Camera Catalonia at Cambridge Film Festival 2014 Part III : Informal interview and punting with Jesús Monllaó, director of Son of Cain (Fill de Caín) (2013)

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

4 October (updated 15 November)

Jesús Monllaó brought his first feature, Son of Cain (Fill de Caín) (2013), to Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (@Camfilmfest / #CamFF) on Day 9 (Friday 5 September 2014) as part of this year’s Camera Catalonia strand - on the following morning, @THEAGENTAPSLEY and he met again, and ended up going punting...

The Q&A in Screen 2 at Festival Central : Jesús Monllaó (left), Director of Son of Cain (2013), Ramon Lamarca (centre), curator of Camera Catalonia, and composer Ethan Lewis Malby (right) (please see below) - image by, and courtesy of, David Riley

* Contains spoilers *

This is a follow-up piece to an account of the previous night's Q&A


Middle game (continued)

As we walked to Clare to take the punt out, we talked a little further about a point that had arisen during the Q&A the previous night, when Jesús had said that Nico would next be seen in charge of a huge corporation – which was the suggestion that some people are just ruthless and evil, whereas calling that behaviour psychopathic or sociopathic invokes illness.

In commenting for this account of our chat, Jesús has written : What I tried to convey was that Nico appals us, whereas I consider him a perfectly adapted being to an utterly aggressive and competitive society. Calling him ILL just diverts the real debate.

The chat went along the lines of whether with other conditions, such as bi-polar disorder, it is justifiable to speak of them in those ways, and there was found to be common ground in experience that it is, leaving just how helpful it is, when, even if many people who have a psychopathic condition do not kill, there is no treatment, except perhaps in the very much longer term, for those who do.

For Jesús, at any rate, it helps to ask this question, and to resist a world that seeks to pathologize everything (and so the latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, DSM-V, was mentioned). For his part, Jesús was not aware of the rather ambiguous novel Engleby by Sebastian Faulks, which was briefly described to him, and he, in turn, referred to a novel in Spanish, Los Renglones Torcidos de Dios by Torcuato Luca de Tena (seemingly not available in English translation).


Fluid, transitional stage

After equipping the vessel with crew, cushions, paddle and punt-pole, the following images are all by, and courtesy of, Vicky Monllaó...

Not quite the classic view of Clare Old Court,
as King's College Chapel is not visible next door

The punting guests were unavoidably told the old, old story about Queens' Mathematical Bridge - of the gift, of taking it apart to see how it worked, and not being able to put it back together (as it had been)

(Insulting, of course, to undergraduate engineers, and appropriating the word 'mathematical', when, if anything, it should be non-mathematical...)

At The Mill Pond, Jesús and his family were told how the building, now occupied by a faux-Italian restaurant-chain, used to have the working water-wheel from this former mill as a feature

(Anyone remember Sweeney Todd's there in the early 1980s, with its line of descriptions of items on the menu that ripped off and insulted the patrons over the years ?)

Heading the other way from Clare Bridge*, towards Trinity Hall and Trinity

The Bridge of Sighs - a name that connects the otherwise unrelated way into The Ducal Prison (Venezia), one route into St John's cloister-style nineteenth-century accommodation (the college uniquely boasts two bridges, for no obvious reason), and a bridge over a road, so not even over water (Oxford)

The atmospheric - if slightly dead ? - little stretch of water (as just sides of buildings within John's on either side, and barely a plant clinging on) between those bridges...

Endgame

All too soon, the pleasant time on the Cam was over, and thoughts turned to directing the guests to the station for their onward journey…

Jesús does not play chess profesionally, only sometimes as an aficionado, but, when asked about how real the positions in the games were, he said that a chess master had worked with them as an adviser, and they are all famous matches – except in mirror form, because (curiously) there would otherwise have been some form of copyright for reproducing them, requiring payment of a fee.

On the right, composer of Son of Cain (2013), Ethan Lewis Malby (ELM, as he calls himself on his web-site), who has written compositions from DrumChasers to anthems for the FA and for UEFA - image by, and courtesy of, David Riley

Fighting for Ethan Lewis Maltby to score the film had been on the level of someone known to him whom he wanted to write the music, but who was not in the sphere of the backers. As Jesús himself achieves success with Son of Cain, and works on his next film in pre-production, it is clear that he is proud of Ethan’s work, and that fighting for his artistic vision should become easier…


End-notes

* The oldest bridge on the river, dating back to 1641.


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

Camera Catalonia at Cambridge Film Festival 2014 Part II : Q&A with Jesús Monllaó, director of Son of Cain (Fill de Caín) (2013)

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

1 October

* Contains spoilers *

Jesús Monllaó brought his first feature, Son of Cain (Fill de Caín) (2013), to Cambridge Film Festival (@Camfilmfest / #CamFF) on Day 9 (Friday 5 September 2014) as part of this year’s Camera Catalonia strand (curated by Ramon Lamarca, pictured left below in front of the film-poster, with Jesús on the right, in a shot taken by colleague David Riley)

Ramon Lamarca and Jesús Monllaó before the poster of Fill de Caín,
by and courtesy of David Riley

Opening gambit

Before the 34th Cambridge Film Festival’s screening of Son of Cain (Fill de Caín) (2013), Ramon Lamarca kindly introduced @THEAGENTAPSLEY to Jesús Monllaó that evening : if you have read the review, you will know that comparisons had been drawn with Good Will Hunting (1997), and with the suspenseful Alfred H., and not be surprised that they were pleasing to Jesús (who has since had a chance to read the review in full and liked it).

After a good-natured meeting of minds and sharing of humour at the busy hub that is Festival Central (in its home every year, for 11 consecutive days, at The Arts Picturehouse (@CamPicturhouse)), and before parting, the hope was expressed that the audience of Screen 2 at Festival Central would take the film well. So that proved, with a full house, and almost everyone both seeming engrossed, and then staying for the Q&A.

If you have watched such a vibrant film for review purposes on even a 15.6” laptop screen, you want to see it again projected to see what it looks and sounds like – as Jesús had said, knowing which City he was in and that he some people would have seen through his trickery with the plot, he hoped that they had enjoyed the journey :

Spot on, because it does not matter at all that you know what unfolds (but do not read much further on, if you have not already seen it – or do not mind spoilers), and, second time around, one could appreciate both the construction, and the full range and subtlety of Ethan Lewis Maltby’s score. (One says ‘appreciate the construction’, because (as the review envisaged) one could view Son of Cain with a murder-mystery mindset* first time through, or when watching again, to see how what happened had been set up.)

Jesús Monllaó answering audience questions with Ramon Lamarca,
by and courtesy of David Riley

Interviewed first by Ramon Lamarca with composer Ethan, Jesús was on fine form, engaging expansively with questions, and wanting others to have credit for their work (please see below). He told us that he had had some resistance, but had insisted on Ethan to write the score, their having met when Jesús was studying the art of film-making in Canterbury more than a decade ago.

And it turned out that choosing a Mahler adagio (the fourth-movement Adagietto* (in F Major, Sehr langsam) from the Symphony No. 5), for the night scene with the family in the car, not only coincidentally accorded with where Ethan’s interest in music had first been sparked (by hearing Mahler in live performance), but also with Ramon’s love for the composer’s works… As Jesús told us, he had originally wanted to use the Poco adagio, marked Ruhevoll, from the Symphony No. 4 in G Major, but the cost of using that track had been prohibitive (and led to using the Adagietto, as more affordable).


Love was in the air generally, indeed, because Jesús (as other directors have been keen to do this year) wanted to stress that 90% of what mattered most had been done by other people. Though, equally, he had found that, having acquired the rights to the original novel, he had to fall out with its writer, Ignacio García-Valiño, on account of the offensive e-mail that he wrote on being shown the first draft of the script (and which, Jesús told us, he still has).

Happily, though, he later related that contact was re-made with the novelist, who saw the film in April 2013 and loved it, publicly writing so. In the event, Ignacio died fourteen months later : the fact he saw his novel filmed and liked it, despite the former confrontation, gives us some comfort now that he’s gone.


Back with the music, we heard from Ramon’s questioning how the texture / density had been ‘stripped back’ for all but the last ten minutes, paring down instrumentation – sometimes, as Ethan told us, by removing an instrument during mixing that had originally been recorded as part of a larger ensemble recorded, but edited down in this way. In this connection, Ethan was asked about the use of harmonics, bell-like sounds and a high-pitched part that might have been a high soprano or an instrument (he told us that it had been a guitar-sound), and said that each film-project requires him to determine the palette that he is going to use at the outset.

Ethan Lewis Maltby, far right, during the Q&A,
by and courtesy of David Riley

Usefully, which we might not have otherwise aptly appreciated, Jesús said that he had taken away all the recorded sound for the last seven minutes, leaving just the score, where Ethan had had full rein to break through, as the closing scenes unfold – one’s lips are sealed, but there is chess at their heart…


Later, as there was a Festival dinner-date for Jesús to make, and a departure for Brighton in the afternoon, it was agreed to meet The Agent at Corpus Christi the following morning for a more formal interview.


Middle game

Just after the appointed hour, the two indeed met and then headed to the corner of Pembroke Street, where Jesús’ wife and young son were finishing coffee at Fitzbillies.

At mention at the table of the idea of taking a boat on the river, an offer was made of a punting-trip, and so began their adventure on the Cam…

Now continued here

Saw Son of Cain (Fill de Caín) at @camfilmfest ? In a pre-punting chat, director JesúsMonllaósaid that Andrew is a rook, Julio a knight...
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) September 9, 2014

End-notes

* A curious word, mindset, and one which seems fitting for Nico… ?

** Afterwards, Jesús shared that he had wanted the Mahler not only because he liked it, but also as the kind of music that the character in the original novel listened to : I wanted to pay homage to the novel with little details that would connect both media.


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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)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

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)

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)