Me and You (Io e Te) (2012)

Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci

Bernardo Bertolucci has a habit of holing his characters up into enclosed and claustrophobic spaces. Think of Puyi’s Forbidden City in The Last Emperor, Isabelle and Théo’s house in The Dreamers and the apartment in Last Tango in Paris. In Io e Te (Me and You) he takes his conceptual guideline to the extreme. Lorenzo (Jacopo Olmo Antinori) is an anti-social fourteen-year-old boy who hates school. His mother, worried about her son’s unfriendly streak, sends him to a psychotherapist, and is relieved when he takes interest in a school skiing trip. But instead of getting on the bus, Lorenzo sneaks away and sets up an extravagant fort in his basement. 

Antinori gives a unique performance. As an awkward adolescent he does not victimise himself, but rather gives a much fuller performance as a young man who is quite content being alone. All is well for Lorenzo until his drug-addled half-sister Olivia (Tea Falco) turns up and begs for shelter. The relationship between the two is complex. We learn about Olivia’s drug problem, artistic aspirations, love affairs and her relationship with her family. The two grow close. Falco is electrifying.

The problem with Bertolucci’s latest is that it is far too slight. There are some interesting scenes, a particularly nice moment features Olivia singing along to David Bowie’s Ragazzo Solo, Ragazza Sola (the Italian version of his super-hit Space Oddity), but the majority of the film centre’s on the odd pairing of Lorenzo and Olivia. They learn about themselves through each other. Who would have seen that coming? Olivia promises not to do drugs anymore and Lorenzo promises not to hide himself away anymore. And then they leave the basement.

The final shot of the film is a homage to Truffaut’s The 400 Blows, a completely arbitrary and unearned throwback. Jean-Pierre Leaud’s Antoine is a child troubled because he is never given a chance. The character’s in Bertolucci’s film are given opportunities and choose to ignore them.

This film is fine. It looks deliciously old-fashioned and I’m sure it wouldn’t have looked out of place thirty years ago, but it’s a celibate and claustrophobic affair for a director used to creating beauty out of grand settings, tortured characters and sudden changes. It’s Bertolucci locked in a basement with nothing but an ant farm and a pair of headphones. Let’s hope it’s just a practise run for a more productive decade ahead.

★★★

Spring Breakers (2013)

Harmony Korine is one of America’s most polarising and defiant filmmakers. His controversial screenplay for Larry Clark’s Kids marked a turning point in screen content, and he continued to push the boundaries with films like Gummo  and Trash Humpers. This year he brings us his most accessible effort, accessible not because of its content, but because of the star power attached. Spring Breakers sees four college girls, Faith (Selena Gomez), Candy (Vanessa Hudgens), Brit (Ashley Benson) and Cotty (Rachel Korine, Harmony’s wife) dwelling on their spring break plans. Pushed for cash, they rob a local diner in a scene of terrifying veracity that is later reenacted with intense passion by the girls in conversation and recalled in the violent third act.

 

On spring break the fun begins innocently. Korine brings us electrifying montage of bikini-clad (and often not) images of girls at the beach, guys pouring beers down their chests, breasts wobbling as they dance to a dynamic modern soundtrack by dubstep master Skrillex. The fun ends (or for some of the girls, begins) when they are caught for narcotics possession and sent to jail. Alien (James Franco), a local gangster and rapper, bails them out and takes them under his wing. Franco gives one of his best performances as a truly unique character, spitting erotic and empowering dialogue that has the power to romanticise his life and undermine ours. The underground spring break life proves too much for Faith, who leaves the group.

 

Then, terror. The remaining spring breakers adopt to Alien’s lifestyle, enchanted by his presence. Things take a turn in an sequence of incredibly polarising and unique scenes which involve gun-fellatio and a singalong to Britney Spears’ ‘Everytime’. The film is no longer about spring break but instead about gangster revenge, guns and extreme violence. 

 

Korine shoots the film in fluorescent aesthetics. Bright pink, cool blues and greens and flashes of lightening yellow permeate the screen. In no other film in screen history can we see gun-clad Disney alumni in bright green bikinis and glow-in-the dark pink ski masks dancing ethereally around a white piano whilst James Franco’s Alien sings modern pop classics to them. The Disney girls (Gomez and Hudgens) are brave for taking on this role. Gomez in particular seems to understand that breaking away from children’s entertainment can be a transformation in her craft and not her life.

