It makes perfect sense that M.I.A wanted to be a documentarian. Like the role of a filmmaker, so much of her music is about giving voice to those who can’t speak for themselves. But in the process of telling stories, she eventually became one, her fame eclipsing the oppression of her own people.
Now a new documentary examines M.I.A.’s core belief: standing up for the oppressed peoples of her homeland. This has really been her mission all along. Matangi/Maya/M.I.A, created by her friend and fellow Central Saint Martin’s Alumni Steve Loveridge, really allows the rapper to speak for herself, showing that although she may have meandered along the way, her central philosophy has always remained on the same noble track.
Matangi/Maya/M.I.Ais one of the most illuminating artist documentaries in recent years thanks to the copious amounts of documentary footage that M.I.A herself shot over the past twenty-two years. Although of varying visual quality, they give an authenticity often lacking in contemporary profiles, allowing us to really observe Mathangi “Maya” Arulpragasam as she slowly turns into superstar M.I.A. The early scenes, so evocative of London in the 1990s, are such absorbing naturalist documents that it doesn’t even seem to matter who the subject eventually became. But the girl named Matangi and nicknamed Maya eventually became M.I.A, thus befitting the three-layered title, and making for one of the best documentaries of the year.
A London-born woman of Sri Lankan origin, M.I.A. has always been caught between two worlds. She moved back to the island nation when she was six, but had to leave again at the age of 10 due to the ferocity of the civil war. Her own father was a key revolutionary figure in the fight for Tamil independence, which waged from 1983 to 2009, always giving her an interest in the plight of her people. The film does not take sides in the protracted civil war, instead using it as context to explain this singular musical personality.
This makes sense, as it is not a film about Tamil independence (a conflict one assumes needs a Ken Burn-type to make sense of) but about what it means to be an activist and a pop star at the same time. Maya starts the movie as a documentarian, travelling back to her home country in 2001 to film her family and the surrounding culture. The movie was never finished due to the dangers of the war and harassment by local men, but it taught her to bear witness, something that inevitably bled into her musical process.
Ditching the video cameras for drum machines, she saw music as the best way to illuminate the immigrant experience. Unafraid to embrace both the London and Tamil parts of her personality, M.I.A. becomes a representative of exiles everywhere. Her music combined the garage beats from her Hounslow council estate with an acute world music sensibility to become an almost instant sensation. Then thrust into a world of fame, M.I.A found herself the sole Tamil representative in a Western world. The rest plays like a checklist of her biggest controversies, with ample criticism from the Sri Lankan government (she should focus on her music) and the Western media (she should focus on her music) — both unaware that her music is her activism, and the two cannot be easily extricated from the other.
This is not your conventional music documentary. Little insight is given into how she composed her debut mixtape, how she met and collaborated with Diplo, or how she createdher standout hit Paper Planes. Matangi/Maya/M.I.A.is far more interested in what the music stands for. Inspired by Madonna as a child, M.I.A. has the same ability to weaponise imagery in order to make defiant statements. Her iconic Born Free video depicted ginger kids being slaughtered over a thudding Suicide-sampling beat (an ironic allegory for the Tamil people). Later Bad Girls (directed by the equally incendiary Roman Gavras) protested the Saudi Arabian women’s driving ban with thrilling widescreen abandon. We see clips of these videos and others, going beyond conventional pop imagery of rappers on boats and girls in tight dresses to really spark dialogue about the world today. Her work is what truly remains: vital and provocative.
The main critique of M.I.A., coming out profiles such as the infamous 2010 New York Times Magazine article entitled “M.I.A.’s Agitprop Pop”, was that she was appropriating the language of resistance to sell records. This may be true, and her approach may come off as a little crass, but there’s no doubting her heart is in the right place. Matangi/Maya/M.I.Afinallyallows the authentic M.I.A to speak for herself. Now is the time to listen.
Maya Matangi M.I.A. is out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 21st. It’s out on VoD on Monday, December 10th.
The largest film festival in the UK is about to begin. The event programme has already been announced. There are 225 feature films from 77 countries being shown in 14 cinemas across the British capital in just 12 days (from October 10th to October 21st). It’s difficult to decide where to begin. That’s why we have done the homework for you, and unearthed the top 10 dirtiest gems. That’s because we caught these films earlier this year in Berlin, Cannes and Venice, and so we can recommend them to you with confidence!
Don’t forget to click on the film title in order to accede to the review of each individual dirty gem on the list below:
his is as close to a tactile experience as you will ever get from a moving picture. Touch Me Not starts with the extreme close-up of a male body, so close you could even count the body hairs. The camera navigates through the unidentified entity: legs, penis, stomach and nipple. This is a suitable taster of incredibly intimate and human film that will follow for the next 125 minutes.
Romanian director Adina Pintilie establishes a dialogue with several real-life characters, in what can be described as a documentary with flavours of fiction, in a roughly congruent arc. Laura, Tómas, Christian and Hanna and Hanna have a very different relation to their sexuality and bodies, and they are all working together in order to overcome their fears and and claim control of their lives.
Touch Me Not premieres in the Festival and it’s out in UK cinemas immediately after on Friday, October 19th.
On July 22nd 2011 500 young people attending a summer camp in the idyllic island of Utøya, near Oslo, were attacked by 34-year-old right-wing terrorist Anders Behring Breivik. The attack claimed the lives of 77 people, left 99 severely injured and a further 300 profoundly traumatised. It shocked a nation not used to crimes of such dimension. It was the deadliest event in the wealthy and pacific Scandinavian country since WW2.
