Here am I in my little websit with England struggling to maintain its veneer of economic and social calm, the country's fifth largest mortgage lender Northern Rock having been bailed out by the Bank of England. I can't even get my Housing Association and its contractors to finalise basic plumbing to my flat without the rumblings of war shaking my soul asunder. A microcosm of England today? Northern Rock savers showed little faith in government assurances and withdrew over £2 billion in a few days. Given the government's broken promises over the years (remember the pension fund debacle?) it was hardly surprising. And in fairness to Northern Rock, it did only what everyone else in the country had been doing all along. Northern Rock just gambled with higher stakes by borrowing heavily (75%) from wholesale markets (i.e. other banks). (Channel Four news as always, had the most incisive coverage). In his Brighton conference speech, Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell chastised the government for, among many other things, allowing personal debt in the UK to reach £1.3 trillion. Spend, spend, spend on the good ship Rule Britannia and hope global warming melts those icebergs!
Housing boom near end (FT)
I had a jovial chat with iceberg voyeur architect Will Alsop the other night "by 31 you give up on ideas, by 41 you give up on opinions, and by 51 you give up on notions". Well anyway, that was the gist after some vino. His archi-sit at Chelsea Space evokes his new hotel project honed from the trees and earth of Malaga and far away from any icebergs. Mandatory transport will be by mule. A business partner of Alsop's chastised me for my notion of dubious freedom of speech in Britain. I guess I'm neither 51 nor even 41. I'm sure the daily freedom of anyone connected with Dispatches docos is undoubtedly unquestionable. Particularly the recent one on the finances of London's 2012 Olympics by Anthony Barnett. Another martini anyone? Shaken or stirred? And again, in fairness to Lord Coe (the former athlete and spearheader of the Games), his personal capitalisation on the back of his Olympic job is no different to what anyone else is doing in the country either. Only, his is on the back of public money. I'd stick to hedge funds if I were he. Documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by Dispatches revealed a 2004 KPMG report stating that there was a 30-40% budget shortfall. Currently a £1 billion budget shortfall (three times the original costs). I'm sure Northern Rock savers would be only too glad to assist :) There was also an amazing, inspiring and quite depressing doco (not Dispatches) about Morgan Stanley chief of security at the World Trade Centre Rick Rescorla The Man Who Predicted 9/11. Probably one of the eeriest 'I told you so' stories in history.
A strange and interesting take on the German financial psyche is Yella, written and directed by Christian Petzold. On the surface it resembles social realism, but in essence is more like a ghost ship leering out of the fog at the jolly Rule Britannia. Yella (Nina Hoss) leaves her dad and small eastern German town for job prospects in Hanover. A car accident with her obsessive ex-husband time warps the film whence an ousted exec Philipp (Devid Striesow) takes on Yella as his assistant in venture capital. The feeling of sehnsucht (longing) pervades this film and director Petzold states his interest in ghost towns and people "who have wanted a little too much and who are now on the outside...no longer belonging...of American ballads that convey being on the road."
We must look at 'root causes' of gun crime
Westerns and the 'way of the gun' have certainly stood out from the pack the last week or so in film and DVD. Aside from the rise of London gun crime, of course. (Worth checking out Dogwoof's release of Tough Enough, the debut film of German actor Detlev Buck, for his perceptive take on Berlin mean streets and their effect on a 15-year-old.) Optimum has four Western Classics Vol.2 and three Sam Fuller Classics. The breathtaking widescreen Fuller prints are the same as those for the US Fox releases though House of Bamboo (1955) has an audio commentary on the US version. Otherwise Optimum's only extras (budget price) are trailers that prove just how dullish the prints were before restoration. Bamboo concerns a gang of ex-American GI's in Tokyo infiltrated by undercover ex-army officer Eddie Kenner (Robert Stack). If the design and colour palette resemble Godard's Pierrot le Fou (1965), that's because Fuller was one of the French auteur's heroes, even casting Fuller as himself in Pierrot. Fuller's cold war Hell and High Water (1954) has ex-Navy officer 'gun for hire' Richard Widmark transporting a nuclear scientist to Alaska in his submarine. He's investigating goings-on by the Ruskies and it's all in stunning Cinemascope with the swirling 'Wagnerian' strings of legendary composer Alfred Newman. Fuller's earlier low-budget B/W Fixed Bayonets (1951) is his second Korean War movie. The new US Criterion set has Steel Helmut (1950).
