK 2011)

If I was sceptical of the idea of an Indian-set retelling of Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles, then Trishna removed them successfully. Michael Winterbottom’s third adaptation of a Hardy novel (following The Claim – based on The Mayor of Casterbridge – and Jude) this updates Tess to modern Rajasthan, a province still functioning as a rural community enough alike to nineteenth century Dorset (or Wessex) to make the parallels less of a gimmick and more living and breathing motivations for the characters. It is a place where the kind of passivity that Tess shows in the face of all decisions would be credible – for a Western audience – in a young girl from a poor family. What more local audiences will make of this – and in particular after some of the controversy that Slumdog Millionaire generated – I’d really like to hear.

Being able to see this pretty much back to back with Andrea Arnold’s Wuthering Heights, shows how two of the main contenders for current leading British filmmaker approach their work with such an eye for the essences of the story and a desire to make it truly modern. Arnold’s film catches you with how it blends both the language of the novel with modern expressions – without the two jarring and so emphasising how little the essences of people and their passions change. It is embedded in the storytelling through the dialogue – a better claim for contemporaneity than any of the surface glosses (wet shirts, tousled hair) added in order to ‘sex up’ and so update certain Austen or Bronte adaptations. Quite differently, Winterbottom has engaged with aspects of Indian culture to create a world where the girl from the village, Trishna, can believably wish to aspire to be part of a glamour that would usually be completely out of her reach – the world of the Westernised Jay whose father owns the luxury hotels to pander to tourists’ colonial nostalgia and who dabbles in the fringes of Bollywood, his money attractive to ambitious filmmakers and musicians. There’s a very modern dilemma for Trishna. Winterbottom (responsible for the screenplay as well as the direction) allows the narrative to generate other possibilities that the lead character could follow in twenty-first century Mumbai. How she chooses to resolve her situation would be huge spoiler – so I won’t spoil it.

Ossian, Rajasthan

In the Q&A following the screening, Winterbottom and Pinto discussed working with a treatment and exploring improvisations extensively (the dialogue is very loose and naturalistic in line with this) and how many of the characters are non-professional locals in the area around Ossian (a city which is off the regular tourist track – as Jay’s group comments – but which looked stunning in Marcel Zyskind’s cinematography) playing a version of themselves. Pinto spent a long time with the real jeep driver’s family who play her family in the film – and that is tangible in the warm on-screen relationships making their relationship much more central than in the novel. Winterbottom had long eyed that area as ideal for an adaptation of Tess – since he went there for Code 46 (another even more improvisational narrative, with some of the same issues of power and disenfranchisement as we find here).

The music drives the story. From the homage sequences to Bollywood films – where a dance rehearsal in the story breaks out of its frame within a frame to become a brief performance sequence direct to camera – to the Indian movies playing on the television. Better minds than mine will be able to furnish the specific references but it’s a melodrama in the true sense in the way it subsumes the music into the drama. The girls (‘milkmaids’) dance with youthful joy and abandon to the TV sequence, knowing all the moves – by turns sexy, provocative but with a carelessness that is innocent of their seductiveness. (This is at the heart of Tess too). The process of working with Amit Trivedi during the course of the film – so that the original songs were developed during shooting enabling them to be embedded into the story (commenting back on the action as is familiar in this style of movie). The original theme is a lyrical, elegiac melody – imbued with a tone more nineteenth than twenty-first century. Written by Shigeru Umebayashi (who was responsible for just such another affecting score on A Single Man) it returns periodically to overlay the romance.

Winterbottom commented that if Pinto and Ahmed had not agreed to do the film, then it simply would not have been made. This is a very typical publicity puff we’re all used to hearing on the DVD extras, except this time it was more convincing. These two actors are what British stars are made of – embodying an charisma outside their character and a conviction within it. Ahmed, in particular, handled a character combining both Alec and Angel well to maintain engagement with a potentially unsympathetic role. It made me want to see them in a role where their ethnic origin, or their ability to represent those roles, was removed. (Although I see Ahmed has subsequently worked with Mira Nair on an American-set 9/11 related narrative – her handling of such a narrative would be a must-see following films such as The Namesake).

Music has been such as integral part of Winterbottom’s film conceptions – there are the obvious links via Nine Songs and 24 hour Party People; there are the collaborations with Michael Nyman in Wonderland and The Claim; a clip played from Jude reminded me of that haunting folk melodies that convey the melancholy and impending tragedy in that story. In an accompanying screen talk, Winterbottom outlined how that process differs from film to film (not surprising given the wide diversity of material he engages with) and it reminded me what a versatile role music plays in his films.