You would be forgiven for thinking this is an exploitative film trying to reopen painful wounds and to capitalise on fetishised violence. But it’s not. This is an overtly political film, and the Norwegian director Erik Poppe sets the tone in the very beginning on the movie. Kaja talks with her friends, immediately before the shooting begins, and after they hear about the explosion in Oslo. They speculate that the bomb may have been planted by al-Qaeda in response to Norway’s involvement in Afghanistan. They have no idea that the attack is in fact being conducted by a white Norwegian man.
They have been neglected and abused throughout the past five centuries. They are men and women of various generations and with all types of professions, and they share the same burden. The government and the society intended to protect them instead scorns them. They have been hunted down by neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacists. Their walls have been graffitied with the N-word, swastikas and calls for ethnic cleansing. But they’re still alive! Italian filmmaker Roberto Minervini captures the apocalyptic scenario that many Afro-Americans from the Deep South have to confront daily.
What you Gonna Do When the World’s on Fire? is shot in black and white using with an Arri Alexa camera with a large depth of field (deep focus). In other words, the images in the foreground, middle-ground and background are all in focus. In a way, this is reminiscent and nostalgic of the neo-Realism aesthetics.
This is probably as close as you will ever get to a leper. Leprosy has been eradicated in most parts of the planet, but still persists in some of the most impoverished countries. The highly contagious disease is immediately associated with removal from society and seclusion. Yet you won’t regret you came into contact with these adorable human beings. Yomeddine gives you the opportunity to embrace, look into the eyes and deep dive into the hearts of these outcasts.
The story starts out in a colony of lepers somewhere in South of Egypt, where Beshay (Rady Gamal) was abandoned 30 years earlier as a child by his father. He has a wife and lives happily with the other members of the colony. There is a real sense of community, and they seem to lead a relatively peaceful existence despite their condition and the abject poverty. Their main source of work and entertainment is a nearby landfill, which they nicknamed Garbage Mountain. Just like the contents of the site, these people have been discarded by society.
Vittoria (Sara Casu) is about to turn 10, and she lives with her doting mother Tina (Valeria Golino) in a happy and and stable household. She befriends Angelica (Alba Rohrwacher), a dysfunctional and promiscuous alcoholic who’s about to be evicted from her own house unless she can raise 27,000 to pay off her debts. At first, it’s not entirely clear what bonds the adult and the child. They seem to have very little in common except for a vague physical resemblance.
Daughter of Mine is set in the barren and oppressively hot Summer of Sardinia, one of the poorest and most remote areas of Italy. Their fishing village looks very precarious and primitive, and untouched by tourists. The houses are old and most of the buildings are derelict, few roads have been paved, and a heavy and brown cloud of dust is lifted by passing cars and motorcycles. The landscape is very arid and golden-hued, just like Vittoria’s hair. This is a sight many people would not associate with a European country, but instead with a developing nation in Africa or South America.
Possibly the dirtiest Brazilian film ever made, Pixote is now nearly 40 years old.
Pixote isn’t just a denunciation of poverty. It goes much deeper, revealing the sheer cruelty of a system that legitimates and perpetuates violence. Drug lords hired minors to sell drugs or rob banks because they would not face criminal action. If caught, they would spend some time in a police or a Febem reformatory, being freed at the age of 18 without a criminal record.
Pixote opens with intense music and no imagery. The symbolism of darkness continues throughout the film. Nothing is lighthearted: boy rapes boy, prison wards are corrupt, Pixote smokes, sniffs glue and kills. The colours of life in the margin are not bright. Even the brothels are somber. There are no red neon lights. The prostitutes Silvia and Debora are unstylish and downtrodden. They are cheap.
The Image Book was shot for almost two years in various Arab countries, and it is being marketed as “an examination of the Arab world”. In reality, the film is a collage of film and political references, some easily recognisable and others completely random and bizarre, with some voice-over. You will see extracts from Todd Browning’s Freaks (1932), Pasolini’s Salò (1975), familiar faces such as Joan Crawford and Gérard Depardieu, allusions to the Bolshevik Revolution, to Rosa Luxembourg, and so on – all in line with the director’s left wing convictions. There is no narrative whatsoever, and the Arab theme is only addressed in the final third of this 82-minute movie.
The jump cuts, the faux raccords, the cacophony and the many other devices crafted by the director himself half a century ago are used in abundance. English subtitles suddenly disappear, and often don’t even entirely match the original in French. Dialogues in German, English and Italian are entirely devoid of subtitles. Text on the screen is illegible, very much à la David Carson. Colours are inverted, and negative footage is conspicuous. The image size switches back and forth to various shapes and formats. The French film itself (“Le Livre d’Image”) is a pun suggesting that the image is free. It all makes Alexander Kluge seem square and boring. Exactly as you would expect from Godard.
The story starts in the impoverished and aptly-named rural town of Inviolata (Italian for “inviolable”), where a group a group of peasants work as sharecroppers in conditions analogue to slavery for the pompous Marquise De La Luna and her son the eccentric Marquis De La Luna. The decrepit buildings and working conditions suggest that the town is in the South of Italy, although its exact location is never revealed. Lazzaro helps both the peasants and the bosses without drawing much attention to himself. He’s prepared to do anything for this people. He will offer his very blood is asked to do it.
Suddenly, De La Luna’s “great swindle” is uncovered. She’s arrested and the farm abandoned. The peasants move to the city in search of pastures green. Then the film moves forward several years. The actress Alba Rohrwacher, who happens to be the director’s elder sister, plays different characters at the different times. Everyone ages. Except for Lazzaro. He looks exactly the same; even his plain clothes remain unchanged.
