Lies We Tell (UK 2017: Dir Mitu Misra)

Any film that starts off with Harvey Keitel being driven around the streets of Bradford and ends up with Gabriel Byrne facing off a mad dog must have something going for it, right?

And Lies We Tell does have a lot going for it. Ish.

Gabriel Byrne is Donald, world weary driver to shady boss Demi (Keitel). When Demi dies suddenly, his last request is for Donald to visit his home and clear away any traces of Demi's extra marital relationship with a Pakistani girl called Amber (who by day is a trainee lawyer), including an intimate video of them together. Mid clearout, Amber turns up at the house, and an uneasy friendship between the two develops. Amber has been seeing Demi as a way of obtaining money for her legal education, and to free herself from her family, ruled by the vicious and calculating KD, who has links to the Bradford underworld. Amber and KD, who are cousins, were once 'married' on paper to appease the family but agreed not to consummate the relationship, except that KD changed his mind. But any control that Amber has on KD's behaviour vanishes when he turns his attentions to Amber's 16 year old sister Miriam. And Amber has other problems, namely that copies of the incriminating video are still floating around, potentially jeopardising her burgeoning legal career.

Gabriel Byrne and Harvey Keitel in Lies We Tell

Donald's constantly perplexed gaze, as he tries to assist Amber in her plight to extricate herself from Demi's life and do right by her family, is one likely to be shared by an audience not previously exposed to the harsher side of life in a Northern city. Bradford, where the film is located, has been used as the setting for other 'gritty' films like Room at the Top (1959) and Rita, Sue and Bob Too (1987). But this is arguably the first time that the experience of a working class Muslim family and indeed the sub culture of young minority ethnic groups has been depicted in this way. Director Mitu Misra shows us the highs and lows of a society normally either pilloried or ignored by the media, and it is to his credit that he doesn't sweeten the pill. Credit should also be given to Sibylla Deen, who as Amber shows the right combination of grit and uncertainty (and as an Australian does a pretty convincing Bradford accent).

On the downside Lies We Tell does have a lot of inconsistencies. Bryne seems rather lost in the role of Donald, unsure of his motivation from scene to scene (he just looks tired). And Mark Addy, who plays Donald's friend Billy, looks like he was slated for a much larger part which may have been trimmed during editing - there are scenes between Billy, Donald and Amber that are played out without context.

Gabriel Byrne at the end of his tether in Lies We Tell

For a first film Misra has also crammed in too many elements - to make them work needed a steadier and more accomplished hand. Apart from the family entanglements in this country there's a land dispute which is touched on but never fully explored. There's also some schemes of mysticism among the Muslim citizens which doesn't help the film defend itself from claims of racism. And the thriller and domestic themes never really gel together. I wondered whether Misra may have been better off simply telling the story of a Muslim family in Bradford, and the tensions with an older daughter who wishes to break out of the household and start a career as a lawyer. It's one that hasn't really been told before, and arguably didn't need the expositional criminal trimmings.

But while the strands of this film don't all quite hold together, there are some good set pieces, and the vibrant photography of the streets (and clubs) of Bradford contrast well with scenes shot against the city's backdrop of imposing buildings and immaculate formal gardens. This is after all a film about Bradford, so it's perhaps right that Lies We Tell's contrasts are as diverse as the city itself.

The Darjeeling Limited (USA 2007: Dir Wes Anderson)

Another of my FEAST Film Nights viewing notes.

For those unfamiliar with the idiosyncratic films of Wes Anderson, The Darjeeling Limited is as good a place to start as any – his movies all share a unique vision, mixing the mundane with the bizarre, featuring odd characters in odd situations in even odder landscapes – and once you’ve seen one, you’ll immediately recognise his work. Confusingly, one should start before The Darjeeling Limited with a short prologue to the movie, Hotel Chevalier, which may or may not be showing tonight: don’t worry if it isn’t, I’m just being pedantic.

