March 2025

volume 35
issue 2

David Lynch
1 9 4 6 - 2 0 2 5 £6.50

His peaks his empire his story

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WINNER
LONDON CRITICS' CIRCLE AWARD
3 BAFTA
AWARD NOMINEE
CRITICS CHOICE
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 CONTENTS

STEVEN
SODERBERGH
Shot from the point of view
of a ghost, the director’s
haunted house thriller
Presence offers a satisfying
twist on the genre. He talks
to Philip Concannon about
the real-life supernatural
event that inspired the film

IN THIS ISSUE
40

26
DAVID LYNCH
48
MIKE LEIGH
54
WALTER SALLES
In our tribute to the great filmmaker, The director, back on scintillating form The director’s first fiction film for more
Michael Atkinson explains how the director with Hard Truths, tells Jonathan than a decade, I’m Still Here follows
didn’t just expand the idea of cinema, but Romney why his work is about a woman seeking answers about the
created a new version of reality. PLUS a understanding, not judging. PLUS the disappearance of her husband.
COVER PHOTOGRAPH: SANDRO MILLER. CHANTAL AKERMAN: CINEMATEK/FONDATION CHANTAL AKERMAN

previously unpublished interview with film’s star, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, He tells Geoff Andrew about the
Lynch from 1984; and collaborators and discusses her creative process ever-present spectre of Brazil’s past
filmmakers explain what he meant to them

44 CHANTAL AKERMAN
In an extract from the latest edition of Sight and Sound’s
Auteurs Series, a 100-page print special out now,
director Céline Sciamma writes exclusively about the
influence the director has had on her work
 MARCH 2025 90
ASTA
REVIEWS CONTRIBUTORS

NIELSEN
A profile of the

6 60 | FILMS
Danish silent star
· Memoir of a Snail
· Nosferatu
EDITORIAL · I’m Still Here

FROM THE ARCHIVE

In the singular world of David · Here
Lynch, there was no such · Presence
thing as a side project · On Falling
· Emmanuelle
· Saturday Night
· Ernest Cole: Lost and Found

9
OPENING SCENES
·
·
·
·
Pepe
A Complete Unknown
By the Stream
Julie Keeps Quiet
MICHAEL ATKINSON
writes about film for the Village
Voice; his books include Exile
Cinema (SUNY Press), Hemingway
· To a Land Unknown Cutthroat (St. Martin’s Press) and
· Opener: Mohammad Rasoulof · The Seed of the Sacred Fig the BFI Modern Classics volume
· Editors’ Choice · Short Film: The Watchman on Blue Velvet (Bloomsbury/BFI).
· In Production: Ben Wheatley’s · The Fire Inside
Normal and more · I Am Martin Parr
· AI Spy: The Brutalist and more · The Last Showgirl
· In Conversation: Yamada · The Colors Within
Naoko and Ushio Kensuke · Bring Them Down
talk about The Colors Within
· Obituary: Malcolm Le Grice
· Mean Sheets: Brian Hung on
Hong Sangsoo’s A Traveler’s Needs 78 | DVD & BLU-RAY
· Mikey and Nicky
IN THIS ISSUE

· Requiem for a Vampire

20
· Mermaid Legend ROBERT EGGERS
· Two films by Ermanno Olmi:
is an American filmmaker known
Il posto and I fidanzati
for his works of historical
· Cure
LETTERS · Rediscovery: Nothing Is Sacred:
fiction, including The Northman
(2022) and Nosferatu (2024).
Three Heresies by Luis Buñuel
· Lost and Found: Freelance

22
· Bushman
· Park Lanes
· The Cat
· Punch-Drunk Love
TALKIES · High and Low
· The Long Take: Pamela
Hutchinson rewinds to her
youthful affair with VHS
· Flick Lit: Nicole Flattery on 86 | WIDER SCREEN
older women with younger men, · Island-hopping with the Muestra
CÉLINE SCIAMMA
in a glut of recent films and books de Cine festival in Lanzarote, and
· TV Eye: Andrew Male applauds John Boorman’s almost forgotten, is an award-winning French
the real children, and real thrills, eerily prophetic absurdist story writer-director whose films
in the latest slice of Star Wars IP of west London Leo the Last include Portrait of a Lady on Fire
(2019) and Petite maman (2021).

98
ENDINGS
88 | BOOKS
· Pamela Hutchinson on a juicy,
gaudy memoir of the Roman film
industry, Anton Bitel on women
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE
Gaspar Noé, Ali Abbasi,
Ehsan Khoshbakht, Sukhdev Sandhu,
Kambole Campbell, William Fowler,
· Chantal Akerman’s musical directing horror and Bryony Dixon Henry K. Miller, Brad Stevens,

96
on a study of film distribution Hannah McGill, Adam Scovell,
comedy of love, loss and Kim Newman, Saffron Maeve,
consumerism set in a Brussels Rachel Pronger, Leila Latif and more
shopping centre, Golden
Eighties, reveals the director to
be an incorrigible romantic THIS MONTH
IN… 1998
Tarantino on
the cover and an
interview with
Shane Meadows
 EDITORIAL Mike Williams
@itsmikelike

In the singular world of David Lynch,

there was no such thing as a side project

Between 1983 and 1992, David Lynch drew often mentioning a song or a thought on
a weekly cartoon strip for alternative news- his mind (“Today I was thinking about
paper the Los Angeles Reader (best remem- the Ukrainians and the song ‘Roads’ by
bered for being the first paper to run The Portishead”). Each forecast is signed
Simpsons creator Matt Groening’s debut off with a cheery “Everyone, have a
comic strip, Life in Hell) called The Angri- great day!”
est Dog in the World. For the entire nine- In the output of another filmmaker
year run, the strip consisted of the same these could be seen as side projects,
four panels of a dog tethered to a post marks on the sketchpad of a perpetu-
in a garden in California. The first three ally active artist, but with David Lynch,
panels are identical – bright sunshine, the the auteur filmmaker, the expressionist
dog stiff, a muffled growl, a factory pump- painter, the avant-garde musician, these
ing out smoke in the background. Any are not just an extension of his universe
dialogue comes in speech bubbles from but keystones in it. He made 29 adverts
the window of the house; puns, quips, between 1988 and 2014, including a
life observations, the kind of thing you memorable campaign for Calvin Klein.
might imagine from Wild at Heart’s (1990) He directed 46 short films including
Sailor Ripley or Lynch’s own Gordon Rabbits (2002), a surreal horror sitcom
Cole from Twin Peaks (1990-91, 2017). The that later reappeared within a scene in
fourth panel is the same scene at night, Inland Empire (2006).
the unseen residents of the house silent They contain the same hope and
now with the light on, the dog still angry, love and adjacency to evil that his
tethered in the garden. A subtitle to the features do. They are another articula-
left of the first panel reads: “The dog who tion of the message he broadcast to the
is so angry he cannot move. He cannot world from his early student films Six
eat. He cannot sleep. He can just barely Men Getting Sick (Six Times) (1967), The
growl. Bound so tightly with tension and Alphabet (1968) and The Grandmother
anger, he approaches the state of rigor (1970) to his final work, Cellophane
mortis.” The message is clear: alongside Memories, his third musical collabora-
the melody and rhythm of everyday life tion with singer Chrystabell, released
there is a clenching, paralysing rage. six months before his death: evil is eve-
In 1991 Lynch worked with Fred- rywhere, and so we must take time to
erick Elmes, his cinematographer enjoy beauty and love where we can.
on Eraserhead (1977) and Wild at Heart It’s only a few issues since I was
(who would go on to shoot Synecdoche, writing about David Lynch on this
New York for Charlie Kaufman in 2008 and The page, insisting that any future definition
Dead Don’t Die for Jim Jarmusch in 2019) to produce In one episode of DumbLand of Lynchian should include his musical output as
a minute-long Public Service Announcement for the protagonist retrieves much as his films, given how much of his time he
the New York Sanitation Department. To a dis- a stick stuck in a neighbour’s had dedicated to his music since installing a state-
cordant Eraserhead-style soundtrack, monochrome of-the-art recording studio in his “modernist com-
NYC residents including a cold-eyed business- mouth via his eye socket, having pound” in the Hollywood Hills. That piece accom-
man, a loving mother and daughter and a group of twisted him inside out panied our September issue cover story, in which
carefree teens toss litter on to the street. The litter Lynch told our writer Sam Wigley that he was
attracts rats, shot in close-up, their claws and tails neighbour’s mouth via his eye socket, having twisted struggling with emphysema, had given up smok-
ILLUSTRATION BY FERNANDO COBELO; BYLINE ILLUSTRATION BY PETER ARKLE

twisting around bars, their teeth bared, gnashing him inside out. In another, a doctor checks our hero’s ing, was housebound and that any future project
furiously like Frank Booth from Blue Velvet (1986) vital signs by driving a dagger into his skull. would have to be done from home as a result. He
and Twin Peaks’s Bob. From 2005 until 2022 (with a ten-year gap doubted whether any such project would happen.
In 2000, the eight-episode animated series Dumb- between 2010 and 2020), Lynch recorded a daily The honesty from the director was both illumi-
Land was launched on shockwave.com, a dot-com weather report. Initially, he made calls to Los Ange- nating and disconcerting. This did not lessen the
bubble enterprise that credited Lynch, James L. les radio station Indie 103.1, then uploaded them to shock a few weeks ago when the news arrived that
Brooks and South Park (1997-) creators Matt Stone his website, creating a repository of charming and he had died.
and Trey Parker as creative directors. Featuring the repetitive missives. During the first Covid lock- Printed and digital pages have been filled
daily goings-on of an enormous, brutal man and downs they returned as videos, Lynch describing with beautifully written tributes to and obituar-
his terrified/terrifying family, it is arguably the most the morning weather as he saw it from his window ies of Lynch in the weeks since his death. Ours,
overtly violent work Lynch ever produced. In one (often cloudy), forecasting the weather to come by Michael Atkinson, is on page 26. Read it and
episode, the protagonist retrieves a stick stuck in a (almost always blue skies and bright sunshine) and remember him – and everyone, have a great day!
 FIVE LOADED GUNS. FOUR EMPTY TANKS.
ONE BAG OF MONEY.

A FILM BY
FRANCIS GALLUPPI

STARRING
JIM CUMMINGS &
RICHARD BRAKE

AVAILABLE NOW OWN IT ON

LIMITED EDITION
BLU-RAY
ARROWFILMS.COM
OPENING SCENES
9

OPENING SCENES
“I am very close to nature. I spend a agents he wore heavier make-up on set

Mohammad Rasoulof:
great deal of time in the mountains. If than the actors. Now, he has come up
Iran becomes a free country one day, I’d with a new solution. “Because there was
love to make wildlife documentaries,” a possibility of the regime raiding the set,
The director who says Mohammad Rasoulof, who fled the
country last year, crossing the mountain-
I made this film from afar. Most of the
time, I wasn’t physically present on set, or

wasn’t there ous terrain of western Iran on foot with

nothing, not even a passport (which had
been confiscated). He sought refuge in
I was a few kilometres away. Sometimes
I was a hundred or two hundred metres
away. For the car scenes, I was in the
Germany and added the final touches back of a car driving behind the produc-
After years of run-ins with the authorities, there to The Seed of the Sacred Fig, which tion cars. The idea was, ‘I’m not there.’ I
the Iranian director was forced to direct premiered in Cannes last May. The man had two assistants who were in constant
who could have been the David Atten- contact with me.”
his latest film, The Seed of the Sacred Fig, borough of Iran is, until further notice, The Seed of the Sacred Fig is based on
remotely and in secret. But the methods one of the foremost clandestine filmmak- the events surrounding the September
are at odds with the film’s direct and open ers from that country. “For now, the free- to December 2022 uprising of Iranian
dom and dignity of man are my top pri- women – a protest movement named
criticism of the country’s repressive regime orities,” he says. “I keep asking myself why Women, Life, Freedom – that took Iran
a system allows itself to do this to us.” by storm and sent thousands on to the
BY EHSAN KHOSHBAKHT
Rasoulof ’s frequent provocation of the streets of Berlin, Paris, London and
Iranian regime has led to multiple prison cities around the world in solidarity. The
sentences, as well as passport and asset film incorporates footage shot by citizens
removals, but the dissident filmmaker during the protests and makes dramatic
has created some of his more formally use of facts such as the firing of shotgun
audacious work during these years of pellets by police directly at the faces and
relentless turmoil and harassment. We genitals of female protesters. The hack-
met in London while he was in transit ing of names and addresses by oppres-
from Ukraine (where he had served as sors of the Islamic regime is another
president of the jury at Kyiv’s Molodist detail Rasoulof has woven into his story.
film festival) to the US, where, the day “I said to myself, ‘You are telling the
before, Donald Trump had been elected story of a family trapped in their apart-
to a second presidential term. The last ment. They are afraid to go outside. How
ABOVE
Mahsa Rostami in
time I spoke to him, he told me that to are you going to show what is happening
The Seed of the Sacred Fig avoid being recognised by the regime’s outside?’ Let’s say that, hypothetically,
 10

I had permission to shoot this film and a including my own family. I come from a
street was at my disposal. Was I going to family of teachers – my parents and older
re-enact events when the power of reality siblings are all teachers; I am the only one
in social media footage is so strong? So I in the family with a different vocation. In
chose the most iconic images. I didn’t use our family, especially with my mother,
unseen footage and sound bites. Instead, the focus was usually on solving people’s
I said, ‘Let’s show what has been seen problems. Students used to come to our
and is familiar to everybody.’” house for extra lessons. In the film, the
Rasoulof has been preoccupied with wife/mother character, who tries to keep
the inhumanity of the justice system since the family balanced and is always on a
his early days as a documentary film- tightrope, is modelled on my mum and
maker, but here his washed-out images my aunt – people who are very selfless.”
and the suffocating world of the family The Seed was shot covertly but it is not
take on a sharper edge. There is no ambi- a militant film – it is a thriller, with the
guity in the film’s intentions. Unlike the conditions of its production mirroring
stark bleakness of his previous works, that. Rasoulof owes more to the cinema
The Seed of the Sacred Fig portrays ordinary of the 1970s – both Iranian and American
people rising up against oppression in an – than to any other period in film history.
act of resistance. In front of a backdrop of Once Iman, the master of surveillance,
images of the state’s heroes and martyrs, feels he himself is being watched, the par-
vulgarised as paperboard cut-outs, stand anoia that turns the house upside down
women who carry the weight of the story evokes The Conversation (1974). Then
once the film shifts its focus from the there’s Robert Altman’s 3 Women (1977),
father of the family, Iman (which means with its themes of female bonding and
‘faith’), who has been promoted to the burying the male figure. Though these
position of interrogator in the judiciary. may be unconscious influences, Rasou-
His hope of acquiring a larger flat is shat- lof is aware of how cinephilia has shaped
tered when the women’s uprising and the his life. He tells me that even the guards
loss of his gun result in an emotionally at the notorious Evin prison in Tehran –
violent confrontation with his two rebel- where he was sent in 2022, before being
lious daughters. released after detainees started to arrive
“We are talking about a specific type of following the protests – turned out to be
family in which submissiveness has been enamoured with cinema.
OPENING SCENES

inherent. We see this in the photograph “During my prison term, I was hospi-
of the father as a young man on the wall, talised twice. And by the way, I was taken
taken at the Imam Reza shrine [a sacred ‘They said to Jafar enrich the narrative effectively. This kind there in the same green vans you see in
site in Iran], where he has placed his of symbolism is apparent, among other the film, which were used for both prison
hand on his chest – a gesture of total sub- [Panahi] and I, scenes, in the abandoned ruin where the and school transport; the driver was
mission to the religious ideal. The same “You should make final act unfolds. The ruin, a significant always in a rush to drop off the prisoners
submissiveness has influenced politics a movie for us symbol in Persian poetry and cinema – and go pick up the children. In the hospi-
and the military, hence the cut-outs of particularly in the work of Rasoulof ’s tal, two soldiers guarded me. They were
martyrs and deceased religious figures. in prison.” We fellow Shiraz-born director Ebrahim kindly and, out of respect for a filmmaker,
Submissiveness and conformity are the came up with Golestan, godfather of the Iranian New didn’t lock my handcuffs. They were very
main themes of the film. I realised that the excuse that Wave – also serves a practical purpose. curious about cinema, asking questions
insecurity can turn people into submis- The ingenious use of this space helps to all the time. They brought a bootleg
sive figures. The father wants to give this we don’t have reframe the story in line with the secre- copy of my previous banned film There Is
attitude an air of sanctity and expects the a cameraman. tive nature of the shoot, allowing the No Evil [2020] and played it every single
family to follow suit.” The officer said, filmmakers to stay out of sight of the day I was in the hospital. They were fas-
When Sana, the younger daugh- regime’s watchful eyes. cinated by how they were represented in
ter, escapes from her father, in a scene “We can arrest “Allegory doesn’t serve the same func- the film, since it shows prison guards.
reminiscent of the family’s terror in The any cameraman tion, but if you can use it creatively, go They shared with me their wish to leave
Shining (1980), she finds refuge in a shed you like!”’ for it,” says Rasoulof. “Let me confess Iran and start a new life.”
where religious props for the annual Shia something: I never thought I was going Though his films are sombre and
mourning ritual are stored. In this space to finish this film, so I said, ‘Be playful, introspective, he tells these prison stories
of presumed veneration she discovers do whatever you like, throw away your with a dark humour.
tapes of pioneering female singers pre- knowledge.’ I just wanted to get rid of “Jafar [Panahi] and I were taken to the
dating the 1979 revolution – voices now everything I knew.” prison’s cultural office. They said, ‘You
banned. These and the removal of the Alongside this subtle symbolism, should make a movie for us in prison.’
mandatory hijab are some of the taboos several of Rasoulof ’s recurring motifs, Jafar and I were wondering, ‘Are we in a
that Rasoulof breaks. Adopting a more such as water and washing as an act of madhouse?’ We came up with the excuse
head-on approach, the film strives to purification, resurface. “That’s so me! In that we don’t have a cameraman. The
move beyond the mode of representation the worst situations, I feel that going for officer immediately replied, ‘Who do
that Iranian cinema has excelled in since a swim would change my mood. I was you want? We can arrest any cameraman
the 1960s: allegory. also raised in a crowded family, and often you like!’”
“I decided to put away allegorical and the only place to have some privacy was When I asked him what keeps this
metaphorical language because I felt it in the bathroom!” ramshackle system – built on mendacity,
was a form of self-censorship. I decided Until Rasoulof, few Iranian films cardboard heroes and deep disillusion-
to be myself. What matters to a dictator- explored political disillusionment ment – propped up, he replied, without
ship is that you aren’t yourself. Stripping through the lens of family and the toll any hesitation: “Money. Brutality. Sanc-
someone of their sense of self is what hap- it takes on those relationships, with tification.” In doing so, he unwittingly
pens in that system. The aesthetics I had the devastating Dead End (1977) by the explained what is causing the world to
PORTRAIT: © FILMS BOUTIQUE

used over the years were what I call the now-exiled Parviz Sayyad being a rare fall apart before our eyes.
‘aesthetics of tyranny’. I decided to reject exception.
them.” Despite its directness, the film ABOVE
“Family is the most basic social unit. The Seed of the Sacred Fig is in UK cinemas
still employs some allegorical imagery to Mohammad Rasoulof I focus on things happening around me, now and is reviewed on page 74
 13

EDITORS’ CHOICE Recommendations from the Sight and Sound team

THE FILMS OF EDWARD YANG: NOW FILMING:

CONVERSATIONS WITH A FRIEND ART, DOCUMENTARY AND RESISTANCE
BFI Southbank, 7 February – 17 March IN 1930S EAST LONDON
Throughout February and March, Until 22 February, Four Corners, London
there’s a rare chance to see all seven There’s not long left to go but it’s worth
of the features directed by Taiwanese making the effort to catch this
New Wave figure Edward Yang on the fascinating exhibition on the Workers
big screen. He may be best known for Film and Photo League (WFPL), as it’s
the sprawling urban epics A Brighter worth remembering the East End was THE GREAT POLITICAL FILMS: JEANNE DIELMAN
Summer Day (1991) and Yi Yi (2000), once a crucible of working-class Past Present Future, on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Amazon
both set at turning points in Taiwanese struggle and radical politics. In the It would be remiss of me not to point out that there is no better time than now to
history, but don’t ignore his earlier 1930s, a period of intense social conflict, familiarise yourself with the Belgian auteur’s restless and ever-surprising filmography,
works, not least The Terrorizers (1986, the WFPL used cameras to document with the current retrospective of Chantal Akerman’s films (which I curated) at the BFI
pictured above), a fascinating filmic the groups battling poverty, Southbank and her revolutionary portrait of a housewife obsessed with her routine,
puzzle which from one instigating unemployment and the rise of fascism. Jeanne Dielman (1975), being rereleased in UK cinemas. But my recommendation is a

OPENING SCENES
incident expands in myriad directions. The show has striking archival podcast episode which, fittingly, I listened to while cleaning my own home: a study of
And if Yang whets your appetite, this materials, some newly discovered, Akerman’s masterpiece by David Runciman in his twice-weekly podcast on the history
retrospective comes ahead of a wider including Workers Newsreel No. 3 (1935, of ideas. Runciman makes a robust defence of Jeanne Dielman’s S&S poll win against
Taiwanese New Wave season at the above), which captured mass the charge of tokenism: he sees it as not just an exploration of domestic drudgery that
BFI Southbank in London in April. demonstrations. The exhibition is chimes with the 1970s feminist notion of the personal as political, but a profoundly
Thomas Flew, editorial assistant co-curated by Samuel Stevens of the mysterious existential film about “the terrible dilemma of human choice in a world
University of Westminster and the Film where choice is meaningless”. It’s part of an excellent 22-episode series on ‘Great
& Photo League Archive. Political Films’, from La Grande Illusion (1937) to The Zone of Interest (2023).
Kieron Corless, associate editor Isabel Stevens, managing editor

GLASGOW FILM FESTIVAL JAPAN FOUNDATION TOURING

26 February - 9 March PROGRAMME
John Maclean will premiere his new Around the UK, 7 February – 31 March
film Tornado on the opening night of the Though it is mainly a showcase for the
Glasgow Film Festival. The director latest Japanese cinema, the Japan
made an impressive feature debut in Foundation’s annual UK programme
2015 with his Sundance winner Slow always turns up archive treasures too.
SAVE THE PRINCE CHARLES CINEMA! West, a downbeat western starring This year’s most eye-catching offering is
The Prince Charles Cinema is under serious threat, and losing it just isn’t an option. Michael Fassbender. Tornado (pictured Kinoshita Keisuke’s 1951 film Carmen
Days before this issue went to press, the PCC announced that their landlords above) stars model-songwriter Kōki, Comes Home (pictured above), the
Zedwell LSQ Ltd/Criterion Capital, who they say have “continually rejected Tim Roth and Jack Lowden in a story country’s first full-colour feature. Japan
requests for negotiation”, have demanded an increase in rent and are proposing a of gang violence and puppetry in the was late to adopt colour, but there’s a
break clause in their new lease – which means they could be kicked out with six 1790s. Further highlights include limpid beauty to early examples from
months’ notice if any plans to redevelop the building are approved. The landlords Athina Rachel Tsangari’s folk horror Ozu, Kinugasa, Masumura and others
told the Guardian that they “categorically deny any attempts to intimidate or Harvest and Laura Carreira’s On Falling, – and here’s where it all started, a
disadvantage” the cinema and want to balance “community benefit with sustainable winner of the BFI’s Sutherland Award, Fujicolor comedy starring Takamine
commercial arrangements”. The Prince Charles is a rarity in central London, a as well as strands devoted to Austrian Hideko. Ichikawa Kon’s mystery The
scrappy indie cinema with a strong sense of identity and a fiercely loyal community cinema and Mai Zetterling. All this Inugami Family (1974), revolving around
that it loves right back, programming popular double bills, mystery movies, plus appearances by Jessica Lange and a contested will, is also showing, while
all-nighters and £1 member screenings – and they still project on film. The week James McAvoy. A bittersweet note to the modern selection boasts two
David Lynch died, the PCC didn’t need to schedule a last-minute tribute, because end: this 25th instalment of the festival time-travel tales: Penalty Loop (2024)
they were already showing Blue Velvet (1986) on 35mm. To help keep the doors open, marks Allison Gardner’s final event as and A Samurai in Time (2023).
go to 38d.gs/SaveThePrinceCharlesCinema and sign the petition. director after three decades. Sam Wigley,
Katie McCabe, reviews editor Pamela Hutchinson, BFI digital features editor
Weekly Film Bulletin editor
 14

Spotlighting artificial

IN PRODUCTION

AI SPY
intelligence in film and TV
BY THOMAS FLEW

Comments by dávid Jancsó, the

editor of Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist,
have sparked fierce online debate
about the use of AI. In an interview
with Red Shark News, Jancsó said
AI sofware Respeecher was used
during post-production. Corbet told
the Hollywood Reporter this was to
“refine certain vowels and letters for
accuracy” in Hungarian by Adrien
Brody and Felicity Jones. Jancsó had
said that actors’ dialogue was fed into
the sofware, where it was merged
with line readings by the editor, who
is Hungarian. He also said generative
AI was used to create “architectural
drawings and finished buildings” as
designed by Brody’s character, architect
ABOVE Ben Wheatley (left) on the set of Generation Z (2024) with cinematographer Nick Gillespie László Tóth. Corbet denied this, saying
the production team “did not use AI to
create or render any of the buildings.
The new normal All images were hand-drawn by artists.”
BY THOMAS FLEW
One filmmaker singing the praises
of AI is Paul Schrader, who took to his
The multifaceted career of Ben Wheat- for sequels down the line – although the Facebook page to share his experiences
ley took another unexpected turn when director has made no promises. with ChatGPT. Afer asking for
he headed to southern Canada to shoot ideas for “Paul Schrader film[s]”,
OPENING SCENES

neo-western Normal in the final months DANCE, MAGIC DANCE he found that “every idea… was good.
of 2024. Wheatley discussed the film, Fresh on the heels of Nosferatu are two And original. And fleshed out. Why
co-written by Derek Kolstad (creator of newly announced and typically gothic should writers sit around for months
the John Wick franchise, 2014-) and star projects from Robert Eggers. Werwulf searching for a good idea when AI can
Bob Odenkirk, over a video call from will be a 13th-century lycanthropy film, provide one in seconds?” he suggested.
Winnipeg – the Manitoban city whose slated for release in late 2026, while an With his tongue perhaps in cheek,
most enduring cinematic representations untitled sequel to 1986’s Labyrinth (a pro- he also suggested that ChatGPT’s
come from its madcap son Guy Maddin. ject that has been circulating for years, script notes and improvements are
“Winnipeg is a real film hub,” he says. “It’s with director Scott Derrickson – The “as good or better than I’ve ever
got really good technicians and a great Black Phone, 2021 – previously attached) received [from] a film executive”.
base of actors. We’ve been waiting for the has no release date. As for who will take
snow [before we start shooting]. It’s dou- over the tight-trousered mantle of the A film composed entirely of
bling as Minnesota for our story.” More goblin king Jareth from the late David AI-generated images is set to premiere
specifically, the fictional town of Normal, Bowie, there is no word as yet. at the Berlin International Film
Minnesota, where Odenkirk’s character Festival this month. What’s next?,
Ulysses is suddenly recruited as sheriff NOLAN GOES GREEK a dialogue-free film by Chinese
following his predecessor’s untimely Christopher Nolan’s next film will be filmmaker Cao Yiwen, will play in the
death. Hinted at in the information we epic in the original sense of the word; experimental Forum strand, where it
have so far is a dark past from which he’s adapting Homer’s Odyssey for the will doubtless spark debate about the
Ulysses is escaping – shades of Saul screen, with Tom Holland cast in a lead- merits of art created using generative
Goodman’s fate in Breaking Bad (2008-13), ing role. The blockbuster cast reportedly AI – with this premiere, the Berlinale
perhaps? Joining Odenkirk, who previ- also includes Holland’s fiancée Zendaya, becomes the first major festival to
ously starred in another Kolstad-penned as well as Robert Pattinson, Charlize programme an entirely AI feature.
action movie, Nobody (2021), are Henry Theron, Lupita Nyong’o and Matt
Winkler, as the town’s mayor, and Lena Damon. The film, which will be “shot
Headey, as its bartender. All other cast- across the world using brand new Imax
ing is still under wraps. film technology”, according to produc-
“There’s lots and lots of action. It’s tion company Universal, is set for a July
more on the Free Fire [2016] end of the 2026 release.
street. It’s full-on and intense,” Wheatley
says. “Obviously, it’s not giant octopuses NEXT ON THE BRAT AGENDA
and helicopters and stuff [as in Meg 2: After conquering the music industry
The Trench, 2023], but it’s definitely rocket with her ‘brat’ summer, cinephile pop star
launchers, combat with axes, gunplay Charli XCX (whose 2022 album Crash
and fighting.” The prospect sounds was inspired in part by David Cronen-
explosive, and with Kolstad’s pedigree berg’s 1996 film of the same name), is
in drawing out franchises from his crea- set to produce her first film, which she
WHEATLEY ON SET: © CHANNEL 4

tions (as with John Wick, whose four-film will also star in. A24’s The Moment will be
series has a miniseries and three further Scottish filmmaker/photographer Aidan
films on the way, and Nobody, a sequel Zamiri’s directorial debut. The film is
to which is expected this year), perhaps based on an ‘original idea’ by Charli, but ABOVE
we could be seeing Wheatley returning no further details have yet been given. Cao Yiwen’s What’s next?
 15

OBITUARY
Malcolm Le Grice
15 MAY 1940 – 3 DECEMBER 2024

BY WILLIAM FOWLER
How to describe Malcolm Le Grice, two-screen 8mm pro- a sense of things being
who has died aged 84, and who leaves jection China Tea (1965), revealed, the guts of
a significant body of work and art and about both serving the cinema and art being
countercultural legacy in his wake? drink and the material reformulated, as he
When any friend and/or member of a of the teacups. What attempted to break and
community dies, the loss can be hard to might have been a draw- demystify their underly-
make sense of as memories zoom in and ing or painting study was ing structures in the pur-
out of focus. transposed to film and high- suit of a radical, exploratory,
In 1998, Le Grice made a deeply evoc- lighted framing and the passing experimental film practice. His
ative, surprisingly gothic experimental of time, and hence ritual and rep- film studies staple Berlin Horse
video called Even the Cyclops Pays the Ferry­ etition. Drawing on vanguard ideas (1970) considered these notions and
man, about his father who had recently in contemporary art and first practising looked at change and dissonance within
died. His dad had just one eye, but most as both jazz improviser and painter, Le Colour, direct a repeating, if elliptical, structure. It also
people assumed the title was about film Grice generated radical new ways to manipulation included an early experimental score by
and video, the single eye – the camera think about filmmaking. Performance, Brian Eno, who was exploring post-John
that takes in light and puts our lens upon musicality and the experiential qualities of material, Cage motives through music and mag-
the world. The video wasn’t about light, of colour were all fed in by way of Lon- lyricism and raw netic tape.
however, more darkness and fire. It had don’s counterculture and underground experience: these An erudite thinker, writer and painter,
surprising references to cycles and the film screenings in DIY, flexible spaces. but ultimately a filmmaker, Le Grice
anti-narrative shapes Le Grice had pur- Often, from the late 1960s into the all excited and used the passage of time and the act
sued over the last 30 years. The piece is mid-1970s, he’d work on found materials: preoccupied him of playback to elucidate concerns and
haunted and haunting. Although it was 16mm film strips he found in Soho dust- and he continued formal ruptures in traditional filmmaker
made more than 25 years ago, many now bins. Imposing colour fields, loops, early aesthetics and language construction. It’s
consider Cyclops a ‘late work’. Overall, computer animation and extensive super- to make and odd to consider his work in retrospect.
show work until

OPENING SCENES
Le Grice made more than 70 films in imposition, he sought to simultaneously All too often his films truly came into
nearly 60 years, dispersed across numer- highlight the codes of moving-image lan- virtually the end being at the point of projection, or “the
ous international cinema organisations guage while embracing ideas drawn from project event” as he called it in his opposi-
and art museums, including the BFI the ‘junk art’ of Robert Rauschenberg tional 1972 essay ‘Real Time/Space’.
National Archive – which holds his and the burgeoning field of cybernetics. Le Grice shared minimalist, concep-
original cut negatives, along with several Channelling nuclear war paranoia and tual preoccupations with other artists,
restorations – and the Tate. new thinking about subliminal imagery yet his work remained fiercely grounded
He was also a campaigner and an edu- and control, which he then inverted, he in craft, using unique, custom-made
cator, though, pushing the notion that presented some of these works under the film printing equipment at the London
film might be considered a fine art along- series title ‘How to Screw the CIA’ at the Film-makers’ Co-op, which he helped
side painting and sculpture. He taught 1970 International Underground Film to shape, going on to extract support-
the first film course in an art education Festival, hosted by the National Film ing funds from the BFI. His influence
context in 1965 at St Martins College Theatre (now BFI Southbank). there extended to sitting on the BFI
of Art and wrote a regular art magazine He could be both showman and magi- Production Board (a precursor to the
column in the 1970s, seeking to take cian – words out of keeping with the time current Filmmaking Fund), viscerally
cinema away from the literary, theatri- but which evoke at least something of challenging long-standing industry vet-
cal traditions it had been lumbered with the presence and feel of his extraordi- erans to overhaul their thinking. He was
since the advent of sound in the 1920s. nary performance pieces Horror Film 1 outspoken but stoic, warm but busy with
His f irst proper work was the (1971) and Joseph’s Coat (1973). There was thought. His move from formalist, anti-
narrative, yet poetic 16mm filmmaking to
more overtly expressionistic, even diaris-
tic video fractured assumptions about his
work, and maybe even his own ideas.
It turns out he wasn’t against ‘specta-
cle’ per se, just the stultifying strictures
of literary-based narrative. Colour, direct
manipulation of material, lyricism and
raw experience: these all excited and pre-
occupied him and he continued to make
and show work until virtually the end.
Across his life, he made shadow perfor-
mances, multi-screen work, 3D films, fea-
tures (see the excellent Blackbird Descend­
ing, 1977), portraits and diary videos.
His imagistic practice was predicated
on engaging, sometimes challenging,
the audience, exploring ideas and asking
questions. He helped so many other film-
ABOVE
Malcolm Le Grice
makers and belonged to a far larger eco-
system of practice, which continues to
LEFT
Even the Cyclops Pays the
this day. He would, I’m sure, urge you to
Ferryman (1998) experience these other works too.
 16

IN CONVERSATION And it’s quite an important aspect of

our communication because that was
music we both grew up with in our

‘I want people to enjoy expanding their teens, we know what it means for us.
So we had two teenage girls doing
the naughtiest thing they’ve ever done
imaginations through colour and sound’ in their life [they sneak into school
dormitories after hours], and it was
totally natural that this was the music
Yamada Naoko’s The Colors Within is an innovative anime about three we used there. Maybe we should have
teenagers who start a band. Here, Yamada and composer Kensuke Ushio used something ‘Born Slippy’-ish
talk about sound, vision and what ‘Born Slippy’ means to them instead, but overnight I came up with a
cover version and sent it to Yamada-san.
BY K AMBOLE CAMPBELL
You worked together on the score
and the music by the band. How did
Ever since 1940’s Fantasia, with its in anime for some time, from her laid- you build the sound for the latter?
segment in which abstract colours back and influential TV series K-On!
and disembodied lines represented (2009-10) to the varied stylisation of Yamada Naoko: For this band created
different musical tones, animation has Liz and the Blue Bird (2018), both works in the film, there were a few reference
continued to demonstrate its unique keenly interested in music. Speaking points for me, like Thom Yorke and
relationship with visualising sound. with an interpreter to Yamada and Radiohead and Crystal Castles,
Unbound by physicality, it offers a composer Ushio Kensuke, her so it wasn’t pop, it was a more
unique opportunity to see the world frequent collaborator, we discussed introspective type of music. That’s
afresh in sensory terms, something that the influences of club culture on their what I gave to Ushio-san to interpret
Yamada Naoko takes full advantage collaboration and using animation when we were sending YouTube
of in her film The Colors Within (her to portray something intangible. links back and forth to each other.
first feature produced by anime studio
Science SARU), a coming-of-age One piece of music that jumps out UK: I took that introspective feeling she
tale about a trio of teenagers. One of in the film is a cover of Underworld’s had given me and respected that, but
them, Totsuko, interprets the world ‘Born Slippy’, well-known from its as a musician myself I had to be true
via the different coloured ‘auras’ she appearance in Trainspotting [1996] – to myself and my own tastes. And the
sees around people. This second sight what led you to that particular song? music that influenced me as a teenager
OPENING SCENES

leads her to the other two, Kimi and was particularly British, like 80s new
Rui, with whom she forms a band, and Ushio Kensuke: Yamada-san and I have wave bands. But rather than directly
the music they make together becomes worked on a number of films together referencing or copying them, I tried to
an outlet for their internal struggles. and quite often, half-joking, we’ll say, BELOW & OPPOSITE
think of this band as part of that genre,
Yamada has been a prolific figure “Should we use ‘Born Slippy’ here?” Yamada Naoko’s The Colors Within and what they would come up with if
 17

that’s one reason why you can feel

the texture of it. The other thing
is, when it comes to connecting
the point of view of the music and
the visuals, Kura-san [Kurahashi
Hiromune], who did the sound
effects, had a big role to play in
connecting the two. He brings that
world to life with the sound of a candle
flame, electricity, everyday sounds.
He’s creating those effects which
connect the image and the sound.

UK: I do the musical equivalent of a

close-up when recording. For example,
taking the lid off the piano and hearing
the inside. At the end of the film you
hear the piano, but you also hear the
sounds of the church where they spent
so much time together, the squeak
of the floorboards and the rattling of
the windows. All of that I recorded
and used as percussion. I went to the
church where it’s set and took acoustic
measurements so that I could replicate
the sound of the church electronically.

Speaking of treating this like a real

world that exists, the character
designs felt reflective of that mindset.

‘I feel that when we meet people, sometimes we get an YN: This is something that was very
impression of them that’s hard to explain based on just our five important for the character designer

OPENING SCENES
Kojima Takashi and myself. We worked
senses. In this case, Totsuko has that but it’s not synaesthesia, on making sure that, through the
just colours. I think we all have different versions of that’ design of each of the characters, you
U SHI O K ENS UK E
feel their gravity and their weight.

How did that influence the dancing?

