Tag: parents

Dark Heart of the Forest (Le coeur noir des forêts

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

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Dark Heart of the Forest is a modest Belgian tale, handsomely told, bolstered by two keen performances by veteran child actress Elsa Houben and newcomer Quito Rayon Richter. Playing two young lovers who escape the confines of their care home and run off into the countryside, it explores the full potential of the woods for both rebirth and connection.

Nikolaï (Quito Rayon Richter) has always been an odd duck. Discovered in the forest by social services, he is quickly branded “Mowgli” by the other kids in the home. Meanwhile, Camille (Elsa Houben) appears to be the more put-together one, but she is hiding a second pregnancy that could land her in a lot of trouble. They quickly find each other in the home and decide to run away. Having no real parents themselves, and Camille losing her first baby due to a forced abortion, they want to be the type of good people that their parents never were.

Despite some narrative trickery in the first half— telling essentially the same story twice yet with key variations in both the male and female perspective — there is little in the final story that should surprise, bar the filmmaker choosing to end on either a positive or a tragic note. This is more of a mood and character piece than a conventional tale — for one, the gendarmerie don’t chase them around — taking great detail to capture the awkwardness of teenage love, as well as its elation, contrasted against a world that quickly wants to confine those who don’t fit in.

Living near a forest myself and usually walking there at least once a day with my dog, I have noticed how its entire look can change depending on the time of day, time of year, precipitation level, weather and available sunlight. As the name suggests, cinematographer Virginie Surdej captures the different moods of the forest well, from foreboding light green to malevolent darkness to hope in the form of the sun chinking through the trees. This moody feel is complemented by hazy synths and later, manic violin scales, rising to a crescendo during the film’s pivotal final scenes. Still, by the end it did feel as if the filmmaking team were running out of ways to shoot essentially the same place.

Shooting on handheld widescreen, featuring close-ups of small gestures and facial expressions, director Serge Mirzabekiantz takes great care to pay respect to the teenager’s plight, including teenage sex scenes that don’t come across as exploitative. While the more combative moments between the young and testy couple could’ve been more interestingly rendered, both Houben and Richter bring a fine rawness to their roles and their adolescent difficulties. Together they feel like a believable young couple, with all the attendant naïveté and passion that entails. The woods may be a cold, dank and often miserable place, but with the right person, there appears to be a chance to create something new.

Dark Heart of the Forest plays in the First Feature section of the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, running from 12-28th November.

Scattered Night (Heuteojin Bam)

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

Their dad Seung-won (Lim Hojun) hasn’t been around much recently. Then he and their mother Yoon-hee (Kim Hye-young) break it to their two kids Su-min (Moon Seung-a) and her slightly elder brother Jin-ho (Choi Jun-woo) that they’ve decided to split up and live apart. The question is, which of the two parents will either or both of the kids live with afterwards? Rather than fight over them, the parents leave it up to each of the kids to decide that for themselves.

Their mother is an ambitious teacher who pushes her students hard. Their father is much more relaxed aboutsuch things, so that’s one difference between the two right there. Jin-ho is studying with his mum at her school for his own exams, so it’s likely that he would move in with mum rather than dad. That just leaves Su-min, but she’s totally conflicted about which way to go.

If she lives with mum and elder brother, she has the advantage that she and her sibling are living under the same room. The two kids get along pretty well, so ther’s no reason why she wouldn’t want that. On the other hand, she likes dad a lot too. And she has problems understanding the fact that the relationship has broken down. Can’t they just get back together again?, she asks.

We never see Jin-ho that much outside the family unit (although we see him studying for exams with mum) but we see quite a bit of Su-min playing with Yu-chan, a boy of around her own age. Dad has given Jin-ho a drone for his birthday, but he’s so busy with exams that it’s Su-min who borrows it and plays with it.

After the overbearing Yu-chan takes the remote out of her hands to have a go then gets distracted and crashes and damages the drone, the understandably upset Jin-ho shows remarkable patience and forebearance to his sister, even going so far as reapiring the damaged drone so she can play with it again. He seems to be good at dealing with people and we suspect that he’s goig to be okay dealing with his parents’ break up.

Su-min, however, finds it all much more difficult. She’s very keen to go on a trip to Lake Park with the family if a bit miffed that her brother will stay behind to study. A family discussion goes in her favour, perhaps taking a little it too much advantage of Jin-ho’s good nature: the parents decree that whoever Su-min decides each of the two kids should live with, that’s the way it’ll be. She can see that her brother will likely end up with mum, but as for herself she finds it impossible to decide one way of the other.

All of which leads to a family trip in the car where she goes missing and parents and elder brother search for her. There’s no point in a spoiler to explain how it all works out – or doesn’t – but this is not really the sort of film where that’s a big deal – it’s a drama based around the characters, particularly the little girl, not a plot in need of resolution. Suffice to say, the film ends at a very interesting place which is utterly consistent with what it’s about.

The shooting style is deceptively simple – a handheld camera following characters around their home or in odd locations like the school, the car, the park, or playing in the nearby streets. It unfolds at a gentle pace yet you can feel the issue of the impending separation pressing in on Su-min and affecting her young life. In the end, it’s a striking portrait of a young girl dealing with issues she’d rather she didn’t have to face at all. It played prfectly well to an audience of adults as the closing LKFF film, but this is also a film that some children might well enjoy with their parents too – although it’s a long way from being a children’s film as such, confronting as it does with some quite tough, grown up relationship issues.

Scattered Night plays in LKFF, The London Korean Film Festival.

Thursday, November 14th, 19.00, Regent Street Cinema, London – book here.

Tuesday, November 19th, 20.20, Glasgow Film Theatre, Glasgow – book here.

Thursday, November 21st, 18.20, Queen’s Film Theatre, Belfast – book here.

Sunday, November 24th, 13.15, Broadway Cinema, Nottingham – book here.

Watch a clip 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: