Europe at Sea

This doc starts out with a bold blanket statement: “in 2017, the world was more volatile than at any time since WW2”. It then goes on to talk about “liquid modernism” and “world disorder”, claiming that we are moving in a very dangerous and toxic direction, and suggesting that a large war could be about to ensue. The tone of Europe at Sea is very bleak. And sadly also very urgent.

This 62-minute featurette follows the footsteps of Federica Mogherini, the Italian woman (pictured at the top) with the longest job title on Earth: she is the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission in the Juncker Commission, a position she acquired in November 2014. The also Italian and also female film director Annalisa Piras then delves a number of topics familiar to anyone who has either a computer or a television: mass immigration as a result of wars of Africa and the Middle East, peace in Europe since the creation of establishment of the EU 60 years ago, Brexit, the threats of Russia and Trump, and much more. Television footage and titles containing facts and figures are blended with talking head interviews with Federica and the likes of British academic Mary Kaldor (pictured below)

Roughly halfway throughout the movie, the director shows some disturbing footage of an illegal immigrant boat capsizing with tens of people being thrown into the Mediterranean. It then explains that at least 17,000 deaths of such nature occurred between January and August this year, and then it investigates the Operation Sophia, aimed at rescuing such people. “Saving lives is our number one priority”, explains Federica. She then complements: “I hope that’s not a push factor”, in reference to the fact Africans might be attracted by the prospect of being rescued in case of an accident.

Europe at Sea exposes a lot of issues pertinent to Europe and the world. But it has quite a few problems, perhaps because it’s too ambitious. Firstly, it’s never entirely what the film is about. Operation Sophia only takes up a small part of the film, making the film title strange and misleading. Unless the “sea” refers to the fluidity of times? Still, very vague. The film sometimes feels a little disjointed: it talks about migration, then waltzes towards national security and then skids back to migration without building an entirely coherent narrative.

Plus, some perverse connections are made, perhaps unwittingly. For example, terror attacks are discussed in the context of immigration, giving the impression of a direct causability. All in all, the tone of the film sounds blatantly propagandistic, and unabashedly pro-EU. I am staunchly pro-European, but this does not mean I wouldn’t welcome a more balanced stance. When Russia is discussed, the music in the background sounds a lot like the soundtrack of The Omen (Richard Donner, 1976). These Russians are evil people; may the mighty EU rescue us good people from them! A lot of viewers might also feel uncomfortable at the clear suggestion that the EU Army should be created, and that it should cooperate with Nato.

Still, an interesting piece of investigate journalism dealing with valuable insight into a number of issues, which we simply cannot afford to ignore. Europe at Sea is available on all major VoD platforms on Friday, December 1st. Not cheerful holiday watching, yet necessary.

The Man Who Invented Christmas

Christmas is a time to celebrate our loved ones and savour the special relationships we have with each other, isn’t it? Embedding these notions in modern society, Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol is a shining beacon of such values and constantly reminds us to be kind and affectionate to everyone. Recreated in the form of the muppets, animation and fiction film, the story is a timeless and fundamental human tale. This festival year, we are lucky enough to be blessed by the presence of The Man Who Invented Christmas, adopting the mould of Goodbye Christopher Robin (released earlier this year), which extrapolated upon the origins of the author A.A. Milne his life. Specifically, Bharat Nalluri’s film deals with how Charles Dickens came to write the famous story of Ebenezer Scrooge.

Similar to Simon Curtis’ dross affair, The Man Who Invented Christmas works as an arduous account that lacks any real fleshed out characters. In their places are left only caricatures that operate in a sea of beige. For a film that attempts to pride itself on recounting history, it’s surprising how unimaginative the whole affair is. Granted its target audience do not own a bank account or know the impacts of Brexit on society, its lack of creativity or even slight fun leave it in a void of a grey dullness that is the complete antithesis to Christmas cheer.

Charles Dickens (Dan Stevens) is a pantomimic (-ish) character filled with an array of voices and facial expressions clearly characteristic of the greatest Victorian writer. After his hit success of Olivier Twist in 1838, his creative juices have suddenly come to a halt in three underwhelming publications. Feeling critical and financial pressure to write again, he is left facing further ridicule if he does not publish a new book soon. His next tale comes to mind when he hears his maid telling ghost stories to his children, becoming the framework for what eventually becomes A Christmas Carol.

