the handmaiden (w&d chan-wook park & w seo-kyeong jeong)

There are quite a few things that confused me about The Handmaiden. Firstly I went into the cinema thinking this was an adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, which I’ve read about but never actually read. From what I have read about that book, rather than having read it, I take it to be a quite serious post-apocalyptic tale, with, perhaps, an eco-friendly subtext, along with a feminist, or at least female orientated narrative. (It might have none of these things, as I say, I’ve never read it.) The opening scene, where Japanese troops marched through a Korean village, felt as though it fitted into Park Chan-Wook’s reimagining of Atwood’s tale. Although from then on it seemed to veer further and further away. There is nothing post-apocalyptic about The Handmaiden, nothing eco-friendly either, and I’d be really interested to hear anyone try to defend it as a feminist text, in spite of the fact that the narrative might be construed that way. 

As it it, the film is actually based on Sarah Walter’s Fingersmith, which is, as they say, nada que ver. I haven’t read that either so the issue of the adaptation can now be dismissed. However, the second thing that confused me concerned the dichotomy between the film’s narrative and Chan-Wook’s direction of said narrative. The narrative is in large part constructed around the story of an old man who collects classic obscene literature (’Is that Sade?’ someone asks at one point), and invites selected men to come and listen to these rare classics being read by his fetching niece. That same niece is also the object of a scurrilous plan hatched by one of the men who visits and befriends her uncle. He hatches a plan to marry her and claim her fortune, and enlists a young Korean servant girl to work as the niece’s handmaiden. The handmaiden and the niece end up in a frisky relationship. My confusion arose because as the narrative develops it’s made very clear that the uncle is essentially a dirty old man whose pornographic collection is viewed as an object of scorn. The logic here is that pornography is bad. On the other hand, the director more than makes the most of the two women’s lesbian relationship. With shades of Blue is the Warmest Colour, Chan-Wook documents their intercourse with a degree of relish which ultimately, especially in the closing shots, ends up feeling like soft porn. The film appears to be arguing that porn is the stuff of dirty old men, unless it’s being filmed by the director, in which case it’s artistically valid. Maybe there’s a subtlety I missed. 

Having said all that, the storytelling is great, and although there’s little of the edge or dramatic tension that was present in his earlier works, there’s still a considerable amount of cinematic flair in evidence. The narrative structure is presumably lifted from the book, but Chan-Wook nevertheless makes it feel fresh and clever in a way so little cinematic storytelling tends to be. (Unlike in fiction, where structural ingenuity is far more common.) There’s a charm to the director’s use of period and the acting has a slightly operatic quality which seems entirely appropriate. It’s an entertaining yarn. Albeit a confusing one. Perhaps Park Chan-Wook is poking fun at the novelist’s feminism? Wiser heads than mine will no doubt be able to explain what exactly his intentions were. 

moonlight (w&d. barry jenkins, w. tarell alvin mccraney)

Moonlight has become a cause celebre. A film that speaks not so much for itself, but for the minorities of the world. People have talked about it in terms of the importance of universal stories coming from all sectors of society. Whilst this is completely right, whether it helps Moonlight to be saddled with this baggage is another story. In the end, all film is political. That’s why we watch more movies from the States than any other country. Including stories from the margin. It’s a reflection of the soft political power that the States exercises, whether we like it or not. The fact that the film was garlanded with the Oscar only serves to reinforce the potency of the Oscar brand, and by default, the North American brand. At a Curzon screening a few months ago, the man introducing Blue Velvet said that Moonlight would have the same impact as Mean Streets/ Taxi Driver. But I think it's worth noting that Scorsese was rejected at the Oscars for decades. They didn’t like his films, and they didn’t like them because they offered the kind of messages which the establishment didn’t want to hear. 

Once a film becomes judged for its political standpoint as much as its aesthetics, the boundaries shift. This is true for Moonlight just as much as for Rambo. Barry Jenkins exercises considerable directorial flair, and there should be a hat-tip to the cinematography of James Laxton. Almost as though in reaction to the last film review on the blog, we see a director employing the tricks of the trade with glee, from the opening gyratory shot to the use of colour and camera. Another film Moonlight is reminiscent of in this regard is McQueen’s Hunger. Having said all of this, the narrative itself becomes pedestrian. There are times when the screenplay’s stage play roots begins to show through, as though there’s a tension between directorial intent and the script. The extended restaurant scene in the third act has a clunky feel, and the last scene with the mother veers towards melodrama. The promised journey to the hard edge of the American dream is never delivered. The film’s final act veers towards sentimentalism instead. Which, of course, helps to explain its mainstream appeal. Oscars are not given to films that truly rock the boat. 

