A Movie Life (O Filme da minha Vida)

The Brazilian production A Movie Life, by the talented star-turned-director Selton Mello, dodges controversy the current political turbulence in the country. Unlike the recent dirty films Aquarius (Kleber Mendonça Filho, 2016) and The Cambridge Squatter (Eliana Caffé, 2016), A Movie Life is far from being socially and politically engaged. Nevertheless, it is an adorable and sensitive piece of cinema set in the South of Brazil.

The script was based on the novel A Distant Father, by Chilean writer Antonio Skarmeta. It is not the first time that a Skarmeta’s novel is turned into a film. In 1994, Michael Radford adapted The Postman to the big screen, turning it into an Academy Award-winning popular hit. Selton Mello changed the names of all the characters, as if he wanted to turn the story into his own. He also cut many events. After eight different versions of the script all of them revised by the Chilean writer – Mello decided to include Skarmeta as a character. If you are a fan of Skarmeta’s literature you will be surprised by his appearance as the owner of the brothel. I remember the goosebumps I had when I saw Paul Bowles on the screen in Bertolucci’s The Sheltering Sky (1990).The Brazilian film A Movie Life gave me the same sensation.

It is probably because of this nostalgic sensation, between literature and a country that does not exist anymore, that I liked the film. Vincent Cassel (“Black Swan”) stars as a French immigrant in the South of Brazil. The region is rarely portrayed in the movies – bar perhaps the Brazilian classic O Quatrilho (Fabio Barreto, 1995) – and it offers a rich landscape for the plot. In the beginning of the movie, Nicolas Terranova (Vincent Cassel) lives solely in memory of his son Toni (Johnny Massaro). Toni is a school French language teacher, and – despite his charisma – his pupils find his lessons boring. Toni is as close to his students as an uncle: he buys gifts on the occasion of their birthday and helps them to get laid in the local brothel.

Toni cannot understand why his father left for France. He has never received any letters and his mother doesn’t seem to have any explanation, either. His only choice is to count on Nicolas’ best friend Paco, played by the director Mello himself, in the hope of some news. It turns out that Paco has a dirty secret.

A longing for the past and for a father are the driving forces of the movie. In order to compose this atmosphere the photography and the score play an important role. Walter Carvalho (Central Station, Walter Salles, 1994; Carandiru, Héctor Babenco, 2003) is in charge of the photography, which resembles an old and worn picture in pastel shades. The score mixes ballads, Brazilian rock and French songs. When Toni finally finds out where his father is and why he’s left, the score is intensified and the photography gets blurred. It is a turmoil. Even the train, where many scenes were shot before, changes into something else terrifying.

A Movie Life is being internationally released at the Rome International Film Festival, which runs until Sunday November 5th.

Manchester Keeps on Dancing

In 1986 record producer Mr. Fingers’, aka Larry Heard, came up with the iconic Can You Feel It. The melodic synthesised groove is complemented by the gospel and prophetical lyrics.

‘In the beginning, there was Jack, and Jack had a groove.
And from this groove came the groove of all grooves.
And while one day viciously throwing down on his box, Jack boldly declared,
“Let there be house!” and house music was born.’

To Manchester, this spiritual awakening came in the former of Heard and co’s music of Acid House. The good old days of The Haçienda are well documented in the form of late night BBC Four documentaries. Its notoriety is known throughout the country but what hasn’t been the subject of inspection is that state to which Manchester’s nightlife now finds itself in 2017 after this ground-breaking movement.

Looking back to the past, whilst observing the present, Manchester Keeps on Dancing is a contemplative documentary that merges Resident Advisor’s long standing Between the Beats series with the historicity of a house music. Serving as a timely reminder that the city transcends the government’s ’Northern Powerhouse’ regime and does things its own way, Javi Senz creates a poignant love letter to Mancunian’s and their city, chiefly through his acute non biased perspective.

Using the daily life of DJ Krysko – a long standing resident at Warehouse Project- as an entrance point into contemporary Manchester, Senz starts his story in the present. As a northern artist, the DJ “feels an obligation to carry on the great work people have done previous in Manchester and to keep it going”. Though separated by 30 years, his story and the tales of those DJs who came before him are all intertwined by the same city and the same music. Though the Spanish director does later use the standard format of talking heads when interviewing the likes of Seth Troxler, David Haslam and Laurent Garnier, it is within the initial personal interaction and voice over of Krysko that acts as a gateway into history and the present. Establishing its rich culture, the film then works through all the pivotal nights that have been held towards present day and Krysko.

A juxtaposition to those formulaic late night musical documentaries, Manchester Keeps on Dancing has an ever present soundtrack. Upon starting each track, their titles are introduced in the top left of the frame. Speaking to a generation, myself included, who use Shazam as a tool to discover a song’s ‘ID’, it’s a touch point for modern society and its instant information.

