Tag: comedy

Kind Hearts and Coronets

Posted on by victorfraga

Elegantly plotted, directed and acted, and wholly a product of its time, Kind Hearts and Coronets remains as current as when it was originally released, in the first half of the 20th century. It savagely questions why some people have it all by virtue of their birth while others endlessly struggle to make ends meet.

One of the biggest lies that members of the nobility tells itself is that their titles are unquestionable. As eight seasons of Game of Thrones has taught us, nobody who is born a Duke or Prince really garnered that title as a result of fine character, but rather as a result of their ancestors abolishing their challengers. Kind Hearts and Coronets examines this concept with brilliant rigour, charting Louis D’Ascoyne Mazzini’s (Dennis Price) dastardly rise to become the 10th Duke of Chalfont by eliminating the eight members of his family standing in his way.

With the “comic” serial killer movie back in the form of The House That Jack Built (Lars von Trier, 2018), The Golden Glove (Fatih Akin, 2019) and Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile (Joe Berlinger, 2019), Kind Hearts and Coronets remains unimpeachable for its refinement of style as well as the utter savagery constantly lurking behind the surface. Mr Mazzini, robbed of any entitlements due to his mother marrying an Italian opera singer, is a gentle murderer. Ever-soft spoken, his murders are meticulously planned and executed, Price only ever revealing his complete bloodlust through the flickering of his eyes.

In one of the most famous examples of one character playing several roles, the eight people standing between him and the Dukedom are all played by Alec Guinness. There is more than simple comedy in this stunt casting. Guinness skilfully sinks into each role, giving them all distinct characteristics while cleverly stressing how each person has done nearly nothing to deserve their honours and titles.

Mazzini’s victims are a private banker, the private banker’s philandering son (occupation unknown), an Anglican priest, an Admiral, an army general, an amateur photographer, the Duke himself, and in one case of cross-dressing, a suffragette. With the exception of the reverend, these are all people who engage in activities that, at the time, could only be bestowed upon people with vast amounts of wealth. Together they represent the diverse spectrum of a “noble” British life. Mazzini realises very early on, in a precisely edited montage, that no matter how hard he works in a retail store, his salary could never produce a tenth of what these people earn simply by inheritance alone.

It is a movie that revels in ironies, piling them on top of one another with remarkable ease. The dialogue is rich in contradictions: In one of the most famous lines in the film, we learn that Mazzini — approaching his sixth murder — prefers not to go shooting due to his principled stance against “bloodsports”. The second irony is his manner of imprisonment. Only after a quarrel with his sweetheart and mistress Sibella (Joan Greenwood) — who of course didn’t want to marry him when he was married, but becomes uncommonly interested in him when he gets closer to the Dukedom — is he finally (but wrongfully) accused of murder. This is tied together by the central irony, that Mazzini, despite despising those who have wronged his mother and refused her burial in the Chalfont estate, aspires to be a Duke himself, thus becoming the kind of person that he truly hates. After all, there is no suggestion that once he becomes a Duke that he will turn into a kindly philanthropist.

It is the prime example of the Ealing Comedy. Produced at the Ealing Studios west of London between 1947-57, they were an exceptionally creative period for British Comic Cinema. The films stay relevant in British culture for the way they question common assumptions upon which society has been built. Take Passport to Pimlico (Henry Cornelius, 1949) which imagines the borough of London suddenly becoming a breakaway state, thus challenging the basis of British law itself. Kind Hearts and Coronets is no exception. Supremely funny while maintaining a great calmness of tone, it exposes the rotten heart of entitlement with the utmost grace.

Nothing much has changed either. At first I was intrigued to learn from rewatching the film that peers were allowed to be tried in the House of Lords, a practice that was discontinued in the mid-twentieth century. It truly felt like something from a previous time. Then I remembered that the House of Lords, the upper chamber of British parliament, is still populated with unelected members from both the Church and gentry, and thought how much further we have to go before Britain can be considered a truly equal country.

The 70th anniversary edition of Kind Hearts and Coronets is out in cinemas across the UK from Friday, June 7th.

