melancholia (w&d von trier)

If cinema, as occasionally noted, is a synthesis of multiple elements (screenwriting, acting, photography, music, art direction, editing etc), then the art of the director is to employ each of these elements to the nth degree. It might seem counterintuitive that Von Trier, who comes from a lo-fi school, which sought a return to a pared-back methodology, should end up excelling in every aspect of this directorial remit, but in Melancholia, we witness a seemingly effortless mastery of the medium.

Screenwriting - when discussing the quality of screenwriting, what is involved? Firstly the idea that the screenplay will introduce and discuss ideas that provoke thought, a condition so often neglected by the mainstream. Second that the narrative should take the viewer with it, should be involving. Thirdly, that the dialogue should be credible, even at its more recondite. So when Dunst’s character says that the earth is evil, in another film this line might feel trite or contrived. Whereas, in Melancholia, it feels not only credible, coming from the mouth of this character, but also resonant of the more complex ideas the film is raising. Cinema is not philosophy. It struggles to explore concepts with subtlety or depth. Von Trier appears to be investigating a Schopenhauer- ian or Manichean argument about the overblown importance of humanity, its relative insignificance within the immensity of the universe. Dunst character explores these ideas convincingly, brilliantly, in a way that allows us to understand the questions the film is posing. Should the world end, would it really be such a tragedy? What would be lost? It’s an existential, anti-renaissance line, which feels all too pertinent in this 21st christian century.

Acting - Acting is by definition, fakery. Someone pretends to be someone else. The question then becomes, how well do they do this? Do they still feel human? Or does the fakery feel contrived? Perhaps the greatest testament to the director’s skill is the performance of Kiefer Sutherland, an actor who sometimes seemed to relish the fakery, the exaggeration of acting for the camera. Here, as the hassled husband of Gainsbourg and Dunst’s brother-in-law his exasperation is completely convincing.

Photography - I was lucky enough to watch the film on a big screen. There can be few more imposing visions than the great planet Melancholia soaring over the horizon, at the same time beauty, monster and avenger. There is something of the formal composition of certain scenes that is reminiscent of Resnais’ Last year in Marienbad. Then, in the opening half of the film, Von Trier’s DOP, Manuel Alberto Claro, captures the nuances and energy of a wedding with all the brillo of the days of Dogma, a homage, in its way, to Festen.

Music - Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde is used repeatedly throughout the film. Given the epic scale the film is looking to operate on, the choice feels just as apposite (and perhaps includes a nod and a wink) to Copolla’s uses of Wagner in Apocalypse Now.

Art Direction - someone (Simone Grau Roney) was doing something very clever indeed with the representation of the planet Melancholia, a second moon/ sun. The use of a simple piece of twisted wire as a messenger of salvation or doom is also extraordinary.

Editing - Editing is one of the least valued elements of the process of making cinema. You rarely get editors on the red carpet. Yet Molly Malene Stensgaard offers a masterclass. In the first half of the film, with its large cast, she ensures that the rhythm never drops as we flit from scene to scene, cutting at the perfect moment. In the second, which has only four characters, she ensures there is a rising sense of tension, propelling the film towards its glorious climax. 

ostende (w&d laura citarella)

Ostende is a masterclass in how to make your debut. The film is predicated on the quiet charm of its protagonist, Laura Paredes. Staying at the eponymous off-season balneario, she observes what she believes is a conspiracy evolving between three of the other guests, an older man and two younger women. This gives the film a Hitchcockian guile, a hook to anchor the film’s quiet observations and gentle humour. As is so often the case with the films from the Pampero stable, there are elements of the shaggy dog story to the narrative. The journey is more important than the destination, even if this is to a certain extent belied by the film’s final sequence. The story Paredes constructs in her head about her fellow guests is echoed by a story for a film that one of the hotel staff tells her, a tale that promises darkness, violence and mystery, but is no more than a first act. The presence of a John Le Carré book which Paredes is reading reinforces the idea that the audience is watching a spy movie, searching for clues along with the protagonist. But the film also makes it clear that in this sense the cinematic thriller is a game, played between audience and director. The director’s role is to keep the audience guessing, which is also a way of keeping them awake and alive, as we try to decipher what the hell this all means.