As a recent graduate of the University of Manchester, it is with pleasure that I see the city represented so accurately on screen. From the famous ‘Piccadilly Rats’ band who play on Market Street to beloved venues as Soup Kitchen, the atmosphere of the city has been captured faithfully and projected onto film. Granted, Manchester’s scene in parts monopolized by Sacha Lord’s gargantuan Warehouse Project, who share ties with the featured Zutekh. On another hand, it would have been refreshing to see the promoters at Meat Free, High Hoops or the great folks at Eastern Bloc given a fair representation as these three curate more inventive and original nights. Featured in the film, Sankey’s Soap was recently closed due to the building being sold for apartments. The ever-changing scene of nightlife will always have its victims and this information could have been added in post to demonstrate the lows which come with the highs.

After welcoming the film, theatre and arts centre HOMEmcr almost two years ago, stunning restaurants like Rudy’s coming into their own and finally a new cycle route throughout Oxford Road, it is clear from any perspective that Manchester is not just an environment of thriving nightlife but culturally. Merged with its deep-rooted investment in house music that will inspire further generations beyond Krysko, the city is truly challenging the long-established London-centric focus for young creatives. This really is the place as poet Tony Walsh stated in May. Manchester will forever keep on dancing.

In a tribute to the spirit of the film itself, our dirty writer Alasdair Bayman wrote this review after partying, while still intoxicated and under the influence of Dionysus.

Manchester Keeps on Dancing is showing as part of the Doc’n Roll Film Festival taking place between November 2nd and 19th.

The Lure (Córki Dancingu)

A naïve mermaid feels the aching tug of first-love on her heartstrings and sings her way to a pair of human legs, so that she can marry her adoring prince. If this story sounds at all familiar, fear not. Agnieszka Smoczyńska’s debut feature film The Lure bites a siren-shaped hole in Disney’s sugary singalong classic The Little Mermaid (Ron Clements/ John Musker,1989) and pushes Hans Christian Andersen’s original tale to a bloodier – and more feminist – climax.

Local Polish legend claims that two mermaid sisters were swimming through the Baltic Sea; one swam to Copenhagen, but the other swam down the Vistula river and later became the symbol of Warsaw. Smoczyńska adds a small twist to this mythology by making the sisters, Silver (Marta Mazurek) and Golden (Michalina Olszańska), turn up on the tree-lined river banks of the city. After serenading a local synth-pop band, Silver and Golden get a gig singing and dancing with their new friends among the kitschy glamour of an underground burlesque club.

Plus, this isn’t just a mermaid horror movie – it’s also a musical!!!

Their young skin and sweet tones stir the passions of many male regulars, as well as their young-looking bandmate bassist (Jakub Gierszał). But in a nod to Homer’s Odyssey and the sisters’ fierce independence, they’re not just a pair of pretty faces.Beneath their innocent veneer, there’s a distinctly asexual androgyny, a monstrous set of scales and enough sharp teeth to tear out a few hearts. Eventually, their paths part. Fair-haired Silver represents a more idealistic understanding of adolescent romance. The darker Golden uses her body in as free a way as possible and has fun with it. Both sisters are prepared to act and are primarily motivated by their own will, rather than pandering to the desires of men around them. This culminates in an end bleeding with revenge, very different to its Disney counterpart and far more in line with contemporary culture.

Sisters Basia and Zuzia Wrońska, better known as electro-pop duo Ballady i Romanse, craft a captivating original score that manages to acknowledge both theatrical musical conventions and the film’s dark poetic exploration of identity. While The Little Mermaid’s Ariel wallows in Prince Eric imposed despair, wishing she could be part of that world, Silver and Golden dance past Warsaw’s Palace of Culture and Science, confident that the city will reveal to them exactly what’s missing in their lives. The songs’ English subtitles seem to do complete justice to the original Polish. They display that vivid melancholia reminiscent of Adam Mickiewicz, the romantic national poet who inspired Ballady i Romanse’s band name. Visually, Smoczyńska displays supreme directorial flair, from department store backflips to kinky police leather eroticism. Each number works on its own as a solid music video, but nonetheless slots seamlessly into the overarching narrative.

Ballady i Romanse also contribute a number of covers to the soundtrack, notably Andrzej Zaucha’s 1988 pop hit Byłaś Serca Biciem. This, alongside an encounter with street milicja, gives rise to the fact that the film is set in the communist Polish People’s Republic (PRL). There is undoubted importance – and cinematic beauty – in the bleak palettes of Krzysztof Kieslowśki’s pre-89 Poland, or Andrzej Wajda’s allegorical critique of cultural censorship. However, Smoczyńska opts to show an alternative side to the PRL, one in which an exciting life could be danced away in a vodka-fueled communal dancehall, if only for an evening. This in itself is a commendable and illuminating turn from tradition.

In a nutshell, The Lure ties together a wealth of elements of Polish culture, such as dystopian surrealistic paintings, the camp musical joys of the communist era and Warsaw’s own infamous mermaid folklore. It’s also a universal and magically brutal coming-of-age fairytale. An impressive debut and a splash of subversion on Disney’s mermaid.

The Lure was release as part of the Criterion Collection just in time for Halloween – click here for more information.

All that Divides Us (Tout nous Sépare)

Catherine Deneuve has conquered audiences with her long and thick blonde hairdo and a cigarette permanently attached to her hand. Chanel and L’Oréal made her a glamorous, wealthy and classy woman, but she’s best remembered for her dirty work in Repulsion (Polanski, 1965) and in Belle de Jour (Luis Bunuel, 1967). Once a dirty woman, always a dirty woman. Welcome to All that Divides Us.