Moonlight is a fine film, which has some bravura moments. It deserves all the plaudits and love its getting. It takes a lot of the indie tropes and makes them work on a grand scale. Perhaps the Chazelle film it should really be compared with isn’t its supposed rival, but Whiplash, another rites of passage movie which was also a showcase for an emergent director making a  name for himself. 

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(As a ps - Moonlight also brought to mind the brilliance of James Baldwin’s Another Country. As far as I know there has never been a cinematic version of one of the more astonishing works of American literature, which also incorporated a gay narrative in order to recount the story of the ‘other’ United States. It’s twenty years since I read it but the power of Baldwin’s exploration of the margins holds fast in my mind. In many ways it is a terrible indictment of North American culture that over half a century later a narrative employing themes of race and sexual orientation - specifically a ‘black, gay’ narrative - should still be seen as radical.)

only lovers left alive (w&d jim jarmusch)

There’s something sad about watching someone who possessed a winsome flair slowly losing their grip on it. I have yet to see some of Mr Jarmusch’s finest films, including Dead Man and Broken Flowers. However, in those I have seen (Night on Earth, Coffee and Cigarettes, Down by Law) there’s a distinctive aesthetic to be savoured. Part of their charm was the feeling of a creator capable of making a film that was more than the sum of its parts. The ingenuity involved in fooling the machine, which is one part of the great skill of beat-the-budget filmmaking (whether that’s a big budget or a little one). You don’t need to blow up skyscrapers in order to make something watchable. Or sink the Titanic. 

Unfortunately, Only Lovers feels as though if anything, the filmmaker was in possession of more funds than he needed. Locations in Tangiers and Detroit. Reasonably famous actors. Well dressed sets. To tell what is a sparse vampire narrative. There’s something about the vampire narrative that seems to bring out the worst in filmmakers. From Ms Denis to Mr Coppola. Maybe the directors are lured by the notion of cinema as innately vampiric: the immortality celluloid bestows, preserving its stars in the amber of perfect youthfulness. Or they see themselves concealed within the genre's narrative: the director as vampire, appropriating the actors’ blood to realise their own dreams. With the possible of exception of Dreyer, and by default Herzog, it rarely seems to work. Hiddlestone and Swinton’s decadent immortals are supposed to come across as louche and sophisticated but actually come across as an unsophisticated idea of what a louche, sophisticated Englishman or woman might be, a kind of cartoon version. The whole film, with many a ridiculous line, feels as though it might have worked better as a cartoon, which would at least allow the creator’s imagination to take the viewer to places which this stylised naturalism aspires to but never reaches. 

weekend (w&d andrew haigh)

It might be that the will is flagging, as I saw Haigh's surprisingly successful movie before 2011 had drawn to a close. The film itself has a clear agenda: to tell its gay narrative with as much vigour as any straight narrative, not to pull its punches, not to be in any way embarrassed about what it's doing. It's a gay Before Sunrise and just as wordy as Linklater's film. The two lead characters are convincing, their relationship, doomed to be nipped in the bud, is, in its way, quietly affecting.

Which perhaps explains the film's success. In truth, despite all the noises recently about the rude health of the British film industry, it seems to me that even at our most maverick we still seem to be producing films which are parochial. Little stories that search out their niche in the market. In that sense we're not that far removed from the fledgling film business of the country I'm returning to shortly, in spite of the money, energy and kudos lavished on the film industry here. Weekend isn't that far removed from Archipelago or Tyrannosaur or much else in terms of the scale of its ambition. Of course, so much of that ambition is re-routed to Hollywood, where people go if they want to get paid well. Thinking on the films of Anderson, Roeg or even someone like Lean, they seem to come from a different, less risk-averse time. As ever, this says more about the industry and the financiers (and hence, obliquely, the intellectual optimism of the country) than it probably does about the filmmakers themselves. There probably are plenty of filmmakers with a grander vision, but there's not much chance of the films they want to make being produced here. 

dreams of a life (d. carol morley)

This is a Christmas film. A woman has finished packing some presents. She sits down to watch the TV. She dies. The TV stays on. Three years later, her remains are discovered. The presents are still there.

