Stranger than paradise (movie review)

Stranger than paradise (comedy) (1984) (1 hr 25 mins)

Director Jim Jarmusch is a leading figure in American independent film-making and is probably best known to a mainstream audience for Broken flowers (2005) starring Bill Murray. But he first came to people’s attention with Stranger than paradise, his second film. It was made on a tiny budget of $125,000 and Jarmusch also wrote the screenplay.

Filmed in black and white, the film has Jarmusch’s trademark slow pacing and focus on mood and characters above plot. The story is straightforward. Willie (John Lurie) lives in New York and spends his time in card games and at race tracks with his friend Eddie (Richard Edson). He’s irritated by the arrival of his cousin Eva (Eszter Balint) from Hungary. He has to put her up for ten days while his aunt is in hospital. Willie resents her being there but grows used to her as the ten days unfold.

One year on, Willie and Eddie win hundreds of dollars by cheating in a game of poker and decide to visit Eva in Cleveland. But when they get there they are as bored as they were back in New York. In one of the film’s funniest scenes, they troop along with Eva to the cinema, much to the annoyance of Eva’s friend Billy. Billy ends up paying for them; they repay him by eating his popcorn.

Willie and Eddie decide to drive to Florida and persuade Eva to come with them. While they’re blowing their money at the dog track, Eva comes into some money by chance and decides to go to the airport and catch a flight to Europe. Willie and Eddie rush to the airport to stop her, with comic results.

The comedy in the film is very dry and understated. Willie and Eva don’t seem to know what to make of each other. Eddie seems interested in her but can’t manage to articulate his feelings for her. The locations are strangely uninhabited, almost ghostly. Run-down sections of New York are succeeded by desolate parts of Cleveland and empty parts of Florida. As Eddie comments to Willie as they leave Cleveland, ‘You know, it's kind of funny. You're some place new, and everything looks just the same.' It is perhaps this sense of being trapped that binds Willie, Eddie and Eva together. And as the film closes, for all their modest efforts to escape to somewhere different, they all end up somewhere they don’t want to be.

The film is punctuated with breaks between scenes where the screen is black, a kind of film equivalent to the white spaces between words in a text. The spaces themselves are what give the action meaning.

The film won the Camera d’Or at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival and the 1985 National Film Critics Award for Best Film. Perhaps Jarmusch’s greatest achievement in this film is to make the viewer care about characters who say and do nothing of consequence.

 Rating: 9/10

This is not a film (movie review)

 

This is not a film (2010) (1hr 15 mins)

In 2010 Iranian director Jafar Panahi was arrested by the authorities and placed under house arrest, banned from making films for 20 years and given a six-year jail sentence for allegedly making propaganda against the regime. This fascinating documentary shows him struggling to cope with the circumstances he finds himself in.

Filmed with just one camera and a mobile phone, the film takes place entirely within the flat block where Panahi lives, and mainly inside his living room and kitchen. Early on we witness a phone conversation with his appeal lawyer, who offers her opinion that the ban on making films might be overturned but the best that can be hoped for with the prison sentence is a reduced term.

Trapped within the flat, Panahi films a film director friend and asks him to come around. When he arrives, Panahi starts exploring the notion of making a film that isn’t really a film and so might not land him in further trouble. In a fascinating sequence, he starts outlining an idea for his next film, reading excerpts from a script and marking out with sticky on his living room carpet the building he had researched before his arrest. In one of the most affecting scenes in the film, Panahi, while telling the story of his proposed film to his friend, he has to stop and walk away to compose himself. The story concerns a woman locked in her home and the similarities with his own situation seem to suddenly overwhelm him.

What makes this documentary so fascinating is watching Panahi reaching towards something, not quite knowing what he’s doing but instinctively sensing that he needs to do it. Though generally sombre as he contemplates his likely future, he comes alive on screen when he starts talking about this next film project. Before your eyes, you see him become energised and passionate, his creativity bubbling to the surface.

In the long final sequence, Panahi gets chatting to a man who has knocked on his door to collect his rubbish. He follows the man into the lift, filming him all the while, and you can see the director in him taking over, searching for meaning in this random encounter.

The film was saved onto a USB flash drive and smuggled out of Iran in a birthday cake. It was shown to great acclaim at the Cannes Film Festival.

 Rating: 9/10

What Richard Did (movie review)

What Richard Did (2013) (1hr 28 mins)

This gripping Irish drama from director Lenny Abrahamson (Garage, Adam and Paul) is built around an interesting study of its main character. We first see Richard (Jack Renyor) joking around with his mates. He appears to be popular and carefree, the good looking star of the school rugby team relaxing in the summer holidays before starting university. Our first impression is of a young man who has everything he could want, especially when he entices the attractive Roisin to leave her boyfriend Connor and pair up with him.

