Month: August 2017

Logan Lucky

Posted on by victorfraga

Clumsy criminals with a profound sense of morality – including a dash of Robin Hood values – are the subject of Steven Soderbergh’s latest movie, an effective comedy mostly set in Charlotte, North Carolina (NOT Charlottesville in Virginia, but also not too far from there). It centres around a small group of outcast males who decide to carry out a bank heist so that they can make ends meet. Their plans are entirely ludicrous and yet strangely feasible. The absurdity of their predicament makes Logan Lucky fun to watch.

Heartthrob Channing Tatum (who famously starred in Soderbergh’s Magic Mike, in 2012) is his usual delicious beefy self as Jimmy Logan, the difference is that this time he comes with a limp. He’s dismissed from his job once his coworkers notice the problem with his leg: his employer becomes concerned that such “pre-existing” condition could cause insurance problems. An issue symptomatic of a country that punishes people for being sick. He’s joined by his one-armed brother Clyde, who lost his limb in Iraq. There are subtle sociopolitical comments throughout the movie, which is ultimately a lighthearted celebration of the marginalised Americans.

Jimmy and Clyde are joined by other social pariahs, including an incarcerated Daniel Craig with his usual charming muscles combined with a highly nasalised American accent. He helps to perform the heist from inside the prison , and how he does that is one of the surprises that the film has in store for you. The plan is to rob the Charlotte Motor Speedway during the big racing day of the year. The movie is teeming with slapstick elements, including a fake limb being sucked up by a ventilation system, knockabout quarrels and car chases.

The climax of the film is a rendition of John Denver’s Take me Home, Country Roads by Jimmy’s daughter Sadie during an infantile beauty pageant. The song is a reference to the neighbouring state where Jimmy and Sadie live, and it lends some emotional punch to the storyline.

Logan Lucky is a cute and colourful movie, but it lacks the punch-in-the-face factor of Soderbergh’s more subversive Bubble (2005) and the contemplative depth of Solaris (2001). This is just a colourful comedy, dotted with a some goods moments and performances, but it lacks a certain je-ne-sais-quois, and I couldn’t help leaving the cinema thinking that something was missing. And sometimes it feels a little too long at 119 minutes.

It is worthwhile noting that Adam Driver is not disabled: he’s in full possession of both of his arms in real life. which opens up the discussion around whether characters representing certain minorities should be played by actors from their respective minorities (such as a disabled actor playing a disabled character).

Logan Lucky is out in cinemas across the UK on Friday, August 25th. It’s out on DVD, BD and VoD in the last week of December.

Your Name (Kimi no Na wa)

Posted on by mjbstaging

In a spectacular and bravura single take, vertical panning shot, a meteor descends from the heavens through the clouds towards the small lakeside town of Itomori. Then, another time, another place: on a train in Tokyo a teenage girl spots a boy and their eyes meet but there’s no time to exchange names. She knows him but he has no idea who she is. As she gets off the train, he asks her… “Your Name?”

Thereafter, Tokyo boy Taki wakes up some days Mitsuha’s body, and the other way round. Soon, each starts writing the other messages on their hands, arms and mobile phones so that the other one knows what he/she has been up to while they swapped bodies. Until one day, her messages stop.

Like the falling meteor which unexpectedly splits into a shower, at once a beautiful display in the Tokyo night sky and an impending disaster in Itomori, this weaves together two ways of looking. Girl and boy. Countryside and city. Celebration and catastrophe. As a ribbon snakes through space and meteor fragments fall through the atmosphere, a thread weaves through a loom meshing separate timelines. When the two teens meet at the beginning, she is near the end of their encounter while he is at its start thanks to subtle storytelling sleight-of-hand. They may not both know each other yet, but they are connected. When finally they meet again on urban Tokyo hillside steps, the moment is poignant.

Although the meteor is expected to fall in one piece, at the last minute it splits into fragments, one of which will wipe out Itomori. After learning through Taki that this will happen, can Mitsuha and her friends alert the town – busy celebrating its annual festival – to evacuate before lives are lost?