There’s probably a more complex essay to be written about how this tallies with a Rioplatense consciousness, with its echoes of the oeuvres of Borges, Saer, Cortazar, Onetti among others. The ludic power of art. Maybe one day I, or another me, will get round to writing it. Meanwhile it was fascinating in the post-show talk to hear how the director was prepared to return and film another scene even after the film had premiered at BAFICI. The dexterity of the Pampero aesthetic is matched by the flexibility of their shooting methods. Ostende possesses a freshness predicated on its constant willingness to surprise, even if that surprise is a five minute sequence where someone narrates a film which will never get made. There’s the constant sense that you, along with the protagonist, have no real idea what is going to happen next, and that just makes you all the more anxious to find out, even if the subsequent discovery proves anti-climactic. Cinema becomes a maze full of dead ends and wrong turns, but there’s something fundamentally active and pleasurable contained within the frustrating process of navigating this labyrinth. 

havana year zero (w. karla suárez, tr. christina macsweeney)

Suárez’ novel is a whimsical account of a turbulent year. In 1993, following the collapse of the USSR, Cuba is cut off from Soviet subsidies. The country is plunged into extreme poverty. People dream of escape, or madcap get-rich schemes which have no chance of coming to fruition. Suárez’s protagonist, Lucia, (a pseudonym, we are told, as are all the names in the book), is told by her former maths professor, Euclid, that a document exists proving the telephone was invented in Cuba, by an Italian scientist-inventor called Antonio Meucci. Euclid has fallen on hard times and convinces Lucia, who is also his former lover, that if they can find the document it will transform their fortunes. Her search leads her to Angel, (who will be her future husband), a novelist, Leandro, and an Italian woman, Barbara, all of whom have their own reasons for wanting the document, and all of whom might potentially already have it in their possession. Inevitably this scheme starts to collapse under the weight not so much of its unlikeliness, but because of the tangled personal web that is being woven, seemingly by the document itself. People fall in and out of love, and this is what changes lives, rather than any kind of deus ex machina. Suárez' novel is breezy and readable, offering a glimpse of the joys of Havana and the way in which these pleasures are sustained, no matter the economic situation. It is also perhaps notable for the absence of any political commentary, something which is usually seen as de rigeur in a novel from the socialist caiman island. 

guilty of romance (w&d sion sono, w. mizue kunizane)

Sion Sono has recently made a film with Nick Cage and been accused of abusive behaviour on the set of his many films. He is a prolific Japanese auteur who I had never heard of. I discovered the above information after watching Guilty of Romance, a Grand Guignol mix of sex, crime and hysteria. The film knits together three women’s stories, one of whom is a police investigator who is investigating a grotesque crime which might involve one of the other two women. They are Izumi, a straight-laced wife of a famous writer who starts to go off the rails when she is chosen for a soft porn photo shoot. The other is Mitsuko, a literature professor by day and prostitute by night. The three tales become more and more outlandish The timeline feels constantly on the brink of being out of synch and storylines are thrown around willy nilly. What starts as a compelling if lurid police thriller becomes an increasingly self-indulgent fable which tries to shoehorn in mutiple Kafka references and rambles towards its end. From this one film, one can see the attraction of Sono, whose overblown narrative, heightened lighting and over-the-top set pieces seem like a Japanese version of the alt-Korean cinema, but with Guilty of Romance it felt as though he could have done with an editor who was as ruthless as the cruel matriarch who is revealed to be the kingpin of Sono’s criminal empire. 

el sicario (charles bowden & molly molloy)

Sicario is the story told in his own words of a Mexican man who worked for a major Cartel in the nineties before finding god and fleeing, aware that his life would be in constant jeopardy. The writers Charles Bowden and Molly Molloy met with the man along with filmmaker, Gianfranco Rosi, who recorded the interviews and later released a documentary. To those with a passing knowledge of the Mexican cartel world, which is also, as the book makes clear, the Mexican political world, the book’s material will be depressingly familiar. The account goes a long way towards confirming the way in which the police, military and political structures are effectively owned by the Cartels, each of which is a shark in shark filled waters, constantly in danger of being attacked itself.

Bowden writes an introduction to the book which gives a description of the man, commenting on his very ordinariness, his invisibility. This introduction suggests how easy it is for elements of this narco-terror to assimilate into society. It also provokes the frightening thought that these people, this violence, might already by present in your society or mine. Just because we can’t see it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. The book also brought back memories of the insidious suggestion of the infiltration of this violence into daily life which we encountered in Michoacan. Both from the exaggerated police presence and also from the anecdotal evidence which constantly came our way, even though we were only there for ten days.