Deneuve comes back in great style as Louise, a protective mother who lives in a bourgeois house on the coast of France. Her daughter Julia (Diane Kruger) is a sexy self-destructive woman, helplessly in love with a drug-dealing jerk called Rodolpho. Julia had a terrible accident and her body still bears many scars. She’s also handicapped and addicted to tranquilisers, as well as other drugs. Her gloomy and tragic personality doesn’t seem to ruin her sex drive. Julia is a strong character and she is fully in the control of Rodolpho’s fetish for disabled people. She is so strong that she violently kills him.

All That Divides Us is a nerve-wrecking film. Its unrelenting pace is never boring. It sits somewhere between Amores Perros (Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2001) and Crash (David Cronenberg, 2004). We see from the very beginning that frenzy is the film’s leitmotif. Its speed contrasts with the lifestyle of a small French city in the coast. Looking at quiet sea is supposed to evoke calmness, but here it suggests disturbance.

The male director Thierry Klifa reveals his female character’s internal contradictions: women are both strong and vulnerable. They have a predisposition for both kindness and violence. Louise fears going into a building in the poor area of her town. She has some sort of contempt for people and dirty stairs, but she is capable of revealing the most tender feeling to the man who blackmails her. Julia, instead, looks fragile when she walks, but she is a powerful hunter when she decides to find a man for intercourse. Klifa’s women are far from being hysterical; their presence says it all without words.

After the killing of Rodolpho, Louise can’t help but to protect her daughter. Defending Julia means getting involved in a drug-dealing business. The relationship between mother and daughter must prevail above the chaos surrounding them. Louise is blackmailed by a former employee, the real-life French rapper Nekfeu. Nefkeu performs well both on stage and in the cinema. He is a sort of European Donnie Brasco.

This is a film with a surprising social message. It is not judgmental at all. There is no moral. Drug addicted, criminals or murderers are not punished with “justice”. They are not judged in any sphere. They are not the clever ones that escape from prison either. They are like you and me. Klifa portrays the clash of classes in a way that conversation and affection prevails over social differences.

All That Divides Us is showing at Rome International Film Festival. Perhaps a risqué pick for an audience more used to feel-good movies.

The Receptionist

This is both a Taiwanese production and a London one in terms of writer-director, cast and locations. The Receptionist is inspired by real life events that happened to someone director Jenny Lu knew. Fictionalised here as Anna (Shuang Teng, also one of the producers, whose performance is quite simply heartbreaking), that character has come to the UK seeking work to send money back to her debt-ridden family and turns up alone and out of her depth at a newly opened, suburban London, so-called massage parlour where a “body to body” is £60 a time. It’s run by hard-boiled Chinese Madam Lily (an astonishing turn by seasoned actress and singer Sophie Gopsill) whose briefly seen English landlady (Nicola Wright) has no idea Lily is anything other than an ordinary tenant.

When the dowdy Anna turns up trolley suitcase in town, Lily already has three women working there – Mei (the very watchable Amanda Fan) and Sasa (a multilayered performance from Tsai Ming-liang regular Chen Shiang-chyi) service the clients while Tina (Teresa Daley whose honest, matter-of-fact performance carries the film) works as receptionist. Mei is a happy-go-lucky type from Malaysia who seems to like dressing up, but don’t let the surface of her character fool you: this film is an honest attempt to portray the lives of sex workers in the UK, how they get into that line of employment and what keeps them there. The older Sasa is a single parent mum working to support her child.

Although the character of Anna was the script’s inspiration, story construction is built primarily around receptionist Tina from whose perspective we are shown the lives of these characters as they ply their trade within the confines of a small, anonymous London terrace.

Literature graduate Tina is living with her white English boyfriend Frank (Josh Whitehouse from Northern Soul, Elaine Constantine, 2014) and both of them are struggling to get work. There are just too many applicants chasing each job whether for architectural assistants (him) or anything in the book trade (her). Tina goes to an interview for a receptionist job and initially walks away when she discovers it’s a receptionist post for a brothel. But then, she needs the money. And the job pays. So she goes back and takes it. Just for a few days. At first.

One of the great strengths of the film particularly in its more focused first half, while purporting to document the plight of East Asian ethnic minorities in the UK (which it does admirably), is that it manages in passing to succinctly express the situation in which Generation Rent currently finds itself – lumbered with student loans to service, unable to find a job, lacking sufficient money to buy a home – which suggests that its audience may be far, far wider than the East Asian demographic at which it seems at first glance to be aimed. Those tensions are never far away and go some way to explain why these women have fallen into the sex industry.

The occupants of the house must interact with their mostly English-speaking clients, so scenes between the women are in Mandarin while others are in English. We watch them cooking, relaxing and working with clients. Both director and actresses appear as fluent in English as in the other languages, giving a real sense of a an immigrant community within the wider, English-speaking London. The clients are a mixture of pleasant and unpleasant, the latter giving rise to some fairly harrowing scenes. Towards the end, perhaps in an attempt at narrative closure, there’s the inevitable police raid.

