Showing posts with label Cambridge Film Festival 2012. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cambridge Film Festival 2012. Show all posts

Tuesday 16 October 2012

A banana with a twist : A Festival review of Hope Springs (2012)

This is a Festival review of Hope Springs (2012)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


30 September (revised 26 August 2023)

This is a Festival review of Hope Springs (2012)



If anyone had seen Woody Allen's film Celebrity (1998), the scene with a self-help sex manual, Meryl Streep and a banana in Hope Springs (2012) would remind them of where a hooker, allegedly demonstrating fellatio, ends up choking on her chosen fruit. (Ironic, as gagging is supposed to be one of the fears of Robin Simon (played by Judy Davis), which she is seeking to have allayed by seeking out the hooker's advice.)

The parallel between Kay, Streep's character, and Robin in seeking perfection, or, rather, the reason for it, is obvious enough, hence Kay on her knees in the cinema. And, in Robin's case, Lee (Kenneth Branagh) - her husband and the intended male beneficiary - is arguably, if not as cantankerous as Tommy Lee Jones is as Arnold, then scarcely more appreciative.

Arnold and Kay have gone to Maine, the fictional resort of Great Hope Springs (filming took place in Connecticut¹), because, essentially, he is a Reggie Perrin of a man, except that his routine doesn't even include kissing his wife when he leaves in the morning, and she wants him to be interested in her. None of this, although it obviously is a serious matter that couples grow into ignoring each other / taking the other for granted (or, at least, one within a couple, rightly or wrongly, may see it that way), is any more than a pretext for a romp :

We will see them in what is played as a therapy-session for couples, but it is just the backdrop for Kay to be girlish and want her man back, and for Arnold to be stroppy, admit that he fancies the female neighbour / other dimensions to sex, and, when the going gets tough - as it often enough does - take his soldiers away. Of course, we know where it's going to go, and that, for comedic effect, the sailing will not be plain (whatever unplain sailing is), and there will be mishaps - such as, as it turns out, the seduction in the cinema.

Steve Carell (Dr Bernie Feld) does a fairly good job of saying the sorts of things that therapists say and / or behaving as they do to redirect anger onto the clients. However, we know that some of it, or some of what has been said already, is not 'for real', because, when the woman with the corgis is revealed as an object of Arnold's suppressed desire, Kay doesn't react by saying anything, let alone slapping Arnold, whereas she is hardly, as we learn, a swinger, and has not so much as admitted to a fantasy about, say, other men in the shower (or to having been in the shower with other men). (Carol, the neighbour with the corgis, turns out to deliver a line with a highly deferred pay-back.) As to how things turn out, Scotland takes some credit when there seems to be a dark night ahead, because Annie Lennox, whose singing captures all the bad stuff in the words² of 'Why', helps exorcize it (some such).

In fact, as The Lennox's career is not lacking in interest to me (and as this is a film from the States), I asked David Frankel, the film's director and the guest afterwards in the Q&A at Cambridge Film Festival, how the song 'Why' had come to be used : he told us that it had been there all along at that point as a place-holder, and had ended up staying because nothing ever did take its place.

(If, as I believe that I recall, 'Why' is the song used, lines such as 'I may be viciously unkind' (and so on) actually delivered some elements that maybe the film itself had not (except by employing it), since one of the therapy-sessions with Dr Feld shows that there has been an issue of It takes two to tango in why separate bedrooms also became not having had sex since 22 September four years earlier.


End-notes

¹ A name that I have never understood.

² I must check this somewhere else, i.e. the album, but four people seem to be credited with writing these lyrics.


Friday 21 September 2012

Jarman and jerking-off

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)



21 September

You might or might not like Jarman's style of working, and I couldn't make it all the way through Jubilee (1978), but he was patently a film-maker.

At Cambridge Film Festival last night, All Divided Selves (2011) and the demeanour of its director, Luke Fowler, gave a very different impression from that made by Jarman, and the film did not seem much like a film, and the artist - as all artists tend to do - tried, although his language kept tripping him up*, to distance himself from the idea that his work said something or had a message.

