Stigmata and sacrifice

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
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4 September


* Contains spoilers *

RewatchingStations of the Cross (Kreuzweg) (2014), tears again - but earlier, knowing each scene's context in the whole... #CamFF
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) September 4, 2014

Can one put one’s finger on what is so affecting about this film ? A young girl, Maria, just at confirmation age, who idolizes Bernadette, the au pair, and who is being pushed in certain directions by her family and the church :

We see Maria objecting to the rather tame music that the sympathetic PE teacher is playing – seemingly not for the first time – to accompany her class’ exercise on the hoof on the basis that it contains ‘satanic rhythms’. Just before, we have seen her urged in confession, and with similar descriptions of music characterized by Fr. Weber, to denounce it. Whose life is she leading that she should want to sacrifice the landscape, or her own life to heal her younger brother Johannes ?

The chill is in the zeal with which Maria’s mother, at the undertaker’s, talks of seeking canonization for her daughter – almost as if she sees past her daughter to a saint, although we have seen her treat Maria abusively for her selfish ill-will on at least three occasions. Kein Wunder that her husband leaves the table and goes aside to stand in quiet thought – and the mother finally breaks down in proper tears…

Is the mapping of Maria’s last days on the elements of The Stations of The Cross something that is partly imposed, from the mother’s eye view, after the event ? – although, theologically, one knows the injunction to Take up one’s cross daily, and that identification with Jesus is the stuff of The Imitation of Christ.

But does she, in the tears, finally realize that the contented smile that she had in the car, after she has humiliated her daughter and, by stopping in traffic with a provocative ultimatum, secured her compliance by sheer power-play is just another aspect of the domination of Maria's life and memory that she craves now ? Perhaps.

Yet, although one wonders that, at the third hour (by the hospital clock) and as Maria’s heart fails, Johannes finally speaks, at the age of four, to call her name and to ask Wo ist Maria ?, we are emotionally with Bernadette in the preceding scene, not wanting her to refuse food and make ready to sacrifice her life. The horrible liturgical humbug is, though, that Maria’s mother says that the sacrament of communion is received when the wafer touches the lips (although Maria chokes on it, and it has to be unceremoniously whipped out of her mouth by a nurse) :

Unnoticed by us, we connect with the first scene, and Fr. Weber’s dogmatic assertion that life begins not, as suggested by one of the confirmation class, at birth, but at conception. Here, we are at the other end of life, and, in urging this hypocritical beatification of her daughter, Whatever one may think of the pro-life position (and choosing an age in weeks up to which a pregnancy can be lawfully terminated does seem somewhat arbitrary), Maria’s mother is invoking similar clear-cut definitions of life and death, right and wrong, holy and impure.

The key thing to notice (third stumble) is that Bernadette, not Maria’s mother, is her sponsor for confirmation, and how, even so feverish and ill, what is on Maria’s mind to pour out to Bernadette is how she believes that he mother does not love her, and to feel responsible for what she sees as a lack of love.

The film is a masterpiece. It is so powerful, second time around and as one tries to link each station of the cross to the tableau in hand, that it deserves a much greater audience than it had at either screening at Festival Central : this time, no laughter at the hard-liners in church and family, no treating of this as some sort of risible entertainment at the expense of real people who do have such faith and dogma.

And a profound emotion for Maria, believing that she is doing as she should for her mute brother’s sake…


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

Marks along the way

This is a review of Stations of the Cross (Kreuzweg) (2014)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
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3 September

This is a review of Stations of the Cross

(Kreuzweg, which means ‘way of the cross’) (2014)

Forget the cinematographic limitation that actually gives one nearly fourteen single takes in tableau style (only eleven where the camera simply does not move) : after the first, where one has one’s doubts*, it is more liberating to the inventiveness of writers Dietrich and Anna Brüggemann (he directs) than one could imagine – not least as the structure mirrors the fact that when the way of the cross is set out, in or around a church, an image to capture the frozen moment in time usually accompanies each step along it, for purposes of contemplation.

That restriction of a static camera-position, broken only incidentally in those few places, does really concentrate the mind and the emotions wonderfully on the amazingly telescoped ambit of the film’s story, starting with a final lesson with the priest to prepare for confirmation. *As that is the first scene, maybe it is not important that at least one (maybe two) of the candidates does not seem to contribute to answering the questions posed by Father Weber – certainly the girl at the far right-hand end of the table does not, and does nothing other than look more or less straight ahead, occasionally moving her hands, and she seems (as, to an extent, does the boy to her right) like a makeweight. (She does not appear again until they are in a pew together for the confirmation address.)

A small hesitation (even if it did make one doubt that the Oulipo-type richness-in-restriction was going to be effective), because the rest of the film is a compelling account of a very short period in Maria’s life, who is one of the candidates, and whose family is part of a fundamentalist Roman Catholic church that names itself after St Paul and rejects changes such as those brought in by The Second Vatican Council (so they still use Latin forms of absolution, etc.). Some in the audience were, rather inappropriately, laughing, as if this were a broad comedy, seemingly unaware that such beliefs (and the systems that keep them operative) are part of life in continental Europe**.