Cutting back to his childhood and hustler father, played by Jonathan Pryce, the film tries desperately to give viewers a strange concoction of both these Dickensian classics. Portraying Scrooge in an acceptable fashion, Christopher Plummer appears as the imagined character in Dickens’ study whilst he creates this world. Haunting him throughout, until the writer’s ending is complete, Plummer is perfectly serviceable.

Creating the novel for the sole purpose to lavishly furnish his house, pay off a few debts and silence an irritable critic of his work, Dickens in this version is a self-centred cartoon. In his position as bringing to light the social injustices of the Industrial Revolution, real life Dickens championed a lower working class. Though referred to as a “man of the people”, Stevens’s character rarely shares a scene with someone who is not finely dressed. Yet, when the film does come to present the lower working classes, it resorts to a clichéd depiction of coal covered faces and yellow death. The seething underbelly of Victorian London, which is omnipresent in Dickens’ works, is replaced with cheery cheap looking sets that feel as vacuous as the character’s presented on screen. Behind the screen, pulling The Man Who Invented Christmas along by the scruff of the neck is Mychael Danna’s score which is unrelenting in its task to act as emotional filler.

The messages of familial love and affection that is so pivotal to Christmas time are hastily rushed at last minute into the film and it never feels that Stevens’ Dickens actually believes in such traditional values. Throughout the whole narrative, he is never shown to pay much attention to his wife, Kate Dickens (Morfydd Clark), his children or appear socially approachable. As a money driven, egotistical and with a hint of multiple personality disorder, there’s not much Christmas spirit in this Charles Dickens.

Through all this negativity, The Man Who Invented Christmas thankfully is not crass or vulgar. Its shortened running time of well under two hours leaves as a short painful experience, luckily. As one character states to Charles, ‘I’m exhausted spending two hours in your company’. Speaking to my inner self I got lost in boredom,Susan Coyne’s line of dialogue could not more acutely summarise any sane person’s impressions on the flawed, soulless commercialised piece of seasonal greetings.

The Man Who Invented Christmas is out in cinemas on Friday, December 1st. We recommend that you avoid it, and pay a visit to your long-neglected aunt instead, and spread some love and Christmas cheer. And buy her a little prezzie with the money you would spend on the cinema ticket.

And click here for a far more touching and convincing Christmas tale!

Most Beautiful Island

A deceptively short film (it runs a mere 80 minutes), Most Beautiful Island is an increasingly unnerving trip to an unexpected destination. New York footage follows different women, one per shot, navigating serial crowded spaces. Eventually a shot frames Luciana (Spanish writer-director Asensio, from Madrid). Titles. Then she’s speaking Spanish on the phone to her mother who wants her to come back. She won’t because of of her past (which is never explained).

She visits Dr. Horovitz (David Little), attempting to scam a consultation off him without paying. (This is the US, remember, where medical treatment isn’t free at the point of need to all as in the UK, but available for a $75 fee for those lacking a social security number. A chilling glimpse of the system after which the UK’s current neoliberal government might want to model the NHS.) She takes a bath, peeling tape off the wall to admit a cluster of cockroaches which she watches swim for their own survival as she relaxes.

Work. She and her friend Olga (Natasha Romanova) wearing vests, hot pants and beaked masks regale passers by with the slogan: “the best chicken in the Big Apple”. Luciana is sick of poorly paying gigs like this. As they chat in a cafe after, Olga gets a text for a gig tonight which she can’t do because she’s double-booked. So she offers it to Luciana. $2 000 for attending a party and you don’t have to do anything you don’t want. You need to wear high heels and a black dress. So Luciana has to buy a black dress. She finds a way despite lack of funds. There are other obstacles to negotiate – a missed text telling her she’s babysitting now and has to pick up the children (she’s late), hiding her backpack and possessions in a bin outside the building as she’s not allowed to take it to the party.

And the party itself. Watched over by a menacing doorman (producer Larry Fessenden) and told what to do by self-assured hostess Vanessa (Caprice Benedetti), Luciana and five other women stand in their designated, numbered chalk circles. They are inspected by wealthy guests, mostly males in suits, who will bet on the girls behind closed doors. Luciana was supposed to replace Olga, but Olga is not only present but also appears to have recruited several other girls. No-one will tell Luciana what the game involves. Eventually, she and Olga are chosen…

The first half hour lifts the lid on the immigrant experience in New York. Women like Luciana and Olga have their reasons for leaving their home countries and can’t go back, but now find themselves in precarious situations. They’re the global underclass and the game which they’re paid handsomely to attend is a divertissement for rich and powerful guests. The script is loosely based on an unpleasant if bizarre personal experience of Asensio’s and what subsequently transpires is horrifyingly believable. Alienating Big Apple imagery anchors the piece: shared apartments, busy streets, cab interiors. A pavement trap door leads down to a literal underworld of claustrophobic lift and (in US vernacular) ‘bathroom’ interiors, impersonal corridors and and brutal cement basements. In this cold environment the party game will play out.

