The Trip to Spain (2017) : All about [St]Eve

The Trip to Spain (2017) : All about [St]Eve

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
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24 January

The Trip to Spain (2017) : All about [St]Eve

* The version as a Sky t.v. series.

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 25, 2021

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Re-visited, as a film, The Trip (2010)

Re-visited, as a film, The Trip (2010)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
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7 July

Re-visited, as a film, The Trip (2010)

The film version of The Trip (2010), originally seen* at @camfilmfest, is class from Michael Winterbottom, its gorgeous landscape shots so skilfully edited in that they speak for, or despite, the on-screen personæ of Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan (who'd hate being credited second). pic.twitter.com/Y4nHE3YPDs

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 8, 2020

The six episode version for t.v. has to arc very differently*, and Winterbottom gets it just right here !

* More so than comparing The Trip to Italy (2014) as film and t.v. series, where, building up to Rob's dalliance with Lucy, we actually have more shots of the yacht at sea. pic.twitter.com/ALyPUiTokv

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 8, 2020

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Can you just put the tops back on these jars, please ?

This is a review of The Trip to Italy (2014)

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22 May

This is a review of The Trip to Italy (2014)

* NB A very crude headline, from The Trip (2010), is quoted *

There were things riding on The Trip to Italy (2014), where they had not been earlier at Cambridge Film Festival for The Trip (2010), and it easily won the double.

The Q&Awas wonderful, @CamPicturehouse, and, if possible, made the pleasure of The Trip to Italy (2014) even greater. Thanks, all !
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 21, 2014

Afterwards, in the Q&A broadcast by satellite from one of the London Picturehouses, Steve Coogan gave credit to director Michael Winterbottom for the whole being greater than the sum of the parts (though Coogan twice succeeded in avoiding that classic formulation), which Rob Brydon (@RobBrydon) humorously undercut by saying that he disagreed, and that it was just a matter of pressing play and record. (Winterbottom was in the audience, but was not taking part, which Coogan impishly attributed to wishing to appear profound, and so not saying anything that might give a contrary impression.)

What Winterbottom has done with both films is to craft something in cinematic terms whose essential premise has also given rise to six-part series of thirty minutes : for the films feel like films, not cut down in any way from something else, and it appears that there is material in the film that is not in the series and vice versa, alongside what is in both (at any rate, that was what seemed to have been said when The Trip screened at Cambridge).

Thank you Italy, Winterbottom, Cooganand @RobBrydon for a lovely combination via @CamPicturehouse : as great to watch as The Trip (2010) !
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 21, 2014

This film reverses the roles a little from the earlier one, with Coogan not so much the know-all who has learnt facts and quotations to throw into the conversation and impress, but a man with ‘a hiatus’ that conveniently leaves him free to accompany Brydon (one which, it turns out, he hopes will not extend into winter), whereas we see the latter succeed with wooing and work. [We should, however, be calling these semi-fictionalized sides to Coogan and Brydon by the names Steve and Rob, so that when we can tell at a glance whether actor or role is meant…]

For the Steve who pontificates triumphantly in the abbey ruins in The Trip, or who wondrously meets someone with a newspaper bearing the startling headline STEVE COOGAN IS A CUNT, bears a resemblance to Coogan, but only as a starting-point for bringing friends Rob and Steve together for a week of driving, joking, eating and thinking in an invented newspaper commission to cover some culinary hot-spots. The Steve of that film definitely wants to impress more, but, when Coogan said in the Q&A that he tried to learn a couple of quotations from Byron each night to throw into the next day’s improvisation, there is little knowing which is Winterbottom’s creating a persona for Steve, or Coogan embellishing it.

What, though, is clear is that Steve is perfectly de Niro at the lunch on Thursday, and that, in reverse role, Rob truly cracks him up with his inventiveness as Parky : in the Q&A, Brydom let us into the knowledge that he had done it so well, because he had been fired up by some antagonism with Coogan, and, when he felt it just working out, went with it. Who says that it is just oysters that can be irritated to produce pearls ?

When asked about how making the two films compared, Brydon said that this one had been more convivial, and Coogan readily agreed with him, repeating the word. Brydon also said that he had been surprised, in the first one, that Coogan would just suddenly declare We’re not using this !, and so seek to gain control over the material – from which we gathered that there was none (or less) of that this time.

In giving the pair Alanis Morissette’s debut album Jagged Little Pill from 1995 to have with them in the car (though skipping the already much-ridiculed track ‘Ironic’), Winterbottom* seemed, they thought, to be off key. However, they then realized that it worked, and that, in 2014, men of their age would be revisiting it** – simply the resource of that album gave them scope, over several car journeys, for :

* Speculations about how to say ‘Alanis’ (because Steve, with his flat in LA, says that names are pronounced in the States as one chooses) – and then Rob points out that she AM is Canadian

* Then wondering whether, if the name Alan made it there, it would be stressed on the second syllable, and making it long vowel-sound – ‘My name is Alahn’

* Singing along to a track, or interjecting comments between the words, or wondering where Avril Lavigne stands in relation to AM

* Steve’s comment about the sort of interesting woman whom Morisette once represented, but to whom one would now say Can you just put the tops back on these jars, please ?…


The delightful thing is that, when Steve overlooks that Morisette is not from the same part of North America, it is so seamless that we do not know whether Steve has been led astray by Coogan or by Winterbottom. Likewise, when they are boarding the ferry in the direction of Capri, Steve makes a comment about what an instrument-case is made of – as if, from his reply, Rob could care. It may be Steve / Coogan showing off his knowledge, but he is calling what is obviously too small to be anything other than a case containing a cello a double-bass.

With beautiful scenery and cinematography, Steve grumping at having to take photos of Rob with various Byronic or Shelleyean inscriptions (until, that is, the photographer from last time turns up again), and the sheer good-humoured balance of reflecting on mortality*** and enjoying the present, there is plenty enough to enjoy – with all the references to films and stars, with even a Mafia vignette woven in as Rob’s guilty, vengeful dream towards Steve****, The Trip to Italy is a delightful way of enjoying two men being together against the backdrop of history, their usual lives, and their desires, summed up in the shimmering waters off Capri into which Steve and his son dive.

What a shame no one asked whether the Andrew Graham Dixon Italy series ripped off The Trip (2010) / influenced The Trip to Italy (2014)...
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 21, 2014

End-notes

* Who had made the car a Mini so that they could make reference to The Italian Job – and, of course, to Michael Caine, on imitating whom Steve delights in giving Rob a masterclass in The Trip…

** Coogan insisted on correcting Brydon that they are not both 49, because he has not yet reached his birthday (Happy birthday for 14 October, Steve !).

*** With Brydon even, to Steve’s feigned / Coogan’s real disgust, giving his Small Man Trapped in a Box voice to a supine figure in a plastic box at Pompeii, and then having the Small Man agree with him about Steve being square (This is a real person, Steve says) : as the scene goes on, the humour wins through, at Steve’s expense. (Steve had the last laugh, because, in the Q&A, Brydon realized that his vocal chords would not let the Small Man out just then…)

**** A question by Tweet, via host Boyd Hilton, asked what each man thought most of the other. Brydon said that he had grudging respect for Coogan, who, hesitating to reciprocate, said (and seemed genuine) being at ease with what he has / who he is, amplifying that this is something that he has improved on, but Brydon is still better at doing.


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Found in her memories

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7 November

90 = S : 14 / A : 16 / C : 12 / M : 17 / P : 16 / F : 15

A rating and review of Philomena (2013)

S = script

A = acting

C = cinematography

M = music

P = pacing

F = feel

9 = mid-point of scale (all scores out of 17 / 17 x 6 = 102)

Those who read my blog with any regularity - poor fools ! - may have found that I am 'not good around' Judi Dench, though I did enjoy (even if I should not have done) Billy Connolly and her in Mrs Brown (1997), and, for this reason, will not have discovered much reviewed that features her : something to do with not being able to forgive her spending her effort on series after series (nine, was it ?) of As Time Goes By...

