Light floods in : through windows, and into souls

This is a pre-Festival review of El Cafè de la Marina (2014)

More views of – or before – Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

14 August

This is a pre-Festival review of El Cafè de la Marina (2014)
(for Cambridge Film Festival 2015)

Funny how a few words on a ticket can say so much

[Claudi]

It is a tribute to a cinematic adaptation of a play, let alone of a celebrated one in verse, when such a film feels cinematic, and when there are not great traces of its origins : the review, on these pages, of August, Osage County (2013) was probably not alone in finding that the film badly failed both tests (so did Venus in Fur (La Vénus à la fourrure) (2013)).


The place on the Catalan coast that director Sílvia Munt, when in conversation, said that she had been scouting for has, as we will movingly see at one point, a history, but meaning more than that what once happened here : recognizable individuals, who made a living from the sea, and had families and their community on this shore. It is two centuries on from the time of Born (2014), also showing in Camera Catalonia (at @camfilmfest / #CamFF), but we have that same sense of how the past is still with us, and has given us what we call the present*.

For those who know it, the story of Josep María de Sagarra’s play El Cafè de la Marina has similarities to that of Marcel Pagnol’s Marseille trilogy** (coincidentally referred to in the informal interview with Munt, before the film screened for the first time in the UK). (The first two parts in Daniel Auteuil’s adaptation, Marius (2013) and Fanny (2013), screened at the Festival in 2013, with Auteuil playing César, the anxious father.) The resemblances are there, though it is hardly as though de Sagarra’s status should depend on this single play or its origins. (In company with A. A. Milne, he seems to have been prolific as poet, playwright, novelist, translator and journalist, even if Milne is forgotten for those things.)

Four great films on one #CamFF 2013 page : Not only the Pagnol / Auteuil adaptations, but the colourful Drako Zarharzar (@DrakoZarharzar) [and a Q&A with the equally colourful Toby Amies (@TobyAmies)], and the best film missed (in error) at the Festival

Moreover, from Chaucer – using dream poetry in French to found his own – to Shakespeare – never seeming to have a plot (even of plays such as Lear or Hamlet) for which he had not relied on one or more sources – writing can be far more about the telling than the story itself (and we do not denigrate One Thousand and One Nights, or The Decameron, for that). Just as de Sagarra wrote a play in verse form, what we need to respect is that Munt has distilled its essence into a film of around eighty minutes.


We begin with two young friends, larking around in what turns out to be the cafè of the title (a bar, to the edge of the foreshore, rather than what English means by the word), on the beach, and in the village : back at the bar, one of them (Rosa) is our means of introduction to her sister Caterina, and Libori, their widowed father, and it is the eve of Rosa’s wedding (to Rafel). Already, Munt has taken us out to the fishing-boats and around about, and, although much time is concentrated in the bar (or on tables outside for the wedding), the film feels liberated from having had an original stage-setting.

An important element is in the soundtrack, which is partly Joan Alavedra’s original melody ‘Marinada’ (and his arrangements for accordion of other compositions), partly a traditional Catalan fishing song, and partly Xavier Capellas’ compositions for himself on piano and various combinations of six other instrumentalists (including Josep Vila Campabadel ?? on accordion). When we meet Rosa and her friend Gracieta, their excitement – whose exact cause is unknown to us – is there in what sounds like a zither, mandolin, and guitar. Later, when Caterina is first talking about her life, as Gracieta makes herself up, we just have soft guitar that does not detract from a visual encapsulation of her position : in focus, just Gracieta’s reflection, and, blurred, Caterina (seen in the mirror (right)) and Gracieta (foregrounded (left)). Likewise, as bride and groom leave the reception, accordion and the chalumeau register of the clarinet catch Caterina’s feelings.

Rosa, and her father

The film is all about feelings. We may, though, have seen – during Camera Catalonia at the Festival in 2014 – in Tots volem el millor per a ella (We All Want What’s Best for Her) (2013), and Ficcío (Fiction) (2006), that there is a reserved side to Catalan behaviour, morals and personality that is not so different from British equivalents (or, for that matter, traditional Russian ones ?), and the playing helps guide us : when someone is being looked out for, we have quiet guitar, piano and cello, but the same instruments, with energy and rhythms, comment on a scene where encouragement has been offered. (Likewise, there is the intensity of light, both when it penetrates into the bar, and in its heightened quality on the walls of the inescapable buildings.)


