Month: February 2019

Out Of Blue

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

Morley’s latest film is both infuriating and enthralling in equal measure. Infuriating because its convoluted plot, firing off in several directions one after another, is often nigh on impossible to follow. Enthralling because while you never quite know where you are, it periodically throws at you utterly compelling little visual clues and sequences of images as teasers to suggest narrative or other possibilities.

Some viewers are going to hate this film and wonder why they wasted their money to see it. Others like myself, while not showering the film with unqualified praise, are going to want to revisit it several times and get more out of it each time they return. If you’ve got the patience and are prepared to dig on a first viewing and return later to dig some more, there’s a lot waiting to be unearthed here.

After a brief introductory sequence in which astronomer Jennifer Rockwell (Mamie Gummer) talks to a small audience outside an observatory about the stars and our place in the universe, she becomes the subject of a homicide case. But who pulled the trigger and blew her face off?

Finding herself in charge of the investigation, Police Detective Mike Hoolihan (Patricia Clarkson) examines the crime scene. Rainfall has interfered with it through the opened telescope slit in the domed roof. She notes such objects as a gun, a sock, a high heeled shoe and a jar of skin cream. She is approached by and surprisingly quickly falls in with TV news reporter Stella Honey (Devyn Tyler) who appears at unexpected moments and disappears equally unexpectedly.

The two immediate murder suspects are Jennifer’s boss Dr. Ian Strammi (Toby Jones) – it was his gun and he covered up the telescope but didn’t close the roof – and her boyfriend Duncan Reynolds (Jonathan Majors) – it was his sock. Reynolds’ alibi was that he rushed home after lovemaking to work on an all-consuming academic theory, Strammi’s that he spent all night with a female student discussing Schrödinger’s Cat. Hoolihan’s boss Lieutentant Janey McBride (Yolanda Ross) and colleague Tony Silvero (Aaron Tveit) have different ideas, including the latter’s belief that the perpetrator is the .38 Calibre Killer who hasn’t killed since the 1980s.

Something doesn’t feel quite right to Hoolihan, though, so she turns her attention outwards to the victim’s family – war hero father Colonel Tom (James Caan), mother Miriam (Jacki Weaver) and their twin sons.

The plot may or may not be clearer in Martin Amis’ novel Night Train from which Morley’s script is adapted, although she’s apparently removed and added quite a lot of material. The New Orleans setting allows for a commendably interracial cast and a clutch of striking performances. Chief among these is Clarkson’s detective, trying to just get on and do her job even as elements from the case on which she’s working resonate with half-remembered memory fragments from her own past. Or perhaps they’re prophetic images from her future.

Morley tantalisingly baffles and dazzles us with repeating images: a red scarf blowing in the wind of an electric fan, blue necklace baubles dropping onto and bouncing on a floor. The piece ends as it begins with images of the stars in the sky above the city.

All this proceeds in a kaleidoscopic manner focusing on a character here and a bunch of images there until a point towards the end where one of the images furnishes a key clue as to what all this is about and the solution is abruptly revealed in a curt couple of lines of dialogue that could have been thrown in at any earlier point in the proceedings.

As far as Morley’s concerned, the plot doesn’t seem to be what really matters. Her interest lies elsewhere – trauma, memory, repression. Our past affecting our present. Some intensely personal events have influenced Morley’s directing: her father committed suicide when she was eleven and according to the press blurb there were characters and situations in Amis’ novel that she immediately recognised as from her past. If the film doesn’t work so well as a straightforward genre exercise, those viewers with the patience to let it speak to them on its own terms over multiple viewings will find it rich in meaning indeed.

Out Of Blue is out in the UK on Friday, March 29th. Before then, it screens in the Glasgow Film Festival on Wednesday and Thursday, February 27th and 28th. On VoD (BFI Player and other platforms) on Monday, October 21st.

Hannah

Posted on by victorfraga

Hannah (Charlotte Rampling) lives in a suburban town somewhere in French-speaking Belgium. Despite her many years (the character is presumably in her 60s or 70s), she still has to work as a cleaner and housekeeper for a bourgeoisie family with a disabled child. She is married, but the relationship is mostly uneventful. She has a dog, her biggest companion. She takes theatre lessons, which seem to offer some sort of therapy and venting outlet for an otherwise tedious existence.