Yet even as Luciana scams her way towards the mystery beyond the door in the hope of financial salvation, in passing there are hints of something better. The world isn’t just kids threatening that their mother will replace their babysitter because she’s late again: it’s also a place where a shopkeeper, seeing someone in trouble, will not only allow her a few days’ credit to get her out of a tight spot but also slip her a free sweet to help get her through the bad times.

Made quickly on a meagre budget, Most Beautiful Island is a more powerful film than numerous more polished, bigger budgeted films out there. We aren’t going to reveal its game except to say it’s most definitely one you want to experience. It is out in the UK on Friday, December 1st, and it’s available on BFI Player just after Christmas.

How dirty are cigarettes in film?

Last week the French socialist senator Nadine Grelet-Certenais proposed a prohibition of smoking in French cinema. She believes that film with smoking characters have a negative impact on French citizens, in one of the few countries in the world where the domestic film industry is indeed large and influential enough to shape up habits and trends. Obviously it backfired. Critics immediately pointed out that if such legislation was implemented in retrospect, only a handful of films would survive. Actors such as Jean-Paul Belmondo (pictured below), Alain Delon and Catherine Deneuve (pictured at the top), to name just a few, were almost invariably attached to a cigarette throughout their film careers.

This is not an isolated trend. Just last year, California’s anti-smoking lobby wanted Hollywood to give up cigarettes altogether. A complaint filed against the Motion Picture Association of America, six major studios and the Association of Theatre Owners, alleges that nearly five million people under the age of 16 have taken up smoking thanks to cigarettes in film. Needless to say, their methodology is highly empirical and many have questioned the numbers and their collection criteria.

Hollywood and French actors are not good role models for anti-smoking campaigners and legislators. They are sexy, elegant and have attached a very positive image to cigarettes. To boot, some look almost immune to the negative effects of smoking. For example, Deneuve is extremely beautiful at the age of 74. Her skin is not wrinkly, her eyes are not baggy, her teeth are not icky and her hair certainly doesn’t look frail and brittle. Of course I’m not saying that you should smoke regularly in order look as good as Catherine Deneuve when you have lived for nearly three quarters of century. But I’m not saying that you shouldn’t smoke, either. In fact, I’m not making recommendations. You are all adults and you can decide for yourselves what you should do. And that’s exactly the point of this article.

.

Times have changed

Film has changed enormously since it was first invented in the late 19th century. And so has our society, as well as our attitudes to cinema and cinema-going. For example, people were allowed to smoke inside early movie theatres in the UK and and the US (the nickelodeons, in a reference to the entrance fee of just a nickel, 5c). In fact, people could do pretty much anything in these crowded, insalubrious and hazardous buildings aimed mostly at the working classes, who couldn’t afford to go to the theatre or the opera.

Later cigarettes acquired a glamorous reputation, with Hollywood and the French (amongst others) playing seductive characters with tobacco attached to their lips. Even the undulation of the smoke is sexy, and highly attractive to capture on camera. Advertising helped. In the 1960s, smoking cigarettes was often marketed as not just elegant, but also good for your teeth (see advert below) and for your lungs (“wanna get rid of that cough? Just light up!). And so many big stars puffed their way through their cinema world. Rita Hayworth (pictured at the bottom of this article), Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart (pictured together below) and so many others had their image directly associated to cigarettes.

So now times have changed again. We know cigarettes are bad for our health, we can no longer smoke in cinemas, bars and restaurants, and cigarette advertisements have been entirely banned. Isn’t it time we did the same to cigarettes? The answer is resounding NO. Let me explain myself.

.

Meat-free films for vegetarians

Cinema is about freedom. Artistic freedom. Freedom to agree and disagree. Freedom to choose. Cinema should be dirty in its nature. Responsive mimicry is not compulsory. In other words, you don’t have to identify with the characters on the silver screen and emulate them at all costs. Advertising is very different. It’s not made for critical thinking (bar specific government and third sector campaigns). It’s not intended to open up your mind. Advertising is overt persuasion and seduction. It’s manipulative in its very nature. Cinema isn’t (or at least not the type of dirty cinema in which we strongly believe).

