Identity Crisis

I Am Love (dir: Luca Guadagnino)

Perhaps this movie’s very title, pretentious and grandiose as it is, should have been a giveaway, but I’d read enough positive thoughts on this film (not least Jonathan Romney’s rapturous piece in ‘Sight & Sound’) to believe it might be a bold and exciting piece of cinema. Whilst the film begins with considerable promise, the final impression is one of incoherence and catastrophic misjudgement. Ultimately, ‘I Am Love’ is exhausting and infuriating.

Film critics are now so frequently blinded by technical skill. As a result, directors such as Carlos Reygadas are all too easily indulged for pompous and didactic work. There is certainly enough technical accomplishment in ‘I Am Love’ to suggest that Luca Guadagnino is a promising director. The names of many Italian masters have been used as reference points – not least film-makers as different from each other as Visconti and Antonioni. In the early stages of the film, with its superb family dinner sequence, and with some elegant, meticulously framed shots of the Recchi family’s extraordinary mansion home (particularly of Tilda Swinton’s graceful walks up and down the staircase), I felt a more transparent influence was the great Orson Welles.

The film begins as what appears to be a subtle, restrained but simultaneously poised family saga. When the retiring grandfather unexpectedly bequeaths the family textile empire to both his son and grandson to share, it sets the scene for an intriguing and compelling power struggle. Yet this becomes simply the restrictive and repressive context for the film’s central concern – the tragedy that accompanies Emma Recchi’s sexual awakening and discovering of her true self.

There are some positive aspects to this film. Daughter Betta’s lesbianism (a no doubt still shocking and unacceptable thing to a wealthy Italian family such as this) is handled with great tenderness, and there are some delightful scenes between her and Emma. Swinton is every bit as majestic as you might expect – brilliantly capturing the conflict between social duty and inner desire.

Also impressive is the way the film withholds crucial information until quite late in its running time. We only find out Emma’s personal history through the course of her affair with Antonio, and this is the film’s one intriguing and original device. Unfortunately, it is only really used to inform the film’s hackneyed and rather muddled theme of personal identity.

However, this is most certainly a film with fatal flaws that sadly linger long in the mind. Many critics have praised the film’s exploration of the sensual aspects of food – but I found this crass. Guadagnino and Swinton seem keen to browbeat the audience with culinary eroticism. Had they left this notion implied or understated, it could have been much more interesting. Instead, these scenes come across more like a piece of gastropornography from a Nigella Lawson programme.

Even worse is the film’s handling of sex itself. Emma and Antonio’s lengthy soft focus al fresco love scene might have been better placed in one of the Emmanuelle films, so horribly clichéd is its cutting between the building natural elements and the moving bodies. The close-ups of skin are unusual in contemporary cinema and could have been quite erotic if left on their own, but the opening scene of Resnais’ ‘Hiroshima Mon Amour’ achieved so much more to this effect.

Perhaps more fatally is the way that, in spite of the film’s overlong two hour running time, characters and plot strands are left undeveloped. Given his youthful energy, natural talent and passion for food, it’s easy to see why Emma might be attracted to Antonio, but less easy to see why she would fall in love with him. It’s even harder to accept that this love would endure the terrible, cataclysmic event that befalls her family as an indirect result of her actions.

It is perhaps suggested that Emma’s son and heir to the business Eduardo may too have affections for Antonio (‘when I first tasted this man’s cooking, I fell in love with him’), but we are supposed to accept that Emma is completely impervious to this closeness. Similarly, we are expected to accept that Antonio would be completely careless in his attitude towards protecting the secrecy of his relationship with Emma (the ultimate revelation, inevitably, involves food).

What we are left with is a rather didactic and unsubtle divide in the family between socially repressed women allying themselves in self-discovery, and authoritarian, conforming men. This might well be an entirely fair and observant comment on wealthy Italian society – but it is hardly in itself original. The film’s final descent into melodrama merely serves to bludgeon the audience with this point, with entirely embarrassing results.

The confrontation between Tancredi (who is a stereotyped sexless regal male throughout) and Emma in the cathedral, complete with the obligatory baptismal rainstorm, is screamingly awful. However impressive an actress Swinton is, she cannot rise above this level of cliché and heavy-handed direction. Whilst the nature of the tragic event that destroys the family is in itself shocking and unexpected, the film’s treatment of its immediate aftermath is completely lacking in nuance or understanding.

If the melodramatic final scenes, complete with religious symbolism (a post-credits coda shows Emma and Antonio entwined in a cave) are supposed to betray the influence of Douglas Sirk, the only plausible response is to highlight how superior a homage Todd Haynes made with the wonderful ‘Far From Heaven’. Many have praised the use of the bombastic music of American composer John Adams here, but I found it intrusive and unpleasant. Whilst I could just about tolerate its role in the sequence where Emma follows Antonio through the streets of San Remo (where the film achieves an enjoyable albeit decidedly Hitchcockian balance of tension and playfulness), the grandiose music that accompanies the final moments is cloying and overblown.

The problem is precisely that ‘I Am Love’ tries so hard to achieve a grand operatic sweep. This is a film crying out for a little more intimacy, reflection and care. In fact, its precisely in its more tender, less provocative moments that this picture is at its best. In trying to make theatrical gestures and romantic statements from the idea of self-discovery, it conspicuously fails to engage with what self-discovery actually entails, or even what it might mean, save for the inevitable collapse of one wealthy family. I am also deeply suspicious of the film’s implied sense that the discovery of a dormant true identity is a purely feminine thing – why are all the male characters left so stilted and underwritten? It’s entirely reasonable to make a film about female subjugation in Italian society – but it is necessary to do much more than simply render the male characters as cardboard cut-outs.

Given the response this film has had elsewhere, I know there will be people stumbling across this review who passionately disagree with me. Yet the very fact that Guadagnino and Swinton spent seven years working on this project betrays that it is, at its core, a vanity project no more worthy of serious attention than those of Mel Gibson. I honestly find it hard to defend a film that is such an inherent stylistic mess and that so thoroughly botches all its themes.

It is not enough to throw together a disparate array of knowing references for the benefit of cinephiles, nor is it enough to try to make weak material transcendent through the use of melodrama. If we accept films like this, however impressive the photography, acting and staging may be, as the best modern cinema has to offer, we are doing audiences, the art of criticism and the medium of cinema itself a huge disservice. That is simply not good enough.

Behind Closed Doors

Lust, Caution (Ang Lee, 2007)

The furore over the explicit sex scenes in Ang Lee’s latest film, which sees him returning to China but working with an American screenwriter, has obscured the real nature and impact of the piece. A great deal is revealed about attitudes to on-screen sex when Anthony Quinn in The Independent can describe the sex as ‘brutal, cruel and manipulative’ and Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian can describe it as ‘sizzlingly erotic’. Both writers seem to have almost casually missed the point – it is a complex amalgamation of both, and exactly which partner is doing the manipulating is somewhat ambiguous. That the plot keywords for searching for this movie on the Internet Movie Database include ‘vagina’ and ‘nipples’ suggests, somewhat sadly, that many people are unable to approach on-screen sex through anything other than an embarrassed schoolboy’s curious gaze. Those approaching this film looking for titillating action will be left disappointed – the sex scenes, whilst undoubtedly graphic, occupy perhaps ten minutes of the film’s two and a half hour running time.

This is a film at least in part about the psychology of sex, quite possibly a great film about this difficult and complex subject. Quite rightly, Lee refused to censor the film to avoid the commercially disastrous NC-17 rating in America (although the government have done that job for him in China simply to get the film released at all). It is essential to the film’s devastating impact that the physical nature of this relationship is depicted. ‘Lust, Caution’ (brilliantly if misleadingly titled as the progression actually works in reverse) is languid and meticulously controlled, but eventually snaps violently like a tightly coiled spring.

Its lengthy and detailed portrayal of its characters’ lives and choices, and the intricate intermingling of the personal and political, reminded me of great epics such as Edward Yang’s ‘A Brighter Summer Day’ or Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s ‘A City of Sadness’. Some have highlighted the plot resemblance to Hitchcock’s ‘Notorious’, although a more recent comparison (from which ‘Lust, Caution’ emerges very favourably indeed) is Paul Verhoeven’s ‘Black Book’, upon which Tartan Films foolishly relied for a success story last year. The transgression of Oshima’s ‘Ai No Corrida’ is another obvious reference point. Viewers should also heed another warning though – in addition to the sex, the film also includes one scene of particularly savage and protracted violence (a scene which I found far more uncomfortable than any of the bedroom athletics).

The film is set over a period of four years and moves between Japanese occupied Shanghai and Hong Kong. The period set design is evocative and extraordinary, and the film offers a vivid, if highly subjective, portrait of the period. We only see this world through the eyes of wealthy collaborators, the women complicit in turning a blind eye to concealed atrocities and occupying their time by playing endless games of Mahjong (itself neatly symbolic of the very real game playing at the heart of the film). This subjective viewpoint might be considered the film’s one significant flaw – the audience is not afforded much of a sense as to why Wong Chia Chi might be drawn into the resistance, or why patriotic fervour was so strong in occupied Shanghai. The whole piece therefore involves some degree of suspension of disbelief, a greater problem when the issues at the heart of the film are very real and powerful.

It compensates for this with masterful structuring and careful pacing, beginning at its conclusion (with coded and subtle hints of intrigue and covert operations), before veering into a flashback that lasts the best part of two hours, eventually returning to where we left off. Lee elicits superb performances from his cast – particularly the two main protagonists, Tony Leung playing the polar opposite of his equally superb performance in Wong Kar-Wei’s ‘In The Mood For Love’. Where that film was all about restraint, ‘Lust, Caution’ eventually becomes about reckless abandon, and the contrast between private freedom and palpable public threat. Leung’s Mr. Yee is cold, callous and detached and, whilst we never see him at work with the collaborating government, we know that he is capable of great cruelty and menace. Tang Wei is every bit his match though – beautiful and entrancing, she is a magnetic presence, making her seduction of Yee, leaving him vulnerable to assassination, convincing in spite of the film’s aforementioned flaw.

Anthony Quinn may have a valid point about the ‘brutality’ at the centre of the film, as it’s possible that the film raises questions about the subjugation of women, sexually, personally and politically, that it doesn’t quite follow through. The sexual encounters between Yee and his seductress begin with intense violence and arguably retain a consistent element of masochism. Wong Chia Chi, in pretending to be a married woman by the name of Mak Tai Tai and dedicating her body and soul to a political cause, is subordinating herself to her male superiors. In order to play the married role convincingly, she is forced to lose her virginity to a womanising member of the resistance circle, in perfunctory and entirely unerotic scenes that contrast horribly with what is to come. The wives in Yee’s circle have little to do but play Mahjong, shielded from the brutal reality of war and politics, but not afforded independent voices.

Yet this kind of sexual politics is not Lee’s primary concern here, and may be a subject best left to another film. The film is about Wong and Yee’s transgression. Wong’s emotional involvement with Yee becomes as passionate as her initial hatred for him, and her final act of assertion breaks all the rules of her engagement, and can only have one possible outcome for her. Yee’s violent lust for Wong represents an escape from the guilt of his everyday work, and the knowledge that his position is may be doomed. Although the entry of the Americans into the war is not mentioned, it leaves him with a good deal less to lose. Their union involves violence, outlandish positions and contortions, and visibly intense passion. Through it, they reveal more of their essential natures than during any other scene in the film. The contrast between their private affair and their public personas is dramatic and effective.

Some have viewed the ending of the film as a botched anticlimax. Although it comes after a lengthy build-up, it eventually happens very swiftly and suddenly, but it is not without its own drama. Perhaps these critics would have preferred an ‘LA Confidential’ or ‘Heat’ style shoot-out, entirely out of keeping with the mood and themes of the rest of the film? Bizarre and uncomfortable as Yee’s gift of a ring to Wong seems, it cements their union, and finally renders Wong unable to complete her deadly mission. Her position is further compromised by her genuine but unconsummated love for the very handsome Kuang, ringleader of the naïve resistance circle by which she herself was seduced. In the end, moral assumptions are debunked, and it is difficult to assess who are the winners and losers. ‘Lust, Caution’ is a film brave enough to recognise that history, and life, cannot be reduced to such stark terms.

Anyone wishing to undermine Ang Lee might describe him as a ‘Jack of all trades and master of none’ due to his tendency to make what, on the surface, appear to be very different films. Yet he has consistently been interested in the stripping away of public masks to reveal the private realities beneath them, and ‘Lust, Caution’ is another masterful addition to this increasingly significant canon. In this country, it seems to have suffered critically in comparison with ‘Brokeback Mountain’ which, like this film, was adapted from a short story. I would venture against the critical grain here though – I came away from ‘Brokeback Mountain’ with a palpable sense of what it is like to live in fear from breaking society’s conventions, but little sense of why the two cowboys were in love, other than through mutual frustration. I wonder if the sense of tragedy at the heart of ‘Lust, Caution’ might be even greater – the film implies that a bond of physical intimacy is irreversible and can never be purely physical, both players left irrevocably changed or destroyed by the seduction. It is a sumptuous and triumphant piece of cinema.

Messages Without Meaning

The Films of Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Thai film director Apichatpong Weerasethakul, who mercifully calls himself 'Joe', is currently the subject of a short retrospective at what we used to be able to call the National Film Theatre in London. Despite only having made five features so far, he fully deserves this attention, as one of the most audacious and original filmmakers currently at work, and for having significantly raised the profile of Thai cinema (his film ‘Tropical Malady’ was the first Thai film to win a critics’ prize at Cannes).

Perhaps his easiest film to digest is his most lengthy, the languid ‘Blissfully Yours’ which essentially unfolds in real time. It is ostensibly a tale of how a leisurely afternoon of al fresco sex is interrupted, but its subtle evocations of tensions and emotions, gradually revealed without dramatic confrontation or violence, is rather majestic. The lush attention to detail in the photographing of landscape and location is a genuine pleasure too. Whilst the deliberately slow pacing and lack of dialogue will seem unfamiliar to western audiences attuned more to the exaggerated action and the snappy scripting of American cinema, ‘Blissfully Yours’ seems remarkably conventional when placed next to his other works.

‘Tropical Malady’ is extraordinary, baffling, possibly visionary and certainly impressive. Its first half shares some of the subtleties and romanticism of ‘Blissfully Yours’, focussing on the blossoming romance between an unemployed illiterate city boy and a soldier. It strikes me as interesting that this film has been welcomed under the banner of ‘gay interest’ cinema, as this love is presented in an entirely matter-of-fact and non judgmental way. There is no reference whatsoever to identity politics, the relationship seems playful and tender without anguish or deliberation, and family members seem largely accepting and unquestioning. The most explicitly sexual moment comes when the two young men kiss and lick each other’s hands, an extraordinary moment of natural and unforced eroticism. Joe also demonstrates his brutally dry sense of humour with occasional deployments of camp – the hilarious duet between Sakda (the city boy) and a cabaret singer is a particularly brilliant moment, as is the diversion to an aerobics workout.

Yet after that moment of tantalising erotic play, Sakda mysteriously walks off into the darkness, the screen goes pitch black for ten seconds or more, and the film suddenly and quite unexpectedly changes direction. There’s a brief interlude exploring animal sprit myths, before Sakda and Keng reappear, Keng as a soldier at first chasing, and then being chased by, Sakda’s tiger spirit. There is little or no dialogue in this section and minimal music, yet the tension and claustrophobia is palpable. Joe achieves this through slow but deliberate camera movements, close-up shots expressing fear and bewilderment, and with a naturalist’s attention to the detail of the jungle.

Eventually, Keng the soldier learns more about his situation and his fate, communicating with a monkey to understand that he is both ‘prey and companion’ of the tiger. Ultimately, he must decide whether to free Sakda’s spirit by killing him, or allow himself to be devoured by him, and therefore enter his world. The final confrontation between Keng and the tiger is both mind-boggling and gripping.

What is all this about? The opening of the film may give hints as to its explanation, with an intertitle displaying a quotation emphasising the bestial nature of man that must be subsumed. So, what is Joe saying is bestial in this film? Is it the tender homosexual love depicted in the film’s first half? This seems unlikely, given that the film ends emphasising, in a unique way, the union between Keng and Sakda, and it seems unlikely that Joe would have portrayed the relationship so affectionately were this his underlying intention. I personally felt the film was emphasising that human relationships come with a peculiar combination of innocence and animalistic desires, the latter sometimes needing to be contained, but Joe himself offers no such clear explanation. It may also hint at the shifting patterns of domination and subservience within relationships too, and the extreme measures required to achieve genuine equality. Whatever it is actually about, ‘Tropical Malady’ is a compelling and fascinating film and quite possibly a masterpiece.