Carlitos (Lorenzo Ferro) has the face of Macaulay Culkin, the lips of Angelina Jolie and the hair of an angel. Yet he epitomises evil. He’s a staunch robber and serial killer. He doesn’t believe in ownership of goods, and so he will steal anything that comes his way, ranging from cars and posh mansions to a gun store. He also has a profound disregard for life, and so he will kill just about anyone who stands in his way. The action takes place in 1971.
Carlitos befriends the dark-haired and also extremely good-looking Ramon (played by Chino Darin, son of Argentinian über-actor Ricardo Darin), who soon becomes his partner in crime. Ramon’s parents also become enthusiastic accomplices. Angel’s parents Aurora (Cecilia Roth) and Hector (Luis Gnecco), on the other hand, suspect that their son is up to no good, and do not approve of his behaviour. But there’s little they can do in order to stop their deviant and untrammelled angel.
In some unnamed and extremely impoverished coastal town in the South of Italy, Marcello (Marcello Fonte; pictured at the top of this article) runs a small dog grooming business aptly named Dogman. He is also a part time coke dealer. He befriends a Neanderthal thug called Antonio (Edoardo Pesce). Together they engage in a life of petty crimes and nights out. They seem to complement each other in s very strange way: Marcello is puny, ugly, calm and with a squeaky voice, while Simone is bulky, considerably better-looking, extremely irascible and with a hoarse voice.
Dogman is in cinemas on Friday, October 19th, immediately after its premiere at the BFI London Film Festival.
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and a last minute addition to our list, no less dirty:
Mandy exists as a headfuck, a hallucinatory trip, but it’s one worth taking and experiencing in all its lucid glory. The action takes place in 1983 in the Pacific Northwest of America that seems devoid of people, at least normal people. But we know this is no alternate reality, however much Mandy believes in the supernatural or the otherworldly. President Ronald Reagan appears on the radio rallying against drugs and pornography. If Mandy had been released at the time of Reagan, the moral majority would have flipped at its bent vision of religion and God. Still, the woods, mountains, and lakes are bathed in a fog of dreamy light and aura that offers a sense that weirdness is a norm in these parts.
Cinema at its purest. Bright white on a screen. A woman starts crawling from the top of the screen. Extreme audience disorientation. We realise she’s crawling through snow. She appears to be in a bad way. Traces of blood. The camera follows her forward movement down the screen. Slowly a tree comes into shot from the bottom. We are watching the same overhead camera movement.
A series of vox pops on a television screen with shelves of books on one side and piles of DVDs on the other. Dancers answer questions on why dance is important to them. Would they do anything in order to make it big? What would they do if they weren’t able to dance?
Then the narrative proper begins. It’s 1996. We’re inside a building with a dancefloor watching the most amazing dance routines we’ve ever seen. It’s the final rehearsal for a dance show. After which the dancers will let their hair down in a party with a DJ. Unaware that someone has spiked the punch. The party will turn into bad trip and an in-your-face vision of hell on earth.
Welcome to the extreme and confrontational cinema of Gaspar Noé (Irreversible, 2002; Enter The Void, 2009). He likes, say the press notes, to set up situations of anarchy and chaos and then commit them to film. Which sounds like a recipe for tedium – and might well be so in lesser hands – but Noé possesses an incredible eye and cinematic aesthetic and what he puts on the screen is never less than extraordinary.
He is equally adept at showing a deeply distressing scene in which men talk about potential sexual conquests among the women nearby or a compelling episode wherein one woman admits to another that she’s pregnant with no idea as to the identity of the father. If such scenes play on our prejudices and probe our sympathies for different characters, they slowly give way to something much more supercharged and kinetic even as they invest us emotionally in what we’re about to watch.
As Noé’s camera follows characters around the dance studio floor and the various rooms adjoining it, including a power supply room with high voltage equipment and ‘Danger Of Death’ notices on the door, he uses the full arsenal of cinematic tricks at his disposal. The camera rolls on its own axis so that sometimes, down is up, up as down and the floor is the ceiling. As the party gets increasingly out of hand, and a couple of performers decide to have sex in the background (that’s real sex, by the way, not the simulated for the cameras variety), the disorientated viewer is vaguely aware of them doing so on the floor in a top corner of the upside-down image above him or her.
There’s an intense physicality throughout running a whole gauntlet of states of being from intense sexual arousal, copulation and post-coital relaxation right the way through to anxiety, isolation, despair and death. Noe is a materialist: he thinks what matters is the here and now, the flesh, the carnal. His heaven and hell is found in our present existence, with the heaven of fleeting or lasting sexual relationship no more than a temporary respite from the hell comprising all the bad stuff, which is the only alternative.
The title Climax suggests a narrative aspiring to and reaching some sort of peak, hinting perhaps at an ecstatic, sexual group orgasm. That’s a sort of tease, because for many of the characters here the climax that they reach via their frenzied, drug-fuelled, dancing excess is more like the hurtling over the edge of a bottomless abyss rather than anything they might actually want. Or perhaps the characters here really do desire something like that. Who knows?
Yet in terms of both dance and cinematic technique the film has the feeling of someone grappling with the very foundations of the languages of both art forms to say something which has never been said before. Such wilful and controlled articulation of form, for this viewer at least, plays against the nihilism. That’s not to say the film is a pleasant experience exactly, but it certainly grabs the attention from its opening frame and never lets go, pushing the viewer into sensory overload and beyond even as it descends into madness and disorder.
Noé is extremely gifted, knows exactly what he’s doing, pulls out al the stops and never misses a trick. The result is both profoundly exhilarating and deeply depressing: an upper and a downer all in one. Most definitely not recommended for those of a nervous disposition: quite possibly, however, the dirty movie of the year.