It feels important as its own form
they were part of that movement. Then thinking side by side and respecting of artistic expression and also as
for things like Rui’s song, that goes each other. That was my starting part of Totsuko’s backstory.
back to when we first see him looking point. Not that I was making this for
through records in the shop. There’s a a Christian audience specifically, but YN: I think that’s just the animators
record by a techno DJ called Surgeon I did think that people watching this putting themselves in the position of
– we couldn’t say the name directly for film in other countries, where there those girls, who aren’t all great dancers.
rights reasons, so [we used one that’s] might be more people familiar with Making something real doesn’t always
similar – but it’s club music, so he’s Christian teachings, would [find it] make for appealing animation, because
obviously thinking about that type of a good framework. As in, that makes sometimes you have to tell lies to make
music in the tracks that he writes. it easier to understand the characters’ things look good. Like with Totsuko
feelings of guilt and the secrets they dancing, or the sisters holding hands
Where did the theremin come from? feel they have to keep. But also, having and dancing.
that belief system and those rules in
YN: Ushio-san was interested in old place gives the characters something Totsuko’s vision has been compared
synthesisers anyway and he taught to strive to be free from through music. to synaesthesia, but it’s not really.
me a lot about those, but in the case I’m not saying anything is bad, rather I was wondering what provoked the
of the theremin… Totsuko gets an that freedom and variety are good. idea of her seeing colours in this way?
intangible sense of colour from the
people she meets. While at the same You’ve obviously put a lot of YN: I feel that when we meet people,
time, Rui is creating music from the thought into the texture of these sometimes we get an impression of
intangible waves [that come from] the sounds and I feel there’s an equal them that’s hard to explain based on
theremin. I thought that was a nice amount of attention paid to just our five senses. In this case, as you
resonance between the two characters. the physicality around creating say, Totsuko has that but it’s not
them. I wanted to ask about the synaesthesia, just colours. I think we all
Totsuko’s point of view is strongly relationship between the animation have different versions of that. When
influenced by her faith. Even and the sound, in that sense. I was making the film, I decided that I
the music operates in parallel to didn’t want to restrict making meaning
religion – what interested you about YN: I think I treat the characters as by using words, I don’t want to have to
Christianity, having the band play living, and I’m just filming them. And tell this in words. I want people to
around with this particular faith? that involves paying attention to bokeh enjoy expanding their imaginations and
[the quality of blur on images] and I did that through colour and sound.
YN: Christianity isn’t widespread in particles and grain – I’m basically I tried to make it, in a way, borderless.
Japan. But there are a lot of other treating the world as if it exists and
ABOVE
Yamada Naoko and
religions, people of different faiths trying to respect the dignity of the The Colors Within is out now in UK
Ushio Kensuke and none at all, different ways of characters within that world. Maybe cinemas and is reviewed on page 76
BEST FILM NOT IN THE BEST FILM OF 2024
ENGLISH L ANGUAGE

STREAM ON
B L U - R AY O U T 3 M A R C H
 19

MEAN SHEETS
Designer Brian Hung tells
Hong Sangsoo’s stories
with passion and empathy
BY THOMAS FLEW
There is a wonderful variety to the
posters that accompany the films of
Hong Sangsoo, even though the films
of the Korean auteur are best known for
their similarities. Brian Hung, in-house
designer for the US distributor Cinema
Guild, which frequently releases
Hong’s films, has created posters for
many of his works over the past decade
– including A Traveler’s Needs (right),
the director’s third collaboration with
Isabelle Huppert, in which she plays
a free-spirited French instructor.
Hung explains how he created this
vibrant design: “I tried to capture and
convey the same childlike wonder
her character has as she wanders
through Seoul. I looked at a lot
of illustrated children’s books for
inspiration, which really informed
the composition, particularly the
exaggerated proportions of Huppert’s
character against the oversized foliage.
All the other small details – the

OPENING SCENES
makgeolli [rice wine], the city building
background, the Korean synopsis
on the rock – came intuitively.”
Green is a significant colour in the
film, from the trees of the park in which
Huppert’s character dozes and the
cardigan she so often wears, to the strip
of tape she playfully affixes to a pen
during one conversation. Says Hung:
“The overwhelming use of green
was an early direction from Cinema
Guild – they told me that whatever the
poster was, it had to be very green.”

See more below and at instagram.com/brianjhung.

Hong Sangsoo’s By the Stream is in UK cinemas now

In Water (2023) The Woman Who Ran (2020) The Novelist’s Film (2022)
 20

READERS’ LETTERS Get in touch

Email: [email protected]
X: @sightsoundmag
By post: Sight and Sound, BFI,
21 Stephen Street, London, W1T 1LN

It was disappointing to see so many titles in the

2024 poll which had previously placed in 2023

POLL POSITION
I greatly enjoyed the recent review which placed at #2 for 2023, poten-
issue and in particular your cover fea- tially have achieved a poll-topping
ture recap of the 50 best films of 2024 consensus if bolstered by its straggler
(S&S, Winter 2024-25). However, it votes for 2024? Likewise, in the oppo-
was disappointing to see the repeti- site direction for La Chimera (#20 in
tion of so many titles which had previ- 2023; #3 in 2024)?
ously placed in the 2023 poll, of which Many films in your 2024 list have
I counted nine in total. Nearly a fifth 2025 release dates. When these are
of the list remaining inert across years early in the new year and align with
feels pretty gridlocked, especially awards season, I see the sense in put-
when it could instead be spotlighting ting them in for the purposes of rel-
and celebrating more work. evance in line with wider industry dis-
It invites a question about whether cussions and reader engagement. But
some films would potentially place is including films that haven’t secured
CUPBOARD LOVE Elene Naveriani’s Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry even higher if they were more clearly UK distribution yet an easy judge-
contained to their most sensible year. ment call to exclude from the list?
Progressive agendas can be just as limiting Would The Zone of Interest (2023), Rob Barnett, via email
as their reactionary counterparts
SUBSTANCE, NOT JUST STYLE
It’s rare that I disagree with Nicole is even more human when Elisabeth
OPENING SCENES

Flattery’s writing, but I respectfully becomes frightened of living up to

suggest that in the overview of The her own perceived notions of physi-
Substance (Flick Lit, Sight and Sound, cal presentation and leaves him hang-
December 2024), it is the critic being ing. With understanding, a one-off
“prescriptive”, not the film. Progres- platonic date might have benefited
sive agendas can be just as limiting as both. I can picture the man wishing
their reactionary counterparts. that he hadn’t opened his mouth to
In a film as stylised as The Substance, precipitate a familiar rejection.
the interaction between Elisabeth Nicole says she’d love to see “more
(Demi Moore) and the man from films about older women who are
her school peer group is one of the unexpected”. Has she seen Elene
more human elements. I don’t think Naveriani’s Blackbird Blackbird Black-
he wants to “see women fall on their berry (2023)? It’s a tale of middle-aged
faces”; rather, he recognises the older female self-determination that
Elisabeth for who she is and gives her lifted this old guy’s heart.
a genuine, if gushing, compliment. It Tim Kyle, via email SIMPLY THE BEST? The Zone of Interest (2023)

YOUTH BEFORE BEAUTY? SOLID GOLD

While there is much to admire in your There is a certain I am in complete agreement with
choice of the best films of 2024, I also Dan Malone (Letters, S&S,
feel there is a certain dumbing down dumbing down Winter 2024-25) about online con-
creeping into your Films of the Year creeping into your poll tent being no substitute for print.
poll (S&S, Winter 2024-25). Whether There was much to enjoy in the
this has to do with your need to rec- issue: Andrew Male’s analysis
ognise popular films or the fact that of The Stone Tape (1972) brought
your critics are just getting younger, to mind the Ghostwatch (1992)
I’m not sure. I’m thinking primar- mockumentary, featuring
ily of putting both The Substance and Michael Parkinson. Perhaps
Love Lies Bleeding in the top ten. now is a good time for a repeat
These are excellent genre pieces but screening on BBC4?
hardly worth the praise being heaped Long may Sight and Sound endure,
on them, (the same goes for shedding light on our cinematic past,
Challengers), particularly when informing us of its present state while
one of the few genuine mas- also looking to its future.
terpieces released in the UK Edward O’Reilly, Dublin GHOST WORLD Jane Asher in The Stone Tape (1972)
in 2024, Pat Collins’s Irish
IMAGES: BFI NATIONAL ARCHIVE

film That They May Face

the Rising Sun (pictured CORRECTION
right), didn’t even make The image accompanying the obituary of Cheng Pei-Pei in our Winter
the top 50. 2024-25 issue was incorrectly attributed as being of the actor. We apologise
Martin Radley, via email for the error and have raised the issue with the relevant image archive.
 Guillermo del toro’s (pan’s labyrinth, the shape
of water) directorial debut newly restored in 4K,
available as a limited edition, extras-packed 2-disc
UHD and Blu-ray set.

ORDER FROM
shop.bfi.org.uk
22 TALKIES

T h e Long Take Pamela Hutchinson

@PamHutch

My memories of falling in love with David Lynch

are forever tied to my nostalgia for the video age

News of the death of David Lynch caused who is to say it should not be first seen on
a lurch in the stomach, and a rush of mem- a well-worn VHS tape courtesy of Houn-
ories: of the films themselves, reeling with slow library? Speaking of wear and tear,
mystery and wisdom, uncompromising I became uncomfortably intimate with
in their idiosyncrasy, terror and charm, my fellow geeks’ proclivities: digital fuzz
but also of the circumstances of watching frequently obscured sex scenes, a tell-tale
them. Such vivid scenes create rich sense artefact of too much rewinding.
memories. I was perhaps a little too young Hungry for films, I would put up with
when I first encountered his work, watch- worse. Intrusive adverts, bleeped exple-
ing The Elephant Man (1980) on TV. But I tives, scheduling disasters where the tape
still feel the lump in my throat. ran out before the film ended, and the
Quite sensibly, Lynch’s films played always abrupt transition between the end
after the watershed, which is to say my of, say, Dinner at Eight (George Cukor, 1933)
bedtime, so this viewing would have been and the middle of an episode of Channel
thanks to the timeshifting magic of the 4’s The Word (1990-95). A shared family
videocasette recorder. Cinema trips were VCR created a palimpsest of film, TV and
very rare in my early years. So I first fell in music, of boggling variety. If one could
love with cinema by watching old films peel apart the layers there would be several
on TV, but it was thanks to VHS that I lifetimes of culture to absorb. It was when
became a cinephile. Lynch was a huge watching one of my parents’ tapes that I
part of that. I met Eraserhead (1977) for the was arrested by the opening of a late-night
first time via videotape on a TV wheeled arts programme, and the vision of a real-life
into an A-level classroom on a trolley. Just Betty Boop far from her American home,
hours before, I had broken my arm, and in Berlin. I know now that it was the BBC
as I watched the film grow stranger and Arena documentary on Louise Brooks –
bleaker, the plaster cast slowly tightened broadcast in 1986, shortly after her death.
and hardened around my bones, leaving Another friend collects vintage small-
me besotted and nauseated. Naturally I gauge projectors. She is the diligent custo-
craved more: Wild at Heart (1990), taped dian of previous generations’ home video
off the telly and scarcely to be believed, adventures. Mine seem mundane in com-
and of course a box set of Twin Peaks (1990- parison, but I see already how filmmak-
91) from the local library, where I soon ers are fetishising the crackle and fuzz of
became briefly notorious for my Lynch VHS. I never noticed the flaws at the time:
enthusiasm. “ There’s a young woman A shared family Some videos were worth purchasing, I was peering at the movie behind them.
here ready to crawl on broken glass to see with Saturday job money: increasingly so Yet the formats carry memories as well as
Blue Velvet,” announced one librarian in videocasette when I began studying film. One had to the films. We know now that no system of
plummy tones on the phone to a distant recorder created consider both cost and shelf space: every media storage is perfect, so why not enjoy
branch. Thanks to my dad for the lift to a a palimpsest of movie was worth a fat Victorian novel. At the oddities of our own personal archives?
suburb I had never been before or since, university, the modern languages library By the time I had a real job, DVDs were
forever associated in my mind with sick- film, TV and had the best selection of silent films, but in, and became my business. The increase
ness festering behind white-picket fences. music, of boggling they were often out on loan. I now know in quality, and storage, meant we rarely
MAIN ILLUSTRATION: MARC DAVID SPENGLER. BYLINE ILLUSTRATIONS: PETER ARKLE

The Blockbuster video store was for variety. If one the culprit, a fellow contributor to this looked back in nostalgia for the video age,
weekends and watching with company, magazine, who likely thwarted my first but it’s burning there, in my memories of
but it rarely supplied the fix I needed. could peel apart attempts to watch the likes of Cabiria (Gio- falling in love with Lynch. More tangibly,
Really hip movies could be taped off the the layers there vanni Pastrone, 1914) and The Cabinet of Dr. it is resting in the box of late 1990s video-
TV and watched late at night with friends, would be several Caligari (Robert Wiene, 1920). And I his. tapes in my attic. Probably unplayable, but
repeatedly: Gus Van Sant, Alex Cox or Jim I had been too young and too squeam- impossible for me to throw away.
Jarmusch. But I was rapidly becoming a lifetimes of ish to join in with the video nasty wave, and My thanks to Dr Sheldon Hall and his
glutton who guzzled her videos alone in culture to absorb my tastes were not omnivorous or macho knowledge of film listings on TV for his
the mornings or at lunchtime: French films enough to emulate the likes of Tarantino. help in fact-checking some of my fuzzy
from the 1960s, American films from the I selected films that my friends considered memories for this column.
1930s. Thanks to the local library and the pretentious or a chore, and hugged my
well-curated resources of my sixth-form backpack on the bus. If it is necessary to Pamela Hutchinson is a freelance
college, I burned through tape after tape. watch Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941), critic and film historian
 23

Nicole Flattery
@nicoleflattery Flic k L i t
There’s a profound cynicism at the heart of
Babygirl and All Fours that speaks to our times

The low-rent hotel room is having a Babygirl and been staying in. She spends all the money but something far more transactional.
moment. Who would have thought that in on soft pillows, expensive wallpaper and What happened to real yearning? In All
2025 it would become the focal point of the All Fours rare furniture. July’s novel then spins off Fours, the protagonist eventually finds out
erotic fantasies of a certain kind of middle- are prettified in genuinely unexpected directions; like Davey knew who she was all along and is
aged woman: successful, high-powered upgrades, like Babygirl this isn’t a story of unfulfilled mid- a devoted follower of her work. They’re
with strict skincare routines and high-end dle-aged desire. not hot, desperate strangers meeting on
coats they practically wear as armour. A layering expensive Babygirl and All Fours are pretti- equal terms: they’re a celebrity and her fan.
woman like Nicole Kidman, for example, wallpaper over fied upgrades, like layering expensive At the end, she watches Davey dance in a
in Halina Reijn’s recent Babygirl. When a sleazy interior, wallpaper over a sleazy interior, of the public space. He’s popular now too, and
we first see Romy (Kidman) in the dirty classic erotic thriller – with added peri- she is overwhelmed by the cheering crowd.
hotel room that her intern Samuel (played of the classic menopause. But something ugly and Is being famous better than sex?
with louche intensity by Harris Dickinson) erotic thriller unintended is showing through the cracks. As much as I enjoyed Babygirl and All
has booked for their tryst, she is moving Babygirl is too careful, and you never get Fours, I was fascinated by their inability
around uncertainly. How did she end up the sense that Kidman’s CEO of a robot- to address either power imbalance. Fit-
not only in this situation, but in this room? ics company will ever actually lose control, tingly, both show scenes of transforma-
She picks a hair that is definitely not hers or lose anything at all. Her final, trium- tion: Romy getting Botox, July’s character
off the bedspread. Is she turned on or phant line over a misogynistic colleague attending weight-lifting classes. In the end,
about to call housekeeping? The strange- struck me as deeply sad and not slightly neither Samuel, who is shipped to Japan
ness and scuzziness is part of the sexual empowering, if that was the objective: “If off screen, and Davey matter all that much.
excitement. Not much later, Kidman is I want to be humiliated,” she says, “I will The men aren’t real people, but another
face down on the carpet, experiencing the pay for it.” Her relationship with Samuel step on the women’s self-actualisation jour-
kind of orgasm she’s never had with her BELOW is reduced to her means, and because of neys. It’s a highly cynical position, which
Nicole Kidman and
husband, in their huge marital bed on their Harris Dickinson in
her means her desires can be fulfilled easily speaks to our times, and one that not even
400-thread count sheets. Halina Reijn’s Babygirl by anyone. It was never about connection the most greed-obsessed thrillers of the
There has been a notable, and much- 80s suggested.
written about trend of older women My favourite depiction of an affair
besotted with younger men in the past with a younger man is the French writer
year. There was Anne Hathaway in the Annie Ernaux’s diaries Getting Lost (2001).
Harry Styles-inspired fan fiction The Idea Her novel A Simple Passion (1991) is also
of You, and Kidman again (but who does it about the affair, but the diaries are rawer
better?) with Zac Efron in A Family Affair. and showcase more complicated feelings.
And there was All Fours, one of the most In them, Ernaux daily and painstakingly
talked-about books of last year, by Miranda lays out her desire for a young married
July, a writer, polymath and director whose man who works for the Soviet embassy
films include Me and You and Everyone We in Paris. She waits for him, he excites her,
Know (2005). he disappoints her, but either way she is
In the novel, a woman – a writer who consumed. He behaves appallingly and,
seems much like July herself – receives sometimes, so does she. At one point, she
a windfall of $20k, which she decides to writes, “It’s obvious that nothing is more
spend on a road trip to New York City. She desirable and dangerous than losing the
doesn’t get far: she stops in a small town sense of self, as with alcohol and drugs,
and becomes entranced by a younger man at least in my case.” Obliteration is part of
called Davey. Davey, and the dance rou- the aim, but Ernaux can also disclose her
tines he performs, become an erotic fixa- greatest weakness: “Admit it: I’ve never
tion for the woman. Her sex life with her wanted anything but love.” These are
generous and wildly forgiving husband high stakes. The pain and tenderness in
(not unlike Antonio Banderas as Kidman’s Ernaux’s diaries are in stark opposition to
husband in Babygirl) is perfectly pleasant the most striking visual element of Baby-
and active, but not sexually liberating or girl: one of Romy’s robots moving goods
exciting. How can she have everything she around, focused purely on their own
wants? In a truly deranged decision (July objectives, unburdened by feeling.
has always been an acquired taste), she
hires Davey’s girlfriend, an interior deco- Nicole Flattery’s novel ‘Nothing Special’
rator, to do up the cheap hotel room she’s is published by Bloomsbury
24 TALKIES

TV Eye Andrew Male

@Andr6wMale

Skeleton Crew is light years ahead of the stodgy,

lore-heavy storytelling of recent Star Wars spinoffs

The first episode of Star Wars: Skeleton children that their home planet is known
Crew opens with a vision of astral anarchy, among fellow space marauders as the “lost
a violent space attack in which a fleet of planet of eternal treasure”.
battering-ram pirate ships pierce the hull Importantly, in drawing upon these
of a New Republic freighter. The maraud- texts that exist outside the Star Wars
ing pirates are led by a helmeted privateer universe, specifically texts that separate
named Captain Silvo, who in his language, children from their parents, Skeleton Crew
mannerisms and electronically distorted allows itself to escape the tedious weight
voice resembles a deadbeat Darth Vader. of paternalistic IP lore that has weighed
It’s an obvious throwback to the open- down Star Wars product ever since Lucas’s
ing scene of the original Star Wars (1977), The Phantom Menace (1999). Also, it cru-
in which Vader and his Imperial forces cially draws from stories, films and novels
storm Princess Leia’s ship to retrieve centred around children who are allowed
plans to destroy the Death Star, and as a to behave as children. Of course, the Star
showcase for what Skeleton Crew is capa- Wars franchise has always featured young
ble of as an action adventure it couldn’t be protagonists, from Luke Skywalker and
more thrilling. Princess Leia (both are 19 years old in the
The more interesting scenes, however, original film) to Anakin Skywalker and
are the ones that follow. We cut to an Padmé Amidala (nine and 14 in The Phan-
ordered, rather dull-looking planet that tom Menace), but whether by accident or
resembles a futuristic Milton Keynes, all design they are never written convincingly
grey buildings and tidily mown lawns, as children. Skeleton Crew may be the first
where a young boy, Wim (Ravi Cabot- live-action Star Wars series that shows its
Conyers), is shown playing with Jedi child stars behaving as normal children:
action figures on his way to school, one bickering, getting scared, messing things
where he and his fellow pupils are being The series settles and forced to learn tedious minutiae and up, having crushes and looking out for
taught accountancy as part of their train- lore about the New Republic. each other. As a result, the show is both
ing to be “part of the Great Work, keeping down into a What Watts and Ford have given us fun and funny, and devoid of the stodgy sal-
the Republic peaceful and strong”. thoroughly instead is a shameless throwback to clas- magundi of pseudo-important exposition
When their droid teacher asks how the entertaining sic children’s adventure stories and, in that
that defined both Ahsoka and The Acolyte.
students plan to contribute to the Great sense, its closest antecedent is the first Yet, as well as taking the dull, lore-heavy
Work, the answers are spectacularly unex- hybrid of Treasure Star Wars and Lucas’s original vision for New Republic narratives of recent Star
citing. “I want to be a senior statistical Island, Peter Pan, the franchise: “Those Flash Gordon/Buck Wars franchises and reinvigorating them
accountant… I want to be an analyst…” ET the Extra- Rogers kinds of things… space operas… with a child-centric adventure narrative,
Only Wim answers differently, saying he adventure serials.” Watts and Ford have done something else.
wants to “help people… in danger”, before Terrestrial, The When Wim and his friends Neel, Fern They have laid the groundwork for other
being told “that’s not a career, that’s what Goonies and Joe and KB find a buried starship in the for- writers to follow in their wake. In Episode
safety droids are for”. The message is Dante’s Explorers ests of At Attin and accidentally launch 4, ‘Can’t Say I Remember No At Attin’,
clear, life in the New Republic is boring. themselves into deep space, the series set- the four children arrive at a planet that
We later learn that Wim’s home planet, At tles down into a thoroughly entertaining resembles At Attin but which is populated
Attin, is a world of peace where all the citi- hybrid of Treasure Island (1883), Peter Pan by child soldiers involved in a never-end-
zens work as analysts, and that the planet (1911), ET the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), Theing war. Without giving any more away,
is protected by something called the Bar- Goonies (1985) and Joe Dante’s Explorers the series’ final episode, ‘The Real Good
rier, which blocks any view of the stars. No (1985), one in which Watts and Ford are Guys’, ends on a note of victory that may
Stars. No Wars. at pains to highlight their influences. So also be a forewarning of defeat, suggesting
It’s possible to interpret these two open- the spaceship has a deck-hand droid called that in disrupting the staid narratives of the
ing scenes as Skeleton Crew’s showrunners, SM-33 (a reference to Captain Hook’s current Star Wars franchise Watts and Ford
Jon Watts and Christopher Ford, showing boatswain, Smee, in Peter Pan) who con- might also intend to destroy the entire
us an example of what the Star Wars fran- verses in arch Devonian Piratese (expertly staid fabric of New Republic itself. It’s the
chise once was (a thrilling space adventure) voiced by Nick Frost), and the children are most excited this writer has been about a
and what it has become with such flop TV befriended by a duplicitous space pirate new Star Wars adventure since 1977.
shows as The Book of Boba Fett (2021-22), and possible Jedi, Jod Na Nawood (a
ABOVE
Ahsoka (2023) and The Acolyte (2024): bored Jude Law as Jod Na Nawood
magnificent Jude Law), who also goes by Andrew Male is a freelance critic
kids stuck in a world of boring grown-ups in Star Wars: Skeleton Crew the name of Captain Silvo and informs the who lives in south London
OUR LATEST SPECIAL EDITION
AVAILABLE NOW
SHOP.BFI.ORG.UK
 As he excavated America’s subconscious, and ruffled the viewer’s, from Eraserhead to Twin Peaks
to Mulholland Dr., David Lynch didn’t just expand the idea of cinema: he created a new version
of reality, an alternative world that changed our sense of the one we thought we were living in

DAVID LYNCH
WORDS BY MICHAEL ATKINSON. PORTRAIT BY SANDRO MILLER

THE DREAM ENGINE WHO ALTERED OUR ORBIT

Now it’s dark. The reason for this appeared to be thinly In a culture a helium voice in 1990’s Wild at Heart?),
He was our most indispensable inva- disguised nonplussedness – though to be shrieking psychopathy lurking beneath the
sive species, the extraterrestrial Other fair, we all invented ‘Lynchian’ as a descrip-
devoted to surface of ordinary life, etc – have become,
hailing from the Great Inside Out and tor in the 80s because there was no extant passivity, wish bizarrely enough, recognisable parts of the
pretending to be one of us. Far from just word that met the challenge. There still fulfilment and broad cultural slipstream.
another hallowed filmmaker, much less isn’t. (One hopes that over the decades The signposts of his biography – Boy
merely a hipster T-shirt idol and incredibly he might’ve been amused, rather than
sloganeering, his Scout boyhood, art school meanderings,
strange recipient of both France’s Legion maddened, by the mainstream attempts has been America’s unhappy early marriage and fatherhood,
of Honour and a Lifetime Achievement to articulate his work.) But, surprisingly, most provocative, disarming aw-shucks adult persona – are
Oscar, David Lynch was an unearthly force with mystification has come culture-sat- practically written on the wind; journalists
field, like a rogue planet exerting its own urated adoration, as though even Gen Z
insistently spent decades interviewing him and trying
disorienting gravitational pull, an indefati- media-gulpers saw in the Yankee-scapes demanding and to get deep answers to questions he would
gably defiant pop-culture fringe lord who of inner Lynchistan a physics of derange- productively often respond to like a shrugging school-
bent the world and altered our orbit, forc- ment that rhymes with their sense of their boy. But from the moment he appeared
ing uncertainty into our daylit materiality. inherited world. unsettling in public, with the American Film Insti-
That’s one way to think about Lynch, Cinephiles, critics and f ilm maga- art project tute-produced short The Grandmother at
anyway, and there are thousands more, zine readers never needed their hands the experimental Bellevue Film Festival
as we’ve seen in the encomiums flooding held; part of the glory of Lynch’s work is in Washington state in 1970, Lynch was
the mediasphere since the announcement how its ineffability forces us out of our clearly a figure who lived outside of cul-
of his death at the age of 78, on 16 Janu- formulations and standardised perspec- tural and artistic trends, and whose muta-
ary, following ill health with pulmonary tives and into a creative headspin of our tive perspective on contemporary life in
emphysema, a condition he had spoken own – as with many of the greats, Lynch America was both terrifyingly off-kilter and
about in a Sight and Sound interview a few made films that teach you how to watch terrifyingly truthful. Going forward, we
months earlier. them, and to respond you must actively saw a different country: the ur-slum Phila-
It’s hardly hyperbole to say that he was muster your own lyrical and conceptual delphia of Eraserhead (1977); the warped
one of the very few absolutely unique army. In Lynchistan we don’t sit back – North Carolinian small town of Blue Velvet
visionaries cinema has had in its 130-odd- we lean forward, toes curled, eyes wide, (1986); the haunted Los Angeles of Lost
year history; using the word ‘visionary’ angular gyrus firing away. In a culture Highway (1997), Mulholland Dr. (2001) and
should ordinarily give us nervous pause, devoted to passivity, wish fulfilment and Inland Empire (2006); the knotty, woozy,
but not this time. Of course, uniqueness sloganeering, his has been America’s most secret-sickened Pacific North-west of Twin
has always had its pitfalls: for most observ- provocative, insistently demanding and Peaks (1990-91) and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk
ers, going back to the 1980s, characterisa- productively unsettling art project. His with Me (1992); the teeming, quasi-apoc-
tions of Lynch have been variations on the treasured motifs – metaphysical waiting alyptic continent-wide mad map of Twin
IMAGE: © SANDRO MILLER

idea of him being a chugging, unchecked rooms with red curtain walls, shots that Peaks: The Return (2017).
id, a ‘surrealist’ dream engine spewing plunge into tiny abysses and emerge in With our eyes opened and our livers
racy weirdnesses without a filter, farmed undefined spaces, distorted and disassoci- OPPOSITE
inflamed, Lynch’s national vision became
out of the post-war American midlands. ated voices (why did Freddie Jones have David Lynch, 2018 iconic: a geomorphology of vestigial
28 DAVID LYNCH

As a composite canvas of an existential cultural essence,

it’s rivalled in its sui generis-ness and strange modern
congruity only by the legacies of Kafka and Beckett
mutations and radioactive sexual psy- This is, of course, a take from a stricken
chopathy, of twisted power figures, errant Lyncheaste who has essentially grown
electrical charges, hidden homunculi, up and grown old with the man (I was a
blood-painted outposts, inexplicable teen when I first saw Eraserhead in its first
wavelengths, deranged undergrounds – years on the midnight-movie circuit), but
simultaneously an outland of sin-cloaking Lynch, with a half-century-long career
forests and a cosmic-kitsch hotel lobby of that included distinctive shorts by the
the dead. As a composite canvas of an exis- many dozen, ongoing webcasts, albums
tential cultural essence, it’s rivalled in its sui of very peculiar music, original DVD
generis-ness and strange modern congruity supplements, paintings, deadpan comic
only by the legacies of Kafka and Beckett. strips (The Angriest Dog in the World ran in
Somehow, this guileless and hermetic alt-weeklies from 1983 to 1992), and even
assault on contemporary cultural conven- experimental musical theatre, has seemed
tions, beginning in earnest in the Reagan to slip the noose of generational obsoles-
era, when Eraserhead stalked through cence. He was as discombobulatingly
midnight shows, The Elephant Man (1980) seductive to the college students of the
netted Oscar nominations and Blue Velvet Carter administration as he remains to
tore unsuspecting filmgoers a new Weltan- those confronting the Trump years, who
schauung, was eagerly folded into our zeit- can now look at the corpus as something
geist. Maybe this is because Lynch’s films sealed and delivered, stretching from the
could be said to have a Jungian relation- art-school shorts made during the Viet-
ship with our own stages of development nam War and culminating in the lysergic
– maturing from Blue Velvet’s coming-of-age cascade of the third Twin Peaks season.
tribulation, through the lostness of the first For a newbie, perhaps distractedly
adult confrontations with the venal coun- weaned on the free-associative whimsy
tryside in Wild at Heart and Twin Peaks: Fire rolling through much of Twin Peaks (how-
Walk with Me, to Lost Highway’s bad-dream ever much they probably should’ve paid
marriage espionage and Mulholland Dr.’s closer attention to the notorious, grimly
ordeal of romantic disillusionment, to the arcane dialogue-free eighth episode of
identity ruptures of middle age in Inland that third season, or the savage confron-
Empire and the vicious uncertainty about tation of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me), a
the once-familiar world in the unnerving tour through the legacy could provide a
years beyond, in Twin Peaks: The Return. little dirty shock treatment. For instance,
They are almost an auto-chronicle of only the Lynchwork-to-come can provide
Lynch’s march through time and space, retro-context for the aberration of Eraser-
reflecting our own, progressing from the head; from nowhere, amid a post-Nixon
teenybopper’s hometown, fit for explor- America dizzy with disco and Star Wars,
ing, to a sprawling toxic tomorrow seen came what might be the most ingenuously
through something like the bloodshot eyes strange American film ever made. We’ve
of the dementia-afflicted. been trying to articulate what Eraserhead

is ever since, from its suppurating Man

in the Planet to the wailing mutant baby
to the Lady in the Radiator to the pencil
factory, and somehow we’re right back
where we started, wondering when the
mere suffocation of dream logic ends
and Lynch’s one-of-a-kind muster of dark
material begins.
The only home for it was as a midnight
movie, where dope could only have made
it more harrowing. Lynch then had his
dalliances with compromise, producing
one masterpiece, The Elephant Man (1980),
deftly walking the crooked line between
historical biopic and Lynchian cosmic
fever-dream, and one boondoggle, Dune
(1984), an oversized convoy of monster
trucks which Lynch wasn’t allowed to
drive the way he wanted. (It’s ramshackle
but speckled with otherwordly nuttiness
no other artist would’ve dreamed up, and
hardly as dull as the recent Denis Ville-
neuve version.) But then, with Blue Velvet,
IMAGES: ALAMY, BFI NATIONAL ARCHIVE

comes the modern Lynch, fully formed

like a Swamp Thing and attacking a
semi-recognisable TV-suburban America
with an Oedipal flamethrower. From any
perspective, the film is a free-standing
ecosystem of reimagined sex-death,
ABOVE simultaneously a Freudian mother of all and paying inscrutable attention to the Lynch-appropriate, including 2017, when
Laura Harring as Rita in
Mulholland Dr. (2001)
bombs, a satire on Bildungsroman myster- Middle America he knows so well; it felt the entirely unhousebroken third season
ies, a psychosexual audience crucifixion, like a sweater he’d always worn, but it was was unleashed on pay TV. This was tel-
OPPOSITE
Sheryl Lee as Laura Palmer
an elegy for lost innocence and a deathless also a shock to see how close he may have evision that tested you, and your capacity
and Kyle MacLachlan as plastic enigma. It’s everything. always been to Rossellini, Hawks, Ozu for ambivalence. Eight years on, it’s still
Agent Cooper in Twin Peaks:
Fire Walk with Me (1992)
Take Wild at Heart as its oestrogen-brew and Renoir. Then, the irascible Lynch- opening startling windows on to a logic-
counter-film, then, abandoning the poi- blitz of Inland Empire, which separates free contra-America for new and younger
soned suburbs for the screaming Ameri- the grown-ups from the freshmen and viewers, for whom Blue Velvet is as old as
can highways in an Oz-inflected swoon the dabblers. His most experimental Lynch himself was when he made it in
(not the first or last genuflection Lynch feature, it’s a three-hour chaos of anxiety the mid-80s.
would make toward the 1939 version of that seems to metastasise, mutating into As a gateway drug, Twin Peaks has
The Wizard of Oz, a lifelong resonance something else, each time you watch it. proved a powerful intoxicant, and it’s
tracked in its own 2022 feature docu- It’s indicative of the film’s raging fever certainly ‘safer’, mass-audience-wise, than
mentary, Alexandre O. Philippe’s Lynch/ that star Laura Dern, in a scouringly fear- Lynch’s seething library of short films,
Oz). Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me is every less performance, manifests in a variety which should not be neglected, if you’re
libidinal nightmare the TV show didn’t of personas, but we can never be sure daring to take a full measure of what this
dare to be, while Lost Highway and Mul- how many. protean consciousness has spawned. (In
holland Dr. exist in their own hyper-Hol- Twin Peaks was a network TV experi- 54 seconds, Lynch, in the 1995 Premoni-
lywood-fringe terrariums, both bifurcated ment that, as far as the suits were con- tion Following an Evil Deed, out-evokes its
and therein mirroring one state of modern cerned, flared and then failed in two alternative reality more acutely than most
lostness with another, and discovering seasons – except that the aura of the show full-length films, even a few of his own.)
that plunging deeper into those shadowed stayed active beneath the surface, like He had no precedents, only imitators.
antechambers – the wet closets of our own a Lynchian fungus, waiting for internet And now we’re living in a post-Lynch
hearts and minds, after all – only finds grot- culture’s tendency toward conspiracy world; what is authentically Lynchian now
tier disjunctures. skulduggery and niche obsessions to feed belongs to the finite past. (Maybe, given
In between, Lynch took a Disney it. At first a kitchen with many cooks, the way he smoked, we’re lucky this didn’t
assignment and made a temperate mas- the show was ahead of its time, sure, happen years ago.) What’ll we do now? As
terwork out of The Straight Story (1999), but it’s possible that no media moment Gordon Cole, the character Lynch played
sublimating his natural creative sporing in modern times would be completely in Twin Peaks, said, fix our hearts or die?
‘WE ARE TWISTED BEINGS
31

GOING ABOUT IN DARKNESS’

In 1984, David Lynch was known as the director of two very different features: Eraserhead and The Elephant Man.
To mark the release of his third, Dune, he was interviewed in front of an audience at the National Film Theatre
in London. The director talked about painting, his first steps in the film business, the process of making
his features, the failure of another project – and a film he’d like to make, called ‘Blue Velvet’
INTERVIEW BY CHRIS AUTY

Chris Auty: You started out as an all sixteen-millimetre cameras were with this and I don’t really know why ‘I lived in
artist. You went to art college, you the same. I thought the name sixteen- I love it so, but it means something to
were a painter. Can you talk a little millimetre meant a certain… almost a me. And Philadelphia struck me as this Philadelphia and
bit about The Alphabet [1969] and The brand name. And I was amazed at how fantastic place because it was decaying, I call Eraserhead
Grandmother [1970], because they seem the prices were so different all over town. it was degenerate, it was filled with the true Philadelphia
to be fine art projects as much as films. Anyway, I set to work with this camera tremendous fear, and I just started
and I animated for two months solid. getting one idea after another, and it Story.… It struck
David Lynch: Yeah, I wanted to be a At the end of the two months I took the was a fantastic place for me to be. me as this fantastic
painter all my life, and where I came film in to get it developed and it came place because it
from, in the north-west of the United back and it was a solid blur. Nothing I wonder what of that film has carried
States, it was unheard of. I didn’t realise was there. And I became sort of crazy through subsequently. It seems to me was decaying,
that you really could be a painter. And and depressed, and I called this man, I that you’ve made, so far, three very, very it was degenerate,
I moved to the East Coast really just told him, “There’s nothing there and I’ve different feature films. Different to a it was filled with
at the right time, and I met a friend spent a lot of your money.” So he said, degree which is extremely unusual,
whose father was a painter, had a “Well, never mind. Go ahead and make not just because the budgets are tremendous fear’
studio in Georgetown, and I became any picture that you want with the rest so different, but because the films
crazy. I had to see a studio and from of the money and just give me a print, are aesthetically so different.
then on I knew it was possible. and that’ll be that.” And so I made this
So I was painting away and I went little film, The Alphabet. And had the film Each one is different, but I suppose
to the Corcoran School of Art [in I was going to make worked out, I don’t there’s some feeling or some kind of
Washington DC] on weekends in think I would’ve won a grant with that. method that could tie them together. But
high school and I went to the Boston But because I got to go ahead and make I’m not sure that I could see it. That’s for
Museum School and the Pennsylvania something a little bit more, I got this someone else to point out, I suppose.
Academy of Fine Arts, but I would make grant from the American Film Institute,
these paintings and I would sort of hear and that really opened another door. You’ve said in a couple of interviews
a sound that went with them, or I’d want that you grew up in the ideal version
there to be some sort of movement. Looking back, do you think you of middle America, where the sun
There seemed to be a bit more of a story were a good artist or do you think always shone and there were plains
behind them. Not a story, but just a little that that was just juvenilia? and blue skies and so forth. Can you
bit of something. And that’s when, for talk a little about your childhood and
an experimental painting and sculpture No, no, no. I was finding my way. your youth? Was it really a happy time?
contest, I made this one-minute film, I loved painting and I still paint, but
which was a loop of film that involved when you are painter you’ve got to stay It was, as I look back on it, an extremely
six figures and a soundtrack of a siren. with it night and day, and then maybe happy time. And the contrast with
So that started it. It was projected on a you find the thing that’s truly yours. what I knew as a child to a city was
sculptured screen. And after I finished like black and white. I want to make
it, I thought this would be the last film You spent a great deal of time – this picture called Blue Velvet, which
I would ever do because I said, “It’s four years – and a great deal is a story of almost an idyllic world, a
much too expensive.” The screen cost of effort on Eraserhead [1977]. neighbourhood, but under the surface
$100 and the film cost $100. I said, “I What of you is there in Eraserhead? there’s a sickness. It’s almost the
can’t afford to do this.” But a millionaire opposite of The Elephant Man [1980]
saw this show and commissioned me Well, I lived in Philadelphia and I call – there it’s an ugly surface, but beauty
to build a moving painting – he called Eraserhead the true ‘Philadelphia Story’. within. But I am thankful I had that
it a moving painting – for his house. I love industry and I love factories, and I sort of heavenly beginning because
So he gave me a bunch of money and I love smoke, and I love oil, and I love all then when I see the cities, they have so
IMAGE: ALAMY

OPPOSITE
bought a new camera, a Bolex sixteen- the factory life and the factory workers, much more power, and industry is so David Lynch during the
millimetre camera. Before then I thought and I don’t have any real experience fantastic just because of this contrast. making of Dune (1984)
32 DAVID LYNCH

Though you were an art student, If I ever make Ronnie Rocket, and you ‘Late in the of film and sound together, and I came
were you an avid filmgoer, or was could play back what you said, it’d be a into New York and it was really cold.
that something that came later? strange teenager. But Ronnie Rocket is an
afternoon it was I wheeled it down to this theatre and
absurd comedy, a frightening comedy, my turn to show there were two or three films before I
No, I never was a film buff really. I just but it’s set in a 1950s industrial world the film, and the could show them Eraserhead. And so
wanted to paint, and that was it. or a couple of different worlds, and it’s I went and got several cups of coffee,
a film about electricity, and Ronnie
projectionist and finally late in the afternoon it was
You’ve said that you liked the films of himself is about three feet tall, or maybe put it on and my turn to show the film, and the
some very, very diverse talents. I’ve seen three and a half, with physical problems, started running projectionist put it on and started
quotes from you saying that you love and a fantastic pompadour, red hair. running it. And I paced out in the lobby,
Jacques Tati, you love Werner Herzog,
it. And I paced then got my film and left, and it was
Billy Wilder, Kurosawa. These directors Does that mean going back to a out in the lobby, about three weeks later, after I got back
are as different as your own three films. smaller scale of filmmaking? then got my film to Los Angeles, I found out that no one
was in the theatre. But I got rejected
Well, they are. Jacques Tati, for instance, Ronnie Rocket involves some special
and left, and it from Cannes. Then I applied to the New
I don’t know what other people think effects and it’s a lot of rigs, [but] was about three York Film Festival and got rejected from
and in America they really don’t know compared to Dune, much less. weeks later there. And actually my wife Mary [Fisk]
him, but I thought he was a total genius. forced me to take the film to Filmex
Not only visually, but his humour was so And perhaps a film that’s less
I found out that [festival in Los Angeles] to try to get it
fantastic, but visually and with sound, aimed at the mass audience… no one was in into Filmex, and drove me down on the
he did just incredible things. And these the theatre’ last day at the last hour, and I popped it
other people all created a world that It’s got some fantastic elements that on the floor and I said, “It’s been rejected
became so real that I loved going in that I think people would love to see. from here. It’s been rejected from there,
world, and I would love to live in many of But I think Eraserhead has some and you guys probably are going to
those worlds. They’re just so fantastic. fantastic elements, and they haven’t all reject it, but take a look at it.” And he
been beating down the doors of the said, “Wait a minute.” He said, “We don’t
There is a surrealism in Eraserhead that cinemas to try to see that picture. care where it’s been, and we are our own
makes one think of various directors... judge, and don’t worry about it.” And
particularly Buñuel. But these are That film was, in fact, rejected, it got in. So that started… Everything
very European preoccupations and wasn’t it, from at least a couple happened because of Filmex, really.
you were an American teenager. of noteworthy film festivals?
You got rejected at several stages.
I can’t figure it. It was rejected from Cannes. I was very At one point you were kicked out
sick and I took the film to New York of the American Film Institute set
I gather that one of the films you are City from Los Angeles, and I had to take where you were filming Eraserhead?
planning, Ronnie Rocket, is really a almost all the money out of the bank to
story of American teenager. Or is that get a plane ticket. I borrowed a cart from Well, we’d been there for three and
perhaps the wrong way to look at it? this grocery store to get twenty-four cans a half years, and the fire department
actually were the ones that made
LEFT us leave. See, the American Film
Kenneth McMillan as the
airborne Baron Harkonnen
Institute was on the grounds of this
in Dune (1984) Doheny Mansion, and there was
OPPOSITE
the Beverly Hills Park Department
Lynch’s 1970 short running the grounds, and they were
The Grandmother
becoming sort of upset because they
thought I was living in the sets.

