Tag: music

Music (Musik)

Posted on by victorfraga

This is a classic piece of slow cinema. The sequences are long, and the camera hardly moves. The clouds slowly move and blur the mountain view. Young people bathe in the Mediterranean scarcely saying a word to one another. A car accident takes place, but it takes minutes before the first passenger budges. The action takes place in costal Greece, in a film directed by Angela Schanelec. The 61-year-old Berlin School filmmaker has been long recognised for her lengthy, static shots, and loose narratives.

There is some sort of plot in Music, but I would never be able to make it out without reading the synopsis. Jon is abandoned inside an empty stone cabin on the craggy coast of the Southern European nation. The local authorities rescue him, and he is promptly adopted by a new family. Now in his 20s, Jon (Aliocha Schneider) becomes involved in a tragic death, and ends up in prison. He becomes infatuated with a beautiful warden of around the same age, a woman called Iro (Agathe Bonitzer). Upon release, Jon becomes a skilled singer. He delivers several arias and also a couple of emo rock songs, often aided by his beloved Iro. His delivery skills are impressive. Schneider is a real-life singer, which probably influenced the casting choice. And the fact that he is Canadian might explain why he does little more than sing (he hardly utters a word in Greek, a language the actor presumably doesn’t speak).

Jon eventually begins to lose his sight, and that’s just one of string of tragedies continue to befall our protagonist as he attempts to carry on with his life. A story briefly moves to Germany, where yet another death takes place, this time at Potsdamer Platz, Berlin’s most important square. That’s literally 200 metres from the the film just premiered. A rumination on the meaning of life and death? or perhaps little bit of festival-baiting?

It isn’t just Jon who is laconic. Barely anyone ever says anything throughout the entire film. The lines are few and far between, and they are mostly hackneyed and stilted. The outcome is that the Music feels cold and distant. A pretentious piece of art cinema. A movie that lacks emotional depth and stamina. Viewers are invited to sit back, disengage and snooze away.

Music was loosely inspired by Oedipus myth, also something I would never know without reading the publicity notes. Not that I’m not familiar with Greek mythology. This is a film so shapeless and loose that it’s almost impossible to make sense of it. Schanelec explains: “There are questions in my life, and thus also in my films, to which I have no answers. They relate to family and family relationships as well as to fate, or mere chance, that determines us and to which we must bow”. I frankly couldn’t even find the questions, let alone seek the answers.

Music premiered in the Official Competition of the 73rd Berlin International Film Festival, when this piece was originally written. The UK premiere takes place in October at the BFI London Film Festival.

Rebelión

Posted on by Paul Risker

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It has often occurred to me that we’re guilty of romanticising the creative process – enchanted by what is created, that we don’t appreciate the arduous effort that goes into the act. The process is intimately involved with agony, self-doubt, and many creatives are weighed down by imposter syndrome, or so I’ve been led to believe in conversation with filmmakers.

Columbian director José Luis Rugeles and his co-writers Chucky García, Martín Mauregui, craft a captivating biopic about the celebrated Columbian singer and songwriter, Joe Arroyo, played by Jhon Narváez. Known for mixing various styles of Latin American, Caribbean and African music, in the 1970s, he was at the forefront of the “salsa explosion.”

Borrowing the title of their film from one of Arroyo’s most famous songs, Rebelión, the filmmakers enter the realm of fiction to explore the life of this prolific artist. An opening disclaimer reads: “The events, characters and facts shown in this film are fictitious or based on facts of public knowledge. The names of those involved, the stories, details and results of the cases are the work of fiction.”

Here we have one of those films that presents a conundrum for the film critic. Art needs to be discussed to thrive and films are made for a response. However, there’s the occasional film we should discover for ourselves. Here’s an example of one we should approach with the mind as a blank canvas – like you’d enter and be caught up in a dream.

It’s no coincidence that I wound up making the comparison to a dream, when Rebelión’s artistry is so pleasing to the senses. There are moments when the cinematography and the story splice through time and space, effortlessly creating a non-linear exploration of the artist. As if the past and present are parallel, not linear, the film functions on a dream logic, as if this story of a life unfolding is from the point-of-view of a dreamer.

