Coming at the end of the Summer, The Venice Film Festival is in many ways the start line for the Oscars. In the past it has been the launching pad for awards darlings such as Brokeback Mountain, The Queen andThe Wrestler though it somewhat lost the plot last year by giving it’s top award to Sophia Coppola’s indulgent Somewhere. For us mere mortals it offers a thirst quenching drink of water after the desert of summer releases. Having spent August choosing between Mr Popper’s Penguins at a multiplex or sitting in an outside arena watching The King’s Speech for the third time while a train rattled behind the screen and mosquitos cannibalized my ankles, I naturally leapt at the chance when most of this year’s programme was screened in Rome last week as part of the Da Venezia A Roma Festival. Hopefully cinema releases are soon to follow but these were the ones I couldn’t wait for.
A DANGEROUS METHOD
The latest film from David Cronenberg was lip smackingly anticipated and I for one couldn’t wait to see what the director of Dead Ringers and Crash (the randy car crash one not the holier than thou Oscar winner) would do with the story of Freud and Jung. Well, a Merchant Ivory imitation is the disappointing answer to that. This is a film where the main characters send each other an awful lot of hand written letters and then read them in voice over. Apart from a particularly assertive spanking scene there is no visceral charge to the film which looks awfully like A Psychiatrist’s Room With A View. The most disturbing thing in the film is Keira Knightley’s acting which is so OTT that it caused a lot of wincing and several guffaws in the first 15 minutes (It seems that Madonna’s W.E. wasn’t the only risible costume drama at Venice this year). I should confess here that I am not a Keira Knightley fan. She can be effective when well cast (Atonement) though I found her anachronistic in Pride and Prejudice and down right wooden in Bend It Like Beckham and the atrocious Love Actually. She seems like a perfectly agreeable young woman and is extremely pretty despite an abnormally large chin which she tends to jut out when trying to convey an emotion of any sort. This made her ideal casting for Ruth in Never Let Me Go (last year’s rather overlooked adaptation of one of my favourite books) in which she played a clone and obviously made someone seeking a chin transplant very happy indeed. Unfortunately Keira does rather a lot of chin acting in this film as well as flailing about in a mental illness 101 “drag me to the snake pit“ kind of way. All this overacting AND a Russian accent which is right out of Fiddler On The Roof. Quite why Keira has been lumbered with the accent is a mystery far deeper than root of her character’s psycho/sexual problems especially as Jung (played by Michael Fassbender who is German/Irish) and Freud (Viggo Mortensen, Danish/American) converse in clipped English tones. Surely they should all be speaking German? Or if you’re going to go the “to hell with reality” Hollywood route, why not keep their own accents? Mortensen comes off best, giving a dry, entertaining reading of Freud at the expense of Fassbender’s stuffy, priggish Jung.
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| Keira Knightley's chin has it's own agent - apparently. |
SHAME
Michael Fassbender deservedly took the award for best actor for his (literally) ballsy performance in Shame, the second feature film from Steve McQueen. In A Dangerous Method there is an awful lot of talk about annihilation of the self through sex but McQueen actually shows you what that might look like. And it’s not a pretty sight. Fassbender plays Brandon, New York high flyer and sex addict. He doesn’t ‘do’ relationships, preferring instead one night stands, sex with prostitutes, anonymous sex under bridges and masturbating - a lot - in the shower, in the toilet at work, on a web cam and with the help of a mother load of porn. In short - acting like a typical gay man. The film is beautifully photographed, as you would expect from McQueen, and features an already famous tracking shot of Brandon running through the streets of New York. Brandon’s city is reminiscent of the sleek and sterile offices and apartments in which Patrick Bateman prowled in the late 80’s but Shame has more substance than American Psycho’s self-congratulatory irony. Fassbender is superb as is Carey Mulligan, who plays his equally damaged sister. A somewhat inevitable crisis looms but the film makers leave it open for the audience to ponder Brandon’s fate. It is an emotionally raw film and I’m not sure if the explicit (though never titillating) sex scenes will prevent it from becoming a success beyond the festival circuit but if you get the chance to see it, do.
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| Shame. Our generation's Last Tango In Paris? |
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| Shame features another stunning performance from Carey Mulligan (above) |
I’M CAROLYN PARKER: THE GOOD, THE MAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL
Jonathan Demme is a film maker who is hard to pigeon hole and one who seems to be more interested in stories than box office receipts. If reality TV has taught us anything, it’s what real life drama looks like away from the cliches and contrived story arcs of scripted drama. Shot on digital camera, Demme, who is an affable presence in the film - always empathetic and never patronising, seems to have stumbled on the subject of this documentary quite by chance. Carolyn Parker was the first resident to return to the 9th Ward district of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and the film charts her battle to rebuild her house and local church. Carolyn is a life force and her positivism in the face of extreme personal hardship is something truly inspiring. She’s also a damn fine cook - whipping up Louisiana delicacies from the confines of her temporary trailer home. Many critics have suggested that this is a golden age for documentaries and Demme’s simple heartfelt piece continues the trend.
CARNAGE
There is always a certain kind of bourgeois element at these festivals - one which was particularly apparent at the screening of Roman Polanski’s Carnage. There were also a lot of middle aged bachelors escort their young wards to the cinema - a phenomenon I put down to the Jodie Foster effect. Carnage is stagey and slight but it’s an entertaining, brilliantly performed 4 hander. The editing is so seamless that you are unaware of a single cut and you feel like you have witnessed everything in real time. Each member of the cast is perfect for their role - John C. Riley’s everyday Joe with hamster issues, Christoph Waltz as a literal and metaphorical devil’s advocate, Jodie Foster as the brittle libertarian and Kate Winslet who provides the best upchucking scene in the cinema since The Exorcist. There is a sense of special pleading here on Polanski’s part especially as Foster’s ultra P. C. Penelope comes in for the most derision. It’s to Foster's credit that she maintains our belief in her character’s integrity throughout. Carnage though is lots of fun - like a good night out at the theatre but at a fifth of the price.
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