The Wolves Who Learnt to Swim (Part 2)

Before plunging into Part 2, a quick rub down with this year’s The Times BFI 51st London Film Festival. I was going to wait a teeny bit before fest blogging so let me make quite clear that this isn’t just a genuflecting plug for the PR’s sake (though I’m very ‘allow me to fight that dragon for you’ grateful for my accreditation). But I saw a preview of a film yesterday, that when you walked outside into the open air after 136 minutes, had really fired your brain into seeing the minutia of life in a different way and a different time frame. And that’s what these film festivals are all about. Silent Light (Stellet Light), UK released in December by Tartan Films, is next week’s World Cinema Gala in Leicester Square. Seeing this on the National Film Theatre’s big NFT1 screen with the film’s widescreen anamorphic cinematography (Alexis Zabe) was like bathing in the colours of a coral reef – a bit like how Robin Williams felt I imagine, surreally wading through oil paints in Vincent Ward’s What Dreams May Come (different film aesthetic of course).

Silent Light is set in a Menonite community on the outskirts of Chihuahua, Mexico where they speak a medieval German dialect. Doesn’t sound promising does it? But writer/director Carlos Reygadas isn’t really into social realism, although I suppose that’s nominally the film’s turf: not much happens and married Johan (Cornelio Wall Fehr) falls for another woman. Not that there are too many to choose from out there. You find yourself fascinated by things like beads of sweat and even sleeting rain seems a newborn image. If you love art and photography you’ll definitely not be disappointed in this film. Flemish chanteur provocateur Jacques Brel even pops up on a tiny B/W TV in a van. Another visual treat (widescreen 35mm again) on the weekend is Jeff Nichols’ debut Shotgun Stories (Vertigo Films UK next March/April) set in SouthEast Arkansas about a feuding family, after their father’s death, of three brothers who don’t even have names: Son, Boy, Kid. As a teenager, David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia inspired Nichols. The production team is that of 2001 arthouse hit George Washington - David Gordon Green and Lisa Muskat and cinematographer Adam Stone.

And, of course, there's the incomparable Ang Lee and with his Lust,Caution (Se, jie): Shanghai on the brink of WW2. Very long film, but Ang's humanity really makes you care. Wong Chia Chi (Tang Wei)almost learns to swim with both her head and her heart.

A quick mention of the complete opposite in filmmaking with Joe Swanberg’s Hannah Takes the Stairs shot on around $50,000 (cast got paid) in Chicago last July. Much the same territory as directors Andrew Bujalski and Mark Duplass who both appear as actors here to Greta Gerwig’s Hannah. Speaking to Swanberg over breakfast about this US indie, low-budget genre some have dubbed ‘mumblecore’ (a term he hates), he said he made Hannah as he was “uncomfortable about the mid-level gross no-man’s land” a lot of US films inhabit that are neither indie nor Hollywood. “I’d rather see Mission Impossible 4 than...” well I won’t quote which so-called ‘indie’ film he mentioned. The Hannah script consisted of “one sheet of paper with a coffee stain” otherwise it’s totally improvised. I haven’t seen Swanberg’s other films but Hannah, though very funny and observant, doesn’t quite have the same unifying rhythms as in Bujalski’s Funny HaHa or Duplass’ The Puffy Chair. However, the naked amateur trumpet playing in the bathtub of the 1812 Overture certainly deserves to go down in the ‘indie’ history reel of fame. And what's the difference between nouvelle vague and mumblecore? Criterion have their new Breathless DVD out next week in the States. Discuss!