Which in fact you were.

Which I was. So one day, Mr King

came down and told me that I had
to leave. We were right in the middle
of shooting. We’d been shooting for
several hours already, and I, at the
time, had a paper route. I delivered
the Wall Street Journal at night. So we
had to shoot thirty hours straight,
and I had to deliver my paper route in
the middle of all this... There was the
elevator scene in Eraserhead that we
were shooting. The last thing we shot.

Eraserhead took something like

four and a half years to make.
Dune has taken nearly as long.

It’s a sad world.

It is indeed. What I was wondering

was the discrepancy in the sense
IMAGES: BFI NATIONAL ARCHIVE

that Eraserhead cost twenty or

thirty thousand dollars, perhaps.

No. That’s an untrue figure… But

I won’t tell you what it cost.
Dune has cost something in the region And the same doesn’t apply So it’s like I say. We all tried to do the ‘A millionaire
of forty-two million dollars plus, to Dune at all? book Dune and get it on the screen.
making it one of the most expensive saw my show
movies ever made. Having gone down No, we started from scratch and I One of your next two projects, [in the late 60s]
that extraordinary route, that escalator was able to make it, not necessarily a Blue Velvet, already has a reputation and commissioned
of budgets, and looking back at it personal film, because the ideas didn’t almost running ahead of itself as
now, do you think that you will ever come from me – that came from Frank quite a heavy movie. Is that accurate? me to build a
again try and cope with the logistics of Herbert – but it was my interpretation moving painting
tackling such a major, major movie? of Dune, and it was a fantastic journey. That’s accurate. And I don’t know – he called it a
To me, on the surface it’s an adventure where these ideas came from really.
Well, Dune really did take that much story, but it has so many other elements. It started from this desire to sneak moving painting –
money and that much time to do, and we I love films that take you into another into a girl’s room and stay there the for his house.
were working six days a week for three world, and Dune has these four different whole night hiding and watching, So he gave me
and a half years. Part of that was writing worlds, and a chance to create four and it’s gone from there.
the script, which was a real struggle different worlds. It has a mystical side. It a bunch of money
because it was the most complicated has a chance to do these dream visions. Where to? and I bought
thing I have ever done, and it took a long It has this complicated story and so a new camera’
time to do it. Every part of Dune was many different textures. It has these To Blue Velvet. It’s a murder mystery.
complicated, and it was very expensive fifteen-hundred-foot sand worms. It has There is some darkness and fear in this
because so many people were involved this evil baron that can float, and it’s picture, and some strange sexual things,
doing so many different things. But it’s got plenty of textures. It’s got a twenty- but there’s also a very nice love story that
the material that sort of dictates the foot Guild Navigator that has been goes with it as well. And all in the midst
money and the time and the people. So distorted through time from floating in of a mood mystery, murder mystery.
if I fell in love with or I got the chance this spice gas. It’s got outer space travel,
to do something that took that much but what’s so neat about it is that all Can you ever see yourself directing
money again, and I loved it, I would these different elements are in one film. an outright comedy, for example?
do it. But I’d also like to do some small It was a real challenge and something
pictures and different kinds of things. I thought that cinema could really do. Well, Ronnie Rocket is really a
comedy, even though it’s strange.
You weren’t, as far as I know, a science- It’s not, if I may say so, disturbing in
fiction buff. And you had, one gathers, the same sense as your previous two Can you talk a little about how The
more or less refused to direct or turned films. It’s a film really with a lot of Elephant Man arose? Because that
down the opportunity to direct Return laughs. Had you not intended really must be one of the most inspired
of the Jedi, but you took on Dune. Why? to include some of that edginess that pieces, I think, of creative casting
works in the two previous films? of a director to a project that we’ve
Well, Dune was a film that I could seen in quite a while. The film
interpret in my way, whereas working Well, I think it’s got some of that, was a project originally with Mel
for George [Lucas], you don’t have a lot at least to me it does. Although The Brooks’s company, wasn’t it?
of leeway. It’s his picture. And when he Elephant Man is totally different than
was talking to me about it he’d already Eraserhead, and Dune is maybe as No, it wasn’t… It ended up with
designed three-quarters of the film. different as that is to the other two. Brooksfilms, but it started off with
34 DAVID LYNCH

‘Eraserhead is an abstract picture, and it can be interpreted in as many different ways

Lynch on
as there are people that will look at it… I just let them interpret it any way they want’ casting
two writers, Christopher DeVore and I was reading lots of scripts and I was Eraserhead is an abstract picture, and it JACK NANCE IN
Eric Bergren, who loved the idea and trying to get Ronnie Rocket going. Finally can be interpreted in as many different ERASERHEAD
the story of the Elephant Man, and Francis Coppola wanted to produce ways as there are people that will look A friend of mine at the
wrote a screenplay. Jonathan Sanger, Ronnie Rocket, and I went to his place at it. Because it’s that way, it means American Film Institute
who later became the producer of the at Zoetrope Studios and was busy something to me, but it’s going to mean told me about Jack and
said that before I cast
film, optioned that screenplay. And getting set up, ready to go, and it was many things to other people. I just let
the picture I should
Stuart Cornfeld, who was working for the most fantastic feeling at his studio. them interpret it any way they want. meet him… It was one of
Mel Brooks, read the screenplay, knew the worst interviews I’d
Jonathan, and Stuart told me about The So Coppola would’ve And on Dune, given the scale, ever had. Jack was really
Elephant Man. I read the screenplay and produced the picture? what sort of interpretations? down on strange student
I loved it. And Stuart and Jonathan and Does the same process apply? pictures… He didn’t know
I went to various studios – all the studios Absolutely. And there were so many Do you think people will come whether he wanted to be
– and tried to get them interested. things going on. He was right in the into it looking for little things they bothered with it. He was
moaning and groaning
middle of One from the Heart [1981], and can take away or is it very much…
about this and that. So
And what was their response? it seemed like everyone was in a very I said, “Well, thanks a
creative mood. But it was definitely There are many, many, many things million for coming in,
It was turned down everywhere we play pretend, because it couldn’t last. hiding under the surface in Dune, Jack.” So we walked out
went. They said, “No one wants to And when One from the Heart came but on the surface, like I said, is this together. He passed my
see a film about a hideously deformed out, it all fell. It’s very unfortunate. adventure happening. But there Volkswagen and I had a
human being,” and that’s what they said. But that was the end of Ronnie Rocket. are lots of symbols and dreams and roof rack that was four
Meanwhile, Mel Brooks had read the Then I started writing on Blue Velvet, moods within this, and different foot by eight foot, because
on my paper route I’d
script. It had been in his office and had and Warner Brothers read the first textures, which I find really nifty.
find wood sometimes and
somehow gotten home, and he and couple of drafts of Blue Velvet and strap it to it. And he said,
Anne Bancroft both read it, and Mel passed on it, and then along came Audience member: It could be said that “Oh man, that’s a nifty
fell in love with it, and said he’d like very Dune. And so I fell in love with that. Eraserhead and The Elephant Man roof rack. I wonder whose
much to have it be his company’s first both deal with a person, or even a that is.” And I said, “It’s
picture. And he said, “We’re definitely Is Dune the sort of experience baby, with physical deformity, and mine.” And he says, “You’re
going to need Chris and Eric, and we’re that you’re likely to repeat? it sounds like Ronnie Rocket does as kidding me.” And so, in a
going to need Jonathan, he’s optioned in well. Is that a coincidence or does it way, this roof rack sort of
sealed the deal.
the script, and Stuart can be involved, Well, every film is different. I don’t have a special fascination for you?
but who’s this guy, David Lynch?” And think there’ll ever be a film like this,
Jonathan said, “Well, you’re going to so I’m not interested in repeating it. I don’t know. I think that I love this idea
JOHN HURT IN
have to see Eraserhead.” And I said, But it’s been a great experience, the that we are sort of twisted beings going THE ELEPHANT MAN
John Hurt was all of our
“This is the end of the road for me.” making of it, and I’m proud of the film. about in darkness, doing strange things. first choice, and Mel
And so Mel went into the screening Bumping around in confusion. But it Brooks asked him to come
room with Jonathan and Stuart and How does your painting relate seems to me there’s got to be some light to Los Angeles… I think
I stayed out pacing back and forth. to your work as a filmmaker? somewhere in the darkness, but until he might’ve been in town
you find it, it’s a very absurd, strange at the time. He asked him
This time you knew there [With painting], it’s mostly feelings and world. And this twisted thing has a lot to come over to the office.
was someone in there. an intuitive sort of thing. It’s so hard to to do with that. I love flesh, too, but And Mel had rigged up the
office so that John would
talk about. Most painters never have flesh… just beautiful flesh. Everybody
sit in a very comfortable
This time I knew. The doors came to talk. They can just do it, and it’s loves this texture, but sometimes flesh in chair right in front of two
bursting open and Mel came happening so nicely under the surface, other forms also is very beautiful. Such giant blow-ups of the
hurtling toward me and wrapped and there’s way more power under there as The Elephant Man, really. Or just sores. Elephant Man. So he did
his arms around me and said, “I love anyway. So you don’t have to sell your sit down in that chair and
you. You’re a mad man. You can do idea for a painting and you don’t have to CA:Like the running joke with the we told him about the
the job.” So fate steps in again. go through so many processes. It’s very Baron Harkonnen in Dune, whose story and he was getting
pure. I think my painting now is closer face is a mass of suppurating sores. more and more interested.
But I was looking at his
That was shot in London. Why was to Eraserhead, or possibly Ronnie Rocket.
left arm, which had no hair
that? Why not shoot it in the States? Right. Yeah. As soon as you put on it, and I knew that
Who are the artists who you’ve a name to it, it stops you he was the guy.
Well, it’s a Victorian picture. And admired or modelled yourself on? really from seeing it as
London, the mood – it would never an interesting texture.
have happened, it would never have Well, now, I don’t really know. I’m so But if you just saw
been the same. When I came here, excited about seeing new painters, it in an abstract way,
especially at the Eastern Hospital in but I was influenced a lot by Francis nature is so fantastic
Hackney – it’s Hackney, right? As soon Bacon and Edward Hopper. Those because so many
as I walked into that hospital, I knew were my two favourite painters. things you stop looking
in my heart, or I felt I knew, Victorian at, because you know
England, the atmosphere was still there. So the surrealist movement exactly what it is. But if
And the atmosphere is so much here, doesn’t really come into it? you were to look at it and
it’s incredible. So it had to be here. not know what it was, it’d
Not really, no. be a fantastic thrill. There’s
Maybe a reflection on how little many medical books that
IMAGE: BFI NATIONAL ARCHIVE

England’s changed. How did you I was wondering what you thought have a thrill on every page.
move on from that? Because I of articles that said that the baby
think there were a couple of other in Eraserhead is in fact a displaced This is an edited transcript of David Lynch’s
projects between The Elephant phallus. How do you feel about that Guardian Lecture at the National Film Theatre,
London, on 12 December 1984. The former
Man and arriving at Dune. It kind of interpretation being applied critic Chris Auty is now the director and
was quite a long period. to your work after the event? CEO of the London Film School
 ‘THAT’S DAVID LYNCH’ For all the singularity of his vision, David Lynch was
admired by those who worked with him for his open
and collaborative spirit. Here, in archive extracts from
Sight and Sound and the BFI, key collaborators discuss
their experiences of working alongside him. PLUS
Ali Abbasi, Robert Eggers and Gaspar Noé, each of
whom voted for a Lynch film in the S&S Greatest Films
of All Time poll, pay tribute to his inspirational genius

Freddie Francis John Hurt Raffaella De Laurentiis

Cinematographer, Dune (1984), The Elephant Man (1980), The Straight Story (1999) John Merrick in The Elephant Man Producer, Dune

David Lynch, in life, is nothing the So, it was down to two people – myself [Make-up artist] Wally Schneiderman… To do a special effects movie today is a
way you imagine him. He’s a lot of and one other. So, David said, “Let’s had to put the [Elephant Man question of money, right? I’m not saying
fun, and both [camera operator] toss a coin. If it comes down heads, it’s prosthetics] on the first time, and it took everybody, but almost everybody can do
Gordon Hayman and I, we pull his Freddie. If it comes down tails, we’ll twelve hours. And the rest of the cast special effects… We wanted a stranger,
leg tremendously, and he loves every have him.” It came down tails. He said, and director and everybody were waiting a more different, a more exotic – it’s not
moment of it. When he did Eraserhead, “We’ll have Freddie.” And, you know, around… for this apparition to appear. the right word – but a different movie,
[1977] David was a bit down on his I say that because David and I knew And I finally did, and I was terrified that a movie that would take you places.
luck financially, and he was living in a that we would get on with each other. I there was going to be a laugh. Because And The Elephant Man did that… A lot
converted garage just off Sunset, and mean, we had a lot of fun. I remember no one had seen it, we had no idea what of people said the greatest gamble [in
his wife wouldn’t let him get his salary once… he and the operator had lined up we’d been creating in Chris’s [Tucker, making Dune] was not the $40 million,
cheques, all he used to have was his per a scene. I looked at it, I said, “David, chief make-up designer] little studio it was David Lynch. But that’s the thing
diem. In those days, the biggest thing in this is the worst set-up I have ever seen down on the Old Kent Road, whether or I’m most proud of, because I think we
David’s life was going to lunch at Bob’s in my life.” And he looked at me and not it was going to be a successful image. have a very special movie… a movie like
Big Boy, which in America is like a just burst out laughing. Because he Fortunately, they didn’t laugh. And nothing that has ever been seen before.
McDonald’s. And he was always saying knew I was serious about it, you know? you could’ve heard a pin drop. And I don’t think we would’ve gotten it that
the whole time we were And you can talk to David like that. from then on, that gave confidence both way without David.
shooting The Elephant ‘Guardian’ Lecture with Alan Jones, to me and certainly for David Lynch, ‘Guardian’ Lecture with Chris Auty,
Man, “The moment you National Film Theatre, who was a very young director at the NFT, December 1984
come to Hollywood, London, July 1995 time… Somehow, at that moment, we
I’m gonna pick you knew we had something.
up at the airport, we’re ‘Guardian’ Lecture with Geoff Andrew,
‘In Dune we have a movie
going straight to Bob’s Big NFT, April 2000 like nothing that has ever
Boy.” And this was David.
When David and Jonathan
been seen before. I don’t
Sanger, the producer, came over think we would’ve gotten
[to the UK, to shoot The Elephant
Man] they knew nothing about
it that way without David’
English cameramen, [but] they RA F FA EL L A DE LAUR E NT IIS
wanted one to do it. They saw a
couple of my films… And I met
IMAGES: ALAMY (1), BFI NATIONAL ARCHIVE (2)

ABOVE LEFT
with David. And because David Kyle MacLachlan with Freddie
and I have the same sense of Francis during the making of Dune
humour – and so does Jonathan
ABOVE
– we got on like a house on fire. Raffaella De Laurentiis
People were saying “No, no, no, with David Lynch
Freddie hasn’t done a film for 15
LEFT
years,” to which David said, “Well, Freddie Jones as Bytes, John Hurt
you know, it’s like riding a bike, really.” as John Merrick in The Elephant Man
36 DAVID LYNCH

Dennis Hopper
Frank Booth in Blue Velvet (1986)

David Lynch wrote the screenplay.

None of it was improvised. I did it line
for line. The only thing that I did – that
was created by me – in Blue Velvet was
the mask that I used [which] David
had written as helium and, you know,
helium makes you sound like Daffy
Duck… I said, “David, I’m just listening
to my performance, to my voice, and
I can’t do it. Besides, when I read it,
I thought of it not as helium, but as
something that disoriented Frank’s
mind so he would go off for a few
minutes.” And he said, “Like what?” and
I said, “Amyl nitrate and nitric oxide,”
and David said, “What’s that?”, and I
said, “Well, David, let me show you.”
You know, I did it! And he said, “That’s
great, great, great, great, fantastic.”
About a month ago, I was sitting
alone thinking about David and about
Blue Velvet, and I thought, “What if I’d
done it like he’d written it?” – I mean,
how strange and how sick a guy Frank
Booth would really have been if all he
did was go, [in a squeaky, high-pitched
voice] “Baby wants to fuck.” Really, that’s
sick! That’s David Lynch.
‘Guardian’ Lecture with Derek Malcolm,
NFT, November 1990

Nicolas Cage
Sailor Ripley in Wild at Heart (1990)

[Wild at Heart], it’s just an incredibly which maybe are lurking underneath
original vision. It’s his own world or a the skin a little bit or maybe they aren’t,
world that he’s formed, and I wanted they’re very scary images. I’ve always
to walk around in that world. I’d seen had a fascination with the dark side of
Blue Velvet, I’d seen Eraserhead when I things or the grotesque side of things.
was 15, and he was one of my favourite The kinds of things that give people
directors. It was as simple as that. I was nightmares have really fascinated me.
dying to work with him. I’ve loved it in all kinds of artwork,
He has a way of giving the American painting, music. I was in the Prado…
people what they don’t want and pulling and I saw Hieronymus Bosch’s The
it off. A lot of the time – in America – Garden of Earthly Delights, and I
people want to go to the movies so that thought it was amazing. And David
they can escape, to take their mind off Lynch reminds me of that, he is like a
of their problems, to laugh and that’s Hieronymus Bosch of film.
great. That’s a good thing. But David ‘Guardian’ Lecture with Emma Freud,
Lynch has a way of showing things NFT, November 1992

‘Darkness and confusion

is a place where he gets Mary Sweeney
a lot of his creative Editor, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me
inspiration. I loved (1992), Lost Highway (1997),
The Straight Story (1999),
working in a non- Mulholland Dr. (2001)
linear fashion, too. It Darkness and confusion is, as [Lynch]
becomes more like says, a place where he gets a lot of his
creative inspiration. I loved working
poetry or metaphorical’ in a non-linear fashion, too. It becomes
M A RY S WE E NE Y more like poetry or metaphorical, and
the language of cinema is so effective
when speaking in metaphors. You
IMAGES: ALAMY (1), BFI NATIONAL ARCHIVE (2)

TOP don’t have to use the camera to explain

Dennis Hopper with things. That is characteristic of the
David Lynch, on the
set of Blue Velvet films we did together – the way the
audience is drawn in because they
ABOVE have to fill things in with their own
Mary Sweeney with Lynch
emotional landscapes.
RIGHT Sight and Sound, October 2022
Nicolas Cage as Sailor
in Wild at Heart
38 DAVID LYNCH

Gaspar NoÉ on Eraserhead

I first saw Eraserhead as a teenager… I
saw it in Paris the first time it came out,
and the reason I ran to see the movie was
because there was a leftist newspaper my
parents were reading at the time called
Le Matin de Paris. The main critic there,
Michel Perez, who had a very good
reputation, hated the movie; the whole
review was so insulting about it. So I
thought, “I want to see this movie. It
seems like the kind of thing that’s really
shocking.” I went to see it on my own
one afternoon and the theatre was empty.
I liked it so much that I went back one
week later and brought friends, and
then after a while it became a midnight
movie that was playing in the cinema not
far from my house. So I kept on going
to see it from time to time, every two
months. I don’t know how many times
I’ve seen it in between its first release
and today, maybe twenty-five times.
It was so sweet and so nightmarish.
It was written with the language of
dreams, like Un chien andalou [1929]. One
thing that really screwed my brain is the
soundtrack, mostly made of drones and
high-pitched sounds. Even today, for me,
it’s the best movie soundtrack ever done.
Last night, I rewatched the movie,
and there’s some images I had forgotten.
I had forgotten how funny the movie is.
It’s really like a psychotic comedy, but
there are moments that are extremely
mental, like these images of moon craters
with water inside or the planets at the
beginning. It’s a symbolist movie but
also like a mental trip into the world of
organic nightmares. I’m not surprised
that Kubrick had an obsession with it.
It’s hard to say what the ten best
movies of all time are, or the best twenty
movies, but you choose the ones that
affect your vision of life and cinema in
general, and there are movies like 2001:
A Space Odyssey [1968] or Eraserhead that
really triggered me to become a director.
Also the fact that Eraserhead was a
self-made movie, made over a period
of five years with no money, eating
sandwiches; the fact that five years of
partial work could create something
so strong. It opened my desire to make
feature films with no money in your
pocket. I had that reference when I was
doing Carne [1991] and its sequel Seul
contre tous [1998]: if Lynch managed
to do such an important movie with
almost nothing, with a crew of five, six,
seven, I could possibly do the same.
I was touched by the global reaction
[to his death]. People were crying.
People were sending me messages with
tears. He really opened the gates of
perception for a whole generation. He
brought poetry to an industry that’s very
square: you have commercial movies and
then art movies that aren’t very artistic.
He brought the language of the seventh
art closer to the language of dreams.
As told to Samuel Wigley
 Robert Eggers on The Elephant Man
Lynch’s profoundly inimitable and context The Elephant Man was simply,
groundbreaking canon is packed with pound for pound, one of the most
inspirational touchstones that I often powerful films I had ever seen. It still is.
revisit and study, from Twin Peaks: Fire Lynch is synonymous with storytelling
Walk with Me to Lost Highway to Inland that defies conventional dramaturgy.
Empire. But The Elephant Man is the But like Picasso’s early naturalistic
David Lynch film I’ve seen the most, and academic works, The Elephant Man
is certainly among my most rewatched showcases that it takes a master of
movies. Arguably, though, it is the convention to have the unique vision and
least Lynchian of his films, both in its the technical ability to defy and reinvent
traditional cinematic storytelling and it. Here he uses his distinctive talent to
its unique setting. Lynch’s imaginary fully transport the audience to another
playground flourishes in mid-century time and place using the resources
Americana. But Victorian London and expertise of traditional British
is a world that more easily sparks my filmmakers – but he pushes it further Ali Abbasi on Lost Highway
imagination and where I feel more at in his collaboration. The atmosphere
home, which is why I gravitate to this and world-building is so dense. From David Lynch was never just a filmmaker. ‘He was a medium
film. And yet, I wonder how much the pounding and throbbing horror He was a medium – an open channel
Lynch’s dark and sooty interpretation soundscapes of industrial London, to the through which transmissions from another – an open channel
of this world has influenced my own dream prologue with Merrick’s mother’s world could pass. His films didn’t simply through which
infatuation. I saw some of the beginning scream that can never be forgotten, tell stories; they expanded the edges transmissions
scenes on TV when I was quite to production designer Stuart Craig’s of our perception, stretching reality to
young, maybe seven years old, at my astonishing detail of the Victorian reveal the hidden forces beneath it. But from another
grandfather’s house. I don’t remember ‘freak show’ – and all this captured with he never forced these revelations upon world could pass.
why I didn’t have the chance to finish the Freddie Francis’s masterful photography us. Instead, he disguised them within the His films didn’t
movie, but I couldn’t shake the images on black-and-white stock (already fabric of the familiar – banal conversations,
of John Hurt and make-up designer archaic in 1980). While the tone and dimly lit rooms, small towns, highways simply tell stories;
Christopher Tucker’s interpretation atmosphere is unmistakably Lynchian, at night. He wove the surreal into the they expanded
of Joseph Merrick – nor the wild-eyed it is the elegance of the staging and mundane so seamlessly that by the time the edges of
Freddie Jones with his unsettling camera work, the pace, the exquisite the rupture came – the unexplainable,
tremors saying “LIFE … [insanely naturalistic performances and the the terrifying, the impossible – it felt like our perception,
long pause]… is full of surprises” – nor emotional thrust of the storytelling it had been there all along, waiting for stretching reality
Anthony Hopkins’ single tear when that makes the film such an enduring us to notice. And perhaps no film of his to reveal the
first seeing Merrick. Then, around classic – not just to cinephiles – but to makes this clearer than Lost Highway.
twelve or thirteen years old, it was on everyone who sees it. As John Hurt There’s a moment in Lost Highway that hidden forces
TV again, and I saw the whole thing. said in a 2001 documentary about the feels like pure, undiluted Lynch – a moment beneath’
I was dumbfounded, and weeping. It film, “If you can get to the end of The so eerie, so inexplicable, that it bypasses ALI ABBASI
was years before I discovered Eraserhead Elephant Man without being moved, I logic and settles somewhere deeper, in the
and got to know who David Lynch was don’t think you’d be someone I’d want to marrow of our subconscious. It happens
as a filmmaker – and even without that know.” It is a masterpiece by the master. at a party, a seemingly ordinary gathering
until the Mystery Man appears, dressed
in black, with a face like a death mask. He
walks up to Fred Madison, our protagonist,
and tells him something impossible:
“We’ve met before, haven’t we?”
Fred doesn’t understand.
The Mystery Man smiles.
“At your house. Don’t you remember?”
Fred shakes his head. No,
that’s not possible.
But then the Mystery Man hands him a
phone and tells him to call his own home.
Fred dials, and on the other end of the line,
impossibly, the Mystery Man answers.
“I told you I was there,” he says, his
voice a whisper from another plane.
It’s a moment that feels less like
a plot point and more like a direct
transmission from the void – something
unknowable breaking through into our
reality. It doesn’t need to be explained
because explanation is irrelevant. It is.
And then, one day, I got the news
David Lynch had passed away. I sat there,
silent, and I cried. Because it felt like a
signal had gone out, like something had
IMAGES: BFI NATIONAL ARCHIVE

slipped away into the dark, beyond reach. ABOVE

Robert Blake as the Mystery
I thought about that line, that impossible Man in Lost Highway
moment in Lost Highway: “As a matter
LEFT
of fact, I’m there right now… Call me.” John Hurt as John Merrick
Can I call you there, David? in The Elephant Man
 PHANTOM
40

RIDE
Shot from the point of view of a ghost inhabiting a
family’s new suburban home, Steven Soderbergh’s
ingenious haunted house thriller Presence offers a deeply
satisfying twist on the genre. Here the director explains
the real-life supernatural event that inspired the film

BY PHILIP CONCANNON

Few contemporary filmmakers are or gore. Instead, Presence emphasises

as prolific or as flexible as Steven the plight of a trapped soul, forced
Soderbergh. By the time one to inhabit the space in which it died
Soderbergh film has arrived in cinemas, and existing as a silent observer of the
he has already moved on to his next living, and by presenting us with this
project, and it’s impossible to predict fresh perspective on familiar territory,
what form that new work will take. He Soderbergh has crafted an unusually
moves fluidly between scales and genres poignant and absorbing ghost story.
– from big-budget Hollywood fare such
as Ocean’s Eleven (2001, cost $85 million) Philip Concannon: When you began
to more idiosyncratic low-budget films thinking about Presence, was your
like Bubble (2006, $1.5 million) and The initial impulse to make a ghost
Girlfriend Experience (2009, $1.7 million) story or to make a film where the
– driven by a desire to push himself camera is the protagonist?
into fresh territory with every feature.
When I meet Soderbergh in London, Steven Soderbergh: It was inspired by
he is putting the finishing touches on a real incident in a house my wife and
Black Bag, a David Koepp-scripted I own. Her friend was house-sitting
thriller starring Cate Blanchett and for us and she saw something in the
Michael Fassbender, which – with a house. She saw a woman down the
reported budget of $60 million – will hall and she reached out to my wife
be the most expensive film he has and said, “I saw this woman crossing
made since Contagion (2011), but we are from the bathroom to the bedroom last
meeting to discuss another collaboration night.” That was when my wife revealed
with Koepp, made on a comparative that when we bought the house, we
shoestring. Presence is a haunted house were told a woman died there and
movie in which we never see the ghost; our next-door neighbour told us she
in fact, the camera is the ghost, as thought she was killed, that she did
Soderbergh aligns us with the point not commit suicide, that her daughter
of view of this mysterious phantom as killed her in the master bedroom.
it floats from room to room, watching I started wondering: I’m her, I was
the family that now lives in the home it killed in this house, I’m looking around
haunts. This simple but ingenious trick and time is passing, and then a realtor
taps into the voyeurism inherent in the shows up, and then a family shows
horror genre – at times, the stalking, up in my house. How do I feel about
subjective camera evokes the films of that? That was my initial thought. I
Brian De Palma or Michael Powell’s gave David Koepp a couple of pages
Peeping Tom (1960) – but Soderbergh describing how the camera is at eye
isn’t interested in serving up jump scares level, cut to black, another shot, time
41
42 STEVEN SODERBERGH

has passed. I just gave him that and ‘There is no taking established genres and finding I was going to say, you do go up and
he said, “I know what to do with this” a different twist on them. Do you enjoy down those stairs at a fair clip.
and he went and built it out. I told
form this story working within genre conventions
him it’s a family, there’s a problem could take other and figuring out a fresh angle? It was an issue, those were formidable
with the family, but I don’t know what than a piece of stairs and I’m not wearing any
it is, and I didn’t tell him the solve. I do. I like having a box and then protection. If I go down, it’s going to
I didn’t tell him who I thought [the
cinema. It can’t figuring out, OK, what’s the sauce be bad. The hardest part was that I
presence] was, and he surprised me. be a book, it can’t that I can roll up with? This is a meal had to look at my feet when I’m going
be a play, it has that people have had, it’s a pizza, but up and down the stairs, so I’m aiming
What is your relationship with the what kind of toppings can I roll up the camera as opposed to being able
paranormal? I know your mother had
to be a movie, with so people go, “I’ve never had a to look at the shot. There were many
a history with it, and being around and that got me pizza like that!” I like pizza, though, times when we’d do a shot and play it
her, when she said she felt a presence, really excited’ and the real pitfall is when you stray back and I would have fucked up and
did you ever pick up on anything? too far from the foundational pillars of chopped somebody’s head off or missed
the genre that you’re working within. the pan. I felt bad for the actors because,
No, and I never felt anything in our It’s OK to upend some expectations, talk about intimate, it’s like we’re really
house, so I was kind of agnostic. but at the end of the day you have to dancing together and at times I’m very,
We’re talking about the 70s here, this respect what the genre is built on. very close to them, but it was fun to
was before these kinds of notions If you’re making a comedy, it should know exactly what was required.
were mainstreamed, so it was a little have good jokes in it. You shouldn’t
weird and we had weird people be tearing down the comedy genre by It’s interesting to hear you say that one
coming through the house to see her, making something that’s not funny. of the biggest challenges was having
to get readings. I didn’t know quite On the one hand, I felt this might be to hold a shot of two people talking,
where to put it, but it didn’t make the simplest idea that I’ve ever come because when I think of your films one
me anti-ghost, I had just never had up with, and at the same time it had of their most distinctive qualities is the
any experience that I felt qualified as enormous potential to me as cinema. way you edit. You often find interesting
paranormal, although my wife has. This is what cinema can do – there is ways to move in and out of scenes
If you’ve never seen the TV series no form this story could take other than and cut around things, and you’ve
Celebrity Ghost Stories [2009-20], you a piece of cinema. It can’t be a book, it given yourself a big restriction here
need to see it. These are interviews with can’t be a play, it has to be a movie, and by taking away one of your key tools.
actual actors that you know by name, that got me really excited. Then day to
describing terrifying experiences that day, the challenge of just choreographing One of my favourite tools, yeah,
happened to them, and you can tell by the shots was fun because as you’re on which again was a challenge. The real
their faces that they’re traumatised, that set you’re trying to reduce the nearly question mark was, does the fact that
this is no bullshit, and it’s fascinating. infinite variations of what this could be there’s nobody to cut to in a reverse
I’ve never had one of these, and so one down to the one thing it wants to be. shot neutralise the audience’s desire,
thing I was concerned about – the only in a typical point of view situation, to
note, actually, that I gave David after his What were the challenges you faced see a reverse? I was convinced that it
first draft – was in the scene where the in shooting a point of view film? would. Once the second shot of the
woman comes over to talk to them about movie happens and you understand
what she thinks is happening in the My job was to figure out how to keep what the gimmick is, you’d realise there’s
house. The first version of the scene was the frame interesting. Whenever nothing to cut to and you would just
a little more of a ‘movie-movie’ scene, and anybody was moving or something drop that, because, personally, point of
I pitched this idea that she’s just a person was happening, that was easy. The view films have not worked for me for
that works at Home Depot, she doesn’t hardest part for me was when characters that reason. I want to see the face of the
do this for a living, doesn’t make money are not moving and they’re talking at person who’s having the experience.
doing it, it’s a burden for her. I want the length. How do I keep the shot alive The other big question was whether
audience to meet her at eye level and without distracting from what they’re to have a score and I decided that we
kind of go, “OK, that seems sincere, doing, and not moving just for absolutely needed a traditional classical
it doesn’t seem like a joke and she the sake of moving because I’m score. Given that there is no looking into
doesn’t seem like a con artist.” insecure about whether you’re the eyes of the protagonist, the music
That was the only note I gave going to get bored? The tricky is there to create emotion for you, to
him, and it was out of respect part for me is two people on a imagine what the presence is feeling,
for my mom, who I did not bed talking for four minutes; not what the family is feeling. It’s there
view as a con artist or a joke. how do I incorporate just a little to put you in the presence’s emotional
subtle movement so that you’re state and I felt that was absolutely
When I heard that you not noticing it, but you’re also critical. The first time I started really
were making a ghost not noticing that you’re static? looking at it, even in that first shot,
story from the point of One of the reasons we shot the there’s something very sad about it.
view of a ghost, I thought whole thing in sequence – with When you start to put together what’s
it made perfect sense the exception of two shots – was happening you’re like, “Oh, it’s alone, it’s
because you’ve always for me to learn as I went about looking for people, and it can’t get out.”
seemed motivated by how [the presence] looks at things,
the idea of because if you were to watch the Presence is a small film made on a low
movie a second time, it’s learning how budget and there’s not much financial
it wants to see things. I felt that would risk. Black Bag is a much bigger
be a very difficult thing to calibrate if undertaking with more risk and there
I was shooting completely out of are many more people that you need to
sequence, because each shot please. What difference does it make
builds on what the last to you going into a project like that
shot was. But you in terms of how you approach it and
know, other than how much freedom you feel you have?
trying not to
hurt myself on I treat them exactly the same. That
the stairs… was the trick when I was making Out
 of Sight [1998], which represented an almost twenty years on from Bubble, “You’re killing me here!” At least if I
‘I’m hopeful enormous opportunity for me at a time the industry still hasn’t entirely could get on a platform in ten days some
because, in the where it was a real question how many figured out what theatrical windows of the marketing money could still be
United States more opportunities I was going to be should be and how to monetise salvaged, there’d be a little bit of exhaust
given. The trick was to do a kind of streaming in a sustainable way. How from that carrying over. I had to submit
at least, young Jedi mind number on myself and act do you view that situation now? to the windowing of that time, which
people are going on the set of Out of Sight as though I’m was months, and I got killed twice.
to the movies on the set of Schizopolis [1996]. I can do There are two problems here. One is that I hope it’s going to change. Two
whatever I want that I think the thing Nato as an organisation – and I mean the of the people that were working at
again: 25 and needs, and I did, and that worked out. Nato that really does stuff, the National Nato during that period, and were
under, they’re It’s the same issue, which is just creative Association of Theatre Owners – is a very sympathetic to my situation, have
showing up’ problem-solving: how do I capture somewhat unwieldy and monolithic formed and are about to announce a
something that feels alive and do it in entity that is very anxious about all of new form of connecting independent
a way that is responsible? I know from this, and it is structured in such a way filmmakers directly with theatres. That
the outside it’s tempting to assume that any single member can veto any idea has enormous potential because now we
that they’re different in terms of my that somebody pitches to experiment. have the data and we have the ability to
experience of them, but they really aren’t. So that’s one problem, trying to get them connect people, and there actually is a
Whether it’s Che [2008] or whether it’s to turn is like turning around an aircraft hunger on a local level for new product
Bubble, on set it’s the same thing – is it carrier. The second thing is, there’s no if you can get people together. I’m still
good enough? And if not, why not? one template that’s gonna fit every movie, hopeful. I’m also hopeful because, in the
and what technology allows for now, United States at least, young people are
Something you’ve tried to do a few even more so than when Bubble came going to the movies again: 25 and under,
times over the years is to find a model out, is the ability to pivot quickly based they’re showing up. If a movie like Anora
for making and releasing movies on what’s happening to the movie. What [2024] blows up, or The Brutalist [2024],
that works and that everyone can was really frustrating on Logan Lucky or anything that was generated from a
profit from, and it feels like that’s an [2017] and Unsane [2018], which we self- pure place of cinema inspiration makes
ongoing struggle. You were very much distributed, was on noon Friday when money, this is the best thing that can
ahead of the curve when you released we knew it wasn’t going to work and happen for the movies and for cinema.
Bubble in cinemas and at home we’d spent all our marketing money, we It means more people going, “Let’s do
simultaneously, and at the time you couldn’t get on a [streaming] platform that!” The solution to all our problems
PREVIOUS SPREAD & ABOVE
said you ultimately believed this would immediately. The movie’s dead, it didn’t is and always has been good movies.
Callina Liang as Chloe in Presence become the norm for movies. We’ve work, you want me gone next week,
OPPOSITE
gradually got closer to that model but you won’t let me go on a platform. Presence is out now in UK cinemas
Steven Soderbergh with the emergence of streaming, but That was frustrating because I’m like, and is reviewed on page 65
 45

MY SISTER CHANTAL In an extract from the latest edition of Sight and Sound ’s Auteurs Series, a 100-page
print special on Chantal Akerman, Portrait of a Lady on Fire’s director Céline Sciamma
writes exclusively about the influence the auteur has had on her work and explains why
thinking about her makes her want to ‘grab film by the lapels and shake it’