It also makes a lot more sense when placed next to ‘Mysterious Object at Noon’, Joe’s debut feature, pretty much unscreened in this country before now. This is shot entirely in black and white, and shares some of the blurring of fiction and documentary that characterised Abbas Kiarostami’s ‘Close Up’. It is a similarly challenging and effective film – even when it appears matter of fact, beneath the surface, there is a world of mystery, fascination and intrigue. The film shows Joe and crew travelling around Thai villages, attempting to make some kind of documentary about Thai life and culture. The result is the unfolding of a magical realist fairytale, narrated and elaborated by the people the crew meet on their journey, sometimes even acted out by them. It gives some context and background for the deployment of folk tale and mythology in ‘Tropical Malady’.

This offers no explanation whatsoever for ‘Syndromes and a Century’, however. This is Joe’s most recent film, and his contribution to the Mozart-inspired ‘New Crowned Hope’ project to which Tsai Ming-Liang also contributed the similarly outstanding ‘I Don’t Want To Sleep Alone’ (showing at the NFT in November). I must admit that Tsai’s film affected me far more on an emotional level – ‘Syndromes…’ does seem rather formalised and cold by comparison. Perhaps this is where its relationship to musical composition lies – in its emphasis on repetition, extended themes, motifs and developments. It is certainly puzzling and memorable.

I don’t share the sentiments of The Guardian’s film critic Peter Bradshaw that it is a ‘transcendentally happy’ experience though, nor do I agree with translator and critic Tony Rayns that it is an easy watch. There are moments when it is deceptively light, and this may be when the film is at its most accessible and charming but, taken as a whole, it maintains a dangerous balancing act between being hypnotic and being soporific, and any meaning or explanation is, in this case, completely elusive. There are also images that are exceptionally disquieting and unsettling – as claustrophobic and unpleasant as anything in a more conventional horror movie.

It is set consistently in a hospital – although the initial calm rural setting eventually gives way to a murkier, far more oppressive urban location in the film’s second half. Whilst it shares its bifurcated structure with ‘Tropical Malady’, it does not share that film’s sudden lurch to a radically different scenario – instead it repeats earlier scenes in different contexts, sometimes with words and themes echoed by different characters. Occasionally, there are even strong visual echoes such as the astonishing image of a large extractor pipe sucking in vapour in the second hospital’s terrifying basement, which reflects back on an earlier image of an eclipse. It’s almost as if nature is being channelled into man’s activities. The effect is both provocative and perplexing.

The film mostly seems to be dealing with unrequited affections, although this is not necessarily it key theme – the central female character, Dr. Toey, is doggedly followed by a colleague clearly besotted with her, whilst she attempts to divert him with stories about her own unfulfilled romantic feelings. There is a sketchier subplot about the hospital Dentist, also a semi-professional singer, and his growing infatuation with his Buddhist monk patient. The one relationship that appears to be based on reciprocated feelings is also fraught with tension, with the two parties clearly wanting very different paths in life. The relationship is possibly even meaningless when set against the other unconsummated romantic crusades, which Joe invests with more significance.

The first half of the film, with its hospital corridors seemingly unusually tranquil, has a feather-light touch and is really rather beautiful. It is essentially a series of wry, humorous vignettes but it sustains a casually elegant flow.

Both halves begin with Dr. Toey interviewing a new doctor, Dr. Nohng, for a job. In the first half he seems rather lost and detached, but in the second, he adopts a far more significant role, exploring the hospital’s unnerving basement, confronting a mentally disturbed patient with carbon monoxide poisoning, and invited to drink from a bottle with some ageing female doctors. It seems that all the lightness of the first half has vanished – in this dense, urban location with its high rise buildings, there is oppression, frustration and confusion in abundance.

Weerasethakul has described ‘Syndromes…’ as a ‘recreation of the lives of his parents’, both of whom were themselves Doctors, and his own memories of the hospital environment as a child. To this, he has added little by way of explanation. Is this film simply a rather languid and dreamy exploration of alternative realities or is it playing with Buddhist notions of reincarnation?

Joe has also said that his films are ‘about nothing’. Yet, the very fact that they are so haunting and immersing suggests otherwise. I found ‘Syndromes…’ his strangest work so far, at once both heart-warming and fearful. ‘Tropical Malady’ is completely extraordinary, vivid, powerful and imaginative. I would suggest these are films about everything and nothing.

Home Cinema!

Over the past two weeks, I’ve finally found some time to rent some DVDs and catch up with some films I had intended to see in the cinema over the last six months or so.

Notes On A Scandal is a frosty, intelligent film elevated by superb central performances from Judi Dench, Cate Blanchett and, especially, Bill Nighy, who makes far more of an underwritten role than might reasonably be expected. Dench revels in her creepy obsessions, both in dramatic, tense on-screen moments and in her manipulative and sinister overdubbed narration. The film (and presumably also its source material, Zoe Heller’s novel) has a sophisticated grasp of its central issues, and remains morally complex throughout. We are not invited to condemn naïve schoolteacher Sheba for her futile affair with an underage schoolboy (although I wonder whether the film would have been this brave had the genders been reversed), neither do we really know whether to detest or pity Judi Dench’s unloved, scheming and controlling obsessive. For me, there were two problems undermining the film though – there are a couple of plot elements that really strain credibility, and whilst certainly dramatic, the film has little in the way of visual invention – ultimately it feels better suited to TV than cinema.

Admirers of the revenge thriller may feel the genre has at last been given a new lease of life by Denis Dercourt’s superbly subtle film The Page Turner. The film is icy and brilliantly restrained. It has only one shocking moment of grizzly violence, but comes with a world of resentment, rage and frustration seething underneath. Deborah Francois, who already proved her acting mettle in the Dardennes brothers’ Palme D’Or winning ‘L’Enfant’, gives an even more sophisticated and meticulously controlled performance here, and with her steely beauty is absolutely sublime casting.