This is not a glamorous portrayal of an artist – instead, Arroyo’s world has the feel of a hellish creative space. We witness a gauntlet of emotions: arrogance and selfishness, love and affection, passion and enthusiasm. We also witness what Freud termed the “death drive”, which makes me wonder whether, as much as creativity and sexuality are linked, is creativity prone to flirting with self-destruction?

Amidst the fever of creation, the film is littered with scenes of agony, anxiety and despair, and in an early scene, it’s mentioned that Arroyo’s pain was the inspiration for some of his music. Rugeles and his collaborators offer us a portrait of the joy and sorrow of creative expression, the extreme highs and lows. Beneath the bravado, there are moments when he or she succumbs to humility, whether consciously or not, which often presents as self-pity or a disposition of being indifferent.

What captivates about Rebelión, is, compared to other biopics, it has an insular energy. We find ourselves isolated within certain spaces and time periods. Instead of following them around, seeing how events in their personal and professional lives became their life story, we spend time with the characters. We’re expected to not just look and listen, but see and hear. The film is a series of impressions, instead of an informative deep dive. Yet through this aesthetic and narrative approach, combined with the fictionalisation, it feels that we get close to the truth of who the man behind the artist was.

Rebelión has just premiered in the Rebels With a Cause Competition of the 26th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.

Plastic Symphony (Plastiksümfoonia)

Posted on by Paul Risker

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Trained documentarist Juraj Lehotský, continues to explore his interest in fiction with the striking emotive and meditative drama, Plastic Symphony (Plastiksümfoonia).

The director takes his audience on a journey, one that cannot be appreciated until the final frames. There are moments where the film feels shallow, hampered by the concept of the plot and a filmmaker unwilling to make bolder choices. By its end, however, we’re left with a film that expresses the virtue of simplicity, that doesn’t lack an emotional punch.

The story centres on Matúš Vrba (Bartosz Bielenia), a talented cellist who mysteriously disappeared five years earlier, leaving behind a promising career in music. He unsuccessfully auditions for the first cello in the Slovak Chamber Orchestra, where he’s quizzed about why he left his studies with the Berlin Philharmonic. A man of few words, he succinctly tells them it was because his mother was dying. When he’s asked where he currently plays, he says, “Vienna.” The truth has a touch of quirky romanticism – accompanied by his stepbrother Dávid (Vojtech Zdrazil), he plays Beethoven on the streets of Vienna under a plastic sheet when it’s raining.

By chance, he meets former schoolmate Albert (Sabin Takbrea), a successful violinist and music programmer. It’s a meeting that opens up the world of lucrative performances in high society. Matúš’s life is transformed, but as the fame of Albert’s quartet grows, Matús finds himself unsettled about the choices he has made. Also, the necessity to compromise on performing his own compositions, in favour of playing popular pieces for the pleasure of the elite, quietly suffocates him

I’m forced to conceive the impression that Lehotský is in love with the face of his lead actor. The way he frames Matúš, feels as if we’re being asked, or urged to read his unspoken thoughts – to look and to understand, instead of having the character explain. Yet it’s not only his silence that is captivating, but a hypnotic vibe that he carries throughout the film. There’s an almost ethereal presence, where the silent facial expressions and body language, the movement and the way he handles the cello, or composes, has its own melody and rhythm.

Plastic Symphony aspires in part to forge a communion with musical (non-lyrical) expression by creating a space for the audience to be in the presence of the character – not to listen to him, but sense his aura and read his unspoken thoughts.

One of the film’s intriguing points is its minimalist nature. Before we near the half way point, we learn little about the siblings, other than that Matús left his studies when their mother was dying, and we suppose the two have taken care of one another. Lehotský understands the necessity of patience, and when we finally learn the bare details of their shared history, it’s significantly more impactful.

Structured as a film of two halves, it’s a play on a rags-to-riches tale, albeit it’s not as dramatic in the juxtaposition. We think of creativity as being full of soul and character, which is in abundance in the first half. As Matús enters high society and he finds himself in the orbit of Albert’s musical celebrity, this begins to fade. We also find ourselves lamenting how the struggle, and the film was formerly more interesting.