Ps: this is the other side of the coin to Don Winslow’s Power of the Dog, the more downbeat, working version of that writer’s more glamorised account of similar territory. 

fraylandia (d sebastián mayayo, ramiro ozer ami)

Fraylandia is a classic documentary which adheres to a well-worn formula of following various characters in order to tell a complex story. The story is that of the Botnia plant built at Fray Bentos on the Uruguayan side of the River Uruguay, a plant which was claimed, on the Argentine side, to be contaminating the river. The dispute lead to the bridge spanning the two countries being shut for nearly five years. It was a low-key dispute in a low-key part of the world. The film follows life on both sides, focusing on various characters: a Uruguayan living on the Argentine side of the border, one of the protestors; another Uruguayan who’s a vigorous defender of the plant, a Finn who works there, and loves the life in South America, and finally a woman who had a relationship with a Czech worker who returned home but sends her baleful love letters, regardless of the fact she’s now seeing someone else. The pace and tone of the film are gentle as it seeks to maintain an even-handed, affectionate appraisal, which rather skirts the issue of any possible contamination and the potential effects on the environment. 

los enamoramientos (the infatuations) [javier marias, tr. margaret jull costa]

Marias is an author much in vogue. I had tried to read one of his previously, and hadn’t got on with it. I opted for The Infatuations as I read it was a novel about Madrid. Where I find myself at present. In truth, Madrid is but a marginal presence in the novel. True, the book is predicated around the act of going for breakfast, a regular Madrileño habit. Thereafter it feels as though it could occur in any capital city. Which in no way diminishes the book’s quality. The narrator, Maria, becomes mildly obsessed with a perfect couple she spies on over her breakfast coffee, whose happiness raises her spirits before she goes to work. When the husband is brutally murdered, she finds herself an unwitting confidant of the murderer. As this brief outline might reveal, there’s a fair amount of contrivance in the plot, something the erudite author plays on, as he riffs on Shakespeare and Balzac, among other references for unlikely death scenarios. The pleasure of the text is to be found in the way Marias teases out the thoughts and permutations of the unlikely scenario he has constructed. With an almost forensic or neurotic diligence, depending on your point of view, Maria explores every conceivable avenue that the book possesses. Marias clearly loves to write and he never seems to use one word where half a dozen would do. The effect is sometimes exasperating, but it also delivers nuggets of brilliance, as the writer sifts through the narrator’s stream of his consciousness.

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(It crossed my mind as I was returning to the city from the Casa del Campo, that one way in which this might be said to be a Madrileño novel is that the city’s perspective is sentinel. Madrid is perched on top of a steep hill, looking down towards the river and the plain. Marias’ perspective, and that of Maria, feels similar. The story is looked down on from on high, with every detail in the landscape inspected and surveilled. A forensic consciousness.)

the physics of sorrow [georgi gospodinov, tr. angela rodel]

It struck me, whilst reading Gospodinov’s novel, how much of the Eastern European literature I’ve read has a blog-like quality. Where the line between fact and fiction appears to be elided. Tokarczuk’s Flights, Andrzej Stasiuk, now Gospodinov. I realise it’s hardly a comprehensive list, but all the same it felt like there was a kind of pattern emerging, even if that pattern is one shaped by the whims of translators and publishers. There’s a restlessness to the format of shorter sequences, coupled with an apparent bid to create a new taxonomy of the world, one that allows for factors which previous taxonomies had not.

Gospodinov makes no bones regarding the relationship of his thoughts to the past. There’s a generational investigation into the narrator’s second world war ancestry, thereby helping to show how the war and the Soviet invasion shaped Bulgaria. But this investigation is located within a wider investigation into the human condition, where he takes the misunderstood Minatour as a central metaphor, a monster that isn’t actually a monster, just a deviant version of a lost boy. The narrator himself, a writer hidden away in a cellar, identifies with this lost boy who is also a minatour, weaving a written thread to find his way out of the labyrinth.

In truth The Physics of Sorrow is a fragmentary read, a book you can dip in and out of, following the discursive nature of the writer’s thoughts. There are Barthesian hints of other books contained within the text. An investigation into the relationship between physics and metaphysics; a history of the Soviet bloc; an autobiography. These threads are stitched together to create a baggy, quasi-novel which perhaps is at its strongest in the way it reveals the formation and spectrum of the post-communist psyche. 

woes of the true policeman [bolaño]

According to the notes, Bolaño spent many years working on the Woes of the True Policeman, a novel which is clearly unfinished. How many writers have stuff lying around, which was in reality part of another project, a project which gradually took over. There might be novels that spring from nowhere, fully formed, but it seems more likely that every novel is the distillation of years of thought, notes, unfinished scraps. As a narrative, overall, Woes of the True Policeman is frustratingly incomplete: a host of parts which don’t add up and aren’t fully formed enough to stand on their own two feet.  There’s clearly a reason for this. An alternative title for the book might be Notes towards the Creation of 2666. Because this is a book which acts as an escort for another book which is now regarded as a masterpiece. The central character, Amalfitano,  is one of the protagonists of 2666. The book is steeped in the fictional history of the novelist Archimboldi, another key figure in 2666. The book touches on the issue of the femicides in a Mexican border town which also constitute a major element of 2666. 

