not even the rain.....

Whiling time away the other day with a colleague, he opined that Woody Allen's latest film You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (released by Warners in the UK and France but not even on their website..) was lazy. To which I instantaneously mused that it felt more interesting than that though the characters did seem to inhabit different films. "Every human being represents a world," according to Italian film director Michelangelo Antonioni whose two early films Le Amiche (The Girlfriends) and La signora senza camelie (The Lady Without Camelias) are co-incidentally out on Eureka DVD next week (indie director Joe Swanberg shoots the interview extras). Mr. Allen's most recent opus didn't send the Americans critics falling over themselves with praise either when it opened there last year. But Antonioni's Le Amiche did back in 1955, its virtues extolled by no lesser mortals than Village Voice critics Jonas Mekas and Andrew Sarris though the film was mostly dismissed in Europe. It was re-released June 2010 at New York's Film Forum to rave notices.

Cinephile earthlings would have to have been incarcerated under a rock not to know that Woody Allen's mentors were Ingmar Bergman and the likes of Antonioni. Now whether Mr. Allen meant You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger to be his Bergmanesque hommage to modern London he doesn't say. If he did then unconciously he's created a film far more akin to Antonioni 'alienation' than Bergman's acceptance of love and death. Best to start with Mr. Allen's own words about the film: "That's how people get through life: by constantly denying reality, constantly buying into allusions of artistic immortality. of meaning to the universe, an afterlife, all kinds of illusions...Even if you could find a pill that makes you live forever, that forever is still a finite number, because nothing is forever. It's all sound and fury, and in the end it means nothing." Given that, filmmaking for Allen "is a distraction that has its own little challenges and consequently keeps the mind off morbid thoughts."

It was no 'accident' or 'mistake' therefore that the characters in You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger seem to live in different movies i.e. their own. Just as Cesare Pavese's (writer of Le Amiche's source novella Among Women Only) writer friend Italo Calvino critised Antonioni for, in Village Voice critic Jim Hoberman's words, "his lack of Pavesean subtlety"; so too could some level the same at Woody Allen as compared to Bergman. Yet anyone who knows London as compared to Manhattan will realise that though Londoners may think they inhabit different worlds most New Yorkers, however, secretly know it is one and the same for everyone- no matter how many fundraising Galas they attend to massage their tax return or assuage their immortal soul. That's where Mr. Allen's film is as incredibly astute as say Manhattan or Hannah and Her Sisters - You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger is not nearly so funny nor as enjoyable but then, nor is London compared to Manhattan in that sense.

Antonioni's pre-Le Amiche film was a series of interviews as part of Love in the City- Attempted Suicide. And both films of Antonioni and Mr.Allen open with a failed suicide. Indeed, Pavese's last diary entry before committing suicide himself was, “No more words, only a gesture”. Antonioni's characters want independence from their fellow humans while simultaneous not being able to live without them. Lorenzo (Gabriele Ferzetti) is an artist of sorts supported by his girlfriend Mariella ; as is in the writer Roy (Josh Brolin) by Sally (Naomi Watts) in You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger. The shopclerk Clara (Lucia Bosé) in Antonioni's La signora senza camelie [The Lady Without Camelias] (1953) is dissatisfied with simply being a movie star wanting to be at least considered capable of being a 'dramatic' actress. Maybe she is given the right chances or maybe she just isn't. As are the characters in You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger - not so much failures more just potential victims of life's cruel illusions with politics not amounting to a hill of beans at the end of the day because all we have as mortals is that dwindling hill of beanstalk progeny.

After the inner emotional machinations of The Illusionist one was hoping for more of the same in director Neil Burger's latest Limitless. Though lacking in that particular quality, the chemically induced plotline does race around in very vervy fashion if not much else. Whatever wonder pills Eddie Morra (Bradley Cooper) is taking, they certainly allow him to see through the hill of beans, up the other side of the mountain and beyond. Leslie Dixon's (The Thomas Crown Affair) script plays cool as in Thomas Crown while never plummetting the emotional payoff beyond that cliff face.

Le Amiche's Clelia (Eleonora Rossi Drago) returns to Turin having deserted her working class niche and ascending to a couture assistant in Rome. Her affair with workman Carlo (Ettore Manni) defines no political agenda (Antonioni's background was one of wealth) yet she is one of the few survivors of the 'middle-class' milieu by the end of the film. Or is she? Should Woody Allen's denouement elderly couple in You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger be criticised for their life of illusion? Who's to say that their shared belief in the weegee board afterlife isn't blissful belief rather than ignoble ignorance?

Chalet Girl aspires to be Brit flic rags to riches Cineplex hit. And it's nigh hard to be disappointed in the results of such ambition from director Phil Trait (you was persona non gratis admitting a soft spot for his Sandra Bullock vehicle All About Steve). Most certainly Chalet Girl is one of those films where you ponder: if it weren't for the captivating female lead would this all just all be hokum? Kim (Felicity Jones) - is fast food check out girl turned posh Austrian ski chalet hospitalitess. All thanks to a co-worker's tipoff and Kim's desultory silver service skills thumping her into right place, right time mode. Needless to say, the poshettes of piste are immediately horrified then somewhat bemused at the waif's arrival on the slopes.

