Rammbock: Berlin Undead

Here's a new review from Horror correspondent Steve Chandler. Enjoy.

DIR: Marvin Kren.

Clocking in at a little more than an hour including end credits I hesitate to call Rammbock: Berlin Undead a movie. It is to the feature length horror flick what the novella is to the full length novel. What we have here is a lean, mean calling card that has been stripped clean of anything that could be described as extraneous. In fact it has more substance in it’s short running time than most of what passes for horror cinema these days. As a piece of entertainment it provides substantial reason to mark director Marvin Kren as one to watch. I truly believe this could be his Mulberry Street. Back in 2006 at the Dead By Dawn film festival in Edinburgh I saw Mulberry Street and left the screening thinking “this director is going someplace”. The director in question was Jim Mickle who I recently found guilty of helming one of the best horror movies of 2011; the Zombieland meets The Road genre gem that is Stake Land. Rammbock has me feeling the same flavour of anticipation. I believe that given the opportunity Mr. Kren has a future classic up his sleeve and Rammbock will hopefully catch the eye of someone in the position to give him the opportunity to prove me right.

Rammbock shares a lot of it’s DNA with Mickle’s Mulberry Street. The focus is on a small cast of characters who live in an apartment complex somewhere in Berlin. They find themselves at the mercy of ever growing mob of ravening, bloodthirsty walking dead; victims of a virus that can be transmitted via contact with the bodily fluids of one of the infected. The movie opens with main character Michael (Michael Fuith) arriving unannounced in Berlin to return a set of house keys to the girlfriend from whom he has recently split. It’s obvious from the off that he still has feelings for his ex, Gabi (Anna Graczyk), as he rehearses a halting, ill prepared speech to the taxi driver who has just dropped him off. Michael is pretty far removed from your typical hero. I would place him in his mid to late thirties, with thinning hair and the physique of someone who is less inclined to hit the gym for a workout than he is the couch for a pizza and a few beers. The rest of the characters that inhabit this movie are, likewise, normal everyday people who, when faced with the virus outbreak and the resultant disintegration of society, react in a mostly believable fashion. Some rise to the occasion. Some go to pieces and make stupid mistakes that cost them and sometimes those around them their lives. Some are selfless and given to sudden moments of heroism. Some are revealed as base cowards who look out for no-one but themselves. But most importantly...they feel real.

I should also mention that Rammbock isn’t an zombie movie in the classic Romero sense. The undead here don’t shamble and moan. Instead they attack with the ferocity of a pack of bloodcrazed, wild beasts; emitting terrifying shrieks as they overwhelm any unfortunate soul that crosses their path. They have far more in common with the rage virus casualties of 28 Days Later or the victims of the demonic plague that breaks loose in the REC movies. The writer has also gone to some effort to put his own stamp on the nature of the virus. Once infected the virus lies dormant until activated by the first surge of post infection adrenalin. Once infected, if the virus continues to lie dormant for an undisclosed period the body’s immune system will fight back resulting in a complete recovery. In the event of the world going to hell in a handcart how easy would it be, when faced by such a terrifying situation, to maintain the necessary composure to combat the onset of the full blown virus? It’s this element of the movie more than any other that generates no small amount of suspense.

I mentioned that I don’t consider Rammbock to be a movie because of it’s length. That’s not to say that I think it should be longer. Many other directors would have shoehorned an extra thirty minutes worth of scenes into a story that simply doesn’t require it, in an effort to bring it up to feature length, resulting in an excess of flab. At no point does Rammbock outstay it’s welcome. It moves at just the right pace. Slowing down where necessary for moments of character development then hurtling at breakneck speed during the various set pieces where the survivors come under attack.

Alongside Michael there’s one other main character, a young maintenance worker by the name of Harper (Theo Trebs). They get trapped together in Gabi’s apartment minutes into the movie when all hell breaks loose. Both characters are fleshed out enough that I cared about them when the story placed them in jeopardy. Other characters are set up in a more economical fashion but skilfully enough that I understood who they were and gave a shit whether they lived or died. These are two tricks that many modern horror movies fail to accomplish. I’ve seen far too many horror movies that sacrifice character development on the altar of gore. None of the actors here are especially experienced but each and every one of them acquit themselves well.

Likewise, the direction is solid throughout. There was none of the shakycam nonsense that crops up so often these days to put a dent in my enjoyment. There was nothing showy about the camerawork but I welcomed the fact that I at no point lost track of what was going on.
So what we have here is an fantastic example of low budget horror movie making done right. Rammbock was produced by a group of talented individuals who have clearly seen a lot of similar movies and have succeeded in making something that doesn’t look like an uninspired hack job in comparison. A trap countless straight to DVD abominations all too easily fall into. I will admit that I’m predisposed to enjoy horror movies that stray into apocalyptic territory. I even got through the excremental Nightmare City, a movie that would insult the intelligence of a cabbage, without putting my size ten boot through the TV screen. Regardless of my infatuation with this genre this is an impressive début and I look forward to seeing what Marvin Kren has in store next. There’s nothing here to suggest that given a larger budget he won’t give us horror junkies something to really sink our teeth into. Something similar but on a grander scale would be very sweet indeed.

DVD Review: My Friend From Faro [15]

DIR: Nana Neul

The Film
Though it's hardly mainstream, the lesbian coming of age movie has, in recent years, become a familiar part of the cinematic landscape, and as such it has laid down many of its own standard forms and clichés, so you have to credit début writer/director Nana Neul for trying to do something at least a little different from the usual coming out story.

The film centres on closeted tomboy Melanie (Anjorka Strechel), who meets Jenny (Lucie Hollmann) after almost running her over. Jenny assumes that Mel is a boy, and Mel, attracted, plays along, claiming to be from Portugal and named Miguel. At the same time, challenged to bring her new boyfriend; Miguel, from Portugal, to a family dinner, Mel hires a co-worker (Manuel Cortez) to pose as Miguel. You can pretty much guess that these lies lead to a lot of confusion and heartache for all concerned.