I have never talked about Chantal Aker- (1913-27), Proust’s novel, from which La this film just as I am entering film school. ‘I feel like being
man before. Captive is adapted, and I remember my I know I’m being a little provocative with
I have said her name many times: in naïve perception of a certain synchronic- cinema, but thinking about Chantal Aker- scathing, saying
interviews or in movie theatres, in the com- ity between the novel and the cinematic man for several days makes you want to things like:
fort and authority of those lists that one is medium. It was clear to me that of course grab it by the lapels. cinema is a
constantly being asked to contribute to cinema was a language that had something There’s definitely a political aspect to my
and that I don’t like doing. in common with Proust’s thought; that silence up until now. I mistrust heritage young language
The first time after her death in Octo- obviously cinema as a montage of frag- timing. I have the strange feeling of want- that has already
ber 2015 that a journalist asked about her ments of movement produced a search for ing to defend Akerman in spaces that cel- formed a lazy
importance to me, I didn’t know how to time; that films were by their very nature ebrate her. I feel like being scathing, saying
say anything interesting. I put it down to reflective time machines. things like: cinema is a young language tradition,
my sadness, but I also felt confused that I What I didn’t yet realise was that only that has already formed a lazy tradition, and Chantal
couldn’t manage to speak about her. Ordi- Chantal Akerman had succeeded in har- and Chantal Akerman is not part of that. Akerman is not
AKERMAN PORTRAIT BY JEAN-MICHEL VLAEMINCKX /CINERGIE; SCIAMMA PORTRAIT BY JULIEN LIENARD/GET TY

narily, I’m quite a talkative person. And I nessing this potential. Later, I learned that I also lack interest in the cinephile-type
like to talk about the people or things I adapting Proust for cinema was officially conversation that dominates discussions part of that’
admire. So if I am honest I think there was considered an impossible challenge, a about cinema and takes an unrealistic
an element of speechlessness there. Espe- theory illustrated by the list of all the elite approach to the creative processes. I antici-
cially since, at the time, even if I still had aborted attempts and, worse, the com- pate with dread having to answer the same
things to understand and even films to see, pleted adaptations. For my part, I like to questions Akerman was asked about her-
there were already things to say. think that this reputation for impossible self, which are broadly the same questions
I could have easily talked about the first translation demonstrates, above all, how that I am asked about myself. I am made
film I saw by Chantal Akerman. It was La cinema is generally on the wrong track with anxious by this cycle that nevertheless
Captive, which I saw at the cinema when it regard to the potential and power of its never brings us together.
came out in the year 2000. I was a young unique language. Obsessed – in this case I think that if I had met Chantal Aker-
film buff and that often meant know- spectacularly – by questions of casting and man I would not have asked her any ques-
ing and respecting films I hadn’t seen. I characters, and considering the matter of tions about cinema. I am well informed
knew Chantal Akerman’s filmography. I time to be a storytelling challenge, cinema about what she thinks on the subject OPPOSITE
dreamed of seeing Jeanne Dielman (1975), seems to have set itself impersonal limits. since she has been so generous with her Chantal Akerman
but I didn’t have access to it. I was also in But not Chantal Akerman and so not me, thoughts. I completely understand what ABOVE
the midst of reading In Search of Lost Time the young woman who happens to see she is talking about and I feel closer and Céline Sciamma
Akerman makes me laugh. I laugh because she’s funny, but I also laugh with that jubilation
that we feel when we hear ideas that resonate with us and that make an impact
closer to her. Perhaps that is one reason young generation is collectively question- that cinema may be profoundly trans- ABOVE
Sylvie Testud as Ariane in
why it is difficult for me to talk about it. ing language and images more than ever. formed and revealed by a teenager in Akerman’s Proust adaptation
It involves giving a little of myself away. I To give them confidence in their personal her bedroom. La Captive (2000)
would have had a host of other questions: and generational ideas, I point out some- The other place I refer to her is on
I’m curious about what she liked to cook thing that makes cinema different from the film set, when I work on setting up
and whether she liked jazz. What was her other arts, and a little suspicious because the frame with the director of photogra-
experience of friendship? I have not met of it. Music, literature, painting, dance, phy Claire Mathon. We just say her first
her, but I have listened to her a lot. I can poetry: these are all forms of language name, out loud – “Chantal” – to qualify
hear her voice in my head, at 20, at 40, at that have developed and are still develop- shots, to celebrate our love of frontality
60. I have watched her too. I like the way ing under the influence of teenagers in and the musicality of gestures and corri-
she dresses. I like her gestures. She makes their bedrooms. Except cinema. dors. Chantal stands for what we like to
me laugh. I laugh because she’s funny, but Isn’t that weird? Doesn’t that make do. The surprise of doing the same: the
I also laugh with that jubilation that we it a little shady? Unless it’s not possible. same as we’ve done before and the same
feel when we hear ideas that resonate with Fortunately, there is a striking counter as her. We say we are maxi Chantal, mini
us and that make an impact. I think that’s example and it’s Chantal Akerman and Chantal, full Chantal. We give ourselves
what I’ve been protecting in silence since Je tu il elle (1974). She’s the one who tells courage by borrowing hers. It makes
the beginning. What I feel and receive us that it’s possible, and by dropping out us happy.
while listening to her or watching her of film school, by the way. I tell them that All of this is very affectionate. Without
films. The joy of ideas. It’s a double impact, Chantal Akerman understood through that affection I would have been afraid to
first the impact of the idea and then the the making of a single film that cinema speak. It is true that I feel great tenderness
love for the idea. It’s a design of reception was a form of writing and that she had for you. It is true that I find you moving.
that requires great precision and clarity of the pleasure and ability to think both One of my favourite videos to watch is the presents the auteurs series

intention. There lies the sensuality of ideas with and about this language, and that, one in 2013 where you talk about Proust
for cinema. There’s a kind of sensuality to unlike literature, it involved having an at the Collège de France. You apologise Chantal
these ideas about cinema.
As a filmmaker, I also feel another echo,
external life, involved living in the world
with others. She is also perfect for telling
to the audience for calling him by his first
name and you recount how you used to Akerman
£7.95

which is to imagine the pleasure there was young people that choosing a language say, “My little Marcel, my little brother.” Unpublished
interview: Akerman
on Jeanne Dielman,

in generating these ideas and anticipat- means choosing a way of life. How you imagined holding him in your
voted the greatest
film of all time
IMAGES: CINEMATEK/FONDATION CHANTAL AKERMAN

Features, reviews
and interviews

ing their impact, and this is transmitting Je tu il elle: this unflinching work’s influ- arms. So I allow myself, because I know
from the archives
of Sight and Sound,
Monthly Film Bulletin
and Fondation
Chantal Akerman

desire for future ideas. That’s what Chan- ence endures, and perhaps becomes you understand. I, too, imagine taking Plus new features
and interviews with
her collaborators

tal Akerman has given me. That’s what I more profound, at a time when the means you in my arms and holding you there.
could have answered to why she’s impor- of production, camera and image and My little Chantal. My little sister.
tant for me. sound-editing tools have never been so Translated by Catherine Wheatley
There are two spaces where I have accessible, including in their interfaces. The latest instalment in Sight and
Sound ’s Auteurs Series, exploring
always spoken about Chantal Akerman. Je tu il elle has the power to always bring The retrospective ‘Chantal Akerman: Adventures in the life and career of Chantal
The first is in film schools, where a us closer to this insight into the future: Perception’ is at BFI Southbank, London, until 18 March Akerman, is out now, priced £7.95
 CHANTAL AKERMAN 47

“Chantal Akerman believed ‘a good fictional 1

film always contains documentary and a good

documentary always has fiction in it’. I try to follow
that sentiment in my work. Her large range of
cinematic language really inspires you to not be
constrained in any way and constantly rethink form
without fear. A film like Hotel Monterey [1972] shows
she obviously thought so much about where to put
the camera. That’s all there is to that film. She’s
known for being austere and serious, but then
there’s a short film like J’ai faim, j’ai froid [1984],
about two goofy girls in Paris; or Nuit et Jour [1991],
about a girl with two lovers, one in the day and
one in the night… It’s really funny and playful.
It made me happy when she was number one
[in Sight and Sound ’s 2022 Greatest Films of All
Time poll]. People will discover Chantal and see 2 3

what they’ve been missing their whole life.”

PAYAL K APADIA ( ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT , 2024;
A NIGHT OF KNOWING NOTHING , 2021)

1. Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975)

2. Je tu il elle (1974)
3. J’ai faim, j’ai froid (1984)
4. Nuit et Jour (1991)
5. D’Est (1993)
6. Golden Eighties (1986)

AUTEURS ON AKERMAN
4 5 “Jeanne Dielman [1975] always reminds “Jeanne Dielman is a surprisingly
me that you need to show the mechanics musical film given the absence
of someone’s world before getting into of a soundtrack. Its ever-insistent
the plot. It’s wild that Akerman had the and accumulative rhythms,
guts to tackle that subject matter in the motifs and patterns amount to a
specific way she did. There are certain quiet, domestic catharsis despite
ways it’s rubbed off on my filmmaking: the fact that Delphine Seyrig
like the fact that as a viewer you’re forced didn’t know how to make a coffee
to walk in [Jeanne’s] shoes. For me, that’s until the shoot. If Michael Snow
the strongest way of creating empathy. donned an apron, you might get
Being forced to live with someone and something close to Akerman’s
observe their life play out in real time.” utterly singular and bloody-minded
SEAN BAKER ( ANORA , 2024; RED ode or indictment to the seeming
6 invisibility of domestic drudgery.”
ROCKET , 2021; TANGERINE , 2015)
PETER STRICKLAND ( FLUX
“Few films are as conceptually GOURMET , 2022; IN FABRIC , 2018;
complete as Je, tu, il, elle [1974], made BERBERIAN SOUND STUDIO , 2012)
by Akerman when she was in her very
early twenties. The risks she takes, as “Golden Eighties [1986] was
both actor and filmmaker, are sublime. destroyed by the press at the time
They are also infinitely inspiring.” of its release, perhaps because
IRA SACHS ( PASSAGES , 2023; LIT TLE Akerman went too rapidly from
MEN , 2016; LOVE IS STRANGE , 2014) austerity to glorious Fujicolor
exuberance. But why shouldn’t she?
3 “Many movie industry people say that film I loved its theatricality, its bright
is about storytelling. I love a good story, colours, its rhythms and catchy songs,
but for me it’s often too high in the mix, its seemingly simple romantic story
like a vocal that dominates the rest of the told with an ironic, knowing eye.”
music in a song. There’s almost no story JOANNA HOGG ( THE ETERNAL DAUGHTER ,
in D’Est [1993]. It’s more like a letter, an 2022; THE SOUVENIR FILMS , 2019-21)
eyewitness account, about the end of the
Soviet empire. And it has shots to die for.” All quotes from Sight and Sound’s
MARK COUSINS ( A SUDDEN GLIMPSE archive except Joanna Hogg,
TO DEEPER THINGS , 2024; WOMEN from Frieze magazine
MAKE FILM , 2018; THE STORY
OF FILM: AN ODYSSEY , 201 1)
 49

TRUTH BE TOLD
Mike Leigh is on scintillating form in Hard Truths, a scabrously funny and emotionally devastating
portrait of the sharply contrasting lives of a pair of sisters and their families in suburban London.
Here he explains the subtle difference between realism and naturalism, the critical importance
of collaboration to his films and why his work is about understanding, not judging

BY JONATHAN ROMNEY

The world changes… London changes… the broader canvas of his three 19th-cen- Pansy is chronically embittered, anx-
Mike Leigh endures. I’m talking to the tury dramas (Topsy-Turvy, 1999; Mr. Turner,
‘The complexities ious and angry. Her perplexed, ineffectual
British director in an office in King’s Cross, 2014; Peterloo, 2018) – remains difficult in life are what husband Curtley (David Webber) and
the area where, 37 years ago, he shot his to classify except in his own terms, given makes us what their unemployed 22-year-old son Moses
feature High Hopes (1988). Back then, the its sui generis tones and textures. Neverthe- (Tuwaine Barrett) are endless sources of
district was notoriously on its uppers and less, a recent New Yorker profile introduced
we are, and how frustration to her – as is her entire life. She
decidedly tawdry, still retaining a potent him simply as “the British realist director we vary between can barely step out of their house without
streak of the atmosphere that once made it Mike Leigh”. Is that a label he accepts? the extreme raging at everyone she meets – doctor, den-
the setting of Alexander Mackendrick’s The “It’s a perfectly reasonable thing to tist, shop assistants – her hypochondria
Ladykillers (1955). You wouldn’t recognise say about a filmmaker who makes films
end of paranoia accompanied by the conviction that the
that place in today’s remodelled corpo- about real life. I mean, if it said ‘natural- and the extreme world is set on persecuting her.
rate landscape of office and restaurant ist’…. I would probably quibble with that, end of joyfulness Meanwhile, her hairdresser sister Chan-
precincts. But Mike Leigh remains Mike because I think what I do is realism, not telle (Michele Austin, a Leigh regular who
Leigh – the gimlet-eyed scrutiniser of the naturalism – it gets to the essence, rather
and positivity’ played Hortense’s friend Dionne in Secrets
world, its inhabitants and their neuroses. than the surface.” & Lies) is buoyantly empathetic and makes
That morning, he tells me, a communica- His latest feature, Hard Truths, has the most of life, as do her daughters Kayla
tions error resulted in him arriving for the another of those Leigh titles that at first (Ani Nelson) and Aleisha (Sophia Brown),
interview earlier than required. “I had an sound tantalisingly vague, as if dabbling highly motivated young professionals who
hour and three quarters to kill in this area. in elusive cliché – High Hopes, Life Is Sweet also know how to enjoy a good time.
Therefore, I went to King’s Cross station (1990), All or Nothing (2002) – but that By turns emotionally devastating and
and looked at people. There’s a thousand reveal their resonance as the stories unravel scabrously comic – Jean-Baptiste’s per-
films there.” tangles of human relationships. Like all his formance spans both registers – Hard
Over the 15 features he has made since films, Hard Truths is an ensemble piece, but Truths looks set to endure as one of Leigh’s
1971, aside from all his stage and TV work, in common with a handful, it specifically finest films. The brilliance is partly in the
Leigh has been an acute, abrasive yet revolves around one character – a middle- excellence of the acting across the board
tender chronicler of British society – and, aged Black woman named Pansy, who – Jean-Baptiste and Austin have both
IMAGE: GET TY/SYLVAIN LEFEVRE

through his famously distinctive collabora- lives in an unspecified London suburb. clocked up multiple awards and nomina-
tive style, has nurtured the same observa- She is played by Marianne Jean-Baptiste tions this season – and partly in its preci-
tional sharpness in generations of actors. – reunited with Leigh three decades after sion and economy. Rigorously executed
His work – whether on the intimate scale her revelatory performance as optometrist OPPOSITE
– look at the tightness of Tania Reddin’s
that characterises most of his films or on Hortense in Secrets & Lies (1996). Mike Leigh editing in the shattering final sequence
50 HARD TRUTHS

– the film comes across as a perfect sum- a relevant question given the way Leigh
mation of Leigh’s intimate-realist style. It generates his dramas – working not with
is his final collaboration with Dick Pope, conventional a priori outlines, but with a
his cinematographer since 1990, who group of actors to discover characters and
died last October, and there couldn’t be a narrative that links them. “Obviously, it’s
a more succinctly perfect farewell image a deliberate decision,” he says, “You know
from Pope than the extraordinary shot – ‘OK, time to work again with Marianne
towards the end of Hard Truths showing and Michele.’”
Pansy from behind, seated in her kitchen In this case, key character details – like
gazing out at the sterile enclosure of her the touches of patois, and the Jamaican
back garden, an eerie, painterly moment inflections that suddenly emerge from the
of frozen stillness. otherwise Cockneyfied London accents,
But the film is also striking for being so as when Pansy dismisses Curtley’s work-
rich in echoes of Leigh’s other work. With mate Virgil as “that imm-becile” – are the
Jean-Baptiste and Austin in the cast, it kind of specifics that the actors themselves
inevitably carries residues of Secrets &Lies; will have brought to the rehearsal process.
indeed, both films contain a cemetery Leigh points out that this is hardly the
scene and a daytime family get-together first time he has created a fiction about a
culminating in a lacerating moment of world that is not his own – including his
truth. As a study of familial depression, stage and TV work about Northern Irish,
there are parallels with All or Nothing. Greek Australian and English upper-class
And Pansy is the diametrical opposite of characters. “Whatever we do, and however
another florally named Leigh heroine, much it may be something I know about
the uncrushably upbeat Poppy in Happy- or don’t know about, the thing is collabora-
Go-Lucky (2008). But such parallels don’t tive, and I am absolutely there to learn and
interest Leigh. “I don’t think about that at to deploy what other people know. So that
all. When I’m making this film, this is what when you get patois, I haven’t gone off and
I’m thinking about. The job is to do this, researched it separately – I work with [the
whatever it is.” actors] and they know what this character
A recurring theme in Leigh’s work is would say, and we edit it in the same way
the contrast between people who are we do all the dialogue. The whole process
equipped to deal with life, and those who of filmmaking for me is a learning curve.”
simply cannot manage to. How is it that There remains, of course, a question
Chantelle and her daughters experience that many people are likely to ask at a time
life so differently from Pansy, her husband when so much caution, indeed suspicion,
and son? Leigh directs the question back attends the matter of which artists are or
at me. “Have you got any siblings?… Ah, are not the ‘appropriate’ people to address
that’s interesting,” he chuckles, when I certain themes: what is an 81-year-old
reply that I don’t. “Look, some people are white man doing making a film about
like this, and some people are like that… Black characters? It’s a debate Leigh has
Ask Pansy and she will tell you that Chan- little time for.
telle was favouritised [as a child]; you know “As far as I’m concerned, it’s nonsense.
from Chantelle’s reaction [in the film] that And nobody involved in the film thinks
plainly that wasn’t the case. The complexi- it’s other than nonsense, by the way. In the
ties in life are what makes us what we are, end, it’s a question of whether it’s truthful
and how we vary between the extreme end and whether it works. As to whether I am
of paranoia and the extreme end of joyful- qualified or disqualified to make this film –
ness and positivity. The things that cause it’s just a complete irrelevance. It’s a tragic
those differences are many and various, manifestation of stuff in the 21st century.
that’s all I would say.” I want nothing to do with it.”
At the centre of the film is the galvanis- One question regarding the experience
ing performance by Jean-Baptiste, a uni- of Pansy and her family concerns some-
verse away from Hortense in Secrets & Lies, thing that never emerges overtly in Hard ‘What’s my because one of the things I consciously
who was so alert and open to the world. Truths – racism. But its presence seems, knew that I would have to do was not deal
Her Pansy vibrates at a nervous speed at the very least, implicit. Take the scene advice for young in conventional tropes and the usual issues
way more intense than those around her in which Kayla’s white boss at a cosmet- filmmakers? Never that films about Black people deal with.
– whether waking from sleep in panic, ics company – played with wonderfully compromise. It’s not about that – it’s obviously saying,
launching into manic fugues of complaint barbed smarminess by Samantha Spiro ‘These are people, full stop.’” Perhaps, he
or simply shutting down, her silence in a – contemptuously dismisses her sugges- Never say, says, racism is at issue in the scene with
pivotal scene expressing a state of emo- tion for improving the brand profile. Then “Well, I don’t really Kayla’s boss – “but that’s for the audience
tional meltdown even more troubling than there’s the moment when Pansy berates want to do this, to decide, not me.”
her frenzied logorrhoea. Moses for taking long solo walks, warn- Leigh referred to Jean-Baptiste earlier
With a handful of exceptions, the cast ing him that he’ll be accused of loitering but if I do this, as a ‘character actor’: for him, the term
and characters of Hard Truths are Black. with intent – a not unreasonable concern, then I can do that.” means something entirely different from
This is not ‘a film about Black British life’, given the realities likely to face a young Bollocks really. its usual more or less belittling application.
whatever that would mean, nor about any- Black man on London streets. Could it be “In old-fashioned lingo, a character actor
thing as vague as a group of characters who, Pansy’s experience of racism that underlies It really is’ was somebody in Hollywood that was old
as the phrase goes, ‘happen to be Black’; her perpetual anxiety? and played small parts. That’s nothing to
it might be more accurate to call Hard “On the one hand,” Leigh says, “it would do with what we’re talking about. There’s a
Truths a film that in passing explores cer- be ridiculous to suggest that none of those massive convention of acting, especially in
tain aspects of UK Black experience and characters would never have experienced the movies, where people play themselves
culture through this particular group of racism. Plainly, all of them will have done ABOVE
all the time. That isn’t what this is about.
characters. Which came first – the idea – plenty, because that’s in the nature of Michele Austin and What I want actors to do in my films is
Marianne Jean-Baptiste
of telling a story about Black characters, their existence. On the other hand, it’s not as sisters Chantelle and
about being versatile and able to do real
or of working with a Black cast? It seems what the film deals with – deliberately, Pansy in Hard Truths people and transform.”
 That transformation process, in Leigh’s his dedication to his own rigorous stand- interview, asked about such and such an
work, famously involves immersion, not in ards has never lapsed. He remembers his insight or effect, he replies, “It’s the nature
the popularly understood Method sense former producer, the late Simon Chan- of the game.” His game is of a very specific
of ‘becoming’ a person, but rather know- ning Williams, coming back from meet- nature, and despite its acerbic edge, far
ing that person – achieving total familiar- ings with financiers: “He would say, ‘They more compassionate than it is sometimes
ity with their history, how they live, speak don’t care that there’s no script. They don’t given credit for. The headline of Steph-
and behave. That includes a character’s care that they don’t know what it’s about. anie Zacharek’s recent review in Time read,
professional skills – like Austin learning to They’ll give you all the money in the world ‘Hard Truths Is Infinite Kindness In Movie
style hair as Chantelle does in her salon. – but they will insist on a name’ – ie, an Form’. But how infinitely kind does Leigh
“Although she’d been in [those salons] all American movie star. And I’d say, ‘Walk feel towards his characters? Are there any
her life, she still had to go and hang out in away now.’ People say, ‘What’s your advice that, in life, he’d feel inclined to thump?
quite a number of them and learn how to for young filmmakers?’ Never compromise. “No, that’s not what it’s about at all. For
do that – not only that, but learn how to Never say, ‘Well, I don’t really want to do me, it’s about understanding people and
do it [while watching TV]… She actually this, but if I do this, then I can do that.’ Bol- being empathetic, it’s not about judging.
had a dummy to do it in her house while locks really. It really is.” Of course, just about the furthest end
she was watching television, so she could In these hard-nosed times, that may not of the spectrum is the landlord in Naked
do it without thinking. The actors going be the most practical advice for aspiring [1999] – whichever way you look at it, I
off and doing research is a standard part of filmmakers – but it’s certainly an ideal to think he’s a profoundly unpleasant guy.
the procedure. It’s simply looking naturally aspire to, and one that Leigh continues to “But even he has vulnerable moments.
at what people do and where they do it.” work by. While commentators have often It’s about seeing people how they are.”
Leigh is already financing his next been inclined to spin mystique around
film, which he says will be on a similar Leigh’s methods, he is entirely down to Hard Truths is out now in UK cinemas
scale to Hard Truths. Over all these years, earth about them. At several points in our and was reviewed in our last issue
52

‘WHEN YOU
Working on a Mike Leigh film, as has often shooting began. Once the foundation was
been said, requires something of a leap of laid, they turned to Pansy’s family, and the
faith from an actor. “You commit to work- complex nature of those interrelationships.
ing, to developing a character, not know- Jean-Baptiste recalls: “Mike will go, ‘OK,

ACT FEAR
ing what’s going to happen or if that char- this is gonna be your sister. You’re three years
acter’s even going to end up in the film at older than her so we’re going back to when
all,” Marianne Jean-Baptiste tells me when the baby came home from the hospital.’ And
we meet in London to discuss her perfor- then you start building up birthdays, grand-

YOUR BODY
mance in Hard Truths. But when it came parents, schools, jobs, friends, all that detail.”
to joining the project, three decades after While the history of each character is built
she played an optometrist tracking down up in parallel, the subjectivity of each person’s
her biological mother in Leigh’s Secrets & viewpoint means their recollections will often
Lies (1996), all it took to persuade her was diverge – allowing the differing perspectives

DOESN’T
for the director to ask, “Do you want to do of the two sisters to be established. “So we’ll
it again?” discuss a memory of the same childhood
Jean-Baptiste last worked with Leigh birthday and Pansy thought it was a night-
when she created the score for his 1997 mare and then for Chantelle it was fabulous.”

KNOW THAT
comedy Career Girls, on which the actor and By the time the cameras were picked up
musician was afforded “a lot of freedom to in 2023, the dialogue and character motiva-
create something jazzy and modern”. She tions were locked in, but Jean-Baptiste is
has now reunited with him back in front of quick to point out that Leigh’s approach to

YOU ARE
the camera in a performance that’s a world
away from her regal real-life presence. In
person, Jean-Baptiste speaks softly and
thoughtfully, taking long pauses as she
precisely recalls details of her collabora-

PRETENDING’
tions with Leigh. In the film, she is prone
to wild tirades, playing the brittle, lonely
Pansy, who is abrasive, obsessive and
unrelentingly unpleasant, even though she
views herself as a bastion of respectability.
The film focuses on Pansy’s relation-
Three decades after her Oscar-nominated ships with her taciturn builder husband
performance in Mike Leigh’s Secrets Curtley (David Webber); timid, direc-
tionless twentysomething son Moses
& Lies, Marianne Jean-Baptiste has (Tuwaine Barrett); and effortlessly charm-
reunited with the director for Hard Truths, ing hairdresser sister Chantelle (Michele
playing Pansy, a brittle, lonely woman Austin). The sisters’ paths forked around
the death of their mother many years ear-
beset by obsessive thoughts and lier, and while Chantelle’s home is filled
grievances. Here the actor describes the with easy banter and affection, Pansy’s is
meticulous process of character building sterile and largely silent beyond her furious
soliloquies on everything from the disap-
and explains the challenges of inhabiting pointments of matrimony to the pointless-
someone wracked by mental turmoil ness of baby clothes with pockets.
Hard Truths grapples with issues of
BY LEILA LATIF mental health, alienation and the inter-
generational trauma of an extended Black
working-class family, with Moses and
Curtley almost crushed by the unbearable
weight of living under Pansy. But the film
also has a wicked sense of fun, with Jean-
Baptiste displaying a near-musical comic
timing as she complains about extraneous
dog accessories or spits insults at overbear-
ing customer service staff. “The interest-
ing complexity of her is that a lot of those
observations are actually true,” Jean-Bap-
tiste says. “Maybe we don’t notice them,
but for her, it’s unforgivable stupidity. And
at times that was fun, walking around to
see the world through her eyes.”
Jean-Baptiste began the process of
developing her character by bringing the
director a list of ten people. “It might be
somebody you know really well, it could
be somebody you see at your supermarket
that you found fascinating,” she says. “And
you start to merge them together and build
a completely new person.”
Armed with a litany of details she had
gathered, from childbirth experiences to
Jamaican family recipes to potential venues
RIGHT
Marianne Jean-Baptiste as
for Pansy and Curtley’s first date, she
Pansy in Hard Truths worked closely with Leigh right up until
 HARD TRUTHS 53

performance is distinct from the kind of ‘Mike [Leigh] is viewings of the film: “The first two times a day of medical appointments, Pansy
immersive acting techniques associated I saw it, I sat there so anxious, thinking, spells it out herself: “After complain-
with Konstantin Stanislavski, Lee Stras-
very strict about ‘My God, somebody’s going to hit her.’” ing about her stomach and her this and
berg and Stella Adler. “Mike is very strict actors coming The possibility that this might happen her that, she finally tells the doctor, ‘It’s
about actors coming out of character and out of character reaches its high point in an incident in a me head!’”
you always [have to] refer to the character car park midway through the film, when As our time draws to a close, I ask how
in the third person, which is in opposition
and you always Pansy’s antics switch from caustically it feels to know that she and Leigh have
to the Method.” have to refer amusing to bone-chilling. It’s a transitional once again received such fulsome critical
This requirement of Leigh’s proved to the character moment that sets up the film’s more muted praise and accolades for their collabora-
challenging for Jean-Baptiste because and mournful final act, and Jean-Baptiste tion. And while the actor, who received
her character’s every waking moment is
in the third recalls being able to hear a “pin drop” in the Bafta and Academy Award nominations
defined by existential pain. “You are creat- person, which screenings as Pansy’s bravado fades, and for Secrets & Lies, “is not deaf to the nice
ing the thought pattern for somebody with is in opposition the extent of her psychological wounds talk about [Hard Truths]”, she impresses
intrusive thoughts,” she explains, adding are revealed. on me that, “ The achievement of the
that it took a particular toll, as “when you
to the Method’ But even though her character is at films is that people still talk to me about
act fear, your body doesn’t know that you times obsessive and emotionally para- their adoptions. All these years later I’m
are pretending. To represent it honestly, lysed, Jean-Baptiste is reluctant to offer a just thrilled that I’ve done another movie
your body goes through all of Pansy’s anxi- specific diagnosis for Pansy: “We’ve agreed with him making people think about grief,
ety, all of that cortisol.” we don’t want the film to explain too much where people argue about what happens
It’s perhaps not surprising that these that she’s got a cluster of mental illnesses.” in the end, or see what’s toxic in their own
feelings of unease extended to her early But she points out that in the film, during relationships. That’s what’s wonderful.”
‘The
55

For admirers of the films of Walter Salles banter is briefly preceded by the whirr
– and both Central Station (1998) and (in retrospect darkly ominous) of a
The Motorcycle Diaries (2004) won him helicopter. Such juxtapositions exemplify
a great many – it has been a long wait Salles’s notion that every moment in
since On the Road (2012), the Brazilian’s a film should somehow relate to, even
most recent, and underrated, feature. strive to encapsulate, its overall theme.
(His only subsequent full-length movie The following interview took place

wound
has been the 2017 documentary Jia during last year’s BFI London Film
Zhangke, a Guy from Fenyang.) But I’m Festival. Salles apologised for being
Still Here, which premiered in Venice tired after promoting the film at a
last year, is a triumphant return to the string of festivals, but his customary
fray, earning acclaim at festivals and eloquence and enthusiasm, humour
extremely strong box-office figures when and warmth remained undimmed.
it opened in Brazil, outperforming such
heavily hyped Hollywood blockbusters Geoff Andrew: Had you thought of
as Gladiator II and Joker: Folie à Deux. making a film about this before
That domestic response is perhaps Marcelo Paiva’s book was published?

is
unsurprising, given that Salles’s
portrait of life in early 70s Rio under Walter Salles: No. As you know, I had
the military dictatorship inevitably a personal link to the story. I’d lived
resonates deeply with a population still abroad for several years, and the Brazil
reeling from the far-right presidency I returned to [in 1969] when I was 13
of Jair Bolsonaro – a regime so prone was so different from the one I’d left; it
to propaganda and censorship that was now run by the military. I felt pretty
it stalled most serious Brazilian uncomfortable there until I met the five
filmmaking for four years. I’m Still Here kids from the Paiva family, who invited

never
may be about events that occurred me to their house. The door was always
half a century ago, but its relevance open, and we’d drift there at weekends,
to today’s world is all too evident. because it was far more interesting than
Based on the memoir of the same our own homes, where you couldn’t cross
name by Marcelo Paiva, the film that line between adults and adolescents
concerns the parents and five children or children. Its different tribes –
of the well-to-do Paiva family, whose friends of each of the kids, friends
lives changed forever in January 1971 of the parents – all mixed together,
when Rubens, formerly a congressman discussing politics, culture, sex, drugs,
for the Labour Party, was taken for whatever. It was the start of the 70s,

closed’
questioning by the military government; the world was being reimagined. But
the family never saw him again. Brazil was doing the opposite, so their
Notwithstanding her own subsequent house felt like another country. Then
arrest and interrogation, Eunice Paiva came tragedy. Rubens disappeared,
strove to discover the truth behind her the house was shut down, the family
husband’s disappearance, determined left. I kept in touch with the middle
all the while to protect her children. daughter Nalu and with Marcelo, but I
I’m Still Here boasts a host of fine didn’t know too much about what had
performances, most memorably, as happened until his book came out.
Eunice, by Fernanda Torres, the lead Reading it, I realised that Eunice
in Salles’s 1995 breakthrough feature had been a force of resistance and
Foreign Land. (Her mother, Fernanda reinvention. I was deeply moved by
Montenegro, who starred in Central the book, but it took a while to decide
Walter Salles’s first fiction film for more than Station, also makes a brief but very whether I should adapt it, because
a decade, I’m Still Here follows a woman affecting appearance as the elderly memory is so selective, it can be
seeking answers about the disappearance of Eunice.) But the film also benefits treacherous. But Marcelo said, “Use
from the director’s own emotional your own memories, blend them with
her husband after his arrest by the Brazilian investment in the project. As a teenage mine.” After I interviewed the sisters, we
military in 1971. The director talks to friend of the Paivas, he was a frequent had enough material for a screenplay,
Geoff Andrew about the ever-present spectre visitor to their home in the period up but it took a long time to decant all that.
to Rubens’s arrest. Characteristically, Also, the political situation in Brazil
of the past in the country and outlines a Salles’s connection with the people in [under Bolsonaro’s leadership] made
very personal connection to the tragedy the story led not to sentimentality but filming impossible for four years. So
to a desire for authenticity. As in all his our project, a reflection of the past, also
best work, his merging of the personal became a reflection of the present.
and political is marked not only by
a profound humanity that respects You brought in two scriptwriters…
and seeks to understand individuals,
warts and all, but by a documentarist’s Yes, Murilo Hauser and Heitor Lorega,
preference for seemingly unimportant two young writers who’d worked with
but telling moments over grand dramatic Karim Aïnouz on The Invisible Life of
climaxes. Understatement is favoured, Eurídice Gusmão [2019]. I liked the way
so that the film never feels manipulative, that film avoided melodrama; it touched
merely honest. It makes its points on tragedy, but showed that life went
not through rhetoric but through an on. That’s what I wanted for our film,
accumulation of subtle details, as in which is also about absence and loss.
the first few frames of the movie, which It was wonderful to have writers of
OPPOSITE
show Eunice and her family enjoying another generation with fresh ideas
Fernanda Torres in I’m Still Here themselves on the beach: their sunny that defied the usual screenwriting
 screenplay; if it’s well structured,
you can always find the theme.
It helped that we found a house very
similar to the Paiva home and lived
and worked there for two months prior
to shooting. One actor broke a rib, so
filming was delayed, but that accident
enabled us to have longer with the kids
we’d cast. We wrote scenes that were
a kind of prequel to the film, in which
the siblings would interact with each
other, so a collective past was created
that they could draw on. We asked
the kids to provide decorations for the
bedrooms, which reflected how they
saw their characters. It’s a bit like what
Kiarostami did in films like Where Is
the Friend’s House? [1987] – we wanted
them to embrace the possibility of
influencing things. So the house wasn’t
just a set; we were actually living there,
and that provided the immediacy
I wanted, which I remembered
from my times with the Paivas.

Eunice’s pain and determination are

very clear, but this is no hagiography.
Did you want to avoid sentimentality?

In a way, when the Paiva kids lost their

father, they also lost their mother, in
that she survived those events by not
sharing the truth. There’s a violence in
that, which has repercussions because
the wound is never closed. For some,
Eunice’s actions are morally acceptable;
rules. They started from the notion that what she saw and heard; she wasn’t ‘Cinema is about for others, there’s something dubious
the way the Paivas lived was a form of tortured physically but psychologically. about her decisions. The book is
resistance, so no plot points for the first So we endure that nightmare with the invisible extraordinary – it doesn’t sweeten her.
30 minutes – this isn’t Netflix! Also, her. Cinema is about the invisible complementing Eunice never let her oppressors see her
they didn’t skirt the tragedy when it complementing the visible: what you the visible: what cry, but nor did she allow herself to cry in
happened. They show us the joy taken don’t see can be more expressive than front of her children. There’s something
from the family, by using a before- what you see. So it was interesting to you don’t see quite complex about such behaviour.
and-after structure. For me that was work with layers of sound. That part can be more
important, because Rubens was the of the film is frightening for me; it’s expressive than Were you always going to
first of my friends’ fathers to completely about the different kinds of fear you cast Fernanda Torres?
disappear during the dictatorship, can experience, and is very much to do what you see. So
something I never forgot. Before that, with the senses. Eunice doesn’t eat, and it was interesting Initially I had someone else in mind,
parents were interrogated, they might loses weight. Actually, Fernanda Torres to work with but that didn’t work out, so I thought of
even disappear for one or two months, lost seven or eight kilos in three days. Fernanda but wasn’t sure she’d accept.
but then they’d come home. But the Filming those scenes was challenging layers of sound’ After Foreign Land [1995] she had done
Rubens Paiva case marked an escalation for all of us, but especially for her. We several great films, but her real penchant
of violence by the military regime; it shot everything chronologically – which is for comedy. She’s done a lot on stage,
would become increasingly ferocious. made it extremely affecting – and we including a one-woman monologue,
I was intrigued by how to deal with see why, having gone through that, which is very funny indeed. When I
Rubens’s absence: that was the part I Eunice doesn’t want to pass on what called, she thought I wanted her to
hadn’t witnessed so had to imagine. she knows to the kids. At first she collaborate on a script – she writes as
I remembered Godard’s line about can’t even embrace her children; it’s well – so I told her I wanted her to play
cinema being about subtraction. From as if she needs to change her skin. Eunice. She thought about it and the
the moment the military guys enter the next day she said, “This is a role I can’t
house, everything is about subtraction Does the film depart in any significant refuse.” She leapt into the part without
– of exterior sounds, of what people say; way from what happened to the Paivas? a parachute: she embodies Eunice
under an authoritarian regime, you can’t not only with honesty but with great
speak freely. So the family members are No. Marcelo’s book is an internal restraint – the opposite of what she was
constantly watching each other, to learn journey based on his mother’s life, and doing in comedy. Though she’s of the
what’s happening. That’s very different we kept as close to that as possible. theatre – her parents are stage actors –
from the luminous beginning of the film; We wanted to respect the spirit of the she’s a real cinephile and understands
it’s more like something painted by [the book – and the spirit of the family. film; she has great faith in its language.
Danish painter Vilhelm] Hammershøi! The script was the springboard for
trying to find something fresh, so some ABOVE
Some of the men who take over
During Eunice’s incarceration in the scenes were largely improvised – we Walter Salles with the Paiva house are respectful and
Fernanda Torres on the
barracks, you avoid explicit violence. even invited members of the Paiva set of I’m Still Here
polite, while one prison guard tries
family to appear alongside the actors to help Eunice, saying he disagrees
OPPOSITE
The book embraces Eunice’s point in the final scene. But if you’re going The Paiva family in
with what’s happening. But that
of view. You always see and hear to improvise, you must have a good I’m Still Here doesn’t excuse his actions…
 WALTER SALLES 57

‘When the Paiva kids lost their father, they also lost their mother, in that she survived
those events by not sharing the truth. There’s a violence in that, which has repercussions’

Of course not. I followed Marcelo’s frightening is how much that kind of of internal haemorrhaging; in 2014
description of the military who invaded thing became part of the everyday. a doctor under oath testified that he
the house in civilian clothes: he said had been called at some point but
they didn’t want to be perceived as thugs Did Vera really shoot home movies? said there was nothing he could do.
but like accountants. We shot one scene
in the library of the house, creating That was poetic licence on our part. It’s remarkable that he was killed
pandemonium, with things tossed But photography was a big thing for the simply for passing on letters.
everywhere. Marcelo said, “This didn’t Paivas. Through the family we got hold
happen. They searched everywhere, but of many photographs which allowed us It’s absurd. Some of the letters
the only clue was something in a drawer to reconstruct their world of the 70s. were for people fighting against the
out of place. They were meticulous in Our research also gave access to 8mm government, and at a certain point, the
their work.” So Marcelo’s perspective films shot by families at that time, which military decided the way to combat
helped us steer clear of cliché. What also informed the art direction. That that was to escalate things: the gorillas
makes a dictatorship frightening is that made me think of bringing home movies were unleashed and Rubens fell
those guys are not so unlike people you into the film. A lot of that footage was prey to that, one of the first. It just
may know; they believe they’re just doing shot by the actress who plays Vera, who escalated and became widespread.
a job. But you can still detect a certain is a photographer. The rest was shot by It’s not the first film made about
ferocity in their gestures, in their look. myself or our cameraman. It allowed the disappearances, but it’s one of the
They come and suck life out of the house. us to evoke the period quite vividly. first to deal with how the situation
affected people who were not on the
Early on the eldest daughter Vera is Were the circumstances of front line in the armed resistance.
stopped at a roadblock and searched Rubens’s death ever uncovered? Indeed, through Eunice, it reflects
and threatened by the militia. Did the point of view of someone largely
you have experiences like that? It depends on who tells the story; it’s unaware of what was happening
Rashomon territory. But we do know he on various fronts, who then had to
Very similar, yes; almost everyone at that died from physical violence inflicted confront the situation and in effect
time got stopped at roadblocks. They on 20th or 21st of January 1971; the completely reinvent herself.
still exist today; the Brazilian police are military thought he had information
still partly military. In some areas they’re about the letters he was passing on, I’m Still Here is released in UK cinemas on
21 February and is reviewed on page 63
as ruthless today as in the 70s. What’s which he didn’t actually have. He died
 R E
V
60
FILMS
Memoir of a Snail, Nosferatu,
I’m Still Here, Presence, On Falling,
Pepe, Ernest Cole: Lost and Found,
A Complete Unknown, By the Stream,
The Seed of the Sacred Fig,
The Fire Inside, The Last Showgirl,
The Colors Within and more

I E
W S
78
DVD & BLU-RAY
86
WIDER SCREEN
Mikey and Nicky, Mermaid Legend, A big-hitting small film
Cure, Freelance, Bushman, festival in Lanzarote and
Nothing Is Sacred: Three Heresies John Boorman’s little-seen
by Luis Buñuel, Park Lanes, portrait of west London
The Cat, Punch-Drunk Love, Leo the Last
High and Low and more

88
BOOKS
A gossipy exposé of the mid-
century Roman film industry,
a study of horror films by
women and an examination
of film distribution
 60

Memoir of a Snail
AUSTRALIA/UK/FRANCE 2024 CERTIFICATE 15 94M 33S

DIRECTOR ADAM ELLIOT

PRODUCED BY LIZ KEARNEY
ADAM ELLIOT
WRIT TEN BY ADAM ELLIOT
CINEMATOGRAPHY GERALD THOMPSON
EDITOR BILL MURPHY
PRODUCTION DESIGN ADAM ELLIOT
ANIMATION SUPERVISOR JOHN LEWIS
MUSIC ELENA K ATS-CHERNIN
VOICE CAST SARAH SNOOK
KODI SMIT-MCPHEE
ERIC BANA

SYNOPSIS
After the death of an older friend, introvert
Grace narrates her life story, starting with her
childhood in post-war Australia, when she
was orphaned then separated from her twin
brother. She withdraws and hoards, but her
difficult experiences include life lessons that
coax her out of her grief and self-pity.

