From the archive : Dry white, best served lightly chilled

This is a Festival review of Les aventures extraordinaires d'Adèle Blanc-Sec (2010)

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6 October

This is a Festival review of Les aventures extraordinaires d'Adèle Blanc-Sec (2010), written 16/17 September 2010 - in the days when one submitted one's response to Cambridge Film Festival's web-site in its style, and hoped that it would appear...

AVENTURES

This is a spirited and very funny romp, variously parodying and paying tribute to, amongst other things, everything from Spielberg to the phenomenon that is TOMB-RAIDER and the INDIANA JONES and JURASSIC PARK films, and it was a really brilliantly enjoyable choice for the start of the festival this year.

The title and the write-up in the festival booklet would lead one to expect no less, not least with the resonance that the French word ‘aventures’ has (I think that it is lacking in our similar English word), and that incongruously added to the heroine’s double-barrelled surname, which flagged up (if one translated it, even if one knew nothing (as I did) of Jacques Tardi) that we were to be prepared for the incredible passing calmly as the plausible (which some find convenient to call ‘magical realism’).

Besson brought his own kind of magic aplenty (which, for me, was already in the air – and very welcome – with the recent screening here of the delightful animation THE ILLUSIONIST), together with a mix that included a slightly gauche (but nevertheless engaging and helpful) nuclear physicist from the pre-Christian era, and an enjoyment of SFX that was only occasionally marred by what were (possibly quite deliberate) slight defects in the execution.

(For example, the heroine mounted a creature (not just a camel) bareback in a (successful) attempt to bring it to heel, and the seemingly unintended blurring that accompanied her return to earth with it subdued (and in harmony with her) could have been a way of undercutting our temptation ‘to believe’ too deeply in what was, essentially, a fable, charmingly distilled from the whole project’s origins in and indebtedness to the world of the illustrated page (and maybe to such films as DRAGONHEART and the trilogy of LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy). I have no doubt that some of the elements and themes were also more closely linked to that pictorial world than I, without other knowledge of it, could identify or fully appreciate, but such is the stuff of taking something from one medium to another (as with the Tati homage).

The film’s quirkiness and Egyptian theme were nicely set by the opening title-sequence, which turned out to be projected onto and panning across an obelisk that, when the edge was reached, at once brought us into focus on a familiar scene and set us in Paris. The Paris of 1911, as the initial and familiar technique of voiceover announced some important characters to be introduced to us in succession. And so their lives interacted (or, in the case of one who was asleep, failed to at that time), and brought us, via the (sometimes) hesitant character of Andrej to the start proper, with the artefact-exploring activities of the person to whom reviews traditionally like to refer as the eponymous female lead.

In the stereotyping of the villains who enter the tomb, one might be able to escape imputing the French-speaking racism towards its African empire to anything other than the plot and its time. (They come complete with an evil eye and other deformities to signal their standing, and with a brazen greed that one knew could not be leading them to their good, much as one knows that all sorts of grasping in Bond plots will (albeit with his hand to assist in it) work against their ultimate aim – and there was a delightfully typical Bond-type moment at the end of this sequence).

However, one could just as easily see a likely reference back to the cultural politics of the time of when Harrison Ford first had adventures as Jones on the screen. In that regard, but still in the spirit of parody, it could have been a deliberate unsettling of our (would-be?) more modern mores regarding (at least talking openly about) the supposed features, attitudes or beliefs that we (want to) believe link with cultural origin.

The pace of the film was, to my mind, perfect, and the little jokes of repetition with the prison scenes, the way that the action moved from place to place and character to character, and the (apparent) rootedness of the piece in its era (at least until the clock’s hands go momentarily awry) all served to echo this concept of time with which we tend to engage as a timepiece that we consult from day to day, but which Besson’s vision prompts us to approach more closely and in a different way. For that reason, I found the allusions to other forays in this field as different as BACK TO THE FUTURE, GROUNDHOG DAY and Scorsese’s (maybe overlooked) AFTER HOURS) to be undisguised and telling.