I'm not really a Westerns kinda guy, but I do like my Sam Peckinpah and throughout his career he never faltered from his character driven stories first delivered in Deadly Companions (1961). A brilliant almost 'contemporary music' score by Marlin Skiles (bandoneon [accordion] and guitar) opens with a melancholic ditty sung by Maureen O'Hara over the title credits and another beautiful widescreen print (William H. Clothier, cinematography). Essentially it's a two hander with Yellowleg (Brian Keith) escorting Maureen O'Hara's Kit through Apache territory. He's atoning for his accidental murder of her 9 year-old son in a bank robbery who she wants to bury beside her husband. It's almost the Western equivalent of Italian neo-realism. The others in the Western Classics set cover more familiar ground by other outstanding directors. Seminole (1953) is by the only recently re-discovered Budd Boetticher, whose fans have included Martin Scorsese. There's also another restored widescreen treat in Nicholas Ray's The True Story of Jesse James (1957) with Robert Wagner as Jesse. James Mangold's film out last week 3.10 to Yuma (a re-make of the 1957 Glenn Ford pic based on Elmore Leonard and just out on US DVD) fares pretty well agin these classics. But from a director, who made the highly original character-probing Heavy as his debut back in 1995, one expected a bit more Sam Peckinpah soul in his 3.10.
John Ford Collection on Fox DVD Oct 1
Region 1 DVD release of Ford at Fox on 4th December 2007, 24 films – 18 of which are new to R1 DVD.
No soul in Shoot 'Em Up, but Michael Davis' writer/director debut is a tour de force of scripting wit and originality. I loved every minute. Who couldn't with a 'What's up doc?' carrot munching Clive Owen outshooting Paul Giamatti's unfit bad guy to save bellissima Monica Bellucci and a baby (ricochets of Jean Reno in Luc Besson's Leon) all in under 90 minutes? More laughs with Hollywood new kid on the block, although he's probably been writing and eating Chinese for years in his dorm, Judd Apatow this week. I may not have raved about last week's Knocked Up but Superbad, produced by Apatow and directed by Greg Mottola isn't the filthy fun of John Waters, but it'll do very nicely in his absence. For a multiplex audience, there's a wealth of emotional subtlety here amidst the 'American Pie' jokes, and the adult cops are nicely characterised rather than just characatured.
To say Quentin Tarantino made a flop with Deathproof (bombed in the States) is like saying the Pope forgot his catechism. Like Scorsese, Tarantino hommages film history and if he persuades our curiosity to check out his sources, that can be no bad thing. Though many will question whether these sources are worth a braincell at all. In the first half of Deathproof he even post-effects the film to look like the original 70's American exploitation pics as seen in a divey 90's cinema, complete with scratches on the print, jumpy film frames and wonky colours. Kurt Russell is the smarmy, scarred and mean Stuntman Mike who finally squeals like a baby when womanhood get their comeuppance on his bloody antics. But when the Grindhouse double-bill with Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror flopped stateside, Tarantino simply rose from the ashes and just added some more to his part for the European release. As always, a great soundtrack.
Don't miss the 15th RAINDANCE FILM FESTIVAL trailer (or indeed the festival-starts Wednesday) directed by Kasimir Burgess and Edwin McGill (Australia) about a dirt poor cineaste scraping pennies together to make his 'Lone Rider' western. Their brilliantly quirky short last year Booth Story, about an underground parking attendant adopting an unclaimed egg and the duckling within, won the Diesel sponsored prize to make the trailer.
And what of the much-publicised Brit hope Atonement - wars of the emotions set against the Second World War? I haven't read Ian McEwan's source novel but the film's tone and structure seem reminiscent of Losey's Brit class classics Accident (1967) and The Go-Between (1970) with Harold Pinter script adapting. Atonement screenwriter Christopher Hampton has done a fine job I'm sure, but it's not an easy film from which a viewer gains much lasting cinematic weight. Vanessa Redgrave, as always, pierces the screen with her reflective gaze as the ageing Briony interviewed about her novel. But Briony's heinous lie that destroyed the lives of Cecilia (Keira Knightley) and Robbie (James McAvoy) has no atonement for the viewer of Joe Wright's film. Impressive elements all round though particularly from Dario Marianelli's score that avoids the usual battleground bathos of Dunkirk fashioning more of a war requiem from the on screen sounds.
Vanessa Redgrave turns in another great performance in Lajos Koltai's Evening as the dying mother Ann Lord remembering the life and loves of her youth in Newport, Rhode Island one summer weekend wedding 50 years ago. Some of the film's publicity, a little misleadingly, suggests that Evening is based on material by Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Cunningham (The Hours) when in fact he's the co-scriptwriter with author Susan Minot of her novel. Koltai is a former cinematography and his use of widescreen in Evening is truly breathless and together with a faultless cast and production team (A-list New York indie) you won't be disappointed. But the story is wafer thin aside these elements. The Harris of the story's 'who was Harris?' just isn't that interesting, though through no fault of Patrick Wilson's Harris. I was more curious about the other bloke, the drunken Buddy (Hugh Dancy). But maybe that's the point, as Redgrave's Ann says finally "we are mysterious characters and at the end none of it turns out to really matter."
Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul (calls himself Joe for ease) gives us the echt Zen effect with Syndromes and a Century. Commissioned as part of the Mozart 250th birth fest New Crowned Hope, this is not an easy film to latch onto to and I certainly felt this the first time I saw it at last year's Times BFI London Film Festival. What's Mozart got to do with it, do with it, you ask? But this is definitely not a second hand emotion when it comes to the Fest films commissioned in Herr. M's honour. I'd been unpleasantly screwed by London transport prior to my second viewing and I emerged refreshed and revitalised from Syndromes. Because of the slow pace and an unrelenting camera almost tripodded with only a few panning shots and sticking to a 35mm lens, the film seems far longer than its 105 minutes. But that's the Zen. Set in a hospital it's basically a love story, quietly and subtly comedic, about the way in which people fall in love. A doctor in her basement office keeps a bottle of stiff beverage in an artificial limb and there's a singing dentist. "I'm interested in the way things change over time, and in the ways they don't change. It seems to me that human affairs remain fairly constant," says Weerasethakul. Let his film envelop you and you'll be richly rewarded, or at the very least, allow you to breathe a little more easily than when you entered the cinema.
Apichatpong Weerasethakul BFI retrospective
And if "Joe" doesn't do it for you then David Lynch might be the answer. His Inland Empire is recently out on DVD, three hours of low res digital video (Sony PD 150, the one used for the dance sequences in Lars von Trier's Dancer in the Dark) with 40-minute takes! There's an extras disc with five interviews; nothing new if you're a Lynch fan but always fascinating and a must have. Mike Figgis interviews Lynch at a cinematographer's fest in Lodz, Poland, Lynch walks biographer Michel Chion through his art exhibition this year at the Fondation Cartier in Paris, and there are extracts from the NFT Guardian interview with his fingers conducting his speech like sea anemones. Lynch is a long-time convert of transcendental meditation "a mental teaching that allows any human being to dive within and experience bliss...experience an unbounded ocean of consciousness...modern science's unified field [the origin of all things]". As one interviewer asks "if TM creates positiveness, what about all the darkness that's in the films?" Sehnsucht..seligkeit...
Saturday 22 September 2007
Friday 7 September 2007
Our whispered rainbow
Almost a haiku
A marmalade wink a honey smile
Eggs umbrellas of tears
Our whispered rainbow always worn.
for my remarkable Mother (8/1/1927-2/9/2007)
"Men everywhere have vied for her heart since the beginning of time. From our ancestor Adam, right up to Adam Smith [The Wealth of Nations]...Everyone thinks their version is the [true story]." So begins Garin Nugroho's Opera Jawa from Indonesia- the village elders able to read everyone's fate in a pig's liver. Inspired by the story from the epic Sanskrit poem Ramayana, the film is sung in Javanese gamelan style throughout and propelled by raw, beautiful choreography - think of impassioned Martha Graham dance but much slower. Commissioned as one of Peter Sellars' New Crowned Hope Festival films marking Mozart's 250th birth anniversary, it's the story of Dewi Sinta, a beautiful girl who marries a potter but is tempted by a malevolent male butcher. Every scene looks absolutely amazing (shot in only 2 weeks!) and some almost surreal as in the Edward Hopper bar room with flamenco dancing to the Javanese equivalent of legendary freedom folk guitarist Robert Johnson. Dewi Sinta's story is at heart a parable about the innocent earth being ravaged by the evils of mankind.
Lady Chatterley, a French adaptation of a DH Lawrence story by Pascale Ferran, does a pretty good job of evoking Lawrence's erotic blend of Mother Nature and sexual desire. Lady of the manor Constance Chatterley (Marina Hands) discovers their gamekeeper Parkin (Jean-Louis Coulloc'h) at the bottom of her garden, so to speak, and for the next three hours of cinema has her jonquils tended to. Does the film itself need pruning? Well, distributor Artificial Eye, whose normal haunt is the art house circuit, tried a wider release here. And seeing this picture on a huge Cineplex screen does hold your interest. There's little chemistry between Chatterley and Parkin apart from the obvious but that's also the point of the film. Coulloc'h has none of the swashbuckling machismo of an Oliver Reed or Alan Bates but he is very simple, strong and earthy for Marina Hands' peahen. And thankfully there's very little music score to guild their passion.
