PHANTOM THREAD

Where to begin with this strange slippery film?  It's genre, tone, dramatic tensions shift and evolve over its two hour running time until it becomes something quite hard to pin down? Is it a melodramatic period romance like THE BEGUILED? A Hitchcockian psychological thriller?  A generational ghost story? A fetishistic romance like THE DUKE OF BURGUNDY?  It's a film that certainly delights and repays the audience with a knowledge of film history. And yet it's something quite hermetically sealed and delicately balanced between difference style of film-making.  It's a film one can imagine quite hard to pull off without an absolute conviction in what one was creating. But in its exploration of intense emotional relationships in a tightly proscribed world, it reminded me most of all of Peter Strickland's dreamy romance.

Daniel Day-Lewis (LINCOLN), in his final role, plays Reynolds Woodcock, a 1950s fashion designer who lives and works in a grand London house, complete with royal clientele. As the film opens, he is presented as the kind of domineering, egomaniacal man surrounded by sycophantic enablers that has become vilified in the #metoo movement. He lives by strict rules all designed to give him, the self-appointed genius creator the peace he needs to create. He fears discombobulation.  And in a sense there's a delicious irony in the fact that the first of his dresses that we see is comically ugly - it's the fawning delight of his clientele  - here Gina McKee - that tells us all we need to know.

Reynolds' perfect world is curated by his devoted sister Cyril (Lesley Manville - veteran of Ken Loach films). She neatly dismisses the young girls he takes as his muses when they become tiresome, and manages the financial side of the business.  As the film opens we see her dispatch one girl only for him to speed to the country and pick up another, mostly on the grounds that she looks biddable and can remember his vast breakfast order. Both women seem at his service.  The young Alma (Vicky Krieps), takes orders from him, becomes little more than an inanimate model, and hangs on his every word.  And so the relationship might follow the typical pattern.  Alma - scraping her butter onto her toast so very loudly - might soon be dismissed.

The beauty of this story is that it subverts our expectations of who is truly in control and indeed who are the true protagonists of the film. This is the way in which it most profoundly reminded me of THE DUKE OF BURGUNDY. One thinks this is going to be a film about subservient women but actually they are firmly in control. As the film progresses we see that Cyril very much rules Reynolds - forcing him to attend a wedding to keep the House in business - daring him to pick an argument that he cannot win.  Even the seamstresses are more in control than Reynolds - he is dependent on them to bring his designs to life.  

And so the principal tension of the film is not really between Reynolds and Alma - as we shall see later - he is only feigning resistance to her. It's actually between Alma and Cyril.  The young girl knows her mind and politely but firmly brooks no objections to her plans.  She is vying with the Cyril to take control of Reynolds, and by a masterful piece of skulduggery, wins. The question is how Reynolds will take to this change in reign, and it leads to a superlative set piece at the end of the movie, where very little is said, but suspicions are noted, and accepted.  It's quite the marvel. 

The result is a film with very clear themes if subtly slippery means of getting there. Reynolds misses his dead mother terribly to the point of almost willing her ghost into existence. He craves a replacement - first Cyril and then Alma.  He is forever ravenously hungry for nourishment, and at the most basic level, Alma provides it, naming him in their opening meeting "hungry boy".  What she gets out of the relationship is the ability to express her side of the fetish.  It is no coincidence that the most passionate kiss between the two that we are allowed to see in this very coy and ambiguous film comes when the sado-masochistic relationship is finally acknowledged on both sides. 

Everything about this production is first class - from the costumes, to the interior design, to the evocation of the British sea-side and 1950s ballrooms. The acting is also superb. Daniel Day-Lewis may be getting the awards, but Manville and Krieps match him turn by turn with performances of such subtlety and brilliance. The script is also fascinating, and funnier than one often expects from Anderson. Genuinely brilliantly funny.  There was only one scene that struck a bum note - when Reynolds and Alma look through a client's deep distress and mock and punish her for her drunken escape.  This was cruel - meant to be cruel - but lessened my interest in the characters. And this is ultimately my only real criticism of the film.  All of Anderson, and his cast and crews talents, on such a self-involved, and ultimately slight story. There's something a little disappointing in that - something small - lesser than THERE WILL BE BLOOD and THE MASTER. 

PHANTOM THREAD has a running time of 130 minutes and is rated R in the USA and 15 in the UK for strong language. The film was released last year in the USA and earlier this year in Canada. It goes on release this weekend in Singapore, Australia, Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Kuwait, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, the UK and Ireland, It goes on release on February 14th in France, Denmark and Russia; on February 22nd in Brazil, Italy, Malaysia, Finland, Portugal, Sweden, Taiwan and Vietnam; on March 1st in Netherlands; on March 8th in Hong Kong and Estonia; on March 15th in Argentina; on April 13th in Norway and Turkey and on May 26th in Japan.

