THE PALE BLUE EYE**

Scott Cooper (CRAZY HEART, HOSTILES) returns to our screens with a gothic crime story starring Christian Bale as a jaded, grief-stricken detective called in to solve a gruesome murder at West Point in the 1830s. He is assisted by the young Edgar Alan Poe who really did attend West Point briefly.  Harry Melling gives the stand out performance of the film as the strange, mournful but intelligent young writer. The murder involves some strange, apparently ritualistic mutilations that allow for spooky slash Dickensian cameos from Robert Duvall and Gillian Anderson respectively. In fact the latter made me think of her turn in the wonderful BBC adaptation of Bleak House as this film matches a lot of that show's colour palette and elegiac tone. 

The problem with the film is that it lacks any real drive or propulsive impact either as a detective puzzle or as a horror story. I think it maybe wants to be an emotional investigation of grief instead? Even that didn't really work for me. It just felt dull and overlong. The only reason to watch it is for Masanobu Takayanagi's (HOSTILES) stunningly wintry colour-drained photography. 

THE PALE BLUE EYE is rated R, has a running time of 127 minutes and is streaming on Netflix.

SUNDOWN***** - BFI London Film Festival 2021 - Day 5

Michel Franco's SUNDOWN is a stunning taut character study that takes you from extreme discomfort to a kind of blissful understanding in its short 85 minute running time. It features a typically memorable and nuanced performance from Tim Roth as an extremely wealthy man called Neil who seemingly on a whim decides to turn his back on his family.  As the film opens, we see the family luxuriating in a Mexican resort that could come straight out of HBO's White Lotus. As Neil wryly says to Colin, "why do have to be such an arsehole?"  Their existence is lubricated by endless drinks and low-level bickering. We are unclear as to Neil's relationship with Alice (Charlotte Gainsbourg) but he seems distant.  

The key plot point happens half an hour in when the family is called home to deal with the death of Alice's mother, and Neil pretends he's left his passport at the hotel and doesn't board the flight. He checks into a random downtown hotel and rather sleepily falls into a rhythm of drinking at the beach by day and sleeping with a local girl by night. He seems happy in this relationship and I rather admired his ability to slip into the local scene. But the audience's frustration mounts with each lie to Alice and our discomfort rises with the momentary flashes of violence.

As the film moves into its final act, Franco and Roth masterfully manipulate our feelings. It's testament to Roth's easy-going charm that even at his most inexplicable, we still hang in there with Neil, hoping to understand. Credit to to Henry Goodman (TAKING WOODSTOCK) as Richard, because his faith in Neil keeps us engaged. The resulting film is slippery and strange and unforgettable.

SUNDOWN has a running time of 83 minutes. It played Venice, Toronto and London 2021. 

3 HEARTS / 3 COEURS - LFF14 - Day Eleven

3 HEARTS is a rather dull French romantic comedy featuring a meet-cute, a surprise re-meet and many other cliches of Hollywood banality.  The fact that it's a French movie has somehow elevated this workmanlike film into the realms of being selected for the London Film Festival. Don't be fooled. There's nothing to see here.

Benoit Poolverde (COCO BEFORE CHANEL) plays a dull tax inspector called Marc who misses a train home and meets a charming woman (Charlotte Gainsbourg's Sylvie) with whom he walks the streets of a provincial town in the manner of BEFORE SUNRISE.  No matter, they separate, their planned meeting never happens.  Later, Marc meets a lovely antiques dealer called Sophie (Chiara Mastroianni) and they marry and start a family.  They never meet the enigmatic sister, because hey, she lives in the US and they just never get round to skype-ing. These contrivances continue until the the necessary confrontation of all three lovers as supervised by Catherine Deneuve's matriarch.  

The resulting film is banal, predictable and oddly uninvolving.  Charlotte Gainsbourg's trademark froideur just doesn't work in a movie where we're meant to sympathise with all three sides of this thwarted love triangle.  A misfire on all counts.

3 HEARTS aka 3 COEURS has a running time of 90 minutes.  The movie played Venice, Toronto and London 2014.  It opened earlier this year in Belgium and France and opens in the Netherlands on November 6th and in Italy on November 27th.

George Ghon on MELANCHOLIA

Andreas Gursky's Rhein II

Doom and gloom are high on the agenda nowadays. Lars van Trier’s poetic Melancholia is one of the more beautiful jigsaw pieces that deal with the sombre mood in an arresting way, creatively speaking. A big blue planet named Melancholia approaches earth on a trajectory, which will eventually lead to a fatal crash, terminally extinguishing humanity. Given that background, we follow the wedding party of Justine (Kirsten Dunst) at a remote, neo Gothic estate, owned by the rich husband (Kiefer Sutherland) of Justine’s sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg). The newly wed couple (with Alexander Skarsgård as Michael) arrives in a pristine mood, trying to wiggle their oversized limousine up a narrow mountain road, delaying their arrival, but keeping their state of general excitement and mutual enjoyment. Only when faced with the party guests, her parents (a confused John Hurt and a cold Charlotte Rampling), and her unscrupulous boss (Stellan Skarsgård), Justine’s fragile emotional composure comes to light and we witness the mental pains of a pretty girl, which seems to have, by all conventional standards, a pretty good life. 

If we remember the Justine of de Sade’s eponymous novel as a victim of society in pre-revolutionary France, whose virtuous intentions get callously exploited by powerful figures (representations of church/law/aristocracy), Lars van Trier’s character is a bit more subtle, her suffering largely self-inflicted, or so it seems. There is no apparent traumatizing event that links to her mental condition. The Melancholia from which she suffers comes out of the blue, like the menacing planet that is spiralling towards earth on its fatal course. On a superficial level it could be afflicted by it, but speaking in more symbolic terms, the planetary crash could act as metaphor for the threat that Melancholia, the illness, is to contemporary society. In this context, Slavoj Zizek’s book ‘Living in the End Times’, which was originally published in 2010, gains new relevance. In a chapter on depression he asks the crucial question: ‘If the twentieth century was the Freudian century, so that even its worst nightmares were read as (sado-masochistic) vicissitudes of the libido, will the twenty-first be the century of the post-traumatic disengaged subject (…)?’ The libido recedes in that transformation, leaving Thanatos to overpower Eros. 

Or the libido takes its funny turns, to say the least. Instead of procreating with her understanding husband, Justine opts for the quicky with the dumb office boy on the nightly golf course to momentarily please her wavering sexual desire. It has to be said that the men in this film don’t live up to their roles. The boss is an asshole, the father doesn’t listen, and the only thing the brother in law can think of is his money. The male characters are bystanders on the sideline, one-dimensional lightweights that merely accessorize the plot, which is driven by the emotionally complex interactions of the two sisters, Justine and Claire. As the end of the world approaches, they have to face the tragedy without any masculine comforting. Claire is ridden with terror, but Justine doesn’t fear the approaching apocalypse. Mankind is evil, she concludes, and the universe better off without it. She is longing to die, can’t wait to swap the bland reality she experienced for something that might turn out to be spiritually more fulfilling. 

This abstract desire to annihilate the human race and trade it in for something more sublime, is equally apparent in Andreas Gursky’s photograph Rhine II, which just sold for $4,3m at Christies in New York and broke the prize record in a photography sale. The large print shows the grey Rhine River framed by its green bed under a foggy sky. Ultra-minimalist composure, strangely attractive, but with every human trace carefully removed in the retouching process of the digital file. Why are the aesthetes longing for a post-human equilibrium so much these days? Both Gursky and van Trier suggest a pretty radical solution to the struggles of society in the 21st century: Complete wipe out. Let’s hope that this message can be seen in a metaphorical way, too, and be understood as a mere hint that it is time to change, soon. 

MELANCHOLIA played Cannes 2011 where Kirsten Dunst won Best Actress, and Toronto. It opened earlier this year in the Czech Republic, Denmark, Norway, Poland, Sweden, Finland, Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Brazil, France, Estonia, the Netherlands, Greece, Ireland, Romania, the UK, Germany, Italy and Hungary. It opened earlier in November in Spain, Canada and the US. It goes on release in December in Portugal, Slovenia and Australia. It opens in January in Hong Kong and Turkey and in February in Japan.

London Film Fest Day 16 - PERSECUTION

Daniel is an layabout construction worker, without a house or a steady job, or, apparently, a comb. He spends his time trying to get away from people, sulking and feeling sorry for himself. He is insecure about the fact that his career-woman girlfriend, Sonia, won't commit to him, but it's not like he's ever introduced her to his best friend, Thomas, or to his brother. And now he's being stalked by a man who claims he loves him, and alternates between kicking him into the street and having a familial chat over a cigarette. Yes, Daniel is a shiftless, emotional mess. Often intensely dislikeable, and yet, in Patrice Chereau's new film, ultimately sympathetic.

The movie is an intimate portrait of a man who has great difficulty with intimate relationships. The most painful moments are conversations with his girlfriends - they feel like negotiations over the terms of engagement. The most awkward, but also the most weirdly touching, are with the stalker. The resulting film is well-acted, well-written, and compelling. Romain Duris and Charlotte Gainsbourg are impressive as the couple, and Jean-Hughes Anglade does well in a difficult smaller role as the stalker.

But I found myself a little disappointed in PERSECUTION. Maybe I am being unfair in holding it up against his other films, which almost uniformly set a very high benchmark. Where, given the subject matter of sexual obsession, is the sexual tension of the marvelous LA REINE MARGOT? Where, given, the deep crisis in the central relationship, is the brutality of Chereau's best and most recent film, GABRIELLE? Certainly, PERSECUTION is a good film, but it is not a film I need to see again.

PERSECUTION played Venice 2009 and will be released in France on December 9th.

ANTICHRIST - emotional psychodrama

ANTICHRIST is, to my mind, Danish auteur Lars von Trier's best film since DANCER IN THE DARK. Forget the hype - ignore talk of genital mutilation and talking foxes - at core this is a deeply felt, beautifully filmed story of grief and religious guilt.

The film opens with a prologue shot in black and white, in extreme slow motion, set to a haunting aria about escaping tragic fate. Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg play a married couple having passionate sex. Their is graphic nudity, but it's not sensational. The camera focuses on the wife's face as she climaxes. The footage is intercut with scenes showing the couple's toddler leaving his cot, climbing onto a table and falling out of their apartment window to his death. It is immediately apparent that Lars von Trier is going to be tackling issues of women's sexuality as conceived in religious propaganda: a woman can be a mother or a whore, and the price of climax is to lose the child.

We then cut to the first chapter in the story, "Grief", and the movie switches back to real-time, colour and naturalistic acting. The chapter sees the mother unable to move beyond grief, consumed with guilt at having left her son unattended. The father, a psychotherapist, wants to take her out of hospital and off meds. He thinks grief is natural and has to be confronted and worked through. She thinks he's arrogant, but submits to his plan. The acting in this chapter is superlative. I've never seen such an honest and touching evocation of guilt on screen. Charlotte Gainsbourg earns her Best Actress award at Cannes in spades. And when you consider that Lars von Trier is often seen as a technical master, but just a jokester, this is simply stunning work.

The second chapter, "Pain (Chaos Reigns") sees the couple journeying to their country cabin in the woods to confront the wife's fear of "nature red in tooth and clear". The husband tries to remain rational and evidently loves his wife dearly, but even he is saying unnatural, Shakespearian, portents - wild animals disfigured, damaged and dying. The wife can't shake off her fear: nature is dying and evil, "Satan's Church". She wakes up one morning, seemingly cured, but her husband distrusts the cure, as do we. Once again, the acting and emotional content in this chapter is searing, and the subtle build-up of dread masterly. I particularly liked the way in which DP Anthony Dod Mantle warps the image at the edges to give a feel of surreality. Sometimes the imagery is so beautiful it's as heart-breaking as the content. The only problem is the final image, where a fox intones "chaos reigns". We all laughed. Maybe that's what we needed? Maybe it's Lars von Trier showing us that even in the midst of the most serious material he can still be a prankster. Either way, I think the movie would've been better without it. But then, it wouldn't be a Lars von Trier film!

The third chapter, "Despair (Gynocide)" is where the stuff that you've read about starts to happen. The wife was writing a thesis on the medieval church's cruel treatment of women which centred heavily on sexually active, powerful women being burned as witches. While researching in the log cabin a year ago, she came to the conclusion that the women actually deserved that punishment. In other words she has become a self-hating woman - a female misogynist. What follows in this chapter and the next, "The Three Beggars", is that the wife descends into madness and takes out her anger on her husband and herself. It is savage - both graphic - and emotionally freakish. But that is all, I think, called for. I never felt that the material was sensationalist, and, once again, Charlotte Gainsbourg must be praised for making it seem credible. I love the ambiguity of whether her greatest fear was "Me" as in herself of "Me" as in her husband. I love the ambiguity of whether she really was complicit in her son's murder. And I love the physical ambiguity in the prologue.

I think the real problem with ANTICHRIST is the sensationalist title, the aforementioned Fox scene, and the fact that it is going to be the victim of its own hype. The movie actually struck me as a bit banal - I had thought it would be up their with SALO but it's nowhere near. But when you reflect on it calmly, and see it for what it is, it remains an impressive, provocative and actually very moving piece of work. And no, a movie about a woman turned misogynist is not, of itself, misogynist, any more than BORAT was racist.

ANTICHRIST played Cannes 2009, where Charlotte Gainsbourg won Best Actress. It opened earlier this year in Denmark, Italy, Finland, France, Poland, Norway, Sweden, Kazakhstan and Russia. It opens in the UK on July 24th, but is on preview at the Curzon Soho next week. It opens in Spain on August 21st; in Brazil on August 28th; in Germany on September 10th; in Belgium on September 15th; in Romania on October 16th; in the USA on October 23rd and in the Netherlands on October 29th.

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.

GOLDEN DOOR/NUOVOMONDO - strange, beautiful, unique!

GOLDEN DOOR is one of those strange magical quiet films that you either take to your heart or find boring and pretentious. For my part, I was enchanted by something so magical and yet so authentic it feels like re-enacted social history.

GOLDEN DOOR opens in rural Sicily at the turn of the twentieth century. It is a country of superstition, mean understanding and deep poverty. Widower Salvatore Mancuso dreams of a land called Califormia where there are rivers of milk and the earth is so fertile that vegetables grow taller than men. So he sets off for America with his two sons, mother and two other girls from the village who will marry Italian-Americans and so gain their citizenship.

The small steps towards this goal make up the two hours of this film, and they are re-created in detail, with an observant glance that makes subtle judgements rather than large political points. The Mancuso family walk to the port-town from where they will sail to Ellis Island. They have scavenged shoes, suits and cloaks to make a good impression when they arrive. Before boarding they must pass medicals and have photographs taken - all strange and wondrous things. A well-dressed English lady, Lucy (Gainsbourg) attaches herself to the family and no-one has the confidence to ask why. A quack doctor tries to sell them medicine for the mute son.

The movie is about the strange bonds that form between the rural family and the well-dressed English woman. The grace of the movie is that it leaves almost everything unspoken and lives a little in the land of dreams. But the movie is also about the petty hurdles that these often illiterate people had to cross to enter into the New World. They are not simply tested for diseases but for being too "feeble-minded" to enter the USA.

But if you see this movie for no other reason, watch it for the beautiful production design by Carlos Conti and stunning use of the camera by DP Agnès Godard. The stand-out shot is an aerial view of the dock-side and the deck of the ship. At first it just looks like a single surface teeming with people. But as the boat pulls away, we see that they are split into voyagers and well-wishers.

The only flaw I can possibly think of is that some might object to the anachronistic use of Nina Simone in the score. (I embraced it!) But frankly, in a world of formulaic studio films, I'd rather directors were too daring and occasionally failed, rather than continually safe. Bravo, Emanuele Crialese!

GOLDEN DOOR/NUOVOMONDO played Venice and Toronto 2006. It opened in Italy in 2006 an din Poland, Sweden, France, Denmark, Belgium, Argentina, Israel, the Netherlands, Germany, the US, Greece and Hungary earlier in 2007. It is currently on release in the UK and opens in Finland on August 17th.

THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP/LA SCIENCE DES REVES - kooky, romantic, beautiful

THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP is a visual and imaginative tour de force from writer-director Michel Gondry (THE ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND). Some say that unshackled from post-modern cult writer, Charlie Kauffman, Gondry has slipped into beautiful but self-indulgent and ultimately boring whimsy. I beg to differ. While I can see the intelligence and conceptual brilliance of a movie like ETERNAL SUNSHINE, Kauffman's films have always left me a little cold. The characters always seemed like pawns in a clever game and I found the movies emotionally sterile. (Perhaps this is the point?) By contrast, THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP is deeply personal and each character is well-loved and engaging, despite going on a surreal, sometimes creepy romantic thrill-ride.

Our hero is a young artist called Stéphane with a child-like fondness for inventing things and optical illusions. Lured back to Paris from Mexico by his French mother with the offer of a creative job, Stéphane finds himself stuck as a typesetter in a basement full of kooky colleagues. The most memorable of these is a middle-aged alleged love-monster called Guy who mercilessly takes the piss out of his co-workers and upstages the lead characters whenever he is on screen. Faced with such a numbing job, Stéphane retreats into his richly imagined dreamworld. Here he is the star of his own Blue Peter style childrens TV show; he can kick his boss out of the window; and he can have fantasies about his co-worked Martine. However, events really kick off when he meets his shy neighbour Stéphanie. At first, he fancies her friend, but soon, Stéphanie's obession with rescuing knitted dolls and making things wins Stéphane over. The question is: will Stéphanie allow herself to be drawn into this charming, romantic dream-world and find love.

It should now be clear that you cannot approach this film with a cynical mind-set. The whole point is to confront us with an infantile man and ask us what is wrong with his reversion into dreams. To that end, the production & costume design betrays an attention to detail not seen since THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS and the characters have a similar habit of saying exactly what they think, no matter how naif or down-right bizarre that seems to us.

If the movie walks a fine line between whimsy and ridiculousness, it stays on the right side thanks largely to a laugh out loud funny script and outstanding performances from all lead and supporting actors. Among the supporting cast, Alain Chabat (LE GOUT DES AUTRES) is outstanding as Guy. And as far as the leads go, while Charlotte Gainsbourg is absolutely fine as Stéphanie, the revelation is Gael García Bernal as Stéphane. I have always liked his work but it has all been off a piece - THE CRIMES OF PADRE AMARO to THE KING to BAD EDUCATION, he has played sexually confident, almost predatory men. By contrast, in THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP he plays a shy, child-like character completely convincingly and - more of a revelation - plays comedy really well, moving as easily between English, Spanish and French as his character moves between dreams and reality.

THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP played Berlin 2006 and went on release in France, Germany, the US, Belgium, Russia, Denmark, Israel, Portugal, Mexico, Poland, the Netherlands, Greece, Hong Kong, Sweden, Turkey and Estonia in 2006. It opened in Finland and Italy in January 2007 and is currently on release in Spain and the UK. It opens in Japan on April 7th, in Australia on May 3rd and in Argentina on August 9th. THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP is also available on Region 1 DVD.

LEMMING - Another day, another disappointing movie

It seems like all I watch these days are film that are not so much bad as disappointing. From X-MEN 3 to THE KING, I watch films with actors, directors and production teams that I admire, but which fail to engage or excite. Today's offering is a French supernatural revenge thriller called LEMMING. The movie is a four-hand piece set in contemporary France. We are introduced to a young couple called Alain and Benedicte Getty. They are a "model couple" living in a nice suburb. The husband works for a high-tech company that makes fancy kit for monitoring one's own house - little flying webcams to spot leaks and such. He finds a lemming in the drain. This being a moody French film, that is a Significant Fact. Alain and Benedicte become entangled with Alain's oleagnious, whoremongering boss Richard, and his veangeful wife, Alice. The film unfurls at length into a supernatural thriller which I found dull, dull, dull. It was never spooky, never scary. Neither the script nor the camerawork created any tension or paranoia. The symbolism - spy-cams and suicidal lemmings - was hamfisted. The nightmare scene elicited unintended laughter. As for the ending, we are given an attempt at a tantalising enigma. But it is not a par with the final frames of that outstanding movie, HIDDEN/CACHE. The film fails badly and this is all the more pitiful considering that is directed by French wunderkind, Dominik Moll, and stars four great actors. Alain is played by Laurent Lucas - the actor who played cabaret-singer Marc Stevens in the superb Belgian horror flick, CALVAIRE. His wife Benedicte is played by Charlotte Gainsbourg, who played JANE EYRE in the outstanding Zeffirelli production and also featured in 21 GRAMS. Andre Dusollier plays the lecherous old Pollock - an actor I'll always remember for his similarly creepy performance in UN COEUR EN HIVER. Finally, the iconic Charlotte Rampling plays his veangeful wife, Alice. What a waste.

LEMMING opened Cannes 2005. It is at the fag-end of its super-limited UK release and at the start of a limited US release. It opens in Germany on July 13th 2006. I do not know of an Austrian or Australian release date.