In Philomena, where she is the title-character, all my doubts were overcome - just the close-ups alone, where one could feel the yearning in her eyes, and believe that she was transfixed by the images that were her past, were worth the whole film. (I must last have seen her in Skyfall (2012), as M, but there she has a different vulnerability to her, feeling under personal threat, and then facing a murderous Javier Bardem - at those moments when Philomena was vulnerable, for she could also be very resourceful and admirable in holding her position, she did not seem nearly so frail, but very touching.)

As with another film out now, Gloria (2013), the clue is in the title, i.e. that we are going to witness a portrait of that person, but this person (although she, too, has hurts and griefs) is very different from Gloria. Martin Sixsmith, played by Steve Coogan (who produced the film, and co-wrote it with Jeff Pope), thinks that Philomena is credulous (and says so to his editor), but, when he more or less tells her so (in what sort of desire to keep her sweet, one does not know), she very quickly tells him that God would think him a feckin' eejit. (No, it did not smack of Father Ted, but seemed a very genuine response to Martin's thoughtless atheistic baiting.)

When I consider that Coogan wrote this part for Dench, I am humbled. At The Lincoln Monument, after he has moved her around like a piece of meat to try to get a good pose, there is a very telling pair of lines :

Martin : I'm only going to tell the truth

Philomena : That's what I'm worried about


The lines encapsulate a polarity at the heart of the film. Philomena is a real person about whom Martin Sixsmith, the former BBC journalist and then adviser to the last government, wrote a book in 2009, The Lost Child of Philomena Lee. The real Philomena (of whom a photo is shown in a closing montage) was presumably similarly torn about looking for the son whom she was forced to allow to be adopted, and the personal cost of her privacy in doing so.

Whatever the offscreen Sixsmith may be like (and Coogan does not use his ability for mimicry here), he must have allowed Coogan to portray as Martin a journalist who, when declining breakfast and asking for privacy in a supposedly polite way, has an abrasiveness to him that causes Philomena to rebuke him for rudeness. (His quick retreat into saying that he needs 'quiet time' felt like a sulk, the complementary side to beginning to correct her when she alludes to him 'going to Oxbridge' (because it is a contraction, not a place), and thereby ignoring the context in which said it, and what she was actually saying to him.)

What worries me a little about the film, from where I could judge the laughter to be coming from in Screen 2 (and of what quality), is that it veers close to the racist notion of being Irish equating with backwardness. Not specifically when an irritated Martin sums Philomena up as someone who has soaked up Reader's Digest and The Daily Mail (and one other publication), because he is not a million miles from being thoroughly conceited anyway (which, in characterizing a Sixsmith persona, Coogan must have enjoyed).

However, there are occasions when the timing of the editing does tend to make Philomena sound like a simpleton, for example when she does not get Martin's allusion to The Wizard of Oz, just after they have first met, and when she quotes the word 'titanium' in a single-word description of her new hip : it floats, as if she is foolishly saying things that she does not understand (whereas her job for thirty years suggests otherwise). Then, at the trademark salad-bar, it is clear that Martin does not know this sort of place to eat, and we are again left with space that makes it sound awkward that she is calling the croutons that she is adding to her salad 'bits of toast' (though croutons are really scarcely more than bits of toast).

As the film progressed, my perception is that a fair number in the audience were, in laughing, not being sympathetic - almost the old distinction of 'at' rather than 'with', although they might have been laughing, rather than bearing with Philomena. Perhaps they missed that Martin was not meant to be right in thinking her to soak up words and phrases to use without understanding, but that he - not unusually in the trajectory of such a film - was, as a graduate from Oxford, meant to learn things from her.

In the first scene at an airport (actually, identifiable as Stansted, from where they would not have been able to take that flight), Martin does not disguise that he has heard the plot of a cheap paperback on sufferance, quipping unkindly that he almost felt as though he had read it. When they are next at an airport, Martin has no answers for why they should not be, and we are left to congratulate ourselves when we hear Philomena articulate the reasons not to catch the flight that we thought of shortly before.

Fine as a plot device to make us think better of Philomena, and to watch Martin just go along with it when he had had no idea what to do, but there are perhaps too many other cases when we begin to wonder how sharp he really is, if he takes the step of going somewhere without having thought through what to do when he gets there. That is where the film seems weak, since we insufficiently have portrayed a Martin who is depressed, for whom some of what happens might no longer be grist to his mill.