Japanese films have dealt with disaster for a long time, most notably in Godzilla (Ishiro Honda, 1954) which turned the devastation of the A-bomb into the eponymous, city-wasting monster. Recent reboot Shin Godzilla (Hideaki Anno, Shinji Higuchi, 2016) shows the franchise still capable of delivering such myth and metaphor.

Not that Your Name is necessarily about nuclear strikes. Japan has a long history of earthquakes and associated natural disasters, most recently the 2011 tsunami and resultant damage to the Fukushima nuclear power plant. Life goes on but such disastrous events linger in the national psyche and inform popular culture. Even as Your Name absorbs Itomori’s annihilation into its wider culture as a pretty light show over Tokyo, it grapples with the magnitude of the disaster by placing us in the immediate days and hours beforehand.

Elsewhere, Your Name plays out as both teen romance and dual exploration of male/female identity. The two protagonists wake up separately in each other’s bodies to discover with a mixture of delight and embarrassment that they possess the genitals of the opposite sex. As the twin narratives move on to explore more psychological sexual differences, the body swap device proves genuinely affecting. By the time of the impending annihilation of Mitsuko’s home town, you’re completely hooked.

It’s one of those rare movies to watch multiple times. If, like this writer, you saw it last year in a small cinema, to catch the new digital IMAX print on a bigger sized screen is a real treat. While scenes with minimal detail and movement show up the fact, other sequences are all the more effective. This applies not only to the big outdoors vistas where you’d expect it but also more intimate, everyday scenes. In short, compared to much smaller screens, the IMAX format allows Your Name’s visuals the room they need to breathe.

Your Name is out in the UK on Wednesday, August 23rd.

For another animation about Japanese life against the backdrop of impending disaster, click here.

Blackface, yellowface, transface – where do you draw the line?

Posted on by victorfraga

Race and gender identity have become central topics in the world of cinema. The BFI has introduced diversity standards and even the Oscars are making visible efforts to become more inclusive of people of different colours and sexualities. The Best Picture Award for Barry Jenkins’s Moonlight is a testament of this, as is a related initiative to make membership more inclusive. These are all positive developments. So is it fair to say that anything goes in the fight for diversity?

Blackface became a no-go at least 20 years ago, and its racist origins are a perfectly reasonable justification. Such grotesque makeup was historically used in order to ridicule Black people, and to perpetuate the notion that they were primitive and less intelligent. It served well the myth of racial superiority upon which British Imperialism was founded, but it has no place in the 21st century. This practice should be confined to the museums and films archives only. The image above was taken from The Jazz Singer (Alan Crosland, 1927), a film often remembered for being the first spoken picture in history but also conveniently forgotten for its racist connotations.

But what about yellowface? What about transface? What if the purpose is to celebrate certain minorities instead of mocking them? Is this acceptable? Scarlett Johansson was controversially cast to play a Japanese woman in Rupert Sander’s Ghost in a Shell (pictured above), which was out in the UK earlier this year. Meanwhile in France, cis actress Fanny Ardent was chosen to play the transsexual Lola Pater in the eponymous film by Nadir Moknèche (pictured below). Are these representations ok?

The answer is no. They too are offensive. Some representations are celebratory in intention yet degrading in nature. Just because one claims that they meant good this does not give them a mandate to represent anyone they wish. Firstly because the mockery could be subliminal. Secondly, even if they had the purest of intentions deep in their heart, their subconscious could be infested with clichés and misrepresentations, which only those affected are able to recognise. The outcome of yellowface and transface can be both toxic and patronising, just like blackface. Plus it prevents real trans and oriental actors from obtaining work.

So am I saying that we shouldn’t change anyone in front of the cameras, that makeup is entirely forbidden and that we should stick strictly to our everyday look when appearing in a film? Again, the answer is no. Cinema is entitled to celebrate transformation, metamorphosis, and this is in the very nature of the seventh art. The problem of course is: where do you draw the line between what’s acceptable and excusable in the name of art and what’s counterproductive in the battle towards inclusion and diversity?

In the name of art

There should be a poetic licence or a very subversive artistic statement for transface, blackface and yellowface, otherwise it’s not acceptable at all.