But it’s not long before we realise that first appearances are deceptive. We begin to see another side of Richard, someone who can be a loner, insecure, brooding, melancholy. When Roisin talks to her ex, he is immediately jealous and on guard. He expresses his hurt by criticising her for not talking enough to his father. We learn that Richard’s father has suffered from depression and seems anxious that his son doesn’t wrestle with similar problems. It seems his family have high expectations of him.

When Richard and Roisin attend a party, Richard is troubled that she doesn’t spend any time with him. He goes outside to smoke and his mood is not improved when Connor arrives. Then Richard is stopped from rejoining the party and has to wait outside, knowing Roisin and Connor may be together. When Roisin finally appears, Connor is with her and starts a fight with Richard. In one moment of violence, Richard releases his pent-up anger, with tragic consequences. Although when Richard leaves, Connor seems to be okay, there’s a report on  the radio the next morning that he has been found dead at the scene of the fight.

The second half of the film shows us how Richard struggles to come to terms with what has happened. His first instinct is to deny any involvement but the guilt proves difficult to live with, and he receives scant support from Roisin or from his father, who sends him away as if wanting to be rid of the problem.

What makes the film fascinating for the viewer is that Richard has many facets and we are unsure how to react to him. He can be witty and warm-hearted but also selfish and manipulative. Is he to blame for what happened? Or is he a victim of a tragic accident and of Roisin’s apparent willingness to spend more time with Connor than with him.

Abrahamson wisely gives us plenty of space to observe Richard as he struggles to make sense of his situation and decide whether or not to hand himself in to the police. But at the end of the film you might still be undecided quite what to think about him.

 Rating: 8/10

The Hunt (movie review)

The Hunt (drama) (2012) (1 hr 46 mins)

In a village in Denmark, a nursery teacher named Lucas is popular with the children, and particularly liked by a girl named Klara. When she kisses him on the lips, he points out that such affection is not appropriate and she takes it as a rejection. She then makes comments to the nursery manager, Grethe, that lead her to think that Lucas has sexually abused Klara. From this moment on, Lucas becomes the subject of a witchhunt as he is rejected by most of his friends, suspended from his job and interrogated by the police.

It is made clear to the viewer that Lucas is innocent so that we experience with him the injustice of his treatment. He is initially too shocked to defend himself properly, and the manager at the nursery mishandles the investigation, too readily assuming that he is guilty and giving the impression to all the parents of children at the school that there is little doubt about his guilt.

To make matters worse, Klara is the daughter of Lucas’ best friend, Theo, which makes the apparent betrayal of trust all the more upsetting. Like almost everyone in the town, Theo assumes that Klara is telling the truth and therefore Lucas must be guilty. In fact the only people who are sure he is innocent are his teenage son and the boy’s godfather, .

It’s not long before Lucas is forcibly confronted with the judgment of his community. A brick is thrown through his window, his dog is murdered and he is violently thrown out of the local supermarket. But he stubbornly and courageously refuses to leave the town and instead confronts his persecutors.

In a scene of almost unbearable poignancy, Lucas goes to the Christmas church service and sits alone in a pew while the congregation stare at him with grim fascination. When the nursery children are brought out to perform a song, Lucas snaps and confronts Theo. In fact it is the strength of his anger that makes Theo wonder if Lucas is innocent after all. Only then does he coax out of Klara the confession that she told a lie.

The emotions portrayed in the film are painfully raw and director Thomas Vinterberg manages to capture an almost primeval struggle for justice. It’s impossible not to identify with Lucas’ pain and his powerlessness in the face of a situation that is threatening to ruin his life.

Mads Mikkelson, winner of the best actor award at Cannes, gives an outstanding performance as the distraught Lucas, having to be strong for the sake of his son but clearly in great emotional turmoil. Annika Wedderkopp is haunting as Klara, bewildered and unnerved by the power she has discovered she can wield in the complicated world of adults. The script by Vinterberg and Tobias Lindholm is superbly constructed, with no extraneous scenes or dialogue.

This is a film that will move you deeply and that you won’t forget in a hurry.

 

Rating: 10/10

Monsieur Lazhar (movie review)

Monsieur Lazhar (drama) (2011) (1 hr 34 mins)

The hardest thing for a film to do is to make the viewer care about its characters. This tender and moving Canadian French-language film directed and written by Philippe Falardeau makes you feel deeply for all of the characters.