Woman at War (Kona Fer í Tríð)

Posted on by victorfraga

On the surface, Halla (Halldóra Geirharõsdóttir) is your average Western middle-aged woman. She has a job in the local choir. She has a smile permanently attached to her face and a shining personality, which makes her very popular amongst her students. She dreams of becoming a mother, and is on the waiting list for a Ukrainian adoption agency. But she harbours a secret. A dark secret. Or a beautiful secret. Depending on views on vigilantism and extreme eco-activism.

Halla is waging a one-woman war against the local aluminium factory because she believes that it represents an environmental threat. The facilities could end up in the hands of greedy Chinese investors presumably with no regard for the health of our planet. Halla takes the matter into her own hands, literally. She uses her bow and arrow in order to carry out acts of industrial sabotage. At first, she knocks down cables, thereby cutting off the electricity supply of the factory. Despite the enormous risks associated, Halla becomes more audacious. Her technique eventually incorporates a chainsaw and even explosives.

The repercussions of her actions are double-edged, the duality of vigilantism being laid bare. Some people support her, and some even willing to lend a helping hand. The media, however, describe the “Woman of the Mountain” as a violent terrorist. They blame her for the failing negotiations with the Chinese, and therefore accuse her of making the “average working man” poorer. It’s ironic that the Icelandic media and politicians opt to brand her a terrorist. This is a country very familiar with the misuse of anti-terrorism laws. One would expect these people to be a little more cautious when using the t-word.

The government sends the police to hunt down the mysterious activist. Men and infrared drones are out. Halla becomes increasingly sophisticated in her technique. She shields herself under an anti-infrared blanket, and even uses a dead sheep as a disguise. Parallel to all of this, she is finally given the opportunity to become a mother. There’s a young girl called Nika waiting to be picked up in the Ukraine. But will Halla manage to juggle her extreme eco-activism with becoming a mother in her later forties?

Halla has a twin sister called Ása (also played by Halldóra Geirharõsdóttir, who looks a lot like a younger Charlotte Rampling). Her sister finds redemption in a very different way. She meditates. Two very different types of revolution. Ása promotes an internal revolution (through reflection and introspection). Halla promotes an external revolution (through political actions). Woman at War finds a very peculiar way of reconciling these two female fighters, but I can’t tell you what it is without spoiling the filmending.

The music score is a remarkable feature. It’s an integral part of the film. Literally. The musicians blend into the sequence despite being topically disconnected to the narrative. They have a cigarette, and even check their phones. They appear in the most unlikely locations, such as a rooftop and the middle of the remote grasslands. There are two trios. One of them is composed of a trombonist, a pianist and a drummer, all male. The other is composed of three singing females, presumably of Ukrainian origin. The outcome is charming and quaint.

The photography of Woman at War is very satisfactory. The lunar plains, the rocky rifts, the hot water streams and the funky Hallgrimskirkja church of Reykjavik are all featured prominently throughout the movie.

But there are a few loose ends, too. This is a very hybrid international co-production. Iceland and the Ukraine have very little in common. This shouldn’t be a problem per se. But the ending in the Ukraine – while quite and engrossing – feels quite disconnected from the rest of the film. Maybe the director is trying to make a connection between Mother Earth and (human) motherhood. It doesn’t work completely. In my opinion, Woman at War would have been far more effective had it discarded the topic of motherhood and focused solely on the topic of extreme eco-activism.

Woman at War is out in cinemas on Friday, May 3rd. On Mubi in June (2020).

Bathtubs over Broadway

Posted on by victorfraga

QUICK SNAP: LIVE FROM ROTTERDAM

In this delightful comedy documentary, ex–Late Show With David Letterman editor and first-time feature director Dava Whisenant introduces us to the show’s longest serving writer, Steve Young, and principally, his obsession: the industrial musical. These were full-blown Broadway-style productions for companies like Ford and Xerox, delivered as one-off performances in conference rooms. To give you an idea, one of Steve’s favourite songs is My Bathroom, from the musical The Bathrooms Are Coming. It begins with the lyrics “My Bathroom, my bathroom is a very private place”. They are mad.

David Letterman, one of the great ironists of all time, poked at the form of the Talk Show with such minute dexterity that, during its glory days, it became impossible to tell what was real, fake, smart, dumb. But Bathtubs Over Broadway is about when irony becomes sincerity, which will be a resonant narrative for cynics in a millennial ‘post-post-post-irony’ world. Steve starts out hunting these musicals down because he finds them so funny (he discovers The Bathrooms Are Coming while looking for material for a Late Show segment) but as he delves deeper into this hidden world, his affection and appreciation for the form becomes something else.