The obvious touchstone for My Friend From Faro is Boys Don't Cry, or rather the real story of Teena Brandon before the events of that film. Like Brandon, Melanie poses as a boy in order to seduce a straight girl, but in this fictional context it is harder to sympathise with Melanie. The main reason is that we know throughout that Jenny is 14, and though she's told Melanie that she's 16, she looks and seems very much younger, which gives a creepy vibe to the relationship (compounded both by the deception it is built on and by a late revelation about Melanie's age). While it's easy to understand why Melanie lies to Jenny, it's harder to see why she lies to her family and invents a fictional boyfriend, there doesn't seem to be any pressure on her to be 'normal', at least not beyond the fact that they assume she's straight, and while the scenes with Melanie's family are well played, there is little inherent drama to them, as there seem to be no stakes.

On the plus side, the performances are uniformly good, with leads Strechel - who convinces physically as an androgynous figure who could be taken for a handsome young man - and Hollmann both committed and impressive, as hard as it is to really invest in their relationship, you do believe their investment in it. There is also a quickly built but convincing brother/sister relationship between Strechel and Florian Panzner, and an appealing performance from Manuel Cortez as Mel's Portugese co-worker/fictional boyfriend.

Beyond a creative title sequence, Nana Neul doesn't do anything flashy as a director. She keeps the focus largely on her actors, and is served well by their performances. She does, however, develop a few subtle things with her blocking and visuals, notably a close relationship between Jenny and her friend Bianca, which seems to hint at a deeper desire on Bianca's part. There are only a couple of really active scenes in the film, and Neul fumbles both. The car crash and a chase towards the end of the film both play almost completely in reactions, and feel slipshod in terms of both shooting and editing, but at the end of the day these are small problems, and the film's focus is on relationships and conversation, which are well handled by the director.

On the whole, My Friend From Faro is a mixed bag; it's well performed, but hard to connect to, and despite its undoubted qualities and several very good scenes (the family dinner with Melanie's fake boyfriend; Jenny, Bianca and Melanie's night out and Jenny and Melanie's date at the beach all stand out), it ends up feeling a bit inconsequential, especially as it ends on a very open note, but one that doesn't - unlike, say, the ending of Fucking Amal - leave you anxious to know what happened after that last cut to black. There are good things here, and I'll be keeping an eye on both Anjorka Strechel and Lucie Hollmann, but My Friend From Faro doesn't quite come together.

My Friend From Faro is released in the UK on May 16th by Peccadillo Pictures. If you want to order the DVD, and help out 24FPS at the same time, please use the link below.

LFF 2010 review roundup 2

HOWL
DIR: Robert Epsitein / Jeffrey Friedman

This biopic of Allen Ginsberg doesn’t, unlike most biographical films, attempt to tell the story of its subject’s whole life. Instead, the film adopts a very specific focus on Ginsberg’s most famous work; the titular, four part, poem Howl. It focuses on Ginsberg (James Franco) as he writes and performs Howl in 1955, and documents events in 1957, as Ginsberg is interviewed while Howl is being tried for obscenity. The dialogue is, apparently, entirely drawn from interviews and trial transcripts. Despite the fact that HOWL is unusually specific in the time period it focuses on, the film can still feel rather scattershot at times, as if it is trying to explore this undoubtedly important piece of work from too many angles all at once.

The film largely falls into three parts, which are intercut throughout. The first is a (presumably complete) reading of Howl itself. This was probably my least favourite part of the film, not because Howl is obscene or offensive, more because I found it rather pretentious and self-indulgent. However, that’s mitigated by the way the reading is presented, in that it is rendered with some genuinely beautiful animation, which illustrates, in a slightly abstract manner, Ginsberg’s words. The second major part of the film is the obscenity trial, at which Ginsberg was not present, and it is here that the starry cast make their presence felt. Most of the roles are cameos, but everyone makes an impression, especially Mary Louise Parker, in an atypical role as a very prim high school English teacher and Jeff Daniels as a pompous poetry professor. The trial scenes are, however, dominated by the two attorneys, played by David Strathairn (prosecution) and Jon Hamm (defence). Good though the acting is here, there can’t help but be a slight stiffness to the sequence, shackled as it is to the transcript, and it becomes overtly preachy towards the end of the film.

The one thing you really can’t fault about HOWL is James Franco’s performance, which dominates the film despite the interview sequences in which he’s on screen being relatively short. He reads Howl brilliantly, accentuating the percussive language, and completely disappears as Ginsberg. If the film as a whole doesn’t come up to the level of Franco’s performance (and it doesn’t) then it’s not for lack of effort. HOWL throws a lot of things at the screen, not all of them stick, but it’s far more interesting than watching one more run of the mill biopic.


UPSIDE DOWN: THE CREATION RECORDS STORY
DIR: Danny O'Connor

Creation Records, in many ways, defined what my teens sounded like. Oasis were so inescapable in the mid 1990’s that not only did Creation reap truly huge record sales, but every other label began to sign bands who sounded like they should have been on Creation (and, let’s be frank, were in many cases far better than Oasis). That period forms part of the story in Danny O’Connor’s hugely enjoyable documentary about Creation (and, to a large extent, its founder Alan McGee) but what the film is more interested in is the journey to that point.

We discover that that journey was mostly undertaken in haze of drugs and parties, that Creation was always just a half step from bankruptcy, and that it was run not so much by businessmen as by insanely devoted music fans who were simply desperate to help bands release albums and singles they loved.

The story is told in great detail, with warmth and humour, by the people who lived it, notably Alan McGee, co-founder Dick Green, Primal Scream’s Bobby Gillespie (a longtime friend of McGee’s, even before they were playing and releasing music), My Bloody Valentine’s Kevin Shields and Oasis’ unfailingly entertaining Noel Gallagher.

The Creation Records story could easily have been told on television, but director Danny O’Connor’s treatment, though it’s largely just talking heads and clips of bands, feels cinematic. That’s largely thanks to the beautiful black and white cinematography employed for the interviews and to the well designed and dynamic graphics. Archive footage of the bands is used intelligently throughout, adding context to the story rather than stopping it dead for musical interludes (though, it has to be said, I’m still of the opinion that ANY use of The Boo Radleys Wake Up Boo, whatever the context and however brief, should be punishable in law).