As our journey with Matúš reaches its conclusion, Lehotský’s modest vision can and rightfully should be appreciated. He’s a filmmaker in command of his craft, supported by Bielenia who learnt to play the cello for the role. If there’s a theme or idea that comes into bloom, it’s how transformative our encounters can be, but also our willingness to be independently minded, and pursue what will offer meaning and purpose. Plastic Symphony is about how some people belong, while others create a place to belong. It’s a simple and powerful idea worth meditating on.

Plastic Symphony has just premiered in the Official Competition of the 26th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.

Tallinn 2022 Kids Animation Programme – part 3

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

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Self-contained fable Birth Of The Oases (Marion Jamault, France, 9 mins) is a near-perfect portrayal of a symbiotic relationship. The cold-blooded hilltop snake struggles to keep warm while the two-humped camel is constantly exhausted by the desert’s heat. They come to a mutually helpful agreement whereby the cold snake takes up residence on the camel’s humps. This warms up the snake and cools down the camel. After the camel dies from old age, the snake moves around the sand dunes – here designed to look like a never ending series of camels humps – to create first water and later full blown oases which, according to the armadillo revealed as the narrator at the very end, to this very day.

In the black and white classroom of the black and white world of The Boy And The Elephant (Sonia Gerbeaud, France, 7 mins), black and white kids taunt someone who is different – a boy with an elephant head who is coloured blue. One kid, though, takes an interest – a boy who is coloured red, and the two embark on a playground friendship which could be read as a gay relationship, a state threatened by the red boy’s need to conform and revert to fit in with the black and whites. Eventually, a black and white girl takes pity on the elephant head, accepts him and he is subsumed into the group.

Marea (Guilia Martinelli, Switzerland, 5 mins) is another self-contained fable about a family living on an island within an hermetically sealed dome.

Stop-frame marvel Laika & Nemo (Jan Gaderman/Sebastian Gadow, Germany, 15 mins), arguably my favourite film in the programme, again concerns an outsider – a boy who lives in a lighthouse who is regularly tormented by fellow pupils and local fishermen at the harbour for wearing deep sea diving gear. When an astronaut crashes his spaceship near the lighthouse, the two helmet-wearers bond which puts them in a good place for when one of those local fishermen drops a key into the harbour.

Last but not least, The Queen Of The Foxes (Marina Rosset, Switzerland, 9 mins) is a French tale about the saddest member of a group of foxes who is, perhaps for that reason, made their queen. The other foxes’ inability to write hampers their attempts at writing such a letter to cheer her up. Instead, they steal from the nearby town all the love letters people have never been brave enough to send, delivering one which results in the uniting of a happy human couple who write their own letter to the fox queen thanking her for their efforts, which finally does the trick. The foxes then deliver the other letters, and the town windows suddenly become full of lively couples, straight, gay, even a threesome.

Which goes to show that programmes of kids animation can be a lot dirtier than you might expect.

The third of three programmes of Kids Animation shorts plays in the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.

Passengers of The Night (Les passagers de la nuit)

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

There’s a certain serenity and magic that comes over me while listening to the radio late at night. It can often feel like you’re the only one listening to the radio host while the rest of the world has gone to sleep. Named after a late-night show that accompanies truckers on long-distance journeys, Passengers of the Night has a similar kind of soft energy. Director Mikhaël Hers transmits this personal-feeling story to us as if he’s talking alone in a radio booth, creating an ode to both the bonds of family and reminiscences of the era in the process.

Like a lot of French films, it takes a broad, novelistic approach, taking us on a journey through the 80s, a golden age for the left, opening on François Mitterrand’s election on 10th May 1981 and ending with his decline. Hers shoots on film, mixing hazy, muted images with archive footage, creating a nostalgic feel for the time, further accompanied by classic 80s bands like Television and Lloyd Cole & the Commotions. Paris, photographed from all sides, looks particularly dreamy here, with Eric Rohmer films playing in Marquee cinemas, people playing tennis against buildings, and punk parties by the Seine.

Charlotte Gainsbourg stars as Élisabeth, a recently divorced mother looking after her two teenage children, Matthias (Quito Rayon-Richter) and Judith (Megan Northam). Matthias is a classic randy teenager, staring at girls in the apartment block opposite them and dreaming of the first time he will have sex. Judith is the political one, grateful for Mitterand’s election and holding plans to run for office one day. As far as families go, they get on pretty well, Hers electing to explore personal development rather than engineering generic conflicts.