It would appear that Woes of the True Policeman is made up of material which Bolaño chose, in the end, not to include in 2666. Or perhaps, if he hadn't been dying whilst he was completing that work, this would have been material which he would have found a way to have included had he had more time to work over the text. Certainly the section on Archimboldi, which includes synopses of his novels, accounts of his friendships and enemies, etcetera feels as though it might have slotted into 2666 fairly seamlessly. 

All of which is to say that the novel is of more interest to the Bolaño aficionado than it might be to the casual reader. The narrative has too many loose ends, the novel is too bitty. Having said all of that, the one thing which that any reader can take from this novel is the unadulterated pleasure of reading Bolaño's prose. There might have been greater stylists in twentieth century literature, but they will be few and far between. No-one picks up an idea and plays with it with quite such kittenish pleasure as Bolano, and that pleasure is something the reader basks in. For a partial, frustrating, unfinished novel, there’s still a hell of a lot to enjoy.

the lamentations of zeno [ilija trojanow]

When’s it all going to end? Sooner than we might expect if you take note of some of the more recent data concerning the fate of the planet. Trojanow’s South Atlantic novel is a breezy, enjoyable read despite the fact it happens to be addressing the minor issue of the end of the world. The narrator is Zeno, an expert on glacial scientist. Zeno is devastated by the demise of his Alpine glaciers, a process which appears to have gone hand in hand with the demise of his marriage. He takes refuge in becoming a lecturer-expert on one of those expensive cruises which takes rich people to look at icebergs, penguins and the effects of global warming at the South Pole. Trojanow captures the beauty and cruelty of the South, as the ship visits The Falklands before heading towards Antarctica. The novel blends surrealism with science, as it seeks to convey the gravity of the world’s fate through the voice of its disillusioned narrator. Zeno’s frustration with the world’s idiocy and his burning desire to keep Antarctica as the last pristine place on earth boils over when he gets into a scuffle with a smoking Chilean soldier. In spite of his misanthropy, Zeno is an engaging host; if anything the book’s jovial tone sometimes seems to work against the seriousness of its content. 

the barbarian nurseries [hector tobar]

Reading Tobar’s novel, the thought of Zola came to mind. I’ve only read one Zola novel, over thirty years ago, and can’t remember much about it. So it was more of an associative, instinctive thought than anything worthy of a literature PhD. In truth, the word Zola could have been Dickens or Balzac or, any other suitable 19th century novelist who set out to tackle their world in all its verticality. 

Tobar’s protagonist is a gawky Mexican nanny, called Araceli. When the parents of the two kids she’s looking after go AWOL, Araceli takes them on a misguided trip through Los Angeles’ hinterlands in a bid to find their grandfather. This mission doesn’t go to plan and Araceli ends up paying the price for her good intentions. Tobar’s story is not overly complex. It’s a slow burner, which takes its time to let both narrative and world unwind. The characters, principally Araceli and her two charges, Brandon and Keenan and their parents, Scott and Maureen, are not so much formed as assembled, gradually acquiring depth and colour as their story unfolds. It’s a meticulous, detailed investigation of Californian society, which looks not merely at the social divide between the Mexican nanny and her arriviste employers, but also the legal and political structures which underpin this social system.

The Barbarian Nurseries is never the most subtle of novels. It benefits from a clear sense of dramatic tension: we don’t know how, firstly, the children’s fate, and secondly, Araceli’s fate, are going to pan out. However, more than anything else, this is a novel that looks to expose the unspoken inequalities of our contemporary world. These inequalities reside in the space where ‘first’ and ‘third’ world meet. They are present every day in the glorious West, only to be resolutely ignored by the arts, with the occasional honorable exception. Where are the contemporary novelists trying to get to grips with our savage matrix? Perhaps they’re out there and they’ve passed me by, but to my mind Tobar’s novel is remarkable as the exception rather than the rule. 