Of course music is the heart and soul of the film, and the love of it bleeds through almost every interview, especially McGee’s. The soundtrack is, obviously, stunning, showcasing bands I’d never heard of, bands I need to discover, bands I’d forgotten I liked… and Oasis. At 101 minutes, UPSIDE DOWN does start to feel a little baggy towards the end, at which point it also seems to rush through the last few years, leading to a few potentially interesting avenues going unexplored (in a film so in thrall to the effects of drugs on music, why is there nothing about the making of Oasis’ coke hazed Be Here Now?).

For the most part though this is a fascinating story, well told, and packed to the gills with great music and well worth seeing for anyone with a passing interest in the indie music scene of the 80’s and 90’s. Beware though, seeing this film may mean that you’ll be spending obscene amounts on albums.


BLESSED EVENTS
DIR: Isabelle Stever

It’s not often, you may have noticed by now, that I’m lost for an opinion, but five days after seeing it, and having thought about it a lot, I still don’t know whether BLESSED EVENTS is a good film or not.

The film is about Simone (Annika Kuhl) a German woman in her mid thirties who becomes pregnant after a one night stand. When she tells the father to be (Stefan Rudolf) he’s very happy. They start a relationship, buy a house, and begin preparing for the baby. However, Simone doesn’t seem so excited, and as the pregnancy goes on she seems to grow ever more disenchanted with it.

Very little actually happens in BLESSED EVENTS, but what keeps it intriguing is the fact that the whole film has an atmosphere of tension and threat about it. It’s acutely felt in Annika Kuhl’s performance, despite the fact that she gives little away outwardly there is an ever present fear that Simone’s detachment is just a few seconds from making her do something terrible to herself and her unborn child. The problem is perhaps that the film explains nothing. Simone’s feelings about the pregnancy are never vocalized, her relationship with a mysterious bearded man who we assume to be an ex (Arno Frisch) is never addressed in any detail and for all the sense of impending horror nothing ever actually happens. As an exercise in extended tension, BLESSED EVENTS is interesting, but there’s no payoff.

The performances are strong, especially given the constraints of the often rather banal script, and I suspect that Annika Kuhl, though she doesn’t really have a lot to do here, is a fine actress, but it’s hard to judge when the atmosphere of the film feels so strange and surreal. Isabelle Stever maintains a chilly distance with her direction, and there are some striking visuals here, but there are also some inexplicably odd recurring choices. Why, for instance, are there so many shots in which characters heads are outside the frame? However, Stever does pull out one great moment, with an enigmatic final image, which will have anyone who sees this movie engaged in a raging debate about what happens in the minutes after the credits roll.

BLESSED EVENTS definitely isn’t uninteresting, but as to whether it’s any good? I’ll have to see it again and let you know.


HAPPY FEW
DIR: Antony Cordier

It’s not that HAPPY FEW is a bad film, I just feel like I’ve seen it before. This French film about two couples (Marina Fois and Roschdy Zem and Elodie Bouchez and Nicolas Duvachelle) who begin swapping partners on a ‘no rules’ basis just feels so familiar throughout, even down to the fact that it is very easy to see who among the group will be the first to raise a problem with the arrangement, and who will start developing some real feelings. Because of this familiarity and predictability, HAPPY FEW feels pretty long. It’s notable in the film’s last twenty minutes or so, during which I expected the credits at the end of every scene.

The thing is though; this is not a badly made film. Antony Cordier and Julie Peyer’s screenplay establishes four very individual characters, gives them each a personality and has a few witty exchanges (one about sexual feng shui is notable). Cordier’s direction isn’t bad either; as even in the many, many sex scenes he finds a lot of variety in his shots.

Best are the performances, all of which are pretty solid. Zem and Bouchez are well matched; both darkly charismatic, but it is Nicolas Duvachelle and Marina Fois who walk away with the acting honours. Fois is especially good, visibly hiding real hurt beneath a façade of disinterest in what her husband and his lover do and real feelings for her lover beneath a detached pursuit of pleasure. The sex scenes are frequent and exposing (and in one case extremely convincing), and the cast deserve some recognition for their fearless performances.

I want to like HAPPY FEW more, but at the end of the day, good as many of its parts are in and of themselves, the film as a whole is not the sum of them. It just never quite engages you in the drama as it should, largely because it’s always obvious where it is going.


CONVICTION
DIR: Tony Goldwyn

The story of Betty Ann Waters (played here by Hilary ‘please can I have an Oscar?’ Swank) is amazing. Originally a high school dropout she got a degree and went to law school in her spare time over more than a decade, so that she could attempt to free her brother Kenny (Sam Rockwell) from a life without parole prison sentence for a crime she believed he didn’t commit. It’s an incredible story, and it deserves much more than this overgrown TV movie to tell it.

CONVICTION (the clanging double meaning of that title really tells you everything you need to know) isn’t ever bad, the problem is that it’s never good either. It’s like a Big Mac; sure it might be satisfying in the moment, but it’s got no nutritional value and it looks, smells and tastes like every other Big Mac you’ve ever had (and it comes with a slice of processed cheese).

The performances are all resolutely average. Hilary Swank acts her hardest as Betty Ann, but she’s never convincing in the slightest, the incredible actor who vanished into Teena Brandon’s skin in BOYS DON’T CRY appears to be gone and what we have here is a grandstanding 90 minute pitch to the academy, not once did I stop thinking ‘oh look, Hilary Swank sitting the bar exam; oh look, Hilary Swank cooking; oh look, Hilary Swank failing to look like she’s 22’ and variations on that theme. Sam Rockwell is a little better, but again there’s just that sense that you’re watching someone act the whole time, he’s usually such a subtle actor but here, from his accent on down, he’s often cartoonish. It’s nice to see Minnie Driver in a movie again, and she doesn’t seem to have aged at all, which is odd, but appealing as she is she doesn’t have a lot to do, or much of a character beyond ‘supportive friend’.