The story of The Darjeeling Limited centres on three brothers - Jack, the youngest, the bandaged and bruised (and very bossy) Francis, and clothing kleptomaniac Peter - who re-unite following the accidental death of their father a year previously, and decide to take a spiritual journey across India by train, hoping to reconnect with each other. That the brothers are a fairly dysfunctional bunch, made worse by their states of mourning, means that their plans, originally carefully planned by Francis and monitored by his seen but not often heard accomplice Brendan, fall apart quite spectacularly. But when they’re thrown off the train on which they’ve been travelling they are properly introduced to a country outside of their sphere of experience, a country which is now home to the reason for their trip.

The Darjeeling Limited is not a film obsessed with plot – it is instead a quirky, ruminative and free-wheeling study of three men caught up in their own depression, struggling to hold themselves together as a family, as well as finding out what ‘family’ means. It’s also a lot of fun, with the brothers bumbling along, sometimes strung out on Indian prescription drugs, constantly bickering while trying to makes sense of their own grief and the country they find themselves in. Anderson isn’t afraid to take us to some dark places, but the combination of humour, occasional slapstick and pathos is delicately balanced, recalling at times the silent comedies of Buster Keaton with added mysticism.

But the real star is India itself. Anderson’s regular cinematographer Robert Yeoman perfectly captures the majestic sweep of the country, and his colour palette is hugely effective whether it’s depicting the glow of sunset or the garish colours of The Darjeeling Limited, the train on which the brothers travel.

There are layers of symbolism in The Darjeeling Limited which have been endlessly pondered over by fans and critics in the same way that the films of the Coen Brothers are carefully dissected. What do the feathers mean? Who is the Bill Murray character? What’s a tiger doing on a train? Who knows? Just enjoy it.

The French Connection (USA 1971: Dir William Friedkin)

Continuing my viewing notes for the FEAST Film Nights evenings, these were my musings on The French Connection:

Towards the end of the 1960s major Hollywood studios started worrying that they might be out of touch with younger viewing audiences, and began hiring ‘risky’ directors like Arthur Penn (The Chase (1966), Bonnie and Clyde (1967)), Sam Peckinpah (The Wild Bunch (1969)) and Dennis Hopper (Easy Rider (1969)) to breathe new life into depictions of America at the cinema. But despite the advances made by these movies, the concept of The French Connection – where drugs are rife in the city and New York cops are almost indistinguishable from the bad guys - was deemed too amoral, and was turned down by nearly every major studio before finally getting the green light from 20th Century Fox. 

The French Connection is an adaptation of Robin Moore’s 1969 book of the same name, which told the true story of NYPD detectives Eddie Egan and Sonny Grosso, who broke up a notorious New York drug operation and confiscated thirty-two million pounds worth of heroin. Egan and Grosso served as technical advisors on the movie, incorporating their own phrasing into Ernest Tidyman’s script - their film counterparts Gene Hackman (who was not the director’s first choice – Friedkin originally wanted Jackie Gleason) and Roy Scheider spent a month patrolling with Egan so they could get closer to the characters they were portraying. It’s probably best known for having one of the tensest car chases in the history of film, but The French Connection is so much more than that – both an intense character study and essay on the price of corruption.

In a 2015 interview with the film’s director, William Friedkin, he reflected on the making of the film: “We were mostly influenced by the European films of the 1960s. The French new wave; Italian neo-realism; Kurosawa and other Japanese filmmakers. We were inspired by them and not bound to any formula. The French Connection, for all its success, was a real departure for a cop film, which was why it took us two years to get it made.”

“The chase scene was never in (the) script. I created that…with the producer Philip D’Antoni…we walked out of my apartment, headed south in Manhattan and we kept walking until we came up with that chase scene, letting the atmosphere of the city guide us. The steam coming off the street, and sound of the subway rumbling beneath our feet - the treacherous traffic on crowded streets. Nobody ever asked to see a script. We went three hundred thousand over (the) million and a half dollar budget, and they (the studio) wanted to kill me every day for that.”

Friedkin hasn’t always been the most reliable of documenters of his own films, and probably the greatest thing about The French Connection is that, while he makes it sound like it was made up as he went along, it’s actually a meticulously plotted movie without a wasted shot, which played its own part in changing the future of film.