The film cries out to be watched. There is a second chance to do so at Cambridge Film Festival (@camfilmfest) / #CamFF 2014 on Thursday 4 September at 2.30


Why should it be seen ? Here are some observations :

* Lea van Acken (Maria), Florian Stetter (Fr. Weber), Franziska Weisz (Maria’s mother) and Lucie Aron (Bernadette) are exceptionally strong – with the only hesitation about cast being as already mentioned

* The clarity of the script and of its delivery mean that one senses all the nuances of Maria’s family and its belief-system, not least her relationship with the dominant mother, and her attempt to fit in with the high demands of living the good life within their church

* Key scenes are at the doctor’s and, afterwards, when Maria is with Bernadette, the au pair

* Before them, the conflict (external) of a group photograph during a walk, and (internal) of Maria’s confession prior to confirmation – the energies, the dynamics, are often laid bare as much by how things are spoken, as well as by what is not spoken

* The power of this film grows and grows – if it does not have tears rolling down one’s cheeks in the closing tableaux, perhaps the film never can achieve that, but it certainly can

To-day at @camfilmfest, the slightly pessimistic view : watching Stations of the Cross and Mary is Happy, Mary is Happy again while possible
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) September 4, 2014

For a spoilery Postscript, following that second viewing, click here

One's baffled by your review from @BathFilm, Henry Heffer: https://t.co/NT8bM10nW1 Some clever juxtaposing of your 'two opposing forces' ?
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) November 28, 2014

It says much to be shocked by one of Maryann O'Connor's reviews for @NewEmpress, but hers of Stations of the Cross (2014) is way off !

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) November 28, 2014

End-notes

* Please see below (where asterisked).

** One doubt here : whether they would have sung the sort of chorale that we hear in the service, and seemingly have approved of Bach’s Chorales, although he was a Lutheran. (Some opposition to Vatican II has also rejected music in worship as a whole.)


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

Don't mention Beirut ! I mentioned it once, but I think that I got away with it all right...

This is a (short) review of A Most Wanted Man (2014)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
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3 September

This is a (short) review of A Most Wanted Man (2014)

Funding apart, there really is little point in having a film set in a country where all the cast speaks English, but they are supposed to sound as if they speak it with the accent of that country.

To that end, Rachel McAdams (who was not identifiable even as a non-German, despite being the love interest in Midnight in Paris (2012)) was alone worth the sole language coach’s fee, whereas Willem Dafoe desperately drifted, but that was better than the respected Philip Seymour Hoffman, who, despite his German name, sounded most often like the best of Richard Burton than any Günther Bachmann.

What was, McAdams apart, the point of this exercise, where Germans such as Nina Hoss (Irna Frey, and who played the lead in Barbara (2012)) were in no way matched by the non-Germans ? One has no doubt that Hoss could have spoken English with less of an accent than the one that the non-Germans were not picking up…

That apart, however nicely the production was put together, more of the same with the script (maybe to be laid at author John Le Carré’s door) : one big dénouement (perhaps predictable) to account for why a man who, under Russian torture (as Günther observes), confesses to crimes and who anyway fits the visual image of the dodgy muslim fundamentalist (until he trims some hair), can prove to be actually more like Prince Myshkin than a jihadist.

Frankly, if that is what one takes from the film, that a man who admits that the non-organization that he heads has no status will not be done over in seeking to protect this Issa Karpov (Grigoriy Dobrygin) and that said Karpov needed some love, then that is not worth the price of the ticket.

Ah, but one forgets the original soundtrack ! As Hamburg is the home of a sailing nation and a commercial centre, accordion slowed down so that sea-shanties became unrecognizable, incorporating the sound of also slowed data-transmissions into composition, and otherwise imitating Arvo Pärt’s procedure of tintinnabulation – all of that must have made it worthwhile after all.


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You have to make a move, you have no choice

This is a review of Four Corners (Die Vier Hoeke) (2014)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
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3 September

This is a review of Four Corners (Die Vier Hoeke) (2014)

* Contains non-specific spoilers *

The film only tells you about the 26s and the 28s, but the Internet reveals that there are also the 27s, although it fails to explain what the numbers of these ‘numbers gangs’ refer to : in relation to the 26s, some of whose members in the film refer to being Americans and to the number of stars on the flag (which flag ?), the dollar symbol is shown, which appears to connect (although there are dollars other than US dollars).

This is by the by. The film toys with the idea of neighbourhood, having all the significant characters converge on a tiny area, and, in this microcosm, showing how pointless the sectarian divisions are, not least when one ends up with father against son (though they do not know each other) (and with the undisguised parallel in chess). For all that, it is fairly routine and not all that interesting. What is interesting is that the film-makers expect us to maintain our interest, because everything is shown quite neutrally, in a man who kills another out of a (pretty pointless) family feud – with a grotesque paying of respects afterwards – and then shoots a boy, just because he can claim to be a householder who is protecting his interests.