For example, Almodóvar has used cis actress Carmen Maura to play a transsexual and trans actress Bibi Andersen to play a cis woman. He has used such subversive devices in various of his films. He’s not mocking transsexuality but instead our shallow notions of identity. It’s as if he was saying: look, transgender/sexual people are fabulous; it’s us who deserve to be mocked for our inability to distinguish between gender and sexuality. And there are also films where people change their gender halfway through, such as Sally Potter’s Orlando (1992).

Well, the issue of race isn’t as black and white, forgive the pun. I cannot think of a film where the character changes his race halfway throughout*. And they haven’t made a film about Michael Jackson’s “whiteface” yet. Douglas Sirk’s Imitation of Life (1959) could be perceived as some sort of “whiteface by proxy”, where the lead conceals her black roots in order to gain social acceptance in the US (pictured below). But this is not the same dirty and subversive device used by Almodóvar and Potter. There is no poetic licence. Sirk is instead making a very straightforward and even didactic anti-racist statement – and also a very effective one.

It is acceptable to use blackface and yellowface in cinema in order to discuss or mock the practices themselves, but not in an attempt to represent these minorities. I am yet to see a filmmaker that does that does that effectively, in the same way Almodóvar did it for gender representation.

So, what’s the limit?

We want race and gender representation to be taken seriously, and yet we don’t want to live in a PC-gone-mad world. So, how do we reconcile the two? Of course that’s not an easy task, and discussion will continue to flourish – thankfully so.

So do we stop young people from playing older characters? And do we prevent actors from delivering performances in a non-native language? I have a profound dislike of “languageface” and I also not very fond of people playing a character of e very different age. Again, unless the character changes in the movie (and, unlike race, our age DOES change) or there is a subversive twist/ poetic licence attached. But that’s just my personal taste, and at least I don’t think such representations are offensive. Instead, they are just silly.

In a nutshell, race and gender identity is where we should draw the line. It’s ok to represent people of a different age, language and culture, but it is NOT ok to represent people with a different race and gender identity. Bar the two caveats already discussed.

There is however one exception I am prepared to make. We should embrace every opportunity to do orangeface, therefore mocking and ridiculing Pussy-Grabber-in-Chief’s very natural colour. I hope a filmmaker will do that soon, and John Waters has already hinted that this might be possible, in his exclusive interview with DMovies. There is no shame in doing that. In the name of tolerance, we should claim the right NOT to tolerate intolerance, and Donald Trump is the epitome of intolerance. So let’s all get our orange paint out and encourage the most grotesque representation ever in the history of cinema!

* Since this piece was written our very avid readers have noted at least three films where characters undergo “racial transformation”: the Brazilian classic Macunaíma (Joaquim Pedro de Andrade, 1969), True Identity (Charles Lane, 1991) and Tropic Thunder (Ben Stiller, 2008). This is called race-bending. Plenty of dirty material for yet another article!

Detroit

Posted on by victorfraga

The timing for the launch of Detroit couldn’t be better, as the US urgently needs to be reminded of the ugly face of institutional racism. Pussy-Grabber-in-Chief’s leniency of neo-Nazis and white supremacists in Charlottesville last week has left the country and the world flabbergasted, and we are glad that Kathryn Bigelow has made Detroit in order to expose the sheer bigotry and the shocking impunity that many racists enjoy.

Bigelow does wear the shoes of the “negroes”, and you would hardly guess that Detroit was made by a white woman. This may come as a surprise to many, and it is perhaps an attempt at reconciliation with liberal Americans, as her film Zero Dark Thirty (2012) was accused of endorsing torture. The director, who became the first woman in history to receive an Oscar for Best Director, does succeed to make amends. Detroit does feel like a punch in the face of reactionary Americans, and a raging denunciation of an extremely brutal chapter in US history, which is now threatening to make a comeback. Charlottesville was not far from becoming the new Algiers Motel.

The movie portrays the 1967 race riots of Detroit, focusing particularly on the Algiers Motel Incident in the evening of July 26th. The Incident should have been described as the “Massacre” instead. Following the report of a gunshot (which in reality came from a toy gun), the police invade the premises and hold the black guests plus two white females hostage for several hours. They consistently humiliate and sadistically torture the young men and women, and finally the succeed to kill some of them. They are convinced that Black people are criminals and therefore deserving of such treatment; they hardly hesitate before carrying out the horrendous actions.