If you didn't already know that Felicity Jones was established as a rising Brit star then after seeing this film you'd grab that list by the scruff of the neck and plonk her name very near the top. Easy to see why out of all possible competition American director Julie Taymor chose her to be Miranda in the rather problematic (as compared to say Derek Jarman's magical) version of Shakespeare's TheTempest. Established Brit comedian Bill Bailey is a straight dramatic foil as Kim's single parent dad William in Chalet Girl. And Kim's almost penultimate dawn mountainous monologue on the death of her mum could go so so gooey but it's largely to her credit that it rises heavenwards. It's a film of illusions, with as a criticism, perhaps just too happiness rounding out 'our little sleep' at the end. But again, who's to say it couldn't all happen? Surrounded by a great supporting cast Felicity Jones makes us believe not so much that this life's all for 'real'; rather that belief in yourself is all "we know and need to know" and is the only thing stopping it all from being just a bitch. Are we just flaccid fated creatures or do we have free will: The Adjustment Bureau is on general release and won't disappoint.

This need to know is what propels Ken Loach's Route Irish. Liverpudlian friend Frankie of private security contractor Fergus (a riveting performance from relative newcomer Mark Womack) has been killed on the route between Baghdad Airport and the Green Zone. Fergus is a mongrel mix of bloodhound/rottweiler/and pooch. There's more than meets the eye to the official explanations he's being dished out and he means to see it through to the bitter blinding end. A director such as Ken Loach should know better than to contrast images of carnage over the emotive traditional music played in concert by Southern Kurdistan musician Talib Rasool. Or perhaps Loach is being far cleverer than that. Is that device not the trope of war we are always offered? Early on, Frankie's widow says about the war deaths "if it came on the telly I'd just turn it off" . The question is not do we really need another film about Iraq? Rather, how do we go on living without more films like Route Irish provoking debate? Fergus sort of tries convincing himself he's different (and quite and of course is possibly) from everyone else. Loach's ending is far more complex than to be simply seen as one of revenge for Fergus' character. We are all bound on that Shakespearean wheel of fire like it or not. Loach's greatness as a director is holding that mirror up to our nature's whatever upbringing and asking, would/could one have been any different knowing what you knew?

Archipelago (a gem at last year's 54th BFI London Film Festival) proves director Joanna Hogg, on just the strength of two features, to be Britain's great hope for the survival of European cinema. One could say her style resembles such and such, or so and so. Really, though, hers is the other side of the Woody Allen coin of 'Englishness'. Hogg: "Facts don't necessarily lead to truth. I was ambivalent around whether I had the right to portray people close to me, and in the end I decided to base all the characters around myself so I wouldn't hurt anyone. What I feel I've ended up with is a rather unflattering self-portrait, in which I've created a kind of internal family that bears no relation to my family of origin...a close-up doesn't necessarily mean intimacy."

As in Chalet Girl friction of class distinctions ignites self-questioning. Edward (Tom Hiddleston) forms not so much a bond as an unconsummated therapy with the rented house's cook Rose (a real life caterer and the first film for non-actress Amy Lloyd). His family have gathered (in reality on the strange Gulf Stream tropic of Tresco off the coast of Penzance) as a send off for this ex city banker's new life as AIDS health educator in Africa. Edward genuinely thinks he'll be able to 'make a difference' to the world. And no doubt he could in some way great or small. The question director Joanna Hogg asks us, though, is how much of a difference will Edward ever make to himself? In a Eugene O'Neill moment late in the film Edward confesses to his mother's painting teacher Christopher that maybe he should instead become a writer. It's one of many scenes in this film reeking of flayed human u-turns; it's victims desperately seeking sign-posting for what will ever only be simply their own reflection in the rear-view mirror.

I'm still plowing or is it gliding through Eureka's Late Mizoguchi - Eight Films 1951-1956 boxed set. So maybe they'll be an addition to this posting if the forces of darkness don't overtake my passion.

Wasn't sent a preview DVD for the brave cinematic adaption of Haruki Murakami's 1987 novel Norwegian Wood. Sounds intriguing, though. Also missed what 'they're' saying is 'the best British comedy in years Submarine.

The very silly but very fun Irish comedy Zonad played the Tribeca Fest NYC last year but only just makes it to DVD (director's commentary) without UK theatrical. Also at last year's Tribeca and out on DVD is a more celebrated The Arbor. Or put spine-tingling hairs on your significant other's body parts with the BFI re-release of Henri-Georges Clouzot's Les Diaboliques (1955)-it even inspired Hitchcock. The 2009 doco on the director's unfinished Inferno is enthralling for any cineaste. But the doco Gasland (DVD) showing drinking water of Americans turning not into wine but flammable gas is even more horrific.

'Nor has your loyal blogger been well enough to haunt the London galleries (not a cop out but unfortunate truth) though I hope to catch these:

John Stezaker at the Whitechapel Gallery (closing today...yikes)
Douglas Gordan at Gagosian
Afghanistan: Crossroads of the Ancient World (British Museum)
Watteau: The Drawings at the Royal Academy as well as the survey of Modern British sculpture.
The British Art Show 7: In the Days of the Comet continues at Hayward Gallery. If you missed Christian Marclay's The Clock at the White Cube last year now's your chance. Movie segments that feature the time are edited into a 24 video that tells the time minute for minute. if it's not art then it's certainly a 'can't go wrong' date movie.

As for real life in London: it continues to be just too unbelievable and no doubt quietly unbearable for some. Read the newspapers online if you dare! I gave you a good education in reality navigation, non? OK, I can't resist the temptation. What do the 2012 Olympics and penguins have in common? You do know there's now a secret colony of our waddling friends called the Herzguins (inspired by director Werner Herzog's doco Encounters at the End of the World. He goes 3D into the French Chauvet caves for Cave of Forgotton Dreams.