This is also not a buddy film, but more of a Rain Man (1988) sort of film, in that Cruise's (Charlie's) position changes in relation to Hoffman's (Raymond's), and Martin ends up respecting Philomena, and making a gesture that shows respect for her views. The closing, rising shot is beautifully executed, and seems in no way forced in bringing an air of grandeur to the scene.

Alexandre Desplat's suitably unobtrusive score has achieved the same aim throughout, of being there, but not being so obvious that one feels it out of place (and, in this, he did as he did with Marius (2013) and Fanny (2013)). The device of using footage, so that Philomena almost seems to be prescient in seeing what happens to her son, is an effective one, and roots Philomena in the memories of what she had.

If we excuse the black-and-whiteness of the depiction of the nuns (though, for all that I know, Sixmsith's book may record Sister Hildegard's views as shown), the cast as a whole is strong, but especial mention must go to Sophie Kennedy Clark for bringing a vitality to Philomena as a younger woman, and for showing us the origin of the hurt, the moment of separation, that inhabits the reflective older Philomena's gaze.


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My favourite poem is ‘Twat’

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9 October

Evidently John Cooper Clarke… Live, relayed from Tyneside (though Cooper Clarke is from Salford), was hosted by Johnny Green, who had been manager of The Clash. It comprised a short video of Cooper Clarke reciting to guitar accompaniment from Franky (Frank Sidebottom, alias the late Chris Sievey), a quick word between Cooper Clarke and Green, the main feature of the film Evidently John Cooper Clarke, and a Q&A.

The collaboration that proved to be made with groups such as The Clash was by no means inevitable, except for CC’s self-belief and making it work on stage, even though, as Green said twice, he was very good at dodging bottles. By sheer perseverance, Cooper Clarke got audiences to listen to him as an authentic voice of the late 1970s, and we heard from, amongst others, Kate Nash, Bill Bailey, Steve Coogan and Arthur Smith what he and poems such as ‘Kung Fu International’ and ‘Evidently Chickentown’ meant to them at the time.

The film used intercutting of different versions to show the variation in Cooper Clarke’s performance from slower to incredibly fast, and how he was on and off stage in seconds in a way that his admirers and supporters found very cool, as well, of course, as what he did in between. The fictionally located ‘Beasley Street’ also proved of lasting appeal, a name chosen by Cooper Clarke to give him rhymes.

In terms of his own taste, Cooper Clarke named The Ramones as the final word on music of the time, and we saw him in The Black Lion at Salford as he reminisced about his career.

One of his teachers, Mr Monroe, was an inspiration not just to him, but his whole class, by reading poems that appealed to teddy boys. In turn, ‘I am Yours’, one of Cooper Clarke’s poems, was anthologized, and reading it at school inspired Alex Turner, who both wrote a song in his vein, and has now recorded a setting of the poem.

As Cooper Clarke was proud to say, Ben Drew (also known as Plan B) has also included him in his film Bad Illusions, performing a poem that he wrote after reading Drew’s script. These are both part of Cooper Clarke’s come-back, although what remained unclear is how much time from the 1980s onwards had been unproductive for him, largely because of drugs and their inheritance, and there is no good reason why one would have wanted to be more explicit.


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In a pear-tree ? : A review of Alan Partridge : Alpha Papa (2013)

This is a review of Alan Partridge : Alpha Papa (2013)

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20 August

This is a review of Alan Partridge : Alpha Papa (2013)

Alan Partridge : Alpha Papa (2013) is a tremendously enjoyable film. If one knew the subject-matter or some of the scenes, one might not be able to imagine that laughs would come (and so consistently), but it comfortably runs to 90 mins without outliving its welcome. (I doubt - never having subjected myself to it - that one could say the same for Steve Coogan in The Parole Officer (2001)...)

That is not meant to knock long-standing Partridge collaborators Armando Iannucci and Coogan down, but rather to say that they (and the others who co-wrote) know what they are doing with the character, and how far to bend him - in the other film, Coogan is credited as authoring it just with Henry Normal (a producer on Alpha Papa), and it must have been a shock that enough people did not seem to trouble themselves to see it (even though, on a low budget, it grossed respectably enough.)