George Ghon comments on THE SKIN I LIVE IN

Art keeps you free.

George Ghon, fashion writer, stylist, editor of ALPHA magazine, and cinephile, comments on THE SKIN I LIVE IN.......

Pedro Almodóvar’s THE SKIN I LIVE IN is a multi-faceted film, an experiment that combines the tradition of Greek drama with a modern, slightly surreal medical thriller. The central character, a brilliant Antonio Banderas as Robert Ledgard, is the contemporary equivalent to a doomed ancient king. He attempts to transcend his own human powers, plays god, and is bitterly punished for his hubris. He is an enormously talented surgeon that has pushed the boundaries in transplantology, scion of a wealthy family, and yet, his life is not a happy game. He tried to save his wife after she burned in a car crash, on the run with her lover. He tried to save his daughter, after the fragile girl got abused and raped in the scenic setting of a lush garden party. Both those women, for whom he had so much affection, took their own lives and found a sudden, unexpected death when jumping out through an open window. These bitter experiences, as well as his talent and money, make for an ambivalent character. On one hand brutal and powerful, but at the same time sensitive and almost loveable in his passion.

He finds his victim and, like Pygmalion, uses his skill to shape it into his perfect partner. In Ovid’s metamorphoses Venus grants the sculptor’s wish and the ivory statue becomes alive. In the Spanish town of Toledo, set in the year 2012, the surgeon also hopes for divine intervention. From the wall of his staircase lurks an oversized Venus d’Urbino, the renaissance painting originally conceived by Titian. It can (re-) ignite love and passion in its spectators, but it has also been seen as marriage picture, as object that was deliberately made to affirm and save the relationship of a couple. 

None other than recreating his lost love is Robert’s aim. But he reverts to dubious practises in order to achieve his goal, and fails miserably in the end. During the opening shots, we can see a beautiful, slightly androgynous girl practising Yoga in a locked room (Elena Anaya as Vera). Guarding her perfect body in a tightly fitted suit, she is completely shut off from the outside world. The only solace she can find, except from physical workout, is engaging with the art of Louise Bourgeois, which she learns through books coming up in a little elevator. She tears apart swatches of fabric and re-uses them to form little sculptures. 

First this seems unusual, but not utterly bizarre. Yet. The real story we only learn later in the film. It then becomes clear that Vera is searching for a new identity and delves into sculpture to overcome an existential angst that results from traumatic surgery. She is Robert’s chosen one, the one he experiments on and tries to find love for. By and by, she comes to terms with her fate and accepts the lover’s role, before finally encountering a reawakening reminder of her past. 

This movie deals with the big themes of classic tragedy, with love, loss, and redemption. Shot in beautiful locations and executed with superb cinematography, it is a feast for aesthetes. But the picture goes deeper than just touching the beautiful surface of things. It deals with the skin of bodies, but also affects the lives beneath it. There is a lot to consider about this new Almodóvar, no matter that the story might have its flaws. 

THE SKIN I LIVE IN played Cannes 2011 and was released in August in France, Ireland and the UK. It was released earlier this month in Spain, and is released today in the Czech Republic and Hungary. It played Toronto 2011 next week and opens in Russia and Poland. It opens on September 23rd in Argentina and Italy. It opens in Brazil and the US on October 14th and in Germany on October 20th. It opens in Hong Kong and Sweden on December 2nd.

3 IDIOTS - The funniest Hindi comedy since Munnabhai

3 IDIOTS is one of the funniest Hindi movies I’ve seen since MUNNABHAI MBBS. So it comes as no surprise to find that it was written and directed by Rajkumar Hirani, the guy behind that smash-hit. 3 IDIOTS also has certain plot similarities to the first MUNNABHAI movie. Once again we find ourselves in an Indian university, with students under pressure from their adoring parents to do well and get a great job. Once again we have an iconoclastic rebel who goes against the faculty head and argues for less learning by rote and more actual education. And once again, there’s a romance between the rebel and the Dean’s daughter. But there the resulting is far more raucous, far more consistently witty, and genuinely laugh-out loud funny.