New Films Round Up #12 - Reviews of Watch Over Us (USA 2017), The Ice Cream Truck (USA 2017), Consumption (USA 2016), Jonah Lives (USA 2015), Peelers (USA 2016) and The Id (USA 2015)

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Themroc (France 1973: Dir Claude Faraldo)

Continuing my series of viewing notes of films screened at West Norwood FEAST Film Nights over the last few years, here's some thoughts on Themroc.

This year (2015) the French Canadian director Jean Marc-Vallée made Demolition, a Hollywood movie featuring a tortured soul who starts to dismantle appliances and later buildings to work through his emotional crises. 43 years ago the French director Claude Faraldo directed Themroc, a movie where a tortured soul has a bad day at work, comes home, turns his entire front room into a cave, shacks up with his sister and eats a policeman. Two films, two building sites. Come on, which one would you rather see?

Themroc is a dark but hugely funny howl of rage against oppression, the strictures of work and everything that prevents man from being primal and free. Made five years after the Paris riots of 1968, there’s more than a whiff of anarchy and Situationist politics in the air as we follow Themroc: preparing for and on his journey to work; his sacking (because he witnessed his boss and secretary fooling around); and his subsequent orgy of destruction after he returns to his flat, grabs his just-clothed sister and walls up the living room door, before creating a cave mouth where the back wall used to be.

I’ve seen this film a number of times over the years. My first viewing, as a teenager, admittedly left me rather cold – it seemed that director Faraldo just wanted to shock with his scenes of incest and cannibalism – don’t worry, you’re spared most of the detail. But watching it some years later, and again recently - with the benefit of at least one mid-life crisis behind me - I appreciated not only Michel Piccoli’s superhuman performance (literally – watch for the scenes where he takes a loaded wheelbarrow upstairs and moves a car with his bare hands) but also a brilliantly nuanced one. 

Communicating without language - his vocabulary consisting of a series of increasingly guttural snarls, howls and grunts (his fellow actors just speak gibberish, save for a few words of French) - Themroc is a bewildered stranger in his own broken part of France, trying to make sense of his own feelings and escape his dull existence.

Praise also for the supporting cast: Jeanne Heviale, who plays Themroc’s mother, is excellent, her face portraying a constant mask of disappointment whatever her son does, whether being late for work or throwing the best cutlery out of his newly formed cave mouth.  Also Beatrice Romand as his sister, who turns in an extraordinarily sensual performance amid the distinctly un-erotic ruins of Themroc’s flat. 

Themroc is a film which in its own desire not to be taken seriously becomes the perfect vehicle for the Situationist concept of non-competitive play being the one thing that is truly liberating for the self. Themroc’s cave and actions are the inverse of the walled in flat-dwellers around him, and he emerges as the hero of the piece despite his apparent madness: he’s a tenement - and rather pervy - King Lear.

Performance (UK 1970 Dir Donald Cammell, Nicolas Roeg)

At the start of 2018 I thought I'd reproduce some viewing notes that I wrote for screenings at my
local film club over the past couple of years, kicking off with Performance. 

Performance is a movie thoroughly deserving of that rather over-used term ‘cult status.’ Filmed in 1968, it was shelved for two years before finally being released – with cuts – to a public unused to such transgressive goings-on in a British flick, and greeting it with little more than mild disinterest. Two decades of frequent showings on the club circuits built up a steady fan base, leading to the film now regularly being included in ‘20 top British film’ lists. Whether it deserves that accolade is a matter for debate, but its enduring fascination is more than nostalgia for a London of the past – it was one of the first films, British or otherwise, to explicitly flirt with gender identity and its blurred boundaries. Filled with druggy details and a certain soupcon of polymorphous perversity, it’s a movie the UK certainly wasn’t ready for in 1970.

The question of identity extends beyond the story of the film, which sees heavy for hire Chas (played by James Fox) on the run from a killing, moving himself into, and ‘turning on’ at the Notting Hill home of ‘retired’ rock star Turner (Mick Jagger) and his two muses, played by Anita Pallenberg and Michele Breton.   