This first feature gets an awful lot right and makes some important comments about Britain today and the way it (mis)treats both outsiders and its very own younger generation. It’s perhaps noteworthy that it’s taken an outsider to make this film in Britain: nevertheless it’s bang on target and deserves to be shown to a wider, mainstream UK audience.

The Receptionist played London East Asian Film Festival in 2017, when this piece was originally written. It is out in cinemas across the UK on Friday, July 20th.

Perfect Blue

A performer. A career that demands everything of her. A double. An identity crisis. A falling apart. You might immediately think of that Hollywood thriller with ballerinas Black Swan (Darren Aronofsky, 2010) but it had already been done over a decade earlier in Japan not with a ballerina but an idol singer – and not in live action but in animation. Perhaps surprisingly, Satoshi Kon’s animated precedent Perfect Blue is far more complex than the Hollywood effort widely considered to have been inspired by it.

In Japan, an idol singer is a squeaky clean, teen-targeted, music industry-manufactured pop star, often in a band that sings and dances. The nearest UK equivalent would be the boy band phenomenon. Perfect Blue’s idol singer Mima quits popular girl trio CHAM! to pursue a solo career as an actress, landing a role in the TV crime thriller series Double Bind. In order to get a bigger part and greater exposure, she agrees to play an explicit rape scene. Meanwhile, the internet fan site Mima’s Room is posting intimate details of her life, an unknown assailant is violently murdering some of her close colleagues while Mima herself is being stalked by a happy-go-lucky doppelgänger.

From the start, the film throws you for a loop when it begins with what appears to be an open air, sci-fi stage show. It will unsettle you, even if you’re watching it for the umpteenth time. This segues into a CHAM! gig, but it’s already cutting back and forth between the public performance and elements of Mima’s more mundane private life. Such as her looking at her reflection while travelling on the train with the impersonal city on view beyond the glass, or her buying dairy goods in the supermarket aisle.

Perfect Blue keeps these shifts up for most of its 80-odd minutes running length. There are times when it’s hard to tell whether you’re watching something taking place in the real world or inside Mima’s head, although the closing shot lets you know exactly where you are. Because it’s executed in drawn animation, there really are no limits to what it can show and where it can go. You want to show a doppelgänger in a ballet-type short skirt leaping from atop one lamp post to another? No problem at all.

After multiple viewings over the years, the film remains as powerful as the best of Hitchcock or Argento. The new trailer with its pounding prog score wisely or unwisely opts to play up the latter’s influence although it still conveys something of Perfect Blue’s constantly shifting perspective. It’s a real treat to see it back on the big screen this Halloween, whether you’ve seen it once or many times before or you’re just jumping into its flow for the first time.

Perfect Blue is back out in the UK on 31st October 2017 with previews on the 27th. Watch the film trailer below:

Pitanga

CLICK HERE IN ORDER TO BOOK YOUR TICKETS FOR OUR DIRTY SCREENING OF PITANGA RIGHT NOW.

Few people in the UK know that the African heart of Brazil is the city of Salvador, which also happens to be the colonial capital of the largest country in Latin America. Proudly boasting the self-proclaimed title of “the blackest city in the world outside Africa”, Salvador is the birth place of 78-year-old Antônio Pitanga, perhaps the most prominent black voice of Brazilian cinema in the 20th century.

Pitanga revisits Antônio’s youth in Salvador, providing viewers with a fascinating opportunity to learn about the African religions of Brazil, to witness experimental black theatre, to vibrate with capoeira and listen to the pulsating energy of Brazilian black music, particularly the drums. Blackness is inextricably connected to every aspect of life in Brazil’s colonial capital and, by extension, also to Antônio. He celebrates his ethnicity in a portentous and unapologetic fashion.

Antônio Pitanga grew up at a time when black people weren’t even deemed fit to become actors. In the early 1960s – before the Civil Rights Movement in the US – he became a recognised black thespian, and his roles were neither clichéd nor caricatural. He was (in fact, he still is) extremely vigorous, good-looking and eloquent. Black actors in Hollywood and Europe at the time were normally assigned grotesque and unintelligent characters, ensuring that the black talent and virility did not pose a threat to the white establishment. The Brazilian filmmaker Neville D’Almeida says to Antônio with confidence: “you were a pioneer not just in Brazil, but also in the entire planet, long before racism was criminalised under the US president Lyndon Johnson in 1966”.

Antônio epitomises Brazilian cinema and history of the 1960s in many ways. He relates to with his black counterparts in the Northern Hemisphire: “we were more Martin Luther King than Malcolm X”, presumably referring to the less belligerent nature of the nascent black movement in Brazil of the 1960s. He also jokes about Brazilian cinema in the same decade: ” I have just committed the biggest breach in cinema by walking in front of the camera”, only to dismiss his misdeed: “that’s ok, this is Cinema Novo” (in reference to the audacious and non-conformist nature of the 1960s movement, akin to the French Nouvelle Vague).