The message that All Divided Selves had consisted almost entirely of Laing talking, often enough with visuals, about psychiatric conditions and his personal and cultural background, plus some others talking with or about him, his theories and psychiatry in general. As it is not difficult to pull quotations out of Laing's works, let alone footage, that says something pertinent to us and to now, then there may be no great merit in having done so, even if you have embellished the enterprise with bits and pieces that you have shot.


Conclusion : Would I prefer to have the chance to see Tacita Dean's FILM 2011 from Tate Modern's Turbine Hall again and have it substitute for my memory of Fowler's film? Yes!


End-notes

* He seemed not to want to say 'illustrative', but nonetheless kept saying it, so drawing atention to a word that he purported to eschew.


Friday 7 September 2012

Those CFF events (2012) - booked so far

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


25 September - an update of :

As of last night, tickets purchased for the Film Festival, though many a gap as more tickets than room in the universe to sort them! :


As last year, there is a code, which is :

A Abandoned - Walked out partway through

B Blog - There is a posting about the film on the blog, although it may not be a review, to which this links

M Missed - Planned - or had tickets - to see, but had to skip

O Take One - Published on line as a guest review

R Review - The blog posting was submitted as a review and appears on the Film Festival web-site, to which a link provided

S Seen - The opposite of Missed

T Technical - Some technical issue meant that the quality of the screening had been compromised and it was refunded



Summary : 30 films seen (or part-seen) in 11 days, with two that couldn't be watched, and quite a bit of juggling at the weekend of 15 to 16 September


Thursday 13

M 3.30 About Elly - too tight to see because of film at 6.00

1. S 6.00 Opening film : Hope Springs (selling out)

Somehow there's time afterwards for a Q&A and to get the new crowd seated in the size of space after About Elly that did me no favours...

2. S B R 8.30 Opening film : Snows of Kilimanjaro (selling out) Festival review



Friday 14

3. A B R 1.00 Salma and the Apple Festival review

4. S B R 3.30 Formentera Festival review

5. S B 8.30 The Body in the Woods

6. S B R 10.30 Tridentfest review 1 and review 2 Two Festival reviews



Saturday 15

T 12.30 Hemel - Gave up, because of picture-quality, for a refund

7. S 5.00 War Witch

8. S B 7.30 On the Road



Sunday 16

M 3.00 On the Road - Substituted by screening on Saturday night

M 6.40 Warsaw Bridge

clashed with

9. S B 8.00 Chimes at Midnight



Monday 17

M 10.15 The Temptation of St. Tony - Proved to be too early!

10. S B R 3.15 Postcards from the Zoo Festival review

11. S B R 8.00 Now is Good Festival review

12. S B R 10.45 Hit and Run Festival review



Tuesday 18

M 10.30 A Cube of Sugar - Also too early

13. S B R 3.00 Home for the Weekend Festival review

14. S B 5.30 The Idiot

15. S B 8.00 The Night Elvis Died



Wednesday 19

16. S B R 12.30 V.O.S. Festival review

17. S B 3.00 Salvatore Giuliano

18. S 6.00 Big Boys gone Bananas!

T 8.00 The Mattei Affair



Thursday 20

19. S B R 3.15 Totem

M 4.30 Event: George Perry on Hitchcock - NB To book separately : film's allocated, talk's not

M 5.15 Vertigo

20. S B O 8.15 All Divided Selves



Friday 21

21. S B 10.45 Vertigo

22. S B 2.00 Warsaw Bridge

23. S B 6.00 Blackmail

M 8.00 Aelita, Queen of Mars - free, no need to book - Too tired!



Saturday 22

M 12.45 Tony 10 - Still too tired

24. S O 6.00 The Lacey Rituals review interview with William Fowler (Curator, BFI)

25. S B 8.30 Black Bread



Sunday 23

26. S 11.00 A Trip to the Moon + Extraordinary Voyage

27. S B 1.00 Lucky Luciano

28. S 3.15 Marnie

29. S 5.30 Surprise film : Looper

30. S B R 8.00 Closing film : Holy Motors







Monday 6 August 2012