Ultimately, it is in highly poetic imaginings (easily delivered as more than the equal of those of Marius in Auteuil’s film), and otherwise just in silence, that what matters most is going to be spoken in El Cafè de la Marina. However, Munt has, twice before, effected a wholly filmic transposition between parallel scenes, where the scoring (or, in the latter case, the use of accordion), by leeching from one into the other, has helped prepare the ground for us.


Maybe more importantly, we also gain, in this act of cinema, a sense of a world of events where our connectedness is not mere cause and effect, or consensus rationality [@russellhobanorg], and where what we dare to do, or hope for, matters : utterly different references, admittedly, but the sort of message that continued to attract The Wachowskis in making Cloud Atlas (2012) (or, even if others may have disparaged it, Jupiter Ascending (2015)).


End-notes

* Through the histrionics of the mother (Meryl Streep) in August, Osage County (2013), maybe we are meant to see something other than the stage-ridden behavior of an aggressive and abusive woman, who has tried to dominate her daughters, and about history… However, dislike it though the contemporary critics may have done, Woody Allen achieved far more in Interiors (1978) (and then in Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) [first seen at Cambridge Film Festival]), the former of which influenced Mar Coll with the look of Tots volem il millor per a ella (We All Want What’s Best for Her) (2013), which screened twice at last year’s Festival (both screenings had Q&As afterwards).

** Those who have the desire – and a good grasp of Catalan – can find on the Internet what is thought to connect Pagnol and de Sagarra, whereas this link (to the Wikipedia® web-page) tells one fairly little : http://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josep_Maria_de_Sagarra.


If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here

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

A historically informed and painterly work of cinema

This is a pre-Festival review of Born (2014) (for Cambridge Film Festival 2015)

More views of – or before – Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

This is a pre-Festival review of Born (2014) (for Cambridge Film Festival 2015)

Note on the title of the film* :

Born is nothing to do with birth, but denotes an area of Barcelona known as El Born (or El Bornet), sometimes conflated with that of La Ribera (meaning ‘the bank’ (of the coastal variety)) in such a way as to denote both areas by the term ‘Born’.

A late-nineteenth-century building survives, called the Mercat del Born (constructed from iron, and formerly a public market), and on its site, when development was planned there (in 2002), extensive remains of the mediaeval city were discovered. Amongst other people, Albert Garcia Espuche has written about this area’s history, and his La Ciutat del Born was an inspiration for this film.


Two years ago, at Cambridge Film Festival (2013) [@camfilmfest / #CamFF], there were two screenings of Eyes on the Sky (Mirant al Cel) (2008) in the Catalan strand (Camera Catalonia) :

That film centred on memories of, and one’s present relationship to, the time when the Italian Air Force was helping Franco’s fascist forces by bombing Barcelona (16 to 18 March 1938), and is described in What is Catalan cinema ? as Movingly mixing documentary, acting, and faux-documentary to dig into past pain. Born evokes that period in Catalan history by observations that one of the characters makes in tidying up the wreckage, and whatever can be salvaged, during the city’s bombardment in the War of [the Spanish] Succession (1701–1714) :

First time was ten years ago. Then it was the French. Now the British. And they will do it again. And every time it will be worse. And us, the poor… the people who only want to earn an honest living, will always be under the bombs. Until we say enough.


In this one way, the writers of the screenplay [credited as including Albert Garcia Espuche (please see the note on the film’s title (above)), and director Claudio Zulian] momentarily step outside the period, making a reference that necessarily reaches forward in time to those both attacking, and trying to defend, Barcelona more than 220 years later [and, in turn in Eyes on the Sky, to the lives of combatants, on each side, 70 years later].

The cover of Albert Garcia Espuche's publication

Not that concerns such as whom to trust, borrowing money to feed one’s family, and being subject to external forces, influences and events are not, now as then, what we will recognize as part of life, but – in every other respect than this passing allusion – Born does what it can to keep closely to its period : the approach of Claudio Zuliano, with which both his cast and crew show themselves to be quite in accord, seems to be not to convince us that the action is in the early 1700s, but for them to believe it themselves. So, not for the first time with Catalan film-making, one finds oneself referencing a piece by Borges (previously, it was with Hammudi Al-Rahmoun Font’s Otel.lo (2012) (@otel_lo), from this blog's review of which this is quoted) :

The Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges, composing a story, in essay form, that touches on the life of the Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes (Pierre Menard, ‘Author of the Quixote’ (‘Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote’)), imagined how someone (in this case, the fictional Pierre Menard) becomes as Cervantes, partly, at first, by living in exactly the same circumstances as Cervantes and then ends up recreating, word for word, parts of his most famous oeuvre (so, maybe, Borges mocking - amongst literary and intellectual fashions and factions – the Laplacean theory of determinism (as well as the writer(s) whom academics consider the model(s) for Menard) ?)