The doc blends footage from the Antônio extensive filmography with very relaxed interviews as he meets up with old friends, some of the biggest exponents of Brazilian cinema and music. This includes Caetano Veloso, Maria Bethânia, Chico Buarque, Gilberto Gil, Martinho da Vila, Zezé Motta and the young black actor Lázaro Ramos (pictured just above; he is also from Salvador). It’s all very relaxed. It feels like a backroom chat between old pals. Highlights from his career include the emblematic climax outside a Catholic church in The Given Word (Anselmo Duarte, 1962, the only Brazilian movie ever to win the Palme d’Or of Cannes) and various excerpts from Glauber Rocha’s 1962 classic The Turning Wind/Barravento (you can learn more about this movie on November 9th at the Tropicália and Beyond: Dialogues in Brazilian Film History exhibition). Antônio goes on to explain how he thinks that he “complements” Glauber Rocha’s body-of-work.

Very significant is the fact that one of the filmmakers is Antônio’s daughter Camila Pitanga. The film is teeming with affection, and finished off with a tender family moment. Pitanga is an ode to fatherhood. Antônio’s contagious laughter, piercing gaze, warm embrace and unabashed joy of living will enrapture you, and you will leave the cinema thinking: “I wish had a father like this” – which is probably what Camila intended to do. This is a feel-good movie celebrating an iconic figure and a fabulous human being, while also avoiding more controversial issues.

DMovies is holding two screenings of Pitanga in London, in a partnership with the University of Reading, as part of the AHRC-FAPESP-funded project, ‘Towards an Intermedial History of Brazilian Cinema: Exploring Intermediality as a Historiographic Method’ (IntermIdia). On the 13th, it’s a screening at Kings College of London and on the 14th it’s a cozy evening at the superb Institute of Light in East London, with our co-hosts Infinita and the Productions Centre for Film Aesthetics and Cultures (CFAC) at the University of Reading. On the 14th, a manifesto about artistic freedom will be read, and there will be live music performances by Nina Miranda, Arícia Mess and Aleh Ferreira – all for just £7 – click here and guarantee your ticket now!

Both screenings will be followed by a Q&A attended by both Camila and Antônio Pitanga.

Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami

There are plenty of outrageous masks, flamboyant hats, glistening clothes, extravagant moves and one hula hoop. What you won’t see in Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami is lip-syncing. Or off-key singing. Or regrets. At 69 years of age, the living legend remains as impressive as in her early days, and her deep voice as vigorous as ever. Her body remains intact, as if immune to senescence. To the extent you will question yourself: is she human?

I’m a huge fan of Miss Jones, so I expected no less than an outstanding documentary about a magnificent human being with a musical talent and physical strength that teeter on the edge of the supernatural. I wasn’t disappointed. Sophie Fiennes spent five years with Grace Jones in order to create this intimate and fascinating portrait of the diva and her family. While the film doesn’t highlight it, Grace and Sophie have a lot of common: they are both females, they both are one of seven siblings and they both come from a family of artists (Grace and her mother are both singers, while virtually all of Sophie’s family is in the film industry). Perhaps a certain degree of complicity allowed this documentary to flow so smoothly.

You will have the opportunity to see Grace – who is often remembered for her tantrums as much as for her talent – at ease with family and friends in the US, her birth nation Jamaica and France (where she lived for a long period of time with her ex Jean-Paul Gaude). You will witness her take part in an informal family dinner where people eat fish with their hands, you will see her laugh inside in the humble dwelling of a friend in Spanish Town (Jamaica). She can’t help being a diva. I’m not sure whether she even tries it. Why should she? Being a diva just comes out naturally. The four-letter accolade suits her perhaps better than anyone else in the music world.

Highlights of the movie include Grace’s very own redemption of the classic Amazing Grace. It feels almost as if the song was made for her. Her delivery is in no way inferior to Mahalia Jackson’s and Joan Baez’s. Her disembodied voice, her hoarse and confident warble will enrapture you. You will be dancing in the dark. You will also see her mother Marjorie sing in church at the age of 90 with a voice as potent as her daughter. Seeing Marjorie singing with such confidence comes as a relief. It suggests that Grace will still be strong and going for a long time. Sadly the old lady passed away just two weeks ago after a major stroke (a few months after the film was completed).

Grace Jones is like wine, she gets more refined with age. Even if the signs of ageing are not quite visible. Her image is still as sharp as in the Jean-Paul Goude days (her then-husband snapped the emblematic androgynous and bestial pictures for which she became famous in the 1970s). She’s extremely virile – an adjective normally reserved for men. Grace Jones can legitimately claim the right to challenge the established orthodoxy of the word usage.

Ultimately, this is an entirely fit-for-purpose doc – not an easy task in the case ultra-demanding Grace Jones. It’s also an imaginative piece of cinema, with Sophie often detaching the image from the voice. There is a fascinating scene where Grace Jones dances in slow motion inside a club to the sound of little more than a rattle instrument. Truly hypnotic. The only downside of the doc is thatit neither contextualises her career nor names her family members, making it sometimes a little difficult to work out who’s who and what’s happening, unless you are already very familiar with all matters concerning Miss Jones.

Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami is was in cinemas across the UK on Friday, October 27th, with a preview attended by Miss Jones herself the previous night, and a Live with Friends events on the 25th – when this review was originally written. It’s out on BFI Player February 2018. The film title means “red spotlight and bread” in Jamaican patois.

Before We Vanish (Sanpo Suru Shinryakusha)

This review is of a first viewing. It really doesn’t happen often, but I can imagine liking this more second time round. Before We Vanish is a very strange and unusual movie, from Japan.

Hands take a goldfish from a group in a white bathtub and transfer it into a metal pan. A sailor-suited schoolgirl carries the fish in a bag to another house. Inside the latter, on its floor, the fish struggles to breathe as it lies on the ground out of water. Spattered with blood, the girl (Yuri Tsunematsu) walks happily along the middle of a busy road. As she strolls without a care, a lorry swerving to avoid her crashes headlong into an oncoming car.

Elsewhere, something is wrong with Shinji Kase (Ryuhei Matsuda from The Raid 2, Gareth Evans, 2014). His behaviour alarms his wife Narumi (Masami Nagasawa from Our Little Sister, Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2015, playing in LEAFF this Saturday 28/10). For instance, he suddenly vanishes from the house only to be found lying, quite happily, in the tall grass of a nearby field.

“No-one is saying anything,” says journalist Sakurai (Hiroki Hasegawa from Love And Peace, Sion Sono, 2015) who spends much of the time driving around in a van with a satellite dish on the roof. He’s convinced that a big story is about to break and intends to be the one doing it.

The girl hooks up with a boy (Mahiro Takasugi). Both are convinced they are aliens who have taken possession of human bodies. An invasion is coming and three of them have been sent ahead to lay the groundwork. Sakurai is definitely not an alien, but the other two let him tag along. The aliens are offering him an exclusive. Besides, in order to function they need a human to act as their ‘guide’.

Once resident within their human hosts, however, the aliens cannot comprehend many of the concepts that humans take for granted every day of their lives. Such as “individual”, “self”, “family” and “love”. But this issue is easily remedied. An alien finds a human with a clear idea of the concept of, say, “self”, touches them on the forehead with an extended finger (a bizarre nod to E.T., Steven Spielberg, 1982) and retrieves that concept from the victim’s head. The victim collapses immediately after the theft and is never quite the same again.

Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s meandering narrative mixes these conceits with more traditional sci-fi and action elements (but not that much of them, lest you might think of this as a generic SF picture – it is, but then again, it isn’t). There are battles with automatic weapons where the aliens get shot but hardly seem to notice. At least, until the resultant trauma proves too much for their host body.

One of the very first scenes has a woman pulled in through her own front door by an unseen adversary: towards the end, aircraft fly overhead delivering firebombs recalling similarly gratuitous flying aircraft at the close of the same director’s career-defining J-horror outing Pulse/Kairo (2001). Kurosawa tops this in Before We Vanish with a scene in which red lines drop from a cloud whirlpool above the sea then change course and fly towards the coast as burning fireballs.

The core of the piece is ultimately much less the plot, such as it is, than the characters: the aliens and their guides, the Kase family and the boy girl companions with the reporter tagging along. One minute it’s charming, the next it’s terrifying. One minute you’re watching a comedy, the next a moving romance and the next a sci-fi action movie. Which ought to render the whole thing an unwatchable disaster which can’t make up its mind as to what exactly it is. And yet somehow, in much the way that Pulse/Kairo threw every horror trope its director could envisage at the audience and yet produced something that cohered under a weird internal logic all of its own, the disparate elements of Before We Vanish hang together as a memorable whole. It’s both bonkers and beguiling in equal measure.

Before We Vanish plays in the London East Asia Film Festival. On Blu-ray and digital HD on Monday, February 11th.

Top 10 horror films made by women

Those fragile, weak and vulnerable creatures are at at risk, and they are hardly able to fend for themselves. Of course we are talking about the pendulous beings best known as men. Our latest dirty list brings to you 10 horror movies directed by women, and rest assured that it isn’t just the film signature that changes. The female gaze is everywhere, the motives and twists are different, and the women are strong and emboldened. Males, you poor creatures, you better run for your lives!

Australian feminist Barbara Creed argued in her 1993 book The Monster Feminine: “the reason women do not make horror films is not that the female unconscious is fearless, without its monsters, but because women still lack access to the means of production in a system which continues to be male-dominated in all key areas”. Thankfully times have changed in the past 25 years!

Don’t forget to click on the film title in order to accede to our dirty film review (where available). The films below are sorted in no particular order.

1. Prevenge (Alice Lowe, 2017)

This fantastic British film has had horror fans grooving all around the world. The female experience of pregnancy in film is something not known for its jovial depictions. Simply viewing Rosemary’s Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968) one can see that child bearing is a painful endeavour, regardless of whether it’s the Devil’s child or not. Akin to Polanski’s film, Alice Lowe’s directorial and writing debut uses the horror genre as a vice to explore femininity and isolation. Unlike numerous egotistical star driven directorial debuts, Prevenge is a strange concoction of the slasher horror and comedy – making for a truly original recipe of British independent filmmaking.