London Film Festival 2011 #2: Wuthering Heights (UK 2011)

James Howson as Heathcliff

It’s difficult to know where to begin in relation to Andrea Arnold’s Wuthering Heights; except to say that within minutes I knew whatever else was missing, this version would not leave out the hanging of Isabella’s spaniel. In playing the race card, by casting a two black actors as the younger (Solomon Glave) and older (James Howson) Heathcliff, Arnold has not subsequently backed away from making him and Cathy the elemental creatures of cruelty and obsession that underpins the brutality of Emily Brontë’s imagining. And it is all the richer for that act of faith in realising all the parts that make them compelling protagonists.

From the start, the elements play a vital role visually. Whilst previous British versions have to a greater or lesser extent ‘prettied’ their subjects, this film is distinguished by the real, visceral realisation of how these two characters inhabit the outside better than they do the inside – the sparse moorland scrub is their wordless playground and these are children who grew up in all weathers, knowing the mud, the rain, the gorse and often wearing it on themselves as a second skin. Cathy’s wasting away inside Thrushcross Grange is entirely logical.

If you are able to see the film you won’t need, so I won’t waste time, on lengthy descriptions of its cinematography (focussed on setting you into the middle of the action) and the powerful editing. Those of us who are lucky to live near the Brontës’ Haworth home – and get to walk on those moors – can recognise the bleakness that Arnold and Robbie Ryan (her long time collaborator) have realised in the best kind of visceral filmmaking. The wordlessness is important – in this stripped down imagining (it’s pulling away from the word adaptation) – the kind of characters Arnold has conceived of here would not be given to nineteenth century verbosity and witticism. The supporting players are convincing – Hindley is especially important since the narrative restructuring places more emphasis on the surrogate Cain and Abel rivalry and bitter hatred. (An honourable mention for Nichola Burley who did much with the usually insipid Isabella). The filmic language consistently places you in the perspective of the main character – because this is Heathcliff’s story told from the perspective of the outsider who enters a world and tries to determine to make it his own. All the performances are strong, I think, notably the non-actors/new actors in the two Heathcliffs and young Cathy (Shannon Beer). The moment where Heathcliff (Howson) beats his head against the tree in anguish – a usually uncomfortably theatrical and unconvincing moment certainly in some of the previous British adaptations –is, well, exactly how this man might express his emotions.

A love story, a revenge drama, a story of a rise to power? It encompasses all of these. I loved the stillness that was at the heart of the film – there is no non-diegetic music used during the narrative – a stillness that reminded me of Red Road and how Jackie’s (Kate Dickie) world was silent, alone and contained until Clyde (Tony Curran) introduced noise and chaos. As in that film, and in Fish Tank (which by comparison was a much ‘noisier’ story generally) there is great sophistication in moving sympathy and/or comprehension between the different protagonists – particularly those characters who do not fit typical moulds of heroism or sympathy or (like Clyde, like Heathcliff) act in a way that should deny it. One of the great pleasures of the original novel is how your sympathies shift as you re-read – particularly on getting older – so Arnold’s text promises the richness of rediscovery. It also has an aesthetic I felt was familiar from Andrew Kötting’s work, especially This Filthy Earth – which reminds me of the relevance of the more European novelistic tradition such as found in the novels of Zola. However, Brontë’s original protagonists are figures out of time and society, and her novel comments on the individual and the psychological – not on class or social systems. Andrea Arnold’s interpretation, though, appears to examine those constructions of power and how they dominate even within small societies. Just as Heathcliff enters the torpid village, steeped in adherence to old ways of religion and ownership, so the wider world seeps into this gothic and elemental classic tale through her bold construction of a real outsider.

London Film Festival 2011 #1: Shame (UK 2011)

Living in-between: Brandon (Fassbender) waits in 'Shame'

(NB No intentional spoilers – but this does discuss the film in detail)

A film about sex addiction? Given the way in which cinema can be all about fetishising what we see and the way we see it, Shame represents a bold piece of filmmaking but maybe not as you would think. The early publicity inevitably uses that easy shorthand of sex addiction. The film does more, including (but not exclusively) how it alters the action of looking by the way it is made as well as the content of the piece.