As a director, Tony Goldwyn doesn’t do anything particularly inventive. He presents the film in a straightforward, evenly lit, personality free way that any Hollywood hack could manage. Unfortunately there are a few areas where he drops the ball quite spectacularly. The biggest of them is the issue of the timeline. The film covers at least 20 years of Betty Ann Waters’ adulthood (it took her 18 to free Kenny) and in that time the sole concession to the passage of time on Hillary Swank’s face is the fact that in the scene in which she’s meant to be in her early 20’s she wears a lot of make up and has big hair. It’s a small issue, but a distracting one because, at a certain point, you begin to wonder where Betty Ann has hidden that picture of Dorian Gray. The age issue and lack of aging make up also results in some other (pretty hilarious) problems, notably Clea DuVall looking about five years older than her screen daughter Ari Graynor and the fact that Betty Ann’s teenage sons don’t age for about six years.

A few of the cameos work well, with Melissa Leo, Karen Young and Juliette Lewis all briefly enlivening this very middle of the road movie, but none of them having enough screen time to make much of an impression on CONVICTION’s utter, overwhelming averageness. You’ll have seen worse movies than CONVICTION, but even in a bad week and certainly at a London Film Festival gala, you can do better.

Yella revisited

Having looked again at Yella, thanks to the BBC Iplayer, I found that my opinion of the film hadn't changed one iota, so much so that, rather than write a new review, I've dug through my archives and found the review I wrote at the time, which I can absolutely stand by.


Yella
DIR: Christian Petzold
CAST: Nina Hoss, Devid Streisow,
Burghart Klaussner



In the largely dreadful, po-faced, Atomised there was one bright spot, an excellent, flighty, performance by Nina Hoss as the mother of the main characters. It was Hoss’ presence that sold me on this strange arthouse thriller. There are two threads to the story Yella (Hoss) is being stalked by her ex husband (Schonneman), while at the same time finding a new job, and perhaps a new romance, with a lawyer (Streisow) who is staying at the same hotel as her.

The big problem is that these threads never really come together to form any sort of cohesive whole and so what you end up with is two separate movies, neither of which really feels complete. It can be quite plodding too, with a lot of the (brief) running time taken up by business meetings about company takeovers. There are flashes of inspiration; a dynamic scene between Yella and her husband in the car and a truly scary culmination of that storyline in particular but all too often seeds are sown but never paid off. Whatever good work is done story wise is, sadly, undone late in the day by a twist so head-slappingly obvious that I had dismissed it when, 45 minutes previously, I had figured it out because it would amount to a giant fuck you to the audience.

There’s a catch though. Nina Hoss, again, completely outclasses the film. Her icy performance is 180 degrees from the one she gave in Atomised and again suggests that she is an actress of estimable abilities. The other performances are also decent but those too pale against Hoss’ leading turn. If only we could now see this talented woman in a film worthy of her, that would be great.

Review Post 65: Youth in Revolt / Ponyo / Anonyma

YOUTH IN REVOLT
DIR: Miguel Arteta
CAST: Michael Cera, Portia Doubleday



Typecasting, it is sometimes said, is casting. It’s something that a lot of stars embrace because, hey, its work. This certainly seems to be the case with Michael Cera, who first came to notice in the TV show Arrested Development, and seems to have spent his entire, short, film career so far playing the exact same dweeby character. Youth in Revolt, on the surface, seems to offer Cera a chance to stretch his acting muscles a little bit, but in doing so it demonstrates that he has little to stretch.

Cera plays Nick Twisp, a dweeby 16-year-old virgin who lives with his mother (Jean Smart) and a rotating cast of her boyfriends, when the latest boyfriend Jerry (Zach Galifianakis) has to escape some vengeful sailors, who want to beat him up for selling them a faulty car, Nick goes with his mother and Jerry to a campsite where Jerry has a mobile home. While there Nick meets and falls head over heels for Sheeni Saunders (Doubleday), they begin a relationship and when Nick has to leave they hatch a plan involving Nick being bad, so he can get thrown out of his Mother’s house, and come to live nearer Sheeni.
To help him do this Nick creates a Jean Paul Belmondo inspired alter-ego; Francois Dillinger.

Playing both sides of this character; the nerdy Nick and the cooler bad boy Francois, should have allowed Cera to prove, at last, that he can do more than be ‘that high pitched kid from Juno’. Instead it achieves the exact opposite effect, Cera appears utterly incapable of doing anything new on screen. In fact, Francois is so unconvincing a character that he undermines the film. He may say a few harsher things than Nick might, but he does it in the exact same uncertain tones as Nick, you’re never really convinced that this rather ineffectual ‘rebel’ would get Nick to do anything more radical than playing something a little more abrasive than Frank Sinatra.

Despite this, and several more problems (such as a screenplay that is very bitty, and provides much dialogue that fails to sound even remotely like words a real person might say), there’s one thing that proves the saving grace of Youth in Revolt, catapulting it over its many weaker elements. It’s funny, consistently, often extremely, funny. The dialogue does much more with the contrast between Nick and Francois than Cera is able to, take this moment when they are trying to seduce Sheeni as an example:

Francois: I'm gonna wrap your legs around my head and wear you like the crown that you are.
Nick: If that's OK with you.

There are also a lot of capable comic performances here; Cera, despite having a range that barely stretches beyond arm’s length, is a strong comedian, with great comic instincts and timing and the adult cast match him beat for beat with Galifianakis, Ray Liotta and Fred Willard (who gets several laughs just by lying still), being especially reliable sources of mirth.

The romance between Nick/Francois and Sheeni isn’t brilliantly drawn, largely because, beyond being very pretty, there’s not really much to Sheeni Saunders, and given the attachment that Nick forms to her she really ought to have a bit more personality, it’s not really Portia Doubleday’s fault, she does her best with what she’s got here and is pretty and watchable, it’s just that she’s got rather a thin character. The film is also sometimes hamstrung by the fact that it feels heavily cut. Characters drift in and out of the film at more or less random intervals, leaving the film feeling, at times, more like a series of sketches. I’d usually pick bigger holes in a film with as many problems as this one has, but the fact is, for all its faults, I laughed long, hard and often during Youth in Revolt, and that makes it a rare beast among American comedies at the moment (all the more so since it is seldom reliant on cruelty or gross out jokes for its humour). This is by no means one of the great comedies, but it is a fun way to spend 90 minutes.