Not method acting as such necessarily, but, as one looks at these locations and how the actors are deporting themselves, one never has in mind that stagey character of, say, some BBC adaptations of Dickens, where one just senses that a street of Georgian properties has been doctored to look as if it is now being occupied in Victorian times [sometimes, one recognizes the Inns of Court in disguise, as they have been well preserved by the legal profession]. Much more, one thinks of how Ralph Fiennes’ The Invisible Woman (2013) looked and felt, and because it was so beautifully lit: Born has a painterly regard for how its scenes are composed, and in the use of light and dark*** (another point of contact with Otel.lo (and also El Cafè de la Marina – please see below)).

The film falls into three sections, named after Bonaventura (Bonaventura Alberni : Marc Martínez), his sister Marianna (Vicky Luengo), and Vicenç (Josep Julien), an ambitious businessman, who is one of the former’s creditors : in this respect, as well as in the interconnectedness of people who live in proximity to one another, one is reminded of Marcel Pagnol’s Marseille trilogy (on which there is more information here in relation to El Cafè de la Marina (2014) (another film in Camera Catalonia 2015)) : the first two parts, in Daniel Auteuil’s version, screened at Cambridge Film Festival in 2013, Marius (2013) and Fanny (2013).

Vicky Luengo as Marianna

Unlike, though, Auteuil’s films of gorgeous technical clarity of image, this film resembles Otel.lo, by making good use of an edgy, documentary style, which really first comes into its own after fifteen minutes : we track Bonaventura, following a confrontation with his landlord, and the immediacy involves us in his inner workings, through the language of demeanour and expression, as he walks the streets.

As we will see both Marianna and Vicenç do, we are with Bonaventura when, after refreshing himself with water from the spring, he makes an important realization / decision in his life, and not conveyed in speech – no moment of soliloquy, but in his look, and then in his movements and gestures, until his purpose becomes clear with what the Notary announces a couple of minutes later. For those who like this sort of approach, and realize that a really good piece of cinema may have been made with dialogue not in English, Born has great dramatic quality, and all the rootedness in how ships and trade govern people’s lives and fortunes that we esteem in a play such as The Merchant of Venice.


End-notes

* Derived from the Wiki articles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercat_del_Born and http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrio_de_La_Ribera.

** Essentially, to see whether Charles III or Philip V would rule Spain (amongst other countries).

*** The director of photography and art director are, respectively, Jimmy Gimferrer and Lali Canosa. One is reminded of the use of darkness in masterpieces by Caravaggio, such as The Supper at Emmaus :

If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Seen at – or adjacent to – Cambridge Film Festival (its earlier, one-screen venue of The Arts Cinema)

Seen at (or because of) Cambridge Film Festival in the mid-1980s

More views of – or before – Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

9 August

Seen at (or because of) Cambridge Film Festival in the mid-1980s

It was necessary to borrow Hugh Taylor’s copies of Cambridge Film Festival (@camfilmfest / #CamFF) programme-booklets from the early to middle 1980s (two of which, within Apsley Towers (@THEAGENTAPSLEY), are conveniently to hand), so one, almost necessarily, has not located ticket-stubs that could clinch whether one did watch any film, listed below as seen at around that time, at the Festival itself : hence ‘at – or adjacent to – Cambridge Film Festival’ in the title of this posting…

That said, one just knows as fact that one chose to see Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) in what, then, would have still been called a Festival gala performance (not ‘a screening’) : the Festival atmosphere – even then with enviably comfortable seats in the snug premises in Market Passage* – was so good, and one wanted to be part of it, rather than waiting for the film to come on release.

