BAFTA-winning short filmmaker Hattie Dalton makes an auspicious feature debut with this poignant but still screamingly funny paean to making the most of life – while you still can. James (Benedict Cumberbatch) invites his three closest friends to join him on a road trip to his favourite place in the world. Like many an impulsive group holiday, however, the undertaking proves fraught with practical difficulties, surreal encounters and emotionally ravaging revelations... With a vibrant, witty and insightful script by Vaughan Sivell, and a quartet of excellent lead performances from the UK’s finest young actors, this is a moving, pertinent and unpredictable film, and a fantastic showcase of new and promising British film talent.
The cracks aren’t hard to find within the imposing stone walls of St. Mathilda’s boarding school for girls. At first they appear in the familiar form of elitist cliques, petty jealousies and bitchy bids for popularity. Girls will be girls, after all, and even in 1930s England, mean girls prevail. At St. Mathilda’s, diving team captain Di Radfield (Juno Temple) presides over her small band of snobs and also holds special favor with their stylish and provocative coach and teacher, Miss G. Draped in flowing silk, cigarettes smoldering, Eva Green (Casino Royale) brings some of her sultry Bond-girl style to an otherwise repressed, gray world of drab uniforms, stern-faced matrons and Sunday hymns. Di and her teammates are entranced by Miss G’s glamour and tales of international adventure, faithfully following her every word (“The most important thing in life is desire,” she avers breathlessly) and every move (a naked nighttime dip into frigid English waters, anyone?). The arrival of a new girl, the beautiful daughter of Spanish royalty, gradually splits the fine cracks into dangerous fissures. Fiamma’s pubescent sensuality and exoticism are both a threat and a lure for the girls and an increasingly unsettled Miss G. Adapted from Sheila Kohler’s 1999 novel, Cracks gradually reveals the darker inclinations of a secluded, self-monitored society in which obsession, rivalry and sexual awakening collide. In her feature debut, director Jordan Scott draws superb performances from her all-female cast, making her mark as the next generation of the Scott (as in Ridley and Tony) filmmaking family. —Joanne Parsont
Longinotto brings us another incredible film about struggling children living in extraordinary circumstances, but this time back on her home turf. Mulberry Bush in Oxford is a boarding school catering to children who have been expelled from regular schools for extreme behaviour. The three-year program gives them the chance to turn their lives around and re-enter the regular school system. Longinotto spends a year at the school following the progress of four charming but troubled boys. All have severe problems with anger and violence; they punch, kick, spit, and curse at the remarkably patient teachers who are trained never to raise their voices. The film compassionately captures the battle these children go through to give voice to the hurt they carry inside. A sensitive and heart-rending study of the results of family dysfunction, Hold Me Tight also bears witness to the effects—good and bad—that adults have on growing children. - Shannon Abel
An independent-minded young woman discovers the joys of football, much to her family's chagrin, in this upbeat British comedy drama. Jess Bhamra (Parminder Nagra) is an 18-year-old growing up in West London, where her family has taken every effort to stay in touch with its Indian heritage. Jess' father and mother (Anupam Kher and Shaheen Khan) are after their daughter to go to law school, learn to cook a traditional Indian dinner, and settle down with a nice Indian boy -- the latter of which is high on the agenda of her older sister Pinky (Archie Panjabi), who is soon to wed her longtime beau Teetu (Kulvinder Ghir). However, her family is unaware that Jess has a secret passion -- football (or soccer, as it's known in North America). While Jess' enthusiasm for football star David Beckham is obvious, given the fact his photos cover the walls of her room, her parents don't know that in her spare time she likes to play a friendly game in the park with some of the boys in the neighborhood. One day, while Jess and her pals kick the ball around, she meets Jules (Keira Knightley), who is quite impressed with Jess' skills. Jules plays with a local semi-pro women's football team, the Hounslow Harriers, and she thinks Jess has what it takes to make the team. Jess knows that her parents would never approve of their daughter playing football, so she doesn't tell them, and starts spinning an increasingly complex series of lies as she tries to keep up a double life as a student and a footballer. Jess soon discovers a number of her new friends have their own problems to overcome; Jules dreams of playing pro ball in America, but has to deal with her stubborn and disapproving mother (Juliet Stevenson), while Joe (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), Hounslow's Irish coach, still struggles with the disappointment of a career as a professional athlete which was dashed by a knee injury.