崖の上のポニョ
[PONYO]
DIR: Hayao Miyazaki
VOICES: Frankie Jonas, Noah Cyrus, Liam Neeson,
Tina Fey, Cate Blanchett



I haven’t really warmed to Hayao Miyazaki’s work, and while I liked this film rather more than the others I’d seen (Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away), there are still things about it that just… rub me the wrong way. It’s worth saying, right up front, that I saw this film in its English dubbed version (something I would only ever do for an animated film).

Ponyo leans quite heavily on what seem to be Miyazaki’s obsessions, namely the relationship of people to their planet and the other creatures living on it. The film tells the story of five year old Sosuke (Jonas), who lives with his Mother Lisa (Fey) on a cliff top house. One day Sosuke finds a goldfish, which he adopts as a pet and names Ponyo (Cyrus). He loses Ponyo by the end of the day, but a bond has formed and Ponyo, after drinking her father’s (Neeson) magical elixir, uses her magic powers to make herself look human, so that she can find Sosuke, an act which causes a raging storm and threatens to throw off the delicate balance of nature.

Ponyo is often a very charming film. Miyazaki’s screenplay captures childhood extremely well, with Sosuke seeming plausible as a five year old, but never becoming irritating in the way that very young kids sometimes can. The fantasy elements of the film are beautifully realised, with Miyazaki creating as magical an undersea world as Disney did in The Little Mermaid; the film that inspired Ponyo in the first place. Kids really ought to love this film, because they’ll get swept up in the world and in the friendship between Ponyo and Sosuke. I found the dub an easy watch, the English dialogue is cleverly written to match the animation and the performances are largely good, with Frankie Jonas a decent lead, Tina Fey making Sosuke’s mother Lisa an interesting and sympathetic character and Cate Blanchett perfectly cast as a goddess of the sea. On the downside, Noah Cyrus voice is high pitched and hard on the ears (it doesn’t help that half of her dialogues is either “Ponyo” or “Sosuke”) and Liam Neeson gives a fine performance, but his voice just doesn’t fit witth his character design at all.

The animation is beautiful, but, and this is something that I’ve felt in all I’ve seen of Miyazaki’s work, I’m just not especially fond of the rather basic, cartoony, drawing style. It’s a matter of personal taste rather than the drawings being bad, but it just doesn’t work for me in the same way that the beautiful work in Satoshi Kon’s films does. The only other major problem with the film for me was that, at times, Miyazaki’s environmental themes resulted in the script turning into an after school special, and talking down to the kids with a lesson, rather than simply telling the story.

All in all, Ponyo is clearly a good film, and Miyazaki clearly a good filmmaker, I just don’t think the director or his films are really for me.


ANONYMA - EINE FRAU IM BERLIN
[ANONYMA - A WOMAN IN BERLIN]
DIR: Max Farberbock
CAST: Nina Hoss, Yevgeni Sidikhin



Given that Julia Roberts, who has never been anyone but Julia Roberts on screen, is described as an actress, it seems a little unfair to use the same word to describe what Nina Hoss does. I think we need a new job description here… shapeshifter, changeling, illusionist, possessed. Nina Hoss doesn’t act her characters, she becomes them, she is swallowed whole by them, I’ve got no idea what she’s like in real life and her films, given that she’s so totally different in each of the four I’ve seen her in, appear to hold no clues. I know only this; she is clearly supernaturally gifted.

Anonyma is set right at the end of World War II, in a Berlin just liberated by the red army. It’s based on a book, first published in 1959, and received with such vitriol that the author said it should never be published again until after her death, documenting the almost systematic raping of Berlin women by the Russians. It’s a tough story, told unblinkingly, but never with gratuitous detail, by director Max Farberbock. Instead of the visceral nastiness that could have been part and parcel of telling this story the film focuses on the reaction of Hoss’ nameless character and that of the friends she is haring an apartment with to the way their supposed protectors are now victimising them. The key phrase in the film is "Wie oft?" (how often), which is frequently repeated when the various women in the story meet, almost in the way that one might use any casual greeting, but the meaning behind it, though never stated, is clear and hideous. Among the women in the apartment where much of the film takes place the reactions range from terror, even suicide, to the more mercenary approach taken by Hoss’ character, as she writes in her diary: “I will decide who gets me”.

This is a part of the war that I knew nothing about, and which hasn’t been addressed on film before. It’s an uncomfortable watch in many ways, first because of the subject matter, which is hideous, but also because it doesn’t really work the way a regular war movie works. We are used to having the good guys and the bad guys in a war movie, and the Nazis, by definition, are the bad guys. Here nobody is without a stain on their character. The rank and file members of the red army are generally shown as bored young men, raping women almost as a way to pass the time after the are stopped from storming the Reichstag. The officers (notably Sidikhin as an officer that Hoss latches on to as a way to protect herself) are less violent, but just as corrupt, extracting sex from women in return for protection from their men, and the women themselves are convinced Nazi sympathisers. At some level every person in this movie is worthy of hating, but you do develop sympathy with the women, because what happens to them is so horrifying, and so protracted. It’s brave of Farberbock to take this tack, not to whitewash the women and thus make it easy for us as an audience. He doesn’t give us a panto villain to boo and hiss at, and the film is all the better for it.

The performers all acquit themselves well, with Sidikhin giving a convincing performance in both Russian and English (this is also true of Hoss, who has much Russian dialogue) and the excellent Juliane Kohler appearing like a ray of sunshine in a brief supporting role which leads to probably the nearest thing to a truly light scene in this dark, heavy, picture. Good as everyone is though, they are all acted off the screen by Nina Hoss. This isn’t to say that she’s some hammy scene hog, quite the opposite. Hoss embodies Anonyma’s quiet strength, her fervent resolve, her attempts to retain some measure of her dignity, It’s a performance of great, but often unexpressed, power. Hoss always lets us see what’s going on under the surface in small, subtle ways, ways we don’t believe the other characters would see. It is an extraordinary piece of acting, the only thing connecting it to anything else I’ve seen her do being her unmistakable face; beautiful despite being composed almost exclusively of straight lines and sharp angles.