At a Montreal school, Simon and his friend Alice go to collect the class supply of milk and find that their teacher, Martine, has hung herself from the classroom ceiling. The school is assigned a psychologist to help children and staff cope with their grief while the headteacher sets about the task of finding a new teacher. An Algerian immigrant, Bashir Lazhar, turns up the school and offers to do the job. Unable to find anyone else at short notice, the headteacher hires him.

What then unfolds is a fascinating story of how the new teacher gradually helps his class of 11 year-olds to work through their grief at the loss of a much-loved teacher. There is no magical transformation. At first, as Bashir struggles to get to know his class, to adjust to cultural differences and to the way things are done at the school, it seems he is doing very little at all. But slowly it becomes evident that he is allowing the children space – space to talk, to argue, to discuss. He takes what they say seriously and treats them as equals.

Alice uses an exercise about the pupils’ feelings about school to express her grief at Martine’s death. Bashir asks the headteacher if he can distribute her composition among the school to help people talk more freely about their feelings but he is refused. It is deemed too risky. He gets the caretaker to show him the possessions left in Martine’s desk, including a book of fables which he uses in class to encourage discussion.

As the process of healing in the school begins, we learn that there is a healing process going on for Bashir too. It transpires that he has applied for political asylum after escaping from Algeria. His wife and children were killed when their apartment building burnt down in an arson attack. In a moving scene, he collects a parcel of his family’s belongings – all he has left of his old life.

As Bashir and his class undertake this journey of healing together, a real warmth develops between teacher and pupils, and the broken friendship between Simon and Alice is restored. An interesting friendship also begins to develop between Bashir and Claire, one of the other teachers who knew Martine well. When she invites him round to dinner, they are both awkwardly trying to discern the other’s feelings. For Bashir it is too early to begin a new relationship but too painful to explain why.

The film is based on a play by Evelyne de la Cheneliere and has been beautifully adapted by Falardeau. It received an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film and won numerous film awards around the world. The acting is outstanding, particularly from the children and from Mohamed Fellag in the lead role. Above all, it is a film that will move you deeply.

Rating: 10/10

Gainsbourg (movie review)

Gainsbourg (2010) (drama) (2 hrs 10 mins)

 

Serge Gainsbourg was a successful French singer-songwriter, at the height of his popularity in the 1960s and 70s and best known for his hit single Je T’aime (with partner Jane Birkin). This unusual biopic from first-time director Joann Star focuses more on Gainsbourg’s personality than on his music and is highly engaging, particularly in the first half.

 
We first see Gainsbourg as a precocious boy in Nazi-occupied Paris. His father forces him to play the piano but he only enjoys playing when allowed the freedom to play in his own style. The pressures he faces in childhood (living in an occupied country, resisting his father’s ambitions for him to become a classical pianist, his Jewishness) appear to have a deep impact on the boy, leading him to rebel and seek artistic freedom.

He shows an early gift for art and after the war finds work as a music and art teacher in a school outside Paris. Then he finds he can make a living playing piano in bars. It is at this point that he makes a big decision: to give up art in order to concentrate on his music. He starts writing songs, performing them at a music hall and developing a following, particularly among young women. He becomes a womaniser and heavy drinker and has affairs with Brigitte Bardot and Jane Birkin.

Laetitia Casta gives a stunning performance as Bardot, cavorting around his apartment wrapped in a sheet. It’s his time with Bardot that seems the happiest of his life and it’s for Bardot that he writes Je T’aime, though it’s with Birkin that he later records the song. It becomes a hit single around the world. Success appears to go to his head, he starts drinking too much and getting into scrapes.

The most interesting scenes in the film are the many appearances of The Face, a grotesque alter ego who represents Gainsbourg’s darker side. The Face constantly tempts him to drink, hang out in bars, have affairs with young women and neglect his family. Director Joann Star draws upon his background as an artist (he first drew the story in comic book form) to create several surreal scenes, such as when the Face flies at night above the Paris rooftops like a giant bird, carrying Gainsbourg off into the night.

Eric Elmosino gives an outstanding performance in the central role, portraying Gainsbourg as mysterious, restless, witty, outspoken. We don’t learn that much about his musical career, just seeing glimpses of his various musical styles: playing jazz in nightclubs, disco in concerts and reggae in a Jamaican recording studio. It’s hard to tell how he built such a following in France and whether his musical legacy will endure.

The film won 3 Cesar Awards in France in 2011 but received mixed reviews world-wide. It was praised for its imaginative approach but also criticised for lacking drama and emotional depth. I recommend it as a genuine curio that may leave you wanting to find out more about a fascinating man.

 Rating: 7/10