On another level, the film even embodied a challenging form of extreme (if unplanned) piercing that I had thought only to be the stuff of my very recent imagination until I saw it here: that was some surprise for me, as was the way in which it was introduced brought about a slight misdirection as to that person’s ‘life-status’ was (if I may call it that, since it has a bearing on the whole). In showing us how that had arisen, in a semi-tragic flashback (on account of the implausibility factor, which is one that is familiar from the other films already mentioned), there was a telescoped mockery of the development of lawn tennis that I was by no means alone in finding quite hilarious at the same time that I knew that it led to someone’s being maimed.

There is much more to say, and I know that ADVENTURES would repay my early viewing, but don’t think that I can make the re-run. As usual, those who left at the titles missed something, an amusing scene from the subplot that eventually (and briefly) brought Andrej and Adele together, and a flashback to a part of the film that we knew we were being taken away from, despite its being partly unresolved. It showed a possible ending to an unwilling alliance (on one side at least) that was not without its precedents, but which, for some reason, most put me in mind of the closing scenes of ‘Whinfrey’s Last Case’ in Michael Palin and Terry Jones’ series RIPPING YARNS.

What that extra snippet didn’t do was in any way to undermine the demise of one pair of highly linked characters, and their fate stood, in juxtaposition to the ‘happy ending’ of Adele being reunited with her sister. That being said, Adele was soon faced with a scheming peril that may (or may not – I am a little hesitant, unlike some heard leaving the screening, to detect scope for a sequel here) serve to end her affirmative approach to life (or, at least, until some time as her own mortal residue might be recovered.) In her case, we probably trusted to her resourcefulness to overcome, and, in the case of the inter-title peril awaiting the killer, maybe did not much care.

Life, death and our attitudes to both have been familiar parts of Besson’s work as far back as SUBWAY, with its choice of tone in ending that led (for those not wanting something else, and who would, for that reason, be deeply unhappy with where BRAZIL leaves us) to a quiet acceptance of what has gone before as life that was lived and worth living whilst it was (and as long as it could be) lived. It is not a heavy note, but it could set one thinking, if one looked beyond the jokes, whilst at the same time, relishing them greatly.

Some of those jokes themselves are not without an import or filmic referent (e.g. pairing the Jurassic period with the Isle of Jura (not, though, really known for anything other than its deer, whisky and George Orwell’s inhabitation), claiming a different historical specialism acts as an excuse not to help and to avoid being detected, and a chain of command that delegates down and down with an ever-diminishing deadline). Others humorous elements are more free in their inventiveness, and, although I am unsure whether there was a definite nod to another recent feature, the spontaneous laughter brought about by seeing the policeman, reluctantly teamed with a hired killer and in costume of the latter’s specification, suddenly viewed from behind was full and infectious.

Yet, for me, it is this theme of mortality and what it is to try to catch at life (for oneself or for others) that I will take away. It also engages nicely in theme with a radio adaptation of Faust that I hope to catch at the weekend (as well as with the revival of The Makropoulos Case in London at English National Opera). The newly resurrected, going off to explore and enjoy France’s capital, have a connection with that ready acceptance of mortality, and enjoying what one has whilst one has it, that struck chords with the South American tradition of enjoyment of bones and skulls, and, maybe, with what we miss in Hallowe’en (itself a key moment in Goethe’s great two-part play).


AJD


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

With apologies to Shaun...

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7 February

I caught Shaun Jefford’s stylish film when it was first shown at Cambridge Film Festival (England) in 2010 – an impromptu adjournment to the bar before the screen was ready both gave everyone who still wanted one the chance to buy a drink to take in (a wonderful feature of the Arts Picturehouse cinema), and allowed informal contact with the director. That opportunity was extended by a Q&A, both after the screening, and back in the bar, so this review is informed by what he had to say.

[Through what must be some obscure weighting and / or averaging, and despite having topped the audience top 10 during and immediately after the close of the festival, Beijing Punk finished . (The top film had only three reviews, none written by an ordinary member of the audience, but all of which awarded five stars out of five.)

Although this is a creditable placing, it is not immediately apparent how one can understand its not having been higher still, when it had twenty audience reviews (including a 500-word one, on which this is based) on the festival web-site. By contrast with those of the top film, none of them had been written by those on the festival staff or its student reviewers, and all but one gave it five stars (the other being four stars).]