But Élisabeth has to make ends meet for his children and applies on a whim to a late night radio talk show, where people call in and tell their stories. Quite the opposite of modern radio talk shows, which thrive on debate or conflict, Passengers of The Night is a more relaxed and hush programme, simple allowing people to tell us about their lives. Rather frustratingly, we don’t ever see any of these shows in detail, apart from one guest, the enigmatic 18-year-old Talulah (Noée Abita), who lives on the streets.

Élisabeth invites Talulah into their home, but her secrets never unveil. Like the drifter in Agnes Varda’s Vagabond (1985),she is a woman without a past. Usually this would irk me, but it fits in with the central theme of the movie that some secrets, whether written, spoken or implied, are better left in the past, better existing in the memories of just one person. The final result is a rather lovely film, one that never moved me that much, but still evokes a particular time, place and feeling with bittersweet ease.

Passengers of The Night played in the Competition section of the 72nd Berlinale, when this piece was originally written. It is out in the UK in October as part of the BFI London Film Festival.

Streams

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

QUICK SNAP: LIVE FROM LOCARNO

There is a great sadness at the core of Streams, as well as a great anger. Depicting a nation in tatters, it constantly surprises and delights despite telling such a dark and difficult tale. The Tunisian system comes across as completely broken and corrupted by a mixture of high hypocrisy and rank misogyny, but the Tunisian people themselves are captured with great resilience and warmth, making for a film that both saddens and inspires. Either way, it announces second-feature Mehdi Hmili as a great talent to watch.

It starts off in a very unassuming fashion, with the young Moumen (Iheb Bouyahya, in a stunning debut) preparing for a football game. He plays in goal and has great dreams of signing for a huge club. His mother Amel (Afef Ben Mahmoud) is incredibly overprotective of her son, going into a minor breakdown when she notices he has pierced his ear. She is right to worry about her son; his father is a full-time resident at the local pub, downing endless beers while hoping that his bets will finally come in. The warning signs are there — all you need is a toxic society and the whole thing can easily fall apart.

It’s really worth knowing as little as possible going in, only that it’s filled with nasty and potentially-triggering moments, taking us on a mother-son odyssey that lays bare the patriarchal, gangster-filled reality of Tunis life. You sense the same post-Arab spring energy that animated the similarly potent Capernaum (Nadine Labaki, 2018). Streams simply fulfils the classic definition of a great film: several great scenes while the rest simply works. It realises that imbuing a film so dark and often depressing with real humanity and joy is not only necessary, but can actually help to deepen the stakes. After all no country, not even the most broken states or brutal dictatorships, is without its joyous moments. In a very strange way, the approach to storytelling actually reminded me of A Star Is Born (Bradley Cooper, 2018) in the way it brings out nuanced acting performances throughout while also bringing real cinematic credentials through fantastic musical sequences.

Veteran actress Mahmoud provides incredible work as a mother constantly making difficult decisions, speaking volumes with just a downward glance or a blink of the eyes. Newcomer Bouyahya is a pretty Timothée Chalamet-type, easily able to hold our attention whether he’s fighting or in the throes of romance. The film cuts between both mother and son at fascinating moments, creating a parallel tension that kept me riveted throughout.

Midway through one dancing scene, the film suddenly changes to widescreen. It’s the kind of move that can come off as pretentious in the hands of a lesser director, but an awesome flex in the hands of someone in command of their work. It’s a bit like watching Ronaldo pull off an extra stopover or Salah — the great hope of North Africa briefly referenced in the film — feinting before bursting into another direction. It’s all the more engaging considering how quietly the film starts. I was expecting a few roman candles and came away dazzled by an immense firework show.

Streams plays in Concorso Cineasti del presente at Locarno Film Festival, running from August 4th to 15th.