The professional R&B group The Dramatics are amongst the victims. Algee Smith deserves praise for his performance as the lead singer Larry Reed, as does the English actor Will Poulter for his delivery of the Philip Krauss, the most sadistic and leading figure amongst the police officers. Violence is neither sanatised nor fetishised. Visuals are accurate yet not constructed in order to give you an adrenaline rush, but instead in order to make your eyes wet. You will feel anger and pain as the young and innocent Black Americans are subjected to all sorts of torture, ranging from death threats to beatings ahoy. The two white females are treated as prostitutes, as Philip assumes that these are the only kind of white women who would mingle with Afro-Americans.

Impunity is also a central topic. Philip Krauss and his chums (which includes a Black officer, pictured above) were acquitted of all of their crimes, in what most people nowadays perceive as a gross miscarriage of justice. The trial, which is also recreated in the end of the movie, focuses on the criminal history of the Blacks, in a sheer and blatant perversion of the American judiciary. Blacks are always to blame for whatever happens to them, whoever absurd this may be.

You don’t need to know anything about American history and the Civil Rights Movement in order to engage with Detroit. This is one of those films so powerful and universal that all you need is a scintilla of humanity in order to sympathise with the victims. This is also a film you won’t forget too easily.

Detroit is out in cinemas across the UK on Friday, August 25th (2017). It’s out on BFI Player and all major VoD platforms in the second week of January (2018). It’s on Netflix on February 25th (2021). On Amazon Prime on September 4th (2021).

The Future of Work and Death

Posted on by victorfraga

Who wants to live forever? Better still, who wants to live forever without having to work? Does that sound like your ultimate ideal, or an inescapable prison? The documentary The Future of Work and Death raises pertinent questions about about the very nature of humanity, and listens to a vast plethora of answers from people in the most varied fields. The result is fascinating, eye-opening and intriguing.

The film notes that our technology knowledge is growing much faster than our wisdom, and we are left grappling with the speedy changes, often without little regard for the geopolitical, social and economic implications. Automation is swiftly replacing workers even in high skill posts. The mechanisation of farms in the past century or so has driven people into cities, but what do we do once machines substitute our human hands in our urban offices, too? The movie claims that 1/3 of US workers could be replaced by robots as early as 2025, and 47% of the existing jobs are at risk. Car drivers, customer service agents and even healthcare professionals of various types could soon be gone, as more “industrious”, non-human devices are created.

So, is this a dream or a nightmare? The doc deftly notes that we are often defined by our jobs, and an automated world could lead to an identity crisis. It also questions the risks of robots eventually outperforming and even overtaking human, but this claim is promptly dismissed by various interviewees. An expert says that robots are more appropriate for “triple D” work: dirty, dangerous and dull. In other words, for the work humans don’t want to do. Philosophical insight is also highlighted, including Aristotle’s view that compulsory work is degrading, plus some of the principles of Marxism.

The second part of the film focuses on death. We are defined by our anxiety of dying, the doc purports. It also notes that our life expectancy has soared from 31 years of age to a staggering 71 in just a century. Yet immortality remains as elusive as ever, despite technology developments. A process called parabiosis has recently reverted the ageing process (known as senescence) of mice, and a jellyfish that’s potentially immortal has also been investigated. But we are nowhere near eternal life. And most significantly: would you want it? Wouldn’t we get bored?

There is a movement called transhumanism that perceives ageing as a disease. Prominent members such as gerontologist Aubrey de Grey share their views in minute detail, and their arguments are not delusional. They note than aging is a burden on our economy, and even if we can’t achieve immortality, it would be enormously beneficial if we could mitigate the effects of senescence. Transhumanism seems to have embraced some elements of Marxism, as it believes that age reversal is contingent on technology, which is related to money. In other words, rich people are less vulnerable to the effects of growing old.

Overall, The Future of Work and Death takes you on a very exciting journey throughout the very foundations of our human conditions, supported by views from transhumanists, journalists, futurologists, writers and so on. The movie is extremely well crafted together blending interviews with footage from various sources, plus a smooth voiceover by Dudley Sutton (who sounds a lot like David Attenborough). Oh, and the film comes at just the right duration of 90 minutes.