Just picture what it would be like if all bad stuff was banned from cinema. If we take everything at face value, we may just prohibit filmmaking altogether. No cigarettes, no getting drunk, no drug-taking, no murders. Just a beautiful flowery world where we all hold hands and prance around in celebration of our magnificent and flawless existence. As if! Ratings already exist for preventing children and young people from accessing certain types of material, but we don’t need to do the same to adults. Films don’t need to come with a warning: “don’t try this at home!”.

Alternatively, we could come up with some sort of metric in order to determine whether the film encourages smoking. Something akin to the Bechdel Test? We could call it the “Smochdel Test”, or maybe the “Deneuve Test”? It would work like this: if two people keep a cigarette for longer than 10 seconds in the mouths while displaying a smug sense of satisfaction, then the film fails the Test! Just brilliant, isn’t it? I’m a genius!

Or maybe not. What if we simply allow grown-ups like you and me to be our own arbiters? I don’t want to live in a world where meat-free films are labelled as such for vegetarians, where sinful stories are marked for Christians, and so on. That’s madness. I want to be able to go to the cinema in order to fall in love, to understand other people, plus to be profoundly moved. But I’m also prepared to be outraged, even offended and insulted. Cinema should hit you like a ton of bricks.

.

Keep calm and carry on

Smoking is dirty and subversive, and it belongs in cinema in its integrality. Cinema offers us a peek into a lot of things. which what we normally don’t see, a non-sanitised reality. We shouldn’t strip cinema of its very expository nature. So let’s carry smoking, eating meat, shagging and dare I say… killing each other? Let’s allow cinema to be a venting outlet so we don’t have to try all of these things at home.

Circles (Krugovi)

Though released in 2013, Circles feels all the more relevant in a society so intoxicated with racial and religious hate, also speaking to contemporary issues of migration. Partially set in Bosnia, 1993 during the genocide of Muslims and Bosnian Croats, Serbian director Srdan Golubovic uses the true story of Marko (Vuk Kostic), a Serbian soldier who witnessed and prevented the death of Haris (Leon Lucev), a Muslim shop owner, from being violently beaten up by the hands of three soldiers, including the brutish Todor (Boris Isakovic).

The beating of Haris has repercussions for all those involved and after an abrupt cut away from 1993, Circles then focuses its narrative 10 years after the Bosnia War has ended. Granted the title can allude towards the circles in which small communities, such as those depicted in the film, orientate in. Still, what it serves to emphasise is the shapes and impacts which are left behind by an act of heroism.

After presenting a Bosnia so consumed by racial hatred in 1993, Golubovic’s shift to a fairly contemporary Europe seething with socio-political issues feels very apt in the current moment. The consequences of Marko’s simple act still bears down upon Haris, Todor and Ranko (Aleksander Berek), Marko’s father. Though it is clear to see that the film’s intentions are to covering a wide variety of social situations and people. The narrative of Circles feels somewhat convoluted by Haris’ decision to shelter a wife and child in Germany from an abusive husband.

The beats which do work, such as Ranko’s decision to not employ a soldier’s son – the father who was present at Haris’ beating- and Nebojsa (Nebojsa Glogovac), Marko’s friend, who faces a dilemma whether or not to make a lifesaving surgery on Todor do however add a level of layered emotional complexities. Choosing to select those closest to Marko and pursuing them only could have been a creative decision undertaken that would have benefited the story.

Supported by a plethora of performances, the film has a clear cinematic milieu in its wide lens, capturing the vast social housing and brutalist architecture. Similarly, the lens sits from a side on perspective in a handful of shots to elicit the isolated decision which Nebojsa in particular faces. Pouring out onto the screen, the clear melancholy of the country is presented in a subdued colour palette that feels akin to social realism, thus fitting the narrative. Specifically, in the apartment of Haris, beiges and grey colours fill the room, with the abusive husband hence entering in all black and throwing his families harmonious situation in chaos.

Bookended by the beating and its repercussions, the strength which the film demonstrates in withholding certain information until the final scene is subtle modern filmmaking. In understated political messages that do not inundate the audience, Circles holds an emotional and powerful core; one which shines a light on an act of kindness that defines an individual and communities’ life. It’s a welcome reminder that during moments of darkness, light can still shine through and break the void.