REVIEWED BY NICK BRADSHAW

Kids do not fly their nest in an Adam

Elliot film. They may be pushed out, or
their homes may crumble, but his charac-
ters do not want to take wing and have no
hope of soaring. Among the many animal
companions in the Australian animator’s
‘clayographic’ life fables, birds do figure,
but at heart they are caged, or their wings
broken, or their legs cut off.
And their human keepers, Elliot’s very
grounded subjects, are equally lumbered.
Where other modes of animation can con-
FILMS

jure levity, mobility and free-fancy, Elliot’s

clay figures bear the weight of their wor-
ries. (He calls his modelling style ‘chunky
wonky’ and attributes it to a hereditary
physiological shake.) An unsparing but
not pitiless creator, he likes to pile up his
characters’ burdens to see what they can
overcome. Across three short films, two
mid-length films and two features – 249
minutes of screen time – he has tested
them with alcoholism, Alzheimer’s,
Asperger’s syndrome, asthma, blindness, Adam Elliot shorts, straddling Melbourne, Canberra leaving the twins to fight a losing game as
a brain clot, a cancerous goitre, cerebral and Western Australia (with a Parisian his night nurses. They are separated and
palsy, deafness, medical electrocution,
builds his flashback). It’s also Elliot’s most subjec- sent to foster families at opposite ends
emphysema, a lazy eye, a lightning strike, story with a tive and interior film to date, narrated by of the country. While Grace is adopted
macrocephaly, paraplegia, Thalidomide Dickensian its protagonist, though she is flanked by by a couple of genial swingers in Can-
deformity, Tourette’s syndrome and vari- a range of counterparts. Grace Prudence berra, Gilbert is sentenced to servitude
cose veins, as well as the loss of parents,
taste for life’s Pudel (her name an echo of Mary and out west with a family of rabid Christian
pets and limbs, plus frequent bullying. gothic pageant Max’s Mary Dinkle, whose eyes “were the apple farmers, who see the devil in his
His thumbnail triptych Uncle (1996), colour of muddy puddles”) is a twin who every passion.
Cousin (1998) and Brother (1999) profiled feels the wrench of familial separation While the twins’ trials scan like the
a series of singular family oddballs in all from the moment of birth, yanked from torments dispensed by Roald Dahl or
their quirks and coping measures. The the embryonic warmth of her brother Gil- Lemony Snicket, Elliot builds his story
Oscar-winning Harvie Krumpet (2003) bert’s side – though it’s their mother who with less glee, more a Dickensian taste for
found a defiant heroism in the persis- dies in childbirth, while Gilbert will be life’s gothic pageant: difference abounds,
tence of an orphan and Holocaust Grace’s stoutest defender. He rescues her shit falls in buckets, life is unbiddable.
exile in outer Melbourne. Elliot’s first with an emergency post-op blood transfu- There is still deadpan comedy in his
feature, Mary and Max (2008), entwined sion, and in the schoolyard from parade of eccentrics, but Memoir of a
the lives of a young Melbourne misfit and bullies (an Elliot perennial) Snail is also surprisingly lachrymose.
an autistic, overweight Brooklyn loner who mock her cleft lip. Their The Pudels are his droopiest models
through a stop-start pen-pal father, Percy Pudel, was a yet, with wells beneath their heavy eyes
relationship, while Ernie Biscuit French stop-motion anima- just waiting to channel tears – which in
(2015) dropped a timid Parisian tor and street magician (as Grace’s case do indeed flow. Sarah Snook
taxidermist in the Australian was the father in Brother; gives her a mellifluous reading that runs
back of beyond to dust him off. Elliot’s own father was an from honeyed joy to quivering misery,
Memoir of a Snail reprises many acrobatic clown) who followed their emotions underscored by Elena Kats-
of these themes, with some variations. mother to Australia, but a drunk driver Chernin’s plangent strings and piano as
The setting makes this Elliot’s most put him in a wheelchair, pushing him well as Elliot’s occasional overwriting
purely Australian film since those early to the bottle. Sleep apnoea also ensues, (“My life had become truly pathetic and
 61

Q&A
Adam Elliot
DIRECTOR
BY K ATIE MCCABE

What drew you to the idea of

a character who hoards?
My father passed away, and he left behind
a lot of stuff. I don’t know whether to
call him a hoarder or just an extreme
collector. I was very annoyed with him,
my siblings and I had to trawl through
everything. But that annoyance slowly
led to a fascination with not just why he
collected, but why does anybody collect?
And when does it become extreme
hoarding? There’s many reasons, but
what I found was that extreme hoarders
have usually had the loss of a child or
a sibling or a twin, and the hoarding
becomes a coping mechanism.

Originally there was a focus on

ladybirds in the script. What
made you switch to snails?
That film Lady Bird [2017] came out,
and that sort of ruined things a little
bit [laughs]. But also it was getting a bit
cutesy and twee and a bit saccharine.
I thought, there must be a different
animal out there. When you touch snails’
antennas, they withdraw into their shell.
In a way, a snail is an introvert, and

FILMS
that’s what Grace is. The shell is sort
of a shield from the outside world.

The film keeps everything in camera

and does not use CGI techniques.
Why was that important to you?
We’re drowning in CGI animation,
but also now with the arrival of AI, so
much of what we look at is synthetic
and artificial. And when the audience
sees the fingerprints on the clay… It’s the
SLOW CINEMA things had got out of control… lonely, Pinky also seems to have encountered celebration of the tangible, tactile nature
Memoirs of a Snail
loveless and imprisoned”). the Uncle of Elliot’s first short, as she of the puppets. I was told it was going
Still, the sentiment is Grace’s own. The relates to Grace his koan of wisdom (by to be a dying artform when I left film
snail of the title, she’s also a wallflower way of Søren Kierkegaard): “Life can only school in 1996, yet Guillermo del Toro
and a hoarder, piling up trinkets, guinea be understood backwards, but has to be and Wes Anderson, they’re dabbling in
pigs, romance novels and, yes, snails as lived forwards.” Grace has made a cage stop motion. For me, it’s always the story
a dam against her feelings of loss. Deep of her self-pity, and it’s only with Pinky’s first, animation second. The audience
into adulthood she still wears a toy snail death – the film’s bracketing device – and will always forgive bad lighting, bad
hat her dad made her, ping-pong ball eyes Grace’s final desolation that she is forced animating, bad acting, but they’ll never
on wire stalks, and she has much to relate to find her own agency. She tells her story forgive a bad story. The puppets are very
about snails’ habits: pulling together to her favourite snail, Sylvia (named after lumpy and asymmetrical and we want
when threatened, but also never retrac- Plath), as she releases it into her friend’s to celebrate the imperfectness of them.
ing their trails. This last point is made by vegetable garden, marked as ‘Pinky’s pity
Grace’s final ally and idol, Pinky, a vener- pit’. Like Harvie Krumpet, she decides
able and gung-ho eccentric (delightfully she has more living to do.
voiced by Jacki Weaver) who has long How Grace moves forward with her
shed inhibition and boasts a lengthy list life – what warts and wrinkles await her
of exploits, from sex in a helicopter with – we do not learn. She may not fly with
John Denver to ping-pong with Fidel rock stars but she has shed her shell. In
Castro. Pinky also trails, or perhaps out- another autobiographical twist, Elliot
runs, a sense of grand guignol calamity: a has her pick up her father Percy’s interest
name gained by losing a finger in a ceiling in stop-motion animation. She may not
fan while dancing on a bar; two husbands have fallen far from the tree; her past, like
lost to bloody mishap; more road acci- Elliot’s marvellously detailed, weighty
dent near-misses as we watch. Yet on she modelling of it, may define and confine
rolls, as symbolised by her blithe talent her; but her future floats, unwritten.
for hitting crazy golf holes-in-one off
every obstruction in her back yard. In UK cinemas from 14 February
 62

Nosferatu but uses Stoker’s character names.

Eggers fixes his version to the location
trope. He has a blood-dripping mous-
tache like the historical Vlad the Impaler
THE NIGHTMARES
BEFORE CHRISTMAS
Lily-Rose Depp as Ellen
and period of Murnau’s original (Wis- and a frogged coat that might suggest
USA 2024 CERTIFICATE 15 132M 24S borg, Germany, 1838) and features Count military rank or just that it’s bloody cold in
Orlok rather than Dracula. But he shows his ruined castle. The scabby sores on his
DIRECTOR ROBERT EGGERS
PRODUCED BY JEFF ROBINOV little interest in what is by far the most skin look more like symptoms of venereal
JOHN GRAHAM distinctive aspect of Murnau’s Nosferatu, disease than plague. Several times, he’s
CHRIS COLUMBUS
ELEANOR COLUMBUS the look of Max Schreck’s Orlok – bald, seen naked – and it’s not a pleasant sight.
ROBERT EGGERS rat-eared and fanged, shaped like a stick- Herzog’s film was a homage, but Eggers’s
WRIT TEN FOR THE
SCREEN BY ROBERT EGGERS insect in a corseted frock coat. is a reimagining – a risky, uncomfortable
INSPIRED BY THE When Schreck first scuttles out of prospect which requires the director to
SCREENPLAY
FILMS

NOSFERATU BY HENRIK GALEEN shadows, Murnau is so fascinated by the add a great deal of his own material.
AND THE NOVEL creature that he stages many shots that In a new twist, this Nosferatu is a
DRACULA BY BRAM STOKER
CINEMATOGRAPHY JARIN BLASCHKE show off his (astonishing) image. Eggers, Christmas movie – we’re told that the
FILM EDITOR LOUISE FORD by contrast, cuts the moment when Orlok estate agent Knock (Simon McBurney),
PRODUCTION DESIGN CRAIG LATHROP
MUSIC ROBIN CAROLAN is disguised as the coachman who brings seemingly Orlok’s servant, has run riot in
COSTUME DESIGN LINDA MUIR Thomas Hutter (here played by Nicho- Wisborg’s Christmas market, and Orlok’s
CAST BILL SK ARSGÅRD
NICHOLAS HOULT las Hoult) to the castle, instead having a visitations to Hutter’s fiancée Ellen (Lily-
LILY-ROSE DEPP driverless carriage do the job. The direc- Rose Depp) are on the pattern of the
A ARON TAYLOR-
JOHNSON tor then stages Thomas’s soul-destroying, ghosts besetting Scrooge. A fresh set-up
mind-wrecking ordeal in the castle – (which comes from Sheridan Le Fanu’s
SYNOPSIS Hoult’s second impressive turn as ‘Drac- pre-Dracula 1872 novella Carmilla) has
Wisborg, Germany, early 19th century. ula’s bitch’ after Renfield (2023) – without Orlok first appear to Ellen in a childhood
Young Ellen dreams she is forced to make a fully showing the antagonist on screen or dream, securing a lifelong vampire’s invi-
pact with a supernatural figure. Years later, in focus. Orlok (Bill Skarsgård) remains tation which dooms them both.
her solicitor husband Thomas is sent to in shadow or silhouette throughout, only In The Witch (2015), Eggers’s ambigu-
Transylvania to arrange a house sale with
seen clearly in the light of breaking dawn ous devil recruits a young woman cast
Count Orlok, the spectre of Ellen’s dream.
which not only kills him but renders him out by puritanical early Americans to “live
REVIEWED BY KIM NEWMAN a pathetic, chicken-legged wreck. deliciously”; Orlok has much in common
It’s possible that Orlok is distinct with Black Phillip, but promises only
from the common-or-garden strigoi ruination. In common with Eggers’s The
The issue of how perverse it is to remake (vampire). Perhaps this Nosferatu is a Lighthouse (2019), this calls on craggy,
F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922) – an adap- human-shaped instrument of corrup- quixotic Willem Dafoe (who wore the
tation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula which tion and evil who drinks from gnawed Max Schreck face in Shadow of the Vampire,
diverges greatly from its source, though wounds in a vampire-fashion but is as 2000) to provide grotesque comic relief
not greatly enough to dodge a plagia- capable of spreading his baleful influence as an ineffectual Van Helsing analogue.
rism suit – seemed settled in 1979 when across Europe without obvious fangs. Often monochrome, but not in black and
Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu the Vampyre That Skarsgård’s Orlok doesn’t look white, the imagery is perpetually on the
was in cinemas along with John Badham’s like Schreck is a bold move on Eggers’s point of blurring, like drawings left out in
Dracula (and the Stan Dragoti comedy part, but it seems Nosferatu’s pop culture the rain. Thundering music and overlaid
Love at First Bite). Yes, it’s an odd notion afterlife (he’s a semi-regular on Sponge- dialogue – Orlok speaks in guttural, sub-
– like, say, remaking Laurence Olivier’s Bob SquarePants) has rendered the once- titled primitive argot – constantly amp
Hamlet (1948) or James Whale’s Franken- fearsome rat-face almost familiar. up the dread. Like The Northman (2022),
stein (1931) – but Murnau casts significant Skarsgård is, however, close to the Eggers’s primal sword-and-sorcery take
shadows on Dracula. As it happens, the description of the Count in the novel: on Hamlet, his Nosferatu takes the skeleton
vampire’s grasping silhouette is a key ele- his precedents are illustrations of Dracula of a foundational text (or two of them –
ment carried over into writer-director editions from 1897 to 1922, created by art- Murnau and Stoker) and clads the bones
Robert Eggers’s Nosferatu. ists who only had Stoker’s words to go on. with his own obsessions and interests.
Herzog’s Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) This Orlok has a bit of a beak but not the
recreates many key images from Murnau hook-nose often taken for an antisemitic In UK cinemas now
 63

I’m Still Here easygoing, burly engineer father Rubens

(Selton Mello), the figure on whom, at
DRIVEN TO EXTREMES
Fernanda Torres as Eunice Paiva
to be sent away to study in London before
the beautifully established familial Eden is
first, the film centres. brought to a close.
BRAZIL/FRANCE/USA 2024
Meals with adult friends and the chil- Anonymous, thuggish men come to the
DIRECTOR WALTER SALLES dren’s sing-alongs equally carry weight house, telling Eunice they’re waiting for her
PRODUCERS MARIA CARLOTA BRUNO in these early scenes because the film, husband. They post themselves about the
RODRIGO TEIXEIRA
MARTINE DE CLERMONT- adapted from a memoir by one of the chil- shared rooms, giving nothing away, while
TONNERRE dren, Marcelo Rubens Paiva, also draws family life proceeds around them – Eunice
SCREENPLAY MURILO HAUSER
HEITOR LOREGA on director Walter Salles’s personal mem- even offers them food. When Rubens
BASED ON THE BOOK ories of this real-life family. He spent time comes home, he is soon driven away to
AINDA ESTOU AQUI BY MARCELO RUBENS PAIVA
CINEMATOGRAPHY ADRIAN TEIJIDO with the Paivas during his adolescence, “give a deposition”. We are given no indica-
EDITING BY AFFONSO GONÇALVES in the early 1970s, envying their intimacy tion of what he’s done to deserve this.
PRODUCTION DESIGN CARLOS CONTI
MUSIC WARREN ELLIS and openness. Love and duty are woven Days pass before Eunice herself is
COSTUME DESIGN CLAUDIA KOPKE into the film’s fabric. ordered into a car alongside 15-year-old
CAST FERNANDA TORRES
SELTON MELLO The Paivas live in a gorgeous rented Eliana (Luiza Kosovski), the second oldest
VALENTINA HERSZAGE house next to the beach. Fabulous Brazil- child, and black hoods are put over their
LUIZA KOSOVSKI
ian music – Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, heads. Locked in a cell, Eunice listens to
SYNOPSIS
Gal Costa – helps evoke a sense of 60s the screams of the tortured and hopes for
Brazil, the 1970s. The joyous beachside life and 70s youth culture. There’s a resem- snatches of information. She’s made to
of the Paiva family in Rio de Janeiro comes blance, too, to the sprawling Mexico City examine books of mugshots, her husband
to an end when Rubens, the father, is taken family life depicted in Alfonso Cuarón’s and daughter among them. After 12 days
away by thugs of the military dictatorship. Roma (2018), set in the same year, 1970. she is released back home and is relieved to
After her own incarceration, his wife Paiva In contrast to Roma’s monochrome, find Eliana there too.
must reinvent herself to keep the family however, I’m Still Here had me thinking Given no information regarding
thriving together.
of Paul Simon’s 1973 song ‘Kodachrome’: Rubens’s fate, with the discovery that
REVIEWED BY NICK JAMES “They give us the nice bright colours she has no access to his funds, Eunice is
/ They give us the greens of summers.” forced to move the family out. She takes
The teenage eldest daughter Vera (Valen- a law degree at the age of 48. The first of
A swimmer floats on her back off Copac- tina Herszage) wields a Super 8 camera, two jumps forward in time takes us to 1998.
abana Beach as a helicopter flies above. and the grain and hues of 35mm film Eunice has become a powerhouse activist
She is Eunice Paiva (Fernanda Torres), enhance that period feel, courtesy of cin- at the centre of the campaign to find out
whose five children are playing beach vol- ematographer Adrian Teijido. It is Vera what happened to the hundreds of desa-
leyball while a stray dog keeps interfer- who has the family’s first encounter with parecidos (disappeared) like her husband.
ing. The family’s blissful life of affection Brazil’s military government, when she Fernanda Torres’s restrained portrayal of
and closeness is signalled by the children’s and her friends are treated roughly at a this resilient matriarch, who retains her dig-
adoption of the dog, agreed to by their roadblock; but she is otherwise fortunate nity even in the most terrifying moments,

FILMS
is one of total conviction (and won her
a Best Actress Golden Globe and an
Oscar nomination).
The second time-leap, to 2014, sees
Torres replaced in the role by her real-life
mother Fernanda Montenegro, the revered
star of Salles’s breakthrough feature Cen-
tral Station (1998). With Eunice now in a
wheelchair and living from dementia, the
family prepares one more signature meal.
By this point you may feel that Salles is let-
ting the saga drift, but that’s a consequence
of his sense of duty to a story that has wider
ramifications.
Thinking about Central Station sent
me back to an interview I did with Salles
when it was released. He talked about a
“culture of cynicism and indifference” that
prevailed in the Brazil of the 1960s and
1970s and said that he prefers to make films
“fundamentally related to me”. The Paivas
are emblematic of resistance to that cyni-
cism. In Central Station he got to the rural
heart of what his huge, near ungovernable
nation was all about. Here, in Brazil’s post-
Bolsonaro moment, he’s speaking of and to
the nation again.
Biopics are rarely to my taste but the
power of this film overcame my preju-
dice. Perhaps ignorance of Eunice’s story
– already well-known in Brazil – helped
dispel any sense of the pre-ordained.
But in any case, given Torres’s brilliant,
understated performance and Salles’s
deep understanding of what he’s trying to
achieve, the film would stand as a shining,
thoroughly convincing exception.

In UK cinemas from 21 February

 64

Here A valentine to homely middle-American endurance

bedecked with all manner of digital fakery? Sounds a
THREE MORE…
ONE-LOCATION
lot like Zemeckis’s Oscar-guzzling 1994 colossus Forrest MOVIES
USA 2024 CERTIFICATE 12A 103M 59S
Gump, and not coincidentally so: self-consciously evoking
DIRECTOR ROBERT ZEMECKIS that film, from its 30-year reunion of Hanks and Wright to BY PHILIP CONCANNON
PRODUCED BY ROBERT ZEMECKIS
DEREK HOGUE its generation-skimming soundtrack of pop staples, Here
JACK RAPKE aims for the same broad-brush, time-capsule symbolism as
BILL BLOCK
SCREENPLAY ERIC ROTH its predecessor, packaging the supposed spirit of a nation
ROBERT ZEMECKIS into its characters’ heavily stretched lives. This time, how-
BASED ON THE
GRAPHIC NOVEL BY RICHARD MCGUIRE
ever, the audience assumes Gump’s role as passive witness
CINEMATOGRAPHY DON BURGESS to history; those on screen remain largely housebound,
EDITOR JESSE GOLDSMITH their lives cramped and frustrated for it.
PRODUCTION DESIGN ASHLEY LAMONT
MUSIC ALAN SILVESTRI The bulk of Here is centred on one extended family. WAVELENGTH (1967)
COSTUME DESIGN JOANNA JOHNSTON Cranky World War II veteran Al (an overbearing Paul Michael Snow begins
CAST TOM HANKS
ROBIN WRIGHT Bettany) and his wife Rose (Kelly Reilly) buy the house Wavelength on one side of
PAUL BET TANY an apartment, and slowly
KELLY REILLY in the first flush of the baby boom. When their son Rich-
zooms in to a postcard
MICHELLE DOCKERY ard accidentally impregnates Margaret in their last year affixed to the furthest
of school, the young couple hastily wed and raise their wall. Nothing distracts
SYNOPSIS
daughter under the same roof. Plans for a home of their the camera from its slow-
One patch of ground in what comes to be suburban Pennsylvania
own are mooted, even drawn up, but never realised; Rich- motion progress, not even
is the scene of various environmental, historical and domestic
crises over the centuries, including the wipe-out of the dinosaurs,
ard and Margaret’s marriage sours and splinters as she the appearance of a man
realises that’s all there is. Here could be quite effective as who collapses and dies
life and death in a Native American tribe, the political reflections
an elaborate visual metaphor for the trap of the modern right there on the floor.
of colonial governor William Franklin, and the 20th-century
When the camera reaches
marital strife of suburbanites Richard and Margaret Young. American dream, but Zemeckis and co-writer Eric Roth
the photograph on which
– another Gump alum – can’t resist sentimentalising even it has remained focused
REVIEWED BY GUY LODGE Margaret’s unrest and epiphany, toward a treacly coda for 45 minutes, an image
which insists she was happiest here all along. of waves fills the screen,
“I could spend the rest of my life here,” says Margaret, a teen- Away from this tepid marital saga, a nonlinear narrative finally creating a sense of
ager played with a garish digital facelift by Robin Wright, darts haphazardly between superficially drawn vignettes liberation. But, of course,
as she snuggles up to her high school sweetheart Richard of family life from other eras, via an intricate editorial we are still in the room.
(Tom Hanks, given the same eerie CG Botox treatment) device of frames within frames that nods to the film’s
early on in Here. It’s the mid-1960s, they’re in the chintzy living comic-book roots. Inconsequential comedy is provided
room of his parents’ house in picket-fence Pennsylvania, and by the antics of a zany pre-war inventor and his pin-up
she’ll come to regret the impetuous romantic hyperbole of her model wife as he develops the prototype of the La-Z-Boy
words – since Robert Zemeckis’s peculiarly tricked-out slab of recliner; hollow topicality by the African American family
everyday Americana will take them very much at face value. who buy the house from Richard and are subsequently
FILMS

The film counts on its audience being likewise content given the job of shoehorning a Black Lives Matter narra- SHIRIN (2008)
to remain in that unremarkable room. Here is adapted from tive into scant minutes of screen time. No less cynical and Shirin takes place inside a
Richard McGuire’s celebrated 2014 graphic novel of the same unearned is a scene depicting a pre-colonial Indigenous cinema. We never see the
film being presented: Abbas
title, which observes millennia of activity – but principally the burial ceremony: a decorative demonstration of grief for
Kiarostami’s interest is in
last century – from the same fixed point in space, as people the film never bothers to name or know. the audience. His camera
time whirs rapidly past it. A dinosaurs’ stamp- While Here exposes the limits of its pale, focuses on the faces of more
ing ground becomes a Native American conservative world-view the more it widens than 100 women as they
ritual location, then the estate of colo- its scope, it’s no better at capturing domes- gaze up at the screen, their
nial governor William Franklin, then a tic intimacy – as the film’s defining master range of emotions evoking
middle-class family home inhabited by shot becomes more reminiscent of a stage our own relationship with
successive vessels of suburban Ameri- proscenium arch. Even when not ham- cinema. Kiarostami shot
Shirin in his apartment,
can tragedy. pered by virtual youth serum, Hanks and
inviting the actresses to sit
There’s a poignancy to the conceit on Wright’s performances are constricted by down in his living room and
the page, a rigidity and repetition that the script’s allegiance to dated just imagine watching a film,
reflects the pace of social and histori- archetypes and pat homi- but the illusion created is
cal change – dully slow as experienced in lies. Home is where convincing and magical.
real time, but seismic in the long view – as the heart is, the film
if moving through a flipbook in very slow would have us
motion. But it would take a more austere experi- believe – but the
mentalist than Zemeckis to translate this simple soul has done a
high concept to screen without lapsing into runner.
outright gimmickry. A filmmaker long preoc-
cupied with technological advancements at In UK LOCKE (2013)
cinemas now
the expense of human investment, he seizes Steven Knight makes us a
on McGuire’s unassumingly expansive passenger on a tense night-
work as a vehicle for more state-of-the- time drive with Ivan Locke,
art effects than it can reasonably bear who has left his family and
his construction job and is
– from that uncanny-valley de-ageing
heading to London, where
to gaudily animated visions of America the woman he cheated on
before the asteroid that wiped out the his wife with is about to
dinosaurs. Even common greenery is give birth. The film is set
synthetically rendered, simply because entirely inside Locke’s car
it can be. Rather than a paean to the pas- and unfolds in something
sage of ordinary life, it becomes a relent- close to real time. Tom
lessly extraordinary imitation of reality, Hardy is tremendous as
the increasingly anguished
offering much to gawk at but little to feel.
protagonist, struggling to
hold his life together in a
SMOOTHED OPERATORS flurry of fraught phone calls.
Tom Hanks as Richard, Robin Wright as Margaret
 65

Presence
CERTIFICATE 15 84M 39S

DIRECTOR STEVEN SODERBERGH

PRODUCED BY JULIE M. ANDERSON
KEN MEYER
WRIT TEN BY DAVID KOEPP
CINEMATOGRAPHY PETER ANDREWS
[I.E. STEVEN
SODERBERGH]
EDITOR MARY ANN BERNARD
[I.E. STEVEN
SODERBERGH]
PRODUCTION DESIGN APRIL LASKY
MUSIC ZACK RYAN
COSTUME DESIGN MARCI RODGERS
CAST LUCY LIU
JULIA FOX
CHRIS SULLIVAN

SYNOPSIS
An ostensibly ideal family moves into a
new home in New Jersey afflicted with a
mysterious presence which intervenes in
their respective troubles. As the household
begins to come apart at the seams, the
spectre’s true intentions begin to materialise.

REVIEWED BY SAFFRON MAEVE

Reflecting on the psychoanalytic poten-

tial of the camera, the French philoso-
pher Jacques Derrida once called cinema
“a magnif icent mourning”: “ There is
elementary spectrality, which is tied to
the technical definition of cinema,” Der-
rida said in a 1998 interview. “It inscribes
traces of ghosts on a general framework,
the projected film, which is itself a ghost.”
There is a long-established link between
moving images and phantoms, an asso-

FILMS
ciation constantly refitted to the fears of
the hour. This, coupled with domestic
horror’s tendency to reveal buried family showing astonishing indifference toward The wide-angle lens makes it so the MOVING SPIRIT
Lucy Liu as Rebekah
secrets, is the impetus for Steven Soder- her younger daughter Chloe (Callina rooms seem to swallow their inhabitants
bergh’s latest film Presence, a supernatural Liang), who is grieving the recent death up in the frame; the surveillance-footage
drama shot from the roving perspective of her friend. style will certainly draw comparisons to
of a housebound spectre. It is just a matter of time before the Paranormal Activity (2007), but feels more
A purveyor of agreeable, inventive film- restlessness they bring into the space technically aligned with the 1992 BBC
making, Soderbergh has found room to comes up against the presence that is sur- supernatural mockumentary Ghostwatch.
play within the studio system after cut- veilling them. For most of the film, the Each scene is notably bracketed by a
ting his teeth in eclectic minor works ghost’s objectives are unclear; it (and, by black screen, always a beat longer than
made independently. His later work extension, the camera) lingers on Chloe’s feels comfortable. This resetting of per-
– take Kimi (2022) for instance, a riff on suffering, occasionally rearranging her spective reveals the gaps in time that
New Hollywood paranoia, or his online belongings to appear neater – a compara- audiences are not privy to, but also feels
series Command Z (2023), an experiment tively benign intrusion that might be read like another evasion that prevents true
in tech-bro revisionism – feel audaciously as either hostile or humane. After Chloe alignment with the spirit’s POV.
arranged, but Presence, a formal conceit secretly begins sleeping with Tyler’s aloof, The marketing strategy for the film
above all else, plays into dull, haunted- popular friend Ryan (West Mulholland), has also been elusive, with billboards of
by-one’s-trauma platitudes. Soderbergh the ghost grows antsy and begins to enact Fox in character above a link to a website
rouses compelling ideas about absence its own sense of morality in increasingly titled ‘Cece’s Realty’ and a phone number,
and alignment – what can a ghost com- violent displays. which, when called, offers a generic voice-
municate that the camera cannot? – but Glissading from room to room, the mail about the agent’s services. (The site
the result feels middling, a sort of mystic ghost reveals an architecture of sus- boasts eerie adages such as, “A house is a
posturing that conveys last-gasp, shop- pense and distrust, emphasised by the place, a home is a feeling.”) It sells the film
worn tropes about abuse. ghost’s at first unexplained confinement. as domiciliary first, then coyly as horror
The establishing shots glide through It is not clear until the third act (which – and it greatly exaggerates Fox’s role in
an empty home, austere and antiseptic, is almost inscrutable in its gear-shifting) the film, though this is no slight to her
giving the impression of an estate agent’s whether the ghost remains there of its persuasive realtor. But the suggestion,
walk-through. This becomes a reality own volition, or if it has a specific pur- hidden under all of the sweet, suburban
shortly thereafter with the arrival of Cece pose in this abode. What is more inter- wrapping, that this is “one of the scari-
(Julia Fox), an agent touring the space esting, perhaps, is how the ghost seems est movies of the year” seems designed
with her keen clients, a family of four on to become part of the house’s structure, to disappoint. Presence is by no means
the brink of purchase. After they move as it carries itself and the audience from an insignificant effort – it tenders heady
in, their own strange conduct comes to room to room. This visual mapping is questions about ownership, privacy and
the fore: ambling dad Chris (Chris Sul- less fastened than Robert Zemeckis’s karmic release, and does so with clarity
livan) is tuned out, tackling nondescript single-room-set Here (2024) and more – but its efforts to formally renovate the
legal troubles, uppity mom Rebekah buoying and thriller-inflected than domestic ghost plot feel homebound.
(Lucy Liu) is halfway infatuated with her David Lowery’s glacial drama A Ghost
teenage son Tyler (Eddy Maday), while Story (2017). In UK cinemas now
 66

On Falling Aurora in affable small talk, as she looks

on helpless, her scanner beeping with
kitchen while her flatmates host guests
and hovering a fraction too long by the
SHELF LOATHING
Joana Santos as Aurora

increasing urgency. shop girl at the department store make-

DIRECTOR LAURA CARREIRA On Falling is a film with little conven- up counter; but when she is presented
PRODUCERS JACK THOMAS-O’BRIEN
MÁRIO PATROCÍNIO tional narrative, but in which small details with real opportunities for social interac-
WRIT TEN BY LAURA CARREIRA slowly accumulate to revelatory effect. tion she can’t fully engage. In the ware-
CINEMATOGRAPHY K ARL KÜRTEN
EDITOR HELLE LE FEVRE Over a week, we follow the rhythm of house canteen, Aurora keeps one eye
PRODUCTION DESIGN ANDY DRUMMOND Aurora’s life, her working days, her com- on the screen of her phone, even as she
MUSIC INES ADRIANA
CAST JOANA SANTOS mutes, her interactions with flatmates, attempts fitful conversation with her
INÊS VAZ her daily meals. An early passing mention colleagues; meanwhile, those colleagues
PIOTR SIKORA
FILMS

of a fellow worker’s mysterious death ges- have nothing much to talk about anyway,
SYNOPSIS tures towards another potential avenue – other than comparing the box-sets they
Aurora, a young Portuguese migrant worker psychological thriller or mystery, perhaps are currently bingeing. Surrounded by
living in Scotland, works as picker at a huge – but Carreira immediately turns away messages that present consumerism and
warehouse, scanning barcodes and fulfilling from that possibility. Her interest lies in technology as the answer, Aurora can no
deliveries. Worn down by this precarious understanding how such working condi- longer remember the question, let alone
and underpaid work, Aurora becomes
tions destabilise and degrade. She never how to ask it.
increasingly lonely as she navigates financial
anxieties and social isolation. offers easy villains. The managers who On Falling is co-produced by Sixteen
police outputs are hapless boy-men in Films, Ken Loach’s production company,
REVIEWED BY RACHEL PRONGER oversized hi-vis, the woman who admin- and, given the subject matter and style,
isters random drug tests is apologetic comparisons with Britain’s master of
but firm; everyone here is just doing their social realism are inevitable. However,
I first watched On Falling, Laura Carrei- job. The infantilisation of the modern it’s notable that unlike Loach’s Sorry I
ra’s quietly devastating study of late-stage workplace – chocolate bars and sticky Missed You (2019), which tackled similar
capitalism in action, on Black Friday. cupcakes for good performance, passive gig economy issues but built to a dra-
That serendipitous timing is the kind aggressive reprimands for missed targets matic, heart-string tugging denouement,
of poetic flourish this careful filmmaker – are captured with sickening accuracy. Carreira keeps the emotional turmoil
would never go for; but to encounter Carreira is particularly skilled at conjur- of her characters under wraps. Aurora’s
the film for the first time surrounded by ing both the crushing banality and the oth- mounting distress remains hidden
algorithmically targeted banner ads and erworldly strangeness of Aurora’s working beneath a placid exterior, leaking out only
flickering digital billboards provided a environment. An opening scene, in which occasionally through her huge expressive
sobering counterpoint. After all, Car- anonymous workers shuffle cattle-like eyes. Thoroughly diminished by each
reira’s scrupulously low-key debut feature through a turnstile, establishes processes daily humiliation, Aurora has become
is primarily an exploration of the cost of dehumanisation which will soon accu- like the automatons that presumably one
of unfettered consumerism, a chilling mulate. The entire factory is lit with the day will take her job – numb, emotion-
exposé disguised as social realist drama. same fluorescent glow, a sickly blue-grey less, lost.
Aurora (Joana Santos), a young that makes it impossible to distinguish When Carreira finally does allow feel-
Portuguese woman living in Scotland, between day and night. Eerie touches ing to break through the surface in an
works as a ‘picker’ at a huge Amazon-style render everyday objects – a plastic doll unexpected rush of emotion during a job
warehouse. She spends her days patrol- crying on a shelf, a package stuck rotat- interview, this small fissure cracks open
ling shelves with a barcode scanner and ing halfway up a conveyor belt – strange. the whole façade. It’s only by finally allow-
picking out deliveries, badly paid and This artificial, almost sci-fi atmosphere, ing herself to fall, literally and figuratively,
precarious work. The other employees, a cut off from markers of the natural world, that Aurora can feel again, and perhaps
mix of fellow migrants and working-class serves to gradually alienate the workers in doing so can find a route back to the
Scots, are friendly but distant. Relent- from themselves and each other. self she has left, buried under stacks of
less targets rule out spontaneous inter- In a chilling twist, however, Carreira cardboard and bubble wrap, back at the
actions and keep the workers endlessly also presents her characters as complicit ironically named ‘fulfilment centre’.
on the move; in one excruciating scene, in this alienation. Aurora clearly longs
an oblivious security guard engages for connection, lingering in her shared In UK cinemas from 7 March
 67