As an actor, Samantha Morton once said she had only one thing to give to directors: “Honesty. Massive honesty and truth.” Directing her own film for the first time, she draws that same truth from her cast and her story. The Unloved is inspired by Morton's own life as a girl in the British Midlands. Lucy (Molly Windsor) lives with an unstable, sometimes violent father, played by Robert Carlyle. When the local social services step in to rescue her, Lucy leaves the chaos of her family for the uncertain dangers of a care home.
In stark, distilled scenes that fall somewhere between the work of Ken Loach and Terence Davies, Morton shows Lucy attempting to navigate the social services system – arbitrary rules, hostile older kids and, most powerfully, isolation. Almost by instinct, Lucy learns to observe the shifting winds of her reality rather than always daring to react. The Unloved was made for Britain's Channel 4 because Morton insisted that girls like Lucy were far more likely to see films on television. And yet, Morton has made something thoroughly cinematic. The images are painterly and the sound heightened, all designed to pull the viewer closer and closer to Lucy's perspective. The intimacy and focus of the film are so complete that, even in its moments of childhood horror, the sense of empathy is unbroken.
Morton's entire childhood was spent in the care of the Nottinghamshire social services system, from infancy to age eighteen. Girls she knew there went on to become prostitutes, two of them murdered on the streets. Morton escaped that fate partly through the strength of her imagination. It was in social services that she began training as an actor, and it was also there, at age sixteen, that she began to storyboard the film that would become The Unloved – full of massive honesty, but also a surprisingly mature art.
The film's website is here. Unfortunately, people in the US can't watch the videos, but more will probably be available later, especially if there is a US theatrical release.
She, a Chinese is a rock 'n' roll odyssey that follows a young woman on a soul-searching journey. The film stands in stark contrast with its title, which would seem to define the cultural and ethnic origins of its protagonist. But this is a truly nationless movie, addressing contemporary issues that trespass borders and blur socio-political lines into a globalized world of shared values and collective problems. Challenging the visual style of traditional Chinese cinema, novelist and filmmaker Guo Xiaolu focuses her subtle narrative on an enigmatic woman who creates her own path. Framed in chapters and often using short, lyrical captions or silent, beautifully composed snapshots of landscapes, the film is an unpretentiously sophisticated hybrid of documentary, creative writing, visual poetry and cinema.
Mei (Huang Lu) has never been further than five miles away from her native village in China. But an unusual combination of fate, curiosity and natural restlessness soon changes that. Looking for excitement and new adventures, she first arrives in Chong-qing. Life in the big city doesn't quite turn out as expected, however; fired from her factory job, she ends up working in a hair salon, where she meets and falls in love with Spikey (Wei Yi Bo), a gangster with a dragon tattoo. She knows he's a hit man with the mafia, so when one day he comes back covered in blood and dies in her arms, Mei must leave town, her dreams shattered. London is the city that unpleasantly greets this illegal immigrant. A new language, bland food and an unfamiliar set of rules now broaden her horizons, but the future is an enticing unknown.
While she was making She, a Chinese, Guo also shot Once Upon a Time Proletarian: 12 Tales of a Country, which is screening in the Festival's Real to Reel programme. Taken together, the two films paint a deft portrait of a young China.
Alternately accompanied by the soft musical score of John Parish and the punk-rock songs of Chinese bands like X.T.X & Cold Blooded Animal, Guo's graceful images are charged with an instinctive, tactile elegance. Romantic, at times melancholic, but always realistic, this is a story about survival and the art of leaving and longing. She, a Chinese glows with powerful inner charm and confirms Guo as one of the brightest talents of contemporary world cinema.
