Tag: suicide

Roxy (Roxy)

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

QUICK SNAP: LIVE FROM TALLINN

The eponymous Roxy is a fight dog who has so far killed 12, no… 14, dogs. For no good reason, he bites a pedestrian’s hand, causing his walker to hand a wad of banknotes to seemingly unflappable, hired taxi driver Thomas Brenner (Devid Streisow) to straighten the situation out. Then his new fare has put Roxy on the back seat, his panting head inches away from Thomas’ face. “You have to buy a muzzle for this dog,” Thomas calmly explains to his fare. “It’s the law in Germany.”

Thomas, whose working life consists of picking up a fare from the railway station, taking them where they want to go, and then returning to the station to pick up the next fare, loves routine and order. In his intermittent voice-over running through the film, we learn that his grandfather was in the Wehrmacht and his father the Stasi, the latter eventually committing suicide in 1990. He has learned from his late mother to never look people in the eyes, a survival mechanism, a way of remaining invisible.

In his flat, his inherited collection of die-cast model cars and motor vehicles sits in lovingly sorted, pre-arranged positions on wall-mounted ornament shelves. His set of dice sit in ordered rows on his pristine tray except when he rolls them for his own amusement, always replacing them in exactly the same place. The tray is covered in tiny images of iconic, naked women, occurring at regular, spatial intervals. He often visits the local bar for a quiet drink, where conversations with latent nymphomaniac barmaid Sara (Valliamma Zwigart) inevitably end in sex.

His latest fare, though, is set to turn his highly ordered life routines upside down. Levan (Vakho Chachanidze) and his friends are criminals or gangsters or some such, we never find out exactly what, but clearly not to be messed with. Levan is impressed with Thomas’ ability to stay cool under pressure, pays well and offers more work. A ride or two later, he’s joined by his pretty, young wife Lisa (Camilla Borghesani) and young son Vova, eight (Raphael Zhambakiyev). Vova asks a question: which is stronger – lion or tiger? It’s a question that sets Thomas thinking.

And then one night, they’re in a restaurant and someone attempts to shoot them. Whatever their history is, these people are on the run and their pursuers are close behind. At this point, Thomas might try to extricate himself from the situation, but he doesn’t. Levan is impressed that Thomas never asks about his background but simply does whatever needs to be done. Above all, Levan is concerned not for himself but for his wife and son. Thomas finds the group a safe house. And Levan offers Thomas a piece of advice about dealing with animals which flies in direct contradiction to his mother’s: always look them in the eyes.

In the scenes that follow, Thomas is asked by Levon to help them obtain fake passports. Surely there must be someone he knows who knows someone who knows someone. Thomas starts asking around to see what he can do. Then he is contacted by people claiming to be agents of a foreign power in pursuit of these men, who want him to help them. They, too, pay well. The only way he is going to survive is by playing one side off against the other, which could prove quite lucrative. What’s more, Thomas gets on really well with Vevo, and Lisa is a very attractive woman…

Also in the picture are Levan’s underlings Andrej (Ivan Shvedoff), Niko (Nicolos Tsintsadze) and the none too intelligent Sasha (Sandro Kekelidze) not to mention a troupe of avant-garde theatre actors who do a nice sideline in fake passports – among them a woman in a blue bodysuit with a fake penis and a truly fearsome, blonde-bewigged man (Waléra Kanischtscheff) sporting a turquoise pantomime dress.

Not only is this one of the most cleverly plotted and executed thrillers in years, which never misses a trick, it’s also about some very interesting ideas. What exactly is power, and how is one person able to wield it over another? When is the time to do as you’re told, and when is the time to strike out and take decisive action? Which is stronger – lion or tiger? We follow Thomas’ journey as he moves from invisible everything-in-its-right-place man towards something far more dangerous, brilliantly expressed in Streisow’s superb performance.

The film is a masterclass in casting, with a superb clutch of performances from the various supporting cast members, including the small boy and, for that matter, the dog. It’s also flawlessly structured, shot and edited. And consistently inventive to boot.

Moreover, it’s a welcome addition to that small, select subgenre of the taxi driver movie which includes such seminal outings as Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976), Taxi (Carlos Saura, 1996), Collateral (Michael Mann, 2004) and A Taxi Driver / Taeksi Woonjunsa (Jang Hoon, 2017). Collateral, in which a mysterious stranger arrives into town and hires a taxi driver to drive him around, probably the closest to it. The film is a real winner and distributors should be falling over themselves to acquire it in territories round the world. An utterly enthralling, stunner of a thriller which deserves to be a massive, worldwide hit. Don’t miss.

Roxy plays in Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival. Watch the trailer below:

Safe Place (Sigurno mjesto)

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

QUICK SNAP: LIVE FROM LOCARNO

The name is ironic. Bitterly so. There are certainly no safe places in Safe Place, a realist, grim and unrelenting exploration of man’s inner darkness and the difficulty of lifting up those who succumb to it. A confident debut from director Juraj Lerotić, it’s a harsh and unforgiving experience, all the more brave for tackling its central tragedy straight on.

The opening expresses the universality of the topic. The film starts on an inauspicious Zagreb housing block, with kids playing in the car park and other people going about their day. Suddenly, a man bursts into the frame, runs across the car park and breaks the door down. In one of many rapid shifts in this film — which toys with temporality, reality, and our sense of space to excellent effect — we see Demir (Goran Markovic) on the floor, just about clinging on after a suicide attempt. He is cradled by his brother (Juraj Lerotić himsef), who waits until the ambulance arrive.

This is the start of many intense and dark scenes, as we follow Demir being moved between hospitals and police stations, going missing and returning again, unable to express his trauma and refusing to get any better. Played with total passivity by Markovic, he is a man on a mission to die. Neither a veteran of the war or, as he puts it, “a starving child in Africa”, he nonetheless seems unable to see the positive side of life. It doesn’t help that the doctors, police officers and other officials seem unbothered by his problems, creating a further feel of total alienation.

There is a Romanian New Wave feeling to this movie, both in its exploration of bureaucracy, and its moments of pitch-black comedy, as well as the way it always keeps us in the moment, closely observed by the camera, which rarely goes for flashy movements or extraneous gestures. The most obvious similarity in its depiction of an uncaring state is The Death of Mr Lazarescu (Cristi Puiu, 2005) as well as Aurora (2010), where Puiu, like Lerotić maintains complete auteur control by playing the main character. Meanwhile, its unrelenting one-thing-after-another approach brings to mind Pilgrims (Laurynas Bareiša, 2021), and might even be able to match that Latvian film’s moderate success.

Despite these Eastern European influences or similarities, there are certain breaks that feel like Lerotić’s own, including a willingness to toy with the reality of what we are watching, inserting purposeful breaks in our understanding of the narrative and moments of gentle surrealism. Some many find this a frustrating and slow watch, but I found mesmerising and hypnotic moments within the unremitting darkness. Suicide is a terrible thing and disproportionately affects young men, who are often unable to talk about their feelings. Sometimes someone has to tell it like it is.

Safe Place (Sigurno mjesto) plays as part of Concorso Cineasti del presente at Locarno Film Festival, running from 3-13th August.

Out Of Blue

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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