Emmanuelle A notoriously blue movie gets a depress-

ingly grey remake in Audrey Diwan’s
guest at the seven-star Hong Kong hotel
where Emmanuelle is also staying.
dismal Emmanuelle, an ostensibly feminist It’s a work trip for Emmanuelle, who’s
FRANCE/USA/JAPAN 2024 CERTIFICATE 18 104M 38S take on the 1970s softcore phenomenon, been sent to discreetly investigate hotel
which mainly bolsters the misconcep- manager Margo (Naomi Watts, for some
DIRECTOR AUDREY DIWAN
PRODUCED BY REGINALD DE GUILLEBON tion that there is nothing witty or fun or reason). So in between trysts – an anti-
MARION DELORD remotely sexy about feminism. Say what septic three-way and an ongoing dalliance
EDOUARD WEIL
BRAHIM CHIOUA you will about the original, at least you felt with local escort Zelda (Chacha Huang)
VINCENT MARAVAL that the heroine of the 1974 Emmanuelle – Emmanuelle glides through the hotel’s
LIVIA VAN DER STA AY
LAURENCE CLERC derived some pleasure from being the tastefully underlit hallways as though
WRIT TEN BY AUDREY DIWAN pliant plaything of the patriarchy. Not so glazed in Teflon, checking on the petits
REBECCA ZLOTOWSKI
BASED ON THE CHARACTER this updated girlboss version – better call fours and measuring the housekeeping
‘EMMANUELLE’ CREATED BY EMMANUELLE ARSAN her Emm-ennui-elle for all the sophisticate response time. It gives us dowdy normals
CINEMATOGRAPHY LAURENT TANGY
EDITOR PAULINE GAILLARD apathy she exudes – who is undoubtedly a glimpse of the lifestyle expectations of
PRODUCTION DESIGN K ATIA W YSZKOP the agent of her own promiscuity, but the inexcusably wealthy – like the 50 Shades
MUSIC EVGUENI GALPERINE
SACHA GALPERINE remains robotically removed from any and 365 Days franchises, the movie’s imagi-
COSTUME DESIGN JÜRGEN DOERING associated physical enjoyment. Here, her nation is less erotic than economic.
CAST NOÉMIE MERLANT
WILL SHARPE hottest encounter is with an ice cube. Although the sexiest thing about Emma-
JAMIE CAMPBELL BOWER Stiff in all the wrong places, the screen- nuelle is the soft furnishings, this peek at
play by Diwan and Rebecca Zlotowski, .01 per cent culture, hermetically insulated
SYNOPSIS
While covertly investigating the management
introduces us to Emmanuelle (a miscast from the Hong Kong hubbub, mainly
of a luxury Hong Kong hotel on behalf of her Noémie Merlant) as she has joyless sex instils a kind of relief that you couldn’t
corporate employers, hospitality standards with a stranger in a first-class aeroplane possibly afford ever to be this bored. It’s a
inspector Emmanuelle has a series of erotic toilet. There’s a similar scene in the origi- conclusion that Emmanuelle finally arrives
encounters that bring her little fulfilment. nal, but here Emmanuelle isn’t gasping at too when, in pursuit of the vaporously
Eventually her attraction to an enigmatic and writhing beneath her faceless hook- enigmatic Kei, she escapes the hotel and
guest becomes an obsession that leads her up, just staring dully at her own reflection is rewarded with a climax, which is a huge
toward tentative sexual self-discovery.
throughout, fruitlessly searching her own anticlimax. But then, that’s only fitting for
REVIEWED BY JESSICA KIANG eyes for any flicker of arousal. On her way Emmanuelle, which turns a 1970s smut-
back to her plush seat, she exchanges sensation into such an effective mood-killer
loaded glances with another passen- you could use it in place of a safe word.
FAULTY GLOWERS
ger, Kei (Will Sharpe, doing his
Noémie Merlant as Emmanuelle best), who then shows up as a VIP In UK cinemas now

Like the 50 Shades and 365 Days franchises, the movie’s imagination is less erotic than economic

FILMS
EMMANUELLE

Saturday Night In the popular imagination, Lorne

Michaels has ruled NBC’s Saturday Night
consistently underused and stereotyped
by SNL’s white writing staff, but Reitman
Live for nearly 50 years (with a brief inter- is keen to wrap this subplot with a neat
USA 2024 CERTIFICATE 15 108M 54S ruption in the early 1980s) like a monarch happy ending.
– coolly fostering a ruthless work environ- In short, get ready to hear everything
DIRECTOR JASON REITMAN
PRODUCED BY JASON BLUMENFELD ment and navigating his empire through you already knew about the early years of
PETER RICE the shifting zeitgeist. Like a superhero SNL. Unless, of course, you didn’t know
JASON REITMAN
GIL KENAN origin story, Jason Reitman’s Saturday anything, in which case, you’ll find yourself
WRIT TEN BY GIL KENAN Night shows a flustered, inexperienced lost in all the cameos and worshipful rec-
JASON REITMAN
CINEMATOGRAPHY ERIC STEELBERG version of Michaels gradually discovering reations of sketches. There are many signs
FILM EDITORS NATHAN ORLOFF his managerial superpowers. This is the that Reitman (the heir to the Ghostbusters
SHANE REID
PRODUCTION DESIGN JESS GONCHOR main novelty in what is otherwise a slick franchise) is a little too close to the mate-
MUSIC JON BATISTE package of received wisdom about one of rial. Out of the cast of rising stars, Cory
COSTUME DESIGN DANNY GLICKER
CAST GABRIEL LABELLE the most canonised brands in American Michael Smith’s Chevy Chase registers
RACHEL SENNOT T television history. most forcefully, precisely because it creates
CORY MICHAEL SMITH
Though the film plays in more or less a character out of Chase’s reputation rather
SYNOPSIS
real time – the 90 minutes before SNL’s first than imitating him directly.
On 11 October 1975, a 30-year-old TV producer named broadcast in 1975 – Reitman and co-writer Gargoyle versions of Milton Berle and
Lorne Michaels struggles to mount the variety show that Gil Kenan do not aim for naturalism, and Johnny Carson drop in as villains, repre-
would become Saturday Night Live. In the lead-up to the pack several years of lore and 49 years of senting the showbiz gerontocracy that
first broadcast, he navigates complex network politics, hindsight into their facsimile of the Rock- Michaels and co. sought to topple. Reit-
the clashing egos of his cast and crew, and an uncertain efeller Plaza studio. This leads to some man expects us to jeer at Berle perform-
professional relationship with ex-wife Rosie Shuster. narrative awkwardness: the same network ing a lame sketch on a primetime variety
REVIEWED BY WILL SLOAN
executive (Willem Dafoe) who spends the show, but how different is this from the
film threatening to smother SNL in its crib tired comic stylings of Alec Baldwin and
is also busy dangling the keys to Johnny the other celebrities who dominated SNL
Carson’s Tonight Show in front of Chevy during the Trump presidency? If he was
Chase – already the arrogant breakout star more honest, Reitman might have recog-
before a second of airtime. Poor Garrett nised that there was nothing intrinsic to
Morris (Lamorne Morris), the show’s first Michaels’ so-called ‘revolution’ to keep him
Black player, is doomed to serve largely from becoming the establishment he once
as the symbolic representation of SNL’s supposedly sought to disrupt.
Diversity Blindspot – but not so much
COMEDY TONIGHT J.K. Simmons as Milton Berle that he sours the vibes. Morris was indeed In UK cinemas now
ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION FULL ARCHIVE ACCESS PAY BY DIRECT DEBIT
b f i . o r g . u k / s i g h t- a n d - s o u n d / s u b s c r i p t i o n s + 4 4 ( 0 ) 2 0 8 9 5 5 7 0 7 0 ( 0 9 : 0 0 -1 7. 3 0 G M T, M o n - F r i )
 69

Ernest Cole: – in his eye for uniforms, queues, segregation signs

and pocketbooks – that the ruthless disempowerment
Lost and Found enforced by apartheid is made most startling.
Peck follows Cole to New York, where his street
FRANCE/USA/HAITI 2024 CERTIFICATE 15 105M 23S
photography included charismatic colour portraits of
the city’s fashionable youth, and then on to the deprived
DIRECTOR RAOUL PECK American South. The US was both eye-opening and
PRODUCERS TAMARA ROSENBERG deflationary for Cole: as recounted in the film’s voiceo-
RAOUL PECK
WRIT TEN BY RAOUL PECK ver, eloquently scripted by Peck using Cole’s own
[SOME SOURCE MATERIAL]
WRIT TEN BY ERNEST COLE
razor-sharp texts, he found Black Americans suffering
CINEMATOGRAPHY WOLFGANG HELD similar oppression to Black South Africans, and strug-
MOSES TAU gled with his own multiple degrees of otherness. That
EDITED BY ALEX ANDRA STRAUSS
ORIGINAL SCORE ALEXEÏ AÏGUI sense of withdrawal in photographs of Cole perhaps
VOICE CAST LAKEITH STANFIELD conceals bitterness that sapped him. His career began
to sputter; eventually, he became destitute. As the voice
SYNOPSIS
The South African photographer Ernest Cole made of Cole, LaKeith Stanfield speaks with an aggrieved Q&A
a name for himself exposing the brutality of apartheid
with his unsparing pictures of daily life, before he fell
exhaustion. The narration becomes less caustically
analytical and more insular and plaintive – diaristic Raoul Peck
into poverty and anonymity in the US. Now, with his reflections on the grief of coming of age under a brut- DIRECTOR
lost negatives having been discovered almost 30 years ish regime. “It is a lie to put things in the frame,” Cole
after his death, Cole’s reputation is being revived. decided, and for years he stopped shooting. The film BY LEIGH SINGER
becomes a remarkable display of grief over exile – from
REVIEWED BY ANNABEL BAI JACKSON
South Africa, from photography. Many people are going to discover
The fact the film is practically a feature-length mon- Ernest Cole through your film.
The South African photographer Ernest Cole docu- tage of Cole’s photographs is testament to Peck’s com- Where did you discover him?
mented apartheid with a radical directness; but in mitment to the archive. But his and editor Alexandra I probably saw his pictures before
even the most candid pictures of the photographer Strauss’s efforts to make the photographs more con- I knew who he was because a
himself there is a feeling of reserve – of some criti- spicuously ‘cinematic’ comes with its own distracting few of his photos were already
cal fact being withheld. Furtive and austere, or half- rhythm. The camera roams around the photographs iconic in the anti-apartheid fight.
obscured by the subjects he hoped to catch, such with a sleek fluency, zooming in or sliding across them I was involved in that in Berlin as
photos of Cole register his tactful mode of observa- in an attempt to add vitality. The effect sometimes a young man, but at the time we
tion, and finally the toll of a life spent laying bare blurs the stunning formal relations in Cole’s photo- didn’t look at photography as an
political ills. graphs – fervid group interactions, or nods to Cartier- art like we do today. It was about,
In this Cannes award-winning documentary, the Bresson-style geometry. There are other editorial is it impactful, efficient? If yes,
director Raoul Peck chronicles Cole’s life and work flourishes too, like colouring the segregation signs a then we use it. Ernest Cole himself
through his photographs and writings – much as he sickly red in otherwise black-and-white photographs, felt that some of his work was

FILMS
dramatised James Baldwin’s manuscripts in I Am or creating a kind of CGI art gallery to ‘hang’ Cole’s used by the ANC as propaganda.
Not Your Negro (2016) – using an archive of 60,000 final photographs in. Such details fail to open up Cole’s So there was some friction.
of Cole’s long-lost negatives that mysteriously resur- photography or interpret it on a deeper level; in their
faced in a Swiss bank in 2017. Peck looks hard into overdetermination, they instead short-circuit the way There’s his quote you put at
the depths of affliction that both animated and that a picture can slowly, and deliberately, reveal itself. the beginning of the movie:
frustrated Cole’s photography, but he does so with When Cole’s nephew picks up the negatives from “The total man does not
a slickness and efficiency that feel estranged from Switzerland, a thriller plot briefly emerges in the form live one experience”...
Cole’s annals of pain. of the puzzle surrounding their provenance. Peck clev- It’s like you would tell a painter,
Cole was South Africa’s first Black freelance erly juxtaposes this with broader political aftermaths “OK, we love your painting, but you
photographer. After seeing Henri Cartier-Bresson’s – the release of Nelson Mandela a week before Cole’s can only use blue and dark blue.” I
book of photographs of daily life in Soviet Moscow death, testimony from the post-apartheid Truth and don’t think you would accept that.
in 1954, he sought to produce an equivalent for his Reconciliation Commission – as a reminder that for You start working to document
own country. But while Cartier-Bresson called Cole there was no distinction between the personal, the human condition. But when
himself a ‘thief ’, a man on the run, for Cole such pho- the political and the photographic: it was all “my reality, you go out from your prison into
tographic heists were fraught with political urgency: my urgency”. the free world, you realise that
“It’s a matter of survival – to steal every moment.” His you cannot just photograph the
book House of Bondage (1967) is a searing collection of In UK cinemas human condition. You should
from 7 March
routine humiliations and indignities. A white man photograph the South African
casually slaps a Black child on the street, his other human condition. And if you come
hand kept coolly in his trouser pocket; Black miners to the US, you should photograph
await the scarce medical attention on offer, stark Black misery in the streets.
naked and held in a line-up. In Cole’s
photographs, even the most mun- You used Samuel L. Jackson to
dane activities take on the visual voice James Baldwin in I Am Not
logic of punishment. The Your Negro [2016] and LaKeith
film rapidly cycles through Stanfield as Cole, but it never feels
images of overcrowded like typical documentary narration.
classrooms and jam-packed I always correct journalists when
trains, domestic servitude they say narration. I cast an actor
and exploited labour – to be the character because my
images of such force that documentary should be about a
House of Bondage was banned story you’re telling. A great actor
RAOUL PECK PORTRAIT: © MAT THEW AVIGNONE

in South Africa and Cole was knows, you have to own every
stripped of his citizenship. But it word. At the end of recording,
is in Cole’s attention to the slow LaKeith was crying – when you
violence of bureaucracy hear his voice break, that wasn’t
false. Sam Jackson cried during
LOOK AND LEARN
the recording, because he was
Ernest Cole: Lost and Found totally in it. You are the character.
 70

Pepe emphasise the irreducible otherness of

its voice.
who will listen. A local beauty pageant
provides a lengthy digression, seemingly
OUT OF AFRICA
Pepe

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC/FRANCE/NAMIBIA/GERMANY/
What is striking about Pepe, beyond the irrelevant apart from being rooted in the
SWITZERLAND/THE NETHERLANDS 2024 outré premise, is its challenging, utterly local culture, and fascinates de los Santos
distinctive style. De los Santos Arias Arias enough to put it on screen.
DIRECTOR NELSON CARLO DE
LOS SANTOS ARIAS won the Best Director award at the 2024 Adding to the film’s fragmentary, stac-
PRODUCERS TANYA VALET TE Berlinale, and while Pepe may not have cato texture are the intermittent use of
PABLO LOZANO
NELSON CARLO DE been that competition’s best-directed film a black or nearly black screen, and shifts
LOS SANTOS ARIAS in conventional terms, it could certainly from colour to black and white: in the
WRITING NELSON CARLO DE
LOS SANTOS ARIAS lay claim to being the most directed, the latter, night-vision shots, a hallucinatory
CINEMATOGRAPHY NELSON CARLO work most assertively defined by a radi- vista of sand dunes, footage of tourists
[I.E. NELSON CARLO DE
LOS SANTOS ARIAS] cally inventive filmic language. at the adventure park built on the site of
CAMILO SORAT TI As in his 2017 revenge drama Cocote, Escobar’s Hacienda Napolés estate.
ROMAN LECHAPELIER
EDITING NELSON CARLO DE de los Santos Arias essentially tells a And throughout, there are the hippos.
LOS SANTOS ARIAS chronological story, but disrupts the They are seen from far above in drone
PRODUCTION DESIGN MELANIA FREIRE
DANIEL RINCÓN flow with digressions and shifts of style images, or nearby, half-immersed in
MUSIC NELSON CARLO DE and medium. Pepe begins with a brief, water, with birds riding their backs. If
LOS SANTOS ARIAS
COSTUME DESIGN ERIK PAREDES disorienting prelude evoking the death we think the film’s talking beast is being
LAURA GUERRERO of Escobar in Medellín in 1993: we see anthropomorphised, that treatment is
VOICE CAST FAREED MATJILA
HARMONY AHALWA soldiers’ faces flickering in darkness and offset by its own parodic version – clips
SHIFAFURE FAUSTINUS lights intensifying to the sound of gunfire of a Hanna-Barbera style children’s TV
JHON NARVÁEZ
and the director’s own pulsing electronic cartoon, about a humanised hippo.
SYNOPSIS
score. We also hear military radio com- Shot in Colombia and Namibia, Pepe
munications, which recur intermittently shows how flamboyant a film can be in its
The ghost of Pepe, a hippopotamus who
throughout. Then a caption tells us production and techniques, yet still make
was shot dead when crossing Colombia’s
Magdalena river, recounts how he and
that we are in south-west Africa: there, minimal compromises with expected
his ancestors ended up in the illegal private a German guide tells a bus full of tour- rules of legibility. Whether it ‘works’ may
menagerie of drug lord Pablo Escobar. ists about local hippo lore, much to their not be an entirely legitimate question for
Pepe finds his voice from beyond the amusement and the palpable discomfort a film that so defiantly insists on working
grave, musing on questions of language, of his resident Namibian expert, whom differently. At one point, referring to his
exile and the afterlife. he treats with contempt. parents’ transatlantic passage, Pepe calls
After a sequence showing the captured the ocean “a river whose bottom we can
REVIEWED BY JONATHAN ROMNEY
hippo’s long voyage, the action shifts to never reach”. Pepe’s own river of imagery
Colombia’s River Magdalena, where can- may be frustratingly murky at points, but
Pepe, by the Dominican director Nelson tankerous elderly fisherman Candelario reaching its bottom is a whole other tan-
Carlos de los Santos Arias, brings to (Jorge Puntillón García) carps at his wife talising matter.
FILMS

mind a Gary Larson Far Side cartoon on Betania (Sor María Ríos), and narrates
the theme ‘If dogs could talk’. It shows a a hair-raising hippo encounter to anyone Now on Mubi in the UK and Ireland
crowd of dogs, each equipped with its
own word balloon, each one reading,
“HEY!” The hippopotamus in Pepe is a
more sophisticated speaker. Early on,
it tries out the sounds “Aaah… ehhh…
ohhhh…”, followed by guttural booms
and rumbles. But, voiced by four dif-
ferent actors, it also speaks in three
languages – Afrikaans, Spanish and the
Namibian tongue Mbukushu – all in an
electronically treated basso with oddly
affable inflections, like Stephen Fry
speaking underwater.
Intermittently, the hippo muses on its
history and its relation to language and
the race of the Two-Legged, with which
it has become inextricably involved. The
creature – speaking from an afterlife,
having been shot dead in Colombia – is
descended from the hippos transported
across the Atlantic for the private zoo of
drug baron Pablo Escobar. ‘Pepe’ now
lingers on questions of power, exile and
the very strangeness of being able to
speak: “How do I know these words?
How do I know what a word is?”
Pepe uses similar devices – and raises
similar questions – to Mati Diop’s recent
documentary Dahomey, about the repa-
triation to Benin of a collection of looted
artefacts. Both films tell a story about
theft from Africa and imprisonment in
a distant land, with non-human protago-
nists evoking clear parallels with slavery.
Diop’s film, too, is voiced by an ‘impos-
sible narrator’, the statue of a king, and
like Pepe, uses electronic processing to
 71

A Complete actually happen; that the infamous cry of

perceived betrayal comes a year later, at a
with the artist’s compact angularity, even
with a subtly modifying prosthetic nose
SHADES OF MEANING
Elle Fanning as Sylvie Russo,

Unknown Manchester Free Trade Hall concert. A

cultural giant like Dylan, whose six-dec-
in place.
Chalamet plays and sings himself and
Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan

CERTIFICATE 15 140M 25S

ades-plus career has been so thoroughly there’s much to admire, even if he lacks
documented, interpreted and reimagined Dylan’s plaintive, nasal tones for the more
DIRECTOR JAMES MANGOLD from so many sides (not least by the artist muted, acoustic-accompanied vocals (he
PRODUCED BY FRED BERGER
JAMES MANGOLD himself ), inevitably throws up this kind does better with more strident, plugged-
ALEX HEINEMAN of factual nitpicking. But a key strength in performances). The level of dedication
BOB BOOKMAN
PETER JAYSEN of James Mangold’s film is its occasional to recreating the music across the entire
JEFF ROSEN attempt to nimbly navigate actuality, to cast is impressive, from Norton’s Seeger
ALAN GASMER
TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET get at a more impressionistic idea of the on banjo to Monica Barbaro’s seduc-

FILMS
SCREENPLAY JAMES MANGOLD truth. The ‘Judas’ condemnation chimes tively cool Joan Baez vocals. The film is
JAY COCKS
BASED ON THE BOOK
with the spirit and the implications of the well aware of this: the end credits resem-
DYLAN GOES Newport gig’s reception, Dylan’s obvious ble album liner notes, carefully credit-
ELECTRIC BY ELIJAH WALD
CINEMATOGRAPHY PHEDON PAPAMICHAEL outgrowing of the movement that first ing which actor sang and played which
EDITED BY ANDREW BUCKLAND established him, and his own defiance of instrument on each track. But it’s entirely
SCOT T MORRIS
PRODUCTION DESIGN FRANÇOIS AUDOUY being pigeonholed. In its best moments, justified in keeping these iconic songs
COSTUME DESIGN ARIANNE PHILLIPS what A Complete Unknown aims for is to living, breathing and bloody, rather than
CAST TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET
EDWARD NORTON ask not what really went down but – to mounting a mere heritage tribute act.
ELLE FANNING quote, as the title does, ‘Like a Rolling It’s no hagiography, either. Dylan’s
MONICA BARBARO
Stone’ – “How does it feel?” desire to follow his own path, no matter
SYNOPSIS
This tension between freewheeling the cost to collaborators or companions,
New York, 1961. Young Bob Dylan arrives artistic expression and the familiar notes is most potently depicted in this film’s two
to pay homage to his ailing hero, folk singer of the musical biopic narrative fasci- central romances – with Elle Fanning’s
Woody Guthrie, and establish his own nates. Perhaps it’s to be expected that sunny, shut-out Sylvie Russo (a fiction-
musical career. His revelatory songwriting and the latter ultimately dominates, bring- alised version of Suze Rotolo, Dylan’s
enigmatic ways challenge the folk scene and ing Mangold’s film back home to genre co-star on the cover of his 1963 album
alienate lovers and supporters, culminating conventions. Scenes in which a flash of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan), and with the
in a 1965 electric festival performance that
lyrical inspiration demands words hur- excellent Barbaro’s Baez, wary, worldly-
revolutionises American popular music.’
riedly scribbled on a diner napkin, or wise but unable to resist the sheer talent
REVIEWED BY LEIGH SINGER an impromptu studio improvisation beside, bedside and soon ahead of her.
becomes a eureka moment, practically That ’s the main takeaway here:
script themselves. But a writer as mer- how incredible was the run of songs
As this new biopic of Bob Dylan reaches curial as Dylan merits more than casual unleashed in a few years. While his music
its climax at the 1965 Newport Folk Fes- shorthand, or bizarre repeated allusions chronicles an era and beyond, Dylan
tival, Timothée Chalamet’s Dylan, clad to Now, Voyager (1942). himself has resisted definition all this
in a leather jacket, armed with a Fender Still, the focus on his formative years, time and it’s more than this heartfelt but
Stratocaster and backed by a full band, from his arrival in New York in January dutiful biopic can handle. Even more
controversially plays ‘electric’ for a crowd 1961 as a Woody Guthrie acolyte to his daring approaches to Dylan – like the
for the very first time, infuriating festival rewiring of American popular music a fragmented personas of Todd Haynes’s
organisers, including longtime support- mere four years later, is canny. It allows I’m Not There (2007) or the failed folkie’s
ers like his affable mentor Pete Seeger the actor playing Dylan to fashion a ver- tangential brush with him in the Coen
(Edward Norton), and an audience of sion of him almost from scratch, rather brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) – only
folk purists alike. Someone from the as Dylan (re-)invented himself in that illuminate Dylan’s multitudes in flashes.
crowd shouts “Judas!” Dylan retorts, “I period. In terms of mass youth audience How many films would be needed for a
don’t believe you!”, exhorting the band appeal, Chalamet is an obvious choice complete portrait? Is such a thing even
to play even louder. And American rock (a more daring one might’ve been, say, possible? The answer, my friend, is…
music shifts on its axis. Dominic Sessa from The Holdovers, well, you surely know the words.
Ardent Dylanologists will, of course, 2023), though his lanky frame and doe-
waste no time in telling you that this didn’t eyed features at first look out of kilter In UK cinemas now
 72

By the Stream Even working at his recent rate of two fea-

tures per year, Hong Sangsoo still man-
to a meeting – whose outcome seems sig-
nificant but is never referred to – she lin-
ages to surprise. By the Stream, his 32nd gers under a tree by a heap of huge orange
SOUTH KOREA 2024 film, may include familiar faces from his and yellow autumn leaves. In one of the
rep company (his partner Kim Min-hee, director’s quietly miraculous scenes, she
DIRECTOR HONG SANG-SOO
PRODUCED BY HONG SANG-SOO Kwon Hae-hyo, Cho Yun-hee), and it picks up a leaf and fans it slowly, an almost-
WRIT TEN BY HONG SANG-SOO may continue his focus on the intricacies dance as the sparsely used score plays.
CINEMATOGRAPHY HONG SANG-SOO
EDITOR HONG SANG-SOO of human connection via the medium of As usual for Hong – who is here writer,
MUSIC HONG SANG-SOO artists having drunken dinners, but the director, producer, cinematographer,
CAST KIM MIN-HEE
KWON HAE-HYO Korean auteur has a fascinating way of editor and composer – By the Stream is
CHO YUN-HEE wrong-footing his audience. filmed in low-resolution video and with
At the art college where Jeo-nim (played natural audio (only the soundtrack is non-
SYNOPSIS
At an art school, a professor asks her uncle (a former actor
by Kim) teaches and practises as a textile diegetic, and even that sounds like it’s
and director) to help produce a student play after the artist, a festival of dramatic skits is being being played via a tinny speaker positioned
student director is suspended for inappropriate behaviour. held. When the student director aban- just out of frame). It lacks the crispness of
While working at the college, the uncle begins a romantic dons the project on bad terms, having silvery monochrome in Walk Up (2022) or
relationship with his niece’s colleague, a fan of his acting. dated three of the cast members, Kim calls the impressionistic blur of In Water (2023),
on her estranged uncle Sieon (Kwon), a but the stark black of the night-time scenes
BY THOMAS FLEW
former actor, to help. does stand out, wonderfully obscuring the
While instructing his four untrained tableau of one palpably awkward discus-
actors – whose skit is almost Hong-lite, sion. As in In Front of Your Face (2021),
centred around eating ramen and making the beauty is in the performances. One
small talk – he begins a flirtatious relation- memorable scene sees the four student
ship with a professor, Jeong (Cho). In actors, drunk on soju and beer, prompted
outline, the story points towards a semi- by Kwon to improvise poetry in answer to
autobiographical examination of director- the question “What kind of person do you
actor relationships, but in classic Hong want to become?” Each is moved to tears
style, the plot is too slippery, too prone to by the others’ answers, and their own.
digressions and dead-ends, for that. From a filmmaker whose use of repetition
Kim’s character often becomes an awk- can often inspire ironic detachment, it’s a
ward third wheel during meals with Sieon moment of profound sincerity.
and Jeong, but she is never made to feel
AWKWARD STAGE Ha Seong-guk as the student director, Kim Min-hee as Jeonim unwelcome. Called away from one meal In UK cinemas now

Aesthetically, the film is the anti-Challengers, fully embedded in

FILMS

the tedium and repetition involved in elite sport

JULIE KEEPS QUIET

Julie Keeps Quiet Leonardo Van Dijl’s debut feature begins

where Antonioni’s Blow-Up (1966) left off:
It’s only as Julie begins to reformulate her
relationships in the wake of her coach’s
on a tennis court, where a player mimes suspension that the world begins to open,
BELGIUM/SWEDEN/FRANCE/USA 2024 CERTIFICATE 12A 99M 50S shots with an imaginary ball. This young and establishing shots appear that place
woman is Julie, a rising star on the Belgian Julie alongside her supportive peers.
DIRECTOR LEONARDO VAN DIJL
PRODUCED BY GILLES COULIER tennis circuit. Moments after we meet her, It seems a given that Julie has been
GILLES DE SCHRY VER she’ll learn that her coach, Jeremy, has been abused. She is isolated and secretive, skit-
WOUTER SAP
WRIT TEN BY LEONARDO VAN DIJL suspended. The reasons for the suspen- tish around the numerous adult men she
SCREENPLAY LEONARDO VAN DIJL sion are opaque but, given that he’s been is left alone with and whose job it is to
RUTH BECQUART
CINEMATOGRAPHY NICOLAS K ARAK ATSANIS implicated in the suicide of his previous pay close attention to her body (a replace-
EDITOR BERT JACOBS protégée, it’s natural that the club wants ment trainer, a physio). We see her talking
ART DIRECTOR JULIEN DENIS
MUSIC CAROLINE SHAW to speak to all its students. Whatever Julie – or rather listening – to her suspended
COSTUME DESIGN ELLEN BLEREAU knows, though, she’s not telling. coach in bed, phone resting on her chest
CAST TESSA VAN DEN BROECK
GRACE BIOT Van Dijl likewise gives little away. like a lover’s head, and covertly texting
ALYSSA LORET TE Aesthetically, Julie Keeps Quiet is the anti- him while her father obliviously prattles
Challengers (2024), fully embedded in the away. At one point there is a clandestine
SYNOPSIS
tedium and repetition involved in elite meeting, during which Julie appears diso-
After a coach at an elite tennis academy is
suspended, the pupils are encouraged to share
sport (the film’s exec producers include riented and pulls away. The other adults
any concerns. All eyes are on Julie, his star pupil. Florian Zeller, the Dardennes and in Julie’s life make half-hearted attempts to
But despite encouragement from her parents Naomi Osaka). This is a film of blank coax her to talk. But they don’t really want
and friends, she refuses to talk, choosing spaces and faces: the anonymous any- to know what transpired, perhaps for
to focus instead on her upcoming trial for space-whatevers of schools and medi- fear of exposing their own complicity, the
the national squad. cal centres, the sports halls and gyms. unacknowledged suspicions that may have
Sporting baggy shorts and T-shirts, long predated the current investigation.
REVIEWED BY CATHERINE WHEATLEY
hair scrunchied into an efficient ponytail, As in Blow-Up, the film’s quiet suspense
Julie moves through this world with joy- is driven not by what happened, but by
less determination in a manner that the instability of the protagonist and her
calls to mind Jeanne Dielman. For relationship to her own reality. We are left
the most part, cinematographer wondering how Julie sees, or makes sense
Nicolas Karakatsanis keeps the of, her abuse, what she will tell herself in
camera low to the ground or order to survive it. Ultimately, the answer
trained on newcomer Tessa Van to that mystery is hers alone to hold.
BREAK POINT
den Broeck’s impassive face, vis-
Tessa Van den Broeck as Julie ually echoing her hyperfocus. In UK cinemas from 7 March
 73

To a Land Unknown Though Chatila acts like an older brother, he

is also controlling. Who, the film asks earnestly,
has the right to judge the damned? Is a fake pass-
UK/GREECE/THE NETHERLANDS/GERMANY/FRANCE/QATAR/
SAUDI ARABIA/LEBANON/DENMARK/BELGIUM/EGYPT 2024
port a more noble form of escape than heroin?
Fleifel steers clear of answering but, with a deft
DIRECTOR MAHDI FLEIFEL touch, brings the interplay between these macro
PRODUCED BY GEOFF ARBOURNE and microcosms of human betrayal – systemic and
MAHDI FLEIFEL
WRIT TEN BY MAHDI FLEIFEL one-to-one – into clear view.
FYZAL BOULIFA In someone else’s hands, the film might have
JASON MCCOLGAN
CINEMATOGRAPHY THODOROS MIHOPOULOS slipped into didactics, but Fleifel is steadfast:
EDITOR HALIM SABBAGH there are no good choices in this world. Inspired
PRODUCTION DESIGN IOANNA SOULELE
COMPOSER NADAH EL SHAZLY by real-life stories he has heard throughout his
COSTUME DESIGN KONSTANTINA MARDIKI own displaced life in Dubai and then Denmark,
CAST MAHMOOD BAKRI
ARAM SABBAH but also heavily influenced by the 1970s Hol-
ANGELIKI PAPOULIA lywood films he grew up watching, To a Land
Unknown is a rare example of slick stylistics seam- Q&A
SYNOPSIS
lessly combined with verisimilitude.
Mahdi FLeifel
Two Palestinian men, Chatila and Reda, having left the
camps in Lebanon, arrive in Athens and spend their The stakes ramp up considerably with the
days carrying out petty scams to pay for fake passports arrival of a teenage Palestinian boy, whose inno-
to get to Germany. When Reda uses their money to feed cence acts as a trigger to set the thriller plot in DIRECTOR
his heroin addiction, Chatila escalates the nature of motion. The boy needs help crossing to Italy. BY K ATIE MCCABE
their crimes. On the one hand, there is an opportunity to act
with humanity; on the other, they could make
REVIEWED BY TARA JUDAH
money here – and so, Chatila cooks up a people- You were known for documentaries
smuggling scheme that is doomed to play out before To a Land Unknown, and
Mahdi Fleifel’s To a Land Unknown opens with a like a Greek tragedy. Preying on an easy target, the film draws from that work.
quotation from Edward Said: “In a way, it’s sort of in the form of a lonely local (Angeliki Papoulia) Do you feel it sits somewhere
the fate of Palestinians, not to end up where they who only needs to act as the boy’s mother to get between the two approaches?
started, but somewhere unexpected and far away.” him across the border, Chatila turns on the charm In fiction, you create the universe. But I
Said’s words set a foreboding, fatalistic tone. The to deceive. also wanted to bring in that naturalistic
film is all about home, safety and humanity, and yet Fleifel has mentioned Martin Scorsese, Sidney element from my documentaries. In
it is their absence that is most felt in this uncom- Lumet and Brian De Palma as influences; each Palestinian culture, we don’t have
fortable thriller. Fleifel’s characters carry those lofty of them can be felt in the violence and betrayals the traditions that have formed a lot
themes in their bodies, infusing the film with a vis- of the film. There’s also a nod to John Schlesing- of 1970s Hollywood cinema, which
ceral ache and a powerful undercurrent of yearning. er’s Midnight Cowboy (1969), and the unfortunate is where I’m at with this film. We
The story expands on themes from Fleifel’s pre- Chatila and Reda feel at times like a recasting of hardly have a country. So for me, it

FILMS
vious films, notably distance and longing. Set far Al Pacino and John Cazale’s Sonny and Sal from was really important to try and get
away from his Palestinian homeland and the camps Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon (1975). Thodoris Miho- something to that level. Of course, that
of Lebanon, on the shores of democracy and ancient poulos’s cinematography conveys the film’s ethical takes time. I think with a Palestinian
gods in Athens, this film is about displacement and push and pull through dim interior lighting and film, you almost have to invent your
broken hearts. Chatila (Mahmood Bakri) and Reda extreme close-ups, contrasted with stark daylight own little industry along the way.
(brilliant newcomer Aram Sabbah) are cousins who and wider shots that depict Athens as a sort of
observe the city’s park life, looking for easy targets urban wasteland. The specific plot detail about Chatila
for their petty scams. Chatila is the brains, and The mix of veteran actors and newcomers lends and Reda posing as smugglers
Reda, a more sensitive soul, bound to him by love the film its gritty balance – Sabbah’s hangdog is based on a true story. Can you
and loyalty, just goes along with it all. expression conveys a gentle naivety that proves tell us a bit more about that?
The old adage that blood’s thicker than water heart-breaking against his character’s living hell, I had been following four guys over
holds tight, but Fleifel pushes and picks at the while the Jordanian actor Monzer Rayahneh the years… One guy came to London.
notion like a scab, questioning how any inherently brings heft to a small role as human trafficker My last year in London, 2013, he told
unequal power dynamic – between nations or Marwan, the weight of his experience looming me how he got out [of Athens]. He
clans – could ever have an ending other than large over the narrative. Palestine is barely men- said, “When we crossed the border
catastrophe. The rhythm of daily life tioned in the film, though it is always present into Macedonia, we had €20,000 on
in Athens thrums slowly, like a – through the iconic shape of the land us, but we left four men bound and
stifling heatwave: the days are tattooed on Reda’s body, through gagged in our basement flat.” He
long, and the nights longer. Mahmoud Darwish’s poem ‘Praise said the real story was a lot worse
Petty crime by day is punc- for the High Shadow’, espoused than what happened in the film.
tuated with drink, drugs b y d r u g d e a l e r A b u L o ve
and poetry by night. (Mouataz Alshaltouh). Such Why did you shoot on 16mm?
Reda is easily seduced clashes of high art and low life I don’t want to judge other filmmakers,
by these indulgences, co-exist in the placelessness of a but in my experience digital makes me
but Chatila abstains; land unknown. lazy. I can’t shoot and just burn film,
purgatory has no time so you become more precise. There’s
for poetry. In UK cinemas from 14 February a discipline that comes with film that
is contagious, throughout the entire
IN PURGATORY set. Even the actors know we can’t
Mahmood Bakri as Chatila
fuck around here. So there’s a level of
concentration that comes in as a result.
And it just looks better. The time I save
MAHDI FLEIFEL PORTRAIT: © ULYSSE DEL DRAGO

trying to colour-correct and whatnot.

You’re not changing or manipulating,
trying to make it taste like real
cheese. It is real cheese.
You know what I mean?
 74

apartment and other rewards for his loyal service.