And, before anyone talked about ‘ear-worms’, that is what the catchy, jazzy principal theme of Hannah already was, on leaving the cinema after the credits, to both one’s fellow viewer (@AJRigbyTweet) and one's self (and for a number of days or weeks), courtesy of Dick Hyman’s arrangements, band, and leadership / playing**. The same had been true of the score of Broadway Danny Rose (1984), for which IMDb® (@IMDb) does give Hyman credit as the ‘music supervisor’ : the themes from both films have such a hook to them that one easily recalls them now. (However, at the time that when the Festival booklet had been printed, that film was said to be ‘unconfirmed’ (as may be legible, in the image below, in the column next to that for El Norte), so it did not have a date / time slot in the programme of events at the back, but was later confirmed and came on sale.)


All that being said, and for the two years in question (being those of the 8th and 10th Festivals, respectively), here was what was seen, if not at the Festival in 1984 and 1986, then as a result of it – in each case, the date and time are given simply of the first performance listed in the programme (except for Danny Rose, where one is having to guess when it would have ended by being shown) :

8th Cambridge Film Festival (15–29 July 1984)

Sunday 15 July

* 3.00 The Dresser (1983)

* 6.00 Swann in Love (1984)

* 8.30 El Norte (1983)

Thursday 19 July

* 6.30 The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum (Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum) (1975)


Saturday 21 July

* 2.00 Cal (1984)


?? Friday 27 July ??

* ?? Broadway Danny Rose (1984) ??


Saturday 28 July

* 1.30 Paris, Texas (1984) [referenced in The Night Elvis Died (La Nit Que Va Morir L’Elvis) (2010), and referred to in What is Catalan cinema ?]

* * * * *

10th Cambridge Film Festival (10–27 July 1986)

Thursday 10 July : Opening night

* 8.00 Mona Lisa (1986)

Sunday 13 July

* 6.30 Plenty (1985)


Friday 18 July

* 11.00 After Hours (1985) [How Time views After Hours (1985)]

Saturday 19 July

* 11.00 Sid and Nancy (1986)

Sunday 20 July

* 8.45 Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)

* * * * *

Twenty-five Festivals later (this will be the 35th), Director of #CamFF
Tony Jones is still in charge

End-notes

* Which runs between Market Street and Sidney Street, when that separated Joshua Taylor from Eden Lilley (one fantasized that they were lovers, cruelly separated by Victorian parents. [Or later ? One thinks of the lyrics of ‘They Can’t Take That Away from Me’ – whose meaning Tommy Smith queried at The Stables lately…]).

Well, anyway, before that became bar / club land, and when, upstairs, had been Angeline’s, a lovely restaurant in which to be made very welcome, and luxuriate in continental cuisine.

Who - of a certain age - remembers this about Cambridge... ? [From the programme-booklet of the 10th @camfilmfest] pic.twitter.com/Z37HEJXmDS

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 12, 2015

** Although not credited by IMDb®, proving unreliable again (and making one doubt oneself and one’s memory, despite owning the soundtrack (on LP)).

*** Probably less famous than Hannah, although with Allen magic of its own, Broadway Danny Rose is a super film in monochrome : with Allen as Danny (an indulgent theatrical agent), his star turn Lou Canova (Nick Apollo Forte), Mia F. as Lou’s unsympathetic secret lover (whose life-or-death attitude Danny finds immediately and alarmingly frank), and gangsters, in the funniest shoot-out in a hangar that you will ever see !


If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here

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

Yorick and Ludwig’s Thanksgiving* at Robinson

This is an account of Tanya Bannister's recital for Cambridge Summer Music Festival

More views of – or before – Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

7 August

This is an account of a recital given by pianist Tanya Bannister, as part of Cambridge Summer Music Festival, in the chapel of Robinson College on Wednesday 29 July at 8.00 p.m.

There were two UK premieres in the hour-long programme for Cambridge Summer Music Festival (@cambridgemusic) :

Handel (1685–1759) ~ Suite No. 2 in F Major, HWV 427

Harold Meltzer (1966–) ~ Iconography

Sidney Corbett (1960–) ~ Yorick’s Skull

Beethoven (1770–1827) ~ Piano Sonata No. 31 in A Flat Major, Op. 110

Of course, no Cambridge audience without someone being superior to the music or the performance, @cambridgemusic, with slighting comparisons

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 29, 2015

Tanya Bannister (@TanyaBannister) had mounted the scores of both premieres on large pieces of cardboard – not elegant, but eminently practical (as she told us) to avoid relying on a page-turner being able to follow them (and so daunting him or her) :

One was reminded, not a little, of Pierre-Laurent Aimard's sensational recital at Aldeburgh Festival (@aldeburghmusic) in 2014, passing folded-out score after score of Études by Debussy, Chopin, Bartók, Scriabin, and, most of all, Ligeti from in front of him – all in his determined order of playing – to the music student next to him.