Then her husband gets imprisoned. Apparently she committed a crime towards a child, and her spouse took the blame for her. Just maybe. It’s never entirely clear what really happened. She also has a estranged son. He refuses to see his own mother and even prevents her from seeing her own grandchildren. He’s very upset, presumably at the crime that she committed. Her imprisoned husband is upset at his own son, and not at his wife Hannah. Presumably because of his refusal to see his mother. I have intentionally used the word “presumably” several times in this review. This is a film that only provides viewers with fragments of reality, allowing us to pierce the pieces together in an entirely different way. Another film critic I spoke to created an entirely different version of events.

Yet, this is not a detective movie. The Italian Andrea Pallaoro is not too concerned about the nature of the mysterious crime. Instead, he investigates Hannah’s personal relationships, routine, fears and ambitions. You will be asking yourself whether the plot will come full circle at the end of the movie, whether the relative equilibrium in Hannah’s life will be restored, whether the crime will be revealed or not. The intentionally monotonous and languid pace of the film suggest an all-too-European open ending. Will Pallaoro surprise us with a shock revelation, or will the questions be left unanswered? Of course I won spoil the ending for you. The last sequence of the film (and I was informed that two endings were initially made) takes place in the metro, and it’s very powerful exactly as it is.

In a way, Hannah is a neighbour that we all have. Or someone you see on the metro/Tube. We dislike and pity her in equal measures, while only knowing fragments of her life. Pallaoro emphasises our alienation with the constant use of slanted angles, mirrors and blurred surfaces (such as a steamed glass inside the slower). It’s as if she was saying to viewers: “you are taking very partial, subjective look into a stranger’s life. She’s fallible and she deserves our compassion, just like any human being on Earth”.

The camera is almost entirely static, except for a sequence in the public swimming pool and the final one in the metro. It reminded me a lot of Ulrich Seidl. The gaze remains motionless and firm, the action is subtle, yet the sentiments are rampant. Subtlety and simplicity speak louder than technical wizardry and myriads of twists.

The 70-year-old British actress is magnificent. She hollers and moans in her theatre class, in the very first sequence of the film. She does it again later in the second half of the movie as she breaks down in a public toilet cubicle (this time she isn’t acting, she’s having a real meltdown). She longs for her husband’s body in bed (this will ring a bell with those who watched Rampling’s character erotically fantasising about her missing husband in Francois Ozon’s Under The Sand, 2000). All extremely convincing and moving.

Hannah screened in the main competition section of the 74th Venice International Film Festival, where Charlotte Rampling won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress in 2017. It is out in cinemas across the UK on Friday, March 1st.

Once Upon a Time in London

Posted on by victorfraga

Charting the fates of two very different criminals from the late 30s to the early 60s, Once Upon a Time in London transports the thirties’ Chicago gangster tale to the East End. A quintessentially British tale stacked with the usual assortment of English geezers, which also brings a unique historical depth to an otherwise well-worn genre.

It all kicks off in 1936 at the infamous Battle of Cable Street, a street-fight between anti-fascists — including communists, Jews and Irish dockers — and Blackshirts, led by Oswald Mosley. The leader on the Jewish side (although history suggests he wasn’t actually there) is notorious gangster Jack Comer (Terry Stone). He is so influential in the East End that he successfully wins the fight, forcing Mosley to retire his troops. Meanwhile, Billy Hill (Leo Gregory) is just getting started: a cocky young upstart, he robs the same jewellery shop twice in one week just for fun.

He owes money to the Whites, who are in opposition to the Italian Sabinis. But when the Sabinis are detained due to the government’s wartime policy, a power vacuum quickly opens up, leading Comer to take control of the underworld. Hill, currently in jail, senses an opportunity, and sends Comer a letter asking for work. Of course, Hill isn’t really looking for employment, but a way to worm his way to the very top.

The result is a predictable albeit entertaining romp through various gangster clichés that is too complicated for its own good. Not content to merely depict one or two rivalries, it shows us several, rushing through the years at a breakneck pace. Given that it is only 110 minutes long, the film feels overstuffed, never giving us time to breathe. Characters die suddenly, often off-screen, go to jail and back within five minutes, and get beaten up only to have their revenge moments later. It would’ve done far better to either extend the runtime — giving us the Leone-esque epic the title deserves — or start in the fifties at the heat of the two men’s rivalry. Instead we get a solid hour and a half of laborious place-setting before a quick half hour resolution.