But their daughters, university-age Rezvan (Mahsa
Rostami) and younger Sana (Setareh Maleki), stay
glued to social media videos of government attacks
on protesters – harrowing clips are shown repeat-
edly in mobile phone-vertical shots.
Theirs is still a loving family, with warm memo-
ries; in one cosy scene, Mum and her girls groom
and chat. But they’re primed for a generational clash,
and the mounting dissonance between the young
women’s democratic views and the parents’ hold-
the-line conservatism becomes a microcosm of the
archaic authoritarian regime ignoring its citizens’
will to be free. Rezvan and Sana are finally drawn
directly into the turmoil of the latest protests when
Rezvan’s friend Sadaf (Niousha Akhshi) is wounded SHORT FILM
by buckshot, and they smuggle her into the apart-
ment for her safety. The Watchman
In a simpler film, the attack on Sadaf would be
the polemical centrepiece: she’s shown in lingering ITALY/CANADA/FRANCE/LEBANON 2023 26 MINS

close-up, realistically gory, her eye swollen shut – DIRECTOR ALI CHERRI
an innocent victim of violence that any supporter CREATIVE PRODUCERS LEONARDO BIGAZZI
of the regime is condoning. But an equally strong ALESSANDRO RABOT TINI
WRIT TEN BY ALI CHERRI
moment comes when Rezvan confronts her father at CINEMATOGRAPHY BASSEM FAYAD
the dinner table and says, baldly, he’s wrong, and too EDITING DENIS BEDLOW
ART DIRECTOR MARIOS NEOCLEOUS
MOTHER’S PRIDE Mahsa Rostami, Setareh Maleki, Soheila Golestani close to the problem to see it; at the film’s premiere, MUSIC CYNTHIA ZAVEN
these exchanges sparked applause. “Normal people COSTUME DESIGN JOANNA SYRIMI

The Seed of the

CAST HALIL ERSEV GÖKÇEK
who want a normal life and freedom” are, in Rezvan’s AYSE DURUR
words, at the root of the protests, not the conspiracy FOTIS FOTIOU

Sacred Fig of ill-defined “enemies” that her father flimsily main-

tains. The teenage rebellion of the moment and Ros-
BY PHILIP CONCANNON

CERTIFICATE 15 167M 11S tami’s reasonable tone and timing steer the scene
clear of didactic showboating. Louroujina is a village in Cyprus that
DIRECTOR MOHAMMAD RASOULOF Accusations fly back and forth between the has been under Turkish control since the
PRODUCERS MOHAMMAD RASOULOF
AMIN SADRAEI daughters and their protective mother, who’d rather invasion of 1974. There has been little
JEAN-CHRISTOPHE SIMON her children had never socialised with the likes of violence there since, but the Turkish mili-
MANI TILGNER
FILMS

ROZITA HENDIJANIAN Sadaf, though she later asks a friend with a high- tary keeps careful watch over the border.
SCREENPLAY MOHAMMAD RASOULOF placed husband to ascertain Sadaf ’s whereabouts Every evening, Sergeant Bulut (Halil
CINEMATOGRAPHY POOYAN AGHABABAEI
EDITOR ANDREW BIRD in custody. Throughout, Rasoulof is plumbing the Ersev Gökçek), the central character in
PRODUCTION DESIGN AMIR PANAHIFAR individual moral decisions faced by citizens under Ali Cherri’s The Watchman, climbs into a
MUSIC K ARZAN MAHMOOD
COSTUME DESIGN NAZANIN TAVASOLI this regime, much as he did in There Is No Evil (2020) remote tower and looks at the arid land-
CAST MISAGH ZARE and its four stories circling capital punishment. But scape, where nothing stirs.
SOHEILA GOLESTANI
MAHSA ROSTAMI Sacred Fig proceeds to bust out of the confines of Gökçek’s gaunt appearance and large
SETAREH MALEKI their domestic drama – surefootedly staged and eyes evoke the figure in Tom Lea’s iconic
fleshed out with telling gestures and glances – with World War II painting The Two-Thousand
SYNOPSIS
eye-opening developments expressing the paranoia Yard Stare; but where Lea’s soldier had
Middle-class lawyer Iman is promoted to prosecuting
judge for the Iranian government. When the Women, engendered by the patriarchal regime. witnessed too much horror, this young
Life, Freedom protests erupt in Tehran, tensions begin These genre-inflected turns include questioning man has seen nothing. When he does
to flare between Iman and his headstrong daughters. of the girls by a friend of the family who works as an spot something unusual, his report is
Their protective mother attempts to keep the peace, interrogator. A creepy sequence, it shows Rasoulof ’s dismissed. “Stop bothering everyone,” a
but Iman becomes increasingly hostile and paranoid, willingness to break out severe imagery: Rezvan sits voice barks from the radio. “There hasn’t
exerting dangerous levels of control over his family. blindfolded against a wall, in an unsettlingly bare been any activity in your sector for years.”
composition that gives the subjugation of citizen to Cherri’s film depicts the absurdity of
REVIEWED BY NICOLAS RAPOLD
state a pure, unforgiving shape. There follow some this state of constant tension, waiting for
wildly unexpected action-drama flourishes (maybe a conflict that never comes. There are the-
For many, the droll, often elliptical films of Jafar foreshadowed by the movie’s mysterious opening, matic connections with Cherri’s feature
Panahi emerged as defining works about Iran under in which Iman drives through the night on a mis- The Dam (2022): both films are about char-
theocratic tyranny, but the latest from Panahi’s fellow sion never fully explained, wielding a gun). These acters in isolation, trapped in a system of
survivor of persecution, Mohammad Rasoulof, sequences suggest the violent prerogatives Iman drudgery and lacking a clear purpose.
shows the power of the starker drama in its story assumes as a father and controlling agent of the state Again, cinematographer Bassem Fayad’s
of division and complicity within the country’s when push comes to shove. crisp framing in both close-ups and pano-
privileged classes. The Seed of the Sacred Fig – which “Over there we will become the family we were,” ramic shots accentuates the futility of the
premiered dramatically at Cannes in 2024 with Iman says at one point, explaining a move to the protagonist’s situation.
Rasoulof freshly escaped from his country – wrench- countryside where he grew up. It’s a concise state- The Watchman also shares with The
ingly pits an investigating judge and his wife against ment of conservative purpose: family and state Dam an effective shift in tone, with a
their two dissenting daughters, who are appalled by returning to some imagined prior perfect form. No sense of mystery and the surreal gradually
brutal crackdowns on protesters. wonder Rasoulof opted to flee the country on learn- seeping into the realistic milieu. While
The parents and teenagers essentially inhabit ing that authorities were on to his film production the film largely unfolds in a straightfor-
different worlds which overlap only in their Tehran and would soon carry out his pending sentence of ward manner with a few lightly comic
apartment, the main setting of the film’s first half. imprisonment and flogging. But his film deserves to moments, the remarkable climax feels
Iman (Misagh Zare), the respectable-looking father, be regarded on its own terms, as an eloquent record like something out of a nightmare, with
is rising in the ranks of the state judicial department, of and warning to a regime clinging to power at the Cherri conjuring up ghostly figures to
doing increasingly repressive work that we never expense of freedom. create an unnerving conclusion.
see; his wife Najmeh (Soheila Golestani) dotes
upon him, and they savour the prospect of a bigger In UK cinemas now Now on Mubi in the UK and Ireland
 75

The Fire Inside The Fire Inside is a lean, supple and mus-
cular film that ultimately can’t quite land
Flint’s post-industrial environs – a city best
known outside the US for its poisoned
its punches, and in its later stages labours drinking water. Its authentic portrayal
CERTIFICATE 12A 108M 55S under its own weight. Rachel Morrison’s of the technicalities of boxing, including
biopic of the pioneering female boxer Cla- Shields’s skill in ‘inside’ fighting, reflects a
DIRECTOR RACHEL MORRISON
PRODUCED BY ELISHIA HOLMES ressa Shields does much right. Working to keen understanding and eye for the sport
BARRY JENKINS a script by Barry Jenkins, Morrison – the (she was nicknamed ‘T-Rex’ for her fero-
WRIT TEN BY BARRY JENKINS
BASED ON THE DOCUMENTARY T-REX [2015] cinematographer on Ryan Coogler’s Fruit- cious style and noticeably short arms).
CINEMATOGRAPHY RINA YANG vale Station (2013) and Dee Rees’s Mudbound But the narrative leans heavily on the
EDITOR HARRY YOON
PRODUCTION DESIGN ZOSIA MACKENZIE (2017), here making her directorial debut – familiar tropes of the American sports
MUSIC TAMAR-K ALI charts Shields’s evolution from mute kid movie. Shields’s traumatic past – she has
COSTUME DESIGN MARCIA SCOT T
CAST RYAN DESTINY seeking a sanctuary in a flea-bitten boxing openly spoken about being raped as a child
JAZMIN HEADLEY gym to the first woman in the history of the and of struggling with an overwhelming
KYLEE D. ALLEN
sport to hold two Olympic gold medals. sense of anger and a severe speech impedi-
SYNOPSIS Typically for a Jenkins film, it pays homage ment – is addressed but not fully explored.
Claressa Shields overcomes a troubled childhood in the to the spirit of those from deprived pro- The film (unsurprisingly) abstracts the
poverty-stricken projects of Flint, Michigan, to become the jects – in this case in Flint, Michigan identity of her abuser and only subtly
first woman to win two Olympic boxing golds, in 2012 and – showing the social context in which acknowledges the psychological toll on the
2016. But she struggles to gain recognition from a sporting Shields assumed responsibility for her young athlete, leaving this critical aspect of
culture that does not consider her achievements marketable.
two young siblings and troubled, alcoholic her story under-examined.
REVIEWED BY TOM SEYMOUR mother while still a teenager. As a result, The Fire Inside offers an
Ryan Destiny, an emerging actress from incomplete portrait of its compelling yet
nearby Detroit, delivers a strong perfor- enigmatic subject. It’s notable that Shields
mance as Shields, capturing her determi- is credited as an executive producer:
nation, smiling insouciance and deep vul- perhaps Jenkins and Morrison wanted
nerability with a direct intensity. Her foil is to spare her feelings. While they bring
her coach Jason Crutchfield (Brian Tyree plenty of sensitivity to the narrative, their
Henry), a one-time contender turned jocu- approach lacks detachment; they may
lar mentor, who must navigate the balance have benefited from less advocacy, more
between dispassionate trainer and father distance. As it is, they lean in, and miss the
figure. The film excels in sound design, dramatic heart of Shields’s fight and rise.
in the fluent fight montages characteris-
RISING CHAMP Ryan Destiny as Claressa Shields tic of the subgenre and in its evocation of In UK cinemas now

That Martin Parr’s images have been interpreted by some as snobby rather than satirical is partly

FILMS
what makes them fascinating: they invite us to consider our prejudices and our conditioning
I AM MARTIN PARR

I Am Martin Parr There are interesting films to be made

about artists, especially when their work
shared interest with Parr in exploring
nationalism and class makes him a much
divides opinion or becomes a lightning rod more sensible inclusion. Curatorial talk-
FRANCE/THE NETHERLANDS/UK 2024 for political ideologies. So why – and here I ing heads have more to offer, analysing the
fear I sound like a broken record, skipping essence of his photography and his lesser-
DIRECTOR LEE SHULMAN
PRODUCED BY EMMANUELLE LEPERS in the exact same groove I’ve been stuck known early black-and-white work. The
CINEMATOGRAPHY MA XIME K ATHARI on since someone drunkenly scratched me film notes Parr’s divisive position within
EDITOR RAPHAËLLE MARTIN-HOLGER
MUSIC ERIK WEDIN at a party – are we still watching documen- British photography but rarely dives deep
taries about artists populated by depth- into how his images reflect ideas of class
SYNOPSIS allergic celebrity talking heads? and nationalism and a very British sense
Portrait of the British documentary photographer and For more than 50 years, the British pho- of humour.
photojournalist Martin Parr which follows him on various tographer Martin Parr has explored the On the whole, I Am Martin Parr is a
sojourns to shoot quintessentially British subject matter,
nation’s leisure pursuits, creating a vast and light-hearted and pleasant watch. It has
from village fêtes and the Platinum Jubilee to the seaside
resort of New Brighton, where he shot his legendary series
instantly recognisable body of work, often the feel of an animated slideshow, which
The Last Resort (1986). copied but rarely matched. I Am Martin makes sense given both the photographic
Parr surveys the artist’s career by follow- subject matter and the background of its
REVIEWED BY SOPHIA SATCHELL-BAEZA ing his return to the seaside resort of New director, Lee Shulman. He founded The
Brighton, on the Wirral, where he shot Anonymous Project, a collection of vin-
The Last Resort (1986), the photo series that tage amateur colour photography that res-
catapulted him to fame. Along the way, we onates with both Parr’s democratic vision
witness his exhaustive documentation of of England and his thirst for collecting. I
British festivities, pageantry and pomp, was left wanting more from the tantalis-
including a feverish sojourn capturing the ing window opened on to Parr’s collection
mania around the Platinum Jubilee. of Saddam Hussein’s watches (!) and
That his images have been interpreted enjoyed the visible sigh of relief from his
by some as snobby rather than satirical is wife when his collectables were shipped to
partly what makes them fascinating: they the Martin Parr Foundation. Parr himself
invite us to consider our prejudices and remains aloof, shuffling quietly in and out
IMAGE: © MARTIN PARR/MAGNUM PHOTOS

our conditioning. What do we bring to the of his own documentary. It’s a challenge
images in front of us? We certainly do not to fashion a portrait from a man used to
need to hear from David Walliams, whose hiding in the shadows, but the work still
vision of Little Britain seems cruel rather has a lot to say.
than richly ambiguous, like Parr’s. Nor do
SHUT TER GENIUS Elland, West Yorkshire, in 1978, photographed by Martin Parr we get much from Grayson Perry, whose In UK cinemas from 21 February
 76

The Last Showgirl As much as it loves tearing them down,

Hollywood loves to build its icons back up.
the flinty cynicism of her cocktail-waitress
bestie Annette (Jamie Lee Curtis in gro-
Gia Coppola’s The Last Showgirl is a small, tesquely unflattering make-up). It’s also
USA 2024 CERTIFICATE 15 88M 26S breathy indie that’s precision-tooled to unlike the quiet world-weariness of thea-
kickstart the career resurrection of 1990s tre manager Eddie (a lovable Dave Bau-
DIRECTOR GIA COPPOLA
PRODUCED BY ROBERT SCHWARTZMAN über-babe Pamela Anderson. But despite tista), whose romantic history with Shelly
NATALIE FARREY its appealing cast and mood of woozy mel- seems forever on the verge of being rekin-
GIA COPPOLA
WRIT TEN BY K ATE GERSTEN ancholy, it is a curiously cautious example dled. But Shelly’s self-deluding sweetness
CINEMATOGRAPHY AUTUMN DURALD ARK APAW of the comeback machine at work, barely means she has further to fall when the
EDITORS BLAIR MCCLENDON
CAM MCLAUCHLIN getting under the sequins, let alone the show’s imminent closure is announced.
PRODUCTION DESIGN NATALIE ZIERING skin, of a bittersweet price-of-glamour The echoes of Darren Aronofsky’s
MUSIC ANDREW W YAT T
COSTUME DESIGN JACQUELINE GET TY story which reiterates the rueful truism The Wrestler (2008) are striking. But Aro-
CAST PAMELA ANDERSON that everything sparkly fades with time. nofsky’s portrait of battered bodies and
BILLIE LOURD
JAMIE LEE CURTIS Against the coldly twinkling lights scarred psyches is grandly tragic, especially
DAVE BAUTISTA of Vegas, Anderson plays Shelly, a vet- in its meta-commentary on star Mickey
eran performer in Le Razzle Dazzle, Sin Rourke’s physicality. Whatever depth The
SYNOPSIS
When her beloved long-running Vegas revue is faced with
City’s last remaining topless revue. Years Last Showgirl has also comes from the
closure, Shelly, the oldest of its performers, has to work out ago Shelly was its star, but she has borne blurred lines between character and actor
who she is without the job that has defined her for 37 years. with good grace subsequent demotions. but – ironically, given that Shelly’s business
Meanwhile, she navigates fraying relationships with her Indeed, her devotion to the show makes is nudity – neither is ever truly exposed.
stalwart best friend, her theatre-manager old flame and her her its backstage linchpin, morale-boost- And so we get a comeback vehicle begging
estranged daughter. ing her younger castmates (including to be dubbed ‘revelatory’ which actually
Kiernan Shipka and Brenda Song) and reveals little we didn’t know, or suspect,
REVIEWED BY JESSICA KIANG
insisting they’re part of a noble Parisian about the self-preservation instincts of
cabaret tradition. That the closest she’ll Pamela Anderson. Good for her, you
get to Paris is the model Eiffel Tower think, refusing to tear her heart open for
on the Strip doesn’t bother Shelly, who our ghoulishly voracious viewing pleasure.
struggles every day but gets to live out her Good for her, but bad for The Last Show-
dreams every night she dons feathers and girl, which is gone from the memory, to a
false eyelashes and steps on to the stage. smattering of applause from a half-empty
Her optimism – despite a broken rela- house, almost before it takes its final bow.
tionship with her twentysomething daugh-
FEATHER REPORT Pamela Anderson as Shelly ter (Billie Lourd) – is in sharp contrast to In UK cinemas from 28 February

Whatever depth the film has comes from the blurred lines between character and actor
FILMS

but – ironically, given that Shelly’s business is nudity – neither is ever truly exposed
THE LAST SHOWGIRL

Yamada Naoko has always been fascinated film is enriched by a varied and evocative
The Colors Within by music, and since the K-On! franchise – soundtrack composed by Ushio Kensuke,
an anime series (2009-10) and film (2011) another of Yamada’s frequent collabora-
JAPAN 2024 CERTIFICATE U 100M 40S following the lives of four members of a tors. This is complemented by the catchi-
high school’s light music club – it has est and geekiest song, and an unexpected
DIRECTOR YAMADA NAOKO remained central to her storytelling. needle-drop in the shape of Underworld’s
PRODUCED BY K AWAMURA GENKI
PRODUCERS OK AMURA WAK ANA With The Colors Within, a story about ‘Born Slippy’.
SAKITA KOHEI three teenagers who form a band, she con- The school setting echoes many of Yam-
WRIT TEN BY YOSHIDA REIKO
EDITOR HIROSE KIYOSHI solidates her collaboration with the Yuasa ada’s previous projects, but here Totsuko
CHIEF ART DIRECTOR SHIMADA MIDORI Masaaki-founded studio Science SARU, and her friend/bandmate Kimi attend a
CHARACTER DESIGN/
ANIMATION DIRECTOR KOJIMA TAK ASHI following the acclaimed medieval drama Catholic school – depicted as surprisingly
MUSIC USHIO KENSUKE series The Heike Story (2021) and the free- warm despite a rigid set of rules and pun-
VOICE CAST SUZUK AWA SAYU
TAK AISHI AK ARI flowing, experimental short film Garden of ishment system. While all-girl Catholic
KIDO TAISEI Remembrance (2022). One of Japan’s most boarding schools are not uncommon in
innovative animation studios, Science manga – and consequently in anime – they
SYNOPSIS
High schooler Totsuko, whose synaesthesia grants her
SARU has given Yamada full creative con- often serve as an ideal backdrop for yuri
the ability to see the colour of people’s souls, decides to trol over her narratives. Partnering with stories (also known as ‘girls’ love’).
form a band with Kimi, her former classmate and school screenwriter Yoshida Reiko (known for A Still, The Colors Within is neither an
dropout, and Rui, a shy music enthusiast they meet at Silent Voice, 2016, as well as The Heike Story), overtly queer film nor one that indulges in
a second-hand bookstore. Together, they practise and Yamada delivers another deeply humane complacent queer-baiting tropes. Instead,
build a precious friendship. exploration of youth, identity and creativ- it embraces an inherent queerness in its
ity. Together, Yamada and Reiko create story, evident not only in Totsuko and
REVIEWED BY REN SCATENI
an empathetic narrative framework in Kimi’s repressed lesbian desire but also
which young girls and women can grow in the gentle characterisation of the third
as characters. band member, Rui. What makes The Colors
The impressionistic visual storytelling Within a queer story, and one that perfectly
that underpinned Garden of Remembrance exemplifies the significance of a chosen
is developed here, capturing protago- family, is its compassionate portrayal of
nist Totsuko’s synaesthesia – which ena- young people who defy societal norms and
bles her to see the colours of people’s expectations. Music, ultimately, serves as
souls – through a mesmerising canvas the cord that binds them in a tight embrace
of watercolours layered over hazy child- of acceptance and mutual inspiration.
hood memories, and bursts of colour that
accentuate emotional connections. The In UK cinemas now
 77

As with most agricultural feuds, the O’Shea-Keeley

beef is decades-long – stemming from Gary Keeley’s REVIEWS IN BRIEF
marriage to Michael’s childhood sweetheart Caroline
(Nora-Jane Noone), who bears a scar from the car crash,
years before, that’s seen in the film’s opening sequence.
Hearing his mother’s plans to leave his abusive father, a
young, troubled Michael responds by recklessly speed-
ing down the road. Andrews films through the wind-
shield, capturing the terror of whizzing down isolated
country lanes, far from anyone who might hear you
scream. Michael’s mother does not survive.
Andrews, a Cumbrian, had planned to set this debut
feature about two feuding shepherd families in York- 2073
shire, but access to Irish funding transported the story Set 48 years from now, in a San
to Ireland. To his credit, nothing about this version of Francisco where the state spies
rurality feels retrofitted. Bring Them Down was filmed on and annihilates dissidents, 2073
around the boggy Wicklow mountains but is set in uses nonfiction elements (archive
Connemara, and Andrews creates a sense of the place material, original interviews) to
by having Michael and Ray communicate in the Irish suggest that this is not ‘a’ future, but
language. For a film about the bloody repercussions of rather ‘ours’. As the end credits roll
festering hatred, you couldn’t ask for a better dialect – and a surveillance camera stares
there are devil-invoking curses for every scenario. out from the screen, it feels like a
Connecticut-born Christopher Abbott had never missed opportunity. It leaves an
spoken a word of Irish before the film, but, with help overwhelming sense that we’ve already
from dialect coach Peadar Cox, shows a grasp of the lan- run out of road. Rebecca Harrison
guage. He also delivers a fairly convincing Irish accent,
all while bringing a hair-trigger menace to Michael.
Among other things, it’s Irish that sets Michael and his
AT TACK THE FLOCK Barry Keoghan as Jack, Christopher Abbott as Michael father apart from the English-speaking Keeleys, suggest-
ing a greater connection with tradition, a dominance
Ray savours when Jack Keeley (Barry Keoghan) and
Bring Them Down his father Gary (Paul Ready) are shown asking for – and
being refused – passage through his land to help con-
UK/BELGIUM/USA/IRELAND 2024 CERTIFICATE 15 105M 58S struct holiday homes. “Is that what you call ‘diversifica-
tion’?” Ray sneers, turning the vitriol around his mouth
DIRECTOR CHRISTOPHER ANDREWS like a Werther’s Original. WOLF MAN
PRODUCED BY IVANA MACKINNON

FILMS
JACOB SWAN HYAM But Bring Them Down is all the more interesting An unusually intimate werewolf
RUTH TREACY for the language it strips away as it shifts between the film whose protagonist remains
JULIANNE FORDE
JEAN-Y VES ROUBIN perspectives of Michael and Jack. Abbott’s Michael, half modern and half man to the
CASSANDRE WARNAUTS earthy and withdrawn, seems to disappear into the wide bitter end. Blake is tragically caught
WRIT TEN BY CHRISTOPHER ANDREWS
STORY CHRISTOPHER ANDREWS shots of cinematographer Nick Cooke, emerging like between primal urges and a desire
JONATHAN HOURIGAN an anglerfish from a deep sea of darkness as he tends to improve upon the previous
CINEMATOGRAPHY NICK COOKE
EDITOR GEORGE CRAGG to his sheep using a headlamp. Barry Keoghan, effort- generation. But what starts as a
PRODUCTION DESIGN FLETCHER JARVIS less as the clammed-up, turbulent young Jack, seems story of a father and son, with Blake
MUSIC HANNAH PEEL
COSTUME DESIGN HANNAH BURY suffocated by the landscape. Wherever he goes, tinny reverting to old behaviours when he
CAST CHRISTOPHER ABBOT T drum and bass follows; when he does speak, the words gets back to dad’s house, will slowly
BARRY KEOGHAN
NORA–JANE NOONE escape out of the side of his mouth like half-remembered metamorphose into the story of a
PAUL READY daydreams. The only thing he seems sure of, and shares mother and daughter. Anton Bitel
with Michael, is the dangerous need to impress his
SYNOPSIS
Withdrawn Connemara shepherd Michael O’Shea spends
father. Eager to help pull his family out of debt, Jack
his days tending to sheep and caring for his father, Ray. His practically sleepwalks into a violent plan formed by his
life is upended by a bitter feud with neighbouring family the reprobate cousin Lee (a break-out Aaron Heffernan,
Keeleys, particularly young Jack, whose mother Caroline rarely seen without a chewed stick hanging from his
was Michael’s childhood sweetheart. When the O’Sheas’ snarl). They hack off the legs of the O’Sheas’ sheep to
sheep are mutilated, Ray spurs Michael on to seek revenge. sell them on the black market. The creatures are left to
bleed out, creating the harrowing scene Ray witnesses
REVIEWED BY K ATIE MCCABE
from his son’s back – a general surveying innocent bodies
on a battlefield.
The burden a parent places on a child, and the question The feud, the senseless act of violence and Keoghan’s THE SECOND ACT
of how much they can be blamed for the damage caused presence will make some think of The Banshees of Inish- Quentin Dupieux’s latest opened
by its weight, runs like a compressed nerve through erin (2022), but Andrews’s film has none of the verbose Cannes last year, cementing his
director Christopher Andrews’s brutal Irish pulp pas- parody that keeps Martin McDonagh’s rural Irish char- paradoxical status as a treasured
toral Bring Them Down. At one point, Michael O’Shea acters at a cudgel’s length. It is closer to a transcenden- outsider. As if to highlight this pull,
(Christopher Abbott) carries his cantankerous, paraple- tal version of Jim Sheridan’s The Field (1990), or Bob Dupieux wrangles the cream of
gic father Ray (Colm Meaney) on his back to show him Quinn’s Poitín (1978), which similarly stripped away any French film actors to question the
damage inflicted on their sheep in a mafia-style attack by notions of quaint countryside life to show an exagger- possibility of meaningful art in an
the neighbouring Keeley family. The image of the piggy- ated version of Connemara toughness. age riddled with irony. Dupieux’s
backing parent echoes Imamura Shōhei’s The Ballad of As Michael enacts revenge on the Keeleys, collecting films don’t just contain jokes for the
Narayama (1983), in which a son leaves his mother on a a head to deliver to Ray in a gravel bag, it all descends audience, they are also jokes on the
mountain for a self-sacrificial death to increase the fam- into a Biblical bogland western. More than once, we see audience. Do you really think this
ily’s chances of survival. Like that film, Bring Them Down blood smeared prophetically on a door frame, but here is important? This charade? And
plays out like a cruel parable, but Ray is not concerned no one – least of all the sheep – will emerge from the yet, we kind of do. John Bleasdale
by what’s good for his flock. His appetite for revenge will cycle of violence unscathed.
spur Michael on to become both sheep and wolf. This Read these reviews in full, and more, on our
Connemara ‘El Jefe’ is out for a head. In UK cinemas now website: www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound
 78

Mikey and Nicky

of female characters never generates any
of those positive images of femininity
associated with explicitly feminist texts,
this is evidence of just how little tolerance
she has for sentimentality.
Elaine May’s masterpiece – a study of male friendship, wrapped Which is not to say that May looks
up in a deeply black gangland comedy – is finally being given down on Mike and Nick from a position
something approaching the release it deserves of complacent superiority. As in Ishtar
(1987), where the satire on masculine pre-
REVIEWED BY BRAD STEVENS
sumption is tinged with affection, May’s
fiercest criticisms are inextricable from,
are indeed conveyed by, that loving inti-
When asked what I regard as the great- on two small-time criminals interacting macy with which she views even the worst
est film ever made, my usual response is over the course of a single night in Phila- of her characters. Although Mikey and
“One you will probably never have heard delphia. The protagonists are Nick (John Nicky, with its noir tone, was understand-
of.” Since Criterion’s Blu-ray of that film, Cassavetes) and his best friend Mike ably received as a departure from May’s
Elaine May’s Mikey and Nicky (1976), has (Peter Falk), who appears to be helping more straightforwardly comic output (as
now been issued in the UK, it will hope- him, but might actually be setting him up both filmmaker and stand-up performer),
fully not be long before this masterpiece for the hitman hired by their boss. By bur- there is plenty of humour here, though of
attains the classic status it deserves. rowing ever deeper into this supposed a decidedly peculiar sort. Warren Kinney
Despite its lengthy shoot, which took friendship, May ruthlessly exposes the (Ned Beatty), the professional killer pur-
place in 1973 and the early months of 1974, hidden resentments, neuroses and fears suing Nick, has been conceived in almost
as well as a notoriously extended post- ‘normal’ masculine relationships are con- exclusively comic terms, but so indirectly
production that resulted in the release structed upon. She is particularly sharp that most viewers have difficulty perceiv-
date being pushed back to late 1976, in her perceptions concerning the ways in ing anything funny about him. Kinney’s
BUDDY HELL
Mikey and Nicky could hardly be more which men relate (or, more precisely, fail John Cassavetes as Nicky,
scenes, in which he endlessly complains
tightly organised, focusing relentlessly to relate) to women, and if her portrayal Peter Falk as Mikey about his expenses and the everyday
DVD & BLU-RAY
 79

Mikey and Nicky activities (such as finding a parking spot) Aesthetically, Mikey and Nicky conveys
he must carry out while attempting to a sense of immediacy, its surface rough-
conveys a sense commit murder, strikingly evoke those ness giving the impression – misleading,
of immediacy, skits May improvised with her onstage but not irrelevant – of the camera just
its surface partner Mike Nichols. This is comedy of happening to be in the right position to
the blackest kind imaginable, and while catch whatever the actors are doing. Such
roughness giving there is a temptation to see Kinney as an approach lent itself well to the degra-
the impression anticipating the post-ironic mobsters of dations of VHS (which is how I first
of the camera Pulp Fiction (1994), it is crucial to note encountered the film), and although Cri-
that whereas Quentin Tarantino was terion’s Blu-ray significantly sharpens the
just happening parodying cinematic conventions, May is image, the film hardly needs a high-defini-
to be in the right taking aim at a wider reality, that world tion format to make an impact. The trans-
position to catch of alienated labour in which matters of fer was supervised and approved by May,
morality are subordinated to questions who has silently (there is no mention of
whatever the of practicality and expediency. Push this this in the accompanying booklet) taken
actors are doing in another direction and we might end the opportunity to correct a few errors: REQUIEM FOR A VAMPIRE
up with something close to Jonathan a shot in which a technician was visible
Jean Rollin; France 1972; Powerhouse/
Glazer’s The Zone of Interest (2023). It is in a mirror has been digitally altered at Indicator; region-free 4K UHD or Blu-ray;
generally accepted that B movies often 16m 45s, and a similar intruder erased in French with English subtitles/in English
Elaine May; US 1976; with SDH; Certificate 18; 87 minutes; 1.66:1.
Criterion; Region B Blu-ray;
explored a dark underbelly of the Ameri- from the background as Mike searches Features: selected scenes commentary by
English SDH; Certificate 12; can dream, one rarely acknowledged by for the pieces of his broken watch. Rollin; commentary by film historians Troy
106 minutes; 1.85:1. Extras: Howarth and Nathaniel Thompson; interviews
interviews with distributor
more respectable mainstream produc- The main extras (aside from an admi- with Rollin, actors Louise Dhour and Paul
Julian Schlossberg and actor tions, and if May’s superficially modest rable booklet essay by Nathan Rabin) Bisciglia; making-of documentary; appreciation
Joyce Van Patten; interviews by Virginie Sélavy; alternative ‘clothed’
with critics Richard Brody
thriller positions capitalism and fascism are two documentaries from 2018, one in sequences; trailers; image galleries; booklet.
and Carrie Rickey; Peter as two sides of the same coin, this dem- which Richard Brody and Carrie Rickey
Falk audio interview;
trailer; TV spot; booklet.
onstrates just how richly complex, how discuss May’s career, the other featur- REVIEWED BY KIM NEWMAN
thematically ‘large’, her ‘small’ film is. ing actor Joyce Van Patten, who plays
Nick’s wife, and Julian Schlossberg, who “I know you’ll never be part of our
acquired Mikey and Nicky for his distribu- existence,” a greying Dracula figure
(Michel Delesalle) tells a girl who
tion company Castle Hill in 1978 (the
holds a sharpened, cruciform grave
trailer and TV spot have copyright dates marker to his chest like a stake. “These
for 1980, the year Jonathan Rosenbaum cruel men and vicious women fill you
programmed the film as a ‘Buried Treas- with loathing.”
ure’ at the Toronto Festival, though it After a pantomime car chase with

DVD & BLU-RAY

doesn’t appear to have been more widely exchanges of lethal fire after the
screened at that time). These interviews manner of children playing cowboys
are certainly interesting, though less with cap-guns, two pretty French
women dressed as clowns survive a
so than those with producer Michael
wreck. They set fire to a vehicle and
Hausman and cinematographer Victor their dying (dead) male accomplice,
J. Kemper on Home Vision Entertain- then drift into an unpopulated rural
ment’s Region 1 DVD (admirers will locale dominated by a vampire cult on
want to hold on to the earlier disc). the scout for virgins. Both are drawn
What one especially regrets is the to the cloaked, fanged patriarch but
continuing absence (presumably dic- take different paths to his castle.
tated by May herself ) of the original Almost everything is provisional –
was that driver alive when burned
118-minute cut released in 1976. May
or could the actor just not play dead
shortened the film by 12 minutes after it convincingly? – and the heroines are
was purchased by Schlossberg, and this so dissociated they might equally be
106-minute version, which received UK villains. Like many of Jean Rollin’s
theatrical distribution in 1984, has now films, it’s hung up on its sulky, reticent,
become the standard edition, the longer teasing leading ladies (Marie-Pierre
edit being virtually inaccessible (most Castel, Mireille Dargent) – and much
written accounts of it, with their talk of of the peculiarity comes from their
oddly offhand surrender to thuggish
alternative takes and continuity errors,
suitors, vampires with chains, an
are wildly misleading). The only remnant awakening bloodlust and rough sex.
of the longer version I have unearthed is Requiem for a Vampire delivers the
a German-dubbed transfer screened on ingredients of exploitation (action,
German television in the 90s. A compari- nudity, violence, vampires) in a
son reveals that, as she later did when casual, offhand manner that must
preparing a new ‘director’s cut’ of Ishtar, have played like an alienation effect
May went through the film removing a in US grindhouses where this was
sold as Crazed Virgins. Even crucial
few seconds here and there, slightly trim-
plot details and character names
ming numerous shots, and eliminating are hard to determine, but the film
several brief sequences (Mike entering offers a succession of striking, odd
the Royale Hotel and talking to the recep- images – in gorgeously red-lit crypts
tionist, Mike tidying the hotel room, or pastel countryside – and, naturally,
Nick crudely flirting with a woman in a a rather melancholy, wistful depiction
bar, Nick mocking Mike for reciting the of the quiet, resigned extinction of the
Kaddish, Nick trying to break into a car). vampire species.
The differences are admittedly minor, but
Disc: The 4K transfer is a major
it would be nice to have this variant made improvement on even previous Blu-ray
available at some point. In the meantime, releases of a film that depends entirely
let’s celebrate the fact that Mikey and Nicky on its visuals – other versions of
is finally in the process of being rescued Requiem seemed like minor Rollin but
from undeserved obscurity. this reveals it as one of his best works.
 80

MERMAID LEGEND Two films by

Ermanno Olmi
Ikeda Toshiharu; Japan 1984; Third Window
Films; region-free Blu-ray; in Japanese
with English subtitles; Certificate 18; 110 IL POSTO
minutes; 1.37:1. Extras: audio commentary
by Jasper Sharp, Tom Mes; interview with
I FIDANZATI
screenwriter Nishioka Takuya; video essay
on composer Honda Toshiyuki; trailer. Ermanno Olmi; Italy 1961/1963; Radiance; Region
A/B/C Blu-ray; 2 discs; b&w; in Italian, with
English subtitles; Certificate PG; 93 minutes/77
REVIEWED BY JOSH SLATER-WILLIAMS minutes. Extras: appreciation by Maurizio
Zaccaro; interviews with cinematographer
The cinema of Ikeda Toshiharu – best Lamberto Caimi, author Richard Dyer,
programmer Ehsan Khoshbakht; booklet.
known for the splatterfest horror Evil
Dead Trap (1988) – is one of extremes, REVIEWED BY HENRY K. MILLER
with a filmography heavy on erotic
‘pink’ films and direct-to-video action Ermanno Olmi made his feature debut
movies. Mermaid Legend (1984) offers 15 years after the neorealist films that CURE
a well-judged modulation of the inspired him as a teenager, and he
director’s penchant for graphic content did not arrive via film school or as an Kurosawa Kiyoshi; Japan 1997; Eureka/Masters of Cinema; region-
and his more low-key instincts, apprentice – often the way in Italy. He free 4K UHD; in Japanese with English subtitles; Certificate 15;
achieving a potent mix of relatively got his start making corporates for a
111 minutes; 1.85:1. Extras: video essay by Tom Mes; interviews with
Kurosawa, Bong Joon Ho, Kim Newman; trailers; booklet.
sedate arthouse drama and brutal Milanese electrical company, and Il
exploitation thriller. It’s anchored by a posto (‘The Job’, 1961, above) was made REVIEWED BY MICHAEL BROOKE
remarkable performance by lead actor on company premises, part-time and
DVD & BLU-RAY

Shirato Mari, who deftly navigates on a low budget, with staff serving as Although a long way from being his first feature, Cure was
naturalistic and mythic registers. extras. Its leads Sandro Panseri and as reputation-making for Kurosawa Kiyoshi as was The Texas
The source is a 1970s manga Loredana Detto, playing young office Chain Saw Massacre (1974) for Tobe Hooper, and for very
by Miyaya Kazuhiko, though workers, were novices who scarcely similar reasons; it seems much more graphically gory than it
the film’s spin on the conflict acted again, and its plot is fairly loose: actually is, because it so thoroughly gets under the viewer’s
between traditional livelihoods boy gets job, meets girl, loses track of skin in deeply unsettling ways.
and encroaching modernity feels girl – indeed for a stretch the film loses Detective Takabe (Yakusho Kōji) is investigating a series
particularly rooted in mid-80s track of both of them. In other words, of murders that outwardly seem unconnected, aside from
corporate Japan. Migiwa (Shirato), allowing that the word realist is a can the victims all having a large ‘X’ carved into their necks.
introduced in a lyrical underwater of worms, Il posto is more neorealist And while the murderers all confess (indeed, they’re all too
sequence, is a pearl diver, working than the neorealists, and comes from easy to track down), none can explain what appears to be
alongside her fisherman husband outside the industry that nourished a single deeply uncharacteristic moment of madness. But
Keisuke (Eto Jun) in a coastal town the original movement. is this straightforward mania, or the outcome of a more
that’s already faced consequences from It isn’t just that Domenico (Panseri) sinister form of manipulation? And might the seemingly
industrial interference. gets a job: it’s his first, and it exposes amnesiac Mamiya Kunio (Hagiwara Masato) be at the heart
After Keisuke witnesses a murder him to big city ways, above all the of it, given his former academic interest in mesmerism and a
connected to a secret power-plant discipline of work, for the first time. growing body of evidence that he was in the killers’ vicinity
project, a hit is made on the couple It’s the all-but universal story of just before they committed their crimes? And might Mamiya
while they’re out at sea. Migiwa the last 200 years, but also a very be having a similar effect on the psychological well-being of
survives; hiding on a nearby island, particular one. Italy, and Milan Takabe himself?
she processes her grief. As the truth in particular, is booming – the What’s so peculiarly disorienting about Cure is the way
behind the murders emerges, she same boom that is the backdrop that Kurosawa makes it so unnervingly plausible that
pursues vengeance. It’s during a for Visconti’s Rocco and His Brothers someone might be so drastically influenced by a banal image
confrontation with a rapist near the (1960), but whereas Visconti the like freshly spilled water slowly creeping over the floor,
halfway point that the film’s genre veteran neorealist can hardly bear or by certain repetitive sounds; Kōri Hiromichi’s virtuoso
switch is definitively announced with to show a place of work, Il posto soundtrack is both intensely ‘Lynchian’ without falling into
arterial eruptions that bathe our doesn’t stint. Olmi perceived that the common trap of merely sounding like imitation David
heroine in crimson. there was fascination enough in a Lynch. Most of its shots are static, contemplative, almost
Mermaid Legend has never had an morning commute, or in the sight of redolent of Ozu, until something happens (often in the
official release outside Japan; this a city being torn down and rebuilt. distance or the extreme periphery) to joltingly remind us of
belated international debut should I f idanzati (‘The Fiancés’, 1963) the film’s primary genre. But even then, such moments are
lead to wider recognition as one of reverses the pattern: a skilled factory often cut as abruptly as they start, with the very last shot
the great revenge movies – not just worker is sent from Milan to Sicily to being particularly effective.
because of the astonishingly staged help establish a new plant and finds
climactic carnage, but because of the himself adrift in what is still a peasant DISC: The 4K UHD upgrade offers a surprisingly marked
moving rumination on how fleeting society. The central love relationship advance on Eureka’s still-available 2018 Blu-ray release. In
catharsis is for a wounded spirit is less compelling than in Il posto, but particular, the image’s wider dynamic range enables more
forced to extend a cycle of violence. it is a beautifully shot and brilliantly to be discerned in the shadows, while the repeated motif
constructed film, done in subjective of a cigarette lighter flame now burns so brightly that its
DISC : Tom Mes and Jasper Sharp
flashbacks. hypnotic qualities aren’t remotely in doubt. The extras have
provide a strong commentary track.
also been beefed up, adding an appreciation by Parasite
James Balmont’s informative video Disc: Both films have been restored director Bong Joon Ho (who included Cure in his top ten for
essay explores the eclectic career of in 4K and there is a plethora of video Sight & Sound ’s Greatest Films of All Time poll).
the film’s composer, jazz musician interviews.
Honda Toshiyuki.
 81

Nothing Is Sacred:
REDISCOVERY Three Heresies by Luis Buñuel
Given the way things have been going lately, why haven’t we been
paying more attention to Buñuel, cinema’s great scourge of authority
and religious orthodoxy? Well, here’s our chance to get started