(Or, during this year’s Aldeburgh Festival, of the fragments that – indeed – confronted Florent Boffard (except that, a few double-takes apart, he seemed to be confidently in control of them) on the music-stand for Boulez’ Piano Sonata No. 3 during the Boulez Exploration, hosted highly informatively by Julian Anderson (with knowledge about, and recordings of, all things Boulez)**.)


The second work, not just through being longer, made a stronger impression : it felt as though Sidney Corbett might have been studied with Messiaen (or just have studied his work ?), because one heard some of the latter’s typical, mature chordal structure (and even sounds that occur in some of Messiaen’s more inaccessible works for piano). However, Corbett also made much use of repeats, both repeated passages, and chords that were played several times, and those repeated chords were handled very well by Bannister, making them meaningful, and not in any way merely dutiful :

Her playing, and the chapel’s acoustic, suited Yorick’s Skull perfectly, and, fearless of the density and challenge of the work (as was Bannister), it was well received by the Cambridge audience. Despite the programme-notes for (Meltzer’s and) Corbett's works, one might not have been able to hear much of Beethoven’s Opus 110 in the composition, but it was certainly a fitting preparation for its spirit and sensitivities, and one would welcome the opportunity to hear it again.


If one had felt that Bannister was not in touch with Handel***, one had no hesitation in realizing that this was not only untrue of Beethoven (or of these contemporary composers with whom she had collaborated), but that this was actually one of the so-called late Beethoven sonatas with which one was not very familiar. (Piano Sonata No. 32, Op. 111, and the one known as Hammerklavier (Piano Sonata No. 29, Op. 106) do tend to steal the limelight ?)

One listened for the material from / via Corbett and Meltzer a little, but most one listened to Bannister playing music that must have presented some puzzle to contemporaries (as one had remarked, the week before, with Melvyn Tan’s playing of the immediately preceding work with Opus numbering, Piano Sonata No. 30 in E Major (Op. 109) (as part of a concert in the Festival with The Škampa Quartet)) :

The playing convinced one of a connection with Beethoven, and what he was about here with this sometimes fragmented (and often thought-provoking) music, although much of the detail has been lost to – what legal circles call – effluxion of time. Suffice to say, though, and before going on to what else marked it out, that the performance deserved better than the reluctantly middling approval of the woman (referred to by the opening Tweet) who had facetiously dismissed the new works with a laconic phrase each : one has to be strong to restrain homicidal thoughts that anyone could be so grudging of pianist and composer’s work.


The very open sounds of the ruminative first movement feel, in harmonic terms, as if they are buzzing to modulate and develop, and Bannister gave direction to that emanation : through such things as being assured both in executing runs and in establishing the role that Beethoven had given them there, throughout she showed a very definite sense of the work as a whole. Even into the brief second movement, Beethoven is keeping much material in reserve, rather than ‘opening it out’ : it may begin with a definite impression of itself, but it is one that proves far less certain, even tentative (in ways that slow movements in sonatas from ‘the middle period’, although likewise in the minor key, are not).

With the closing Adagio ma non troppo, just as we could hear Bannister bringing out some of the inner parts in the writing, which meant that we did not just follow the upper line(s), so the programme-notes also usefully drew our attention to elements of the construction of the fugal sections (not just by describing it as an elaborate slow-movement-plus-fugue sandwich, but by expanding on that summary, and analysing the use of thematic material).

Perhaps, unlike the sonata (from 1820) that Tan had played days before, which found comparative freedom in the variations with which it closed, this one (whose autograph score is dated 25 December 1821) elaborates a mixture of complexity and finding resolution by employing the form of the fugue. (Just as Beethoven was to do in 1825, with its original placing within the String Quartet in B Flat Major (Op. 130) of what separately became the Grosse Fuge, Op. 133.) In Bannister’s rendition, not only was the performance of extremely high technical quality, but, in its musical arc, we were able to trust her to guide us, and the emotional depths of the work were therefore always readily apparent.