The industrial musical echoes through pop culture, filling in the blanks of Mr Show and bands like Ariel Pink. Punk legend Don Bolles and Jello Biafra also appear, superfans, two folks who Steve almost certainly never expected to be friends with. There are great scenes of them geeking out together over the deepest cuts about radiators and management techniques. It genuinely reveals something new. Something that’s more than a sexy dog chow song. It’s an entire piece of American history.

The filmmaking is not exactly what we would call dirty. But in revealing this bizarre subsection of American culture, Whisenant has made a film that lives up to the ideals of the dirt. We touch lightly on the death of American industry, with clips of General Motors in Flint, Michigan as a marker for the change, which caused the decline of the industrial musical (lower budgets, more corporate anonymity). That drama makes this a real snapshot of an American moment, a time which some wish to return to, and also one that doesn’t really exist. That’s glossed into a song and dance routine about a toilet brush.

Bathtubs in Broadway manages to capture a huge time of change in Steve’s life, with the end of Letterman, his building of friendships with figures from the industrial musical scene, and the release of his book. But there’s also an off-the-cuff reference to a separation, to a wife that we’ve heard about but who doesn’t appear. The movie is perhaps too respectful of Steve to go prying into this stuff, but at the same time, that perhaps holds it back from properly investigating his psychology. This is, after all, an increasingly life consuming hobby-cum-obsession, that Whisenant never investigates the reasons for. Which results in a comic figure at the film’s centre who is difficult to really know. It’s a difficult negotiation.

Bathtubs Over Broadway exists in order to shine a light on the industrial musical and maybe delving further into Steve’s head would have shifted that focus, but when he’s such a central figure who is clearly searching to fill some void, you are left wondering.

The film falls prey, as have a lot of recent documentaries, of over-egging the ending, delivering a sequence that seems to wrap up all the ideas, one last check in on the interviewees making their grand statements… and then it keeps going. You could hear the audience, half reaching for their coats, slumping back down. But then Whisenant delivers her most ambitious piece of filmmaking, a full musical finale that features most of our interviewees dancing through the streets, Steve making at least two costume changes. Their singing is questionable, the lyrics corny, but its put together with such love that it achieves what musical numbers are supposed to: capturing a feeling that mere words can’t. Bathtubs Over Broadway is one of the funniest documentaries in years, and I hope it lets many more into the world of My Bathroom.

Bathtubs Over Broadway is showing at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, which is taking place right now.

One Wild Moment (Un Moment d’Égarement)

Posted on by victorfraga

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:

Father-Son Bootcamp (Père Fils Thérapie)

Posted on by victorfraga

Being a good father to a son is not an easy task. And neither is being a good son to a father. The bizarre and grotesque societal connotations of masculinity will often stand on the way of what should be a beautiful and tender relationship. As a result, fatherly love is often murky, sons are traumatised and whole notion of affection is mired in mud. Thankfully someone in France invented a father-son bootcamp where the two generations can reconnect through group therapy and bizarre activities. Well, actually the outcome isn’t as rosy as many would hope!

The plot of Father-Son Bootcamp is as twisted as the relationships it portrays. Jacques (Richard Berry) and his son Marc (Waly Dia) are police investigators seeking a a gangster called Claude Bracci. Jacques regrets that Marc – who happens to be black thanks to his mother’s genes – does not resemble him, and the two are constantly bickering. They join the bootcamp not because they are seeking to bury the hatchet, but instead because they want to get close to Bracci’s lawyer Charles (Jacques Gamblin), and obtain more information about the criminal. On the other hand, Charles is nin the therapy group for very genuine reasons: he wants communicate with his estranged son Fabrice (Baptiste Lorbel). He’s extremely violent and passionately hates his father. Top it all up with a very insecure female shrink, who’s in charge of the entire therapeutic experiment/adventure.