So, on with those other music flics I promised. Xavier Giannoli’s The Singer(Quand j'étais chanteur) has Gérard Depardieu as Alain Moreau singing “mellow crooners” to the singles and divorcees of Clermont-Ferrand in France. And it’s the best thing Depardieu has done in years. Well into middle-age Alain has a one-night stand with the much younger assistant Marion (Cécile de France) of an old friend who’s now an estate agent. She initially regrets the experience, but Alain inveigles her into helping him find a new house. She nicknames him ‘ladies man’ and has no intention of repeating her mistake. But a bond slowly forms between them, a real one not a screenwriter’s male fantasy. One of Alain’s songs is “trouver avec moi les paradises perdues” (find the lost paradises with me) but neither character is lost. On the contrary, they are survivors: Alain in the entertainment biz (his nightclub is successful and he’s no alcoholic or druggy) and Marion with a failed marriage and a rarely seen young son but still organised and independent. And while Alexandre Desplat’s songs sound intentionally sentimental, Alain’s audiences find truth and comfort in their sentiments. The nuance of Depardieu and Cecile de France’s performances is remarkable. Lovely scene where they visit the volcanic mountains and Alain teaches Cecile about the the Raelians. You’d need a heart of stone not to find pleasure in this film.

Renowned rock music photographer Anton Corbijn has made his first (and probably last given the struggle) feature Controlabout the troubled life of Joy Division’s Ian Curtis who suicided at 23. Based on his widow Deborah’s Touching from a Distance it is stunningly shot in grainy B/W (Martin Ruhe, camera). Corbijn put a huge chunk of his own dosh into this when funding fell through and it’s far from being a ‘vanity’ project. This is gloomy grey Macclesfield, North-East England 1970’s where Ian (Sam Riley) met Bernard Sumner (James Anthony Pearson) and Peter ‘Hooky’ (Joe Anderson) at a Sex Pistols concert thence forming the band Warsaw that became Joy Division “what happened to the name Slaves of Venus,” someone says. Even with that name I’m sure they’d have succeeded. Samantha Morton plays Deborah, Alexandra Maria Lara the other woman Annik, and the entire film is a quiet elegy for Curtis’ inimitable talent, his most famous song probably being Love Will Tear Us Apart. You exit the theatre wanting to put pen to paper yourself and down more than a couple of very stiff drinks.
'Control' splits our critics

A date movie that’s bound to cheer you and make you chuckle is the New Zealand Black Sheep debut written and directed by Jonathan King. Die hard horror fans will remember Peter ‘later Lord of the Rings’ Jackson’s Braindead and while this film doesn’t quite approach that benchmark of invention and editing gore, it certainly doesn’t disgrace itself at the table of horrors. Bad brother Angus (Peter Feeney) is genetically engineering sheep for better wool. Good brother Henry (Nathan Meister) knows niet and turns up to sell his stake in the farm. He bumps into eco-girl Experience (Danielle Mason) and together they bump into hundreds of mutant ‘werewolf sheep’. Trust me, it’s very funny, only 87 minutes and not quite the gorefest it sounds. But all things are relative.

The black sheep of London’s art scene (i.e. those not invited into the inner sanctum of the Frieze Art Fair) clubbed together four years ago to form Zoo Art Fair, named thus because it was held at London Zoo. Previously open only to UK galleries, this year it opened its doors to the world and changed venue to the Royal Academy of Arts in London’s West End. It’s a non-profit enterprise showcasing under 6-year-old galleries. One art critic tried putting me off going by saying it was a waste of time. It certainly wasn’t wasted time, and while I liked the fact it was centrally located (not the usual eco-system for black sheep) and less intimidating in scale than Frieze, it has started taking on a mini Frieze feel. And like Frieze seek and ye shall find gems amid the dross without spending the gross domestic product of a small country. Very cute and ‘kid friendly’ piece by David Ellis from Roebling Hall, New York who’s assembled an automated rhythm group out of bopping garbage. Or there’s the more aesthetic video art of Eve Sussman

Francoise (Daniel Auteuil) is a middle-aged antique dealer as obsessed with objects as many of the rich art collectors at Frieze. In Patrice Leconte’s My Best Friend(Optimum DVD, IFC this week in the States), his business partner Catherine bets him an expensive Greek vase that he can’t prove to her by the end of the month that he has any friend at all. The unlikely Bruno (Dany Boon), a taxi driver, comes to the rescue. What, in other directorial hands could be a strained scenario, in Leconte’s is effortless, very funny, and very moving. Nicely self-deprecating Making Of extra too.

Author Benjamin Barber discusses Agency and Art in a Hyper-Consumerist Culture: The Agent as Artist, as Consumer, and as Citizen

Lots of 'isms' in the London arts scene.