End-notes

* The notes about the pieces, in the Festival programme, had reminded one of ‘the historical nexus’ against which Beethoven wrote latter works of this kind (i.e. his life – please see below), and [der] Heiliger Dankgesang of the third movement of his String Quartet No. 15, Op. 132. [In full, Heiliger Dankgesang eines Genesenen an die Gottheit, in der lydischen Tonart (not to be mistaken, by non-Germanists, for the earlier Heiligenstadt Testament… – please see below).]

One reads on the web-page for the quartet on Wikipedia® :

Beethoven wrote this piece after recovering from a serious illness which he had feared was fatal because he had been afflicted with intestinal disorder during the entire winter of 1824–5. He thus headed the movement with the words, "Heiliger Dankgesang eines Genesenen an die Gottheit, in der lydischen Tonart" (Holy song of thanksgiving of a convalescent to the Deity, in the Lydian Mode).


** One thing, amongst many, that we learnt about the Piano Sonata from Anderson was that contemporaries of Boulez had condemned him for using something as eighteenth century as the trill (just as Boulez had sought to correct Xenakis and Cage – without referring to them by name, in an essay, before producing this work – by showing how a piece could be written whose structure would vary between performances, but without resorting to chance). However, it is a sound that one associates with his writing for piano, without it ever seeming like a relic of the baroque or classical past, and a device that Corbett was happy to use.

(In the morning session of Boulez Exploration, also in The Britten Studio at The Maltings at Snape, Anderson had been with Quatuor Diotima, for a presentation about, and performance of, Livre pour quatuor.)

*** In all honesty, before Tanya Bannister explained her programme (and how Beethoven had looked to Handel, more than to Bach, for his fugues), one could already tell that she does not normally play Handel.

NB The paragraphs that follow are principally for those who wish to know more in a critical vein Movements that resembled what Scarlatti sonatas sound like, when over-romanticized by a modern style of playing, had alternated with Glenn Gould’s fast Bach take on, say, movements of The Goldberg Variations (BWV 988) [or French Suites (BWV 812–817)], i.e. Handel had marked it Allegro, but it was being played more like Vivace, if not Presto :

Somehow, though, Gould has an air about him that carries it off (or, depending on one’s point of view, he ‘appears to get away with it’), but there is, of course, a debate to be had about what ground there is for expecting Mozart, say, to be performed in more or less the same way that we perceive to be Mozartian - with or without modern performance practice / instruments.

Yet, at Aldeburgh in 2014, Ian Bostridge gave us A swaying, snarling, even spitting Schubert for our times, effectively so. However, on the other hand, one had to say of Sollazzo Ensemble, the winners of the Young Artists’ Competition at York Early Music Festival in 2015 : If one were told that this was not meant to be a Balkanized take on works by fourteenth-century composers, or that they had set texts in Italian, one could not credit it.



If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here

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

For posting 1111, a portal-page to the TAKE ONE interviews...

More views of – or before – Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

17 October

Interviews conducted for, and published by, TAKE ONE, a Cambridge-Film-Festival-based – and mainly on-line (http://takeonecinema.net / @TakeOneCinema [formerly www.takeonecff.com]) – publication [except at the time of Cambridge Film Festival (@camfilmfest / #CamFF)]

In Saffron Walden : was one an amazing present (from another) ? - and, with the other, does that have to be 111 IKC ? pic.twitter.com/njhUbl3mOO

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 1, 2015

An accreting series of links, by order of interviewee's name (date of publication is in square-brackets, and the film-title links to the IMDb (@IMDb) web-page for the film) :


Claudio Zulian [23 September 2015] :
Interview with Claudio Zulian – Anthony Davis spoke to Claudio Zulian, the creator of the film BORN, which screened at this year’s Cambridge Film Festival. [BORN follows the 18th century adventures of coppersmith Bonaventura, his sister Marianna and the rich merchant Vicenç, in the disappeared neighbourhood of El Bornet in Barcelona.]

Born (2014) ~ bornfilm.org ~ @Bornfilm

Daisy Hudson [14 January 2017] :
Half Way – We spoke to Daisy Hudson whose documentary chronicles her family’s devastation when they find themselves at the mercy of the housing crisis. [HALF WAY chronicles the experience of a family of three women trapped in a homeless limbo.]