One point that the film DOES NOT raise is that the creative sector is not at risk from automation. You can’t get a robot to direct a film or to write a film review. And machines can’t be subversive. Phew, that’s great news for DMovies, and for the cinema industry in general. Maybe once robots do all of the “triple D” work, we’ll all be making dirty movies instead!

The Future of Work and Death is now available to view on Amazon Prime and Vimeo.

Le Trou

Posted on by victorfraga

To many critics and audiences alike, a director’s continual legacy in the filmic canon rests upon their final film. Kubrick went out on Eyes Wide Shut (1999), Hitchcock on Family Plot (1976), and Billy Wilder on Buddy Buddy (1981). Simply from this random selection of great directors’ last films, it’s quick for one to see the varying degrees of quality which a filmmaker associated towards greatness can go out on. In the case of Jacques Becker, Le Trou is a complex statement on man’s continual stride to be free from oppression. Based on a true Parisian prison breakout, Studiocanal’s remastered Blu-ray, along with many more of Becker’s work, symbolises his position as a definitive voice in cinema.

Opening with Roland Darban (Jean Keraudy) breaking the fourth wall and notifying the viewer retrospectively on an elaborate prison breakout in 1947, Becker treats the audience with respect and does not over elaborate on plot; this is a film simply about five men trying to find freedom and its repercussions. No backstory is required on any of the men’s charges, they are criminals to us with that all that mattering.

Swiftly cutting to the cell in 1947, Darban’s initial position as the lead protagonist is swiftly removed by the introduction of Claude Gaspard (Marc Michel) into the cell. A binary to all the macho men, including Darban, Gaspard’s is a shady character whose motivations for escaping are constantly unclear. Yet, he is welcomed into the plot to escape by all, which includes digging up a tunnel (the film title is French for “hole”). From the opening scenes onwards there is an abundant lack of music. Admittedly, not a negative statement, its use is replaced by diegetic sounds diegetic. Constant bangs and footsteps are omnipresent all scenes, helping to interpolate the audience into the claustrophobic space.

Within this cell, Ghislain Cloquet’s camera uses close-ups in order to create bonds between the group. Alongside such two pivotal elements as sight and sound, the use of a persistent presence in digging equipment et al through mise-en-scene accentuates to perilous task these men face in tunnelling their escape. Holding the frame as Keraudy’s huge arms slam a metal bar to the ground, Becker isn’t afraid to let his scenes unfold naturally. This applies throughout Le Trou, with such stillness capturing the palpable moment of men digging for their lives.

A standout use of mise-en-scene craft is the men’s looking glass, used to observe guards movements in the corridor. A toothbrush with a piece of glass attached at the end is not only a prisoner necessity but surprisingly becomes a vehicle for nuanced cinematography. Becker and Cloquet’s utilises it as a cinematic POV tool. Watching the film, I repeatedly questioned how the director and his team achieved these shots – the sign of a masterful piece.

As the men dig deeper and deeper, their situation in the cell becomes more volatile, with the tension of being suspected or found escaping real. Every innovative trick in the trade is used by the crew to conceal their plans to escape. Such an ambiance of tension is enlarged by a conversation between the prison director and Gaspard in the final act.

Melville has been quoted as praising Le Trou ‘’as the greatest French film of all time.’’ Though I am hesitant to state the same as Melville, its shades of moral ambiguity, inspection of man’s physical power, and themes of brotherly betrayal construct a highly philosophical piece. Going out with a bang, as they say, Becker’s cinematic legacy will be eternally embodied in his last work, Le Trou. Watching the bad guys and their tricks has never been as much fun.

Le Trou is now out on DVD, BD and EST, along with three more restored titles from Jacques Becker.

Quest

Posted on by victorfraga

Despite widespread international skepticism and disappointment, the Obama years conveyed a message of hope to many Americans, particularly those confined to neglected suburbia and with a colour of skin that did not bestow racial privilege upon them. Obama meant that such people felt represented for the first time and, in spite of his many shortcomings, this poignant symbolism will never die.