Climax is out in the UK on Friday, September 21st. On VoD on Friday, February 8th.
Toni Collette, Harvey Keitel, Rossy de Palma, Michael Smiley and Tom Hughes head a most curious, international ragbag star cast for the elegant and deliciously teasing Parisian comedy Madame. The adaptation, screenplay and story are by the clever 40-year-old Paris-born writer and director Amanda Sthers.
There are no actual shaggy dogs in the movie, but Sthers’s plot is really only a shaggy dog story, that is a long-winded anecdote with extensive narration of irrelevant incidents that ends in an ironic anti-climax. But it is a graceful and satisfying shaggy dog story. Sthers is certainly good on the high level of build-up and in complicating the action.
You don’t expect to find Toni Collette and Harvey Keitel to be playing a married couple, but here they are, and very convincing they are too as Anne and Bob Fredericks, a rich, well-connected American couple, who move into an almost obscenely lavish manor house in romantic Paris.
Paris is the sixth star of the movie, looking just great, and of course romantic. That is its job and Sthers sees to that. She wants us to be jealous of the lifestyle of the rich, and of living in Paris. She makes a very good job of that.But Anne and Bob aren’t so romantic. They are in a waning’ loveless marriage. Still, they are enjoying themselves, in their fashion, indulging in their rich lifestyle.
Anne has eyes for one of her dinner guests, Antoine Bernard (Stanislas Merhar), whose marriage to Hélène Bernard (Violaine Gillibert) isn’t going to get in the way of them meeting up clandestinely, any more than Anne’s marriage to Bob is going to stop her either.But that is an irrelevant incident and isn’t the story we have here. Anne is preparing a luxurious dinner for sophisticated international friends. Well, actually, she isn’t preparing anything at all. Her staff are. Ah, staff! How lovely to have staff! Sthers so wants us to be jealous of the lifestyle of the rich.
Anyhow, at that moment in pops English writer Steven Fredericks (Tom Hughes), Bob’s son and Anne’s stepson. You’d think Anne might be pleased, but no, she’s scandalised. Though unshaven and grungy, he wants to stop for dinner. That would mean there are 13 guests, which is unlucky.
In a proper posh panic, Anne improvises and gets her loyal Spanish maid Maria (Rossy de Palma) to disguise herself as a mysterious Spanish noblewoman guest. A hilariously reluctant Maria is ordered to go easy on the food, talk and the wine, and she’ll be OK. Anne dolls up the weird and drab-looking Maria in a posh frock, and Maria is of course the belle of the ball, funny and charming as she knocks back the chateau vintage expensive wine, and accidentally endears herself to a dandy Irish art broker David Morgan (Michael Smiley).
Ah, so this is the story. David chases after Maria, sending Anne into an unqualified repressed fury, and Anne ends up chasing her maid around Paris. Even with wealth, a husband and nookie of her own, Anne can’t stand the idea of this unexpected budding joyful love affair, and maliciously sets about plotting to destroy it and destroying Maria too.
Obviously Anne is a great role for, well for whom? That nice Toni Collette doesn’t seem to fit the bill at all. But here she is relishing every moment of it, cast gleefully against type as a heartless rich bitch in great frocks. Come to that, Harvey Keitel hardly seems the type of actor for Bob, but Keitel settles down nicely, comfortably, into the complacent old husband role. He suggests he has the measure of Anne, and is quite canny enough himself.
You don’t expect to find Collette stripping off for a nude bathing scene, like she is Joan Collins in The Stud (Quentin Masters, 1978). Perhaps you expect Keitel to do the naked thing. But old Harvey has calmed down since the Scorsese films/ Bad Lieutenant years. Away from those ghastly TV ads, he has become a graceful, charming actor in his old age. Collette is up for anything, and she seems good at everything.
But the star of the show is of course Rossy de Palma. She is brilliant, funny, charming and touching, quite adorable. Collette gives her a good run for her money, but ultimately de Palma wins the prize. Keitel is sandwiched between the two, but his entirely different, unshowy acting keeps him alive in the picture. Smiley and Hughes give low-key, naturalistic performances that just about keep them in the picture, but they are kind of just ciphers, though key characters. It turns out Hughes’s character is writing the story we are seeing unfold, another irrelevant incident.
Although it isn’t an Agatha Christie, there are plenty of clues dotted along the way to the film’s likely ending. Fortunately, even if you guess it, even if it is anti-climactic, deliberately underwhelming, throwaway ironic or ultimately meaningless, it is still satisfying. Thanks to the Spanish treasure who is Rossy de Palma. And to Amanda Sthers, who manages considerable Oscar Wilde-style wit along the high level of build-up way.
Madame is available DVD, Blu-ray is also on all major VoD platforms on Monday, September 17th.
It all starts like a conventional French comedy. Laurent (Vincent Cassel) and Antoine (François Cluzet) are old friends going on holiday with their daughters, Louna (Lola Le Lann) and Marie (Alice Isaaz). The famous Charles Trenet song La Mer plays over the soundtrack as they drive to a sun-dappled country-house in Corsica. The teenage girls complain about the lack of mobile reception while the men – one divorced, one seemingly soon to be – moan about their love lives. You might think all four characters are about to find love on the beautiful Mediterranean island, all the while offering up bons mots about the complications of sexual desire.
But initial appearances can be deceiving, as director Jean-François Richet has something far deeper on his mind. A remake of the 1977 film with the same title, One Wild Moment exploits the limits of male desire, offering up a queasy moral play with no easy answers. As the title suggests, the film is structured around one key incident; the seduction of Laurent by Louna by the beach during a party. She may be the one who has started it, but she is only 17 and his best friend’s daughter, making Laurent’s willingness to go along with it all that more problematic.