Circles is part of the Walk This Way collection, and it’s now available on all major VoD platforms.

Saint George (São Jorge)

In the year of 2011 the Troika bailout program was implemented across Portugal. More than 1,8 million families and companies were in debt, and 60 debt collection agencies engaged in immoral practices on the brink of legality in order to coerce and intimidate people into paying. People who simply didn’t have such money. The outcome was confusion, anger, despair and sometimes even tragedy.

The film opens with the Prayer to Saint George: “I will go dressed and armed with the weapons of Saint George so that my enemies, having feet will not reach me; having hands will not trap me; having eyes will not see me, neither with thought can they cause me harm”. It feels almost like an ironic comment on the predicament of the film’s protagonist. Jorge (Nuno Lopes) is an unemployed boxer struggling to support his child Nelson (David Semedo). The mother Susana (Mariana Nunes) is threatening to take the child back to her birth nation, as she too is struggling to make ends meet.

Jorge finds a job in one of the much-feared debt collectors in order to earn quick money and dissuade Susana from leaving the country. He becomes a henchman prepared to use very obtuse elicitation techniques in order to extract money, daunt and terrorise debtors. His bosses often take him to “casual” collection meetings, as the mere presence of the bulky and muscular male is indeed very frightening. But it’s in the dark of the night, when there’s no one around, that the elicitation techniques get sanguinary.

This is a very dark and somber film. The photography is mostly at night, and the camera remains borderline static throughout the movie. There’s an eerie stillness, just like the country’s economy. People often filmed from outside barren and soulless, making them look like rats in a cage and emphasising their helplessness. The neighbourhoods are poor and derelict, an image you don’t normally associate with EU countries. Much of the action takes place in the Jamaica District of Lisbon, which is populated mostly by marginalised black people. It reminded me a lot of the gypsy district in Slovakia of Ulrich Seidl’s Import Export (2007). They are the forgotten peoples of Europe.

Prejudice is also a central topic of the film. Susana is a black foreigner, from a former Portuguese colony (Brazil). She has been consistently accused of being a “nigger whore” and a gold-digger. She is subjected to racism, xenophobia and misogyny. Unbeknownst to Jorge, his father offered her a large sum of money for an abortion, which she refused. Now she wants to return to Brazil, reversing her immigration route. Europe becomes the doomed continent, while the former colony is promising land. A exotic papaya symbolises the longing for Brazil

There is a touch of hope at the end of the film. Despite a very tragic event, the characters seem to find some sort ofredemption and reconciliation through their complicity. It’s as if people they suddenly realised the cruel nature of capitalism. During a crisis, the most vulnerable are often forced to confront each other; those who should be support each other are instead set against each other.

The Troika ended in 2014, and Portugal has since recovered and become one of the most promising economies of Europe. Saint George serves as a reminder that solidarity and compassion should prevail above corporate interests at times of economic hardship. The Patron Saint of England will protect those who remain loyal to their most humane values. Those are the real weapons at such difficult times.

Saint George is available on all major VoD platforms from November 2017, and it is part of the Walk This Way collection.

Driftwood

It is now November and winter is knocking at your door. For many, this is the hardest and most depressing month of the year (at least in the Northern Hemisphere). How are you going to prepare for winter? Want a suggestion? Get Driftwood on iTunes.

Driftwood haunted critics in Park City, Utah. No, it wasn’t part of Sundance; it was the winner of the Grand Jury Prize for Best Narrative Film at 2016 Slamdance Film Festival. Slamdance is an indie film fest on the West Coast of the United States. It is a film community born out of rejection; likewise the main characters in Driftwood.

The story begins with a blurry image. An undistinguished, young woman washes ashore and is taken in by an older man. He lives in an isolated house by the beach. There is a bush by the back door. The relationship between them is strange. They seem to know each other, as she offers no resistance. There is something fatherly and patriarchal in the relationship, almost as if she was his daughter. She is passive, and there are hints that she could become passive-aggressive. He cooks a meal, and he holds her hand as they pray before eating; she struggles to manipulate the cutlery, and then she pisses while eating.