Additionally, the production design feels strained, dampening the character’s personalities instead of bringing them to life. While even the worst modern ‘geezer’ pictures can be guiltily pleasurable thanks to contemporary soundtracks and shameless depictions of excess, the historical context of Once Upon A Time In London sanitises the worst of it, making it feel all rather stale. The ways in which government policy and organised crime intersected during the war, or the media promoted criminals such as Hill to the top of pile, is truly fascinating, but this isn’t explored with much depth.

We come to these films for their violence and what it says about man’s worst tendencies. Once Upon A Time in London contains many such violent moments — including one man’s face being used for a dartboard — but they never manage to land with any real force. Director Simon Rumley has the tendency to score the most brutal of beatings with music from the time, cutting out the sounds of blows entirely. This is symptomatic of the film as a whole: which rarely pulls a punch.

While the acting is serviceable (with Stone standing out as a ruthless crime baron) they are ultimately let down by a run-of-the-mill script, subpar direction and endless diversions. Although containing some fascinating ideas, and a side to British criminal history that is under-portrayed compared to the Swinging Sixties and Cocaine Eighties, Once Upon A Time In London barely compares to Once Upon a The Time in The Midlands (Shane Meadows, 2002).

Once Upon a Time in London is out in cinemas across the UK on Friday, April 19th. On Netflix from January 11th, 2020.

Wall

Posted on by victorfraga

Follow David Hare – recently described as “the premiere political dramatist writing in English” by the Washington Post – as he travels Israel and Palestine in order to assess the impact of the wall separating the two countries on both peoples. The film is mostly in black and white, combining distinctive handcraft with advanced animation tools and 3D motion-capture footage. The outcome is a realistic feel, not dissimilar to rotoscopic animation. The images are raw and bleak with the very occasional splash of colouring – much like the existence of the Palestinians.

Wall never shies away from political indictment. While listening to both sides of the story, it remains unequivocally critical of Israel’s aggressive stance towards the people who could be their “potential best friends” (here I quote Hannah Arendt, who’s not mentioned in the film). Wall reveals that the International Court of Justice in The Hague ruled 14 votes to 2 on July 9th 2004 that the wall is contrary to international law. They demand that Israel seizes construction, dismantles what has already been erected and makes reparation for the damage inflicted. Israel opted to ignore the ruling, in a sheer violation of international law.

Comparisons to the Berlin wall are inevitable. The difference is that the Berlin wall kept people locked outside, while the Palestinian wall keeps people locked inside.

Israeli people are becoming increasingly anxious and therefore aggressive towards Palestine, we are told. A recent poll showed that 84% of Israelis are in favour of the wall. It has an extension of 486 miles, in a combination of razor coil, electronic fences, watchtowers, ditches, concrete slabs, control roads and checkpoints. It comes at a price tag of U$4 billion. Israelis use the euphemistic “separation fence” in order to refer to the illegal construction, while Palestinians describe it as the “the racial segregation wall”. An Israeli puts it succinctly: “80% of terrorist attacks against Israeli have been stopped. Am I not meant to be pleased about that?”

Professor Sari Nuseibeh of the Al-Quds University of Jerusalem has the best analogy to describe the relation between controversial wall and Palestinian violence: “if you put someone in a cage they will start screaming like any normal person would. Then you use their temper as a justification for putting them in the cage in the first place. The wall is the perfect crime because it creates the violence it was ostensibly created to prevent”.

Israelis use their own fears and anxieties in order to justify their aggressive behaviour. A man explains it: “Our country feels provisional. In the UK you make plans for trains and airports in 2038. We don’t. We look strong from outside, with army and nuclear weapons. But we feel weak and insecure inside”. Israelis became “addicted to occupation”, like a narcotic. They have become victims of their own anxiety, incapable of distinguishing between real dangers and ghost from the past.

Beauty is also a central topic. “Jerusalem used to be beautiful. Now it isn’t. It used to take your breath away. Now it doesn’t. How could it ? There’s a bloody concrete wall around it”. The Israeli settlements look menacing and soulless. A real eyesore. They sit on top of the hills as if keeping guard over the Palestinians below. The Palestinian city of Nablus has 180,000 inhabitants surrounded by nine Israeli checkpoints, 14 Jewish settlements and 26 settlement outposts (which are illegal even under Israeli law). Nablus used to be the commercial heart of Palestine. Now it’s just “the capital of poverty”.