There’s a lot of ways that this material can go wrong, either leaning too hard on poor-taste comedy or feeling too much like soft-core porn. While the film does very occasionally lean a little too much in the latter direction, it still shows the consequences that such an awful decision can bring. All is held together by a nuanced performance by Vincent Cassel, who plays a decent man who makes one extraordinarily bad mistake and has to get out of the situation alive. While Louna is somewhat underwritten, Lola Le Lann does her best to draw her character out with a lot of youthful energy. The scenes between the two of them are the best in the movie, the couple dangerously navigating each other’s fears in an awkward yet effective way.
A sense of foreboding is created by the boars that ravage Antoine’s garden, trampling on the grave of his forefathers, all buried in the same garden. Antoine, suffering from being estranged from his wife, is taking out his rage on the animals, suggesting that if he were to find out, there’d be hell to pay. This laces every moment in delicious dramatic irony, knowing that the facade of happy vacationers could fall apart at any moment. Yet, the film could’ve done more in using the island itself to represent more primal emotions (like Laura Bispuri’s Daughter of Mine did with neighbouring Sardinia earlier this year), thus coalescing into a suitably catastrophic conclusion. While the house and the neighbouring mountains and coastline are suitably picturesque, the film doesn’t allow the scenery to speak for itself, relying more on dialogue to carry its central moral dilemma.
Ultimately unsure whether its a feel-bad comedy, devastating drama, or straight-up Mediterranean noir, the movie flows gently between genres without ever truly involving us up in its story. Although enjoyable from moment to moment, especially in any scene involving Vincent Cassel alternating between ‘good guy’ dad, friend and even lover, its final power is lost by the underwhelming conclusion, which seems to sweep all its contradictions together and dismiss them with a shrug. It feels like a betrayal of its previously foreboding sense of danger, complicated depictions of power and lust, and of Cassel’s fascinating central performance. Nonetheless, it remains a fascinating portrait of men who think that their indulgences can occur without any repercussions, and how the actual reality can be so different. For one thing, it’ll make you think twice about going on holiday with family friends again.
Watch One Wild Moment right here with DMovies and Eyelet:
You are about to confront a strange beast, one that you want to follow down the dark city streets to see where it is going. Director Josh Appignanesi’s film makes a bold bid to shake us up, using a 1986 VHS camera that gives us an engaging and pleasantly dated viewing quality. We feel that we could be watching a ‘home video’ taken by a friend of the London-based Mexican novelist and writer Chloe Aridjis and yet clearly not. This film is a combination of form, part documentary, part gallery film and part thriller. We are never quite sure which film we are in and this is what keeps us watching.
The further we go into this film, the further we are lost inside this work of art, it feels as if we might be inside a painting. From the plastic packaging motif that runs throughout, to the close-ups of animals on canvas, the cat creatures mirroring the prominent cat character of the writer’s pet Ludwig, along with seeing the central figure of Chloe often from behind plastic or through glass.
Our protagonist is in her own imaginary world of pushing her experience to the outer reaches of what is ‘safe’ and ‘normal’ and at the same time in a ‘man’s world’ and in a man’s ‘Art World’ where her interaction with men at private views and her interactions with her literary agent (Angus Wright) portray a place where her opinion is not ultimately valued and she is to be flattered and patronised.
Chloe’s own agency in her own story is stronger than these influences around her, she makes a deliberate choice to follow the odd ‘Marcel Marceau’ like character of the man in the gallery (Marc Hosemann) who appears randomly throughout the narrative, in spite of being warned of danger by her friends and a rather jarring police detective (Patrick O’Kane). The man leads Chloe in a ‘Pied Piper’ like manner on a dark journey including moments when he appear to exist inside a painting; a kind of still life where a man lasciviously consumes a meat filled banquet. He later tells Chloe that he ‘loves meat and sex and art’ in that specific order. This coupling thread of the story reaches a fairly predictable conclusion and is the culmination of the repeated shots through plastic.
The male figures attempting to influence Chloe’s life, from the mask watching on the wall, to Ludwig as he viciously scratches her, to her fictional father (Helder Macedo) give an Sylvia Plath flavour to the narrative. The voice of the actual Leonora Carrington is a strong counterpoint to the “you have to own your own soul” the artist tells us towards the end of the film. We have been presented very elegantly with a living work of art that leads us to the conclusion that we must not hand over our our female human animal to some half-arsed male.
Chloe tells us at the beginning of her narrative and documentary-type interview that she was “probably born in the wrong century”. Therefore, she becomes the perfect guide in this enchantment of a story.
Female Human Animal is in UK cinemas on Wednesday, October 3rd. Out on VoD on Friday, March 1st.
Late Héctor Babenco transposed Brazil onto the silver screen in a very honest and raw style. He was born and raised in Mar del Plata, Argentina, and died two years ago in Sao Paulo, Brazil. His mother was a Polish-Jewish immigrant and his father was an Argentinian gaucho of Ukrainian origin. Babenco settled in Sao Paulo in 1969 and worked on several documentaries before he filmed Pixote in 1981.
Babenco chose Fernando Ramos da Silva – who lived with his mother and nine brothers in the slums of Sao Paulo – to play the titular Pixote. The director believed that casting a non-professional for the main role would make the violence more realistic, lending more credence to the film. This was a common practice for the Cinema Novo movement in the 1960s and 1970s. The movie FavelaFive Times (Carlos Diegues/Joaquim Pedro de Andrade/Leon Hirszman/Miguel Borges/Marcos Farias, 1962) was a very important reference to Babenco. The movie, which was divided into five episodes, exposed the hardship of shanty towns dwellers in Rio de Janeiro.
