London Film Fest 2011 Day 4 - STATELESS THINGS

STATELESS THINGS is a movie I admired rather than enjoyed. Indeed, so little did I enjoy it, so long did it drag, so obscure was its meaning, that I considered walking out. But I'm glad I persevered to understand the overall architecture of the film and something of its purpose. 

Kim Kyung-Mook's follows his FACELESS THINGS with another movie set on the fringes of contemporary South Korean society. The first forty-five moments focus on Jun - an illegal immigrant from North Korea who is exploited by his employer, forms a tentative relationship with a sweet girl - another immigrant - but eventually finds himself forced to trick for cash. The second forty-five minute segment moves to a more luxurious but no less sexually exploitative situation. Hyeon is a kept in a nice apartment by a closeted homosexual, tricking in his spare time, and caught in a deeply obsessive relationship. As the movie reaches its conclusive segment, I became very confused about what was going on. Jun and Hyeon clearly meet, there's a confused, suffocating finale, are they two aspects of the same man? Figuratively? Literally?

The directorial style goes from social realism in the first half, to showy and quirky in the romance sequence, to almost Lynchian in its obscurity in the final segment. All of which is unsettling. There is also a lot of very explicit homosexual sex, and perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of my day of screenings was to watch couples walk out of the homosexual sex scenes in STATELESS THINGS but not during similarly explicit but heterosexual scenes in SHAME earlier in the day. I guess it's still a sad indication of the world we live in.

STATELESS THINGS played Venice, Vancouver and London. It doesn't yet have a commercial release date.

London Film Fest 2011 Day 4 - BERNADETTE: NOTES ON A POLITICAL JOURNEY

BERNADETTE: NOTES ON A POLITICAL JOURNEY is a simply brilliantly made documentary about a simply amazing woman. A woman, mind you, that I hadn't heard of before I sat down to watch the movie, but that I am now convinced is a deeply important figure in British and Irish political history - the kind of woman we should be taught about in school. The sad thing is that while I think this movie should be seen by all, it doesn't yet have a commercial release date - in fact it doesn't even have a page on IMDBPro! - something I hope will be rectified by the end of the festival.

Bernadette Devlin's story begins in an impoverished large Catholic family in Northern Ireland in the 50s and 60s. Orphaned early, raised by strong women - grandmothers, nuns - she became a radical politician in university, battling for Irish civil rights. She was the youngest elected MP in decades; served time for her actions at the Battle of the Bogside; witnessed Bloody Sunday; and punched Reginald Maudling in the House of Commons when he claimed the police shooting of unarmed civilians was in self-defence. In the 1970s she suffered an assassination attempt by the UFF - an attempt the police did nothing to present - and was a powerful voice during the early 80s hunger strikes. And in the 1990s she was effectively blocked from opposing the peace process when her daughter was dragged through the courts. Throughout, she comes across as fiercely intelligent, full of integrity, and inspiring.

Director Lelia Doolan brilliantly fillets the historical record - TV footage, newspaper headlines - in support of her candid interviews with Bernadette over the past decade - the real strength and heart of the film. The resulting film feels well-researched, economically told, and full of genuine insight. Bernadette's voice feels unmediated, full of integrity and compelling. And I didn't miss talking head interviews with her contemporaries - because of the way in which the archive footage was used. 

Earlier this week, I was listening to a Radio 4 programme where an author reminded us that the "first" British Empire, was the Empire at home - the conquest of Wales, Scotland and Ireland. It's something that is easy to forget. It's also easy to forget how recently that political entanglement was causing violence - from the hunger strikes in the early 80s back to Bloody Sunday and before. It's also easy to forget that while our civil liberties were massively eroded in the post 9/11 period - and we were horrified about detention without limit in Guantanemo - that these policies were all in action in Northern Ireland long before - with internment camps and the brutalisation of the Catholic population. I guess what I'm trying to say is that it is unforgivable not to try to understand the Irish conflict better, and that this documentary is a crucial and valuable part of that process. It deserves to be seen as widely as possible. 

BERNADETTE: NOTES ON A POLITICAL JOURNEY has no commercial release date yet.

London Film Fest 2011 Day 4 - LIKE CRAZY

God I hated this movie. I hated it from the opening scene where kookily sweet English girl Anna (Felicity Jones) propositions  goofy, nerdy American boy Jacob (Anton Yelchin) with a quirkily, goofily, cutesy letter under his windscreen-wiper.  I hated the falling in love scenes - all reading each other's poetry and carving each other's names on a chair - adolescent crappiness - and the self-indulgent, stupid manner in which the girl screws up her visa application by over-staying her welcome.  I had no sympathy for the couple. She just seemed selfish and juvenile - he just seemed weedy and pathetic.  Her parents seemed unbelievably nice - why didn't they just slap them both round the face and tell them to get on with it?  And as for so-called honest insights about the problems with long-distance relationships - jealousy, cheating, feeling left out, expense - frankly, there's nothing more profound in this flick than in the mainstream rom-com GOING THE DISTANCE.  