Extreme Job (Geukhanjikeob)

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

Radio voices. “Target in position.” “Unit 2 on roof.” Four criminals in a dimly lit apartment playing Mahjong. A knock at the window. A raid. But embarrassed lady cop Jang (f) (Lee Hanee) and her male boss Captain Ko (Ryu Seung-yong) can’t operate their window cleaning slings. The cliched, action packed raid by SWAT in which the criminals are swiftly arrested is visualised by the villain, but the actual police operation is a series of hilarious bungles, the criminals only “caught” when one of them is hit by a coach and the others are stopped by the resulting multiple car crash pile up. In a brutal debriefing with their chief, Captain Ko loses his position to young rising star Captain Choi, who’s just successfully caught a major criminal gang.

In order to save their reputation, Ko’s unit set up surveillance on the gang’s apartment where Hong and his men are awaiting the return of big boss Mubae (Shin Ha-kyun). There being a Chicken restaurant opposite, the cops take it over as a cover to watch the criminals’ premises. It turns out that one of their number Ma (Jin Sun-kyu) has an incredible family recipe for Suwon Rib Marinate Chicken which is an immediate success and overnight turns their fast food joint cover into a hugely profitable business. The team discover the joys of running a food emporium except for Young-ho (Lee Dong-hwai) who finds the others are becoming to busy too fulfil their police duties and back him up when needed.

Other memorable characters include merciless, ruthless and highly effective, female fighter Sun-hee (Jang Jin-hee) who uses a knife to put Hong on crutches on a whim from Mubae and rival gang leader Ted Chang (Oh Jung-se) who threaten to atart a turf war with Mubae.

Starting off as a lightweight caper, this is one of those movies that effortlessly shifts genre throughout, from caper to violent actioner to comedy to food porn and back again innumerable times. It’s aided no end by a clever soundtrack by a composer who understands the effect different pieces of music have on the audience, from the opening pizzicato caper strings to the closing titles which sounds like a spaghetti Western. Somewhere in the middle, a wounded character who may die is briefly underscored by the cantopop song from Asian mega-hit gangster outing A Better Tomorrow (John Woo, producer Tsui Hark, 1986).

As if this wasn’t already a huge crowd-pleaser, for the climactic fight sequence it reveals that Ko’s five man team are, for example, a Chinese national Judo champion (Ma), an Asian Muay Thai champion named Jang Bak after Ong Bak (Jang) while he himself has the nickname ‘Zombie’ because he’s sustained 12 stab wounds and just doesn’t die. These and other attributes are pressed into service with Ko taking bullet after bullet in pursuit of Mubae. This South Korean gem is proof positive, if it were needed, that even for the kind of entertaining movies on which it prides itself, Hollywood really isn’t the only game in town.

Extreme Job plays in LKFF, The London Korean Film Festival.

Thursday, November 6th, 20.35, Regent Street Cinema, London – book here.

Wednesday, November 20th, 18.20, Queen’s Film Theatre, Belfast – book here.

Saturday, November 23rd, 15.30, Broadway Cinema, Nottingham – book here.

Watch the film trailer below:

1985

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

Here’s a Christmas movie with a difference. It’s December 1985 and young New York ad agency man Adrian (Cory Michael Smith) flies home to Texas to see his family for the first time in several years. Tensions are immediately apparent between go-getter son and his blue-collar worker father Dale (Michael Chiklis) from the moment the latter picks him up from the airport. Once Adrian gets to the house, his devoted mother Eileen (Virginia Madsen) can’t stop fussing over him while his younger brother Andrew (Aidan Langford), in his early teens, is distant having never forgiven Adrian for leaving.

Each of the family members presents Adrian with a different challenge. Dad is horrified at his Christmas present of an expensive leather jacket while Adrian is slightly shocked to receive a brand new Bible. Mom encourages him to call up Carly (Jamie Chung), a girl with whom Adrian grew up who also left Texas and is likewise home for the holidays and who he hasn’t seen for years. Andrew quit the school football team for its drama society, which is giving him issues with the father who understands contact sports but doesn’t really get the arts.

Underneath all of this is the presence of the local conservative Christian church, briefly heard as dad sits listening to sermons on a Christian radio station and seen as a worship service which the family attend in Sunday best where Adrian struggles to sing the words of hymns which make him uneasy. Elsewhere, Adrian has an embarrassing encounter with former high school jock turned supermarket manager Mark (Ryan Piers Williams) who has become a Christian and apologises for his past treatment of Adrian, although the two clearly have nothing in common.