Lowe’s straight-faced performance is all the more impressive when considering the actor was seven months pregnant when filming the role. Her ability to create awkwardness in a scene lends itself well to her script-writing. Though some critics could see the film as a series of killings, without any emotion or character, this would ignore the nuanced portrayal of a women isolated from society and clearly suffering from severe grief and depression.

2. The Babadook (Jennifer Kent, 2014):

This is a touching Australian horror that has won praise all over the planet for its unusual tender and unexpected message of conciliation with the antagonist. Initially it wasn’t a strong commercial success in Australia and was given a limited release in art house theatres. It gained international attention after seeing a strong reception at the Sundance Film Festival.

The film, which does not have any major starts, tells the story of widowed mother, plagued by the violent death of her husband. She’s battling with her son’s fear of a monster lurking in the house, but soon discovers a lingering and sinister presence all around her. At first it feels a lot like a boogeyman story, but you soon realise that it has far more depth.

The film antagonist also became an LGBT icon after it was jokingly said he was gay on Tumblr.

3. Trouble Every Day (Claire Denis, 2001):

The French director is best known for the deeply lyrical Beau Travail (1999), and most people do not know that she created a dirty masterpiece of erotic horror just two years later.

In the film, scientist Shane Brown (Vincent Gallo) isn’t a very doting husband. He neglects his new bride (Tricia Vessey), instead spending their honeymoon searching for an old workmate who vanished after a research paper he had written was discredited by the medical community. It turns out that Dr. Semeneau is living in obscurity in order to protect his wife (Béatrice Dalle), whom he keeps prisoner in a room with boards nailed across the doorway. The narrative slowly unfold with numerous shocking twists, revealing the dark secrets that each character harbours. The film has enough blood and gore to please most slasher and horror fans, even if the device is used in a far more elegant way.

4. Near Dark (Kathryn Bigelow, 1987):

Kathryn Bigelow is the first woman to won a Best Director Academy Award, and we would hazard a guess that she will snatch a few more prizes next year with the extremely powerful anti-racist statement in her latest movie Detroit. The 65-year-old director has a very diverse career, and she has even been accused of endorsing torture in Zero Dark Thirty (2012). What few people know, is that she directed a horror 30 years ago, making her a trailblazer also in the genre.

In the movie, Cowboy Caleb Colton (Adrian Pasdar) meets gorgeous Mae (Jenny Wright) at a bar, and the two have an immediate attraction. But when Mae turns out to be a vampire and bites Caleb on the neck, their relationship gets a little bit more complicated. Wracked with a craving for human blood, Caleb is forced to leave his family and ride with Mae and her gang of vampires, including the evil Severen. These ladies are bloodthirsty!

5. Dearest Sister (Mattie Do, 2016):

This movie is not without faults, but it will still scare you. It also the first film ever made by a female and Lao, and it’s remarkable that she decided for a horror flick. A countryside girl moves to the city in order to live as her rich cousin’s companion. Her cousin is quickly losing her sight and occasionally seeing very scary apparitions. She has a doting Estonian husband who will do everything in his power to save her vision, but his attitude towards the local culture is often arrogant and ambivalent. In fact, most characters in the movie seem to be morally-corrupted and easily engage in revengeful acts and petty money feuds.

Dearest Sister has most of the ingredients of an effective horror movie: creepy ghosts, violence, sex and punishment for betrayal or corrupt behaviour.

6. Deliver Us (Federica Di Giacomo, 2016):

This one is out in cinemas this weekend. And it’s a doc. A very unusual one! Father Cataldo runs a regular mass in Sicily aimed at freeing people from bad spirits. Giullia, Grazia, Enrico and some others in the crowd suddenly start to act strangely. After a few minutes their voice and expressions don’t belong to them any longer. They are said to be possessed and they look possessed. The mass that started quietly in the name of God suddenly becomes a theatre of the disturbed.

The film almost tresspasses the very fine line between documentary-making and fiction. But then the director retracts, and instead smoothly enters the lives of the subjects of the movie, investigating who they are, where they come from, what the issues are that surround them. We often find people with a tormented background, dysfunctional relationships, in desperate search for answers. The director remains non-invasive, just an observer. Some viewers might think these people need to be set free from a demon, other will think they need psychological support.

7. Good Manners (Marco Dutra, Juliana Rojas, 2017):

This dirty Brazilian film was made by both a man and a woman, but the tender and feminine touch is conspicuous throughout. It starts out as an awkward domestic drama, as the gorgeous, upper-class, white and pregnant Ana (Marjorie Estiano) hires the black babysitter Clara (Isabél Zuaa). At first, Ana is reluctant to take Clara on board because she lacks credentials: she did not finish nursing school and she has never looked after babies. To boot, one of her referees doesn’t quite sing her praises. Yet, there is something soothing and comforting about the very beautiful and polite stranger.

The subject of interrupted motherhood and isolation from society become central to the story, which takes a very unexpected twist roughly in the middle of the 127-minute narrative. Good Manners then incorporates easily recognisable devices from a number of horror films, such as Rosemary’s Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968), Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979), Possession (Andrzej Zulawski, 1981) and the more recent French cannibal flick Raw (also on this list). Oh, and there is a giant creature that looks a lot like a meerkat!