Max Farberbock creates a believable atmosphere of a war torn Berlin. Everything around the characters is broken, rubble and bodies lie everywhere and even parts of the house in which the characters live are no longer there. The action scenes are few and far between, which is fine, because this film isn’t about the war outside the apartment, but those that are there are brilliantly done; short, sharp and shocking, and filled with exactly the casual brutality you might expect from battle hardened men who were never really supposed to be soldiers. The only real problem with the film is one of its pacing. Anonyma does move slowly, and at 131 minutes it feels rather long at times, and there are some easy cuts to be made to the midsection of the film, which does hammer home the same points several times. The other pacing issue is to do with the timeline, which feels unclear. Apparently the film takes place over barely two weeks, and yet it could well be years from the feel of it.

These, though, are small problems with what is, overwhelmingly, a brilliant film. As with everything I’ve seen her in, Nina Hoss is worth the price of admission for this film all by herself, but she’s far from the only good thing about this difficult, hard hitting, but often stunning film.


Note: The DVD of Anonyma comes out in the UK on March 1st, under the (nonsensical) title “The Downfall of Berlin - Anonyma” It’s inexpensive (just £9) on Play, but also happens to have some of the worst and most unrepresentative DVD art I’ve ever seen. It’s a horrible botch job for a fine film.

Review Post 57: Festival of German Films

German Film Festival 2009
This is my fourth year attending the German Film Festival at London’s Curzon Soho. This year I was joined by a German friend (my Brother’s girlfriend Andrea). She picked the films, though they were both films that I would likely have seen if I’d gone on my own.

Neither of these films has been passed by the BBFC as yet.

EFFI BRIEST
DIR: Hermine Huntgeburth
CAST: Julia Jentsch, Sebastian Koch,
Misel Maticevic, Juliane Kohler


Apparently the story of Effi Briest is very famous in Germany, something of a classic novel, and like much of our classic literature, much adapted for the screen (the last version was by Rainer Werner Fassbinder). The story is set in late 19th/early 20th century Germany, and sees young Effi (Jentsch) married off by her family to the wealthy, much older, Baron Instetten (Koch). On moving to Instetten’s house on the coast Effi finds herself bored and takes refuge in an illicit relationship with dashing young Major Von Crampas (Maticevic).

The story feels familiar almost to the point of formula, and some of the plot devices (the letters especially) are so hackneyed that you can see almost every turn of the story coming from a few miles off, even if, as was the case for me, you don’t know the story anyway. The only thing that isn’t especially predictable is the ending, changed from the book quite substantially, and it sticks out like a sore thumb. After spending nearly two hours very properly in period the film tries desperately to cram in some contemporary relevance. It is as if the character of Effi is suddenly flung fifty or sixty years forward in time, such is the change in her attitude. It’s odd, and doesn’t work at all.

This isn’t the big issue though. The real problem with Effi Briest is that it is a curate’s egg. It looks beautiful, the acting is strong, most of the scenes work in and of themselves and yet this ornately made thing doesn’t add up to very much, doesn’t do very much. It just sort of sits there, lovely to behold, fleetingly engaging, but ultimately forgettable and unable to connect on any real emotional level.

Julia Jentsch is surely one of the finest German actresses working - for the proof see her performance in Sophie Scholl - and she is customarily brilliant here. One of her best moments comes when she isn’t even facing the camera. When Effi is visited by her estranged 6-year-old daughter, who almost immediately asks to go home, the devastation that Effi feels registers viscerally even though the reaction shot is of her back. Much of Jentsch’s best work is done in the absence of dialogue, of which she actually has surprisingly limited amounts, she has an interesting face, which can be either beautiful or boyish depending on the angle, and while her work is always subtle she is always highly expressive, laying bare her character’s emotions at all times.

Sebastian Koch, so good in Paul Verhoeven’s Black Book, has perhaps the most difficult role. Instetten seems to be a man devoid of, or even unaware of, emotion. Playing what is essentially a blank vessel without becoming boring is a hard task, but Koch just about squares the circle. The real issue with his performance is perhaps inherent in his casting, and that simply that Instetten doesn’t really come off as the villain I suspected the story wanted to cast him as. The rest of the supporting cast generally does good work, but the film does create a major problem for itself by casting such a non-entity as Misel Maticevic as Crampas. He looks as if he’s just left high school, and Matcevic never really gives him much personality. I never really bought the love between him and Effi. However, Julian Kohler, Barbara Auer and Andre Hennicke all contribute strong character work.

Hermine Huntgeburth’s direction is generally fine (with the exception of some bizarre scenes involving Effi’s nightmares, which seem teleported in from another film). The period detail is beautiful and there are some nicely designed shots, while the scenes in a deserted shack where Effi and Crampas meet are especially attractive, with the light spilling in through cracks in the walls and roof. The thing is Huntgeburth never really stamps much identity on the film, it’s a film that looks as if it could have been made by 100 directors (if, for example, Joe Wright had done it, I can imagine the only real difference being the presence of Keira Knightley).

It isn’t that Effi Briest is a bad film, and actually if you’re a fan of Julia Jentsch (and if you aren’t, why the hell not?) it’s worth seeing because her performance is exceptional, but it’s one of a very few things to raise this largely forgettable film out of the extremely ordinary.


ALLE ANDEREN
[EVERYONE ELSE]
DIR: Maren Ade
CAST: Birgit Minichmayr, Lars Eidinger,
Hans-Jochen Wagner, Nicole Marischka


NOTHING happens in Everyone Else, but that’s not why I hated it, after all, nothing happens in The Dreamlife of Angels, nothing really happens in Before Sunset. The people in Everyone Else are horrible, but that’s not why I hated it, after all, there’s nobody remotely sympathetic in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, there’s nobody especially likable in Pulp Fiction. I hated Everyone Else for one overwhelming reason: I didn’t give a shit.