Quest is a touching and sobering doc about Christopher “Quest” Rainey, his wife Christine’a “Ma Quest”, their daughter Patricia “PJ” and other relatives, friends and associates who live in North Philadelphia. They host a music studio at home, voicing local artists and providing a sense of identity to the community. Along their way, they have to face up a number of crises, including extreme violence, cancer and addiction. Very significantly, the documentarist Jonathan Olshefski follows the footsteps of the family roughly during the eight Obama years.

A message of love, altruism and tenderness prevails throughout the movie, which fits in very well with Obama’s message of hope. This would sound very clichéd if it was a average white American family leading a life more or less comfortable, mostly devoid of violence, racial stigma and deprivation. Sadly, the average Afro-American family faces problems, to which many white people are either alien or oblivious. A rapper in the movie rhymes it succinctly: “Racism still lives in the days, just in different ways”.

The discreet charm of peripheral Philadelphia is conspicuous, debunking the myth that poverty is grey. In reality, these suburbs are far more vivid and vibrant than their wealthier counterparts. The bourdeaux-hued bricks of the buildings, the verdant weed on the pavement and the colourful clothes create a energetic and inspiring atmosphere. These people lead a meaningful and even contagious existence, against all odds.

One of the most powerful moments of the movie is the aftermath of PJ being hit by a stray bullet in the eye, which she eventually loses. She apologises to her father for something that’s clearly not her fault, revealing a toxic inversion of values in American society. There is a tacit belief that Black people are always to blame for whatever happens to them, however absurd it may be. Racism is still deeply ingrained everywhere, and this is a very difficult conversation for Black parents to have with their children, Quest being no exception. A controversial advert by Procter & Gamble recently touched on this issue.

More than once, Black people in the doc are confronted by the police. They deal with the situation with enormous calm and casualty, suggesting that they are used to racial profiling. Most white people wouldn’t act in the same way. Police violence against Blacks is obviously not confined to Philadelphia. Spike Lee portrayed a similar phenomenon in Chicago in Chi-raq (2016) and Kathryn Bigelow’s upcoming Detroit (very dirty review to follow very shortly).

Quest is described as a vérité documentary about an Afro-American family, and it succeeds in both its realism and message of hope at the face of adversity. Yet it’s nothing remotely close to the raw and naturalistic cinéma-vérité of the late Jean Rouch, nor does it possess the lyrical mastery of Alma Har’el’s recent American family doc LoveTrue (2017). It’s stuck somewhere between the two, and it gets a little laborious halfway through its 106 minutes.

The film soundtrack deserves to be mentioned, with a creative score of screechy pangs and ethereal chords throghout. The closing song is particularly touching, and makes me wish it was played more extensively during the film

Quest is out in selected cinemas and VoD in the UK on August 18th. Below is an interview with the filmmaker Jonathan Olshefskiand various of the members of the Rainey family.

Damned Summer (Verão Danado)

Posted on by victorfraga

Youth culture, though it adopts different fashion style and identifies with different musical genres always holds the same ethos; live in total freedom. Chico (Pedro Marujo) certainly endorses such a lifestyle in constantly partying, smoking and drifting through the sun kissed streets Lisbon. A recent graduate of Politics, he is embracing his youth to the full. The narrative of Pedro Cabeleira’s second feature can be summarised in these three activities.

The simplicity of partying and relaxing is later a binary to the heightened mental states and intensity of emotions created during raw techno sounds and drug consumption. To Chico and his friends, every night represents a new possibility, a new crowd to party with and a new girl to get with. Caught in a space of adulthood independence, yet with a disregard for working life, Damned Summer revels in its hedonistic presentations of youth nightlife.

Under Cabeleira’s direction, the film takes a very episodic approach to Chico and his friend’s daily lives in Lisbon. Such cinematic depictions of youth like La Haine (Mathieu Kassovitz, 1995) set in practise a working template which has been adopted right throughout world and European cinema i.e. Eden and After (Alain Robbe-Grillet, 1970), Gomorrah (Matteo Garrone, 2008) and Girlhood (Céline Sciamma, 2015). The larger than life character which are found in Kassovtiz’s piece are exempt here.