8. Raw (Julia Ducournau, 2017):

This incredibly well-crafted cannibal horror starts with a sequence that is guaranteed to get you jumping off your seat, only for the pace to slow down and gradually begin to build up again to the very graphic, repulsive and inevitable outcome: human eats human. At first, the film seems to be a very serious and stern horror with strong political and activist connotations, but then it slowly and willfully morphs into an absurd black comedy about wild and naughty university students and a very strange fraternal relation between two sisters. It will keep you hooked, fluttering and pulsating throughout. Much like a chicken in an abattoir.

Cannibalism isn’t the only sort of interaction with the human body that you will encounter in Raw: there’s plenty of sex (both straight and gay), the most unorthodox university initiation rituals (Americans call them hazing) you’ll come across (including covering the rookie’s body in paint for a hilarious and colourful interaction) and even a Brazilian wax with a tragic outcome. Oh, and there are animals everywhere: dead or alive, put to sleep on ketamine or being cut open in an operation table.

9. Berlin Syndrome (Cate Shortland, 2017):

One of the dirtiest films of the year. Clare (Teresa Palmer) is an Australian photojournalist visiting Berlin and trying to capture some of the city’s essence with her camera. As both a female and a foreigner who doesn’t speak the language, the actress conveys a sense of extreme vulnerability without coming across as clueless and stupid. There’s lingering fear in her eyes, even in the most trivial actions such as having a glass of wine or crossing the street. She soon falls for the handsome and charming local lecturer Andi.

The dirtiest aspect of Berlin Syndrome is that, unlike in the syndrome named after the Swedish capital, the victim here does not gradually begin to identify with her kidnapper. The frail and vulnerable foreigner here defies all expectations and instead morphs into a headstrong escapee.

An image from this film illustrates the top of this article.

10. Jennifer’s Body (Karyn Kusama, 2009):

A horrific female double dose: Jennifer’s Body was created by not one, but two American women! The script was penned by Diablo Cody, while the film was directed by Karyn Kuasama. If you are a fan of Courtney Love’s band Hole – like many of us at DMovies – you will realise that the film title was taken from one of their songs.

This supernatural black comedy tells the story of a newly-possessed high school cheerleader turns into a succubus who specialises in killing her male classmates. Her best friend suddenly intervenes but her plans don’t quite work out as expected. There is no shortage women power, all with a very demonic twist!

Democracy

Each and everyday our online footprint grows. Most of us produce an extensive amount of information online every single day (in the shape of emails, social networking interaction or simply our browsing history). Companies such as Google and Microsoft are very keen to access this data, and it isn’t always for noble purposes. Democracy investigates what the EU is doing in order to protect our personal information.

Back in 2012, the European Commissioner for Justice Viviane Reding (pictured below) and the Green German MEP Jan Philipp Albrecht (pictured above) joined forces in order to reform the data protection laws in light of the digital era. Reding is adamant that “personal data belongs to the person”, and the young and energetic Albrecht takes a passionate stance against the erosion of our personal freedoms and civil rights. Unlike Theresa May, who has a history of contempt for personal privacy. The EU Parliament and the European Council finally agreed on the legislation on December 15th of 2015, and the new laws will be implemented next Spring.

This European doc takes an insightful look into the three-year legislative process. It’s both an interesting peak into EU lawmaking and a useful lesson on privacy issues. For example, you will learn about the difference between “singling out” and “identification”, the uses of data mining, the repercussions of data leaks and compliance with fundamental rights outside the EU. Sounds boring? Don’t worry, Democracy takes a lighthearted approach to the subject. Interviews are intertwined with parliamentary sessions to didactic yet engaging results. The only downside is that the entire film is entirely in black and white, and I’m not entirely sure why. This would work fine for an art movie, but it feels a little awkward for a more informative and straightforward piece such as this one.

The reverberations of Edward Snowden’s NSA leaks are one of the most interesting topics of the movie. On one hand, the EU didn’t quite react with enthusiasm, concerned with the security of its very own data. On the other hand, the leaks also raised awareness that data can be used as a weapon, and triggered both governments and individuals to think information security more thoroughly. Love or hate him, Snowden was a game-changer.

Democracy does what the British media generally fails to do: it highlights the importance of personal privacy. In fact the UK seems to be moving precisely in the opposite direction. The highly controversial Investigatory Powers Act was passed last November with barely any objections from the political establishment, and very limited exposure in the media. The UK government now has unprecedented powers to snoop on our Internet history. While the film doesn’t highlight the UK context, if you are vaguely familiar with Tory privacy policy (or lack thereof) you might immediately realise the stark contrast.

It’s vital to note that, with Brexit, the UK may no longer be subjected to these laws, which could make the country extremely vulnerable to US corporate interests. Data privacy laws are very relaxed in the US, where an individual’s criminal and even health records are often publicly available or stored in databases with little to no protection.

Don’t get lulled into complacency – watch Democracy and join the debate around data privacy. This is not a doc answering to corporate interests. This is a doc that vouches for your interests as a citizen. The film has been released as part of the Walk This Way collection in October 2017. You can view it on all major VoD platforms, such as iTunes and Amazon.