MAY DECEMBER** - BFI London Film Festival 2023 - Day 4

Todd Haynes' latest film fails to ignite. What's the point of setting up such a grungy nasty little tabloid scandal, complete with melodramatic music and Chekhov's hunting rifle, if you aren't going to truly mine the emotional gore?  Instead, we get a limp, anaemic relationship drama, enlivened only by the occasional caustic barb from the matriarch (SALTBURN vibes, anyone?) but one that ultimately wastes great performances from its twin leads of Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman.

Moore stars as the deeply delusional and manipulative Gracie, now 60. She lives with her husband and three nearly grown kids. The twist is that Gracie, when 36, seduced aforementioned husband when he was ijust 13 (although British audiences may fail to grasp just how young a seventh grader is for most of the running time.)  Over twenty years later there is no sign that Gracie realises that she has done anything wrong, and her husband seems to be living in a state of arrested development, more elder child than partner.  So much so that I spent much of the film trying to figure out if Charles Melton was a bad actor or just directed to look simple.

The family's fake-we're-fine lives are upturned when Natalie Portman's TV actress comes to town to research an upcoming movie.  In her own way, Portman's Elizabeth is just as fake and manipulative as Gracie, except she is more self-aware of why she is behaving the way she does.  It's a great role for Portman who gets to show us her subtle manipulations.  Portman also has a fantastic monologue straight to camera that is as good as anything she has done since BLACK SWAN.

I just felt that all of this was wasted in a script by Samy Burch that fails to really go as nasty and melodramatic as it could've done. I wanted more about how a young abused child comes to realise he was taken advantage of, his life thwarted. I wanted more of the kids' reactions to being raised in this weird set-up. I wanted twisted queer frissons between Gracie applying lipstick to Elizabeth.  I was waiting for something, anything to happen, and all I got was a tease. Chekhov's rifle failed to fire. 

MAY DECEMBER is rated R and has a running time of 113 minutes. It played Cannes and London 2023.

WONDERSTRUCK - Day 2 - BFI London Film Festival 2017

I read Brian Selznick's WONDERSTRUCK upon hearing that his screen adaptation would be playing the BFI London Film Festival and immediately fell in love with it.  So many of its themes resonated with me - from the fear of having no place to fit in in society; to the love of collecting and old books; to the delight in architecture and models; and most importantly of all, a captivation with the history of cinema itself.  And that's all before one realised that this was going to be a profoundly beautiful treatment of the challenges and triumphs of growing up deaf.  Added to its thematic richness, Selznick's book was truly beautiful, unique and imaginative. He intertwines two stories of two kids from different eras - a girl called Rose living in 1920s New Jersey, and a boy called Ben living in 1970s Minnesota. Rose's story is told in beautiful black and white pencil drawings and depict a world of silent movie stars and the golden age of New York. Meanwhile Ben's story is told in text, but text that is beautifully and deliberately typeset. As the stories later meet and mingle, so to do the formats. The result is a visually stunning book.

Acclaimed auteur Todd Haynes admitted in his introduction to this film that he wasn't the obvious director for such a book at first glance - this is his first film aimed at a younger audience.  But when one considers its fascination with cinema history, who better than a director who has reinterpreted Sirkian melodrama for modern audiences? WONDERSTRUCK demands a director who is comfortable in different eras and styles, and who can harness the powers of pure cinema - visual, sound design, music - to convey emotional journeys and suspense. And this is what we get in this film.  In Rose's story, huge attention has been paid to texture - her hair, the patterns on her clothes, the thick ribbing on her tights, visually echoing the cross-grain drawings in the original book. And there's a delight and wonder at the stunning architecture of New York - we see it afresh in her eyes.  Millicent Simmonds - a talented deaf actress in her screen debut - is captivating in the part.  In Ben's story I feel Haynes really added to Selznick's world, showing a grittiness and griminess to pre-Giuliani New York and using music cues to great effect. In fact, Carter Burwell's score is one of the most impressive thing about this film, and holds the disparate themes together.

I can see why some people have been less than impressed by WONDERSTRUCK. It is patient and deliberate in how it unravels its story - the plot reveals depend on "big" events happening that may feel too many or too obvious - and its essentially a rather melancholy story about loss.  But I also feel that it's a deeply moving story about finding one's place in the world, triumphing over loneliness, and forging one's own path.  And I must admit that the final half hour had me in tears. Fans of the book will not be disappointed, and I feel that in the technical brilliance of the film, neither will Haynes fans if they open themselves up to the young adult material. After all, aren't so many of his films about misfits struggling to find a place in oppressive bourgeois conventional society?