Small DVD outfit Bluebell (no website) gives us more French passion. Camille (Karin Viard) is no peahen more skewer bird as she seeks her male sustenance in Paris. After many one-night stands, she encounters married Socialist Party organiser Alexis (Pierre-Loup Rajot) and keeps after him. Catherine Corsini's La Nouvelle Eve (The New Eve - 1999) is another of producer Paulo Branco's soulful character studies with absolutely no music (except for the parties) to distract you from the performances. With understated cinematography from genius Agnès Godard, it's not an art house shattering experience by any means, but nor does it set out to be.
Last month, Bluebell DVD also re-issued Pascal Bonitzer's Rien sur Robert and Christopher Frank's Love in the Strangest Way. The latter is a decent French femme fatale revenge thriller in which Nadia Fares worms her way into Thierry L'Hermitte's happy family life and his affections to wreck havoc. Rien sur Robert (Nothing on Robert) has a number of neurotic women upsetting the world of mid-life film journalist Didier (Fabrice Luchini). His young girlfriend Juliette (Sandrine Kiberlain) says she loves only him while openly sleeping with another. Didier is thence drawn into the web of the very cute but neurotic Valentina Cervi. It's all a bit French but very watchable.
Another Bluebell (all are mid-price, no extras) is Korean director Jae-eun Jeong's Take Care of My Cat about five former schoolfriends trying to find excitement in the lifeless port of Inchon. The cat in question is 'tee-tee' a birthday present for Ji-young who lives in a shanty home where the roof always threatens to collapse and finally does. Hee-joo, meanwhile, left to work in Seoul's financial services. This isn't a surprising script but it's a charmingly observed one.
The friendship in Joachim Trier's Norwegian Reprise (out in cinemas this week) is a 'what if' scenario. My Norwegian grammar stops at the echoing past of the noun fjord so I'm not quite sure of the correct tense, but it's a good trivia question to ask how many films begin with 'He would have done x, if y had had that'. Reprise begins with this past conditional and 23-year-old friends Erik (Espen Kloumann Høiner) and Philip (Anders Danielsen Lie), novelists both posting off their initial opus. Their milieu is Oslo Bataille/Barthes reading bourgeois youth but their creativity is the existentialism of a novel like Knut Hamsun's Hunger (1899) about a starving young writer. Like Hunger, Reprise is less concerned about milieu and more about the growth of soul and self. I first saw Reprise at last year's London Film Festival and was a touch perplexed by the narrative. On a recent second viewing you realise that that's exactly the point. There's a taste of Godard rustled up by Olivier Bugge Coutte's editing and indeed, Philip's girlfriend Kari (Victoria Winge) has the captivating screen presence of Godard's muse Anna Karina. Both Philip and Kari love The Ramones and dislike The Clash. There's also a subtle bitter flavour of Hamsun's Nazi sympathies in the mix. This is a very impressive debut for director and co-writer Joachim Trier. And it's the third and equally impressive release from new Brit indie distributor Diffusion. Trier's also a Norwegian skateboard champion and distant relative of Lars von Trier.
Is Col Spector's Brit debut film Someone Else existential or just plain solipsistic? Set in London, thirtysomething photographer David (Stephen Mangan) ditches loyal gal Lisa (Susan Lynch) for dipsy Nina (Lara Belmont) and finds that he can't go back and reprise or even appease Lisa. And would you really trust a guy who thought you liked Jethro Tull? Lisa didn't. Though Spector's co-written dialogue is very sharp and witty, the story ain't much. And it's a film easy to dismiss because of the latter. Interestingly, Spector signed up to RSA Films as a commercials director but the film is almost entirely filmed in mid-shot without any camera choreographic antics. Given the film's short 78 minutes it leads you to think that Spector knows exactly what he wants and that he's conveying that sense of observed urban alienation, particularly a London one, where everybody appears to be happy in the bars and dinner parties but in reality just isn't. Mangan hasn't got that Clive Owen lone prowler's face, more a hangdog likability that gets adopted from the cold and curls up at the foot of a female's bed. And the performances Spector elicits from the rest of his actors are uniformly first-rate. I wish he'd not used music at the end,though,instead of just letting the images speak for themselves.