François Truffaut’s famously cast a non-professional to play a marginalised child in his first feature The 400 Blows (1959). A 14-year-ols Jean-Pierre Léaud answered a newspaper casting call. The difference between Truffaut and Babenco is that Pixote is not an autobiographical film. This is instead a Latin American auteur investigating a Brazilian social problem. Pixote is a homeless boy who commits crime and has to live under custody in the now-defunct young offenders’ institution Febem.
Pixote isn’t just a denunciation of poverty. It goes much deeper, revealing the sheer cruelty of a system that legitimates and perpetuates violence. Drug lords hired minors to sell drugs or rob banks because they would not face criminal action. If caught, they would spend some time in a police or a Febem reformatory, being freed at the age of 18 without a criminal record.
Pixote opens with intense music and no imagery. The symbolism of darkness continues throughout the film. Nothing is lighthearted: boy rapes boy, prison wards are corrupt, Pixote smokes, sniffs glue and kills. The colours of life in the margin are not bright. Even the brothels are somber. There are no red neon lights. The prostitutes Silvia and Debora are unstylish and downtrodden. They are cheap.
Despite the sheer horrors of Pixote, Babenco also inserts sensibility and humanism into his movie. Silvia is tormented by successive abortions and lingering loneliness. Pixote insists that she becomes a maternal figure, but her selfish survival instincts prevail. In the film’s strongest sequence, Silvia and Pixote bond very much à la Michelangelo’s Pieta (pictured above). This image has become an epitome of Brazilian cinema.
The sordid environment in Pixote transcended fiction. Sadly, years after the film was made, Fernando Ramos da Silva returned to poverty and criminality. He was killed by the police at the age of 19. Tragic reality emulates tragic fiction.
Pixote shows as part of the 62nd BFI London Film Festival taking place between October 10th and 21st.
Aneesh Chaganty’s debut feature Searching in which a widowed father investigates his daughter’s disappearance, was released in cinemas two weeks ago, the latest film belonging to what producer Timur Bekmambetov has described as ‘screen life’, a genre or subgenre (or ‘language’ according to Bekmambetov) in which the story is told via computer screens, smartphones and webcams. Instant messages, internet surfing, Youtube videos, and social media often play vital roles in ‘screen life’ films, including the 2014 horror box office-hit Unfriended (directed by Levan Gabriadze and pictured above) and its 2018 sequel Unfriended 2: Dark Web (Stephen Susco).Both films were produced by Bekmambetov. Whereas the Unfriended films received mixed to negative reviews, critical responses to Searching have been largely positive. Nevertheless, Searching’s ‘screen life’ format and presentation, like that of the Unfriended films, has been referred to as a ‘gimmick’ by many critics and publications, in both negative reviews and positive reviews.
As something which is designed to attract publicity and attention, a ‘gimmick’ is something of a pejorative that dismisses the ‘screen life’ style of storytelling as having little intrinsic value. In the cases Searching and the Unfriended films, this is simply untrue. These ‘screen life’ films and their ‘language’ do have intrinsic value, the use of computer and smartphone screens complementing the subject matter and reflecting the very real notion that we now live much of our lives through these screens. Whether these films are good or bad is irrelevant to the value of their narrative techniques, and to dismiss these films as ‘gimmicky’ is to ignore a new, innovative way to tell stories and construct films.
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Gimmicks from the past
To be clear, the ‘gimmick’ of ‘screen life’ is not the same as other cinematic gimmicks. Cinematic ‘gimmicks’, it seems, can be split into two categories: on-screen and off-screen. Off-screen gimmicks, such as those in William Castle’s Macabre (1958, pictured above), House on Haunted Hill (1959), and The Tingler (1959) – respectively, life insurance for viewers should they die of fright when watching the film; plastic skeletons rigged to pulleys in theatres; and vibrating chairs that corresponded to the actions of the titular tingler (a parasite inside human beings that feeds on fear) – were gimmicks in the true sense of the word: marketing tools designed to attract attention and sell the film. Taking inspiration from Castle, Alfred Hitchcock employed a marketing gimmick in order to publicise Psycho (1960, pictured below), with audiences having to adhere to a ‘special policy’ preventing them from entering the theatre once the opening credits had finished. Needless to say, Hitchcock’s off-screen gimmick proved successful, generating plenty of hype and long lines of paying customers.
In comparison, the ‘gimmick’ of ‘screen life’ is not solely intended to sell the film. In Chaganty’s Searching, David Kim (John Cho) attempts to figure his missing daughter’s whereabouts by tracing her recent online activity. The use of computer screens, social media, and FaceTime calls makes narrative sense here, just as the use of social media and webcams makes narrative sense in Unfriended, in which a group of friends are terrorised by the spirit of their former friend, who committed suicide following an unflattering photograph of her going viral. Again, the ‘screen life’ style and structure is informed by the subject matter, and offers a degree of contemporary social commentary on how we live our lives. Evidently, the on-screen ‘gimmicks’ of Searching and Unfriended are not the same as the off-screen gimmicks of William Castle’s B-movies or Alfred Hitchcock’s marketing scheme for Psycho. In fact, when compared to these off-screen gimmicks, on-screen ‘gimmicks’ are not gimmicks at all.
Looking back, it’s not uncommon for innovative storytelling techniques to be disparaged as ‘gimmicks’. The found-footage subgenre – from which ‘screen life’ takes its cues – is frequently referred to as gimmicky, though interestingly the subgenre’s most famous example, The Blair Witch Project(Eduardo Sánchez/ Kevin Foxe, 1999; pictured below) – which implemented both an on-screen ‘gimmick’ in found-footage and off-screen gimmick in viral marketing -, was praised for its ‘mockumentary’ style upon release. The Paranormal Activity franchise, in contrast, has not fared quite so well.