The final five minutes of this film – when the graffiti sprayed on the titular wall acquires colour and movement – are genuinely breathtaking. Banksy’s iconic Girl with Balloons takes off heading towards the sky. A real explosion of images. A real explosion of feelings. Pure catharsis. A fresh reminder of how liberating art can be, particularly when several media are combined: graffiti, animation and documentary-making.

Wall shows for at the BFI Southbank on Wednesday, February 27th. There will be a director’s Q&A event on theatrical opening on Friday, 1st March at Bertha DocHouse..

Alien

Posted on by victorfraga

It is hard to decide where to begin. There are just so many reasons why Alien is dirty movie. I say more: it is the most subversive Hollywood movie ever made, alongside Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960). Plus it’s incredibly influential. In 2008, the American Film Institute ranked it as the 7th film of all time in the science fiction genre, while Empire magazine named it the 33rd greatest film of all time. It forever changed the way we see science fiction, women and sex. It spawned seven spin-offs (including the prequels and the crossover with Predator franchise). Yet none of these movies is nearly as powerful and remarkable as the original film.

Alien is based on a story by Ronald Shusett and Dan O’Bannon, who also penned the film script. It follows the crew of spaceship Nostromo, who encounter a deadly, extremely aggressive and resilient extraterrestrial creature set loose on the spacecraft. Six members of the crew are killed one by one in the most horrific and gruesome ways. The cast is stellar (no pun intended). They include Tom Skerritt (Captain Dallas), John Hurt (Executive Officer Kane), Veronica Cartwright (Navigator Lambert), Ian Holm (Science Officer Ash), Yaphet Kotto (Engineer Parker) and the late Harry Dean Stanton (Engineer Brett). The seventh crew member and the only survivor is Warrant Officer Ripley (played by Sigourney Weaver, in a career-defining role).

But why is Alien so dirty? First of all, it changed the way we see women in film. It was the very first Hollywood blockbuster to feature an action heroine in the leading role. Prior to that, women were portrayed as either secondary or vulnerable, reliant on the mighty male in order to make decisions and to achieve their objectives. Feeble creatures prone to cowering. Victims of violence. Victims of gaslighting. Hitherto there were no true heroines in sci-fi and action movies. many film historians and feminists consider Ripley a watershed in the history of filmmaking.

However, Ripley wasn’t your average Hollywood woman. She was masculinised. Her hair was short, she wore trousers, her name was unisex. In fact, her role was originally written for a man. Many people believe that this was a creative choice, and the only way Ridley Scott found to portray an empowered female. Because of this masculinization, both character and actress became Lesbian icons. All of this happened long before the New Queer Cinema movement (of Todd Hayes, Greg Araki and others) was born in the 1990s, with openly homosexual characters.

The final sequence of Alien – when Ripley is alone in the spaceship with the creature and about to go into stasis – has been widely interpreted as a Lesbian act. Ripley appears in her underwear (pictured at the top). The curvy and slimy creature – sensual in a very twisted way – is to be seen in the background. Old-fashioned horror theory states that the monster is always female, the Freudian penis envy being their biggest driving force. The alien creature is indeed female. In David Fincher’s Alien 3 (1992), we find out that the alien had previously impregnated Ripley with her embryo (possibly in this sequence), despite the human being blithely unaware of it. Non-consensual sexual interaction, it seems. Luckily for all of us, the graphic details and the precise nature of this Lesbian impregnation have never been revealed.

There’s more sexual violence and symbolism. The facehugging creature attached to John Hurt’s character Officer Kane represents the male fear of forced penetration (oral rape). And the infamous chestbursters equate to the male fear of giving birth. In the 2002 TV documentary The Alien Saga, Alien screenwriter Dan O’Bannon explained, “I’m going to attack the audience. I’m going to attack them sexually”. Ridley Scott has also discussed the sexual connotations of Alien in various interviews.

Now it’s time you watch Alien again and come up with your own dirty interpretations. Horny, wet and otherworldly fun!

The 40th anniversary 4k restoration of Ridley Scott’s Alien is out in cinemas across the UK on Friday, March 1st.

