DARK RIVER - Day 9 - BFI London Film Festival 2017

Clio Barnard's DARK RIVER is arguably one of the finest film's of the festival. It's a dark, sparse, claustrophobic chamber drama - beautifully acted and edited, with not an ounce of fat on its bones. It's so emotionally intense that the 90 minute runtime feels like three hours in the best possible way.  By this I mean that it didn't feel overlong at all, but I really felt emotionally rung out by the end of it. I suspect that it's a film that's going to be with me for days to come - its scenes haunting me. 

The film rests on the twin performances of Ruth Wilson (THE AFFAIR) and Mark Stanley (DICKENSIAN).  Wilson plays a capable sheep farmer called Alice who returns home after a 15 year absence when her father, who had abused her as a child, finally dies.  She's still massively traumatised by that abuse, and Clio Barnard depicts it as a kind of visceral haunting.  Alice believes her father would've left her the tenancy of the family farm, but the person sitting in possession is her angry brother Joe (Stanley). He resents Alice for leaving, and her need to update farming methods. In fact, he'd rather sell the farm to property developers than co-farm with Alice.  

Over the 90 minute the tension between the two until we have the expected final confrontation and revelation that leads to some kind of emotional pay-off.  There's a real vulnerability and violence to the lead performances and Stanley matches the more famous Wilson pound for pound in the confrontation.  I won't say more for fear of spoiling the outcome.  However, I was surprised to find that Meester Phil had an utterly different interpretation of the final scene to mind, which suggests that this film is even more slippery than I'd thought. 

DARK RIVER has a running time of 89 minutes. The movie played Toronto and London 2017. It opens in the UK and Ireland on February 23rd and in the Netherlands on August 2nd. It is rated 15 in the UK for strong language. 

BURNT

Director John Wells (AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY) returns to our screens with a slight and predictable romantic drama that had the capability to be so much more. BURNT stars Bradley Cooper as a michelin star chef called Adam who is a recovering addict.  He returns after a two year hiatus to open a new restaurant to prove all the critics wrong, win a third star, and poke two fingers in the eye of his rival Reece (Matthew Rhys).  On one hand, this movie wants to be a light romantic drama about a difficult person finding love and emotional balance. So naturally when Adam meets a feisty chef called Helene (Sienna Miller) and they have a massive ding-dong battle, we know they are going to end up falling in love. She even has a super-cute kid with which Adam can bond.  And when the first act of the movie sets up Adam as a dinosaur who refuses to cook sous-vide, we assume she's also going to give him a water-bath and some plastic bags and lead him joyously into the food revolution to wow the critics.  

But then the movie thinks about taking a slightly different turn into a much more complicated and fascinating world and we think - yes - this is why Brad Cooper has agreed to do what seems on the surface like quite schlocky fare.  We realise that within his kitchen he's dealing with the consequences of his addiction - the colleagues he hurt and the maitre d' he'd let down. And throughout the film we have the shadowy French figures who are after him from drug debts.  We see him struggle with his addiction and think, finally some meat for Cooper to sink his teeth into. But in the end it's too late in the final twenty minutes of the run-time to drag the film back into profundity and it wants its perfect romantic ending too badly. This is a tremendous shame, and a waste of a supporting cast that includes Emma Thompson, Alicia Vikander, Omar Sy and Daniel Bruehl.

BURNT is rated R and has a running time of 101 minutes.  The movie is on release in the USA, Turkey, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Macedonia, Portugal, Bulgaria, Iceland, Poland, Kuwait, Serbia, Singapore, Canada, Turkey, France, the Philippines, South Korea, the UK, Ireland and Sweden. It opens on November 12th in Russia and Estonia; on November 20th in Lithuania and Norway; on November 26th in Italy and the Netherlands; on December 3rd in Germany and Finland; on December 10th in Brazil, Denmark, Hong Kong; on January 21st in Chile; and on January 28th in Argentina and Thailand. 

AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY

AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY is a histrionic family melodrama of little merit in which the performances are so extreme they verge on parody. Oh look, there's Meryl Streep which all her trademark physical ticks being a drunken, mean old cancer-ridden harridan, haranguing her family so cruelly that her alcoholic husband (Sam Shepard) tops himself.  It's hard to know whether it's the character who's so repulsive or Streep's "turn it up to eleven" performance, but for whatever reason seeing the old witch harassing her children made me want to leave the cinema.  And what of her children? Julia Roberts is doing some proper acting. We know this because she has generously allowed us to see her grey roots as she portrays a tired middle-aged mother struggling with her unhappy marriage in a haze of self-righteous anger.  Juliette Lewis is cast against type as the fragile, man-dependent, delusional ditz, and it's utterly unconvincing. Finally, we get some actress called Julianne Nicholson playing a shy wallflower quite implausibly attracted to her cousin Little Charles - played by the typically marvellous Benedict Cumberbatch only two notches shy of Simple Jack.   