 

Furthermore, Korine’s film provides yes another turning point. In all of the reviews of this film, the word pop-culture is used arbitrarily, as if it is a reference point for Skrillex, hip-hop and Spears. It is not a referential film, but a film that contributes. Korine’s friend Werner Herzog would be proud of the creation of new images in this film. The world of ‘pop-culture’, long ignored by high art is here being portrayed in an extremely beneficial artistic way. I hope that other director’s take note, and take risks. Spring Breakers has grossed five-times it’s budget in the US and overseas.

 

Yes, what you’ve heard is true. Spring Breakers is a candy-coated fever-dream. A fluorescent nightmare. It’s everything Katy Perry wants to be about and everything she would be if she had the balls to follow through with her ‘provocative’ pop-candy lyrics. Most importantly of all, though, it reminds us: Is this what we really want?

The Imposter (2012)

Documentary filmmaking is dominating fiction. Six of the seven films that scored a perfect 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes in 2012 were documentaries, and nine documentaries round out the top 10 of 2012. The all-time top ten films on the popular aggregator include four documentaries made in the last decade. The best reviewed film every year since 2004 has been a documentary. Are we to believe that documentary is an art form elevated beyond our beloved narrative cinema, or are they simply easier to make these days?

The truth may be that sometimes these films, whether they’re well crafted or not, are just so fucking interesting.

The Imposter is a completely enthralling and fascinating insight into the disappearance of teenager Nicholas Barclay and the subsequent investigation surrounding the boy’s identity when he resurfaced in Spain almost four years later. The title should tip you off, but I’ll leave the synopsis there to keep from spoiling the party.

Director Bart Layton takes his cues from the unprecedentedly celebrated Man on Wire (which is the second greatest film of all time according to Rotten Tomatoes oddly unbalanced list). Instead of involving himself in the film (a pet hate of mine, thanks to a few documentary filmmakers who quite literally write the outcomes of their ‘documentaries’ through their involvement and manipulation of their subjects…see Winnebago Man) Layton steps back and in the tradition of Wire uses interesting interview footage, cinematic recreation and a smattering of home video footage and archival material. The Imposter has the right amount of each element and keeps a steady distance from its story, so that it all appears to just unfold itself. It really is masterfully created.

The star of this film is its eccentric and conniving subject, the reemerged Nicholas Barclay. When we meet him, he seems well adjusted. His smile is charming enough for us to enjoy him on the screen despite the complete knowledge that he is, after all, a grade-A sociopath. There is just so much to learn about him, and the film, already rich in information, doesn’t quite touch on his past quite enough. We can only truly understand a man’s decisions when we know where he has come from, and unfortunately the film glides over these details.

The family of missing teenager Nicholas Barclay are victims for the first two acts. The film begins with the top layer of this complex story. As we dig deeper, the film calls everyone into question and there is a colossal shift in the narrative. How could these people, surely traumatised by the disappearance of their brother and son, be so calm and coy about telling this story? Why did we, the audience, never question them before? Calmness becomes anger, and suddenly the imposter isn’t so bad anymore.

Underlying this taught detective-drama is a comedic chronicle of American stupidity. The titular subject states at one point that he didn’t need to be Columbo to figure his situation out. Well the woman in charge of the investigation, FBI agent Nancy Fisher, could have taken a leaf out of Columbo’s book. She is the least inquisitive agent I have ever seen. Her short-sightedness raised laughter from the audience. On the other hand, Private Investigator Charlie Parker thinks he is Columbo. He’s a naive man with a faded expectation of what his life is, but he’s earnest and well-meaning, and at least he can think far enough ahead to make some leeway in the investigation, which is more than the Fisher’s FBI were doing.

The beauty of the film is that behind the eyes of each of its subjects lies either a secret or a dream, and it’s ultimately up to us to decide which one.

★★★★

The Imposter opens February 28 at Cinema Paradiso Northbridge- Perth, Dendy Newtown- Sydney, Cinema Nova- Melbourne and State Cinema- Hobart.

Trailer: Inside Llewyn Davis

I got sick of Googling the Coen Brothers upcoming and future projects quite a while ago, so it comes as a surprise that the trailer for their new film ‘Inside Llewyn Davis’ was just leaked on YouTube. 

The film is looking set to premiere at Cannes, where the Coen’s have won big before, and stars Oscar Isaac as the titular character and a cast of Coen favourites and newcomers such as John Goodman, Adam Driver, Justin Timberlake, Alex Karpovski, Carey Mulligan and Garrett Hedlund.

The film follows a folk singer as he navigates the 1960s New York scene, and fittingly the trailer features Bob Dylan. Enjoy.