Granted Chico and Co all have a distinct style with the use of mostly non-professional actors adding veracity to the images on screen. Still, in specific scenes they are lost in the highly visual and melodic template of nightlife, specifically electronic music. Though unfair to compare to the greatness of La Haine, as a viewer, you rarely care about what happens to Chico. The heartbeat of any film is character and without that its truly hard to be absorbed- even if Chico does share a passion for electronic music as I do.

Damned Summer’s episodic nature enables Cabeleira and his cinematographer Leonor Teles to shoot different spaces in a vast array of lighting and extreme close-ups. Kudos must also be given to the kaleidoscopic lighting of the rooms in which these parties are thrown. Transforming you into these spaces of freedom, the whole creative team creates coherent visuals to match the rhythmic sounds. Not entirely based in electronic music, the film utilises a multitude of genres to reflect the continual presence of music in Chico and Co daily lives. Bold moments of silence in the midst of the nightlife on the surface juxtapose the constancy of music in darkness. Observing this silence from a higher viewpoint could be used to reference the emptiness to which society views these youth people’s hedonism.

Cabeleira crafts a visually sumptuous film with narrative and character problems. The skill set is there for the director to flourish if he nurtures a script which has feeling and emotion. Still, such problems can be excused at such an early stage of his career.

Damned Summer showed as part of the last Locarno Film Festival, and it is available for online streaming courtesy of Festival Scope until Auigust 20th.

An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth To Power

Posted on by mjbstaging

The documentary An Inconvenient Truth (Davis Guggenheim, 2006) was based around former US Democrat vice president Al Gore’s travelling show which warned of the dangers of climate change. In some ways, much has happened since; in others, not much has. Throughout the subsequent decade, Gore has consistently spoken out about the environment.

Those expecting an updated presentation in the manner of the first film will be disappointed. Instead, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth To Power provides a brief summary of its predecessor then updates us as to events in the interim, which includes some of the original’s predictions after being lambasted by the naysayers. He was told that the idea of the Ground Zero monument at the World Trade Center being flooded was far fetched. In 2012 it happened.

Title aside, the new film works very well as a standalone entity: you really don’t need to have seen the first one. Gore journeys to the Arctic to be shown the Polar ice cap melting first-hand, little rivulets become streams which become torrents. Solid areas are now seascapes. Elsewhere, an arctic station which a year ago stood flat on the ice now stands as if on stilts, the ice having melted so much that its level has dropped by over a storey.

He visits Miami, the most flood-endangered city in the world, where coastal roads are below flood waters. He finds hope in the rise of solar energy as a viable alternative to fossil fuels and meets with the Republican mayor of Georgetown, Texas, a town which now runs entirely on renewables.

Much of the film is spent in the run up to the 2016 Paris climate change talks, where Gore is presented as its saviour when India is struggling to agree with proposals to which most other countries have signed up. Gore, who today half-jokingly describes himself as a “recovering politician”, is part campaigner, part showman. However, there’s no doubt he’s getting the message out and mobilising people. The implications of what Gore is saying are terrifying. They were terrifying back in 2006 and they’re even more terrifying now.

As for the UK, it’s conspicuous by its almost total onscreen absence (I noticed one shot of former Prime Minister Gordon Brown). Given our current Tory government’s enthusiasm for building nuclear power plants, encouraging fracking and slashing subsidies for renewables, that’s not altogether surprising.

This writer believes that the climate change issue is the single most important one facing humanity today. I applaud Gore for his tireless, pro-environment campaigning: the more people see this movie and are moved to action by it, the better.

An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth To Power is out in the UK on Friday, August 18th.

Special previews with Al Gore satellite link up on Friday, August 11th.

Edward and Caroline (Édouard et Caroline)

Posted on by victorfraga

An amusing comedy portraying an adventurous day in the life of a French couple, this is the most simple way of summing up Edward and Caroline. Edward Mortier (Daniel Gélin) is a working-class, man, a talented pianist and a bohemian artist. He lives with his wife, Caroline Mortier (Anne Vernon), a dynamic woman who comes from a bourgeois family. The upheavals begin when the couple is invited to a luxury, posh party that Caroline’s uncle is organising in his mansion. The couple’s attire is the most crucial issue that they need to deal with before appearing in front of Caroline’s uncle’s bourgeois friends.

Edward’s passion for the piano and his mastery is a constant element within the film. Classical music accompanies various parts of the film. The first scene we see is of Edward displaying his virtuoso techniques in piano. Although he comes from a working class, bohemian background, he apparently has a quite high-class, classical education: Chopin and Brahms are among his repertoire.

The couple resembles gender stereotypes of classical mainstream Hollywood cinema: the male is sophisticated and educated (with his huge dictionaries in the bookcase), while the female lacks of such a culture and enlightenment. In the opening scene, Becker and his gentle camera take us from the talented pianist to the housewife cleaning the bathroom. However, Becker has definitely given to his female protagonist a more active and dominant role: she is a dynamic and independent woman with her own will and ability to get things done. She even doesn’t hesitate to ask for a divorce when her husband slaps her.

The party of the well-off uncle has various surreal moments, while it is also a display of wealth and authority. The performances, especially of the women, seem quite theatrical and melodramatic, as they try to draw attention and dominate in the space. Becker accurately portrays the cultural gap between the two classes. Modesty and simplicity are definitely not among the characteristics of the bourgeoisie. Classical music would traditionally connote to upper class. However, in this case, the one who possesses this ‘elite’ education and knowledge is first of all. Despite recognising the music he is playing, some of the guests quickly get bored and the classical piano, and instead get excited by a jolly rumba-like tune.

The only character who seems to differentiate from this flashy group of people is probably the American guest, who truly appreciates Edward’s talent and invites him for a business talk to his office. This generous move is what finally loosens the tension and resolves the fight between the couple.

This is a hilarious comedy, reflecting the living habits of the French bourgeois and its interaction with the working and middle class. Despite differentiating radically from the ‘traditional’ French New Wave pioneers, Jacques Becker also gives a tone and style to his narrative, and should be deservedly credited as an auteur.

Edward and Caroline will be released on DVD, Blu-ray and EST for the first time in the UK on Monday, August 14th, along with three other titles by Jacques Becker: Casque d’Or (1952), Touchez pas au Grisbi (1956) and Le Trou (1960).

Touchez pas au Grisbi!

Posted on by victorfraga

Most of us dream of comfortable and peaceful retirement. And gangsters are no exception. They too want to stop working and enjoy the perks after a life of hard toiling. Preferably with a vast sum of money, so that they don’t ever have to worry about getting their hands dirty again.

This star-studded and neglected dirty gem follows the ageing gangster Max (Jean Gabin) and his partner-in-crime Riton (René Dary; both men are pictured above) as they pull off their final heist, a perfectly executed gold bullion robbery at Orly airport, near Paris. All goes well until Max’s deceitful ex-girlfriend Josy (Jeanne Moreau) tips off a rival gangster, Angelo (Lino Ventura). He kidnaps Riton and demands the gold as ransom, spoiling Max’s plans for a peaceful retirement.

Gabin, with saggy wrinkles at all, still looks very charming and attractive. He personifies the “scrupulous” gangster struggling to reconcile his values with the requirements of his not-so-noble job. This is movie about honour, ageing and loyalty, and a test of how far one is willing to go in the name of their personal allegiances. A 25-year-old Jeanne Moreau epitomises just the opposite: the lure and the volatility of youth.

Ultimately, Touchez pas au Grisbi is an elegant, finely acted and riveting gangster movie, with a crisp black and white photography. It will inject just the right amount of adrenaline into your heart and nervous system in order to keep you going for 91 minutes. It is supported by a very piercing and and powerful sound score, which will probably remind you of the later James Bond movies. The movie opens up with a very unusual version of Franx Schubert’s Ave Maria sung in French, and it’s also dotted with bits of chanson from yesteryear.

Touchez pas au Grisbi will be released on DVD, Blu-ray and EST in the UK on Monday, August 14th. Three other titles by Jacques Becker will be launched on the same date: Casque d’Or (1952), Le Trou (1960) and – for the first time in the UK – Edward and Caroline (1951).