This sack of unsympathetic, uninspired characters gather at the old witch's house for the funeral of her husband, as we would expect, all the seething resentments and nasty secrets come out.  I found the whole thing shouty and dull. The only real emotional truth came from a confrontation between Margo Martindale and Chris Cooper as the witch's sister and brother in law, arguing over their treatment of Simple Jack, sorry Little Charles.   The acting is otherwise over-done. The direction, from John Wells, plodding. The cinematography, by Adriano Goldman, often just technically bad. 

What's the problem here? We've had two marvellous movies recently based on plays by Tracy Letts - BUG and KILLER JOE. In both cases, the characters were outlandish and the plotting crazy but it somehow worked and seemed real in the context of the gonzo worlds the director, Billy Friedkin, had created.  Here, the director seems to rooted to a naturalistic setting, in which his characters seem like circus freaks.  There's a disconnect - are we meant to be taking this seriously? Are we meant to be laughing? It's disconcerting, but not in the way the play is meant to be disconcerting. What a waste of the on-screen talent!

AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY played Toronto, Austin and AFI 2013 and was released last year in the USA, Israel and Brazil. It was released this month in Australia, New Zealand, Greece, Canada, Spain, Hungary and Kuwait. The movie was released this weekend in Singapore, the UK, Ireland, Iceland, Lithuania, Poland and Romania. It opens on January 30th in Italy and Macedonia; on February 5th in the Faroe Islands, Argentina and Denmark; on February 13th in Belgium; on February 26th in France, Hong Kong, Portugal, Finland and Sweden; on March 6th in Germany; on March 20th in the Netherlands and on April 18th in Japan.

AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY has a running time of 121 minutes and is rated R in the USA and 15 in the UK for strong language. 

London Film Fest 2011 Day 1 - 360

Jude Law and Rachel Weisz as an estranged couple in 360

It has long been my experience that the most interesting and exciting films showing at the London Film Festival are those tucked away in the heart of the programme, rather than the red-carpet galas, where one suspects the programmer's hand has been forced by the exigencies of publicity and sponsorship.  Sadly, 360 proved no exception to this rule.  Worse than that, one suspects that Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles' early success with the dazzling CITY OF GOD was a fluke.  Ever since then, his films have maintained their visual style, but lost pace, energy, and tackled subject matter with a heavy handed earnestness that belies their insight.  One wishes that he would stop trying to be clever-clever with his narrative devices and just tell a good, simple story.  

The too-clever concept at the heart of 360 is to show the interweaving stories of people across the world  - the only commonality is how each of them experience a seemingly arbitrary event changes their lives.  The story takes us from a failing marriage in middle-class London (Jude Law, Rachel Weisz) to hookers and Russian mafiosi in Vienna (Moritz Bleibtrau) - from  sex offenders and grieving parents in Denver (Ben Foster, Anthony Hopkins) to forbidden love in Paris (Jamel Debbouze).  In each case, characters are introduced, their love affairs and dilemmas explained, an event occurs, its ramifications start to be explored, and the matter is dropped. Perhaps in a later strand we will meet the character again and see them from a different angle.  But by then, so much has been going on, so many characters introduced, so little time given to being able to emotionally bond with them, that we are past caring.  I left the cinema feeling totally "blah".  I had watched a parade of characters and frankly, didn't care about a single one of them.  And as for the "message" of this ponderous work, it's hardly revelatory or profound.  Some people are cynical sleazebags - some people still naively take a chance on love - the world keeps turning - and random events can change the path we move along. 

Jude Law and director Fernando Meirelles present
360 at the Opening Night of the BFI London
Film Festival 2011.

The result is a film that is utterly unmemorable and actually rather tragic when one considers the talent deployed.  To be sure, cinematographer Adriano Goldman (JANE EYRE, SIN NOMBRE, CONVICTION) creates some arresting visuals, but the rest of the talent is below par.  The actors have little to get their teeth into and are rather unforgettable, except for Anthony Hopkins hamming it up. To be fair, Hopkins is only responding to one of those awfully obvious crass Academy-Award-aspirant speeches by screenwriter Peter Morgan (THE QUEEN) when he finally comes to an epiphany in an AA meeting. 

Overall then, 360 is yet another film by Fernando Meirelles that is technically accomplished, but fails to provide us with characters that we care about and situations that are compelling.  A serious own-goal by screenwriter Peter Morgan too, moving from his typically more straightforward biopic material into some more narratively ambitious, and clearly beyond his capabilities. 

360 premiered at London 2011 and will play Toronto 2011. It will open in Sweden on October 19th 2012.

JANE EYRE (2011)

You would rather drive me to madness than break some mere human law?

In the context of a literary education dominated by Jane Austen (English all-girls prep school - rolls eyes), Jane Eyre felt radical - a proto-feminist tract in the form of a gothic-romantic novel. Charlotte Bronte presented us with a mid-nineteenth century heroine that was plain and poor, rather than pretty and middle-class. A heroine with a strong morality but who rejects both the piety of Mr Brocklehurst and the Christian "cheek-turning" martyrdom of Helen Burns. A heroine that attracted her lover, Edward Rochester, with moral and intellectual strength rather than sparkling wit. A heroine that rejected that same brooding Byronic hero to protect her moral autonomy and sense of self. A heroine who, even in the very depths of desperation and poverty, was never a "damsel in distress" to be rescued by her cousin, St John Rivers. Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre is morally and intellectual tough, but never a prig (in the way that Austen's Fanny Price can be), and her happiness resides in finding a man who with whom she can be herself - who gives her permission to be herself - the ultimate philosophical emancipation. And whereas so many romantic novels end abruptly with a marriage, Jane Eyre ends with a resolute declaration and the readers belief that, yes, this really is a marriage of equals that will last. 