Two big art shows well worth visiting are Millais (Tate Britain) and Louise Bourgeois (Tate Modern). John Everett Millais (1829-1896) was one of those Brit Pre-Raphaelite painters who have now become postcard images (young female eyes heavenward). But in their time they proved quite outrageous. Unbelievably, this is the first ever proper retrospective and this show goes a long way towards sifting the art itself from the conventional wisdom it has become shrouding in over the centuries. At age 9/10 Millais was a phenomenal drawer (Bust of a Greek Warrior in chalk) and his later oil portraits show the magnificence of his talent. The Tate is making a big plug for assembling 21 of his late Scottish landscapes, a place where he loved to hunt and shoot. While I can’t quite share their enthusiasm for these, a unique eeriness of soul and physic light shines through them. And that’s true for most of the work and is the captivating quality of the show. Millais was not averse to cashing in on his success, a reproduction of Cherry Ripe had a 500,000 print run, and Bubbles did wonders for Pears soap sales. He was also the first artist to be made a baronet in 1885. All in all he’s now seen as part of the establishment (which he was) and not quite in the league of more suffering artists. This show won’t bowl you over, but like the neglected and maligned work of many artists and composers over centuries, look, listen, make up your own mind, and you’ll be surprised.

Artist Louise Bourgeois, French but long time New York denizen, is now 96. If known at all to the general Brit public, it’s for her giant spider (one of a series of 6) sculpture Maman (1999) now looming outside Tate Modern. But Bourgeois’ spider is not meant to frighten rather to protect, like a mother. Or she’s known for Robert Mapplethorpe’s photo of her with Filette (1968) a latex covered giant phallus under her arm like some Diana huntress with her trophy. This Tate retrospective is F**KING FANTASTIC and really inspires one to make art out of inner turmoil. (Her last retrospective was in 1982 at NY’s MOMA) It begins with her early 40’s Femme Maison (housewife) paintings leading onto her Personage sculptures, stacked columns of wood and plaster that seem to have risen and silently crawled through the floor. Later, the isolated figures become grouped, “My work grows from the duel between the isolated individual and the shared awareness of the group,” Bourgeois said. Hauser and Wirth Colnaghi have her latest work, sculptures using the contents of her wardrobe as raw materials, then cast in bronze and painted.

In the ‘60s while hard-edged minimalism was all the rage, Bourgeois made malleable sculptures from latex and plaster. This culminated in The Destruction of the Father (1974) an installation of rubber, latex, wood, fabric and lit with a red glow resembling something out of the film Alien: Bourgeois: “This piece is basically a table, the awful, terrifying family dinner table headed by the father who sits and gloats. And the others, the wife, the children, what can they do. They sit there, in silence. The mother, of course tries to satisfy the tyrant, her husband. The children are full of exasperation....So in exasperation, we grabbed the man, threw him on the table, dismembered him and proceeded to devour him.”

A hanging bronze from 1993 Arch of Hysteria continues this theme and her reading of Jean-Martin Charcot, a French neurologist, about the hysteria of men not only women. Further installations are rooms of remembrance and surveillance. The whole exhibition is like a giant organism - swelling, contracting, breathing then silent. All presided over by Maman outside by the Thames. Bourgeois’ family was in tapestry restoration and her mother was in charge of the workshop, “like spiders my mother...was a weaver... and very clever. Spiders are friendly presences...helpful and protective.” And the exhibition ends with Bourgeois’ most recent tapestry heads. Like Salcedo’s Shibboleth, The Bourgeois retrospective forces us to ask what it is we fear?

Once upon a time
There was a lonely wolf
Lonelier than the angels.

He happened to come to a village.
He fell in love with the first house he saw.

Already he loved its walls
The caresses of its bricklayers.
But the windows stopped him.

In the room sat people.
Apart from God nobody ever
found them so beautiful
as this child-like beast.

So at night he went into the house.
He stopped in the middle of the room
and never moved from there any more.

He stood all through the night, with wide eyes
and on into the morning when he was beaten to death.

Fable (Janos Pilinszky) Detail from the KZ-Oratorio, Dark Heaven
From the Hungarian (trans. Ted Hughes)