BFI LFF 2016 Preview - BLUE VELVET REVISITED

Peter Braatz' lyrical documentary is a must-watch for all fans of David Lynch's surreal, beautiful, disturbing work.  As a younger film-maker, Braatz served as an intern on the iconic 1980s movie, and shot lots of photos, behind the scenes videos and interviews. Now, thirty years later, he has assembled a collage of impressions of what it was like to work with and for Lynch and how the film came together. But this isn't a conventional linear documentary, with carefully composed and edited talking heads taking us from the films conceptions to final release.  Rather, in the manner of Lynch himself, the film is a kind of meditation and mood movie - carefully layering images and interviews and a beautiful sound-track to take us into the emotional world of the film.  

One of the things that jumped out at me was how calm the shoot seemed to be - the union of all members of cast and crew in this strange endeavour.  Lynch repeatedly claims that this is the happiest he has ever been on a shoot - going back to a low budget in exchange for artistic freedom.  There seems to be a spirit of trust on set - trust in David's genius and vision.  Even people who don't really like films - like actor Jack Nance - or don't believe Lynch is au courant - think the movie is going to be something special. Lynch himself, secure in the quality of each component, is quietly confidant too.  It's also pretty special just to sit back and watch the man at work - his immense attention to detail - personally adjusting and trimming a wig - and the way in which movie making feeds into his larger artistic life with sketches of the day's events. 

This movie is then, a wonderful indulgence for fans of Lynch - as creative in its approach as Lynch deserves, and a visual and aural delight. 

BLUE VELVET REVISITED has a running time of 86 minutes. Tickets are available for both screenings.

London Film Festival Day 11 - NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD

NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD is a brilliant doc about Aussie exploitation flicks from the 70s and 80s. It's a great flick for three reasons. First off, the subject matter is just balls out funny - slasher pics, crazy stunts, kung-fu fighting and copious quantities of tits'n'ass. Second, because even if exploitation films aren't your thing (and they're not my thing at all) you can't fail to be swept up by the enthusiasm, good humour and audacity of the guys and girls who made and starred in these movies and their chief cheerleader - Quentin Tarantino. This is all down to director, Mark Hartley, who has managed to get all the major players on tape, talking candidly. Third, Hartley does a great job in editing his material together. He manages to impose order on this chaotic film movement, making a clear case for Ozploitation as being culturally significant and the foundation of the Aussie film industry. After all, people like Barry Humphries, Susannah York and DP John Seale went on to mainstream success, and directors like Brian Trenchard Smith have a major influence on films from KILL BILL to the SAW series. So whether or not you're a fan of B-movies - indeed whether or not you're a cineaste - I can highly recommend NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD. It's that rare thing - intelligently made AND raucous fun!

NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD: THE WILD, UNTOLD STORY OF OZPLOITATION! played Toronto and London 2008. It was released earlier this year in Australia.

SWING VOTE - actually rather enjoyable!

I went to see SWING VOTE because my mum loves Kevin Costner and I love my mum. That age discrepancy leads you to the first stumbling block in the movie: how plausible is it that someone of Kevin Costner's age would have a 12 year old daughter? How much more fun would this movie have been if it had, for instance, starred Sam Rockwell? But this is the least of the film's problems in terms of willing suspension of disbelief: the conceit of SWING VOTE is that the whole US Presidential election is so finely balanced that it comes down to the vote of a single man and that, thanks to a malfunctioning electronic voting terminal, each party has ten days to win him over to their cause.

Despite these seemingly insurmountable odds, SWING VOTE made a really good attempt to make the electoral conceit seem believable, and the whole movie is so much fun that I simply went with it. Like a moody independent, I was won over by its earnest good intentions, its sheer audacity, and the fact that Kevin Costner and Madeline Carroll pull-off the central emotional relationship at the heart of the film. Kevin Costner absolutely surprised me with his humanity and ability to pull off physical comedy. He makes Bud Connell an everyman in the mould of Homer Simpson. Yes, he's a shirker, yes, he drinks too much beer, but at heart he wants to do right by his family and he's got a lot of common sense. Madeline Carroll is also really great as his daughter Molly. She plays one of those over-responsible kids of divorce, effectively parenting her own father. But she also acts like a kid and doesn't have the preternatural air of grim adulthood that I sometimes detect in Dakota Fanning.