Aamir Khan plays Rancho, an iconoclastic student who transforms the lives of his two best friends Raja (Sharman Joshi) and Farhan (Madhavan). Together, they are the 3 idiots of the title, who fight financial and social pressure to have pursue their passions. They come up against the tyrannical and uncaring university dean, nicknamed Virus, and played by the typically hilarious, but here more modulated, Boman Irani. Lisp and comical haircut aside, Irani’s Virus is less funny than terrible, because until tragedy strikes his own family, he does not change. The 3 idiots also come up against the university swot, a Ugandan NRI nicknamed Silencer, played with a pitch-perfect East African gujurati accent by Omi Vaidya. Silencer is also a tragic figure, but equally one of the funniest, with a hilarious comic set-piece revolving around a formal speech in front of the education minister which the fluent Hindi 3 idiots have doctored replacing the word “serve” with “screwed”. Silencer is also the best exponent of the movie’s full and up-front exploration of fart jokes! Naturally, this being a Hindi film, there has to be a love interest, and so we have Kareena Kapoor, also superb at the comdy, playing Pia, the dean’s daughter.

The bulk of the movie takes place a decade ago, and sees Rancho befriending the other idiots, confronting the dean and falling in love. The movie’s framing device takes place in the present day, with Raju, Farhan and Silencer trying to track down Rancho after ten years of radio silence.

The perfectionist Aamir Khan, aged 44, undergoes an impressive physical transformation to play Rancho, a university student. He has lost weight, and the combination of baggy clothes, make-up (unfairly – botox?!), posture and physicality make him more convincing in the role than you might imagine. It was even more suprising to see how far this actor, famed for his serious political films, could do pure physical comedy. His acting in the song “Aal eez well” is superb, and genuinely laugh-out-loud funny.

So, 3 IDIOTS is utterly hilarious. But the great thing is that it is also politically provocative. The key argument in the film is that Indian parents are too strict with their kids, picking out their careers for them, and putting too much pressure on them succeed. Worse still, success is measured purely by salary, with which you can buy flashy branded clothes and attract a pretty wife. The price of this pressure is extreme – suicide. Rancho argues that real learning isn’t learning by rote to come first in an exam. And that, rather than trying to come top in an exam, if you “pursue excellence, and success will follow, pants down.” Most of all, if you love engineering, be an engineer. Don’t become a banker in a foreign land. It’s a wonderful ethos and the argument sorely needs to be made. It’s great to see a populist movie taking such a stance.

Of course, with Hindi cinema you have to expect a big dollop of melodrama and implausibility. For instance, the framing device see the “two idiots” go in search of Rancho by driving from Delhi to Shimla via Ladakh – a massive road trip that seemingly happens in a day! And the single most ludicrous set-piece is the scene where Rancho and the students help the dean’s daughter to give birth despite heavy rains, a lack of electricity, and any medical equipment. Just when you think the scene can’t get more schmaltzy and melodramatic, Hirani pushes it one step further, with the movie’s motto, “Aal eez well” playing a key part. It’s ludicrous. But then again, you have to assume that a writer-director who has pastiched Hindi cinema tropes in the song “Zoobi Doobi” knows perfectly well what he’s doing. He’s both pandering to our expectations of what a Bollywood movie should do, and simultaneously sending them up. It takes a very assured director to create a scene that’s both moving and hilarious.

3 IDIOTS was released on Christmas Day 2009.

Douglas Sirk Retrospective 2 - ALL I DESIRE

We're a big disappointment to each other, aren't we? You've got a mother with no principles; I've got a daughter with no guts.

Continuing with the Douglas Sirk retrospective, we have his 1953 melodrama, ALL I DESIRE. In a theme that Sirk would explore most famously in IMITATION OF LIFE, Sirk shows the price paid by a woman who sacrifices her family to her career, and who later is positioned as a rival to her daughter. Barbara Stanwyck stars as the classic Sirkian heroine, a woman who has made a break for freedom and personal happiness, by leaving her decent but dull schoolteacher husband, her three children and her possessive lover, to pursue a career on the stage. A decade later she returns, to find her grown daughter about to graduate, and her family convinced she has made it as a big star. As with all Sirkian heroines, she is forced to sacrifice and subsume her passions in order to make her judgemental family happy. This is the genius of Sirk - on the face of it, ALL I DESIRE is a deeply conservative morality tale in which a malcontent runs from her responsibilities, returns home with her tail between her legs, realises that she really wants her dull husband and settles down to her dull life. But in reality, it is a film about the invisible constraints of suburbia - the malicious force of small-town gossip - and settling for less than you wanted through exhaustion and desperation. The resolution is less a happy ending than a resigned return to repression. It is a tremendous film - and all the more astounding because it is examining the dilemma of MAD MEN's Betty Draper on screen at the time at which it was *actually* happening, right in front of an audience who think they're in for some populist sentimental nonsense.