Driftwood is a full banquet with courses you have never tried. The characters do not speak. They breathe, puff, observe, react. She is disabled; she cannot even control her bladder. He is a lonely widower. The writer and director Paul Taylor explains his choices: “I wanted to create something which strays from the many dialogue-driven films of my generation”. And he succeeds. Driftwood is somewhere between Room (Lenny Abrahamson, 2015) and The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (Werner Herzog, 1974), proposing a silent way to expose domestic violence and abuse. It also depicts the attempts to socialise “the savages”.

Violence is gentle. The consensual relationship feels incestuous. The beautiful photography can also be misleading. A clear sky, a sunny day, a cosy house. Things get a little bit more complicated when the man inserts a third person in the relationship. Threesomes can often disrupt a established equilibrium.

Although the title of the film refers to pieces of wood, the actors are anything but wooden. The old man (Paul C. Kelly) had worked before with Joachim Trier in Louder Than Bombs (2015), and Joslyn Jensen gives an emblematic and visceral performance. She made me think of Kate Dickie in Couple In a Hole (Tom Geens, 2016).

Watching Driftwood feels a little bit like floating. You don’t get the whole picture. You are looking at the skies, and you don’t know exactly where you are. You just go with the flow. It is never clear who those characters are and what their motives and intentions might be, and even whether they have any. Yet, these people seem very familiar.

Driftwood has now washed up on VoD, and you can view it on iTunes (US only).

Lost in Paris (Paris Pieds Nus)

Growing up in a rural French-Canadian village, Fiona (Fiona Gordon) clearly does not know much else apart from the life outside of her snowy hometown and work at the small library. Touched with a sumptuous vivid colour scheme and an absurdist tone of humour, Lost in Paris opens with a younger Fiona being told by her older auntie, Martha, that she is moving to the French capital. It’s only years later when her elderly aunt, now played by the late Emmanuelle Riva, is failing to live on her own, due to her health, that she is requested to join and care for her relative in one of the most beautiful cities in the world. What could possibly go wrong…?

Accompanied by a humongous red bag, with a patriotic Canadian flag amount its top, Fiona instantly gets lost in the city, the result of her aunt not being at home. Deciding to kill a few hours before returning to her cosy apartment- as seen when Fiona reads out her letter. Walking across one of the many bridges in the city that run over the Seine, she accidentally falls into the river due to the sheer weight of her bag pack. As she is collected from the river by a passing boat, married directors Dominique Abel and Fiona Gordon imbue their world with a tone similar to other contemporary filmmakers like Bruno Dumont in Slack Bay (2016).

In their worlds, the strange interactions between human beings is escalated to a point of hilarity, offering an inner relation to our deepest desires. Specifically, in Gordon and Abel’s seventh feature film, Fiona and Dom, played by Abel himself, hold a resilient desire for one another. Though she later returns to the apartment with no sight of her aunt, the narrative then unfolds into her and Dom’s interactions with one another, whilst trying to find her increasingly senile aunt.

Channeling a performative quality akin to the great Jacques Tati, Dominique Abel – as the homeless Dom – uses the physicality of his facial features and body to elicit a comedic tone reminiscent of early silent cinema, perhaps aking to mimes. Similarly, in the film’s sound, crafted by Arnaud Calvar, the silent era is recalled further. The slapstick of Dom’s character occasionally feels overplayed, particularly in a scene where himself and Fiona attend a funeral to which they think is Martha’s. Still, at a consumable 82 minutes, Lost in Paris has very few moments which outstay their welcome.

Portraying the aged aunt, it is a sheer delight to see Emmanuelle Riva perform in such an opposite manner to Michael Haneke’s Amour (2012). Always a touchstone for a theoretical exploration, Aristotle’s Theory of Comedy only serves only serves to foreground the links between tragedy and comedy. If Amour is Riva’s defining tragic role, then Adel and Gordon’s latest piece underlines one of her more lighthearted performances. Sadly, passing away this January just before her 90th birthday, the French actress is sincerely eternalised in the moving image.

Notwithstanding moments of cinematic nuances, such as self reflectively framing Dom and Fiona with a window frame, Lost in Paris is pure harmless fun that considers humanities inner need to share beautiful moments of life together.

Lost in Paris is out in selected cinemas across the UK on Friday, November 24th.

Beach Rats

It’s New York, it’s Summer and it’s sultry. The tarmac is sizzling, and the pavement scorching hot. And so are the libidos of young men. Frankie (Harris Dickinson) is no exception. The problem is that he is very confused about his sexuality. The extremely attractive young male is dating an equally stunning female called Simone (Madeline Weinstein, who’s not related to the now infamous Harvey), and he hangs out with young straight men of his age. She struggles to have sex with her, and instead fulfils his sexual needs through online gay chat rooms and stealthy sexual encounters with older men.