Interestingly, a literary equivalent to found-footage exists in the epistolary novel, a novel written as a series of documents, such as diary entries, letters, or more recently emails. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Bram Stoker’s Dracula serve as examples of ‘literary found-footage’, though whether anyone would dismiss these pieces of work as ‘gimmicks’ is unlikely. Coupled with ‘screen life’s ties to genre cinema, perhaps there is an element of snobbery and elitism to regarding ‘screen life’ as a ‘gimmick’, a piece of ‘low art’ – at best – that is unworthy of serious critical analysis.)
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Another dimension
3D, repeatedly scorned as an overly-expensive money-making gimmick, was an essential part of the narrative in James Cameron’s Avatar (2009). The immersive 3D experience of the audience was intended to reflect that of Sam Worthington’s Jake Sully, as he embodies his Na’vi avatar and immerses himself in the culture of the Na’vi and their home world of Pandora. Just as Jake entered a new world when he is sealed within his link unit, the audience treated on a new cinematic world when donning their 3D glasses. Whether one enjoys the 3D experience is beside the point; the ‘gimmick’ has thematic relevance, Jake himself, like many film protagonists, acting as an avatar for the audience, our connection, our link, into the world of the film.
And in the same way, we are linked into Searching’s world through computer screens, Twitter trends, and viral videos. We see what David Kim sees. We are a voyeur, seeing into his life, viewing the world through his eyes. To an extent, we embody him, and the connection this creates with David allows for greater sympathy for his character and circumstance. There is far more to ‘screen life’ than ‘gimmick’ filmmaking. In the case of Searching, it is filmmaking at its most inventive, at its most thought-out, subject matter informing structure, art with purpose and meaning.
It may only be in its infancy, but the ‘gimmick’ of ‘screen life’ is likely here to stay. As it should be. As it deserves it.
Watching Glenn Close is always a fascinating experience. Her facial features are so rugged and expressive that 71-year-old actress says a lot even with her eyes closed. Her performance in The Wife is virtually immaculate, a fine example of Oscar-baiting. She’s feminine without conveying a sense of vulnerability. She’s demure without being submissive. She’s also a little masculinised, with an androgynous face, short hair and a male-sounding name (Joan). She’s a woman riddled with contrasts: she’s extremely intelligent, well-spoken, beautiful and elegant, and yet she’s more than happy to stand in the background, in the shadow of her famous husband.
Joan Castleman (Close) has spent the past 40 decades of her life entirely devoted to her husband Joe Castleman (Jonathan Pryce, who looks increasingly like Jeremy Corbyn with longer eyebrows). Not in the kitchen or raising children. Well, she has probably done her share of the more traditional and old-fashioned wife duties, too. But what keeps Joan and Joe together is a far more profound complicity. Joe is a famous writer, but he’s only successful due to his wife, who does the work for him. Joan is Joe’s ghost writer. Her name is never credited anywhere. Yet Joe wouldn’t even know where to start without her.
Nathaniel Bone (Christian Slater), an ambitious journalist with a very sharp eye, notices that Joe’s writing was remarkably inferior four decades earlier, immediately before he met Joan. He suspects that Joan is the real author of Joe’s extensive portfolio. He approaches Joe and Joan, but they both deny his theory. He continues his investigations undaunted, and becomes involved in the lives of the Castlemans in more ways than the couple anticipated.
I can’t help but seeing this movie as a celebration of all women who live in the shadow of their husbands, and who are more than delighted to stay there. They do not wish to budge. Despite the fact that the screenwriter and the author of the eponymous book on which the film is based are both females (Jane Anderson and Meg Wolitzer, respectively), I feel that The Wife does women a huge disservice. Joan is a more sophisticated version of Dorothy Mitchum. Or Tammy Wynette. Joan is very proud of Joe, even though he’s hard to understand.
To add insult to injury, Joe is unfaithful. And Joan is fully aware of his dalliances. No one seems to understand why such a talented woman opts to give up the recognition she deserves in favour of a very undeserving husband. One day, Joe learns that he is about to receive a Nobel Prize in Literature. Joan is more than happy travel to Stockholm with her husband for the ceremony. During the ceremony she opts to stay remain the shadow. She does not even want to be thanked for her support. Of course, this is her prerogative. As it was Dorothy Mitchum’s and Tammy Wynette’s to stay at home baking cookies. A woman must be respected whatever her choice. It’s just very awkward that a woman would give up her entitlement and privileges for no apparent reason. Not impossible. Just awkward.
Ultimately, The Wife doesn’t feel entirely credible because Joan’s motives are so extremely fuzzy. Not that ghost writing for a spouse is not conceivable. It’s now widely known that Alma Hitchcock did it for her husband Alfred, often described as the greatest filmmaker of all times. It’s just that Joan’s personality doesn’t seem to fit in with her attitude.
There are other problems with The Wife. The script is banal. It lacks gumption and flare. It’s a pretentious and mediocre study of nature of creative writing. Ironically, there is hardly anything creative about it.
The final denouement is very problematic for women. A saccharine and mostly predictable ending, with a subliminal message I found difficult to digest. If I was a female, I would never want to find redemption in the way Joan did. It’s almost like self-sabotage. Of course, I am not a female. So it’s perfectly conceivable that I simply lack the sensibility to understand The Wife. One way or the other, I would not stand by your man!