Brief Story from the Green Planet (Breve Historia del Planeta Verde)

Posted on by victorfraga

This is an idiosyncratic pop film with bite. Memorable in theme and story, it follows a triumvirate of LGBTQ friends who discover an actual alien inside the house of one of their grandmothers. Sordid story lines make way for long cuts silhouetting the empty countrysides. Tania (Romina Escobar) is a trans woman searching for her place in the world, as alien to her setting as the extra terrestrial is. Opening herself up to a pilgrim, Tania joins her friends as they return the creature to where it was originally found, paying tribute to her dying grandmother.

A journey across Argentinian plains in an intimate car is as alluring as Alfonso Cuarón’s Y Tu Mama Tambien (2001) and although Santiago Loza’s doesn’t match Cuaron’s coming of age masterpiece for quality, it stands decidedly on its own two feet for originality. The film is an eye-opener, foreshadowed at the beginning, Daniela (Paula Grinszpan) waking beneath her eye mask, tellingly pictured by hideously large Bunuelian cartoon eyes. She wakes from sleep to live.

Much of the film is silent and silence looks particularly strong on Pedro (Luis Sodá), a magnetic character unsure of his place in Tania’s journey. The first three minutes are free of dialogue, as we watch these three characters fix themselves for the day ahead. There is a beauty to many of the long shots, whole passages of footage spaced over two minutes detailing the perspective of the vehicle alone. Nicolas Roeg’s untimely passing has brought his influence to mind, this feels like a film that belonged in his wheelhouse.

Then there’s the alien laminating in the darkened room it sleeps in, delivering a strangely comic moment that brings viewers from the surreal to the real and back again. It bases the alien from epigrams of fifties fiction, rather than the muscular machines that have been in the public domain since James Cameron’s time. Friendly, fair and figurative, this alien brings three unlikely heroes on a quest and in doing so, shows them purpose. It’s a film that begs not to be pigeonholed, as many in the arthouse milieu ask to be judged on their visual content. It could be summarised as a Todd Haynes meets Spielberg’s Close Encounters of The Third Kind (1977). If that tickles your fantasies, then this is the film for you.

Brief Story from the Green Planet premiered at the 2019 Berlin Film Festival,where it won the Teddy Award for best LGBTQ-themed feature film.

Madeline’s Madeline

Posted on by victorfraga

The cat breathes and makes sounds. Little noises that inadvertently get behind your ears and stay with you while you are watching Madeline’s Madeline, the new feature by American director Josephine Decker. By tackling mental illness in the story of a young theatre actress in a manner that disrupts both style and storytelling, the director creates an invigorating audiovisual experience that has wowed cinephiles since its debut at Sundance last year.

Watching Madeline’s Madeline feels like being part of a very intimate dream. We become an integral part of the life of the protagonist, played by Helena Howard in a breathtaking debut. We see the action entirely through her eyes, as she becomes the star of an experimental workshop in a theatre troupe of New York. In the first half of the film she pretends to be a cat and a sea turtle. Next, she pretends to be a pig.

“In all disorder there’s a secure order” says Madeline’s teacher Evangeline (Molly Parker), who is very fond of the adolescent’s creative presence. Suddenly, the play begins to veer in an unexpected direction. The rehearsals are portrayed as improvised, emotional and sometimes chaotic. The same can be said about Madeline’s world. We get a grasp of Madeline’s troubled mental state as she stages her routine through her distorted point-of-view. We also learn that she has a dysfunctional relationship with her mother Regina (Miranda July).

Madeline is not the only one drifting. The visuals do of the movie, too. The camera work and editing include a playful use of the depth of focus, abrupt time jumps and images overlays. These resources handled by cinematographer Ashley Connor and the team of editors (Decker, Harrison Atkins and Elizabeth Rao) go hand-in-hand with our protagonist sense of self. Behind the unconventional and sometimes oneiric narrative, lies an intimate tale about growing up and surrendering to the artistic process. This is not a new theme in Decker’s work, who has placed her very own relationship with director Zefrey Throwell at scrutiny of the camera in their documentary Flames (2017).

Art raises more questions than answers. Madeline sees how her work on the play gets caught in her bond with her mother. Regina is overprotective, and attempt to solve her daughter’s problem with an excessive and damaging mount of nurture.