Helping to lure or keep your significant other half, The Speciality and Fine Food Fair this week in London had some tantalising hand-made morsels from young independent companies. The Wicked Fruit Company has a great logo, hot chilli chocs and some very fetching new lavender ones. A young, seductive Frenchman in Brighton started The Chocolate Empire two years ago and has wondrous choc concoctions. Last year it was dark choc basil, this year poor relation white chocolate leapt forward with subtle lemongrass and poppy seed, cranberries and ylang ylang. Some alluring and very knowledgeable girls from Raw Intent sung a mermaid's song to woo me away from red meat and into their healthier chocolate cove of Aphrodesia Luxury Chocolate spread, ancient Taoist and Tibetan longevity wolfberries, and their range of superfood powders including protein punch. Their luxury raw chocolate pie is so good you only need tiny portions to partake in Raw Intent's siren song that definitely wont send you to your death. The husband and wife team of The Perfectly Delicious Company quit their city finance jobs and after a year now produce handmade natural biscuits that they sell back to the boardrooms they once sat in. Now that's what I call jammy job satisfaction.
Interesting also to chat to the coffee roasters around the issues of Fairtrade products. Unbeknownst to most people, just because your coffee doesn't have a Fairtrade label doesn't mean the farmers aren't necessarily getting a fair deal as the man from the wonderfully named Grumpy Mule pointed out. The same goes for Union Hand Roasted. But you do have to do your homework and find companies you can trust. The coffee exploitation debate was well promulgated in the recent doco Black Gold helping enormously to raise awareness. For Fairtrade spices try Steenbergs Organic, the first UK business to introduce Fairtrade spices and this year they have a fully certified Vanilla essence.
And if all that healthy eating has got you into planet-saving mode, you could try adopting an olive tree in Italy from Nudo, a company set up by an ex-TV producer Brit couple. For £65 a year you not only get your tree but all its produce which, when you do your math, is a really good deal. 970 of their 1200 trees have so far been adopted. It's such a good idea that Selfridges included an adoption in each of their Christmas hampers last year.
If you needed to give your alien friend from another galaxy, or indeed a non-Brit, an educational Christmas present on contemporary British life, this week has your answer. Sixteen Films have two volumes of Ken Loach, Optimum has its Shane Meadows set (with their usual copious extras) giving a Northern perspective, and Fabulous Films have Mike Leigh's High Hopes set in London. I haven't been able to view the DVD's but these films are all fantastic and many of them quite funny, albeit bleakly. BBC TV screens its last episode in their splendid British Film Forever series tonight Comedy. Matthew Sweet's hip script is cheekily voice-overed but the footage will enthrall everyone.
The laugh outloud comedies of the past couple of weeks couldn't have been more diverse. Knocked Up hails from Hollywood and writer/director/producer Judd (The 40-Year-Old Virgin) Apatow. TV entertainment journo Alison (Katherine Heigl- Grey's Anatomy) has a one night stand with 'boy's own' reefer couch potato Ben (Seth Rogen) and to her horror falls pregnant. They agree to differ on their differences and go ahead with the birth. Brit crits have uncharacteristically enthused about Knocked Up. Perhaps it was Loudon Wainwright III's (who also plays Alson's doctor) final ironic song track Grey in LA, bemoaning the city's endless blue skies. Maybe that swayed the critics into thinking it wasn't really a Hollywood film at all. And don't get me wrong, it is actually funny with some great scripting and performances, and for Hollywood, quite risqué in language (Cert. 15 here). A good date movie with Heigl particularly watchable in the 'not-as-easy-as-it-looks' tall, willowy blonde stock role. I just wasn't moved to laugh aloud.
2 Days in Paris had me chuckling all the way, though. Well-known French actress Julie Delpy has written, directed, co-produced, edited, scored as well as sings a track in this Woody Allenesque couple flic. She even cast her own parents as Marion's (Julie Delpy!) Paris old hippie folks. Marion now lives in New York, is very loyal, but a bit flirty and this Paris trip is to placate her laconic NYC boyfriend (Adam Goldberg) after a less than successful one to Venice. Delpy's mission was not an easy one to pull off but this film goes way beyond expectations and will no doubt have producers battering down her door for future projects. Actors are very good at internalising their observations of human minutia but often not so good at manifesting them into words. Delpy cast herself as stooge to the wry, politically incorrect humour she's written for Goldberg. And the 'translation' jokes (Adam has no French) that can fall so flat, soar with Delpy's expertise.
No much humour to be found in this week's London Tube strike that cost the capital an estimated £50 million (3 day strike reduced to 2 day), a "pointless strike" said Chamber of Commerce's Colin Stanbridge. Prospective business will think, "London isn't the place we thought to set up." Well, I think readers will know my feelings on that one. Interesting interview with the RMT union's honcho Bob Crow on ITV Local (Wednesday 5/9/07), and against popular opinion, I do think he has a very important point. After the plethora of failed delivery promises from Metronet, now in receivership, Crow is probably right not to trust any of them. I feel much the same about my Housing Association landlords (don't believe the website!). Bob Crow wants cast-iron assurances for his members on the issues of pensions and redundancies. Cast-iron with no cryptonite! And he's absolutely right when he says "the public own the railways and they were stolen from us". I do take issue with some slightly anti-American comments he made though such as "the MD was sitting in the room for 9 hours yesterday [!], was he singing American folklore to him or something?” I think you'll find that the democratic ideals of American folklore are on your side Bob, rather than the multi-nationals. What was so galling about the strike was the absence of any extra buses to ease the strain and the lack of information for passengers transferring on unfamiliar routes, "absolutely dreadful" to quote one train passenger.