There’s a rationale to this. Literature generally emerges from a set society. Writers emerge from these societies, knowing their world intimately, but lacking the same depth of understanding of the other parallel worlds which live in suspension, surrounding their primary universe. (The rings of Saturn.) Tobar’s immersion in the dual Anglo-Mexican world of Los Angeles, a city which sits on a contemporary faultline of the globalised world, offers him privileged access. On the whole, the role of a successful novelist works against their ability to analyse the actuality of the world. The successful novelist, in the Western world, enters a bubble of friendly festivals and like-minded literary souls, where they drink fine wine or organic juices, and glory, as they have every right to, in their brilliance. A brilliance which isolates them from the other worlds, which are less brilliant, darker, less accessible. Success, when it comes to the job of depicting the world, is a poisoned chalice. As a result, it’s hardly surprising that there aren’t more novelists out there, probing at the warp and weave of a globalised world, (which, today, is the world, just as much as any localised world, beautifully concocted, might be the world), even though the novel retains its primacy as the most effective artistic medium for this kind of vertical investigation. The hybrid nature of our unjust world is precisely the thing that mitigates against it receiving the imaginative analysis which a Zola, or a Dickens, brought to their worlds. Tobar’s doughy, conscientious novel kicks back against the tide. It’s a welcome attempt to penetrate the myth of Western security, which is perhaps all the more subversive for its gentle, warm-hearted tone.

faces in the crowd [valeria luiselli]

Faces in the Crowd is a sly, engaging short novel. It’s set in at least three timelines, possibly more. In one, the narrator relates how, working for a small NY press, she convinced her editor to publish the poems of obscure Mexican poet, Gilberto Owen. Mainly by deceiving him as to the origin of the translations. In another timeline, the same narrator, writing the book we are reading, offers details of a marriage which appears to be falling apart, in spite of the fact the couple have two young children. In the third timeline, we step into the world of Owen himself, as he hangs out in a New York of speakeasies and deluded foreign poets.

The three timelines snuggle up alongside one another in a neat, poetic fashion. Images flip from one timeline to another (an orange tree in a pot plays an important narrative role in all three strands). The book has a staccato quality, frequently constructed from tiny fragments of life whose potency comes from their juxtaposition with other tiny fragments of another life. There’s a reference to Bolaño at one point, with the narrator’s editor asking her if she knew him. She feigns disinterest, but her novel, with its quest to discover and corporealise a lost Latin poet is eminently Bolañesque, whilst at the same time being all its own thing. Luiselli’s voice rings through, if not loud and clear, then dextrously. This feels like a book which has been woven as much as written, a patchwork quilt which wraps its readers up, sheltering them from their cold, Southern Hemisphere nights. 

io sono li (w&d andrea segre, w. marco pettenello)

Immigration is and will remain a hot topic. Where once the treatment of this theme on Europe was radical, it has now become tepid and somewhat conservative, a favourite of funders on the euro film circuit. There is little that is innovative, stylistically or from a narrative point of view, in Segre's film; it's not breaking down any aesthetic boundaries. Nevertheless, it exhibits the virtues of a simple story well told.

Recounting the history of Li, a Chinese immigrant in Italy, the film centres on her relationship with Bepi, a fisherman/poet who is getting on in years and is himself an immigrant, from Yugoslavia, albeit he is now so integrated within the community you would never guess. Their friendship creates problems for both of them. Conservative Italian society struggles to accept a man in his sixties enjoying a platonic relationship with the younger Chinese woman; whilst the Chinese community believes that Li is causing trouble and threatens to annul the savings she has made which will eventually allow her son to join her. In the end she is forced to sacrifice her friendship with Bepi in order to ensure her son can come, something he can do nothing about. 

All of this is told in a cinematic language which is efficient and constrained. The filmmaker makes good use of location. Most takes place in quayside bar which Li is sent to run. When the quay floods, so does the bar. On her first and apparently only day off, Li takes a trip to nearby Venice, filmed with a suitable absence of panache. This is not Europe experienced through the tourist's eye, but through the worker's. Segre's film lacks the visceral power of the work of Fatih Akin, for example. Nevertheless, within its own terms it is a quietly effective tale of inter-continental friendship, with charismatic performances from the film's twin leads, Tao Zhao and Rade Serbedzija. 

river of smoke [amitav ghosh]

River of Smoke is a curious book. At once vast, full of fascinating detail, engaging; but at the same time the storytelling is flawed and the book’s structure means it sags somewhat as it homes in on the finishing line.

In my (perhaps) former job, a script was defined by character, narrative, (dialogue) and ‘world’. The last being the most relevant here and frequently the hardest for a scriptwriter to master. A novelist has more scope to conjure an unknown world, and Ghosh takes full advantage. He appears to know mid c19^th Canton like the back of his hand. His prose leads us through the alleyways, across the Maidan, weaving in and out of the 13 factories. It’s a world as brilliantly realised as Dickens’ London and the depth and breath of the author’s scholarship is never in doubt.