WONDERSTRUCK has a running time of 117 minutes and is rated PG.  The movie played Cannes, San Sebastian, London and New York 2017. It opens in the USA on Oct 20th, in Hong Kong on Oct 26th, in France on Nov 15th, in the Netherlands on Dec 7th and in Belgium on Dec 20th.

CAROL - BFI London Film Festival 2015 - Day Nine

In 1952, Patricia Highsmith, author of THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY, wrote a novel called The Price of Salt, about a young girl and an elder married woman who fall in love and try to make a life together.  It was so controversial, not just in showing homosexual love but also not punishing the characters for it, that it could not be published under her name.  Nonetheless, it was a success, maybe because it was the only place people could read about such things.  But also, I think, because regardless of gender, it's a wonderfully authentic depiction of a coup de foudre, of falling in love and of trying to conform - which are all deeply relatable matters. Moreover, in Carol, Highsmith created a wonderfully charismatic character. Self-assured but sometimes nervous - tender but also uncompromising - a good mother but also self-aware enough to realise that she cannot be other than herself.  Few of us would envy Carol's position as a woman  divorcing her husband at a time when the odds were stacked against her, but many of us have come to admire her.  By contrast, the young girl Therese Belivet is perhaps closer to how we feel ourselves - unsure, grasping at self-knowledge, acting on a whim, and unwilling to let go the tide. 

Overlooked DVD of the month - OFFICE KILER

Still photographer Cindy Sherman is famous for photographing herself in poses taken from B-movies, horror movies and film noir. In 1997 she made a feature length film called OFFICE KILLER that has been described as a mix of all these genres. It's a story about a dowdy secretary who starts killing people in her office. While not short on gore, the movie singularly fails, however, to work either as horror movie or as noir.

In fact, the film only really works as an increasingly ridiculous and perhaps unintentionally funny spoof. Carol Kane is wickedly brilliant as the dowdy copy editor turned killer, with her high-pitched voice, frowsy costumes and nervous ticks. Molly Ringwald is cast against type as the office flirt and is clearly having a ball in her pastiche-50s outfits. Barbara Sukowa (of ZENTROPA fame) is ridiculous as the Joan Collins'-style magazine editor. All together, we have a pastiche of the way in which women have been represented film.

Apart from the unintentional laughter, what else can OFFICE KILLER offer a contemporary audience? Well, there is a hint of the middle-class neuroies that hit the US and UK when "off-shoring" and "down-sizing" became buzz-words. And the way in which the staff react to the introduction of email and laptops makes for fascinating social history. Finally, Cindy Sherman's use of colour is admirable. I particularly love the exterior shots of the office building - shaded purple - contrasted against the unhealthy acid yellow coming from the windows. Sherman also frames her shots particularly well - always looking through desk lamps, over in-trays, and through doors.

OFFICE KILLER played Toronto 1007 and was released in the US that year. It played the London Fashion in Film Festival 2008. It is available on DVD.

Todd Haynes retrospective - SAFE

Todd Haynes' 1995 movie SAFE is one of the creepiest, most subversive films I have seen. It opens in perfectly manicured American suburbia - the home of the shag-pile carpet and the hostess trolley. Everything is perfect - almost too perfect. Sterile surfaces are photographed in perfectly symmetrical tableaux - coloured in bland pastel. Our protagonist is a housewife called Carol White. Julianne Moore plays her as a fragile woman, uneasy in her own skin. Her life is defined by her house and its furnishings and she exists to service the needs of her family.

Moments of black humour, satirising materialism, are flecked throughout this otherwise sinister and intense film. Just watch Carol's reaction when she realises her decorators have delivered the wrong coloured sofa! But for the most part this is a terrifying film. Carol develops non-specific illnesses. Is she really physically ill or are her allergic reactions a manifestation of a nervous disorder? Will her doctors and her family help her? Will she put herself forward for help? In the end, Carol scorns conventional therapy for a new-age centre for people sickened by the modern environment. In this final section, the movie shifts from a critique of bourgeois materialism and neuroses to a satire of new-age cults that cater to the whims of those willing to pay.