Half Way (2015) ~ halfwayfilm.co.uk ~ @halfwaydocu

Desiree Akhavan [20 September 2018] :
Interview with Desiree Akhavan – Anthony Davis spoke to Desiree Akhavan at the Cambridge Arts Picturehouse recently after the screening of her film THE MISEDUCATION OF CAMERON POST. He began by asking whether she had been influenced by ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST or GIRL, INTERRUPTED…

The Miseducation of Cameron Post (2018) ~ CamPostFilm.com ~ @campostfilm

Dunstan Bruce [17 October 2014] :
A curious life – We spoke to Dunstan Bruce at Cambridge Film Festival this year about his documentary A CURIOUS LIFE, which follows the winsome Jeremy 'The Levellers' [@the_levellers] Cunningham on a trip down memory lane via squids, folk-punk festival mayhem and the Battle of the Beanfield

A Curious Life (2014) ~ acuriouslife.co.uk/Blog ~ @a_curiouslife

Hammudi Al-Rahmoun Font [9 January 2015] :
Font's Othello – Anthony Davis spoke to Hammudi Al-Rahmoun Font about his entertaining and provocative Catalan adaptation of OTHELLO, screened at CFF2014

Otel.lo (Othello) (2012) ~ otello.cat ~ @otel_lo

Ken Loach [6 June 2014] :
In conversation with Ken Loach – Ken Loach visited the Cambridge Arts Picturehouse with his new film JIMMY’S HALL; Anthony Davis spoke to him about journalistic vitriol and corporate propaganda

Jimmy's Hall (2014) ~ http://www.facebook.com/JimmysHallFilm ~ @JimmysHallFilm

Laura Rossi [17 October 2014] :
Interview with Laura Rossi – Anthony Davis spoke to composer Laura Rossi about her experience writing music for BFI Silent Film JANE SHORE (1915), currently touring the UK

Jane Shore (1915) ~ http://www.laurarossi.com/janeshore/ ~ @thelaurarossi

Magali Pettier [28 August 2015] :
Addicted to Sheep – Anthony Davis spoke to Magali Pettier, farmer’s daughter and director of ADDICTED TO SHEEP, which follows a year in the lives of two sheep farmers.

Addicted to Sheep (2015) ~ http://www.addictedtosheep.com ~ @addictedtosheep ~ @MagaliPettier

Mar Coll [27 September 2014] :
[Appended to Rebecca Naghten's] review of We All Want What's Best For Her (2013) – Anthony Davis spoke to director Mar Coll after the screening, focusing on the mental-health-related themes in the film. (An extract of the interview follows.)

Tots volem el millor per a elle (2013) ~ http://www.totsvolemelmillorperaella.com ~ @Totsvolem_peli

Marc Quinn / Gerry Fox [23 July 2015] :
Interview with Marc Quinn & Gerry Fox [Although there is now a link to the full interview] – On 23 July the Arts Picturehouse screened MAKING WAVES, a documentary in which Gerry Fox records one year in the life of Marc Quinn. The film delves into the nature of creativity, following Quinn across the globe. Shortly before the post-screening Q&A we spoke to director Fox and subject/artist Quinn about his notorious “shit-head”, his bromance with Fox and the film’s examination of Quinn’s Warhol style “assembly line of art workers”.

Marc Quinn : Making Waves (2014) ~ http://www.marcquinn.com ~ @_MarcQuinn

Raf V. [11 February 2018] :
Vlogumentary joy with Rafael V. – In his 2017 documentary JOY, vlogumentary maker Rafael V. asks what it means to be happy – where can we find joy ? A few months on from the film’s release, Anthony Davis caught up with Rafael to discuss his personal approach to cinéma vérité, reflect on what he learned from making this film, and find out about his next project.

Joy (2017) ~ youtu.be/tp1AVRoS77Q ~ @variousgiraffes

Toby Amies [6 November 2013] :
Interview with Toby Amies – Filmed predominantly in his cave, haven, call it what you will, of a council flat, Toby Amies’ touching portrait follows ageing maverick Drak [self-styled Drako Zarharzar] as he goes about his everyday life, or rather his every second. Anthony Davis spoke to Toby Amies following the screening at Cambridge Film Festival.