This is not only a far cry from the utter barbarism of the gangs in prison (a building which gives us the film’s title), but seeks to have us ‘on side’ for the failings and future of the chess-playing son. The film leads us back to the drama with which it opened, and we recognize it for the first time, but the experience in between has been too hollow to make this amount to anything : our only connection has been with unearthing some disappearances, and, later, the shock of realizing how they have been perpetrated.

The chess has been there as a floating symbol of peaceful competition and endeavour, but it is too weak to sustain this narrative, where, we are told towards the end, You have to make a move, you have no choice – in fact, such references test the story beyond breaking-point, and leave us just with a glib quotation about how there is, in life, no such thing as a standstill. Maybe a documentary about the long standing and the elaborate tattooing of these gangs, if that had been possible, would have been a better endeavour…


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Flaws that stopped one sleeping

This is principally a critique of Before I Go to Sleep (2014), not a review

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
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2 September (updated 26 November)

* Contains many spoilers – this is principally a critique of Before I Go to Sleep (2014), not a review *

A film such as Cell 211 (Celda 211), despite having a flaw at its centre that was challenging to spot, deserved a release (and, at least on DVD, got one). However, to Before I Got to Sleep (2014), the following Tweet sadly does apply :

Let alone half-a-dozen, if one has one reason why a film does not hang together, maybe it doesn't : Before I Go to Sleep at @camfilmfest...
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) September 1, 2014

As to plausibility, if one wanted a digital camera, one would do well to buy Christine’s make – it is apparently indestructible ! But, on other matters, the question put mainly to Steve Watson, who wrote the novel on which the film is based, at the Q&A on Monday night at Cambridge Film Festival / #CamFF 2014 follows.

Premise : Christine does not remember the previous day, and sees no one, every day, but the person whom she takes to be Ben (because he tells her so)
Question : So what does reason does Mike have to pretend to be Ben [which, in fact, he may do out of guilt, but clearly resents doing] ?

An immediate answer was not forthcoming, which, accepting that writing the book had been some while ago, was fine. However, the best that director / writer Rowan Joffe and he came up with (slightly later) was that of cementing the memory by repeating a version of the past, because Christine’s forgetting is not certain.

Nothing, though, could address the fact (put to Steve) that, if Christine woke up with a sudden memory of the real Ben and being married to him, nothing that fake Ben could do to pretend to be he would make him look like him – and, if she remembered that she was married to the real Ben, he would have to persuade her that he is also Ben, and that he married her after Ben 1 and she divorced…

Screening plus Q&A@CamPicturehouse with #B4IGTS author @SJ_Watson & director Rowan Joffe@camfilmfest pic.twitter.com/O5idtndE1K
— Anna 安娜(@lunchfilms) September 2, 2014

The book and film’s reality and need is that it wants to present the to us as much as to Christine man who is really Mike (Mike 2) as Ben, and so have us believe that he is her pre-injury husband. Yet, if Mike wanted to pretend that there are images of him marrying Christine, i.e. proof that he is her husband (and so legitimate), he would have done it photographically, not physically.

The images are so patently cut together that they would never convince anyone, let alone a woman staring at them because she cannot remember the events that they show : the film gives us what appeared to be a dishonest close-up of what a crude job it is, with a cut-line between their heads, whereas a medium shot shows the heads touching, or, at any rate, so close that there would be no white space in between

* * * * *

As to the positives, with a variation of date rape, any woman could wake up in bed with a man, not knowing who she is or why is there, and drugged into accepting that she has no memory and that he is her partner… Or we could ask, as philosophers in the past have, how we know that the external world exists and that we are not ‘brains in a vat’ : receiving sensory data with no senses, beyond having those stimuli, to perceive the world that we apparently see and feel …

So it is not as if the film / book does not pose questions. (Though, as Hugh Taylor (Festival supporter and regular put it), it is not as if it is not full of holes, and turns Nicole Kidman into that traditional character of the helpless woman.)

Nonetheless, there is such a spoilery list of things to consider (most of which were evident during or just after the screening, and just condensed into the criticism implied by the question posed) that one must wonder what Watson / Joffe thought they were doing regarding a plot that worked. Not an exhaustive list, but the more obvious ones, follows :

* Mike 1, even if he has good reason to suspect Mike 2, seems to act fairly strangely for a doctor – contacting Christine out of the blue, without her husband’s knowledge (and encouraging her not to change that position), and expecting her to trust him

* In fact, her levels of trust are worryingly high (given what she later fears about him, albeit curiously having been taken to a remote reservoir), and indicate that the issues below (of getting her discharged) should, from the point of view of her vulnerability to exploitation and abuse, have made that extremely difficult without very convincing bona fides

* How does Mike 2 have Christine’s telephone number, if, as we are told, she was discharged from a hospital / home (unless she has some contact with it or equivalent day services) ?

* And how does he have the photographs of Claire (with which he stimulates Christine’s memory of Claire), and would he not have been using photographs of her taken with the man who is really Ben (to trigger memories of those times, too, before the attack) ?