Howard is the true star of the film thanks. This is an unforgettable role. She walks through the streets of New York at night talking to strangers, while also emulating their mannerisms. This is a committed and surprisingly natural portrayal, and the tactics are both endearing and devastating. By the end of the film, the actress also gives a soliloquy worthy of an award.

The power dynamics between the three women at the helm the story change constantly as Madeline’s Madeline evolves into a more traditional depiction of a troubled mind. Decker’s daring conception of the energetic and fierce Madeline – a complex, lovable and unique character – reminds us of what experimental cinema can achieve. This is truly powerful stuff.

Madeline’s Madeline showed at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, when this piece was originally written. It is out in cinemas across the UK on Friday, May 10th. On Amazon Prime on Friday, July 12th.

Ring (Ringu)

Posted on by victorfraga

Adapted from Koji Suzuki’s 1991 novel, Hideo Tanaka’s is the second film version of the book. The first one was a Japanese television movie in 1995. A number of remakes and sequels have been made since, both in Japan and Hollywood. The franchise was so successful that two 3D movies were released earlier this decade. Hideo Tanaka’s film, however, remains the most powerful and successful one to date. Luckily for me, having never seen the original it was a revelation to watch the story unfold with fresh eyes in a superb 4k restoration.

This is truly a story from which nightmares are made, a situation that any viewer can imagine themselves in. Late at night with a group of friends you find yourself watching this video that apparently has a curse, maybe you were dared to watch it. You all laugh and think this is a bit of joke and then (as promised) your phone rings and someone tells you that you will die in seven days.

The simplicity of the idea works well, even if the film is viewed on a video tape. The concept does not lose its impact. It is easy to imagine that we are watching a film made just now and set two decades ago. The new version has a crisp bright quality to the image which gives the effect of having us believe we are watching something set in the past. The use of the schoolgirls at the beginning of the film lends itself to this film being viewed during a teenage sleepover. The plot is carefully constructed following Tomoko (Yuko Takeuchi) who has been given this cursed video by a group of friends who watched it the week before and through her niece’s death to our central character, journalist Reiko (Nanako Matsushima) who feels compelled to investigate this mystery.

Her journey towards the truth leads her to involve her ex-husband Ryuji (Hiroyuki Sanada) who proves to be a willing ally in the adventure. Their son Yoichi (Takashi Yamamura) becomes involved accidentally and has to be left with his Grandfather Katsumi (Koichi Asakawa) for safely. The tension and stakes build exponentially as the search for clues to the origin of the curse progress. The image of water is used throughout to build atmosphere tension and the inner mood of the protagonist. Water is a central device in many Japanese horror films, including Nakata’s 2003 Dark Water. The surging black ocean mirrors the grainy fuzz on the video before we see the blurred face of Sadako (Rie Ino’o). Rain pours down at key moments, and during Ryuji and Reiko’s investigation on Oshima Island they uncover the well that they have seen in the video. They must empty the water to find out if this is where Sadako’s remains are where they suspect them to be. The swampy water at the bottom of the well needs to be dredged by hand, Reiko and Ryūji are on a physical as well as psychological quest.

The complexity and intensity of the story is developed brilliantly by Nakata as he brings in the psychic element of the plot, not only has Sadoko brought the haunted video into being psionically, but Reiko and Ryūji are both psychic themselves and see the whereabouts of the well in a vision.

Just as Reiko thinks the curse has been broken and their efforts rewarded, the plot takes a deeper and satisfyingly shocking turn. Perhaps the only “jump out of your seat” moment, but it is worth waiting for. The final moments of the film pose a very human dilemma for the leading character and for the audience. We are invited to muse about what our choice would be faced with this dilemma. To perpetuate the curse and it’s ‘get out’ clause or to have it end by sacrificing someone else. Sacrifice will be involved whatever the choice and it is just this dilemma and psychological drama that makes this film still so watchful 20 years after its original release.

The 20th anniversary restoration of Ring is out in UK cinemas and also on Blu-ray on Friday, March 1st.

Two for Joy

Posted on by victorfraga

Writer and director Tom Beard has stated that he wanted to write about voiceless British white youth in his debut feature Two For Joy. These adolescents may be invisible in our wider society but they are very much seen in this powerful film of child neglect, sorrow and loss. The film is a portrayal of two families dysfunction during a critical moment when their lives become intertwined.