Adrian learns from Andrew that his younger brother’s Madonna music cassettes and Bryan Adams poster have been taken off him because the local pastor deems them ungodly. When Andrew discovers that his brother saw Madonna on tour, he suddenly has a new-found respect for him. As a covert Christmas present, Adrian gives him a $100 voucher for the local Sound Warehouse to replenish his audio cassette collection, admonishing Andrew to keep his purchases hidden.

Contacting Carly, Adrian is invited to see her do an impressive improv stand-up gig where she expresses “all the shit you daredn’t say in real life”. Following some time at a dance club, they go back to hers which ends badly when she comes on strong to him but he isn’t really interested. As he tells her, “I’ve had a shitty year.”

Shot in aesthetically pleasing black and white by Ten’s cameraman and co-screenwriter Hutch, this boasts a strong script with deftly sketched characters and is beautifully cast and acted to boot. It completely understands its chosen time period of the mid-eighties, a time of LP records and portable music cassette players, before mobile phones and the internet existed. The film grasps very profound topics: the pain of the gay community being decimated by the AIDS virus in urban locations like New York and the deficiencies of Bible Belt Protestant fundamentalism in its inability to comfort those feeling that pain. And it grasps them without judgement of one side or another.

This is full of genuinely touching moments. Via an overheard conversation in another room, Adrian hears his mother tell his father he really ought to wear that leather jacket to work. Carly’s stand-up routine details her heartfelt experiences of racism as a Korean-American. And in a frank conversation with his mother, Adrian learns that she… well, you’ll have to see the film to find out.

Most people have experienced the joys and heartaches of spending time with their families at Christmas. While 1985 is set in the Christmas of that year, and some of its issues are specific to that date and time, there’s also much here that relates to wider human issues of family, how children deal with parents and siblings, how parents deal with children and how, sometimes, with the best intentions, that can all go horribly wrong. And can then sometimes, somehow, tentatively, in small steps, be at least partly put right.

A Christmas treat.

1985 is out in the UK on Thursday, December 20th, and then on VoD on Monday, December 24th. Watch the film trailer below:

Dance me to the end of love!

Posted on by victorfraga

Cinema and music are the two biggest passions of my life. Put the two of them together and the combination is explosive. Below is a very small list of five diegetic songs that make characters dance (“diegetic” is a very academic word meaning that the song is played within the film, and that it’s audible to the characters). But it isn’t just the characters that these songs have affected. They have literally changed my life.

These are not mainstream movies, and you may have not even heard of some of them. What they have in common is that they got me straight to the music shop to investigate and to buy the record. These films and songs have since become an integral part of my life.

This is a very personal list, which I’m honoured and thrilled to share with our amazing dirty readers. They are intense moments of catharsis and bonding. Either the characters connect with their inner selves or with other characters through music. Compiling this list and rewatching these vids was an extremely emotional experience to me. These songs are so deeply ingrained in my mind and heart that they came back to me almost instantly as soon as I decided to write this piece. I suggest that you turn the volume up and glue your eyes to the screen while you watch them!

What about you? Are there songs that had a similar effect on you?

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1. My Summer of Love (Pawel Pawlikowski, 2004):

I remember watching this at the Curzon Soho when it came out nearly 15 years ago. I always liked Edith Piaf, but La Foule was never amongst my favourite songs. This changed immediately after watching Pawel Pawlikowski’s very British and Lesbian romance My Summer of Love, where the two lovers divided by class finally bond in a very personal dance. Another key moment of the film includes Goldfrapp’s Lovely Head in a disco dance. Truly dizzying stuff. The Polish born and London-based director Pawlikowski has since a become a wizard of film music. His latest feature Cold War (2018) is almost entirely constructed around music. To astounding results.