Despite my great respect for the novel, I feel that it lends itself less easily to screen adaptation that the sparkling novels of Austen. Gothic tales, if mis-handled, can seem melodramatic and ridiculous. And then there are those few episodes which stretch credulity on the page, and look absurd on screen. How should a modern audience react to the sight of Edward Rochester dressing up as a gypsy woman to read Jane's fortune? How will they react to the absurd coincidence that St John Rivers is Jane's cousin? And how far will Hollywood have the courage to cast a hero and heroine that really are plain and Byronically ugly respectively? To my mind, the most successful adaptations have been the 1944 JANE EYRE with a truly frightening and Bryonic Orson Welles as Rochester, and a script by John Houseman and Aldous Huxley. The only negative was the altogether too pretty and insipid Joan Fontaine as Jane. After that, I very much liked the 1996 Franco Zefirelli JANE EYRE starring a good-looking but suitably old and menacing William Hurt as Rochester and the absolutely perfect Jane in the jolie-laide Charlotte Gainsbourg. Both of these adaptations retained the gothic, dark atmosphere of the novel and showed the struggle between passion and morality. Both are memorable and definitive in their own way.

The new adaptation of JANE EYRE from director Cary Fukunage (SIN NOMBRE) and screenwriter Moira Buffini (TAMARA DREWE) has its moments but must, overall, be judged a failure. And for that, I blame the writer and director. Buffini's screenplay is admirably concise; uses an effective flashback structure; and thankfully omits all episodes that force a willing suspension of disbelief that strains the modern viewer. (No gypsy and the Rivers aren't cousins). But, Buffini also compresses Jane's early years so radically that we do not get a sense of how she came to be the remarkably self-possessed, morally upright woman that Rochester falls in love with. The Red Room is shorn of its Gothic visions; the death of Helen Burns is dealt with in a matter of minutes; and most importantly, the good example of Miss Temple, the kind teacher who forms so much of Jane's character, is omitted entirely. And so, after a few short episodes, we go to Thornfield and see, almost as quickly as we rush through Jane's childhood, Rochester and Jane falling in love. Admittedly, once we get to that point, the love story plays out beautifully, because Buffini finally gives the story room to breathe, and Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender (though both far too beautiful) finally get the chance to show what fine actors they are. 

But as the story develops into its dramatic climax, the movie and the script absolutely fails. For Buffini and Fukunaga have taken the decision to focus on the romance, the intellectual and emotional inter-play, at the expense of the Gothic. There is no "woman at the foot of the bed", no "tearing of the veil"...It's as though they are embarrassed by it, or unwilling to keep faith with Eyre's vision. Indeed, they are so embarrassed by the generally brooding and serious tone of the novel, that they feel it necessary to make Judi Dench's Mrs Fairfax comic relief - pathetic. And so we are left with a very beautifully acted and wonderfully photographed (DP Adriano Goldman) love story yes - and with no little power - the scene where Rochester begs Jane to stay is quite wonderful. But this is not Jane Eyre, not really. The proto-feminism is there - the Victorian romance is there - but the Gothic is cruelly, disastrously under-played.

JANE EYRE was released earlier this year in the US, Estonia, Latvia, Taiwan, Portugal, South Korea, Iceland, South Africa, Singapore, Israel, Kuwait and the Czech Republic. It is currently on release in Hong Kong and Russia. It opens on September 9th in Belgium, France, Ireland and the UK. It opens on September 16th in Sweden; on September 22nd in the Netherlands; on December 1st in Germany; on December 9th in Turkey and on February 23rd 2012 in Denmark.

London Film Fest 2010 Day 3 - CONVICTION

Another film fest and another disappointing, soupy Oscar-bait flick starring Hilary Swank. She plays Betty Anne Waters, a middle-aged mother who put herself through her GED, college and then law school in order to represent her brother and over-turn his murder conviction. It's a two hour film that reads like a police/court procedural, where plucky little Betty Ann digs out evidence and outs corruption with her can-do, no-nonsense attitude. She has a best-friend with a heart of gold (Minnie Driver) and understanding teenage kids with hearts of gold, and a New York injustice-fighter (Peter Gallacher) with a heart of gold. It's all so bloody banal and twee and Hallmark TV afternoon movie I wondered what the frack it was doing in a Film Festival. Neither Tony Goldwyn's direction nor Pamela Gray's script ever move beyond hammy cliche. The only, only things elevating this movie beyond utter mediocrity are a small cameo from Juliette Lewis, as usual, typecast as a skank, and a scene-stealing role for Sam Rockwell as the charismatic incarcerated brother. Avoid at all costs.

CONVICTION played Toronto 2010 and is on release in the US. It opens in Belgium on December 1st, in Germany on February 24th 2011 and in the Netherlands on March 24th.