This sounds like an ordinary predicament, familiar to many gay men. There’s nothing unusual about a teenager grappling with his sexuality. What makes Beach Rats so special is director’s sensitive gaze, and the very realistic and relatable settings. The young female filmmaker Eliza Hittman, who’s only on her second feature, managed to penetrate (no pun intended) a male and testosterone-fueled territory to very convincing results. The film is neither exploitative nor sanitised. Sex is uncomfortable and awkward: both the failed attempts with Simone and the quick interactions with older men (in their places, or even in the woods at night). Frankie is a treat for the online pundits: he’s “scally” with a touch of sweetness and innocence.

Simple sounds and visual effects make the film particularly engaging. Fireworks become a symbol of a disjointed sexual eruption. The acting is also very effective. Dickinson, who is British, mastered a perfect Brooklyn accent. His very own sexuality became a matter of public interest. Is the teen living an ambiguous life just like in the film, or is his sexuality well resolved; and is he gay, straight or bisexual? Of course the answer is not relevant, and so I’m not going to reveal it. And I know you’re not going to look it up because you’re not the slightest bit curious, right? I thought so.

This very dirty American film also delves with a number of issues very pertinent to the 21st century. One of them is the toxic effect that technology can have on gay and bisexual men’s ability to develop relationships. Sex becomes mostly dehumanised and desensitised, feelings are banalised and even the interaction becomes dangerous (in the sense of physical integrity). Young males are particularly vulnerable to the notion that one can engage in gay sex without being gay.

The film also reveals that there’s still a stigma attached to homosexuality, and interestingly it’s the female (Simone) who disseminates the most old-fashioned prejudice: two women together is “sexy”, while two men together is simply “gay”, she explains with a grimace. There’s also a “gay” test that consists of comparing the length of your ring finger with your pointer finger. And it’s 100% accurate!

Beach Rats is out in cinemas across the UK on Friday, November 24th, and the following week on BFI Player (2017). On Mubi on Sunday, January 22nd (2023)

#Starvecrow

This autumn looks set to be a tale of two vaginas. In The Double Lover (2017), François Ozon flashes his trademark cheek with an opening visual gynaecological gag. #Starvecrow – the first offering from the newly-formed HYPEREAL collective – also opens with a vagina. But this British feature film steers well clear of any Gallic wit. Instead, we’re presented with a bloodily real childbirth that sets the tone for the brutally realist onslaught that follows. It’s not a film for the faint-hearted, nor is it one that avoids difficult topics such as incest and rape. However, its head-on handling of the haunting faux-happiness of a self-documenting millennial generation is chillingly well-executed, if occasionally contrived.

HYPEREAL aims to eschew traditional big-budget studio filmmaking. The movement encourages actors to film each other using that ubiquitous 21st century essential – the smartphone. Films are script-less and rely on small mood prompts, alongside the actors’ own improvisational ingenuity. Where relevant, actors might contribute with their own existing mobile phone footage. Importantly, there’s no post-production. The original low-fi quality is maintained and the production team work on cutting together a coherent narrative. In the case of #Starvecrow, this entailed an initial 69 hours becoming a screen-friendly 84 minutes. If Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg had been born in the UK during the late eighties, this may well have been their jam. This may have been British Dogme 17.

The result is a surprisingly tight story that digs underneath the sanitised social media veneer of a group of 20-somethings and steers us through their psychologically shocking secrets. The plot is instigated by the relationship between Ben, a controlling man who records almost all of his daily interactions, and Jess, a seemingly troubled woman who has recently returned from a stint of rehab in the US. The two clearly have a deep connection, but after Jess neglects to invite Ben to a weekend house party in the woods, he obsessively hacks CCTV and mobile phones so that he can keep an eye on Jess. In doing so, he captures the everyday boozy banter of a close-knit circle of friends, as well as their more private moments. This has echoes of the darker episodes of UK television series Skins, with an occasional The Blair Witch Project (Eduardo Sánchez/ Daniel Myrick, 1999) reference thrown about in homage to its handheld lineage.