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2. Beautiful Thing (Hettie MacDonald, 1996):

I was 19 years of age when I watched the British movie Beautiful Thing. I was still living in Brazil, and I had never been to the UK. It made me want to be 15 years of age and experience love for the first time again, but obviously that wasn’t possible: I was already a rather “experienced” gay man at the time. This tale of young homossexual love is a small masterpiece of LGBT cinema, and it catapulted many young actors to fame (including Tameka Empson). It made me run to the shop the next day in order to buy Mama Cass’s greatest hits (the film soundtrack consists almost exclusively of Mama Cass songs). The very public gay dance to the sound of Dream a Little Dream of Me at the end of the film became synonymous with unabashed coming-out (also pictured at the top of this article).

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3. Our Children (Joachim Lafosse, 2012):

This is a far less rosy film. This French-Belgian production is based on a real-life incident involving a woman (Genevieve Lhermitte), who killed her five children. It is impossible not to be moved by Émilie Dequenne playing the film protagonist (here called Murielle), as she cries, moans and sings along to Julien Clerc’s Femmes, Je Vous Aime inside her car. After this sequence, she proceeds to kill her offspring, one by one and at home. Her motive is never entirely clear, which makes the sequence far more ambiguous and powerful, as audiences attempt to decipher what’s going though the mind of the deranged lady about to commit such an unthinkable crime.

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4. Cría Cuervos (Carlos Saura, 1976):

Carlos Saura’s masterpiece is also the Spanish film that most accurately translates the transition back to democracy immediately after Francisco Franco’s death, and all from the perspective of a child. Eight-year-old, stoic and stern Ana observes the fast changing family and nation around her in 1976. But she’s no innocent child. She believes that she has psychic powers and can kill those around her with her thoughts. Ultimately, this is a film about suspicion and lack mutual trust at such turbulent times of fast change. The most striking moment of the film is when Ana dances with other children to the sound of Jeanette’s Por que Te Vas – this is probably the most puerile moment of authentic bonding in the film. The song became a hit in Spain, catapulting Jeanette’s vulnerable and frail voice with a slight British accent to fame (Jeanette was born and raised in London). Since watching Cría Cuervos, Carlos Saura became my favourite Spanish filmmaker and Jeanette a recurring guest in my lounge, my car and my earphones.

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5. Beau Travail (Claire Denis, 1999):

Claire Denis will be forever remembered for penetrating an all-male military world with an acute sensibility. Beau Travail is loosely based on Herman Melville’s lesser-known 1888 short novel Billy Budd. The action takes place in the tiny African nation of Djibouti (between Eritrea and Somalia), where French Foreign Legion soldiers are stationed. Parts of the film soundtrack are from Benjamin Britten’s opera based on Herman Melville’s novel. But the most beautiful and cathartic moment comes at the end when masculinity is expressed in a very solitary dance in front of the mirror. This happens to the sound of the well-known hit The Rhythm of the Night, performed by Italian eurodance act Corona. Simply unforgettable.

Suggs: My Life Story

Posted on by victorfraga

Known to all as the frontman of the 2 Tone masters, Madness, Graham ‘Suggs’ McPherson has a personality, voice and aura that makes him a joyful presence to watch and listen too. Recording his autobiographical show at Hoxton Hall (in East London), merging it with cuts away from the stage to the real world, Julien Temple brings his keen eye for capturing some of the most colourful and peculiar moments in Suggs’ life story, in Suggs: My Life Story.

Blending the structures of a comedy show, animation and dramatised filmmaking, Temple deploys a plethora of different cinematic vices to tell the story of Suggs. Initially walking onto a small stage accompanied by fellow Madness piano player Dean ‘Deano’ Mumford, Suggs, from the opening moments, is an energetic figure, bouncing around the stage, whilst recounting his life story to a packed out theatre. Translated to Steve Organ’s variety of different shots with Jonny Halifax and Ben Young’s quick edit, the information on screen comes at one thick and fast. As any great comedian would, including the likes of Micky Flanagan, Suggs has a commanding voice that is greeted by his viewers in an incising fashion.

Holding the spotlight was a talent evidently crafted in the backstreet pubs of Camden Town as the band came to fruition in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Guiding us through the back streets of Soho and Camden, his stories are filled with comedic anecdotes regarding blue silk suits and youth culture of the era. Still, a fundamental search lays at the heart of his story – who really was his father? Though not as orientated around lineage as the BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are?, it is a narrative beat that creates a significant piece pathos towards Suggs and makes him all the more endearing in achieving the success he has.