Still, The Wife is guaranteed to please a lot of people of both sexes. Europhile Americans will love the images of snowy Stockholm combined with the pomp and circumstance of the Nobel ceremony. There’s even an impromptu Saint Lucia intervention at breakfast, and a touch of royalty. Who doesn’t love a Scandinavian monarch, particularly one that sits downs and interacts with you on your dinner table? In a nutshell, a formulaic endeavour tailored to mainstream audiences and the Oscars.
The Wife is out in cinemas across the UK on Friday, September 28th. On VoD on Friday, February 8th.
The sensibility of a child is not an easy one to transpose onto the silver screen. Our little human beings have an entirely different way of seeing the world, with a very fertile imagination, a lot of curiosity, a certain naivety, but also a touch of callousness. Recreating a child’s world isn’t just about plush and colourful images, toys, fairy dust and pixies. Subtlety and nuance are also mandatory. Mamoru Hosada’s latest film succeeds at all accounts. Mirai is both sophisticated and ingenious, and it’s entirely relatable whatever your age.
A spoiled and pampered four-year old boy called Kun (voiced by Moka Kamishiraishi) is perplexed and indignant at the arrival of his newborn sister Mirai (Haru Kuroki), whose name means “future” in Japanese. His parents (voiced by Gen Hoshino and Kumiko Aso) now have to divide their attention between the two children. The two adults are never named, emphasising that the film is seen from Mirai’s perspective (who simply calls them “mother” and “father”).
Kun is used to all of the attention to himself, so he’s predictably jealous. Extremely jealous. And angry. Red with anger even. He’s prone to tantrums, which throw the hitherto household into disarray. Sounds banal? Well, it is banal. Until you penetrate Kun’s imagination, which is teeming with action, fantastic concoctions but also very vivid fears. Almost the entire film takes place inside Kun’s house. It’s Kun’s imagination that has the ability to travel very far,
Mirai will transport you back to your early childhood, when reaching a doll or a piece of bric-à-brac sitting on a shelf without attracting your father’s attention was a mammoth quest. Kun has two handy imaginary helpers: a grown-up version of Mirai and his anthropomorphised pet dog. The unlikely trio embark on a very thrilling adventure, and this is just the first of many voyages.
Later on, Kun’s vivid imagination establishes a dialogue and a relationship with his late great-grandfather. He has overheard his parents talk about how his forebear – whom he never met – survived WW2, became disabled and married his great-grandmother. His grandfather represents a connection with the past, while Mirai represents a link with the future (the nominative determinism speaks for itself). Past, present and future mingle together, providing integrity and continuity’s to Kun’s family history.
Mirai has at least three subtle yet very significant and pertinent messages to Japan, a conservative country grappling with a demographic implosion (the population is shrinking very quickly). Firstly, the film suggests that it’s good to conceive. Children humanise parents, who become “unflappable”. So let’s have babies! Secondly, the father is caring and doting, and he helps to look after the children. Quite refreshing for a country where men work so hard they never have time for their family. A few years ago, Japan created the annual Beloved Wives’ Day in order to give men the rare opportunity to spend time with their family. Thirdly, the mother is a working mum. Japan has a problem with females giving up their career after they become a mother.
The graphics of Mirai are a delight to watch. They become increasingly soulful and elaborate as the narrative progresses in a tandem with Kun’s imagination. There’s plenty of cuteness, as the opening song suggests (the lyrics cry “cute, cute, cute”, in English). But there’s also plenty of sadness. Enough tears to fill up the Sea of Japan. And there’s a touch of ugliness. The representations of evil and loneliness are quite jarring, even for adults.
Mirai premieres as part of both the BFI London Film Festival (UK premiere) and Scotland Loves Anime (Scottish premiere) in October. It is out in cinemas across the UK on Friday, November 2nd.
Crystal Love takes to the stage, gargantuan in gown and appearance. Describing herself as a whale, Love refers to the audience as a bunch of “cunts”. It’s a hysterical moment in a series of moments which details the empowerment a Drag Queen Pageant can bring to a person. Love admits later of being reinvigorated, while Isla refers to the transformation as one which changes their attitude from being masculine to more girly more easily. Behind the costumes, flowing hair and choreography is the story of empowerment, invigoration and humanity, all told with the cheekiest of tongues.
Preparing for the stage, one contestant reflects on who they have to slip something into their drink. Elsewhere, Isla goes into detail on the 4.5 hours spent in the changing room. But behind it all, the film is mindful of the developments Australia has made in order that everyone can enjoy such frisson. A Pride Parade has the prodigious personalities and colours, but viewers are mindful that Australia only legalised same-sex marriage in August 2017.
When gender identities are asked, Isla admits that he’s very happy being a straight guy, delighted with the escapism of a guise as beautiful woman, but Love (a transgender woman) has had a different experience, grateful for the support of Love’s family. It’s also an insightful photograph into the world Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community, where gay, transgender, sistergirls and gender diverse members have not always found it so easy to feel loud and proud in their orientation within indigenous communities.
An hour long in length, Divaz flows at a choppy and pacey rate, there’s little room for convolution. That said, a segue where Crystal Love flows down a market place of smiling passers-by feels a little prolongues, drowned by intrusive electronic music. Similarly, the naturalistic indoor settings are more successful and contained than many of the outdoor sequences.
But its not the pageant that makes the film. It’s the people who are going to the pageant, either the contestants ( Nova Gina, Isla Fuk Yah, Crystal Love, Josie Baker, Jojo and Shaniqua) or the hosts ( Miss Ellaneous and Marzi Panne), bonding in their shared challenges and desires. The swearing, the laughs shared between the self-described “crazy bitches” and the glamorous unfolding drama make Black Divaz a powerful and moving doc.