At just 80 minutes in length, here is a rare film with absolutely no excess whatsoever, and where meaning and intent are frequently communicated through glances and unuttered thoughts. I am not sure how intimate the relationship between concert pianists and their page turners generally is, but there’s something utterly convincing about the need for trust and dependence on which this film’s devastating plan hinges. There’s also something plausible in the intense emotions that accompany serious artistry, and in the bitterness that comes with Francois’ character adopting a role she perceives as beneath what was once rightfully hers. Apparently, Dercourt is himself also a musician as well as film-maker, and found how ‘similar the mechanisms of suspense’ were to those of music. He’s extrapolated these similar tensions brilliantly with this film.

Francois’ performance is matched by that of Catherine Frot, vulnerable (and therefore sympathetic in spite of her original injustice) as Ariane Fouchecourt, a renowned concert pianist struggling with confidence and anxiety following an accident. Francois’ Melanie, taking a role as live-in childminder in their stately family home, shocks her out of her hermetic shell, encouraging her to find aspects of herself perhaps previously concealed, whilst all the time scheming and engineering her downfall. Everything hinges on a tragic disappointment in Melanie’s childhood, captured during the film’s prologue, for which Ariane was ultimately responsible. The film deals with many issues surrounding prodigious musical talent – the difficulty in gaining access to formal musical training in a world which is still somewhat elitist, the casual arrogance and insouciance that serious performers sometimes carry with them and the difficulty in sustaining musical brilliance through advanced years and personal trauma. The film’s conclusion is unremittingly nasty, and brilliantly executed, the look of callous and malevolent satisfaction on Melanie’s face providing the icing on the cake.

Gabrielle, an adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s novella The Return by that wayward and unpredictable director Patrice Chereau, is another fine and well executed piece of French cinema, although there are moments when it feels self-consciously stagy. The intervention of inter-titles and loud, clamorous classical music under the dialogue are techniques borrowed from silent cinema. I’m not sure they add as much to the picture as Chereau clearly intended, but the two central performances (for the film is essentially a two-person chamber piece) are so superb as to turn these reservations into minor quibbles. Isabelle Huppert is characteristically wonderful as Gabrielle, a sophisticated woman part of a cultured bourgeois set but locked in an entirely loveless marriage with Pascal Greggory’s complacent Jean.

One evening Jean arrives home to find a letter from Gabrielle informing him she has left for another man, but she returns a mere four hours later, confused by conflicting emotions and guilt. The ensuing series of confrontations between the two reveal complex power dynamics within the marriage, suppressed frustration and resentment, considerable self-deception and loathing. Greggory is superb as Jean, who seems to regard emotion as a demeaning excess to be constrained at all costs, almost matching Huppert’s compelling iciness (she is perhaps the only woman alive who could deliver a line like ‘the thought of your sperm inside me repulses me’ and still retain her composure). The period locations are superb, and this modest but successful film appears to have been somewhat overlooked.

Guillermo Del Toro’s acclaimed and popular film Pan’s Labyrinth no doubt works much more effectively on a bigger screen, but it’s easy to see why this has been a rare foreign language film with broad appeal. The attention to detail and spectacular audacity with which Del Toro and his effects team have conjured young Ofelia’s private fantasy world is a marvel to behold. Some have questioned the film’s success in placing a fantasy landscape on an equal footing with an historical one (the film is set during the Spanish Civil War), but it’s worth noting that that the historical element of the film is very much in microcosm, focussing on one Franco-ite compound surrounded by groups of Republican Guerillas. Del Toro doesn’t really attempt to explain the wider context of the Spanish Civil War. In some ways, the private and brutal world of Sergi Lopez’s villainous Vidal is very much a parallel to Ofelia’s escape into the extraordinary underworld. I found Vidal a little caricatured as a tyrant – an evil stepfather capable of barbarous cruelty and unfailingly self-righteous. The fantasy element of the film, which is very much presented as ‘real’ rather than a dream or an illusion, can essentially be reduced to a series of episodic confrontations with bizarre and frequently threatening creatures, and these scenes resonate gloriously in the mind long after the end credits have rolled. There are problems with execution – and the film’s interweaving of alternate worlds is not always entirely successful. Still, I found the film’s conclusion surprisingly moving, and the whole film is dominated by an outstanding performance Ivana Baquero as the intrepid, imaginative Ofelia.

John Cameron Mitchell’s Shortbus has been somewhat patronisingly dismissed in some quarters as a ‘sex comedy’, with many feeling that it is not as profound as it thinks it is. All I can say is that these critics must be very self-satisfied and smug in their own insights into the mysteries of life (as well as being sexually satiated) as I felt this film had daring, provocative and incisive things to say about private lives. Real sex has now become quite commonplace in movies (although not, it must be conceded, in American cinema), so there’s little offensive or shocking about Shortbus’ inclusion of fellatio (some of it, staggeringly, self-administered), penetration, erections and ejaculation. The scenes could certainly be viewed as pornographic if viewed entirely out of context, but Shortbus is by no means a porn film, as it very carefully plots the tensions and interconnections between its characters’ sexual journeys and their emotional lives. It asks questions about the role of its audience. In much the same way as Michael Haneke’s ‘Funny Games’ satirised movie violence, the film suggests that ‘voyeurism is participation’. As one of the characters films an amateur film intended as a suicide note, we wonder whether this is material we should be watching. In the end, the voyeurism at the heart of the film is proved to be essential, as it is a voyeur character who jolts the movie back to celebrating life.