If one looks at the Wikipedia® page for Partridge, it is written in a curious amalgam of fact and pseudo-biography, almost as it was not known where to place this would-be child of Norfolk (though Coogan neither attempts to sound as though he is one, nor does much other than mask his Mancunian heritage), and it reveals that we have had more than twenty years of Partridgeisms on radio, and not far short since he first appeared on t.v. Again, in the nicest way, it had seemed like longer, and I had hoped against hope that Partridge had not been made into a feature for the sake of doing it.

Those whose judgements I trusted assured me that it would be a safe ride, and now I see that Coogan had had a half-feature-length t.v. outing with Alan Partridge: Welcome to the Places of My Life (2012). Alpha Papa loses nothing from seeing the trailer (a feat of avoidance that is almost impossible to achieve), keeps the gags, by and large, safe with Coogan, and he delightfully (in character) loses his dignity (in various different ways) whilst trying to play each situation for his advantage.

I am not sure that one likes Partridge any more than one ever does, because he is always on the make, but he does get our resect - momentarily - in some of the scenes that he has to face. However, he really does not irritate in this nicely structured scenario.


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What look does Coogan have ?

This is a review of The Look of Love (2013)

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28 June (24 March 2015, Tweet added)

This is a review of The Look of Love (2013)

* Contains plenty of spoilers *

I was at a special screening of The Look of Love (2013), with Paul Willetts* present to take part in a question-and-answer session – he is the author of the book now of that name. (It had initially been published, we were told, under the title Members Only.)

One has to take with a pinch of salt whether the older man, looking back over his life in the wake of his daughter’s death, is genuine, or just film schmaltz – engendering a sympathy for Paul Raymond in some realistic mode, whereas significant parts of the rest of the film had Steve Coogan stamped all over them. Coogan, after all (which it took a question from me to elicit, when the Q&A until then had chosen to comment little on the film, how it came into being, or related topics), had approached Michael Winterbottom with the desire to make a film where he played the part.

"My name is Paul Raymond, welcome to my world of erotica." At 11.15pm, Steve Coogan stars in The Look Of Love. pic.twitter.com/HWoUDDCKjn

— Film4.com (@Film4) March 23, 2015

What I take from the film is an attempt to show Raymond as a man whose primary (or initial) interest had been in the burlesque, showman side of things. That aim was significantly undermined by other aspects :

* Showing him destroying his own marriage by first taking sleeping with young hopefuls (with his wife Jean’s acquiescence) and coming home to her to tell her about it, and then starting bringing them to the marital bed, in selfish supposition that such swinging was as good for her as it was for him

* Willing – for money’s sake alone – to enter into partnership with Tony Power (even more sleazily played than Raymond by Chris Addison) to start publishing the trademark magazines (and like products)

* Seeming, in fact, to be unable to relate to anyone except on the level of a transaction**, even his beloved daughter Debbie (Imogen Poots) when talking to his advisers forces him to decide that he cannot keep taking the financial losses of the big show that she is fronting (as a singer) : in this scene, Debbie is clearly hurting at the news, but Raymond has nothing to offer her (no suggestions for alternatives or much comfort), and can only question why she is crying, and keep urging her not to, almost as one of Coogan’s most famous creations might

* This coldness was typified by a stiffly awkward and dutiful reception of Derry, his son from a pre-marital relationship, with just Cooganesque utterances*** to cover thinly the lack of anything to say to him – the closing titles tell us that Raymond, in comparison with the millions left to granddaughters Fawn and India Rose, left Derry nothing


Raymond as presenter of spectaclesis there, but more drawn upon by what Willetts had to say, for the film really tries to show Raymond as driven, but pitifully lost in a world of cocaine, sexy women and alcohol. From the moment when Powers persuades him to have another go at publishing, and Men Only is launched, the spectacles become the different and more specific ones of solo women posing for the camera.