Haynes' film is notable for three reasons. First, as social critique it was remarkably prescient on the issues of environmental degradation and the rising tide of nameless fear whipped up by politicians and the media. In addition, one might read the movie as a parable about the irrational reaction to the rise of AIDS in the 1980s. The second reason why the film is notable is that it gave us a glimpse of Haynes' technical accomplishment - a facility that was to be expressed most fully in his homage to Douglas Sirk, FAR FROM HEAVEN. Finally, the film was a break-out role for Julianne Moore and foreshadows many of the roles she was later to become famous for. In her icy detachment and her self-imprisonment, Carol White is the precursor for Linda Patridge in MAGNOLIA and more particularly, of Laura Whitaker in FAR FROM HEAVEN and Laura Brown in THE HOURS. For all these reasons, and the sheer horror of this chilling thriller, SAFE remains a must-see movie.

SAFE opened in 1995 and is available on DVD.

I'M NOT THERE - a daring conceit that mostly pays off

I'M NOT THERE is Todd Haynes audacious attempt to make a film, not so much about Bob Dylan's life, as about the way in which Dylan himself manipulated his own image and was in turn manipulated by his fans and the press. Haynes tackles head-on the difficulty of creating a linear, neat biopic about a poet, musician and political icon, who shifted shape so often. Dylan often seemed deperate to make us realise how non-chalant he was of what we thought of him. He wanted to appear aloof and enigmatic. As a result, I get the feeling that Dylan is a paradox and a mystery. But not to the extent that he'd like us to believe! Haynes response to the tangled web of image, fact and manuipulation is to create a collage of scenes, both real and imagined. He takes on a surreal journey into Dylan's alter-egos. He recreates iconic documentary-footage and press conferences. Most notoriously, Haynes casts a number of actors to depict Dylan's various self-creations. He weaves their stories together, leaving the viewer to pick through the minefield of information and misinformation.

I admire the bravery of Haynes' concept and for the most part, I think it pays off. The young actor, Marcus Carl Franklin, is brilliant as Woody-Guthrie-Wannabe-Bob. This was the point where a middle-class Jewish boy with a lovely singing voice transformed himself into an Old Time blues singer, inspired by the laments of the Great Depression and the radicalism that came out of it. He transformed his voice, his name and his stance, in a manner that is as radical as having a teenage white man played by a pre-teen African-Amercan boy. In another incarnation we see the fantastically talented young British actor, Ben Whishaw, play Dylan the Poet. He's filmed face-on to the camera in black and white, explaining his stance on language, politics and poetry. He's already complaining about how slippery language and labels can be - a true post-modernist - and will return throughout the movie. Next up, we have Christian Bale as Acoustic-Folk-Bob, who latches onto the folk movement and takes it from an underground anti-establishment scene to the very heart of the mainstream. In faux-documentary footage, we see a Joan Baez type figure played by Julianne Moore tell us how quickly Dylan put himself in opposition to the movement, becoming cynical about its chances of success. We then have the radical break that will forever define Bob - his use of the electronic guitar and move from political songs to songs of personal experience. Cate Blanchett is note perfect (and painfully thin - intentionally?) as Electro-Bob. She plays Bob at his most scabrous, cynical, manipulative and spikey. It's glorious stuff. Finally, we revert back to Christian Bale as Born-Again-Bob.

All this material is superbly acted and filmed with a technical mastery of different types of film, lens and style. If Haynes had left it at that, he would have had a tightly-knit, fascinating film of about 90 minutes in length. The problem is that he adds two other "Bobs". The first is Actor-Bob who plays Folk-Bob in a movie. He's played by Heath Ledger - the least comvincing portrayal. Actor-Bob has a long set of scenes with Charlotte Gainsbourg playing his wife. I suppose the point of these scenes is to show us how cruel Dylan was to some of the women in his life. I thought this could have been more effectively portrayed by expanding the role of the Joan Baez figure in the Folk-Bob scenes. The second redundant Bob is Richard Gere's portryal of Bob as a Billy the Kid figure. Gere is fine in this role, but the segment seemed the most pointless, the most random and the least well though out.

I'M NOT THERE played Venice 2007 where Todd Haynes won the Special Jury Prize and Cate Blanchett won the Volpi Cup. It also played Toronto, London and Vienna 2007. It opened in Italy, the US, Denmarl. Canada, France, Finland, Belgium and the UK in 2007. It is currently on release in Israel and opens in Norway on January 18th. It opens in Austria on February 1st, Sweden on February 8th, Germany on February 28th, the Czech Republic on March 6th, the Netherlands on March 13th and Japan on May 17th 2008.