Grayrigg Derailment
Train crash points not inspected
Maybe the last word should go to Alan Weisman whose new book The World Without Us, about what will inherit the earth when us humans are defunked, was featured on Jon Stewart's The Daily Show. No, actually. The last word really should go to my remarkable mother, who even in her worst pain always managed a smile. There wasn't a single morning when she didn't awake and feel that the world was a beautiful place. Her prophecies, intimated to only a few, may have seemed strange. But she knew in her bountiful goodness, that there are indeed forces in the world that don't always wish us well. And she always managed never to let down one single person in her entire life. If London transport were like my mother, you'd never have need of a union or a sleeping pill in the first place.
Almost a haiku is Copyright 2007 Andrew Lucre
A marmalade wink a honey smile
Eggs umbrellas of tears
Our whispered rainbow always worn.
for my remarkable Mother (8/1/1927-2/9/2007)
"Men everywhere have vied for her heart since the beginning of time. From our ancestor Adam, right up to Adam Smith [The Wealth of Nations]...Everyone thinks their version is the [true story]." So begins Garin Nugroho's Opera Jawa from Indonesia- the village elders able to read everyone's fate in a pig's liver. Inspired by the story from the epic Sanskrit poem Ramayana, the film is sung in Javanese gamelan style throughout and propelled by raw, beautiful choreography - think of impassioned Martha Graham dance but much slower. Commissioned as one of Peter Sellars' New Crowned Hope Festival films marking Mozart's 250th birth anniversary, it's the story of Dewi Sinta, a beautiful girl who marries a potter but is tempted by a malevolent male butcher. Every scene looks absolutely amazing (shot in only 2 weeks!) and some almost surreal as in the Edward Hopper bar room with flamenco dancing to the Javanese equivalent of legendary freedom folk guitarist Robert Johnson. Dewi Sinta's story is at heart a parable about the innocent earth being ravaged by the evils of mankind.
Lady Chatterley, a French adaptation of a DH Lawrence story by Pascale Ferran, does a pretty good job of evoking Lawrence's erotic blend of Mother Nature and sexual desire. Lady of the manor Constance Chatterley (Marina Hands) discovers their gamekeeper Parkin (Jean-Louis Coulloc'h) at the bottom of her garden, so to speak, and for the next three hours of cinema has her jonquils tended to. Does the film itself need pruning? Well, distributor Artificial Eye, whose normal haunt is the art house circuit, tried a wider release here. And seeing this picture on a huge Cineplex screen does hold your interest. There's little chemistry between Chatterley and Parkin apart from the obvious but that's also the point of the film. Coulloc'h has none of the swashbuckling machismo of an Oliver Reed or Alan Bates but he is very simple, strong and earthy for Marina Hands' peahen. And thankfully there's very little music score to guild their passion.
Small DVD outfit Bluebell (no website) gives us more French passion. Camille (Karin Viard) is no peahen more skewer bird as she seeks her male sustenance in Paris. After many one-night stands, she encounters married Socialist Party organiser Alexis (Pierre-Loup Rajot) and keeps after him. Catherine Corsini's La Nouvelle Eve (The New Eve - 1999) is another of producer Paulo Branco's soulful character studies with absolutely no music (except for the parties) to distract you from the performances. With understated cinematography from genius Agnès Godard, it's not an art house shattering experience by any means, but nor does it set out to be.
Last month, Bluebell DVD also re-issued Pascal Bonitzer's Rien sur Robert and Christopher Frank's Love in the Strangest Way. The latter is a decent French femme fatale revenge thriller in which Nadia Fares worms her way into Thierry L'Hermitte's happy family life and his affections to wreck havoc. Rien sur Robert (Nothing on Robert) has a number of neurotic women upsetting the world of mid-life film journalist Didier (Fabrice Luchini). His young girlfriend Juliette (Sandrine Kiberlain) says she loves only him while openly sleeping with another. Didier is thence drawn into the web of the very cute but neurotic Valentina Cervi. It's all a bit French but very watchable.