(The film casually interjects Powers telling a model not to spread her legs so much with the words This isn’t Germany, thereby establishing both the standards of the day and Powers’ prowess in showing what could be shown. Raymond is often enough shown there, but looking as if having as much fun as on a wet afternoon in Scarborough.)

Powers, until he falls from favour for apparently not being able to handle his coke (he has a sordid fate listed in the closing titles), is just as much a catalyst for change in Raymond’s life as the lion whose interaction with two bare-breasted women lands him in court. Thus another thing that can be seen about how Matt Greenhalgh (who wrote Nowhere Boy (2009) about the young John Lennon) sought to effect is a serendipitous universe in which Raymond lives and which he – with the major exception of Debbie’s death – creates and controls.

Unfortunately, as with the footage where India Rose is in the back of the car with him and quizzing Raymond as to which Soho properties he owns, it all feels like an over-simplification, and then one asks what the point is. So one comes back to Coogan wanting to do this with Geoffrey Anthony Quinn, born 15 November 1925, and I have no idea whether that pre-dates the death in March 2008 (though it is not as if Willetts appears to have rushed out a biography).

A comment in a review on the film’s IMDb page suggests that Coogan had been turned down in favour of Geoffrey Rush for playing Peter Sellers – however, if so, that film was released in 2004, so it seems unlikely that Coogan harboured the loss, and The Look of Love is ‘compensation’. If he had really wanted to play a funny man like Sellers, why not have selected, as a project, a number of other comics who have died in the last decade or before ?

But there were the out-of-place Partidgeisms – as a rich man, Raymond had no need to make ludicrous and highly self-conscious attempts at witticisms to get women into bed (since, whatever Coogan may think about his own magnetic powers, Raymond had more of a power of preferment that rendered him attractive). It was clearly part of Coogan’s desire to play the part that they should be there, even though they did feel tacked on, and not at the heart of the role :

Willetts, who said that he had been a script consultant, agreed, when answering my question, that the film-makers seemed pleased, even boastful, that they had Cooganized it more and more as it progressed, and one certainly cannot claim, whatever merit the ambition possessed, that they failed.


Yet what it does leave us with is a Raymond who, although wealthy and successful, is alone and probably lacking love at the end, self-obsessedly reliving Debbie’s life and the images surrounding her death – as a purely linear device, it is also, of course, a way of inducing suspense into the story for us, leaving us to wonder, as we work back from an orphaned India Rose, when the moment has come for her to die (and how that will be – we are on edge when Raymond closes the show as to whether it is then with a mixture of heroin, alcohol and a broken heart).

By Debbie’s death in 1992 (although we only heard about this), she had been playing the role that she found for herself of taking over from Powers, and her father had started letting her take over the business. Was he lost, as much as anything, by not being able to leave the pornography and property portfolio in her hands, however much he seemed to show that he did really care for her ?

(There was a slightly strange, because undwelt-on, detail in that, when he split with model Fiona Richmond (whose relationship with Raymond had helped break the marriage), she moved in with Debbie.)

It appears that there is to be another film about Raymond, for which this one made way by taking a different from his nickname, The King of Soho. Will it, as Raymond’s other son is involved, give us a less-romanticized account, where he does not end his days grieving over Debbie and, probably, for his past life, and where he is not played by someone quite so keen to mould the title role to his image ?


Post-script

I think that Antonia Quirke's review (in The Financial Times) is quite fun, and spot on about the Britishness, and there is a good little video linked to in Peter Bradshaw's.

Looking at the publicity material, I have no idea whether Raymond ever said something about what he achieved was not bad for a boy from Liverpool who just had a five-bob note in his pocket : if he said it, one nonetheless felt that Coogan was ficitionalizing his own career's success in and around such detail; if not, that it was in the melting-pot of Coogan creating Raymond in his own image.

Coogan is interviewed on film with Winterbottom, but, in what I saw, all that they touch on is the simple riches-are-empty paradigm.


End-notes

* Perhaps seriously, as I do not recall, IMDb credits Willetts as Lord Longford.

** Echoes of Mark Ravenhill’s Fucking and Shopping ?

*** Including the running joke as to who Raymond claimed had done the interior of his flat, which at one point was George Harrison, another Yoko ?



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