Aisha (Samantha Morton) is drowning in a sea of depression after the loss of her husband, cared for by her teenage daughter Vi (Emilia Jones) who is also parenting her younger brother Troy (Badger Skelton). This family’s story collides with Lillah’s (Billy Piper) escape from her abusive partner to the caravan park where Aisha and her children have also sought refuge.

The two mothers are played with force and a total lack of vanity by Morton and Piper. Lillah is able to present a veneer of holding things together with make-up and clothes and a pretence at social niceties. Aisha, struggles to get out of bed, wash and dress herself or even provide food for her children. Her hair hangs in lank rats tails, she leaves her phone unanswered and is mostly unaware of her son or daughter’s whereabouts from day to day. Both women leave their offspring to fend for themselves too often and it is this that leads to the darkest chapter of the story.

As wonderful as the two female leads are, this film belongs to the children and it is through their eyes that we see a world that is letting them down. Skelton gives a natural and unaffected performance as a prepubescent teen looking for some anchor in a world that has become chaotic. The association with local ruffian Kyle (Adam Young) is inevitable given Troy’s lack of supervision and the area in which he lives. His lonely demeanour leaves him open to the manipulation domination of Miranda (Bella Ramsey) when they encounter each other at the scruffy seaside caravan park.

Miranda is a wonderful creation from the pen of Beard brought to Iife in vivid technicolour in a focused, committed and terrifying performance by Bella Ramsey. Miranda has a feral and dominating personality with no awareness of risk to herself or others. Her force of will dominates the story from the moment we meet her. She will go to any lengths to keep herself and her new friend amused, leading them on adventures that seem like a desperate attempt to block out what caused the bruises we can see on her back. Lillah tells her brother Lias ( a warm and endearing Daniel May) that Miranda “is a kid she will forget” what has happened. As the viewer follows the children’s journey of petty theft, anti-social behaviour and rule breaking, we can tell that this is very far from true.

The filmmaker Tom Beard employs simple and evocative imagery in order to integrate the themes of the story naturally into the world in which they take place. The cheap illuminated necklace that Miranda wears is both an image of her shining inner light and energy and a beautiful lighting effect when the two friends are lost in the darkness. The concrete, weed infested landscape of Troy’s neighbourhood is a reflection of the chaos at home.

The home-movie quality of the shots depicting a dejected seaside holiday quality to this trip away that is definitely not a vacation. Fish and birds flit in and out of the picture at key points, the cage containing two damaged birds that we glimpse at the beginning, the delicate way that Troy strokes a fish before releasing it back into the river. The animals in this story receive better care than the humans around them. Lias (the caged birds protector) is the only adult who shows any nurturing towards the children, driving them to the fun fair, giving them treats, teaching them how to fish.

As the adults drink cheap wine and eat the fish that has been caught on the fishing trip, we see shots of fish heads and blood in a bucket. As time ticks away everyone assumes that the two younger children are with Vi (Emilia Jones); the scene is set for the dark final act of the film. Vi constantly struggles to make sense and order, encouraging her mother to dress and start the day, complaining that she is left responsible for everything, attempting to study for exams while chases reigns around her. She blocks out reality with headphones, studying French phrases and distancing herself from the cruel behaviour of Miranda.

When tragedy strikes it is in part, because Vi has been left in charge of her brother and his friend.The pressure on her as a young carer is an essential element of the narrative. There are currently an estimated 700,000 young carers (some as young as five years old) in the UK, and their stories are rarely seen on screen. This is an important film in every sense, we need to see more stories that reflect all communities within our society portrayed with sympathy as they are here, rather than paraded as gargoyles of an underclass for the amusement of the intellectual.

Two for Joy is available for digital download from Monday, February 25th. Click here for the iTunes predownload.

Divine Love (Divino Amor)

Posted on by victorfraga

It’s 2027 and Brazil has been turned into a quasi-religious state, despite officially still being a secular country. Joana (Dira Paes) works at the registrar’s dealing chiefly with divorce cases. Her profound faith, however, drives her to going the extra miles. Instead of doing her bureaucratic job, Joana recruits such couples to her Divine Love cult, where they are encouraged to reconcile through a number of rituals involving plenty of water, nudity and sex.