* Maybe some questions of acquired brain injury would be considered a psychiatric issue (under the provisions of s. 1 of the Mental Health Act 1983 (as amended)). If it were thought one, to protect the interests of a person with no memory from exploitation, signing them off to an appropriate place for her care and aftercare would almost certainly have had to be part of the discharge (please see below) – not to somewhere where she is at home all day and almost never leaves the house :

* What does Christine have for lunch ? How does she get vitamin D or exercise, for example, if she does not leave the house (she cannot leave the house, because she does not know where she is ?) ? How are her dental and health needs met, etc. ?

* And, although we only see a period inside term-time, what happens in the holiday ? Can their lives really be confined to a house that is as central to this fantasy as François Ozon’s is in In The House (Dans la maison) (2012) ?

* Neurological tests should have established what (important) part of her amnesia is from the injury, what from the fear-memories of the attack, if she came to this house as recently as four years ago : the film makes scant distinction

* The simplest divorce, where there are no real assets and no children, can be a paper exercise. However, with a wife with a son and who, because of her problems with memory, almost certainly lacks capacity, it is just not clear on what basis one would straightforwardly be obtained. (Out of the possible ones of adultery, ‘unreasonable behaviour’, desertion, two years’ separation with consent, or five years without consent, probably the last, being the time spent in hospital(s).)

* Whenever exactly it happened (the film seems a little unclear, maybe because Mike 2 is lying about the divorce ?), it would have been a major event in any hospital / care home, and almost certainly involving The Court of Protection, because of the need for someone’s valid agreement, to make sure that Christine’s interests would be represented, to what would happen to Adam and how the assets of the marriage would be divided :

* Her share of any proceeds of sale would be held on trust for her, again supervised by the Court, and yet we seem to have the house passed off as where Christine has always lived with Ben…

* Again according to Mike 2, Christine was in hospital / care when he came for her and discharged her – so who was he somehow pretending to be with his forgeries, and why, if that was Ben, he would not have been her next-of-kin as her former husband, so why was he allowed to take her ‘home’ (unless we are to suppose that the hospital / home has somehow forgotten that significant legal step in Christine’s life) ?

* Why would her actual next-of-kin (probably her elder parent) not have been contacted – or is that the nature of Mike 2’s forgery, e.g. to pretend, say, to be her brother ?

* If the attack on Christine was as violent as we see, not only would blood be all over the room and the corridor, but pathology would also have established that it did not take place where her body is found :

* Mike and she may have been checked in under assumed names, but they had met before (maybe there), and no proper police enquiry would have failed to link the injured body to the hotel (because of the blood and a sheet from a hotel), and hence to the people who had occupied it

* One reason is that there are laundry-tags or codes (even if removed), and missing sheets from hotels that night and the type and size of the sheet in which she has been found wrapped would have narrowed the field – just using a hotel sheet, in itself, did so much to implicate Mike

* He did not seem to premeditate the attack, since he was attempting to get Christine to agree for him to call Ben to tell him of the affair, and then got angry and violent towards her with the phone when she tried to stop him : he left her, for some reason naked (would someone have recognized her clothes as such ?), where it is clear that the sheet that he used to clothe her would have been from an airport hotel in the vicinity

* If Claire has been contacting the last place where Christine was an in-patient, why would they have been telling her what she reports about Christine – and why does she not tell Christine that she has a grown-up son ?

* Has Mike dummied up a forged death certificate for Adam (in case Christine has the energy to go through the contents of the tin ?

* The fact that he tells her that she has remembered Claire before is not conclusive that she has not had a memory of her real (former) husband before, but maybe chloroforming her and relying on her having forgotten in the morning is a sufficient remedy for someone intent on living with the woman whom he nearly killed and who is frightened of seeing him every morning – perhaps just for the occasional times when (as we see) her levels of trust lead to intercourse…

* The film also seemed confused as to when Adam was said to have died / when Christine was attacked in relation to it (but maybe because of Mike 2’s lies again)

QED ?

Whatever the quality of the production (with Colin Firth having to contain his role much of the time to give us a shock - and, to go back to that question in the Q&A, the shock that he gives us is precisely because, for our benefit alone, he needlessly pretends to be Ben, rather than being himself), the plotting is just not worthy of it.


With a 36% rating of Rotten on the Rotten Tomatoes web-site from critics, and 50% from audiences, here is a link to what some of even the most positive reviews admitted...


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

Return visit to Alphaville

This is a review of Mary is Happy, Mary is Happy (2013)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
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2 September (updated 17 September - Tweets added, 10 January 2015)

This is a review of Mary is Happy, Mary is Happy (2013)

Some may be disconcerted by the subtitles seeming to be in advance of the dialogue, although largely they lag (if not synchronized) : if that seems like it is a problem to your sort of viewing (of course, it may not be deliberate (please see below), though that seems unlikely), read no further :

Do not make a date with your second chance to see a screening of Mary is Happy, Mary is Happy (2013) at Cambridge Film Festival / #CamFF 2014 (Thursday 4 September at 6.00 p.m. in The Queen’s Building, Emmanuel College)

Those staying with this review can safely be told that there are lots of black-outs, big pink capitals that announce the advancing months, jump-cuts and quick cutting, and both a skilful use of a limited number of locations and an unshowily impressive performance by Patcha Poonpirya (Mary). Nor will it spoil things to know that an incoming head teacher turns Mary’s school’s status from day to boarding, stores and promulgates his own-branded coffee and soup, and that (not introduced by him) her fellow schoolmates wear tops that, in autumn 2012, state :

SCHOOL
1983
SPORT DAY
SENIORS

Yet, although set in and around a school, with Mary's best friend Suri, it is not a coming-of-age film, but one that challenges the notions both of what we expect from cinema and of what we think that reality is. If that is still seeming like a little too much, some of us may be doing some rearranging to be able to watch the film again, but please feel free to alight now.