Or maybe it’s an anti-Christmas film. The real miracle of the movie is that, in spite of its premise, (and this is a documentary, telling a true story), it somehow manages to be in some way not depressing. The weirdness of Dreams of a Life is that we learn that far from being unloved, a victim of our heartless society, Joyce Vincent, the woman in question, was held in deep affection by the people whose lives she had passed through. If this is a mystery movie, it’s one that leaves its puzzle unresolved. The causes of her death, both physical and psychological, remain speculative.

In a way, Dreams of a Life is the biography of the London I have lived in these past 25 years. The modern city is a peripatetic land, full of magic doors and ratholes. You never quite know which one you’re going to pass through next. Vincent, we are told, enjoyed the city. It brought her within touching distance of realising her dream of being a singer. It brought her relationships with people from a variety of races, cultures and different classes. It allowed to be invisible when she wanted, but also to participate in the things which constitute city life: the events, the bars, the streets. Someone describes Vincent as a chameleon. All true city-dwellers are chameleons, capable of switching from one ambience to another; their personalities as much a negative of the world they live in as a positive of themselves.

The director took the bold move of casting an actress to recreate scenes from Vincent’s life. The actress sings and walks and is given one line. At first I thought that this was a mistake, that the audience’s mental picture of the film’s subject would be distorted by the actress Zawe Ashton’s features, but in the end it worked. Another aspect of Vincent’s life is that she grew up in the pre-digital era. Ours will be the last generation whose memories are captured within minds, not on hard drives. There are few photos of Vincent: she remains a blank slate upon which we can draw our own picture. Ashton remains an approximation of the woman who vanished; her mystery all the stronger for the lack of documentary material to reflect the accounts of her given by friends and lovers.

It seems likely that we have all of us who have lived in this city over the past twenty years known our own version of Joyce Vincent. Perhaps for some she is what we became: someone who vanished from their lives, who mattered for a while and then moved on. This is where Morley’s sympathetic approach reveals another truth, less tragic, more mundane. The city is a place almost designed for transience. The people Morley tracked down to tell us about Joyce come across as good-hearted and caring. It’s not such a bad society we inhabit, even if it has cracks. And whilst this is but a partial story of its subject’s life, with the crueller aspects under-explored, the film still succeeds in being somehow celebratory. All the lonely people are perhaps not quite as lonely as they seem. The closing image need not be the one by which they are remembered. Morley seems to restore Joyce Vincent’s self-respect, counteracting the obvious, tragic figure of the newspaper headlines. As such, Dreams of a Life pulls off the odd trick of being both affirmation and condemnation of our culture at the same time. By choosing to tell the unheralded story of one of the city’s unknown warriors it succeeds in being one of the most telling documentaries about London I have ever seen .

leaving (w&d catherine corsini, w. macé)

I"m seated in a garden in Ipswich, en famille. By English standards it's a warm day. It could be a scene from Accident, but it could equally be a scene from what Mr C might describe as a middle class French movie, in a derogatory tone. There does indeed seem to be an increasing inclination on the part of French filmmakers to make what might be called 'middle-class' movies, many of them featuring a range of the current remarkable generation of French actresses. Mr C says the only French film he likes is La Haine. Quite apart from the whole new wave phenomenon, I've enjoyed movies over the years by the likes of Rohmer, Mimouni, and probably a host of others whose work could be described, perhaps, as 'middle class'. In a way, given the sometimes predictable, patronising tendency of a middle-class British film industry to try and explore its own agendas through often contrived portrayal of 'working class' life, it seems perhaps more honest to turn the mirror on the class where the film industry emerges from. (Something Cooke noted when he took over the Royal Court, although I'm not sure if his well-intentioned mission to stop rich people delving into the lives of the marginalised/ proletarian in their corner of Sloane Square has quite come off.)

Which is all a roundabout way of saying that the reason Leaving is such a turkey has nothing to do with its socio-politics, and everything to do with its cliched, soft-centred premise and script. That Kirsten Scott Thomas should want to give up her bourgeois sensibilities in order to have fierce sex with Sergei Lopez does not seem altogether unlikely. However, that this will involve her plunging towards an abyss of criminalising impoverishment proves hard to take. With only love to sustain her as she works in a water melon packing factory, with her comically evil husband finding new, devious ways to gain revenge for his cuckolding at the hands of an ignorant ex-con, Scott Thomas sinks towards infamy, a modern day Lady Chatterley.