Whilst move movie sex exists in a world of idealised eroticism and is frequently wholly unconvincing, the sex in Shortbus (both straight and gay) is adventurous, quirky, sometimes absurd, entirely genuine but not necessarily arousing. This not only serves to distance the film from that most obnoxious of genres, the erotic thriller, but also from the pompous, indulgent sexual commentaries of Catherine Breillat. The sub-plot of a frustrated woman (herself ironically a sex therapist) in search of an orgasm may well be a direct reference to Breillat’s infinitely more pretentious ‘Romance’, but mercifully the film has none of the outrageous superiority of ‘Sex is Comedy’ or ‘Anatomy of Hell’, films with which it will inevitably be compared. The latter was particularly offensive in its casual homophobia, arguing not only that all men hate women, but that gay men inevitably hate women more, because of their innate inability to understand the mysteries of female genitalia (personally, I can’t understand anyone, gay or straight, who hates women). Mercifully, Shortbus is less preening and self-conscious in its unpicking of the psychology of sex and sexuality.

The film is certainly very funny, as any film containing such a painfully hilarious demolition of the Jackson Pollock school of painting inevitably must be. It’s the sort of film that can get away with a line like ‘I’m sorry, but I have a vibrating egg between my legs!’. What’s most impressive about the film, aside from the real demands it places on its excellent cast, is the exquisitely moving material it draws from it. Yes, the movie is full of sex, but it is characterised as much by snappy and intelligent dialogue and ingenious editing. Those who dismiss the film suggest that its chief insight is that its characters sex lives and emotional lives are not one and the same thing – but I think it actually achieves far more than this. It is a film that dares to suggest that we often struggle to find what we’re looking for in love and lust, and that when we do find it, it might actually be too heavy a burden for us to bear. The characters are all in some way unfulfilled, whether in relationships or not. The candid ‘dare’ meeting between dominatrix Severin (who hides the fact that she is actually called Jennifer Aniston!) and depressed James in a small cupboard may be the boldest and most moving scene in American cinema since River Phoenix confessed his love for Keanu Reeves in My Own Private Idaho. I’m baffled by those who have argued that the film offers no insight into its characters’ emotions or psychology and in its emphasis on honesty above deception, the film may have a moral centre that even those most offended by its explicitness could perhaps accept.

The film centres around Shortbus parties, polysexual orgiastic dens of hedonism and free love in an underground New York club. The parties revolve around the outrageously camp Master of Ceremonies Justin Bond, who brilliantly undercuts the hedonistic ideal by saying ‘just look at it – it’s like the 60s, but without the hope’. This quite brilliantly sums up the underlying sadness at the heart of the movie, although Cameron Mitchell bravely concludes everything with a ray of light (‘we all get it in the end’).

The film benefits considerably from a superb soundtrack, with incidental music from Yo La Tengo, as well as songs from Animal Collective and The Hidden Cameras (whose Lex Vaughn has a brief acting role). It has a real independent spirit, which has misled the likes of Philip French into dismissing it as ‘amateurish’. It’s actually very carefully put together, with a narrative arc that moves from humorous satire to emotional trauma, before a visually stunning cabaret finale. John Cameron Mitchell has reinvented the ensemble piece with this enjoyable and very clever film.

Another Report From The London Film Festival

The Alternative Closing Night Gala

Yep that's right, whilst some muppets headed in the direction of Leicester Square for the Closing Night Gala screening of Babel (and if Inarritu's previous, horribly overrated work is anything to go by, this will be a tedious, self-satisfied and dour experience), I headed to the NFT (soon to be rebranded as BFI Southbank) for two weird and wonderful films on the last night of the festival. Both, in slightly differing ways, reminded me a little of the recent work of Korea's Kim Ki-Duk, particularly 3 - Iron and Spring, Summer, Autumn Winter...and Spring. No bad thing.

First up was Tsai Ming-Liang's I Don't Want To Sleep Alone, a defiantly dreamy and mysterious mood piece that I found completely enthralling. The slow pace is tricky initially, and I'm not sure British audiences will be all that easily prepared to yield to it. Indeed, about 20 minutes in, there was a mass exodus from the cinema. Only one of Tsai's last five films has received any kind of significant cinematic distribution in the UK (Goodbye, Dragon Inn). Even accounting for this, it astounds me that people pay inflated festival prices to see movies having done no background research on the director. Tsai is an auteur with a very singular style that requires some patience on the part of the audience. This film contains virtually no dialogue, and instead unfolds in long, wordless sequences that emphasise the physical and erotic tensions between the characters. It's a technique completely alien to western audiences - and this film has a unique intimacy and peculiar force all of its own. In places, it's also very funny, which will do much to stifle any accusations of pretentiousness that Tsai may well be placed with. Much of the language comes from the frequent interjection of songs - either captured on radios or performed by street musicians. They all serve to enhance the opaque but haunting mood of the images.

The film is essentially a visual musing on the nature of physical desire, and, perhaps more controversially, the erotic associations implicit in acts of care. A homeless man is beaten to a pulp by a criminal gang demanding money, and is eventually helped out, and offered half of an old mattress, by a member of a group of immigrant workers. The two men sleep next to each other chastely, but a number of carefully filmed scenes depict the physical and emotional tensions between them. Meanwhile, a parallel story unfolds whereby a young woman cares for the paralysed son of a cafe owner. She is humiliated by her domineering female boss. As he recovers, the homeless character of the other story becomes intimately involved with both women, and torn between them and his chaste relationship with his own carer. As a toxic heat haze descends on the city, all three characters begin to give way to their desires and the results are strangely compelling.