Admittedly, this movie pulls its punches when it comes to satirising the political system. Kelsey Grammer plays a W-lite dumb Republican President and Dennis Hopper plays a candidate for "Change" Democrat. Their campaign managers are played by the ever-brilliant Stanley Tucci in Karl Rove mode and Nathan Lane respectively. But the jokes are as soft as the targets are obvious. This movie clearly doesn't want to upset anyone. Still, maybe this was the right way to go with what is, essentially, a sweet film about a father and daughter bonding. And on that level, this is a very satisfying film.

The SWING VOTE opened earlier this year in the US, Greece and Turkey. It is currently on release in Brazil and the UK. It opens in the Netherlands and Spain on October 30th.

ELEGY - intelligent, emotionally brutal drama

ELEGY is a well-made, brilliantly acted, intelligent and moving drama by Spanish director Isabel Coixet and based on a novel by Philip Roth. It stars Ben Kingsley as an ageing academic with a penchant for sleeping with his students. More seriously, he has devoted his life to becoming truly independent, at the expense of his relationship with his son and a certain loneliness. The professor starts an affair with a stunning young student (Penelope Cruz). He is mesmerised by her beauty and frightened by the fact that he will never truly possess her. His flaws are to objectify her - think of her as unknowable - and to assume that she will leave him. This last is fatal. She is, in fact, remarkably self-assured, and prepared to brave society's scorn by introducing her older lover to her conservative family. *He* is the one who lacks faith, breaking her heart in the process. This act, so true to life, comes roughly half way into the film and the remainder of the movie is about how he comes to terms with his decision, his relationship with his son, and his relationship with the girl. There are no epiphanies or neat endings, but genuine character development and brutal emotional encounters.

Ben Kingsley gives a nuanced performance and has a real rapport with his unjudgmental best friend (Dennis Hopper) and, finally, with his son (Peter Sarsgaard). But the lynchpin of the film, and the real achievement, is that the relationship between Kinglsey and Cruz is utterly believable. We believe that they both find each other attractive and have a complicated, evolving relationship, despite the age difference. Cruz, in particular is superb as the student. Watch her reaction in the key episode at the centre of the film, and feel the tragedy of a photo-shoot near the end of the film. It's an award-winning performance. In addition, I would single out Patricia Clarkson for praise in her cameo role as a self-assured business woman. It's always a pleasure to see an older woman portrayed on screen as successful and sexually attractive.

ELEGY played Berlin 2008 and was released in Spain earlier this year. It is currently on release in the UK, US and Canada and opens next weekend in Austria, Germany and Russia. It opens on August 28th in the Netherlands; on September 13th in the Czech Republic; on October 22nd in Belgium; on November 27th in Mexico; and on December 4th in Argentina.

THE NIGHT WE CALLED IT A DAY - ring a ding ding!

THE NIGHT WE CALLED IT A DAY is a corker of a flick, that seems to have been somewhat overlooked by distributors and critics. It's essentially a long-drawn out one joke movie, but I think it has a lot of charm and a good few belly-laughs. It's apparently based on a true story wherein an ageing Frank Sinatra was brought to Australia by an upstart young promoter called Rod Blue for a comeback tour. Frank called an irritating young journo a two-buck whore, which caused all the Australian unions, headed up by a pre-premiership Bob Hawke, to go on strike. So you get two intransigent men who don't say sorry - Sinatra and Hawke, eye-balling it - and this young promoter who is one more cancelled concert away from bankruptcy, caught in the middle. What we get from all this is a nicely observed, frothy slip of a movie. Joel Edgerton is endearing as the chancer, Rod Blue. Melanie Griffith is convincingly ditzy as Frank's squeeze and Rose Byrne is suitably sweet as the straight girl with a crush on Blue. The only weak link is Dennis Hopper, cast as Frank. That's not because Dennis is bad - just that imitating Sinatra is near-impossible. For my money, Ray Liotta did it best in the TV movie, The Rat Pack. But this is more than compensated for by the sheer brilliance of casting David Field (notable as Keithy George in CHOPPER) as a young Bob Hawke complete with insane hair-do, aviator specs and bad suit. Genius. So for any of you looking for a bit of Ol' Blue Eyes nostalgia combined with a conventional heart-warming rom-com, knock yourself out.

THE NIGHT WE CALLED IT A DAY premiered at Cannes 2003 and goes on limited release in the UK this week.