The film feels like it's been created as a vehicle for Scott Thomas. It's a role which, in theory, any actress would die for, the woman prepared to sacrifice all for love, but the sheer predictability of the template sadly only goes to confirm the prejudices of those who claim 'middle class' French cinema (by which they mean almost all French cinema) is self-indulgent and emotionally vacuous.

the killer inside me (d. winterbottom, w. john curran)

Winterbottom's career tends to be somewhat hit and miss, in part as a result of the variety of cinematic styles this prolific director has chosen to explore. For my money, the films of his I've enjoyed the most have been those dealing with a specifically British sensibility and humour. However, he's become an adept filmmaker, capable of ratcheting Hollywood A-listers into unlikely material (A Mighty Heart, Code 46) and you always expect to find something of interest in his films, even if you don't like the one in particular.

Consequently, the slightly mundane nature of The Killer Inside Me, in spite of its violence, makes it feel like an atypical Winterbottom movie, more of a Hollywood product. Casey Affleck delivers another phenomenal performance as the psychotic lawman, and the supporting cast do their bit (their value emphasised by the the old school title sequence), but the material, an adaptation of a Jim Thompson novel, feels generic.

Maybe that's why the director's chosen to go overboard with the violence. It feels as though he's a hired hand, looking to stamp his mark on a packaged product. The violence is shocking, in a cinematic way. Less so is the transgressive sex, (somewhat limply re-featured in flashbacks from time to time), which titillates rather than excites or disturbs. As though made knowing that whilst he could get away with upping the violence ante in the States, he would be never be allowed to explore the potentially more intriguing sexual themes in any great detail. Occasionally, in Winterbottom's work, there's hints of Roeg at his darkest, but where Roeg was prepared (or allowed) to explore his themes in all their murky depths, Winterbottom sometimes seems to use these same themes as window dressing.

The ending, pure grand guignol, seems indicative of a script which has backed itself into an absurd corner. The way in which the direction chooses to promote the theatricality seems like another indication of the director himself struggling to make something more quirky from his base materials, but at the end of the day the film seems slightly sluggish, lacking a real sense of place, and choosing to make up for its torpor with the occasional firework.

el baño del papa (w&d cesar charlone & enrique fernandez)

A Uruguayan film on general release in London. Not something that happens every week/ month/ year. When I was in Montevideo people mentioned El Baño, but I assumed as it wasn't on release there, then, I would have missed it. The shock of its appearance here should not be underestimated.

However, the reason for its appearance, and success on the international festival circuit, is apparent from the opening frames. A group of smugglers, fuelled by nothing more than pedal power, pursued on the Uruguay-Brazil border by the corrupt customs officer, Meleyo, in his truck. Charlone's cinematography imbues the chase with the drama of Ben Hur. Has there ever been a villain on a bicycle? A bicycle rider signifies various things: poverty, hard-workingness, and a life lived in the open air. Film a group of cyclists trying to get away from a four-wheel-drive and the audience instantly knows who it's rooting for. The smugglers, Beto and Valvulina, are both family men, trying to make ends meet in a world where earning a living is far from straightforward. All over the world, people scamper across borders, trying to turn a profit out of the accident of geography, that peculiar dictate of fate which determines who gets what in a globalised world.

Charlone's camera skillfully depicts the simplicity of Melo, a small Uruguayan town which is part impoverished backwater, part new age nirvana. Earning a crust might be difficult, but the neighbours are friendly and you never have to worry about locking up your bike. It's easy to see why Beto, Valvunia, their families and friends exude a kind of innocent contentment, in between the moments when the rigours of survival get them down. Whilst the narrative's overt theme is the visit of Pope John Paul II to Melo, a nice enough hook, it's sub-text is about family, its trials and tribulations but, ultimately, its rewards. Whilst it seems sentimental that the film ends with Beto's daughter, whose university savings have been blown by his madcap scheme to build a public loo for the Pope's visit, forgiving him, it helps to articulate the film's point that, no matter how poor, if your heart's in the right place you'll get your reward.

As such El Baño has a slightly conservative feel, which from another perspective might be seen as 'universal'. Its artlessness is actually artful; its lack of polish makes it slick. In many ways it seems to have no more to do with the lives of the Montevideans I know than it does with the lives of Londoners. There are two sides to the 'universal' coin - on the one hand it means that your story has a fair chance of making the leap beyond your culture, appearing in cities around the world. On the other, there's a danger that, in appealing to everyone, your story ends up speaking to no-one. El Baño del Papa is a clever piece of cinema, warm and touching, with some convincing performances, but it doesn't reveal as much about Uruguay as I perhaps hoped it would.