However, his fascination with the intricacies of Canton’s geo-political structure is at the expense of his plot. Ghosh treats his characters with the irreverence of a historian, rather than the reverence of a novelist. Paulette and Penrose, two of the principle characters in the book’s opening section are rudely removed from the plot, left to dawdle about in Hong Kong, offstage. Similarly, Bahram’s son, perhaps the most fascinating character in the book, a true product of Canton’s miscegenation, is introduced and then expunged. There are other figures who flicker into life only to fade out before they are allowed to catch fire. Instead, the author’s focus turns to the historical detail of the lead-up to the opium wars and the actions of the British and US merchants as they strive to resist the Chinese emperor’s will. Whilst Modi’s fate remains of interest, the novel increasingly feels as though it’s marking time before it can knit up its plot, with the day-by-day account of the last days of Canton’s foreign enclave overstated.

Having said which, River of Smoke is still an absorbing read. Ghosh displays an authoritative, over-arching take on the way the modern world has been shaped. Furthermore, he does the European the grand favour of removing their continent from the epicentre, shifting history’s focus further Eastwards, revealing the centuries-old mercantile structures that Europe’s military might took advantage of. Furthermore, River of Smoke contains a vigorous commentary on the nature of the drugs trade. It’s a strong critique of European double standards, one with echoes of today’s world, proving there’s little new under the rising sun.

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[Some of the characters named above, I realise after a cursory glance at Wikipedia, feature in the first part of the trilogy, Sea of Poppies. Which might mean that I am being unjust in my criticism. Nevertheless, it still feels to me as though the book lacks balance as a result of the way the author manipulates his characters.]

elena (w&d andrei zvyagintsev; w. oleg negin)

Andrei Zvyagintsev manages to pull off the remarkable trick of creating in Elena a film which is both slight and magisterial at the same time. The film has the gravity of a 500 page novel, although the narrative itself is little more than a fable.

This tells us something about the way in which cinema works. Zvyagintsev’s attention to detail is meticulous. We seem to know every inch of the apartment Elena shares with her wealthy but dispassionate husband, Vladimir. The polished surfaces are contrasted with the bleakness of the estate where her son lives with his family. It’s the accumulation of detail which lends the film its power. The opening shot shows Vladimir’s flat through the branches of a tree. Peering more closely at the twilight frame, we notice a bird in the bottom left hand corner. The shot is repeated at the end. The metaphor is clear: this is cinema as ornithology. The filmmaker brings the same attributes of patience and a sheer appetite to watch as the bird-watcher, attributes his audience are obliged to share. There are sporadic moments of action, all the more intense for the way in which they suddenly flicker to life from a canvas which is so passive for so much of the time.

Whilst this runs the risk of sounding dull, it is in fact compelling. In the process Zvyagintsev reminds us that more than mere story-telling, cinema is also an exercise in perception. As such he gets away with the slight narrative, a cuckoo-in-the-nest tale which is tied up with all the neatness of a Chekhov short story in the film’s closing moments. One suspects there is an allegorical power to the story which resonates more in Moscow, perhaps, land of the newly minted super-rich, than it does here.

This is Zvyagintsev’s third film. I saw The Return on tv one night, chez Mr P. We had been channel hopping and came across it and found ourselves hooked, against all expectations. This is a director, in the model of his countryman, Sokurov, who knows the weight of the cinematic hammer he wields. His films have substance; the substance of life observed and related with a painstaking yet exhilarating precision. 

hors satan (w&d dumont)

Hors Satan was the final instalment of my month's subscription to Cinemateca. Life here is somewhat roller coaster. Periods of not-a-lot followed by periods of extreme activity. At least the process of going to the cinema got a look-in. Where it's a staple part of life in London, in Montevideo it is less so. People I know tend to go to the theatre more. The theatre is a place to meet and catch up. The fact I'm working in the theatre here probably influences this. But the London habit of catching an early afternoon matinee doesn't exist. Subtract that and social outings and its clear that there's going to be less cinema in your life.

In Jan/ Feb, however, when I was still relatively idle, I took out a monthly subscription to Cinemateca, the four screen film club. The screens themselves are not of the greatest quality, but the range of films is catholic. Hors Satan cropped up in rep, after Marley. It's the second film of Dumont's I've seen. Apparently his latest is less low-fi. This is a film with a seemingly minimal budget, dependent on a high concept and some intense acting. A young man arrives in town, the northern French coast which always reminds me of Sartre's Nausea. (A book whose cult reputation seems to have ebbed in my lifetime.) People lead sparse, spiritually impoverished lives. They take walks on the sand dunes and become possessed. The young man fucks the devil out of them. The women have an exorcism moment during sex and then they recover. Or is he actually the devil? It's not entirely clear.