Nothing draws attention to a budget that must be modest, except that one continues to nudge oneself, impressed by the quality of what one sees, with its search for photography’s magic hour, for (in the title of a series of booklets) Calculating Future Probability, and for recognition that The mouth does more damage than the hand. The film plays to its limited resources, with sly repetitions, variations of light and angle, and that disjunctive use of text.

Which is where some make much of the fact that, centrally on the screen, and most often with a click as they appear, are words, mainly not in English script, but with an unvarying line that appears underneath : Expand / Reply / Delete / Favorite, which may mean little to those who do not Tweet, but which would (before Twitter changed its format) be the line beneath only one’s own Tweets* (i.e. broadly short, public messages (a maximum of 140 characters, including spaces and punctuation), as one cannot delete another person’s Tweets, only (broadly speaking) choose not to see his or her Tweets any more).

What seems of much more interest than whether these are real Tweets from an account in the name of Mary Malony is the fact that this film is steeped in cinema, so much so that Mary’s form has a class – announced by a painted board in the background – in which her film-script is being discussed. Not in the knowing sort of way (which some might associate with Holy Motors) that tries to make you feel that you ‘should’ know all the references (or admit your inadequacy), but that uses film as a dynamic and creative medium, whose capacity – if we enter into it – is enhanced by the image that we watch is writ so large, and being able to explore cinematographers and directors’ works when one learns how they have been an influence on what interests one (though that latter feature is not unique to film).

Here, although the quiet pulse that ran through the film was that of Jean-Luc Godard (those incongruous scenes where the paramedics suddenly appear, the moodily evocative setting of the disused railway-lines, and a US diner full of bike helmets and cake…), it was nonetheless pleasing to have confirmation in the form of open acknowledgements, towards the end, of him and of Nouvelle Vague.

Director Nawapol Thamrongrattanrit has not just absorbed Godard’s key work, but has given it a fresh, strong spirit, and this film is sure to have filmgoers revisiting it to share his enthusiasm.

On again, at the very least, on Thursday 4 September at 6.00 p.m. in The Queen’s Building, Emmanuel College

Postlude

Watching a second time did not bring very much more into focus, but was more of a battle - albeit a successful one, maintaining the original view of this film - with a sceptical inner voice, which sought to argue that the film was not as strong :

Just picture how it feels to get a friend to watch something that one things highly of, and then seeing it through what one imagines are his or her eyes.

Quite a test to pass - and it also gave a chance to catch the subtitles and the midline Tweets that were in English !



Postlude by Tweet :

Some of us saw @MaryIsHappy_ first at @camfilmfest and rate it very highly indeed, @everyfilmdteled ! : http://t.co/QprWyruHXl #CamFF 2014
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 11, 2015

End-notes

* The question being : how could these be the real Tweets of another person, if the person reading them has the privileged option to delete ? That said, @marylony, the Twitter account that the Festival booklet names, does exist...


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

Am I my brother’s keeper ?

This is a pre-Festival review of Son of Cain (Fill de Caín) (2013)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
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1 September

This is a pre-Festival review of Son of Cain (Fill de Caín) (2013)

As with the version of pool being played in Scorsese’s The Color of Money (1986), one does not need to know about the winning moves of chess to watch this film : one is not required to understand them, although it features chess.

The film invites comparison with Good Will Hunting (1997) (where, as a viewer, one does not need to understand mathematics) for a relationship that is at its centre, that between Nico (Nicholas Albert), played by David Solans, and Julio Beltrán (Julio Manrique), even down to the fact that the motives of both participants in the therapy are mixed : Will Hunting (Matt Damon) is effectively blackmailed into it, and his client, passed to him in desperation, is hardly what Sean Maguire (Robin Williams) had been seeking from Dr Lambeau’s contact.

This is an adaptation of Ignacio García-Valiño’s novel, and its evocation of Cain, the first murderer and the one who gave his name to a mark, deceptively plunges us into what apparently concerns us, some mistake with a contract, and attending a posh business party, where the daggers (or the excuses) may be out.

Dream-laden footage of gently curving wide roads in the suburbs have already given us a notion of this sort of milieu (as against the narrow streets where Beltrán’s practice is located), yet it is really about coming home to the shock and uncertainty of an apparently bloody incident, and with a trail downstairs and into the very heart of the grand cliff-top property where the family lives. Nico’s seeming lack of care, and even taunting of his distressed father Carlos Albert (José Coronado), ends up with the latter calling a chance contact for whatever help there is, short of putting Nico in the reformatory.