Another Bluebell (all are mid-price, no extras) is Korean director Jae-eun Jeong's Take Care of My Cat about five former schoolfriends trying to find excitement in the lifeless port of Inchon. The cat in question is 'tee-tee' a birthday present for Ji-young who lives in a shanty home where the roof always threatens to collapse and finally does. Hee-joo, meanwhile, left to work in Seoul's financial services. This isn't a surprising script but it's a charmingly observed one.
The friendship in Joachim Trier's Norwegian Reprise (out in cinemas this week) is a 'what if' scenario. My Norwegian grammar stops at the echoing past of the noun fjord so I'm not quite sure of the correct tense, but it's a good trivia question to ask how many films begin with 'He would have done x, if y had had that'. Reprise begins with this past conditional and 23-year-old friends Erik (Espen Kloumann Høiner) and Philip (Anders Danielsen Lie), novelists both posting off their initial opus. Their milieu is Oslo Bataille/Barthes reading bourgeois youth but their creativity is the existentialism of a novel like Knut Hamsun's Hunger (1899) about a starving young writer. Like Hunger, Reprise is less concerned about milieu and more about the growth of soul and self. I first saw Reprise at last year's London Film Festival and was a touch perplexed by the narrative. On a recent second viewing you realise that that's exactly the point. There's a taste of Godard rustled up by Olivier Bugge Coutte's editing and indeed, Philip's girlfriend Kari (Victoria Winge) has the captivating screen presence of Godard's muse Anna Karina. Both Philip and Kari love The Ramones and dislike The Clash. There's also a subtle bitter flavour of Hamsun's Nazi sympathies in the mix. This is a very impressive debut for director and co-writer Joachim Trier. And it's the third and equally impressive release from new Brit indie distributor Diffusion. Trier's also a Norwegian skateboard champion and distant relative of Lars von Trier.
Is Col Spector's Brit debut film Someone Else existential or just plain solipsistic? Set in London, thirtysomething photographer David (Stephen Mangan) ditches loyal gal Lisa (Susan Lynch) for dipsy Nina (Lara Belmont) and finds that he can't go back and reprise or even appease Lisa. And would you really trust a guy who thought you liked Jethro Tull? Lisa didn't. Though Spector's co-written dialogue is very sharp and witty, the story ain't much. And it's a film easy to dismiss because of the latter. Interestingly, Spector signed up to RSA Films as a commercials director but the film is almost entirely filmed in mid-shot without any camera choreographic antics. Given the film's short 78 minutes it leads you to think that Spector knows exactly what he wants and that he's conveying that sense of observed urban alienation, particularly a London one, where everybody appears to be happy in the bars and dinner parties but in reality just isn't. Mangan hasn't got that Clive Owen lone prowler's face, more a hangdog likability that gets adopted from the cold and curls up at the foot of a female's bed. And the performances Spector elicits from the rest of his actors are uniformly first-rate. I wish he'd not used music at the end,though,instead of just letting the images speak for themselves.
Helping to lure or keep your significant other half, The Speciality and Fine Food Fair this week in London had some tantalising hand-made morsels from young independent companies. The Wicked Fruit Company has a great logo, hot chilli chocs and some very fetching new lavender ones. A young, seductive Frenchman in Brighton started The Chocolate Empire two years ago and has wondrous choc concoctions. Last year it was dark choc basil, this year poor relation white chocolate leapt forward with subtle lemongrass and poppy seed, cranberries and ylang ylang. Some alluring and very knowledgeable girls from Raw Intent sung a mermaid's song to woo me away from red meat and into their healthier chocolate cove of Aphrodesia Luxury Chocolate spread, ancient Taoist and Tibetan longevity wolfberries, and their range of superfood powders including protein punch. Their luxury raw chocolate pie is so good you only need tiny portions to partake in Raw Intent's siren song that definitely wont send you to your death. The husband and wife team of The Perfectly Delicious Company quit their city finance jobs and after a year now produce handmade natural biscuits that they sell back to the boardrooms they once sat in. Now that's what I call jammy job satisfaction.
Interesting also to chat to the coffee roasters around the issues of Fairtrade products. Unbeknownst to most people, just because your coffee doesn't have a Fairtrade label doesn't mean the farmers aren't necessarily getting a fair deal as the man from the wonderfully named Grumpy Mule pointed out. The same goes for Union Hand Roasted. But you do have to do your homework and find companies you can trust. The coffee exploitation debate was well promulgated in the recent doco Black Gold helping enormously to raise awareness. For Fairtrade spices try Steenbergs Organic, the first UK business to introduce Fairtrade spices and this year they have a fully certified Vanilla essence.