ALL I DESIRE was released in 1953.

KABHI ALVIDA NAA KEHNA/NEVER SAY GOODBYE - Crass Bollywood melodrama

Man. I thought I was bored watching MIAMI VICE. If you choose to disregard my advice (rant) and see this movie you will get very little change from four hours. Of course, long isn't bad all on its own. THE SORROW AND THE PITY is one of the films I admire most and it clocks in at well over four hours. But why take four hours to say something that could easily be said in the regular ninety minutes?

The plot is insultingly simple and I'm going to go ahead and tell you what it is. Don't worry, this doesn't constitute a spoiler. There is barely any plot to spoil and what does happen can be seen half an hour before it actually happens. So, we are in contemporary New York and there is an embittered ex-pro soccer player* called Dev (Shah Rukh Khan) whose career ended after an injury. He resents his high-earning wife, Rhea (Preity Zinta) and is abusive to his young son. Also in New York there is a barren primary school teacher called Maya (Rani Mukherji) who has married a man, Rishi (Abishek Bachchan) who loves her and settled for cotentment rather than love. They are sexually incompatible. An hour into the movie, Maya and Dev start hanging out and half an hour later they declare their love for each other. Then there is an intermission. After the intermission, Maya and Dev sleep with each other. Then they confess to their other halves who kick them out of their respective houses. Three years later (an hour and a half in movie time but it really does seem like three years) the other halves have moved on and found new loves. But Maya and Dev are alone and miserable because for some odd reason they didn't tell each other that they had been dumped. Rishi and Rhea tell Maya and Dev to get it together (such magnanimity!) and they do. The End.

Like I said, the plot is simple and does not need four hours. We have writer/director Karan Johar to thank for it. Karan Johar is a supreme hack with delusions of profundity. He wants to tell us that the only foundation for a successful marriage is love. Hmmm. Thanks for that, Mr. Johar, but I'm seriously not going to take any advice on adult relationships from a man who writes "I love you, mom" on a credit at the start of his film. And yes, I know that the concept of sanctioned marital infidelity is a novelty in mainstream Bollywood cinema, but KABHI ALVIDA NAA KEHNA is hardly an adult, insightful treatment of this theme. For all its pretensions, this movie is not remotely in the same league as PAGE THREE or SILSILA. I mean, come on, how can you tackle marital infidelity when you haven't got the balls to show two adults so much as kissing on screen?

So this movie sucks. The script and directing are superficial and hammy and Karan Johar cannot do discreet or subdued. Everything is egregious to the point where you want to vomit. At the key "declaration of love" scene between Maya and Dev, he says to her, tearfully: "I'll buy a blue car. I like blue. You like blue..?" She replies, tearfully, "I like blue!" (Audience laughs maniacally.) Everyone on the train platform is now miraculously wearing blue. And now Maya and Dev are wearing blue. I had this compulsion to do an Alan Patridge and keep shouting "A-ha!"

The over the top camera work and production design continue throughout. Someone should tell the photographer that he can use shots other than tight close-ups. Someone should tell the production designer that real houses don't look like pictures from the Heal's home catalogue. Real women don't wear fake eyelashes and hot curlers every day. And they don't go out in the rain without an umbrella. Someone should tell Karan Johar that great directors don't use Manhattan city scape as a vapid picture-postcard, but capture the energy and spirit of the city. They should also tell him that Burberry and Louis Vuitton aren't aspirational but chav. And while they're at it, they should point out just how crass it is to have a couple about to embark on adultery singing to each other as they walk up the aisle of a Catholic church making the sign of the cross.

In fairness, KABHI ALVIDA NAA KEHNA is delivered by a competent but hamstrung cast. That is, with the exception of lead actor Shah Rukh Khan. Khan's apparent desire to be David Beckham and/or an MTV star is induldged to the hilt and his "acting" is absurdly over the top.

All in all, KABHI ALVIDA NAA KEHNA feels like a delusional attempt at profundity from a director best known for creating crappy, melodramatic B movies. It is the most expensive Bollywood movie ever made, apparently, and that will guarantee it some publicity. Maybe it will have a large box office taking. Frankly, the whole exercise looks like a shameless cash-in. Why else would Johar give small cameos to stars such as Kajol, Arjun Rampal and John Abraham if not to lure in their respective fan-bases? Oh yeah, and the music sucks. The dance numbers are derivative and sound like shitty Euro-house with the odd tabla beat and Hindi lyrics.

KABHI ALVIDA NAA KEHNA is on release in India, the US, the UK, the Netherlands and Australia. *I know, I fell off my seat laughing at that one, too.