We see greater evidence of Nico’s provocations of and angry outbursts at his father, not softened by the Mahler adagietto playing in the car during the scene, and we sense that his mother Coral (Maria Molins) thinks him the more and more lost, if he does not get help. Contrariwise, everything – including what Andrew, a respected former colleague, has to say – has been telling Beltrán not to commit himself to the approaches that the family are making, and to say no.

Yet, in his effort to see how he can assist, he is as driven as J. J. Gittes in Chinatown (1974), and takes the chance of even involving Andrew against the latter’s better judgement – as for Gittes, does it also represent a challenge that, for reasons of his own, Beltrán cannot resist ?

Seeing his interactions with others, such as the staff at school or even his own sister (Patrícia), who manages the practice, it is clear both that he dispenses with the formalities, and that he does not suffer fools gladly : he has time for Nico for those same qualities, and for having a very high IQ, as well an ability for chess…

Classifying this film as ‘a thriller’ misses the richness of chess as a metaphor, not least how Andrew’s (Jack Taylor’s) lavish premises with a covert entrance are fully enlivened by Jesús Monllaó’s direction, where Alice’s sense of another world (through the looking-glass, and with its own rules), and of competition on equal terms, are evoked again and again*. (Here, there is even a little twinkle of Hogwart’s, as of the magically gifted…)

There is also a competitive gesture that makes Will Hunting’s therapy a challenge to Maguire, and which figures in Beltrán fascination for trying to fathom Nico. As Son of Cain unfolds, with its deliberate play of light and dark spaces, we will find that, in this sense, it aspires to what we most admire about Hitchcock’s best suspense, that of a taut unwinding, as of a spring.


End-notes

* Just as Scorsese did, as his film built to The Nine Ball Classic in Atlantic City : the epitome of The American Dream.


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

Two Days Plus Xanax

This is a spoilery follow-up to a review of Two Days, One Night (2014)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

31 August

This is a spoilery follow-up to a review of Two Days, One Night (2014)

(Deux Jours, Une Nuit) (2014)

* Contains spoilers *

L'enfer, c'est les autres

Huis Clos ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

This quotation was chosen, because, in the film (if not in the play), it is Sandra’s thoughts about herself and about what others, including her husband, may be thinking about her that are now at the root of being off work.

That and the inhuman approach that Sandra’s boss, Dumont, has cooked up with the connivance of the foreman, Jean-Marc, of requiring her fellow employees to say whether they would rather receive a bonus of 10,000 Euros than for her to return to work (when sixteen have done the work of seventeen during her absence, albeit by doing three hours’ overtime, and when Jean-Marc prejudges the issue, by saying that Sandra is no longer up to the job).

‘Bonus’ has been used to translate the French word prime, which, in practice, can serve to mean, when qualified, terms as diverse as ‘severance pay’ (prime de liceniciement) and ‘productivity bonus’ (prime de rendement), so Il a eu une prime en récompense de son travail (‘He received a bonus for his work’). Despite how some of the colleagues talk of spending ma prime, it does seem to be in the nature of a one-off payment, of which there is no future guarantee, and not a pay-rise (for which there is the separate word une augmentation - as, at least, the term is used in France).

As Sandra is forced to approach each of her colleagues, she hears their reasons why they have already spent what, for all that we know, they only recently knew that they would be getting, and have not yet received. It is almost un fait accompli. The deviltry is in making it seem as if they decide, when Dumont (with Jean-Marc) has (as emerges late on) arbitrarily set one against the other (sc. the bonus against her returning to work), and two main questions arise in consequence :
(1) The overdose that Sandra takes in despair – is it so unrealistic, as two matriarchs were tutting after the screening, that she could be out and approaching the last few employees that night ?

(2) If Sandra wanted recourse in employment law, what claim is open to her (in the UK, as against Belgium, this would be unfair dismissal) - though, when so many of her colleagues have to work au noir, could they risk being involved ? 


(1) Well, Xanax, which is used to treat anxiety, is one of the few medications that states (in the patient information leaflet) :

'If you forget to take a dose, take it as soon as you remember unless it is time for your next dose.
Do not take a double dose to make up for a missed dose.'

The article linked here talks about the risks of overdose, including having to take 975 times the maximum human dose to reproduce the cardiopulmonary collapse that is found in rats at this level : it lists, as manifestations of overdose, ones that include somnolence, confusion, impaired coordination, diminished reflexes, and coma.

Although death has been reported as an outcome of overdose, since Sandra said as soon as she had taken the tablets what she has done, and Manú starts by trying to induce vomiting when the ambulance is being called, it does not seem improbable that Sandra could escape severe symptoms, and be able to discharge herself quite quickly.

(2) As to employers' practices in the field of mental health, they may be harder on our attempts to make a recovery : we see Sandra buoyed by how many support her, but understandably does not wish to betray colleagues on fixed-term contracts by accepting the offer, as it is put to her, of reinstatement in her post.

Dumont’s folly, if he actually values Sandra after all (rather than is trying to manipulate her to do as she does), is to think that she sees things as casually as he does, and to say that he will instead not renew the contract of someone working on a fixed term : although he is technically right that this is not a dismissal, she has been represented as having had no protection from being dismissed anyway herself, in a world where employees can vote against someone ready to return from illness…

Whether that is possible in employment law in Belgium does not much matter, for the film – without being over-specific that it is set in one country rather than another – asks us to accept that it is so (or effectively so*).