Django Unchained (2013)

Directed by Quentin Tarantino

This highly anticipated  comeback from Quentin Tarantino sees the once-cult director appropriating yet another one of history’s darkest periods, that of slavery in 19th Century USA. Just like the violent and vengeful Jewish Nazi-hunters in Inglorious Basterds, Tarantino’s rich and diverse characters in Django Unchained seek revenge on the ignorant and bigoted folk who find slavery perfectly natural. The characters range from the German liberal Dr King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) to the titulal Django Freeman, who after being freed by his European counterpart seeks to find his slave wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington). Dr Schultz, a bounty hunter, employs the naturally gifted Django and the pair’s friendship spurs the films narrative. It’s Django’s debt to Schultz and Schultz’s infatuation with the complex Django that keeps us intrigued through a middle section that suffers due to Tarantino’s freewheeling dialogue. The pair discover that Broomhilda has been purchased by Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio), and the second half of the film is set on Candie’s elaborate property, where high tension elevates into a bloodbath and body count which, in Tarantino’s oeuvre, can only be surpassed by the Crazy 88 scene in Kill Bill.

Django Unchained is in so many ways classic Tarantino. It references a plethora of films and draws from two genres rarely, probably never, seen together: the Spaghetti Western and the blaxploitation film. There’s so much fun to be had in this strange blend, and Tarantino ensures that the journey across America’s deep south is entertaining to populist audiences and cinemagoers with a keen eye for intertextuality. A brief and unmentioned cameo from Frank Nero, star of the 1966 film Django from which the film takes its title, epitomises this playful approach. A comedic highlight comes in a scene in which a group of Klansmen debate over whether or not to wear masks to their next manhunt. Sweeping shots of deserts and plantations, comical sound effects and, at least in it’s first and third acts, a tense and witty screenplay will provide whatever Tarantino fans are looking for here. Despite this, the film’s flaws provide an insight into Tarantino’s dark side that I could do without from now on.

His indulgence in cinematic reference is fun for viewer and director alike, but his overindulgence in violence mars the film’s credibility. I applaud Tarantino’s decision to face the truth of the matter when it comes to slavery, but when I found that Tarantino was enjoying himself, and even taking inappropriate historical liberties, I couldn’t take it seriously. Calvin Candie’s major pastime is a gambling fad called Mandingo Fighting. Two slaves are forced to fight to the death while their masters watch on. The sequence is horrifying, and I didn’t mind it’s inclusion in the film until I realised that not only did it have nothing to do with the film’s major narrative arc, but it never actually happened. Mandingo Fighting is a reference to the 1975 film Mandingo, one of Tarantino’s favourites. It’s a clever reference, but it’s inappropriate in a film that depicts one of the great American tragedies, the consequences of which are still being felt today.  Another sequence sees a slave ripped apart by Candie’s vicious dogs. This scene spurs Django’s revenge even further and contributes to our devotion to him, it’s necessary, despite being almost unwatchable. There’s a difference between the two.

Perhaps the most intriguing psychological profile comes in the form of Samuel L Jackson’s Steven, an elderly slave who acts as a sidekick to Candie. After years of service he seems to have earned himself special omission from the regular slave rules, and interacts with the white folk just as much as Candie himself. I can’t yet tell if Steven is overcome by Stockholm syndrome or thriving on power and authority, but his allegiance to his master makes him as much a villain in the film as Candie himself. Otherwise, Foxx, Waltz and DiCaprio are in top form, and Kerry Washinton, working in overdrive, gives a very powerful performance.

Tarantino’s go-to editor Sally Menke passed away in 2010, and one can’t help but feel that her absence contributes to the uneven pace of Django Unchained. Despite this and the director’s distasteful excess, the film is as fun, raw and memorable as anything else Tarantino has made. One can only begin to imagine which historical tragedy he plans to take revenge on next.

★★★★

Django Unchained plays in wide release from January 24th.

The Impossible (2013)

Directed by Juan Antonio Bayona

The Impossible tells an uplifting tale of human survival in the midst of one of humanity’s worst tragedies. On Boxing Day 2004, a tsunami, triggered by a subterranean earthquake, struck the Pacific Basin, wiping out kilometers of coastline and tens of thousands of human lives in its path. The story told by director Juan Antonio Bayona in The Impossible accounts for one of the families affected, but encounters moral issues both in the isolation of its story, and in the melodramatic way in which it is told.