Just because you film everything in a ramshackle indie style; give it a score by Dustin O'Halloran; and neither of the lead characters ever wash or comb their hair, doesn't make a movie authentic or interesting.  I really just don't get the hype it's receiving.  It struck me as juvenile, self-indulgent and banal - just like its milquetoast lead characters.  ENOUGH ALREADY!  

LIKE CRAZY played Sundance 2011 where it won the Grand Jury Prize - Dramatic beating TERRI, MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE and HERE. Felicity Jones won the Special Jury Prize for Acting.  The version shown at London 2011 has been cut to achieve a PG-13 rating.  LIKE CRAZY will be released in the US on October 28th and in the UK on February 3rd.

Felicity Jones on the red carpet for the UK premiere
of LIKE CRAZY at the BFI London Film Festival

London Film Fest 2011 Day 4 - SHAME - One of the best films of the year

Michael Fassbender (Brandon) and Steve McQueen (Director) at the
photocall for SHAME at the BFI London Film Festival 2011.

SHAME is a movie that is so brutally honest and achingly sympathetic about sex and love addiction that I can't help but believe that someone in the production is or knows someone with the disease, as I do.  It leaves you profoundly thankful that someone had the balls to go where few mainstream film-makers would dare to go, and had the wit, style and empathy to depict highly sexually explicit material without one iota of leeriness or mockery.  

The movie centres on a brother and sister called Brandon and Sissy (Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan).  They have clearly suffered some kind of childhood trauma that has resulted in deeply disturbed attitudes toward sex and love, as well as behaviours of literal self-harm and suicide on the part of Sissy.  Brandon has created a successful, almost pathologically clean life in New York, but secretly feeds his compulsion for sex with whores, cyber-sex, one-night stands and compulsive masturbation. He takes no joy in these activities but is maintaining his dual existence comfortably until Sissy arrives.  She is less a sex than love addict, craving the attention of her brother - a relationship that hints at a dangerously unboundaried sexual tension - then his boss - she uses sex to get what she really wants, which is an approximation of a genuine emotional closeness - and self-harms when she can't get it.

Sissy's arrival and exposure of Brandon's double life leads to a moment of deep shame and purging, and an attempt to have a normal sexual relationship with an office worker. It's a relationship we know is doomed given Brandon's condition - and which precipitates a backlash that culminates in a scene of profoundly explicit sex that is also perhaps the most moving and despairing piece of acting I've seen in quite some time.  Particular credit to DP Sean Bobbitt and director Steve McQueen for capturing Michael Fassbender simulating orgasm in a manner that looks completely desperate, horrific, horrified and pained. One could almost have ended the movie on that scene and perfectly captured the tragedy at its heart.  

It should be clear by now that I am full of admiration for this bold, brave, painful movie.  Fassbender once again displays his complete courage and Steve McQueen his ability to use visuals and silence to create scenes of quiet power. But perhaps the biggest revelation was Carey Mulligan, who takes on an extremely challenging role - exposing herself physically and emotionally - and is utterly convincing.  Admittedly, SHAME is in some respects less pure than HUNGER, given that it plays with a wider cast of characters and a less austere colour palette.  But what it looses in purity and visceral power it makes up in its deep humanity.

SHAME played Toronto, Venice and London 2011. It goes on release in the US on December 2nd; in the  UK on January 13th; in Germany on March 1st and in the Netherlands on March 15th 2012.


For those wishing to seek more information about recovery from sex addiction please use the following link: http://saa-recovery.org.uk/materials/79-leaflets.html. It gives useful information and advice to anyone wanting to learn more, as well as for health professionals.