End-notes

* In fact, a briefing on employment law in Belgium from Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer suggests that, for dismissals made before 1 April 2014, it was open for blue-collar workers to ‘claim that their dismissal was not based on their performance or attitude, or on economic reasons and, if the employer could not prove otherwise, they were entitled to an extra six months’ indemnity’.

In the law operative for service since 1 January 2014, there now appears to be no (or less) distinction between white- and blue-collar workers, and for it to be open to all to require written reasons for dismissal within two months (as well as to receive a specified minimum notice).

In conclusion, it does not appear, in Belgium of recent date, that an employer could succeed (except for the reasons stated) in lawfully seeking to dismiss Sandra in this way in these circumstances.


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

News and views from Cambridge Film Festival / #CamFF 2014

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

15 September (updated 17 November)

Following the elaborate planning, this posting records what actually happened, and when, with links to reviews (two still lagging behind)...


As in 2012 (and 2011), there is a code, which is :

A Abandoned - Walked out partway through

AA Wished to abandon - But, against better judgement, could not (or did not) leave partway through

B Blog - There is a posting about the film on the blog, to which the link takes one (although it may not be a review)

C Catalan preview - A film from the Camera Catalonia strand, reviewed ahead of and for the Festival

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

P Partly watched - A clash with an earlier (or later) film prevented seeing it as a whole

O Take One - Published on line as a guest review

S Seen - The opposite of Missed

The great Tony Jones @camfilmfest what a man. pic.twitter.com/KunPw1CoNA
— Owen Baker (@Owenkits) September 7, 2014

Tony Jones, Trustee of Cambridge Film Trust and director of Cambridge Film Festival for 30 (?) years - the longest-serving UK festival director

Thursday 28 August

6.00 P Peter Sellers : The Early Shorts (1957) : Emmanuel (90 mins) - The one caught, Dearth of a Salesman, was also short on laughs...

7.00 AA The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq (summed up, pretty much, in Andrew Pulver's review for The Guardian) (Opening Film) : Screen 1 (93 mins)

10.00 B S Magic in the Moonlight (2014) (plus a riposte to TAKE ONE's reviewer) (Opening Film) : Screen 1 (97 mins)


Friday 29 August to Sunday 31 August (both inclusive)

Delayed response to the loss of a dearly loved companion subverted any plans for cinema-going on these days, but, by proxy...

Saturday 30 August

7.30 Bx2 S Ida (2013) (plus spoilery critique) : Screen ?? (80 mins)


Monday 1 September

1.30 B S A Most Wanted Man (2014) : Screen 1 (121 mins)

4.00 AA B Four Corners (2014) : Screen 1 (114 mins)

6.30 B S Under Milk Wood plus Q&A (1971) (Dylan Thomas 100) : Screen 1 (88 mins)

9.00 B S Before I Go to Sleep plus Q&A (2014) : Screen 1 (92 mins)


Tuesday 2 September

1.00 M M : Screen 1 (1931) (117 mins)

Nifty bit of timing - arrive at Festival Central at 1.15 for 1.30 screening of Fritz Lang's M at @camfilmfest : it was at 1.00... #CamFF
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) September 2, 2014

3.30 S Last Call (2013) : Screen 2 (91 mins)

6.00 S How I Came to Hate Maths (Comment j'ai détesté les maths) (2013) : Emmanuel (110 mins)

8.30 B S Mary is Happy, Mary is Happy (2013) : Emmanuel (127 mins)


Wednesday 3 September

1.30 B S Iranian (2014) : Screen 1 (105 mins)

4.00 AA Eastern Boys (2013) : Screen 1 (128 mins)

6.30 B x 2 S Stations of the Cross (and further thoughts on a second viewing) (Kreuzweg) (2014) (German) : Screen 2 (104 mins)

9.00 C S Tasting Menu (plus a riposte to TAKE ONE's reviewer) (2013) (Camera Catalonia) : Screen 2 (85 mins)

11.00 M Short Fusion : Life Lessons : Screen 2 (79 mins)


Thursday 4 September (a day for not sticking to the plan at all !)

11.00 M Night will Fall (2014) : Screen 1 (75 mins)

1.30 M Le Jour se Lève (Daybreak) (1939) : Screen 1 (93 mins)

As to be on general release, substituted by rewatching :
2.30 B x 2 S Stations of the Cross (and further thoughts on a second viewing) (Kreuzweg) (2014) (German) : Screen 2 (104 mins)

4.00 P German Short Films (German) : Screen 1 (~70 mins) (all 2013) Will have to miss the end to get to Still the Enemy Within (2014)...