I Don't Want To Sleep Alone is Tsai's first film to be produced in his native Malaysia (previously he has worked in Taiwan, effectively in exile). The use of location is masterful, from the cafe to the extraordinary abandoned factory flooded with water. The photography is consistently enthralling, and the final sequences have a rapturous quality unlike anything else I've seen in recent years. Some will no doubt react adversely to Tsai's uncompromising high-mindedness, but I found this to be a bold, beautiful and intelligently provocative work from a modern master.

Zhang Ke Jia's Still Life was a last minute addition to the festival, and surprise winner of the Golden Lion at this year's Venice Film Festival. It's safe to say that this film relies a lot more on conventional narrative and characterisation than Tsai's film, but it still has a surreal strangeness and glacial pace unusual for western audiences. It also interweaves two stories, although not as explicitly. Set in the village of Fengjie (now demolished) on the site of the extraordinary Three Gorges Dam (the world's largest Hydroelectric project), it tells the story of two characters returning to the city looking for loved ones. A man is looking for his wife and child, neither of whom he has seen in the last 16 years, whilst a woman arrives looking for her husband, although it is some time before we appreciate her motive.

Whilst the film certainly achieves some emotional impact from their stories (although some may be more bemused by the dry, almost deadpan nature of the performances), it is less about plot than theme and mood. Zhang's greatest success in this picture is to capture the strange atmosphere of a place being demolished to make way for man-made floods, with all the confusion and transitory sensations that arise from forced relocation. There are two very bizarre scenes - one in which the two main characters see a UFO fly through the valley (is this purely to give some sense that their experiences are linked?), and another where a superimposed spaceship appears to blast off entirely unexpectedly. I'm not sure these sequences added very much, although I appreciated the final surrealist image of a man walking a tightrope between two high buildiings a good deal more, as this seemed to symbolise the precarious nature of the local lives of this region more effectively. It's ultimately a straightforward, if inclonclusive work, although its masterful handling of time and place, landscape and atmosphere, adds considerable weight and impact. Again, like Tsai's film, the intervention of music is significant - in this case some spectacularly cheesy Chinese pop music, with a romantic lyricism that seems peculiarly intoxicating. The Venice award should mean it gets full UK distribution next year, which is good news for anyone prepared to look beyond the ordinary for their cinematic fixes.

The London Film Festival

I haven't written about cinema for some time, but my appetite for watching films has remained voracious through recent months. I was particularly pleased to attend three films at this year's London Film Festival. It's the first time I've managed to enjoy this event, and it's worth stating that artistic director Sandra Hebron has produced a superb line-up of films. It's gratifying to see new films from the masters of world cinema in the enormous Leicester Square Odeon, a space usually reserved for the most hollow and banal of blockbusting 'entertainment'. Not only that, but this festival seems less concerned with glitz and glamour, and also less concerned with judging awards and prizes. Instead, it is a celebration of the great diversity and quality of modern cinema. Those that attest that cinema is in a state of perpetual decline need look no further for firm rebuttal of their arguments.

Having said that, all three of the films I saw at the festival were in some way flawed. Most disappointing of the three was Wong Kar-Wai's 2046. To my mind, the Hong Kong director is one of the greatest living film directors, and his visionary approach to narrative and structure has produced some beautiful films, particularly when combined with the stylish cinematography of his collaborator Christopher Doyle. His previous film 'In The Mood For Love' was an atmospheric and evocative masterpiece so much is expected of this picture, which has had a ludicrously troubled gestation. The baffling success of Zhang Yimou's Hero (a film that seemed to me to be all style no substance, all surface no feeling) has reawakened interest in Asian cinema, and it's no surprise that Wong's latest production is being greeted with zealous enthusiasm. It has employed something in the region of seven different cinematographers, and following a Cannes screening which confused many, it was deemed to be unfinished and the version showing in London was a re-editied version. Unfortunately, it still seemed fragmentory and frustratingly opaque. Some of its images are striking, particularly the mysterious shot which opens and closes the film. However, its ideas appear to have been pieced together almost at random, and the meaning of the film only starts to become clear in its final third. It's not an overlong picture at just over two hours, but it really seems to drag and, particularly in its middle third, feels dangerously repetetive.

It is supposed to be a sequel of sorts to the previous film, with Tony Leung reprising the same role. He plays a writer who stays in a hotel to work. He is inspired by room 2046, and the number becomes the title of his latest novel. The film intercuts scenes of his relationships with various women, which often seem fraught, intense and complex with some loosely realised scenes from his science fiction novel. The problem is that the sequence of the film is eliptical and elusive. The majority of the science fiction scenes are left to the end of the film, and don't really help elucidate much about the earlier scenes. Most of the encounters between Leung's character and the various women seem to be like circular arguments and don't appear to ever reach a resolution. Added to this is the problem that the leading female performances, from the undeniably beautiful Faye Wong and the ubiquitous Zhang Ziyi, seem to be overstated and bordering on histrionic. There really are only so many shots of teardrops and scenes of perpetual crying that any audience can stand. The film is bizarrely inconclusive about the nature of love and relationships, and plods along as an ill-conceived mess.

Dialogue is minimal, and music frequently employed. In fact, the film feels like a series of experiments in form, with a wide variety of stylistic devices and sounds being employed to vary the mood. Some are more successful than others, and there were times when I did feel strangely moved by the combination of music and image. Unfortunately, this is a film comprised of a series of tableaux that don't add up to a coherent whole. Wong has used complex editing and shifting cinematic styles before, to much greater effect, particularly in the outstaning 'Happy Together'. Here, there really is no narrative thread to grasp at. Towards the end of the film, Maggie Cheung returns as a character called Shieu-Lien, who shares a name with the character she played in 'In The Mood For Love', yet it is left ambiguous as to whether or not the two characters are meant to be the same. What does, at last, become clear, is that Tony Leung's character has been veering between a number of different women, searching for the more crystalline and higher love that he shared with the original Shieu-Lien. Why on earth did it take so long for Wong to make this point? Does it really justify the two hours of confusion we have just endured? No doubt many critics will be awed by the power of this film's mood and imagery into composing rave reviews - but images without coherent ideas or emotions behind them don't make for great cinema.