Presenting a vivid image of London in the 1970s and 1980s, with its red light glistening Soho streets, credit must be paid to those involved in unearthing such striking footage. Besides Suggs talking, such images interpolate the viewer into his world. Temple’s selection of footage does not undermine the lyrical worlds of Suggs, to the film’s advantage. Though suffused to his words, they elevate his anecdotes to a vibrant position. Supplemented by the diegetic audience laughing, jeering and whistling, the delights held as seeing Suggs’s world is left to flow naturally by Temple.

In the moments of breaking away from speaking to song, the transgression feels natural and unforced simply due to Sugg’s already iconic voice. Supported by his friend and band member, Deano’s piano imbues the live footage with an old fashioned piece of humour and entertainment. There from its starting moments to its last, it is a positive omnipresent voice, just as Suggs’ vocal chords are.

As Madness’ music to this day does SO brilliantly, Suggs: My Life Story fills one with an upbeat feeling and foregrounds Suggs as a national treasure. Just like the buoyant chords that play right throughout their song, One Step Beyond, Temple and Suggs imbue the film with a constant pulse, never leaving a dull moment. Welcome to the house of fun, indeed.

Suggs: My Life Story premiered in cinemas in January (2018). On TV and Sky on Saturday, August 14th (2021).

Eric Clapton: Life In 12 Bars

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

You could be forgiven for thinking this is just another music documentary. Blues devotee and English guitarist Eric Clapton rose to fame in the sixties as in such bands as The Yardbirds, John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, Cream, Blind Faith and Derek And The Dominoes. Since the seventies, he’s had a successful solo career. While Eric Clapton: Life In 12 Bars covers all that material in detail, its main focus is upon how Clapton coped (or didn’t) with the various tragedies in his life, some circumstantial and some self-inflicted.

A happy childhood ended at age nine with Eric’s discovery that his mum and dad were in fact his grandmother and grandfather and that his sister who had long since emigrated to Canada was in fact his mother. Worse, when she visited the family in England, she disowned him. Eric’s faith in humanity disintegrated at the most basic level: trust became impossible. On the BBC’s Uncle Mac kids’ radio show he heard the occasional Muddy Waters record and without any understanding of the music’s roots in the black man’s experience of the racist US connected with an art form that seemed to speak to him in his very core. As a teenager, he bought every blues record he could get his hands on.

Perhaps the film’s most telling clip has Clapton talk about feeling anger and working it out through his guitar. He demonstrates to the TV interviewer by playing a series of clearly angry licks. Years later, he dismisses some of his sixties material precisely on account of its anger.

Eric’s obsession with his best friend George Harrison’s then wife Pattie Boyd in the late sixties gave rise to the Layla album with his band Derek And The Dominoes, a powerful collection of unrequited love songs. He played Pattie the newly recorded work in an attempt to win her but she went back to her husband anyway. Around this time Clapton got sucked in to heroin addition and became a recluse. A few years later he made a comeback with an album and a world tour, but in reality he switched from smack to alcohol and became a wildly unpredictable performer who on one occasion told audiences to go out and vote for (racist British politician) Enoch Powell. As a man who loved the Blues and admired many black musicians, Clapton was deeply ashamed of this particular incident afterwards. He barely remembers the string of albums he made as an alcoholic. To illustrate the point, most of the record covers from the period whizz by in a matter of seconds on the screen.

He seemed to finally get his life on track when he discovered the joys of fatherhood in the late eighties only for his young son Conor to tragically fall out of a skyscraper window in New York a few years later. Determined to live life from then on in a manner that would honour his late son, Clapton wrote the song Tears In Heaven as part of his process of dealing with this tragedy. In recent years he appears to have found genuine happiness as a married family man with three daughters.

His route to his current contentment has been a harrowing one. By documenting Eric’s various personal struggles, his friend and the film’s director Lili Fini Zanuck has crafted a striking portrait which, far from merely showcasing a celebrated guitarist (which task it fulfils more than adequately in passing) tells how, via his impassioned music, this extraordinary individual has worked through the terrible situations in which he’s either placed or found himself.

Eric Clapton: Life In 12 Bars is out in the UK on Friday, January 12th. Watch the film trailer below: