London Film Fest 2011 Day 6 - RESTLESS

Gus Van Sant seems to alternate between directing genuinely art-house cinema often with an experimental edge and directing more mainstream fare.  It has to be said that RESTLESS is very much in the latter camp, and may well be his most banal film since FINDING FORRESTER.  Based on a debut feature film script by playwright Jason Lew, the movie feels like a sort of watered down romance with pretensions to the style and feel of HAROLD & MAUDE or even second-rate Wes Anderson (himself already derivative of H&M). You can't start a film with a lead character obsessively crashing funerals while wearing a three-piece suit and end the film to the sound of Nico without raising eyebrows.

If you set aside all that stylistic pilfering what do you get? A wannabe cute romance between two quirky teenagers: Mia Wasikowska's terminally ill Annabel and Henry Hopper's morbid, mournful Enoch.  They share a dark sense of humour, they don't quite fit into the world, and run around being kooky. We're meant to care. And then she dies. I just couldn't get into the film at all. I wanted the subversive comedy that the opening references to funerals implied, but which the movie didn't deliver aside from one very funny staged death scene.  I wanted the film to make more of it's one genuinely new and good idea - Enoch's imaginary friend, the kamikaze pilot Hiroshi (Ryo).  I wanted the movie to tackle the death from cancer with the honesty of Will Reiser's 50/50 but to no avail. I wanted to care, but just plain didn't.  I mean, there's something wrong with a movie when you care more about the plight of the hero's imaginary friend than the hero himself.  I think the problem here is the script, which once you strip it off its affectations, is pretty banal. The direction, photography and lead performances are just fine. Forgettable, derivative, blah.

RESTLESS opened earlier this year in Egypt, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Italy, Argentina and France. It played Cannes, Toronto and London.  It is currently on release in German, Greece, Russia and Spain and opens on October 21st in Finland and the UK. It opens in Portugal on November 10th; in Sweden on November 25th; in Hong Kong on December 1st and in Japan on December 23rd.

Overlooked DVD of the month - PARIS JE T'AIME

PARIS JE T'AIME is a series of 18 five minute short films inspired by the different arrondisements of Paris. Each director had 2 days to film in their designated area. Sadly, the films don't really work as a coherent whole. It isn't the case that watching one film will give you a cunning insight to another. As such, I'll review them as individual shorts.

The movie opens with MONTMARTRE**, in which director-actor Bruno Podalydès skewers our post-card vision of Paris, and Montmartre in particular, as a city of love. A middle-aged man curses the traffic and his lack of success with women. It's an entirely forgettable segment.

Gurinder Chadha uses her segment, QUAIS DE SEINE*, to comment on European perceptons of Muslim women who wear the hijab. A young girl articulates her choice to wear the veil to a bemused young ethnic European boy. This segment isn't forgettable but for all the wrong reasons. It's a pretty trite exploration of an extremely complicated social issue. Maybe a more profound treatment isn't possible in a five-minute slot? But if that were the case, Chadha should have chosen another story.

In LE MARAIS****, we finally get a fascinating and memorable segment. Gus van Sant shows a young man (Gaspard Ulliel) telling another that he loves him, not realising that the object of his affections can't understand French well enough to understand him. It's an enchanting and tragic little mood piece, but I don't quite understand why we need to have a cameo of Marianne Faithful. It strikes me as redundant cinematic name-dropping.

TUILLERIES**** is another fantastic segment. The Coen Brothers mess with us by filming the entire skit in a metro station. A nervous American tourist (Buscemi) gets roundly beaten up for daring to make eye contact with a kissing couple. So much for the city of love!

Walter Salles sticks to his preoccupations with social divides in LOIN DU 16e**. Cataline Sandino Moreno leaves her own baby to work as a nanny after a perishing commute. Her employer dehumanises her. It's all worthy enough but just like's Chadha's segment, comes across as a bit obvious and trite.

Christopher Doyle's bizarre segment has a salesman (Barbet Schroeder) enter a surreal Chinatown salon in PORTE DE CHOISY*. I was bemused and unimpressed. It's a shame - because it somewhat detracts from Doyle's reputation as an outstanding cinematographer.

In BASTILLE**, Leonor Watling shows a wealthy man trapped in a loveless marriage, but rediscovering his love for his wife (Miranda Richardson) when she falls ill. Much like the first segment, I thought Watling gave us a rather dull story, told with no visual flair.

Nobuhiro Suwa gives us a segment that rather predictably uses Juliette Binoche as a grieving mother. In a Gondry-esque flight of fancy she deludes herself with visions of a cowboy (Willem Defoe) in PLACE DES VICTOIRES**. It's all a bit mawkish and forced.

Sylvain Chaumet shows life in Paris for two mimes in TOUR EIFFEL****. It's sweet and bizarre and rather strange.

Alfonso Cuarón puts together a tricksy single take conversation between Nick Nolte and Ludivigne Sagnier in PARC MONCEAU***. It's clever but hardly substantial or affecting.

Oliver Assayas has Maggie Gyllenhaal procure drugs in the QUARTIER DES ENFANTS ROUGES***. He makes a nice comment about the interaction between the heritage of the district and the current underground scene.

Oliver Schmitz shows a moment of violence and rekindled love at first sight in PLACE DES FETES*****. It's arguably the best segment in the movie. The acting is brilliant - the concept is original - it's tricksy but emotionally engaging all at the same time. Although it's five minutes long you feel you really know the characters and the lives they live. And best of all, you get the kind of social insight that Chadha and Salles were striving for without feeling lectured at.

Richard LaGravenese has Bob Hoskins and Fanny Ardant act out an argument for a prostitute in PIGALLE***. It's fun but not much more.

The same could be said of Vincenzo Natali's fantasy in LA MADELAINE***. Elijah Wood's hapless traveller chances upon Olga Kurylenko's sexy vampire.

Wes Craven's PERE-LACHAISE***, where Oscar Wilde helps Rufus Sewell win back Emily Mortimer, is also well-acted but insubstantial.

Like a middle-class version of PLACE DES FETES, Tom Tykwer condenses an entire relationship between a blind man and Natalie Portman's acting student into five minutes in FAUBOURG-ST DENIS****. The two leads act beautifully - the story has a great twist - and the use of music and the musicality of speech is outstanding.

In QUARTIER LATIN**, Ben Gazzara and Gena Rowlands have a last drink before separating in a bar run by Gérard Depardieu. Frédéric Auburtin directs. Yawn.

Perhaps most controversial and open to interpretation is Alexander Payne's segment 14e ARRONDISEMENT*/*****. He has a stereotypical American tourist (Margo Martindale) recite in demotic French her love for Paris. I can't make up my mind whether he's being very patronising about American tourists, or whether he's actually satirising European prejudices about Americans. This segment is either offensive or brilliant! You decide!

PARANOID PARK - accessible, derivative

Gus van Sant is the master of capturing disaffected teenagers struggling to keep the real world at bay. In his movies, kids slouch around with such a lack of energy they can usually be perfectly captured in slo-mo. They are unshackled by parental authority, and drift through his films toward uncertain doom. PARANOID PARK picks up on the vibe of ELEPHANT and LAST DAYS. The cast of unknowns hang out at school and at the skate park. Our protagonist - if that isn't too strong a word - is a well-meaning but almost comically apathetic kid who finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. He circles the ramifications of this event like the nervous, guilty schoolkid that he is. Gus van Sant's peculiar talent is to mirror the kid's avoidance techniques with a choppy, non-linear structure and a rather directionless camera that belies the thought and care that must have gone into the filming process. DP Christopher Doyle creates images whose aching beauty adds profundity where there really isn't any to be found. I also loved the odd flashes of high comedy: the girlfriend harrassing her apathetic boyfriend to have sex with her; the kid brother rehearsing Napoleon Dynamite. But I have to say that after about 45 minutes of this meandering nothingness I felt a bit bored by it all, not least because I'd seen this sort of thing before. It may sound harsh, but I wish van Sant would try something different. That doesn't belittle his achievement in movies like ELEPHANT. It's just that he so comprehensively covered these moods and themes there that I don't particularly need to see it again.

PARANOID PARK played Cannes, Toronto and Vienna 2007. It was released in Belgium, France, Luxembourg, South Korea, Portugal, Russia and Italy earlier this year. It goes on release in the UK on Boxing Day; in Taiwan on December 29th; in Sweden on January 18th; in the Netherlands on February 28th and in the US on March 7th 2008.

LAST DAYS - pretentious wank or genius? I tend to the latter

LAST DAYS is Gus Van Sant's beautiful interpretation of the last days of Kurt Cobain. Instead of aiming for a literal fictionalised account of Cobain's life, Gus Van Sant tries to explore the pressures that Cobain might have felt under at the time. The movie has attracted a lot of criticism which basically runs along the lines that the movie disappears up its own arse. After all, there is no clear narrative arc to cling on to. There is very little dialogue. There are long scenes where nothing seems to happen. Michael Pitt plays the Cobain character behind a mop of blonde hair and sunglasses, and we can barely hear what he is saying. More specifically, people have argued that it depicts Cobain "incorrectly".

I can sympathise with these criticisms up to a point. If you want a more obvious biopic then this movie is not for you. But I reckon that the way to approach this movie is as a poem rather than a novel. Gus Van Sant brilliantly evokes a wistful, tragic mood. There may be a lack of obvious narrative but we do have a sense of increasing foreboding as we approach the inevitable conclusion. As with GERRY and ELEPHANT there is something tragic in the wastefulness of young men moving towards a seemingly inevitable death. And if he goes about it in an odd fashion, I genuinely feel that van Sant's method gets us closer to how isolating it must feel to be a great musician who feels increasingly hemmed in by all manner of people who are after things from you. And perhaps, it's better just to watch this film as a meditation on loneliness than as a comment on Cobain. Either way, I found it genuinely moving to see a young man - any young man let alone one of such talent - inch toward death not with a nang but a whimper. Thank god we have people like Gus van Sant willing to take a chance on such demanding material.
LAST DAYS premiered at Cannes 2005 and has been on release in the US. It is currently on limited release in the UK and hits Austria in February 2006.