The Man Whose Mind Exploded (2012) ~ http://itunes.apple.com/gb/movie/the-man-whose-mind-exploded/id894744010 ~ @DrakoZarharzar ~ @TobyAmies

William Fowler [12 October 2012] :
Interview with William Fowler – Following the collection of works, featuring or directed by Bruce Lacey, that he brought to the 2012 Cambridge Film Festival, I spoke to William Fowler, who is Curator of Artists’ Moving Image at the BFI (British Film Institute [@BFI])

The Lacey Rituals (1973) ~ http://www.brucelaceyexperience.com

If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here

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

Lost in Translation (albeit of the author’s / artist’s own making*… ?)

This is a review of Moomins on The Riviera (2014) (at Saffron Screen)

More views of – or before – Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

1 August

This is a review of Moomins on The Riviera (2014), as seen at Saffron Screen (@Saffronscreen)

The following little comment tells one that one was not exactly in, say, the league of the unstinting values and quality of Sylvain Chomet’s L’Illusionniste (The Illusionist) (2010), or of Studio Ghibli (e.g. Spirited Away (2001)), with those of Moomins on The Riviera (2014) :

One almost took more pleasure in these, than in the story of Moomins on the Riviera (2015), at @Saffronscreen... :) pic.twitter.com/0YKqyeWWHi

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 1, 2015

Roughly speaking, one rated its various aspects thus :

1. The opening sequence (with Snuffkin, voyaging) – charming, inventive, and beautiful*

2. The voices – one really only takes issue with Moomin's**

3. The characterization**

4. Much of the generality of the animation***

5. The music (which is too often more like Muzak ?)

6. The story – few surprises in store



Little things to note (in no particular order) :

* You do look good without the stripes, too – the thinly disguised homoeroticism of a little dog, who thinks that he only likes cats (but has never approached any), whom Moominmamma helps by painting another dog to look like a cat (which is fine, until he is near water)

* Paying for things : sometimes this is an issue (e.g. when The Snork Maiden has to win cash at the casino to buy her bikini (and other outfits – and conveniently has a huge amount left over, just when needed by the plot), but elsewhere Moominmamma buys that paint (or Moomin hires a boat) without any means of payment

* Mymble (voiced by Alison O’Donnell) is flirtily fun, readily falling in with the idea of Stockholm Syndrome and fancying the pirates (who are so manly), but she (and they) are written out of the film when The Moomins sail off (even if Little Myy stows away) – just dealt with by a throwaway line at the end about how she missed Little Myy and so could not enjoy the pirates

* Many names of oriental origin appear in the voluminous animation credits – accounting for all those people, seen in silhouette at the outset of being on The Riviera (and then occasionally later), wearing conical hats ?

* The unexplained bag of creatures, collected and kept until the escape from the Keystone-Kops like mass of policemen, seem to correspond with the outlandish words from the Moomin books : Moominmamma, indeed, says (of The Grand) We simply don’t fit in – everything is simply too outlandish

* Moomin (innocently ?) does not seem much bothered where The Snork Maiden spent the night of the ball, only to see her with flashy Clark Tresco…


End-notes

* Arguably, to fit the storyline (and, really, the clue was in the title : Moomins do not belong on The Riviera, even if Tove Jansson did translate her own quirky characters there (their quirkiness, and her creativity, is there when we start the film, with Snuffkin…)), this lushness of life is to show that the grass was not greener (even if it was only The Snork Maiden’s celebrity interest, arbitrarily entertained, that ever suggested that it could be).

(Admittedly, Moominpappa quickly styled himself De Moomin to fit in (saying, of The Grand Hotel, It looks a bit big – or maybe I’m too small…) – and became florid in his fabulation – which (as she heard, and fell in, with all this) did not quite accord with Moominmamma’s naive desire to have us believe that she thought them to be literal guests, rather than paying ones.)

** Voiced by Russell Tovey, we have a highly tetchy and jealous Moomin (about the motor-boat : It can go to blazes, and so can you !), paired with a flighty / ambitious Snork Maiden (and no Snork) [although, according to http://moomin.wikia.com/wiki/The_Snork_Maiden, ‘She is very loyal to her friends and somewhat emotional’])

*** The lack of imagination, and detail, in the animation cannot simply be laid at the door of having to show the Riviera as a shallow, one-dimensional place*, because, although there are variations in the levels of detail / richness in the picture-frame, so much of the film fills space with animation that is just simple action (or loops of action) against an unmoving background, e.g. Moominpappa ascending the stairs with Marquis Mongaga at his mansion : it feels very much like a stop-gap for the eye-pleasing quality of the opening scenes (with their deft touches of real magic).


If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here

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