The Divine Love rituals look like some sort of night club, with pink and purple lights and a foggy feel. Swinger sessions are also arranged in order to achieve redemption. The only rule that must never be broken: all the semen must be deposited “inside Mother Earth” (the woman’s vagina). Joana is attempting to become pregnant, so sex with her husband Danilo (Julio Machado) is abundant both at Divine Love and at home. The aesthetics combined with the sexual interaction at times hive Divine Love a soft porn feel. A very bizarre soft porn.

The evangelisation of Brazil is conspicuous everywhere. Carnival has been replaced by the “Sublime Love” festivities. There is a “prayer drive-thru” with am empathetic pastor and a fog machine inside. Detectors at the entrance of most shops reveal your marital status and also whether you are pregnant. The information is displayed in bright lights for everyone to see. This some sort of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter adapted to 21st century Brazil. The harlot must be displayed for everyone to see!

Parts of the film are narrated by voice of a very creepy child. As in a horror movie. The identity of the child is revealed at the end of the film. In reality, Divine Love is constructed like an eerie sci-fi movie. The music score is a combination of electronic music and deep, dispersed strings, as in a film set in outer space. This is indeed an otherworldly Brazil. Yet it’s not too far away from reality. The year of 2027 is just around the corner. Damares Alves, the Human Rights and Family Minister of Brazil’s current fascist government, has recently and unequivocally indicated that only the evangelical Church can “save” the nation, not the state.

Divine Love is a commentary on the consequences of the rapid evangelisation of Brazil and their increasingly unorthodox conversion tactics. Its vaguely futuristic feel combined with religious rhetoric make it an interesting experiment, yet not a profound and meaningful piece of filmmaking. The director Gabriel Marcaro replaced the naked and raw realism of Neon Bull (2015) with the twisted and weird futurism of Divine Love. Both films are very provocative, yet the former is far more effective.

Divine Love showed in the 69th Berlin International Film Festival, when this piece was originally written. It premiered a few weeks earlier in Sundance. It premieres in October in the UK as part of the BFI London Film Festival.

So Long My Son

Posted on by victor@dmovies.org

It’s not uncommon for a film festival to leave its crowning jewel for near the end of the festival, and Berlinale 2019 may just have found theirs in the form of So Long, My Son, the epic (in terms of both content and duration; the film has 180 minutes) family saga tearjerker from Chinese Wang Xiaoshuai. Across four decades of turbulent Chinese society, Wang studies a married couple, using the death of their son as a focal point around which to subtly explore the single-child policy and the impact of the Cultural Revolution.

The unconventional structure zips back and forth through different time frames, gradually moving along a central timeline. The story occurs in episodes which each have the feel of their own short story, but which fill in the details of the other things we have seen. Wang leans heavily on dramatic irony, raising the tension as we wait for truths to emerge. One wonders if he couldn’t have found a way to cut 15 minutes or so from the run time, so languid are the first two hours. It isn’t until the final 50 minutes that So Long My Son really pays off every beat he’s set up. Like a Koreeda film, revelation is piled upon revelation, disarming you with one bombshell and then slapping you with another. Wang even uses the flashbacks to abet this by undercutting the outcome of one scene with the reality of the past or present.

The seriousness and the attention to naturalistic detail allows for slight detours into almost hallucinogenic images of memory. After the central couple go looking for their missing adopted son in a thunderstorm, they return to their flooded house and the family photograph floats towards them as though Baby Moses in the basket. When that boy is a little older we meet his punk, motorbike riding friends, who hang around the family house and appear like a mad apparition before the trash heap landscape. It’s a nod by Wang to the drifter youths he depicted in his earlier films.

Sometimes Wang takes the distance of a public spectacle. He rhymes shots by framing corridors in a particular way to remind you of a particular day in the lives of the characters, and repeatedly uses the Scottish poem Auld Lang Syne to haunting effect. Occasionally he’ll follow a peripheral character from this incredible ensemble cast and reveal their hidden depths. Then it ends with a note of blissfully ignorant hope, which recalls Make Way For Tomorrow (Leo McCarey, 1937) in its graceful affection. This is challenging in its length and bleakness, and probably won’t find much of a cinema life in the UK, but it should, because So Long My Son is one of the most skilful and rewarding films of the competition, and a guaranteed tearjerker.

So Long My Son showed at the Berlinale in February, when this piece was originally written. It won both the Best Actors and Best Actress prizes. In cinemas Friday, December 6th. On VoD in April. On Mubi in July/August