6.00 M Still the Enemy Within (2014) : St Philip's Church (112 mins)
Instead rewatched :
6.00 B S Mary is Happy, Mary is Happy (2013) (Festival link) : Emmanuel (127 mins)

8.30 M Under the Lantern (1928) (Lamprecht) : St Philip's Church (129 mins)
Stay for this - or head to Festival Central for...
9.00 M We Are Many (2014) : Screen 1 (104 mins)


Friday 5 September

1.00 B C S We All Want What's Best for Her (Tots volem el millor per a ella) (2013) plus write-up of Q&A (now with photos) (Camera Catalonia) : Screen 1 (105 mins)

Just time to interview Mar Coll (director and co-writer of We All Want What's Best for Her- write-up to come...) before :
4.00 S People on Sunday (Menschen am Sonntag) (Lamprecht) : Emmanuel (73 mins)

5.00 P Energized : Screen 1 (91 mins) Sadly, needing to miss the start of which...

7.50 C S Son of Cain (Fill de Caín) (2013) (plus write-up of Q&A) (Camera Catalonia) : Screen 2 (90 mins)

10.30 M The Mad Magician (Retro 3-D) : Screen 2 (72 mins)


Saturday 6 September

1.00 M Berlin, Symphony of a Great City (Lamprecht) : Screen 3 (74 mins)

Missed to interview - and take punting - Jesús Monllaó, director of Son of Cain (Fill de Caín)


2.30 B S Fiction (Ficció) (Camera Catalonia) : Screen 3 (107 mins)

5.00 AA B Amour Fou : Screen 1 (96 mins)

7.30 B S Tony Benn : Will and Testament : Screen 1 (running-time not advised)

Not likely to finish in time for (as was indeed so)...

9.00 M West (Lagerfeuer) (German) : Screen 2 (102 mins)


Sunday 7 September

1.00 C S Othello (Otel.lo) (Camera Catalonia) : Screen 2 (69 mins)


The next film was missed, because of lunch and then completing an interview with Hammudi Al-Rahmoun Font, director of Otel.lo (with the kind assistance, as translator, of Cristina Roures)

4.00 M A Poem in Exile (Camera Catalonia) : Emmanuel (77 mins)

Silver Punt Award For Best Documentary 2014: A Poem In Exile http://t.co/HdEMjBqncg
— Cambridge Film Fest (@camfilmfest) September 12, 2014

5.30 M Set Fire to the Stars (Dylan Thomas 100) : Screen 1 (90 mins)

Sorry to have to miss you, @setfirettstars, at @camfilmfest, but needed to take @Al_RahmounFont punting whilst he was around...
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) September 16, 2014

For the sceptical, there is evidence of that punting-trip, with star pupil Hammudi

8.00 A The Grandmaster (which turned out to be Surprise Film 1) : Screen 1 (?? mins)


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

Don’t take my advice – I’m a major eccentric !

This is a review of Magic in the Moonlight (2014)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

28 August

This is a review of Magic in the Moonlight (2014)

(one of Cambridge Film Festival 2014's Opening Films)

Woody Allen can never resist giving all the good lines to one character, and this time it is to Colin Firth (as Stanley Crawford), whom others close to him describe as a rationalist and caustic : sounding on Firth’s lips, the egotism of some characters that Allen has written for himself (e.g. Harry Block in Deconstructing Harry (1997)), and their disparaging or grudging excuses or views of others, seem refreshingly new.

The plot is not a complex one, and it would not easily hold off a fan of who-dunnits, but it plays with the familiar Allen type of a man whose (intellectual) opinion of himself gets in the way of his real enjoyment, a theme that goes right back to Love and Death (1975). Here, the tone is light, though calling it whimsical (as some have done) is not perhaps catching the right tone – and better describes To Rome with Love (2012) - but it benefits from the quality of having been caught on film (and cinematographer Darius Khondji has been working with Allen as early as Anything Else (2003)*), as crucially with the effect of day- as of moonlight.

Allen regularly revolves certain themes that mean something to him, such as magic (from Stardust Memories (1980) and earlier (and Radio Days (1987)? ) to The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (2001) and Scoop (2006)) and a disbelief in clairvoyance (You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (2010)) or anything beyond the rational, and those come together here, with magician Crawford’s distrust of the powers of Sophie Baker (Emma Stone), egged on by his friend Howard Burkan (Simon McBurney).

Crawford is a sort of Benedict to Baker, as Firth was famously as Mr Darcy to Jennifer Ehle’s Elizabeth Bennet, and Firth carries this off perfectly, so much so at times (and with the film maybe a shade too long) that he is a little in danger of putting the others in the dark, even to some extent the redoubtable Eileen Atkins as Aunt Vanessa, let alone Baker : when we hear him discussed by members of the family where he is staying is not only a momentary absence from the screen, but also reinforces his nihilistic attitude (described as depression).

Nonetheless, we sense that he convinces himself more than others that he knows his own mind, and, in this sense, is a true Allen leading man, clinging to rationalism in order not to be adrift in the world – as we hear him, off guard, confessing to Baker his boyhood awe at the night sky. Criticize Allen, if one likes, for where the story is heading, but one would not be watching a film with such a title if not for it, and he gets us there with an ego more or less intact, as well as many a smile and an occasional hearty laugh along the way…


End-notes

* For which Carlo Di Palma, coming out of retirement, failed a medical, and so could not be insured by the studio.


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