The acting here is top-notch and entirely relatable for a UK-born millennial. In place of Judd Apatow-esque goofy back-slapping improvised inertia, the cast are convincingly naturalistic and interact with acute authenticity. The subject matter is also painfully timely. We live in an era of rapid technological expansion, as anyone with an internet connection and access to YouTube can vouch. This is slowly encouraging many generations to document their every move, clinging on to the hope of a Facebook like or a Snapchat follow. Concurrently, we are creating an absurdly encompassing panoptican that appears to modify our behaviour in increasingly narcissistic ways. This social critique is compellingly manifested in #Starvecrow’s depiction of the fine line between the fictional façade of fun and the repressed reality of trauma.

At times, the protagonists’ relentless recording of every waking moment can come across unrealistically. It seems unlikely that young people sit at pubs filming their mundane hungover chatter, just as it seems bizarre that an individual would film themselves committing a sexual offence. Likewise, the insertion of a Jungian therapist through which the plot is primarily relayed sometimes makes for contrived, didactic storytelling. It also opens up an intriguing unreliable dream narrator, but doesn’t entirely deliver on this idea. A more polished version of the story can perhaps be found in the Netflix series Black Mirror, episode “The Entire History of You”. Nonetheless, the HYPEREAL medium of delivery is genuinely novel and engaging.

HYPEREAL is an exciting concept, one that aims to democratise filmmaking and make it more relevant and financially accessible for a millennial generation. #Starvecrow is a promising debut from the movement, but can lack coherency as the film approaches its gut-wrenching end. This is a film collective with dirty ambitions – future releases will prove how real the hype is.

#Starvecrow is out in UK cinemas on Friday, November 24th.

All of a Sudden (Auf Einmal)

The small town of Altena sits in the Germanic North Rhine-Westphalia with luscious valleys and clearly an idyllic life for some. The antithesis to his tranquil surroundings, Karsten’s (Sebastian Hülk) life takes a drastic change when a girl unexpectedly dies at a house party he is hosting. She is called Anna and prior to her death, Karsten and her are framed kissing before an abrupt cut. Berlin based director Asli Ozge, working in the German language for the first time, constructs a fairly atypical mystery narrative in All of a Sudden. Still, what unfolds is heightened significantly by the performances of all her cast, a deep cinematic style and a riveting final act.

As Karsten runs out of his apartment and towards the nearest clinic, one cannot help notice all his future worries would have been avoided by simply calling an ambulance, rather than leaving the dying Anna alone in his flat. The result of a hasty transition to the film’s titles, the audience are left unaware of what truly happened after Karsten and Anna kissed. Rippling through the whole narrative, this cut leaves every action of the character down to interpretation and second guessing – is our protagonist really a murderer or has fate playing a cruel trick on him?

From the evidence stacked against him, Anna’s underwear is unearthed under his table and his inability to call the services leaves many, including his lawyer, questioning his true intentions. From a cinematic perspective, Muriel Breton’s editing proposes an infinite amount of possibilities for what really happened in the final moments of Anna’s life.

A calm man, it does not appear that Karsten is capable of murder, yet Hülk plays the character with an understated level of vulnerability; as his job, girlfriend and home town turn on him, there lingers a degree of emotional instability to him. This all comes to a head when a local newspaper reports on the incident in the press, resulting in his boss requesting for his imminent leave until the whole situation has ‘blown over’.

The only beacon of hope for him lays in his father’s strong connections to the town as a loyal patron and affluent donor to charities etc. As Karsten’s appearance in court draws nearer, Ozge deploys a tangible class divide in the form of Anna’s familial ties. The family are uncovered to be Russian immigrants to Germany- a juxtaposition to Karsten’s affluent roots in Altena. Extending this class divide, the low key lighting employed in the industrial estate of Anna’s home acts against the natural light of the protagonist’s working environment in a prestigious bank. Further, some scenes are light with a David Fincher-esque quality, strengthening the peculiar and off beat position the audience finds their opinion on Karsten.

Though the trail sequence plays out in a rudimentary manner, All of a Sudden’s most captivating scenes occur after Karsten has been placed under severe emotional and psychological pressure. Using the situation to his advantage with others, he is relentless in the pursuit of his old equilibrium. Hülk transforms from a shy reserved man, into a sinister, depraved human being. Ozge final shot leaves a tactile impression of the real world, a world where the corrupt succeed and exploit others to their own advantage.

All of a Sudden is part of the Award Winners’ series of the Walk This Way Collection, and it’s available for viewing on all major VoD platforms from November 2017.