It’s 1961 and Jenny (Carey Mulligan) is an attractive, bright 16-year-old schoolgirl, poised on the brink of womanhood, dreaming of a rarefied, Gauloise-scented existence as she sings along to Juliette Greco in her bedroom. Stifled by the tedium of adolescent routine, Jenny can’t wait for adult life to begin. Meanwhile, she’s a diligent student, excelling in every subject except the Latin that her father is convinced will land her the place she dreams of at Oxford University. One rainy day, her suburban life is upended by the arrival of an unsuitable suitor, 30-ish David (Peter Sarsgaard). Urbane and witty, David instantly unseats Jenny’s stammering schoolboy admirer (Matthew Beard), and even manages to charm her conservative parents Jack (Alfred Molina) and Marjorie (Cara Seymour). Very quickly, David introduces Jenny to a glittering new world of classical concerts and late-night suppers with his friends, replacing Jenny’s traditional education with his own version, picking her up from school in his Bristol roadster and whisking her off to art auctions and smoky clubs. Jenny’s school friends are thrilled with her newfound sophistication but her headmistress (Emma Thompson) is scandalized and her English teacher Miss Stubbs (Olivia Williams) is deeply disappointed that her prize pupil seems determined to throw away her evident gifts and certain chance of higher education. Just as the family’s long-held dream of getting their daughter into Oxford seems within reach, Jenny is tempted by another kind of life. Will David be the making of Jenny or her undoing?
Debuting at Cannes Film Festival today: Bright Star, directed by Jane Campion
Jane Campion has the distinction of being the only woman ever to win the Palme d'Or (The Piano), and one of only three women to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director (also The Piano).
London 1818: a secret love affair begins between 23 year old English poet, John Keats, and the girl next door, Fanny Brawne, an outspoken student of fashion. This unlikely pair started at odds; he thinking her a stylish minx, she unimpressed by literature in general. It was the illness of Keats’s younger brother that drew them together. Keats was touched by Fanny’s efforts to help and agreed to teach her poetry. By the time Fanny’s alarmed mother and Keats’s best friend Brown realised their attachment, the relationship had an unstoppable momentum. Intensely and helplessly absorbed in each other, the young lovers were swept into powerful new sensations, "I have the feeling as if I were dissolving", Keats wrote to her. Together they rode a wave of romantic obsession that deepened as their troubles mounted. Only Keats’s illness proved insurmountable.
Debuted at Cannes Film Festival yesterday: Fish Tank, directed by Andrea Arnold
Hard to find any US reviews of this, as it just got shown at Cannes, but this story of the relationship between a 15-year-old girl and her stepfather has been getting ravereviewsfrom the Brits. While waiting for Fish Tank to be released over here, you might want to stick Red Road, Arnold's first feature, in your Netflix queue.
Update - Here's a much more thorough synopsis, from the TIFF website:
Andrea Arnold's pure, potent Fish Tank is many things: a taboo-breaking love story, a searing portrait of working-class Britain today, a film Ken Loach could have made had he been born a woman. But above all, her film is a girl's own fantasy. Arnold began exploring the precise perspective of a woman's desire in her terrific debut, Red Road. With Fish Tank, the view is broader and the focus even sharper.
Mia is a tough, wiry teenager with a mouth like a sailor and only one way to escape the brutality of her daily life: she dances, always by herself with her headphones on, and always to the point of ecstasy.
She has a lot to escape. Her mother is a bottle-blond party girl who favours skirts shorter than her daughter's, and men on the rough side. One day she brings home her latest catch, Connor, who is played by Hunger's Michael Fassbender. He soon proves irresistible.
Once Fish Tank sets its dangerous premise in motion, it observes its characters with generosity. The environment may be harsh, but Arnold's approach is lyrical, even loving.While the story goes to some dark places, Arnold never strays from her spare, beautiful aesthetic. Shooting in old-school 1.33 aspect ratio, she composes her frames with rigorous symmetry. The effect is to bring the simple order of a fable to the seeming chaos of Mia's life.
Even better, Arnold lets the sociology remain unspoken. The fact that Mia's mother must have had her as a teenager, that alcohol fuels so much of the characters' bad behaviour, that Mia adopts rage as a cover for more complicated feelings – these are left to the viewer to infer. Instead, Fish Tank focuses on getting the details of Mia's life right – contrasting her love of rapid-fire dance music to her mother's reggae and Connor's Bobby Womack soul, for instance – and on following her desire wherever it goes.
As you may know, the percentage of women directors hovers around 9%, which is a ridiculous statistic in 2009 (or ever). It's not (just) that Hollywood is sexist—-if female directors brought in the big bucks on opening weekend, studio heads would certainly sit up and take notice, as might Oscar voters. But how to find out when these films are showing? Well... come here! (Update: Hmm, the same year I start this blog, the Academy nominates TWO female-directed movies for Best Picture! Coincidence?)