Participants are forbidden from using their mobile phones, as they seek to forge a very different “connection” with those who they’re supposed to love. Father-Son Therapy finds humour in very strange situations. The father-son mud-wrestling will elicit some awkward laughter. Likewise the image of a father trying to bond with his grown-up son through breastfeeding. And a joke about the amount of sushi consumed being the ultimate gaydar (the more fish and rice you eat, the gayer you are). But Father-Son Therapy is not set out to be a comedy. Instead, it’s a film intended to challenge our shallow and orthodox notions of virility. It’s intended to make us feel uncomfortable about our notions of masculinity. And it does it extremely well.

Halfway through the therapy, it becomes clear that very little is being achieved. Instead of love and tenderness, the males dsiplay mostly callousness and competitiveness. Some decide to stay not because they want to achieve reconciliation but because they cause further inflammation, and to humiliate their own “bloodsake”. At one point, the participants are asked to pick an object to represent their father/son. Fabrice chooses a turd to symbolise Charles. He explains that the little M&M-looking bits in the faeces represent the drugs that Charles takes. Not quite a beautiful moment of compromise and harmony.

Ultimately, Father-Son Bootcamp is anything but therapy for fathers and sons. It’s a dirty and caustic reminder of the our restrictive masculinity requirements, which often prevents males from communications with each other and displaying affection. Surprisingly, some sort of redemption is achieved in the end of the film, if in a very dark and twisted way. A happy ending, in very dirty European fashion.

Father-Son Bootcamp is out on all major VoD platforms on Monday, July 9th, as part of Walk This Way. Click here in order to view it in the UK, or here for information about how to view it in other countries.

Swimming with Men

Posted on by victorfraga

A small group of British men of all colours, shapes and girths get together in a field not often associated with males. They have to overcome their own prejudices, to challenge orthodox notions of masculinity as well as to face objections from their family and friends. What they are doing raises a lot of eyebrows. They have to dance, rotate, swivel, do a little acrobatics and look entertaining for a large cheering audience. And they are wearing skimpy clothes. And the action culminates with a Tom Jones song. Sounds familiar? No, this is not Peter Cattaneo’s The Full Monty (1997). This is Oliver Parker’s Swimming with Men. Basically, the difference between the two is that the gear doesn’t come off at the end. And the Tom Jones song is It’s a Man’s World instead of You Can Leave Your Hat On.

Eric Scott (Rob Brydon) is having a mid-life crisis. He can no longer connect with his wife. He’s convinced that she’s cheating on him, and he feels intimidated that she has an elected job at the local council. His job as an accountant is banal and mundane. Swimming becoming his only venting outlet. He becomes part of an all-male, middle-aged, amateur synchronised swimming team, a sport normally associated with women. What initially looks like an uncompromising hobby suddenly becomes the central pillar of Eric’s life, a predicament not dissimilar to the other seven men’s. Then the unthinkable happens: the group is invited to take part in the unofficial World Championship of Male Synchronised Swimming. But could they win the tournament, thereby overcoming their personal fears and barriers and also honouring Britain with the unusual and novel prize?

Swimming With Men is a feel-good tale about ageing and finding redemption in sports. It has all the ingredients of a conventional romcom, such the sexually insecure protagonist seeking to rekindle some sort of affection, and finding an very awkward solution to the problem. There’s also a like bit of British patriotism, but thankfully not enough to poison anyone. The director was careful to avoid an all-English film by creating a Welsh character. The choice of Welsh singer Tom Jones to top the film soundtrack is no coincidence. Most significantly, this is a film that challenges ageism and body fascism. The eight males learn not to be embarrassed of their real bodies in all of their dirtylicious imperfections. There’s nothing ugly about “wilting like a flower”. It can be done gracefully and with confidence.

I am surprised that Swimming With Men only received a 12 certificate. I think that this is a film perfectly suitable for children. I don’t remember seeing drugs and discriminatory language. Perhaps it’s the bit about imitable behaviour! You probably wouldn’t want your children engaging in dangerous manly acrobatics, would you? I would hazard a guess the Oliver Parker was disappointed.

Swimming with Men is out in cinemas across the UK on Friday, July 5th. It’s out on VoD on Monday, November 5th

Eaten by Lions

Posted on by victorfraga

It’s hard to summarise this film as anything but a British Wes Anderson. Widened shots of piers and roads, acerbic dialogue, sardonic dealings of death (particularly when Pete throws his Gran’s ashes to avoid arrest over a beach bridge), a tasteful use of The Velvet Underground and luminous uses of yellow trousers matching the Parisien dark coats of the two main characters. So far, so Anderson, right?