And if all that healthy eating has got you into planet-saving mode, you could try adopting an olive tree in Italy from Nudo, a company set up by an ex-TV producer Brit couple. For £65 a year you not only get your tree but all its produce which, when you do your math, is a really good deal. 970 of their 1200 trees have so far been adopted. It's such a good idea that Selfridges included an adoption in each of their Christmas hampers last year.
If you needed to give your alien friend from another galaxy, or indeed a non-Brit, an educational Christmas present on contemporary British life, this week has your answer. Sixteen Films have two volumes of Ken Loach, Optimum has its Shane Meadows set (with their usual copious extras) giving a Northern perspective, and Fabulous Films have Mike Leigh's High Hopes set in London. I haven't been able to view the DVD's but these films are all fantastic and many of them quite funny, albeit bleakly. BBC TV screens its last episode in their splendid British Film Forever series tonight Comedy. Matthew Sweet's hip script is cheekily voice-overed but the footage will enthrall everyone.
The laugh outloud comedies of the past couple of weeks couldn't have been more diverse. Knocked Up hails from Hollywood and writer/director/producer Judd (The 40-Year-Old Virgin) Apatow. TV entertainment journo Alison (Katherine Heigl- Grey's Anatomy) has a one night stand with 'boy's own' reefer couch potato Ben (Seth Rogen) and to her horror falls pregnant. They agree to differ on their differences and go ahead with the birth. Brit crits have uncharacteristically enthused about Knocked Up. Perhaps it was Loudon Wainwright III's (who also plays Alson's doctor) final ironic song track Grey in LA, bemoaning the city's endless blue skies. Maybe that swayed the critics into thinking it wasn't really a Hollywood film at all. And don't get me wrong, it is actually funny with some great scripting and performances, and for Hollywood, quite risqué in language (Cert. 15 here). A good date movie with Heigl particularly watchable in the 'not-as-easy-as-it-looks' tall, willowy blonde stock role. I just wasn't moved to laugh aloud.
2 Days in Paris had me chuckling all the way, though. Well-known French actress Julie Delpy has written, directed, co-produced, edited, scored as well as sings a track in this Woody Allenesque couple flic. She even cast her own parents as Marion's (Julie Delpy!) Paris old hippie folks. Marion now lives in New York, is very loyal, but a bit flirty and this Paris trip is to placate her laconic NYC boyfriend (Adam Goldberg) after a less than successful one to Venice. Delpy's mission was not an easy one to pull off but this film goes way beyond expectations and will no doubt have producers battering down her door for future projects. Actors are very good at internalising their observations of human minutia but often not so good at manifesting them into words. Delpy cast herself as stooge to the wry, politically incorrect humour she's written for Goldberg. And the 'translation' jokes (Adam has no French) that can fall so flat, soar with Delpy's expertise.
No much humour to be found in this week's London Tube strike that cost the capital an estimated £50 million (3 day strike reduced to 2 day), a "pointless strike" said Chamber of Commerce's Colin Stanbridge. Prospective business will think, "London isn't the place we thought to set up." Well, I think readers will know my feelings on that one. Interesting interview with the RMT union's honcho Bob Crow on ITV Local (Wednesday 5/9/07), and against popular opinion, I do think he has a very important point. After the plethora of failed delivery promises from Metronet, now in receivership, Crow is probably right not to trust any of them. I feel much the same about my Housing Association landlords (don't believe the website!). Bob Crow wants cast-iron assurances for his members on the issues of pensions and redundancies. Cast-iron with no cryptonite! And he's absolutely right when he says "the public own the railways and they were stolen from us". I do take issue with some slightly anti-American comments he made though such as "the MD was sitting in the room for 9 hours yesterday [!], was he singing American folklore to him or something?” I think you'll find that the democratic ideals of American folklore are on your side Bob, rather than the multi-nationals. What was so galling about the strike was the absence of any extra buses to ease the strain and the lack of information for passengers transferring on unfamiliar routes, "absolutely dreadful" to quote one train passenger.
Grayrigg Derailment
Train crash points not inspected
Maybe the last word should go to Alan Weisman whose new book The World Without Us, about what will inherit the earth when us humans are defunked, was featured on Jon Stewart's The Daily Show. No, actually. The last word really should go to my remarkable mother, who even in her worst pain always managed a smile. There wasn't a single morning when she didn't awake and feel that the world was a beautiful place. Her prophecies, intimated to only a few, may have seemed strange. But she knew in her bountiful goodness, that there are indeed forces in the world that don't always wish us well. And she always managed never to let down one single person in her entire life. If London transport were like my mother, you'd never have need of a union or a sleeping pill in the first place.
Almost a haiku is Copyright 2007 Andrew Lucre
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