London Film Fest 2011 Day 3 - THE DAY HE ARRIVES

THE DAY HE ARRIVES is an intriguing, slippery, funny little South Korean art-house flick, directed by Hong Sang Soo as a kind of vintage Woody-Allen-esque take on thirty-somethings drinking, flirting and ruminating on life, relationships and co-incidence. The trigger of the film is a semi-famous movie director called Yoo Seongjun visiting friends in Seoul from a self-imposed exile in a provincial university. He seems diffident, annoyed at fawning film-students and embarrassed by former colleagues. He's sentimental about an old love affair and yet throws himself at a pretty young girl in a bar. He seems compelled to relive the day he arrives over and over, each time events take a slightly different turn and shed light on characters and relationships. And the whole thing revolves around drinking and eating and drinking some more! The movie is hard to characterise. It's very funny, contains some on-point relationship insights - and yet feels somehow insubstantial - an exercise in writing around a funny central "Groundhog Day" concept. And yet I do find myself thinking about it - it has left its mark - and of all the films I have seen to date, it strikes me as the most original, and the one I'd love to see again. Definitely worth seeking out, and thanks to Filmland Empire for the tip-off. 

THE DAY HE ARRIVES / BOOK CHON BAN HYANG played Cannes 211. It doesn't have a commercial release date yet.

London Film Fest 2011 Day 3 - SARAH PALIN: YOU BETCHA!

SARAH PALIN: YOU BETCHA! is a really bad documentary.  Risibly, embarrassingly so.  And here's why.  1) There's no balance. 2) There's no insight.  3) There's no context and therefore no relevance. 4) Cheap stunts undermine the purported aim of the project.  

1) There's no balance.  Directors Nick Broomfield (AILEEN: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF A SERIAL KILLER) and Joan Churchill (BATTLE FOR HADITHA) claim that they're going to Wassila, Alaska to discover the true Sarah Palin.  They claim they aren't making a "hit movie".  But that's bollocks.  They clearly had already made up their mind about Palin  before they made their movie. They are evidently delighted that it turns out to be a character assassination.  There is no balance.  No attempt at context.  No real seriousness. Where are the interviews with her supporters? If no-one in Alaska would speak to them, why not talk to her supporters in other states - ordinary folk and political operators. Why not attempt to understand her appeal, beyond her charisma? They claim that they want to take her seriously as a political threat, so why not do just that?  But no, this isn't that kind of film.  This isn't serious engagement with the rise of the evangelical right wing, but a cheap National Enquirer type story.

2) There's no insight. One has to assume that anyone who wants to see this movie knows who Palin is and follows US politics. And if that's the case - if you already know about Troopergate; watched those Tina Fey impressions; saw Palin on Fox and watched her popularity plummet after the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords - this movie really doesn't add anything to your knowledge.  I mean, we all know that Palin is ill-educated and ill-qualified for office - that she abhors scholarship, has anti-diluvian anttitudes toward homosexuality, and has used power to pursue personal vendettas. That's why she's know so unpopular that she isn't standing for the presidency.  The only genuine coup is an interview with Trooper Mike Wooten, Palin's ex brother-in-law who she got fired from his job.

3) There's no context and therefore no relevance. The tragedy for Broomfield and Churchill is that their subject matter was crumbling beneath them during production.  Palin had already been eclipsed by Michelle Bachman during filming and during editing not only did Palin's star fall, but by now even Bachman looks irrelevant. Even Rick Perry's numbers have gone South.   The film-makers delude themselves into believing that their documentary contributed to Palin's decision not to run but one suspects that they have come woefully late to the game. The film-makers could've made their movie still seem relevant if they had made more of an attempt to look at the wider movement Palin helped create - The Tea Party - and rise of popular evangelical politics.  Palin's particular character failings have made her unlikely to hold office again, but she remains a kingmaker, and if that's her continued threat, then it needed to be explored. What precisely is her continued power?  Why do ordinary people respond to her? It isn't enough to say personal charisma. We need to understand what she says.  Sadly, this just isn't that kind of film.

4) Cheap stunts undermine the purported aim of the project.   The film-makers claim that while most British people treat Palin as a joke, they wanted to treat her seriously, reflecting the threat that her presidency would be.  But that's belied by Broomfield's trademark, semi-Michael-Moore penchant for cheap stunts and putting himself in the frame.  It starts with shooting fish in a barrel - anyone can, after all, find video footage from Christian fundamentals showing rapture that looks ridiculous to liberal eyes. And continues with cheap tricks: Broomfield getting up with a megaphone at a Palin speaking engagement - or chasing her down at book signings.  Hardly dignified, and not even that funny - just rather pathetic.

Let me be clear. I hold Palin in contempt. But she was for a time a serious political threat, and the movement she represents still is.  This documentary was a valuable opportunity to explore that threat - but instead it looks cheap, nasty, and given it's narrow focus, sadly irrelevant. I suspect that Palin's decision not to run will seriously affect its chances of distribution. 

SARAH PALIN: YOU BETCHA! played Toronto and London 2011 and was released in the US on September 2011.