But the film has such a nice level of frisson and joie de vivre, it works on its own terms as a piece. It’s a delightfully postmodern look at the classic tale of boy searching for his father. The film has many visual highlights, but it is the engagement party (which includes a reading from Omar’s mothers’ diary) that stands as the most memorable. During a mass confusion in, Pete and Omar unwittingly accuse a man of sleeping with their mother – the wrong man, even though incidentally he did cheat on his wife!

The film delves into the topics of infidelity and paternal abandonment with the thickest tongue-in-cheek, darkly flippant and ironic tone. “She had those eyes, almost as if something was wrong with her” Irfan (Asim Chaudry) tells Omar (Antonio Aakeel) about meeting Omar’s mother. Aakeel and Chaudry are on fine form, but Jack Carroll, playing the disabled Pete, is the real scene-stealer. Simply watching him trying to act anything but impish in a seduction scene (across from the sultry Natalie Davies) shows a comedic talent that stands beside the decided discomfiture of Peter Sellers and Stan Laurel.

Kevin Eldon, Johnny Vegas and Hayley Tammaddon punch up the supporting cast with strong supporting performances, with the right hint of subtle xenophobia. Despite his background, Omar’s foster mother suggests that he belong with “his own” (pointing to his Indian father), a particularly potent and shocking moment and one that supports an exclusivist England that voted for Brexit and one that touches on an all too potent nerve.

But it’s the way the film is shot and edited that proves the film’s selling point. Those long crane shots over a dawning beach, a blue silhouette of aquatic location and a kaleidoscope of flaming fireworks complete a cyclical montage of psychedelic pictures. Bar the thick Southern English accents, this film brims with the frisson of Nouvelle Vague. And it’s one Wes Anderson would struggle to beat!

Eaten by Lions showed at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in 2018, when this piece was originally written. It’s out in cinemas across the country on Friday, March 29th. On VoD on Monday, July 22nd, and then on VoD on Monday, July 29th.

Three horrific short movies

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

The first short film of this horror triptych by British filmmaker Neville Pierce is the psychological terror Lock In (2016, pictured above). It boasts a clever little script concerning a gangster Jimmy (Nicholas Pinnock) visiting a pub just after closing time ostensibly to ask Richard the landlord (Tim McInnerny) for protection money. Richard, meanwhile, is soon to be a granddad: his pregnant daughter Lucy (Sing Street’s Lucy Boynton) is working behind the bar and hits Jimmy over the head with a bottle, knocking him out. Unbeknownst to Lucy, Richard and James have a history as former school teacher and difficult pupil.

Aside from some in car shots and a few exterior pub moments, the whole thing takes place inside the pub. The script packs in a lot in its 10 minutes and is a real gift for a director. Pierce responds with some fantastic casting: McInnerny, a prolific actor who deserves much wider recognition, plays a character who seems to change as revelations alter our perception of him. The catalytic Pinnock lends the whole thing an edge while Boynton is terrific as the daughter confronted with unpleasant home truths (or are they lies?) about her father. Pierce also has a striking feel for pace: the whole thing never lets up and moves along very nicely.

The second short Bricks (2015) adapts Edgar Allan Poe’s short story The Cask Of Amontillado in which one nobleman lures another to his wine cellar to exact a cruel revenge. The Russell/Pierce adaptation shifts the tale to the present day and the two characters to stockbroker William (Blake Ritson), the owner of the wine cellar, and builder Clive (Jason Flemyng), his unsuspecting victim. Which means that the script has the virtue of consisting of just two characters on one set, which makes it reasonably easy to produce as a film. But that virtue could so easily be the film’s downfall: hard to imagine anything potentially more boring than two people in a room.

Fortunately for us viewers, as the two characters from their very different worlds talk, Russell avoids that pitfall and delivers a taut sparring, a game of cat and mouse. Pierce again demonstrates astute casting skills and elicits from both actors performances among the most memorable of their considerable careers. Flemyng claims this film is one of the few times a director has actually given him direction – and you can feel it as you watch. The short has also been championed by no less a director than David Fincher (who directed Flemyng in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, 2008).