Maria Belon (Noami Watts), a doctor, her husband Enrique (Ewan McGregor), and their three children Lucas, Thomas and Simon are vacationing in Thailand over the Christmas break when the tragedy strikes, a short time into the film. Maria and her eldest son Simon are swept inland, somehow surviving albeit with heavy injuries, whilst Enrique, Thomas and Simon somehow remain in the vicinity of the hotel. Maria and Lucas are taken to an overrun hospital, where Maria’s injuries worsen, and Enrique sends his two youngest sons to the safety of the mountains while he continues to search for his wife and son. For a period of time the family are completely separated from each other, and their journey to find one another provides some of the films most touching and heart wrenching moments.

This is a film loaded with emotion and passion, which suits the situation but falters due to a script filled with cliche and hyperbole. At a time when human life is at its most frail and powerless, melodrama seems distant and out of place, as though there is something unrealistic and ingenuine about it. And it isn’t just the script. Bayona prefers tracking shots that sweep in and out to intensify the drama (it works to evoke the movement of the tsunami, but nowhere else), and Oscar Faura’s lush cinematography simply isn’t the Thailand that I remember, a shiny veneer over reality.

There is mastery at work in the scenes which depict the tsunami itself. I’m sure the we’ve all been shocked and sickened by footage of this tsunami before, but Bayona’s camera doesn’t look from afar, it’s in the water with Maria and Lucas. Visual effects are used in the wider takes, but the majority of the action occurs in the water itself. It’s an experience worth seeing the film for.

Watts gives an Oscar-worthy performance, and despite the lack of range she is given, she is raw and powerful the whole way through. McGregor has great moments, as do the two youngest performers, but I was particularly taken by Tom Holland’s role as the eldest son Lucas. He doesn’t play, like many child actors (most recently Quevenzhene Wallis) on instinct or naturalism, but with method and tact. This is a trained actor, and I have a feeling he would be at home in a more heightened environment like the theatre.

But still, despite these great elements, there is something not quite right about this film. It fails to recognise something at the heart of this disaster. The final shot of the film harks at a bigger problem. It shows us, from an airplane, the affected Thai coastline. This is a whole community affected by an unprecedented natural distaster and left to make do with the desolate landscape the tsunami left behind. It’s a shame that we have to see it from the perspective of a surviving British family being flown back to safety.

★★★

The Impossible plays in wide release from January 24th.

You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (2010)

Directed by Woody Allen

It should come as no surprise that the decision was made, three years after it’s US distribution, to release Woody Allen’s 42nd feature film in Australia. After the success of Midnight in Paris, the affection acquired from Woody Allen: A Documentary, the bountiful homage to the director in countless recent films (2 Days in New York and Paris-Manhattan the more prominent amongst them), the recent release of To Rome With Love and the sudden promotion of his classics into different collections and box sets, the love for Woody Allen can be felt stronger than ever. After seeing the film, it’s easy to see why it wasn’t released in the first place. Like To Rome With Love, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger doesn’t soar to any memorable heights or provide any of the insight that Allen is famous for.

The film is set in London, some time in the recent past. Alfie and Helena Shepridge (Anthony Hopkins and Gemma Jones) divorce decades into their marriage. Alfie indulges in a life of luxury while Helen confides in a bogus fortune teller (Pauline Collins) who tells her what she wants to hear. Their daughter Sally (Naomi Watts) and her husband Roy (Josh Brolin) face marital issues of their own, and seek interest in other people and places. Both are stuck in a rut professionally, and their tension and frustration builds until their marriage crumbles. The rest is ridiculous farce. Each of these characters seem to be looking in all the wrong places for happiness, and in the end all we discover is that everything we do basically signifies nothing. It sounds like classic Allen, but it’s not.

As predicted, they all meet a tall dark stranger in some form. Frustratingly, the characters drag in a supporting cast that seemed perfectly happy (albeit disillusioned)  before they became entwined in this tiring web. Alfie’s dimwit prostitute wife (Lucy Punch), Helen’s stout, occult bookstore-owner partner (Roger Ashton-Griffiths), Sally’s art-curator boss (Antonio Banderas) and Roy’s exotic, guitar-yielding muse (Freida Pinto) bring comedy and joy to the story at the detriment to their own lives. Punch is the hit of the film. Despite a few missteps in life, her character certainly has enough heart for us to be rooting along with her (no pun intended) against Hopkins’ shallow Alfie.

Fittingly, nothing is ever resolved in the film. We can assume that the characters continue down their destitute paths, and honestly, I was glad I didn’t have to see then end results. If there’s anything to learn here, it’s to be content with the reality of life and not with any desirable dream you we have conjured up. It’s a downbeat message provided by a film with a few laughs, one sly twist and an abundance of assholes who could not be more misguided in life.

★★

You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger opens at Luna’s Cinema Paradiso, Northbridge and Luna on SX, Fremantle on January 17th.