The premise is schlocky and Catholic (capital C). However, Dumont's narrative style remains as sparse as the film's surroundings. The long takes and snail-like progress of the plot help to counteract the salaciousness. Dumont immerses us in the tedium of this world, where nothing happens and if something does happen it has to be extreme in order to break the surface of this ennui. Rape, murder, possession. There's an element of a conjurer's trick to the film (as is the case with almost all dramas which deal with the theme of Mephistopheles, from Marlowe to Potter). Is this a subtle treatise on good versus evil, or is it merely a pretentious, exploitative dirge? I tended towards the former, but then I've always enjoyed a bit of painstaking Gallic existentialism. 

swimming home [deborah levy]

There's a corner of a foreign field that will be forever England. According to Levy, this corner is constructed out of petty deceit, matrimonial disquiet and suicidal urges. Whilst there are echoes of McEwan's Atonement in the conceit, the work of art this most resembles is Joanna Hogg's Unrelated. The British idyll abroad upset by the appearance of a rogue element, in this case the unpredictable and clearly unhinged Kitty Finch, who is swimming in the pool of the French holiday villa hired by two bourgeois London families. Kitty Finch spells trouble and sure enough she brings it to the party, unhinging one and all.

Whilst this is a potent cocktail of a premise, the truth is that the book skates over the dramatic depths. Like an iced-over pool, we gain glimpses of things the novel might have explored but chose not to. Instead the writer favours a poeticised imagistic approach, full of metaphor and simile, one which lathers the cold, cruel eye of the poet over the novel's crust. If you get my drift. Cruel, the book certainly is: with the exception of a 14 year old girl, Nina (more shades of Atonement) all the various characters are people you'd rather not hang out with. It does feel slightly pretensious of the author to give them such portentous jobs, (a holocaust-escapee poet; a TV war correspondent; etc), the significance of which are never really investigated. Instead the book hinges on Kitty, the bastard daughter of Fitzgerald's Nicole, waiting for the nuthouse to claim her.

The book has been a success and has earned an introduction from Tom McCarthy, no small praise. In some ways it also reminiscent of Lerner's Atocha Station, but it lacks the humour of Lerner's anti-heroic text, forever taking itself as seriously as it possibly can, overloading its 150 pages with an implication of a depth it never gets round to revealing.

las malas intenciones (w&d rosario garcia-montero)

This is the third Latin American film of recent years I've seen which posits a child's coming of age story within the context of the political violence of late 20th c Latin America. One supposes that the extension of this theme would be that the countries themselves (Argentina in the case of Kamchatka and Chile in the case of Wood's Machuca) will have to go through their own right of passage before they emerge into the calmer waters of the twenty first century. It's a cute angle for any filmmaker seeking to take a tangential look at their country's recent history, offering a less didactic approach than a film such as Noche de Los Lapices, which had an urgency conditioned by the fact that the events were still raw and terrifying.

As such Garcia-Montero's film fits into the continental discourse about the way in which societies have moved on (something also present in recent theatre). We watch the young girl Cayetana's story wondering to what extent the paranoia of her upper middle class parents conditions her world view. Not to mention the Hammer and Sickle burning on the hillside or the dead dogs which hang from the lamposts. We see all these things through the child's eyes: all around her the world is in flux. Her mother is a valium addict. Her absentee father a waster. In the midst of this she struggles to find a clear moral path, (hence the bad intentions of the title), seeing her imminently born baby brother as a mortal threat and finding no reason not to steal from her parents. It is as though all feeling has to be dampened down under the country's state of emergency. One of the film's most powerful scenes is when her bourgeois family attempt to leave the beach in a rowing boat, only to be pestered by a host of indigenous children. Risk is all around and things will have to be sacrificed, in particular normal human emotions, something the film's very last scene, when Cayetana finally discovers what it means to feel, illustrates.

The film rides to a large extent on Fatima Buntix's performance as Cayetana. She carries the film remarkably well, even when it starts to feel as though it loses its direction in the final third. There's a whimsical strand relating to her ancestor who participated in a losing battle against the Spanish, which, whilst adding colour, seems to diminish to an extent the intensity of Cayetana's story. At times if feels as though the film pulls its punches: it might have benefitted from having slightly worse intentions itself. The dramatic tension ebbs in the final third, with Cayetana's friend's near-death experience again distracting from the core of her relationships with her mother, father and stepfather.