It doesn’t matter if you love or hate a character in a movie, just as long as you are interested in them, and none of the people in Everyone Else are even remotely interesting. For two hours we spend almost every moment with late 20’s couple Gitti (Minichmayr) and Chris (Eidinger) and yet in all that time all that we really learn about them is that she's in A and R, he’s an architect and both of them are selfish navel-gazing wankers. The couple are staying in a villa belonging to Chris’ parents, while he supposedly works on plans for a renovation, though we only see blueprints fleetingly. Most of the film consists of the petty bullshit of a disintegrating relationship.

I’m not sure what Maren Ade wants us to take away from this film, which amounts, most of the time, to a pair of pretty bad actors being sniping at one another. In La Seperation I cared about what happened to the characters played by Isabelle Huppert and Daniel Autueil, not because they were likable, but because the whole thing felt horribly real and raw. Everyone Else doesn’t, the stiffness of the acting (particularly Minichmayr’s) undermined any identification I might have felt with the story because I simply didn’t believe that these people were a couple, and I especially didn’t believe Gitti when she (repeatedly) begged Chris not to leave her.

Every time something interesting threatens to happen the film works against it. Gitti and Chris meet a couple who have invited them on a boat tip. These people are never seen again, Gitti and Chris never go near a boat. Gitti and Chris have dinner with another couple; Hans (Wagner) and Sana (Marischka) and Gitti essentially spends the entire dinner abusing them. Nobody says anything. The next time they have dinner Gitti threatens Sana. Nobody says anything, and Hans and Sana go home. It’s almost as if Ade has decided to evade drama at every turn.

Every scene is brutally overextended, speaking to a meandering, improvisatory style and an unwillingness to edit. Worst, perhaps, is a scene in which Gitti, Chris, Hans and Sana listen to a terrible song together. It goes on and on and fucking on, I wondered if they were just going to sit there for the whole damn thing. Everyone Else is a mind-pulverisingly tedious film, two hours that seem to last forever. Don’t waste your precious time on it, spend it with someone you actually like instead.

Review Post 55: The White Ribbon / The Girlfriend Experience

DAS WEIßE BAND
[THE WHITE RIBBON]
DIR: Michael Haneke
CAST: Christian Friedel, Burghart Klaußner, Leonard Proxauf,
Rainer Bock, Susanne Lothar, Leoni Benesch



Michael Haneke’s cinema is deliberately, often explicitly, challenging. The White Ribbon lacks the extremes of films like Funny Games and The Piano Teacher but, like its director’s previous work, it is an uneasy experience.

The White Ribbon often seems like a set of contradictions. It is a film about violence, physical and psychic; but that violence is almost never shown. It is a mystery, a whodunit; but we never find out any answers, and the answers never seem to matter. It begins by saying it wants to clarify things, but then spends two and a half hours obfuscating. This is a film that could easily have dealt in explicit shock (imagine the same material in the hands of, say, Gaspar Noe), but what Haneke does instead is create an undertone; an atmosphere of impending doom and of utter dread that begins as an almost imperceptible background note, but grows with every passing frame to a crescendo. This makes The White Ribbon a deeply haunting, troubling film; the unease all the more deeply felt because you can’t find any reason or any culprit for the events that precipitate it.

The film deals with strange violent events in a highly religious German village in 1913 and 14. What it seems to suggest is that these events, which range from the tripping of a horse, leading the local doctor (Bock) to break his arm to the vicious attack on a local disabled child, are a manifestation of the abuse that everyone in the village seems to mete out. Though there is nothing explicit shown it is clear that abuse runs deep. The pastor (Klaußner) humiliates his ‘sinful’ elder children by making them wear ribbons to remind them they must be pure, deprives his family of food when the children misbehave and even ties his son’s hands to the bed frame so that he can’t masturbate, and in the most appalling scene the Doctor dispassionately details to his Midwife and lover (Lothar) how she now disgusts him. Some have read the violent events and the cycle of abuse as a suggestion of the incipient fascism that would come to fruition 20 years later. Personally, I think I’ll have to see the film at least once more to decide what I think Haneke is saying with it, but it is a rich enough film that I’m looking forward to doing just that.

Technically The White Ribbon is flawless. Haneke and DP Christian Berger shoot in stunningly crisp black and white. It’s Haneke’s first non-colour film, but he demonstrates a total mastery of both black and white and of his frames. The light in the film is beautiful, with stark whites and deep blacks dominant, in a story comprised almost entirely of shades of grey. The photography calls to mind directors like Bergman, Murnau and perhaps especially Carl Dreyer. Each shot is a beautifully composed tableau, a perfectly stark image, often painterly in its beauty. Even some of the more disturbing images, like that of a gruesomely (and symbolically) killed bird, are as startling in their beauty as their shock value. Another thing that really makes the film appear somewhat out of its time is the casting. Haneke’s casting department deserves some sort of award, not only for finding such a capable group of actors, especially among the many children who play pivotal roles, but for finding actors whose faces seem to fit the period. Haneke has said that this was a painstaking process, and that he saw 7000 candidates for the children’s roles, weeding out the modern faces. It’s stood him in good stead, as The White Ribbon is very convincingly set in its early 20th century period.

The children are uniformly excellent. In one especially strong scene the Doctor’s daughter (Maria-Victoria Dragus) tells her adorable young brother about death, both of them giving supremely natural performances. Also impressive is Leonard Proxauf, in perhaps the most important juvenile role, as the pastor’s eldest son. There’s a powerful, barely repressed, simmering rage behind his eyes in a few scenes (which lends a little credence to the idea of at least this character being an incipient fascist). It’s an effective and rather chilling piece of work. The adult cast is also excellent. The only lighter moments come from a little romance between the school teacher (Friedel) and his young fiancé (Benesch, a beautiful young actress who seems lit from within), but even these scenes sometimes have an undertone of darkness, as in a deeply uncomfortable carriage ride late in the film. Friedel does well as a man who seems something of an outsider looking in at this slowly imploding community, and as the only possible point of identification for us. Burghart Klaußner is chilling as the film’s biggest hypocrite - a man who preaches against and punishes sin, yet sins himself and ignores news of bigger sins when it is brought to him - but he’s best in the one moment when his severe mask seems to slip, letting us see for one brief moment that he does have emotions. Best of all are a pair of barnstorming performances from Ranier Bock and Haneke regular Susanne Lothar as the doctor and the midwife. That devastating scene in which he tells her how he is disgusted by her is astounding cinema, the kind of thing that burns itself into your brain and remains there long after the credits roll.