The distinction between real life and film was blurred in the casting - Jagger and Pallenberg may possibly have been an item at the point of filming, and the latter had already been associated with other members of The Rolling Stones. James Fox was at the time going out with an androgynous girl called Andee, who is suspiciously similar to the slight Ms Breton, with whom Chas has a relationship. Jagger’s former girlfriend Marianne Faithfull goes further in the ‘art imitating life’ debate, citing  a wild druggy evening with Jagger, James Fox and Andee as the inspiration for part of the film, a detail picked up by Donald Cammell and expanded into a full length movie script, originally titled ‘The Liars’. 

And one cannot forget the spectre of Brian Jones, the Stones member who, very like Turner in the film, had rejected his band and opted for a life of drug-fuelled self-reflection. As Bill Wyman said, again echoing the Turner character, “he was very influential, very important, and then slowly lost it – highly intelligent – and just kind of wasted it and blew it all away.” Tragically Jones would die between the filming of Performance and its cinema release.

People often cite Performance as Nic Roeg’s first directing role, which it was, but it was also co-helmed by Donald Cammell. Cammell came from a wealthy background, which funded his travels around the world, freely indulging his talent as an artist and moving in the circles of the great and the good. In 1967 he ended up in Paris, where via producer Sanford Lieberson he was paired with Nicolas Roeg, a jobbing cinematographer, to produce the final flick – rumour has it that Marlon Brando, a friend of Cammell’s, was first approached for the James Fox role. And although it’s what would now be seen as a typically Roeg film – all sharp edits and strange point of view shooting  - there is a question about how much of Performance’s look and louche transgressive feel actually came from Cammell’s first-hand experience of the excesses of the ‘swinging sixties.’

Better Watch Out (US/Australia 2016 - Dir Chris Peckover)

Chris Peckover's witty, deceptive suburban nightmare Better Watch Out (which I saw under its original title, the more prosaic Safe Neighbourhood) is both a Home Alone / Funny Games / Scream mashup and a rather interesting take on the state of US maleness.

Luke (Levi Miller) is a 12 going on 13 year old living a somewhat privileged life. While his well to do parents attend a Christmas party, babysitter Ashley (Olivia de Jonge), who is five years older and on whom Luke has a crush, comes over to watch him. But it seems that everyone's interested in Ashley, including a couple of older boys, and she's made plans to leave town for a while; Luke only has eyes for Ashley, but when his attempts to impress his babysitter by rescuing her from a gun toting home invader fail - a bit of staging involving his friend Garrett as the masked housebreaker - it all threatens to get difficult for the boys. But then the tables are turned.

Part of the twisted pleasure of watching Better Watch Out unfold is that it functions both in a rather meta way but also as an effective thriller in its own right. There's an amorality on display which clashes with the squeaky clean visuals and clean cut cast - very Wes Craven. There's also some clever genre nods (at one point one of the victims gets a paint bucket swung into his face, while another comments that he's been "Home Aloned" and indeed the movie plays like a more sinister version of Chris Columbus's 1990 film, which of course includes that very scene).

But there's something more than simple homage at work. Better Watch Out gradually transforms, after the first half hour of homely snow scenes (although it was actually filmed in Australia) and light comedy, into something increasingly and insidiously darker. While it's difficult to go into more specifics without spoiling the plot (and yes it is a film that you are best knowing nothing about before seeing it) the nastiness of later events is tempered by consistently good acting and a whip smart script; also having the violence occur mostly off screen (surely a nod to movies like Funny Games) makes it a more unsettling watch than I expected.

Levi Miller and Olivia de Jonge make a great cat and mouse pairing; Miller is creepy, chilling but not unlikeable, and de Jonge, with her unattainable girl next door beauty, transforms well into the film's 'final girl.' There are fine supports too from Virginia Madsen and Patrick Warburton as Luke's parents, and from Ed Oxenbould as the gullible Garrett.

For only a second movie, Chris Peckover's directing is assured and never misses a beat. This is a director to watch and one who has delivered a very cool addition to the Christmas fright flick canon. Go see.