Given that I am not a big fan of Gregg Araki, I'm not entirely sure why I went to see his latest effort Mysterious Skin. I think it was mainly so I could judge for myself how well he tackled a weighty topic. His previous films 'Nowhere' and 'The Doom Generation' have been tacky, nihilistic films emphasising hedonism and violence. 'Mysterious Skin' addresses the subject of child abuse, and does so with decidely mixed results. It is nevertheless by some considerable distance Araki's finest work to date, and a sure sign that he is moving in the right direction.

Perhaps inevitably, Mysterious Skin reminded me of Lukas Moodysson's similar, but more coherent 'Lilya 4 Ever', particularly in that it contains some grim and unflinching scenes. Much of the film makes for disturbing viewing, and it is these harsh and compromising elements that are most successful. Araki's expose of the lack of options facing both young and old in smalltown America is hardly original, but is presented in a spare and entirely convincing manner here. This is all helped along by superb performances from the film's two leads, both taking considerable risks with their previously safe reputations by agreeing to take the roles in this film. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, better known as the long-haired kid in Third Rock From The Sun gives a brooding and mature performance here. Brady Corbitt (I believe one of the stars of the supposedly dire Thunderbirds movie) has to deal with a slightly more sterotyped and restrictive character, but manages to be sympathetic and moving nonetheless. The juxtaposition of the two characters' contrasting reaction to the abuses they suffered at the hands of their paedophile baseball coach are effective, and I found the final confrontation with their past to be particularly devastating.

Levitt plays Neil, a frustrated youth whose childhood endurances we are introduced to in pretty unpleasant detail. He is a difficult character, who clearly has problems forming meaningful relationships and he seems to drift into the seedy world of a gay hustler simply because he has nothing to do, and no longer really cares what happens to him. His apathy, and compulsion to keep repeating meetings with increasingly violent men, is troubling and believable, as is the blissful ignorance or inability to help of those who surround him. It all culminates with a deeply horrible rape sequence that left me feeling physically and mentally shaken. By contrast, Corbitt plays Brian Lackey, a young man frustrated by his loss of memory, believing that he had been abducted by aliens in his youth. The truth of his childhood ordeal has been cruelly withheld from him, and he gradually attempts to piece together his past, finding the major missing piece of the jigsaw when he finally tracks down Neil, with whom he had been on the same baseball team.
This side of the story presents more problems - the alien abduction storyline seems a little hoary and cliched, and adds an uncomfortable layer of surreal comedy to the proceedings. No doubt this came from the source material (Scott Heim's novel of the same name), but it may have been elaborated and heightened to complement the dreamlike atmosphere which infuses this otherwise harrowingly realistic picture. Indeed, there are a couple of surreal scenes (one involving that most depressing of cinematic cliches, suddenly falling snow) that seem like they belong in a different film entirely.

Ultimately, these issues are so devastatingly real and severe that they probably required a surer narrative presence than Araki's unsteady guidance. He seems unconcerned with lingering, and frequently cuts too quickly from one scene to another. This is surely a remnant of his low-budget exploitation style from films like 'Nowhere'. From the evidence presented here, Araki would be on much surer ground if he concentrates on a non-judgemental realism. This may well be where he might find his true cinematic voice.

A big event for me was the UK premier of the new film from Greek director Theo Angelopoulos. Angelopoulos is one of the true masters of cinema - with a distinctive personal vision comprised of stately pacing and elaborate long tracking shots and set pieces. Some critics felt that his last film 'Eternity and A Day' represented a compromise of his vision. I disagree wholeheartedly. It was without doubt a more accessible film than his earlier works - but it justly won the Palme D'or for its extraordinary resonance and humanist concern. I found it to be one of the most beautiful films I've ever seen and it repays repeated viewing. To my mind, 'The Weeping Meadow', the first part of a projected trilogy (at his rate of producing films, Angelopoulos may well be dead before he manages to complete the set), seems to be a retrogressive step back towards a more austere style of film making. Its palette of colours is more muted, and the mood is relentlessly tragic. It also repeats a number of Angelopoulos' regular concerns, most significantly the plight of stateless refugees. I'm confident, however, that repetition has not diluted these concerns, nor the deep humanism that characterises his films. It is still, of course, defiantly elaborate, and I simply have no idea how some of the characteristic set piece scenes in this film were constructed. Its images have a resounding power lacking in most western films, particularly the extraordinary middle section, which incorporates a flood and a funeral, and ranks with the best of Angelopoulos' work.

At the Q and A afterwards, many of the audience felt that the film contained little hope. In Eleni, Angelopoulos seems to have created a character that acts chiefly as a cipher for the suffering of Greek history more generally, and there is no doubt that her despair in this film is palpable. Yet, her plight to me seemed to be profoundly affecting, and it sustained this film throughout its lengthy three hours. There may not be hope as such, but as in all his films, Angelopoulos seems concerned chiefly with elucidating the harsh reality of life in times of war and confusion, and there is no doubt that his vision is sympathetic and passionate. This film is a powerful and compelling illustration of the devastation of war. In its focus on one small village, it is structured in microcosmic terms, yet has an epic sweep that is distinctive in its lack of bombast. It is certainly another powerful statement to add to one of the great canons of modern film-making.