The enthusiastic first festival reviews alone made clear that Beijing Punk – the title neatly tells one everything to expect! – deserves a wider audience than many art-house documentaries, and, with the increasing identification of and also with its merits that it is gaining, it is likely to reach one. (That recognition is by no means just because, at one point, Shaun daily downed two bottles of Madame Pearl’s codeine-laden cough-medicine to get it made – although that obviously wins respect! – and I must return later to what has been called his ‘immersion’ in the totality of the life of the bands whom he features here!).

I call Shaun’s film ‘stylish’, because I see it as in the nature of punk rock that it has its own, specifically anti-establishment, style. It was Siouxsie’s distinctive sound, look and eye make-up, for example, that made me such an adherent (acolyte?) of The Banshees from the early days, along with her inescapably hip way of doing just about everything. Of course, her image was a unity with that of the whole band’s provocative lyrics, moody and suitably jolting harmonies (including edgy multiple-tracking), a strong drummer, and evocative lighting, both on stage and heightening atmosphere in videos. All those, amongst other things, were part and parcel of what made the songs’ delivery so effective, whether the doomed ‘Christine, the strawberry girl’, or the not-so-happy ‘Happy House’.

(For the benefit of those who might think that this review has simply gone off the rails, please try to trust, and without doubting, that there was more than a little echo of Siouxsie’s spirit – for want of a better word – in the girl drummer of featured band Hedgehog.)

Others would, responding to what ‘punk’ means to them, more naturally go to the more clearly raw and untamed (or even often untuned) sounds of punk, but this truly is ‘a broad movement’. For me, Don Letts is clearly right, in his documentary about this scene called Punk: Attitude, to home in on this question of the bands’ stance towards life, which is established by quoting key players talking about what punk is.

For this reason, I would argue that two-tone had just as much the attitude or spirit of this era as more aggressive or maybe threatening bands such as The Pistols or The Clash, and the times could, happily and largely without strain, embrace (or, more likely, those bands could) music as diverse as that of Madness, Blondie, Ian Dury and The Blockheads, and The Jam.

This apparent diversion from directly talking about Shaun’s achievement is actually to allow commentary on how it is that ?, Demerit and Hedehog are all a completely recognizable part of punk and yet still quite different from each other. What the bands, as groups and as their members, share is an attitude to the world that might loosely be called that of non-acceptance of the status quo and even of rebellion.

This is truly what brings a skinhead whose consumption of substances is phenomenal into the same arena as a hard-hitting female drummer, because the images of her with boxing-gloves and a furious look that is disquietingly hard to characterize further are in the same juxtaposition to the norm as his lifestyle. And where that comes out is in the protesting tone and lyrics of these bands’ music, whether they are high on life or on a mix of chemicals.

That means that you can, after all, be so much on the edge that you’re in the real centre, as there’s really an Einsteinian continuum that loops around on itself (not any sort of discworld). Saying that may, itself, seem literally eccentric (in its true sense of ‘out of the centre’), but I do believe that it’s just as much relevant to punk as to art and anti-art under the Dadaists or Surrealists: the essence of punk is not far from those origins in the post-war time of 1918 on, with the linking theme being not satisfied with the world as it is, and, more importantly, dissatisfied with everyone else for putting up with it.

After all, if it wasn’t André Bretton, poet and unchallenged spokesman of Surrealism, who said that the true surreal act is to take a loaded gun and go out into the street, shooting at random, it’s thereabouts. In that statement, there’s very much the feel of Lee, the lead-singer of one of the three bands with whom Shaun came into close contact - self-destructive and chaotic though he is, and despite what Lee puts into his body and ‘helps’ others to put into theirs whilst seeking to live as a skinhead in China, he’s obviously really just a pussy-cat. (After all, even cats fight, scrap, but eventually sleep.)

What matters most, though, about this film is not the bands’ lifestyles, or Shaun the worse for wear, or his often indisposed camera-man, but the music, which is so much in the punk idiom that one wonders that it was first caught so fully by trawling the Internet. For example, the drummer of Hedgehog is compelling in her playing, and though justly described as hitting really hard, is so truly in punk fashion.

Unlike the explosion of punk in the UK and US, though, there is no one to latch on, making money out of bondage-trousers or whatever, and, as far as I could see, no other media manipulators in the mode of those behind the Pistols would have scope for
doing that in China. The excellent music is what counts, and, despite underground sales of recordings, there’s no hope of a wider home audience.

Thanks for showing us, Shaun - if they want, maybe those bands can find unleashed fans elsewhere...


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