For this writer, however, the best of the three films here is the black and white photographed Ghosted (2016). Again, Russell’s script posits a deceptively simple idea. A widow in search of love and romance visits a restaurant on a series of five dates (the fifth is a man who happens to be at the next table when date number four goes wrong) accompanied by the ghost of her late husband whom she alone can see. It’s an excuse to explore male foibles – narcissism, personal baggage, obsession with tech, earnest intellectualism.

The five dates are beautifully cast, among them Jason Flemyng as a man unable to forget the woman who left him, a very different but arguably equally impressive performance to the one he gave in Bricks. Christien Anholt projects just the right amount of wry observation and world weariness as the dead husband, but the actor who really brings the tale to life is leading lady and comedienne Alice Lowe (Prevenge/2016, Sightseers/2012) who is as good here as she’s ever been (which is saying something). Pierce pulls his various elements together brilliantly: comedy is a notoriously difficult genre to do well, and this one is very funny indeed.

So, an intriguing horror story adaptation, a tense gangster genre outing underpinned by relationships and an hilarious romantic comedy with supernatural overtones. Quite an impressive range of material and all three well executed which makes me, for one, want to see more by this writer-director team. I have no idea what Russell and Pierce will do next (the latter has already made another short with a different writer, unseen at the time of writing) but if they can come up between them with a feature length piece as good as these shorts, we want to see them make it. Meanwhile, the three shorts just released are something of dirty treat.

The Three Neville Pierce Shorts are available to view on Vimeo from Monday, February 5th. Find them here.

The films will also screen on YouTube channel Tall Tales, the new online home for indie films. Lock In will play on Tall Tales from February 6th, Ghosted from February 13th and Bricks later in 2018.

Your Name (Kimi no Na wa)

Posted on by mjbstaging

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Edward and Caroline (Édouard et Caroline)

Posted on by victorfraga

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

8:30

Posted on by victorfraga

If you’ve hit a certain age, you may remember Edward Norton’s character in Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999) justifying a life of insomnia: “Everything is a copy of a copy of a copy”. Strictly speaking, Laura Nasmyth’s 8:30 isn’t about insomnia, but it does seem to come from that same state of mind. It’s as if the sleep disorder materialised right in front your very eyes.

This Austrian film follows the misadventures of a young sales agent (Florian Nolden) that travels to some unnamed suburban place and becomes trapped, in a surreal fashion, since the train he takes keeps bringing him back to the same godforsaken station. Madness ensues.

The funny thing (of which there are plenty) is that the sense of being trapped is established from the very beginning, way before we realise the protagonist’s fate. The framing that leaves the characters uncomfortable amidst the locations’ stern architecture belies their inadequacy, having to walk in these spaces not made for them, which looks like a cue straight from Roy Andersson’s playbook and also brings to mind Robin Collyer’s photographic work of street signs with no text.

We see the sales agent go on with his daily duties with three colleagues, with whom he never talks directly, only through wireless phones. They go about not actually managing to sell anything, being miserable in the most matter-of-fact fashion and even do an impromptu tribute to Reservoir Dogs (Quentin Tarantino, 1992). This is the collapse of 21st century youth.

Once we enter the Lynchian part of film, however, other themes surface: like the 70-year-old American filmmaker, the director blurs the line between real and unreal by having their main narrative interspersed with commercials, talking heads interviews and dream sequences, that start to borrow from each other so much that they eventually blend into one being.

For the whole of its running time, the film does not provide much dialogue or even much of a plot, relying on its visuals, that have the look and feel of an art installation, to get its message across. 8:30 is an Austrian production, directed by a Brit, with bits in English, German, Spanish and Italian. In this world of extreme connectivity and a myriad of languages, the helmer proposes that the lack of communication is not due to lack of tools, but a lack of will and focus. In the film, all around the protagonist’s story, content is always been consumed but conversations rarely take place.

Despite its social critique and relatively short duration of just 70 minutes long, the movie does overstays its welcome during its final third. Yet it does manage to create some inspiring surreal moments, specially the one that takes place on a swimming pool (no spoilers there, it’s in the poster). Overall, it seems more suited to museums than to theaters, but that’s hardly a bad quality.

8:30 will show in London as part of the East End Film Festival, which will take place throughout June. It’s a part of the Discovery section.