Set in New York and starring McQueen’s muse, Michael Fassbender, it follows a man (Brandon) who has the capacity for seduction and the an obsessive compulsion towards all forms of sexual encounters, ones which do not necessitate the intimacy of a full relationship. The arrival of his sister, Sissy, disrupts his carefully organised and guarded world.

Shot using film, the first composition suggests the same kind of textual depth that McQueen achieved in his first feature, Hunger – visceral in its recreation of place and time and simultaneously calling attention to the beauty of the image. However, this film gives way to a very different aesthetic, with striking blues and whites of the typical WASPish New York apartment joining to create an overriding tone of desaturated flatness. Meanwhile, New York itself glitters in the background in several scenes – a stereotype of its symbolic value as the place of all desires. (Something that will be developed in other ways). Early scenes have some resonance towards American Psycho in their evocation of the emptiness of that highly-paid, corporate existence.

Co-written by McQueen with British TV and film writer, Abi Morgan (very well-known in the U.K., most recently for The Hour and the upcoming Margaret Thatcher story film The Iron Lady) there is (a McQ trademark?) avoidance of dialogue for long sequences – relying on Fassbender’s capacity to move through an extraordinary range of emotions (and the performance’s quality testifies to the way in which McQueen is clearly Fassbender’s muse) – and it avoids trite explanations of background and psychological motivations. (Abi Morgan spoke at a festival event about creating “maximum impact with minimum words”). These could be a form of French New Wave characters – glamorous and attractive at times, inscrutable and dark at others. We experience them from the outside in this dispursive rather than concentrative narrative structure.

The theme of alienation plays through the whole film – the central figure struggles with a fear of intimacy that we are familiar with (a modern parallel with Soderbergh’s Graham in sex, lies and videotape and both films share the awkward interactions and missed connections of floundering associations. However, Soderbergh’s film was very certainly about something – sex and lying. In saying what McQueen’s is about, I think we have to start with the way in which the film embraces the experiential level rather than the simply thematic – which seems contradictory given its anti-realist narrative aesthetics (see the trailer below for some feel of this).

This might explain why the odd critic may have commented on being bored whilst watching – isn’t that maybe the point of some of it? McQueen’s mastery of the visual image subtly but relentlessly removes that traditional screen dynamic for sexual imagery so that the true, achingly banal and despairingly repetitive nature of these transactions is viscerally apparent. This is not necessarily new – there are numerous examples of interrupting the audience’s gaze. American Psycho (to return to the earlier example) chooses to go to parody and excess as its means of subverting the glamour (a technique, of course, that relies heavily on audience reading). However, by blurring focus, altering depth of field, holding long on discomforting close-ups (a face, a back of a neck), McQueen does not so much ‘subvert’ or ‘challenge’ typical spectatorship positions – rather he seems to have started from elsewhere. The striking human-ness of some of the flesh is what immediately stands out, the beautiful ordinariness of a face – compared to the dehumanised, virtual forms populating Brandon’s gaze (sometimes physically present, sometimes on screen). In addition, the emotional punch is helped by the symbolic use of the spaces of the city – the way in which the ‘in-between-ness’ of characters’ lives (the streets, the apartment lobby, the subway) is a powerful metaphor for their inner states (the loneliness of the long-distance porn surfer).

Sure – the alienation of modern living is no new theme. But, as in his first feature, McQueen’s filmmaking doesn’t worry about ‘saying’ something original – he just drops you directly into the melting pot to experience those people’s lives through the medium of an artistically stunning image. The intellectual engagement is fully there once we reflect on our discomfort. Discomfort because – as someone noted in a discussion with Abi Morgan at the festival – this is not a film ‘about’ sex addiction, just as Hunger was not ‘about’ a terrorist. I’m going to finish this idea by going off on a tangent to the choice of Bach’s Goldberg Variations (e.g. the famous Aria) as part of the soundtrack (the sound design is another technical achievement). It uses Glenn Gould’s recording which means the music includes his distinctive hum, well-known as part of the texture of his interpretations. Alongside those clean, baroque melodies (so representative of control and purification) the voice of a driven, obsessive, messy human runs along complementing rather than detracting from the music. Elsewhere, Brandon’s sister, Sissy, sings the blues – using an unexpected classic to do so. So, without being ‘about’ anything or one small section of society (sex addicts) – this film rather shows us how people are complicated, how real intimacy can be so unbearably difficult. Not a new theme you might think. But how I enjoyed the power with which that old tune was revoiced by McQueen, Morgan and the others not least by the depth of feeling those beautiful surface images could create.