Nevertheless, this is a rangy, intriguing film which casts a clear, cold eye over Peru's recent history. In keeping perhaps with the process of being a child growing up it seems to surf from highlight to highlight, with life drifting along during the bits in between whilst portentous events occur just around the corner. 

two years at sea (d ben rivers)

The act of experiencing cinema is an act of watching. It’s a passive action. Receptive. It’s so passive that at times it’s as though there’s no input from the viewer at all. In this it is similar to the action of enjoying art. In this day and age there are ways of experiencing art that involve going down slides or talking to strangers, but the predominant impulse in art is to look, to see, to watch, to receive.

Ben Rivers is well aware of this. Firstly, his film in an observational one. His camera observes a character, Jake, a man with a verdant beard and an energetic if solitary disposition. In some ways the film is like a nature documentary, studying the hermit in his environment. The camera is a spy of which Jake is presumably aware. The beauty and eccentricity of Jake’s surroundings are in themselves intriguing, but perhaps insufficient to warrant a 90 minute film. Instead it is something the director does with this material that makes it magical. What he does is he compels his audience to watch. We observe not just the ‘action’ of the film, but also the ‘process’ of the film, as the filmstock itself flickers and distorts, engrains and degrains. These frames are all unique (as of course every frame there has ever been is unique) but the filmmaker draws our attention to their uniqueness. The fuzz of the footage means each second has its own texture.

There are two sequences in particular that are so striking, from this point of view, (demanding from another), that, a little like the latest twist in a Bond film, the reviewer doesn’t want to speak about them, for fear of spoiling their potency. These are moments when the viewer is drawn into the image, almost as though staring at a Rembrandt. The only other sequence I’ve seen do this as effectively is the opening of Reygadas’ Silent Light. In these moments the passive nature of watching is revealed to be a myth: the film only comes alive because we make the active effort to participate. Without our eyes a film is nothing (except sound). This is as close to 3D as film can get (forget the specs). Blink and it’s gone. Which is always the case, but normally we take it for granted. Here, that indulgence is denied us, but what we gain more than compensates, as the viewer becomes the sentient actor in the face of a passive screen.

There’s nothing remotely commercial about Two Years at Sea and I came to it with a mild sense of dread. There’s no shortage of poorly made “art” films out there which sink under the weight of their own pretension. But Rivers’ film is one of the most disciplined, charming and beautiful pieces of cinema I’ve ever witnessed, taking the viewer to the heart of what it means to be a viewer, whilst maintaining an irreverence and an understated use of mystery. The questions that remain unanswered are as potent as the ones that are answered, ensuring that the unstated “narrative” ticks along beneath the wordless surface. It will barely make a ripple in the cinematic consciousness, but in another world, one of Borges’ parallel universes, it will be revered, a true blockbuster, a game-changer which will make superstars out of the quiet genius’ who created this work.

killer joe (d. william friedkin, w. tracey letts)

This curious movie feels like something of an anomaly. In part Hollywood star vehicle in part faithful homage to Letts' play; in part another comeback movie from a lost great of the 70s. Where does it sit in the canon?

I didn't know Letts' play, but it feels as though the adaptation is probably not unfaithful, all the more so given that the playwright is also credited as screenwriter. As a play it does what it might have said on the tin: deep South, Southern Trash, Trailer Trash, Southern Gothic, etc etc. Not a million miles away from the work of Martin McDonagh, a world where little people have to make big but hopeless decisions. As such it has a cynical sheen and requires some grandstand acting. 

The latter is supplied in spades by McConaughey, whose performance drives the film. He seems to be having fun and Friedkin gives him license to go as big as he can. In many ways this contributes to the impression that this is an "anti-film". Where we're encouraged by the Michael Caine school of acting to believe less is more, McConaghy et all rip up the rulebook and hope that the camera keeps up. Similarly, this feels like anti-film because, no matter how well done the adaptation, it retains the resolute feel of a stage play, where dialogue is king and the narrative can be as overblown as it wants to be.

The strange thing about all this is that it kind of works. There's a verve and an energy to Killer Joe which means it rides the obstacles in its way and like a limo with a healthy suspension comes bouncing back on the other side. It doesn't feel like a great film or great filmmaking; it doesn't come across as a great play; but as a package it's more interesting than your run-of-the-mill Hollywood fare, perhaps because it's not afraid of being a bit rough around the edges.