The White Ribbon is certainly an austere film, and there are audiences who will find it distancing because of that. Many will also find it frustrating, because of Haneke’s total refusal to answer the many questions his film throws up. It’s not a film for the casual cinemagoer, it demands your attention, it demands reflection and, frankly, it also demands repeat viewings. The White Ribbon is not an easy film, but it is a great film, the work of a man who has not only made a storming return to form (after the curious, pointless, Funny Games US) but who is working at the height of his powers, it’s a sight that should be seen. Twice.


THE GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE
DIR: Steven Soderbergh
CAST: Sasha Grey, Chris Santos,
Glenn Kenny



If Che; a two part, four hour plus epic, years in the planning, was a five course dinner then The Girlfriend Experience represents a palette cleanser for Steven Soderbergh; a quick shoot, with largely improvised dialogue, and a lot of non-actors, and an eventual runtime of just 74 minutes.

The film centres on ‘Chelsea’ (Grey), a high class, very high priced, call girl who specialises in ‘girlfriend experiences’. Rather than turning a simple trick she is paid to spend time with clients; go to movies and dinner, talk, listen to their problems and, yes, to have sex with them. For many of the men it seems that being with Chelsea is as much about companionship as it is sex. Soderbergh began shooting the very week that the US economy crashed, and these concerns also weave their way through the film, impacting on ‘Chelsea’s’ clients as well as on her real life as Christine Brown and her relationship with boyfriend Chris (Santos).

My problem with the film was that, in dealing so closely and personally with ‘Chelsea’s’ life it should have felt rather intimate and observed, but for me Soderbergh’s own photography and editing undermined that. There’s a veneer to the film, a rather self-conscious artsy feel that strives to be off the cuff, but feels extremely designed and artificial. You could read this as clever, as reflective of the dual realities of Christine’s life. I don’t buy that. Most galling for me was Soderbergh’s very consciously metaphorical use of focus, I felt especially battered over the head by it in a bar scene, which has Grey and Santos out of focus as they talk, but snaps Grey into sharp focus when Santos leaves the frame. I get it Steve, but it’s not as clever a device as you think. The non-linear editing was also a problem for me, because it was another thing that seemed just to shout “you’re watching a movie”. Another issue is that, even at just 74 minutes, the film feels baggy. There’s a lot of very dull, time marking, stuff about Chris trying to maximise his earning potential as a personal trainer, stuff about which I really don’t care. What saves The Girlfriend Experience, somewhat surprisingly, is its star Sasha Grey. I’m not a big porn watcher. Of course I’ve seen some, but the only porn films I’ve seen all the way through are so-called classics Deep Throat and Debbie Does Dallas. I hadn’t seen any of Grey’s work prior to The Girlfriend Experience.

Let’s say this for starters; this girl is wasted on porn. Now obviously I’m making a judgement call here, but I’m guessing that Face Invaders 4 (charming) doesn’t call for much in the way of characterisation, which is a shame because in The Girlfriend Experience Grey demonstrates an ability to create a very convincing, multi-dimensional character. Christine and ‘Chelsea’ are very different personalities, and Grey draws that distinction impressively. What is particularly striking is the fact that she creates each persona so convincingly that we are never sure whether Chelsea is a mask that Christine puts on, or vice versa. It’s a complex piece of acting and Grey disappears into it completely.

While the film as a whole doesn’t quite work, some individual scenes are excellent. All of the scenes in which ‘Chelsea’ is interacting with her clients are nicely done, with the actors playing the johns (many of whom, apparently, are based on real people) all doing good work and Grey impressing with her ability to show how ‘Chelsea’ adapts her persona to each individual client. The film’s most striking moment is a scene featuring film critic Glenn Kenny as a blogger called ‘The Erotic Conniseur’ who, in return for a freebie, says he can give ‘Chelsea’ a review that will increase both her client base and her price. Kenny and Grey are both brilliant, in a scene that is skin-crawlingly unpleasant, sad, scary and also hilariously funny. In the film’s most memorable line the blogger tells Christine he’s planning to take a group of escorts to Dubai, which is “great, because it sounds like white slavery, but it isn’t”.

The Girlfriend Experience is ultimately an interesting failure. It’s hard to care about the characters, and the narrative is so choppy that it is difficult to get wrapped up in it, but it is worth seeing because, in Sasha Grey, it heralds the arrival of an impressive actress who I really hope we’ll get to see in more mainstream films.


Q and A


After the screening of The Girlfriend Experience Sasha Grey did a 30-minute Q and A session. Without her heels she would have been tiny (in them she was still perhaps a touch under my 5’ 7”) and she looked so petite that she seemed almost fragile (a notion that seemed ridiculous after she spoke). Still just 21, she looks even younger and is delicately beautiful, more so than on screen, in person.

I’ve been to a lot of Q and A sessions, but I’ve seldom seen a person who seemed smarter, more confident or more engaged than Sasha Grey. There were some stupid questions, even some that bordered on insulting, but she fielded all of them with good grace and gave full, thoughtful answers, always trying to engage the questioner personally. Most of the questions centered not on The Girlfriend Experience, but on her porn career and how she was going to combine it with a burgeoning mainstream career (she said that she's not putting up any boundaries). An interesting question asked whether she was interested in higher production value, more cinematic, adult films. To this she answered that she's setting up her own production company (Greyscale, a good name) and that she wants to move into making adult films with more plot and better production values, if not huge budgets. My favourite question was perhaps the last. Are you a feminist? She said that she is, but that she could see both the positive and negative sides of that description, before ending on the note of "isn't every woman basically a feminist?"

After she left the stage I managed to grab a brief personal moment, just to shake her hand (I didn’t have anything to get signed) and say how much I had enjoyed her performance.