Luis Buñuel moved to Mexico in 1946, Yorgos Lanthimos. Much of what distin- warmth. In the midst of The Exterminating
VIRIDIANA having been politically exiled from Fran- guishes Lanthimos is Buñuelian: dream- Angel’s worst case scenario, we also feel
coist Spain and unfulfilled by a stint in like off-ness in settings and communica- just how much engaged couple Eduardo
THE EXTERMINATING
Hollywood. The early part of his Mexi- tion; scorn for hierarchical systems and and Beatriz want to escape the crowd
ANGEL
can period saw him largely churn out their unquestioned acceptance; dual fas- in order to make love. Desire flourishes
SIMON OF THE DESERT cheap, efficient genre fare, but in the later cinations with cruelty and eroticism. But against all oppressions – except the one
1950s he embraced more international Lanthimos also follows Buñuel in his to which the couple ultimately succumbs.
Luis Buñuel; Spain/Mexico
1961-65; Radiance; Region
collaborations and creatively risky pro- commitment to glee, and it’s interesting Desire makes itself more sinisterly
A/B/C Blu-ray; 3 discs; b&w; in jects. This period produced some of the in revisiting these key works to note the manifest in Viridiana, trapping the
Spanish with English subtitles;
Certificate 15; 231 minutes; 1:66.
most celebrated work of his vast career, degree to which they lean into optimism eponymous novice nun in a system of
Extras: new appreciations for including the three titles presented here, and cleave to a sense of fun. ownership, exploitation and male sexual
each film by filmmakers Richard
Ayoade, Alex Cox, Guillermo
all in new 4K restorations. Their stories are bleak, for sure. In Vir- whim regardless of the purity of her own
del Toro and Lulu Wang; 1983 Viridiana, released in 1961, was idiana (1961), Pinal’s young nun is forced wishes and intentions. Viridiana isn’t per-
BBC Arena episode The Life
and Times of Don Luis Buñuel; A
emblematic of Buñuel’s split cultural from her vocation and then abused out mitted to be good, because male desire
Mexican Buñuel (Emilio Maillé, identity: it was shot in Spain, and of her mission to do good. The Extermi- – that of her uncle Don Jaime (Fernando
1995); Buñuel: A Surrealist
Filmmaker (Javier Espada, 2021);
intended to restore Buñuel to the status nating Angel – in a plot that has escaped Ray) – has other plans. Like Judy in Ver-
1964 French TV interview with of a star Spanish filmmaker, but also cre- into popular culture to become known tigo (1958), to which Viridiana clearly nods,
Buñuel; visual essays by Abraham
Castillo Flores and Alexandra
ated as a vehicle for a Mexican star, Silvia even to people who will never watch the this protagonist is desired for her resem-
Heller-Nicholas; commentary Pinal, and funded in part by her Mexican film – sees guests inexplicably trapped blance to another, dead woman, by a pur-
on Viridiana by Michael Brooke;
image galleries; trailers; booklet.
producer husband Gustavo Alatriste. at an upscale dinner party. Simon of the suer who doesn’t care if she’s conscious,
This story of a novice nun subjected Desert depicts the trials of a Christian let alone consenting. Yet Rey’s Don Jaime

DVD & BLU-RAY

BY HANNAH MCGILL to objectification and exploitation also ascetic who is relentlessly taunted by is no obvious gothic monster: he remains
proved so controversial on its screening Satan while living at the top of a pillar in smilingly ingratiating throughout his pro-
at the 1961 Cannes Film Festival that, pursuit of closeness to God. But while ject to degrade and possess his niece, just
despite winning the Palme d’Or, it was these are films that twist tender parts, as the guests in The Exterminating Angel do
promptly banned in Spain, remaining mock misfortune and gaze unflinchingly their very best to comply with whatever’s
so for 17 years. Despite this opprobrium, at ugliness, they’re also tremendously happening for as long as they can. The
Buñuel greatly appreciated the freedom pleasurable to watch: slick and sometimes social order is sustained by people play-
Alatriste had granted him, and went on ravishingly elegant in their construction, ing along with madness and brutality. A
to work twice more with the producer captivating in their wit, and peopled with crucifix that Don Jaime’s son Jorge (Fran-
and his actress wife – on the famed and performances of undimmed charisma cisco Rabal) finds among his father’s
much-imitated satire The Exterminat- and verve. Buñuel had an avowed aver- things contains a hidden blade.
ing Angel (1962), and the kooky religious sion to “psychology” in directing, prefer- In Simon of the Desert, another effort to
comedy Simon of the Desert (1965). ring to advise his actors on their physical approach God is interrupted and cor-
If Buñuel’s arch tone, esoteric pre- movements alone, but that is no indicator rupted, this time by the literal interven-
occupations and sheer old-school big of blank or mannequin-like performances tion of the devil. Like Viridiana, Claudio
beast auteur status have perhaps made in his films. Indeed, it is the liveliness of Brook’s weary saint is challenged as to
him unfashionable in recent decades, his their casts that keeps The Exterminat- the point of his vocation; like Don Jaime,
MALICE TOWARD NUN name has been more regularly and posi- ing Angel and Simon of the Desert from he is tormented by his sexual desires.
Fernando Rey as Don
Jaime, Silvia Pinal in the
tively invoked with the rise to star direc- high-concept theoretical stuffiness. Not This is a short, simply conceived and
title role of Viridiana tor status of his young Greek disciple only comic energy abounds, but human straightforwardly comic film, greatly
reminiscent of the later Monty Python
comedy films it clearly influenced – but
its final twist, in which its Biblical char-
acters are transposed to a very different
setting, remains a gloriously stylish and
funny provocation.
All three films look lovely in restora-
tion, particularly Viridiana with its inky
blacks and shimmering whites. Sound
quality is also good, although The Exter-
minating Angel retains a hiss. Extras are a
mix of new and old material, with several
archive documentaries on Buñuel’s life
and times, personal introductions by a
disparate set of directors including Alex
Cox, Richard Ayoade and Lulu Wang,
and two new video essays. Highlights
include a brilliant onslaught of observa-
tions by the vastly knowledgeable Guill-
ermo del Toro, and a lively new Viridi-
ana commentary by Michael Brooke.
 82

Freelance
LOST AND FOUND The tail end of the Swinging 60s, Ian McShane
on the run through London’s underworld while
his girlfriend parades around in Biba, set to a cool
jazz score – Francis Megahy’s thriller has all the
ingredients of a cult success, except the cult

The director Francis Megahy spent the early stages in their careers but it’s nota- naive hopes for the world are in tatters.
Francis Megahy, 1970 UK
greater part of his varied career work- ble that they continued working with McShane’s Mitch learns about the hard
BY ADAM SCOVELL
ing in British television, with directorial each other over the decades, even though reality of this collapse; hands dirtied
credits including episodes of series such McShane’s career took off with greater by murder and trapped in a potentially
as the Patrick Mower cop show Target velocity. The pair would reunite for the unending spiral of crime thanks to black-
(1977), The Professionals (1978) and Minder heist film The Great Riviera Bank Robbery mail by the Boss (Peter Gilmore) who
(1979-89). His big-screen break, while (aka Sewers of Gold, 1979) and again a few initially wanted him clipped. There was
occupying similarly villainous territory, years later for several episodes of Lovejoy a brief hope for a better life, at least for
came rather earlier, in the form of the (1991-92). But Freelance is the most inter- Mitch and Chris, but it is quickly and
underrated crime thriller Freelance (1970). esting result of their collaboration, sitting mercilessly extinguished.
Scripted by Megahy and his regu- right in the middle of a halcyon period for Freelance still has more of the Swinging
lar collaborator Bernie Cooper, Free- British screen criminals. London atmosphere than most of the
lance follows small-time con Mitch (Ian Even given McShane’s involvement, other films that came in the wake of Rob-
McShane). He’s far from the big league; the film’s disappearance is not too surpris- bery. A scene in which Hunnicutt enters
his rackets include brokering dodgy deals ing, considering the competition. The a flat wearing a hooded velvet ensemble
and putting on blue film nights. On wit- late 60s saw British crime cinema enter created by Bárbara Hulanicki, founder
nessing a local (and accidentally lethal) a brief golden age that lasted around of Biba, is a fine example of this cultural
gangland beating committed by hard- f ive years, arguably beginning with residue. Elsewhere, Freelance is vibrantly
DVD & BLU-RAY

man Dean (Alan Lake), he’s recognised Peter Yates’s Robbery (1967). Freelance sat colourful, in spite of the general dilapi-
as the only credible witness and forced to alongside some of the best British crime dation of the capital throughout. Along
go into hiding. With the help of his friend films ever made, films that were gritty, with the sharp suits and leather jackets,
Gary (Keith Barron), and much to the strange and down-and-out: Jack Gold’s Mitch often sports a flamboyant cravat.
chagrin of his society model lover Chris The Reckoning (1970), Donald Cammell It’s a neat metonym for the contrasts that
(Gayle Hunnicutt), he disappears. It’s and Nicolas Roeg’s Performance (1970), characterise the period’s British crime
not long, however, before he is faced with Michael Tuchner’s Villain (1971) and, of cinema, in which the colourful and the
the choice of continuing to run or facing course, Mike Hodges’s adaptation of a criminal often sit side by side. There was
Dean head-on. Ted Lewis novel, Get Carter (1971). Vil- a reason David Bailey included the Kray
DUFFEL JEOPARDY
Freelance was Megahy’s first project lain, in particular, makes for an interesting twins in his box of pin-ups alongside
Ian McShane as Mitch with McShane. Both were at relatively comparison to Freelance, since it features Mick Jagger and Jean Shrimpton.
McShane in a similarly under-the-thumb One of the film’s swingingest aspects is
role – in his early films he tended to play a soundtrack by the maverick composer
a keen mixer but never quite top dog Basil Kirchin. His work here is typical
(something Jonathan Glazer would cor- of the period, a mixture of psychedelic
rect much later in Sexy Beast, 2000). jazz and stoned-out easy listening. A
As in a number of British films of number of the films that Kirchin scored
the period – especially the brilliant Sit- have been released on the BFI’s Flipside
ting Target (1972), directed by Douglas label, among them Arnold L. Miller’s
Hickox, for whom Megahy had scripted oddball documentary Primitive London
Les Bicyclettes de Belsize (1967) – gritty (1965) and David Greene’s coming-of-age
London vistas are the focus; wintry in thriller I Start Counting (1969). A lot of
this case, yet vivid and providing con- Kirchin’s film scores have been released
stant visual interest. Meetings take place by Trunk Records – Freelance’s score is,
on boat cruises along the Regent’s Canal, appropriately, presented along with
grimy west London alleyways provide Primitive London – creating an unusual
escape routes, and new high-rise blocks situation where the score is easier to find
scratch the horizon. The film is, if noth- than the film itself.
ing else, an architectural time-capsule. It’s a shame that Freelance has so far
The most celebrated of brutalist build- been left by the wayside. The only way
ings, Ernő Goldfinger’s Trellick Tower, to view it at the moment, apart from a
is seen, half-built, as Mitch escapes from VHS rip on YouTube – which is cut by
the murderous Dean along the towpath around 15 minutes, and has such a level
winding through Westbourne Park. of crackly disintegration that it feels posi-
In hindsight, an intriguing sense of tively hauntological – is on a hard-to-find
evasion pervades the whole film. This double-feature DVD, where it’s paired
is symptomatic of the early 1970s and with another 1970s British crime film:
the general refusal to accept the fallout Donovan Winters’s bizarre sexploitation-
from the spiritual failures of the previous cum-home-invasion flick Give Us Tomorrow
decade’s optimistic counterculture. Its (1978). Megahy’s film certainly deserves a
flamboyance still bleeds through but its better fate than this.
 83

BUSHMAN PARK LANES

David Schickele; US 1971; Other Parties; Region B Blu-ray; b&w; English SDH; Kevin Jerome Everson; US 2015; Second Run; region-free Blu-ray;
Certificate 12A; 74 minutes; 1.66:1. Extras: Schickele film Give Me a Riddle (1966); 2 discs; 480 minutes; 1.77:1. Extras: trailers; booklet.
very short film by poet Olivia Douglass to, from (2024); The Black Body as Home:
selected scene audio commentary by Eloise King and Tomisin Adepeju; booklet.
REVIEWED BY BEN NICHOLSON
REVIEWED BY ALEX RAMON
Watching people going through the motions of the nine-to-five in
real time may not sound like the most enticing proposition, but in
One obvious effect of the mainstreaming of Black Lives Matter
the hands of the prolific artist filmmaker Kevin Jerome Everson,
has been a drive to highlight lost or previously under-appreciated
spending eight hours in a factory that produces bowling alley
work either by Black filmmakers or featuring Black protagonists.
parts is an experience both engrossing and bracing. Most profiles
David Schickele’s Bushman belongs to the latter group, joining
of Everson will draw upon the fact that labour is – in its various
the likes of Peter Kass’s Time of the Heathen (1961) as a vibrant
guises – a recurring preoccupation of his. In one sense, the 2015

DVD & BLU-RAY

rediscovery of American independent cinema. Schickele’s
feature film Park Lanes is the fundamental expression of this
film didn’t go entirely unnoticed at the time of its premiere: it
recurring subject. Newly released on Blu-ray by the indispensable
was awarded the Best First Feature prize at the 1971 Chicago
Second Run label, it is a deliberate, durational presentation of
International Film Festival and screened at the following year’s
people employed on a factory floor, fashioned to resemble – and at
inaugural edition of New Directors/New Films. But, never
480 minutes, exactly match in length – a typical working day.
securing a distributor, Bushman inevitably fell into neglect.
Of course, any film quite so long is intended to challenge
Restored in 4K in 2022, the film made its way into the world
the viewer, on some level. Park Lanes spends its entire runtime
again with successful screenings at Il Cinema Ritrovato in
holding uninterrupted shots of 10 minutes or more, primarily of
Bologna and Cinema Rediscovered in Bristol. Now it’s brought
various individuals going about their daily work routine. There is
to British viewers thanks to the enterprising Other Parties label.
no narrative progression per se, but Everson arranges the piece to
Schickele was born in Iowa to Alsatian immigrant parents, and
create a simulacrum of the working day – beginning with people
was an actor and musician as well as a filmmaker. The catalyst for
arriving on shift, passing through hours of work, lunch in the
Bushman was his experience in the Peace Corps, and specifically a
cafeteria, coffee-room breaks and clocking-off time. The film’s
period spent teaching English language at University of Nigeria
length may imply that watching the film will be arduous, but in
Nsukka. Making the documentary Give Me a Riddle (1966), a
fact it evokes the rhythms and quiet focus of an average day.
portrait of young Nigerians at a transitional time in the country’s
That is not to say, though, that the film has the feel of a
history – included as an extra on this disc – connected Schickele
meandering fly-on-the-wall portrait. What feels evident in every
with Paul Eyam Nzie Okpokam, around whom Bushman would be
moment of Park Lanes is its formal and aesthetic rigour. Anyone
built, in ways both foreseen and unexpected.
familiar with Everson’s wider body of work will be aware of how
The film casts Okpokam as Gabriel, a Nigerian graduate
precisely his films employ form and composition and that remains
student and teacher in San Francisco who has left his country
the case even in an eight-hour opus. Despite the lack of framing
as it enters its second year of civil war. As Gabriel navigates
information, the film still feels as though it has discrete sections,
the city at a politically and culturally volatile time, his past in
following the work of different people, like a series of vignettes.
Nigeria remains present. He’s a liminal figure but never a cipher;
These feel divorced from place and time – the camera focus is
the film keeps us close to him, physically and emotionally, and
shallow, the framing compact, the background devoid of people.
Okpokam’s strong presence, plus canny casting of the other
Each sequence has an almost unreal intimacy which emphasises
roles, ensures that Gabriel’s encounters reverberate with a mix of
that the efforts of the ordinary individual as just as worthy of
misunderstanding, tension, curiosity and sympathy.
consideration as those of a renowned artisan.
The influence of Cassavetes and Sembène is felt, but Bushman
Everson’s interest lies in the act of labour itself, rather than
conveys the particular complexities of migrant experience with a
the outcomes. By broadly eschewing the larger socioeconomic
wit, sensuality, subtlety and poetry that are entirely distinctive.
implications – or, at least, by letting them linger, unaddressed, at
Few films can have been more decisively affected by unexpected
the edge of the frame – and by mostly dispensing with the final
events during their making, either. Schickele’s film, already
products of the factory, he submits, and forces us to submit, to
blurring the lines between fiction and documentary, was forced
these moments of process. Park Lanes is a film as much about
decisively into the latter mode when Okpokam was wrongfully
attention as labour; the demanded attention of the audience
arrested during a strike at San Francisco State College. The
member, the patient attention of the observant filmmaker, and
absence of the protagonist in the final stretch is jarring, but also
that of the diligent, intent worker. It’s suitably captivating.
resonant for a film in which, as Gabriel expresses it, “a traveller
is like a ghost.” More than a counterculture era curio, this is an
Disc: The disc for this release contains only the film, but it comes
essential rediscovery.
with an accompanying booklet that includes an interview with
the filmmaker and essays by Matthew Barrington and Elena
Extras: Digitally remastered from the 4K print, the release
Gorfinkel.
shows off the vibrant tactility of David Myers’s black-and-white
cinematography to advantage, and the entire package has been
assembled with exceptional care.
 84

PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE HIGH AND LOW

Paul Thomas Anderson; US 2002; Criterion; Kurosawa Akira; Japan 1963; BFI; Region
4K UHD and/or Region 2 Blu-ray; English B Blu-ray; b&w; in Japanese, with English
SDH; Certificate 15; 95 minutes; 2.35:1 subtitles; Certificate 12; 143 minutes; 2.35:1.
(UHD)/2.39:1 (Blu-ray). Extras: short doc Extras: documentary Akira Kurosawa: It is
Blossoms & Blood’ (Anderson, 2002); interviews Wonderful to Create – High and Low (2002);
with composer Jon Brion; footage of music commentary by Jasper Sharp; booklet.
recording session; conversation between
curators Michael Connor and Lia Gangitano;
Cannes press conference; interview with David
REVIEWED BY MAT THEW TAYLOR
Phillips (‘the pudding guy’); deleted scenes;
scopitones – artwork transitions by Jeremy Blake; As suggested by both its English title
‘Mattress Man’ commercial; trailers; booklet.
and the original Japanese – which
literally translates as ‘Heaven and Hell’
REVIEWED BY HANNAH MCGILL
– Kurosawa Akira’s blend of rigorous
procedural and moral inquiry invites
Some fans of Paul Thomas Anderson’s
us to consider binary opposites, only
existing auteur canon couldn’t forgive
THE CAT to gradually muddy the waters. Drawn
his choice to work with Adam Sandler
from the 1959 novel King’s Ransom
on this edgy, high-strung comic
Dominik Graf; Germany 1988; Radiance Films; Region A/B/C Blu- by Ed McBain (aka Evan Hunter,
romance. Nor did the casting of
ray;in German, with English subtitles; Certificate TBC; 118 minutes; who scripted Hitchcock’s The Birds
1.85:1. Extras: interviews with Graf, screenwriter Christoph Fromm, America’s most lavishly remunerated,
in the year of this film’s release),
producer Georg Feil; selected scenes commentary by Graf; trailer. critically reviled clown pay off at
Kurosawa’s riveting thriller expands
the box office, for Punch-Drunk Love
REVIEWED BY K ATE STABLES on its sturdy pulp origins to become a
was a flop. The film’s early critical
sombre scrutiny of status and ethics in
DVD & BLU-RAY

acclaim has endured and built,

A taut, muscular heist movie, The Cat stood out within postwar Japanese society.
however, and today its audacious
moribund 80s German genre cinema for its tough tone, What remains striking within a tale
quirks of presentation still feel fresh,
claustrophobic big-city locations and glossy, American- of ostensible contrasts is the film’s
as do its performances. Sandler is
style visuals. Director Dominik Graf, heavily influenced by bifurcated structure, encompassing
all yelps, jitters and agonised self-
Robert Aldrich’s macho, matter-of-fact 70s action output, the before and after of a botched
consciousness as Barry, bullied by
had worked with Götz George (a hugely popular TV star kidnapping. The prolonged first half
his seven sisters and crushed into
in the very long-running cop show Tatort, 1970-), and felt is confined to ‘heaven’ – specifically,
submission by life. Loneliness draws
his laconic toughness would add nuance to novelist Uwe the plush hilltop abode of self-made
him into a sextortion scam, and
Erichsen’s flinty, tech-filled tale of a betrayal-spattered executive Gondo (Mifune Toshiro),
from there into the bad books of the
Düsseldorf bank heist. George’s Probek, impassively who looks down on the slums
ferocious Mattress Man (played with
masterminding by walkie-talkie a robbery being botched by below like a salaryman Zeus. When
outrageous relish by Anderson regular
Heinz Hoenig and Ralf Richter’s short-fused thugs, holds his chauffeur’s child is mistakenly
Philip Seymour Hoffman). But then
down the most satisfying layer of the film’s fragmented snatched instead of his own, Gondo
kindred spirit Lena (Emily Watson)
narrative. His restraint contrasts pleasingly with the – who has just ploughed all his assets
meet-cutes into his life, and Barry
bickering grandstanding of the robbers, the mounting into a risky company buy-out – stands
finds the strength for a showdown.
frustration of police inspector Voss, and the nervy but to lose everything if he pays the
The madcap plot recalls a Coen
inscrutable unhappiness of Probek’s lover Jutta, recruited ransom demanded.
brothers caper, but it’s overlaid with
for access to her bank manager husband. Kurosawa and his two
a heavy layer of heartfelt indie angst,
Christoph Fromm’s script is workmanlike though, rather cinematographers work marvels with
and staged with all the widescreen
than the easy flow of Treffer, the 1984 coming-of-age comedy the wide TohoScope frame in this
grandeur of a Golden Age studio
he’d made with Graf for German TV. His efficient dialogue initial section, deploying long takes
romance. Interposed screens of
is strictly in service of a succession of tense countdowns and careful movement to ratchet up
gently pulsing digital paintings by
that propels the film into its hotel-scaling action sequences. the tension. It’s also a masterclass
Jeremy Blake add a further dreamy
Graf gives the film a jittery texture by utilising the constant in blocking actors, as painstakingly
dimension, as does Jon Brion’s score,
soundtrack chatter of Probek’s illegal police radio, terse controlled in its technique as the
with its repeated refrains, mini-
walkie-talkie exchanges and barked commands across ensuing police search is to retrieve the
soundscapes and snatches of song. It
the police’s helicopter, sniper squads and incident unit. If ransom and locate the kidnapper.
sounds like a lot, and it is – but the
the sensual but slightly stiff scenes between Probek and The noir-inflected second half
spacious visual construction gracefully
Gudrun Landgrebe’s Jutta feel a bit short on emotional heft, sees the tempo and texture change
accommodates the clutter of ideas,
Landgrebe’s surly, almost offhand manner adds a useful dramatically, as a frantic railway
and provided you fall on the side of
enigmatic quality to the film’s sudden plot twists. rendezvous gives way to an exhaustive
being charmed rather than infuriated
manhunt through the dive bars,
by its oddball central couple, its
Disc: A pin-sharp transfer shows off the appropriately dope dens and beach shacks of lower
emotional payoff is all pleasure.
alienating post-modern concrete-and-glass courtyards of Yokohama. With Mifune’s chastened
Düsseldorf ’s landmark Hotel Nikko, which provided all the character relegated to the background,
Disc: Designed for maximum visual
locations. The pair of new interviews with Graf and Fromm the cops and a pliant media play
intensity and with a soundtrack of
gives frank and occasionally rueful insights into German dirty to make an example of their
intricate detail, the film looks and
genre cinema in the 80s. disaffected quarry. By the time Gondo
sounds gorgeous in a 4K restoration
finally faces his tormentor, it’s clear
overseen by the director.
the distance between their realms has
dwindled.

Disc: Yokohama dazzles from top to

bottom in Toho’s fine 4K restoration.
 limited edition

Sight and Sound

framed cover prints
Ready to hang on your wall
s i g h ta n d s o u n d p r i n t s.c o m

w i n t e r 2 0 2 2-23
v o lu m e 3 3
issue 1

special collector’s edition 4 of 4

WINTER 2022-23 • VOLUME 33 • ISSUE 1
THE GREATEST FILMS OF ALL TIME

T h e v o t e s a r e i n
£7.75
 86
WIDER SCREEN

Muestra de Cine de Lanzarote

1960), L’Ordre (Jean-Daniel Pollet, 1973),
Mor’vran (Jean Epstein, 1930), Vole, vole,
tristesse (Myriam Charles, 2015), to name
but a few. Connected to this there was
An event that continues to carve out a distinctive niche in the festival yet another nice touch, whereby a sub-
ecosphere, this year’s programme saw a stimulating selection of films stantial chunk of the festival catalogue
grouped around the theme of ‘islands’ and a trio of fascinating documentaries was given over to literary texts on the
same generative theme, by writers as
BY KIERON CORLESS
varied as Sappho, Charles Darwin,
Georges Perec, Jamaica Kincaid and
Mishima Yukio. The overall impression
The smaller film festival multiverse is debate was twice as long), it felt some- was of a festival profoundly rooted in
endlessly rich and various, with just about how right. Why should the jurors’ exper-
Kamal Aljafari’s its own community and history, asking
every niche cinephile proclivity catered tise and knowledge remain unshared, A Fidai Film, pertinent questions about ecology, sus-
for. A great thing, of course, but it doesn’t cloistered away in secrecy? And why pulls off a tainability and futurity, while also deftly
make it easy to distinguish yourself in the shouldn’t the audience’s equally valid connecting local experiences to currents
midst of such abundance. Nevertheless, observations not be brought to bear? It
fascinating feat, in the wider world.
the Muestra de Cine de Lanzarote, which made for a concentrated, exciting, often managing to There was a small, smartly curated
started in 2011 and takes place annually on revelatory experience that could surely be reclaim aspects selection of recent films in competition;
the eastern-most of the Canary islands, adopted elsewhere to similar advantage. three documentaries stood out for their
manages to pull together a set of elements Each year the festival puts together a
of Palestinian experiments with form. After all those
that gives it a very particular and special themed programme of films, the largest life while hours of jury and public discussion, the
flavour even in such a crowded field. strand by far, relating to some aspect of simultaneously main prize went to A Fidai Film, directed
Probably the most eye-catching of life on Lanzarote, repurposing spaces by Palestinian filmmaker Kamal Aljafari,
those elements, which most clearly across the island as screening venues
revealing who now lives in Berlin. It’s a film essay
encapsulated the open and inclusive – previous ones have included salt, the the violence about the myriad forms of violence
stance of the festival, was holding the wind, the volcano, overcoming crises, of erasure inflicted on the Palestinians, specifically
competition jury debate in public, with fishing and migration. This time the relating to the archive, filmed images
audience members invited to participate theme was simply ‘islands’, inviting and historical memory. In 1982 the Israeli
at particular junctures in the proceedings reflection on their multifaceted identi- army looted the Palestine Research
(understandably, directors of films being ties as, inter alia, spaces of idyllic retreat, Centre in Beirut, which had been gather-
discussed were not permitted to attend). militarily strategic sites, prisons and ing documents on Palestinian history for
It’s a practice I’ve not come across else- places of scientific interest, through a nearly two decades; an incalculable loss.
where, but watching it unfold over the stimulating programme that ranged far Aljafari constructs his film from copied
course of a more than four-hour session and wide geographically and historically ABOVE fragments of this archive he’s managed to
Four stills from
chaired by artistic director Javier Fuentes – A City of Sadness (Hou Hsiao-hsien, Kamal Aljafari’s
track down, often from Israeli academics,
Feo (I was told the previous edition’s 1989), The Naked Island (Shindō Kaneto, A Fidai Film which he then overlays with splashes of
 87

red and a densely intricate soundtrack.

It pulls off a fascinating feat, managing
to salvage and reclaim aspects of Pales-
Tales of the city: Leo the Last
tinian life while simultaneously revealing
the violence of erasure. John Boorman’s little-seen 1970 film, starring Marcello Mastroianni,
Every Document of Civilization (Todo explores the multicultural world of Notting Hill, offering a fascinating
documento de civilización), by Argentinian insight into the mysteries and possibilities of the ‘white gaze’
director Tatiana Mazú González, refers
in its title to the famous Walter Ben- BY SUKHDEV SANDHU
jamin quote: “There is no document
of civilisation which is not at the same
time a document of barbarism”; the bar- “All movies are bad,” John Boorman once said. “Mine Black neighbours. But he’s no mere peeping Tom.
barism in this case being the murder of are often acutely embarrassing.” Was he thinking of He’s amused by the creative hustling that goes on,
a teenage boy, Luciano Arruga, by the Leo the Last? It won him the Best Director award horrified by the sexual violence he spies. Looking is
Buenos Aires police when he refused at Cannes in 1970, but few have ever seen it. Set in surely better than looking away; it leads to him rescu-
to steal on their behalf; tragically a not Notting Hill in west London and starring Marcello ing a Black teenager from being on the game. “I feel
uncommon occurrence in more impov- Mastroianni in his English-language debut, the film I should help,” he says, with feeling. But members
erished parts of the city. It’s another film – now the subject of a new book by Edward Platt of his own milieu mock him as a “true friend of the
of disappearance, of salvage and remem- – died a death at the box office and has never been people”, and he comes to learn that he has personally
brance, of protest and refusal to accept released on video or DVD in the UK. Even Michel been profiting from the wretched living conditions
injustice. The camera, blurred around Ciment, Positif editor, Boorman’s friend and the of those people.
the edges, forensically scrutinises and author of a 1985 book on the director, dismissed its Less of a frontline dispatch than Horace Ové’s
lingers on the places in his locality where “self-indulgent absurdism”. Pressure (1976) or Franco Rossi’s Babylon (1980), less
Luciano was last seen alive for some Based on a play by Hungarian writer George pompous than that other outlier of Black British
trace of his presence, or the crime that Tabori, Leo the Last follows the return of an exiled cinema Frankie Dymon’s Death May Be Your Santa
was committed against him; “a process European prince to his father’s mansion in the Eng- Claus (1969), Boorman’s film isn’t doctrinaire in any
of excavation”, as González describes lish capital. In recent years he’s been in the Galápa- shape or form. One scene in which banquet-goers
it. Arruga’s mother Monica becomes a gos, working as an ornithologist, studying exotic cackle and gorge themselves is pure Buñuel. Another
towering presence in the film, channel- birds. The birds in W11 are mostly pigeons and they features a bathhouse full of posh naked people, their
ling her grief and rage into a ferociously flock to the roofs of rundown homes mostly rented bottoms wobbling like those in a Yoko Ono artwork,
focused articulacy and a campaign with by immigrants from the Caribbean. Upon his arrival being asked to “drift and undulate”. (Poor Leo, like
other similarly afflicted parents to bring Leo is weary, laden with ennui; soon though, and a bathetic Monty Python figure, murmurs, “I feel
the culprits to account. Miraculously, much to the bemusement of his fiancée (Billie wet. I feel embarrassed.”) A near-surreal soundtrack
I’m not quite sure how, the various Whitelaw) and the lackeys around him, he finds him- meshes human barking, avant-garde poetry, proto-

WIDER SCREEN
formal strategies – the repetitions, the self peering through his telescope at the new world rap and art-calypso.
blurring, the long takes, the sound- outside his window. What gives Leo the Last savage potency is its set-
image disjuncts – somehow draw us in Where rent-a-gob politicians of the period saw ting, as Platt details in his new book As Kingfishers
further and further and deepen the sense only ghetto urbanism and the end of England, Leo Catch Fire. He explains how it was shot on a street
of loss and absence; it’s a brilliant meld- sees vital signs of life. The skies are grey. You can that was later demolished to make way for an
ing of protest and experimental cinema. almost smell the lard, paraffin, fags. But there’s graft estate that included Grenfell Tower, the 24-storey
My other favourite film was 7 Walks and energy too – preachers and pimps, pawn shop block (described by local workers as “little Africa”)
with Mark Brown, directed by Pierre wheeler-dealing, kids in Halloween masks. In wom- destroyed in a 2017 fire that killed 72 people. Its clos-
Creton and Vincent Barré’s – Creton’s en’s laundry factories, in rough and ready pubs, at the ing scenes, in which Leo himself watches his own
last film, A Prince, was a heavily nar- impromptu protests where white grannies join Black house burn down, become eerie, freshly ghastly.
rated sui generis tale of a gay horticultur- locals in railing against the police, there’s a scuffed, The politics of seeing that Boorman explores in this
ist’s sexual forays in Normandy and my cheek-by-jowl camaraderie, the germ of what Paul wildly idiosyncratic lost film are revealed as being of
highlight of 2023, in which both he and Gilroy has called “multicultural conviviality”. life-and-death importance.
Barré featured as actors. This latest Leo the Last is an early inquiry into the mysteries
is a documentary diptych; in the first and possibilities of the ‘white gaze’. Mastroianni’s As Kingfishers Catch Fire by Edward Platt
section a tiny filmmaking crew and a character, a voyeur of sorts, is always peering at his is published by Texte und Töne
couple of botanists, including Brown,
search for rare plants to film on a 16mm
camera during seven walks around
Normandy. The second part of the film
shows the plants they’ve filmed while
Brown explains in voiceover what they
are and what makes them so special.
One of several pleasures afforded by
the film is observing a small commu-
nity forge powerful emotional bonds
over the course of their week together,
through their dedication to capturing
on luminous film stock those botanical
species which tend to escape notice, or
may not survive the pressures of climate
change or invasive farming methods. In
the second half, the plants look as if
they’re lit from within, joyful presences
every bit as complex and substantial as
IMAGE: BFI NATIONAL ARCHIVE

the humans observing them. It’s a qui-

etly ecstatic film, and by dint of its devo-
tional attention to the natural world, its
sense of vocation and its labours of love,
it felt completely at one with the spirit
of the festival itself. ABOVE Marcello Mastroianni in John Boorman’s Leo the Last (1970)
 88

Hollywood
on the Tiber
AUTHORS HANK K AUFMAN
& GENE LERNER
PUBLISHER STICKING PLACE BOOKS
PAGES 408
ISBN 9781942782858

REVIEWED BY PAMELA HUTCHINSON

This juicy showbiz memoir depicts the

Roman film industry in the 1950s and
1960s as a paradise for cinephiles: the
auteurs of neorealism rubbing shoul-
ders with Italy’s greatest stars and a
stream of excitable Hollywood visitors.
All the glamour of Roman Holiday (Wil-
liam Wyler, 1953) and La dolce vita (Fed-
erico Fellini, 1960), and just a hint of the
bureaucracy and backroom deals that
allowed the cameras to turn and the
cocktail parties to swing. Anita Ekberg
dancing in the Trevi Fountain in the small
hours, but the camera pulls back for a few
seconds to reveal the heavy wading boots
she wore to protect her feet from the
freezing February waters.
In 1953, Hank Kaufman and Gene
Lerner were a couple of young Ameri-
cans besotted with Europe who decided
to do whatever it took to stay on the con-
tinent. Their scheme was to open a movie
talent agency in Rome, and while this
was not exactly welcomed by the locals,
somehow Hank and Gene made it work.
BOOKS

They positioned themselves at the centre

of a glamorous exchange of transatlantic own. Hank and Gene rarely seem to meet Summertime (1955) opposite Katharine
celebrities and cineastes, with a front-row a female star at eye level, rhapsodising Hepburn, but were pushed out of the
seat for Hollywood’s European expan- about the figures of Sophia Loren, Gina deal – and the commission. Of all the
sion, and rapidly became confidantes and Lollobrigida, Ekberg and more with anecdotes here, the most breathtaking,
counsellors to stars from Ava Gardner to phrases such as “twin mountains and the and unedifying, involves Ava Gardner,
Anna Magnani. gorge between them”, “mammoth mam- who had famously played the mixed-race
Hollywood on the Tiber is officially their mary equipment” and other inelegant character Julie in Show Boat (George
account of the rise and fall of Kaufman- variations. Regrettably, if they have noth- Sidney, 1951) contemplating whether to
Lerner Associates, but in fact it is some- ing nice to say about a woman’s bosom, accept another role as a Black woman –
thing far more appealing: a breathless col- they focus instead on her “fatness” in less Billie Holiday. In a quite uncomfortable
lection of intimate anecdotes about their complimentary terms. scene, Gene attempts to advise Gardner
A-list clientele, comprising tantrums and Still there is plenty of good, solid busi- frankly, without neglecting his unwritten
trysts and the occasional troubled con- ness here and when the book concen- obligation to flatter his client: “A white
tract negotiation. The book was written trates on the nuts and bolts of making woman doing Billie… It’s tough, Ava.
at the very end of the 1970s and published Hollywood on movies it is fascinating. How their actors But I really think you can do it.” The duo
in an Italian translation in 1982. It is now staged a strike to persuade Italian pro- wrestle with the dilemma until Gene hits
published in English for the first time.
the Tiber has a ducers to include their representatives in upon the idea of writing to an outside
As such, this is film history at a double heady appeal: negotiations, how they worked out a clan- authority: the novelist James Baldwin.
remove, tales of the mid-century, through an insider’s view destine deal with Charlie Chaplin for A His measured reply settles the matter:
a filter that already seems euphemistic King in New York (1957), how they talked “It is widely rumoured – and this may
(about Hank and Gene’s own romantic
of the business Marlon Brando out of escaping from sound like a joke, but it isn’t – that Ava
relationship, in particular), and occasion- that maintains the the Italian premiere of On the Waterfront Gardner is white… In this particular case,
ally quaint. lovestruck gaze (Elia Kazan, 1954), how they persuaded I don’t quite see how we could hope to
Not that that should stop most of Ekberg to dance in that fountain for Fell- get around this problem.” Diana Ross
the fun. Kaufman and Lerner lean into
of a movie fan ini… The enthusiasm is muted occasion- went on to play Billie Holiday, in Lady
the allure of their subject, recalling tem- ally, just enough to make it clear that this Sings the Blues (Sidney J. Furie, 1972),
pestuous encounters with high-strung is a tale with a serious side. The arrival of and although the authors maintain that
clients in uncanny detail. And the prose Hollywood on the Tiber was not always Gardner could have triumphed in the
is ripe. This book is rich with flagrantly a boon to the Italian film industry, and role, we can all be grateful for Baldwin’s
overwritten tributes to the eternal city many of those emigrés were escaping the gracious intervention.
(“Rome, seductive courtesan of the night, brutalities of the House Un-American Hollywood on the Tiber has a heady
was continuing to exercise her sorcery”), Activities Committee back in the US. appeal: an insider’s view of the busi-
where “luminaries” enjoy “repasts”… as Also, Gene, for example, increasingly ness that maintains the lovestruck gaze
IMAGE: BFI NATIONAL ARCHIVE

such the style is perfectly fitted to the wanted to write rather than represent, of a movie fan. As a partial account of a
subject. That said, the reader’s patience which meant leaving Rome. celebrated period in cinema, it offers all
may wear thin on the subject of décolle- ABOVE Then there are the deals unbrokered. the pleasures of a great party: beautiful
Gregory Peck and
tage. The descriptions of famous breasts Audrey Hepburn in
Gene and Hank candidly recall how they people, exaggerated emotions, grade-A
in this book could fill a chapter of their Roman Holiday (1953) placed Rossano Brazzi in David Lean’s gossip and only a trifling hangover.
 89

Journalist, programmer and producer office, even Lambert was not rewarded
Heidi Honeycutt’s I Spit on Your Cel- with further big budgets.
luloid: The History of Women Directing Where female filmmakers have long
Horror Movies opens with a foreword by been sidelined by both a toxic indus-
Mary Lambert, whose Stephen King try and its chroniclers, Honeycutt’s
adaptation Pet Sematary (1989) was book serves as corrective and antidote,
the first large studio-produced horror restoring women to front-row centre
film to be directed by a woman – but – although it is no hagiography and
a publisher’s oversight has omitted pulls few punches, describing outsider
Lambert’s name and left the foreword Doris Wishman’s œuvre, for example, as
unattributed. It is a peculiarly sym- “remarkably, objectively terrible”. Its nine
bolic accident, for the history of horror chapters represent a detailed account, in
cinema has been marked by the erasure chronological order (with digressions),

I Spit On Your Celluloid of female directors.

Women’s silents are mostly lost and
of the women who have found accom-
modation, sometimes uneasily, within
THE HISTORY OF WOMEN known to us only by their titles, while genre cinema, typically through oppor-
DIRECTING HORROR MOVIES the prolif ic early practitioner Alice tunities offered by individuals like Roger
Guy-Blaché, cinema’s first female direc- Corman, by television (particularly
AUTHOR HEIDI HONEYCUT T tor, has been broadly overlooked or well-covered here), or by home release,
PUBLISHER HEADPRESS reduced by film historians. Later film- streaming and crowdfunding.
PAGES 464
ISBN 9781915316295 makers have had to use male pseudo- In her preface, Honeycutt ascribes the
nyms to be taken seriously or get admit- book’s genesis to a list of female horror
REVIEWED BY ANTON BITEL ted to festivals, or have seen their work directors she first saw in 2005, which she
vilified or attributed to their male co- then spent 17 years expanding and refin-
directors or to others – recent publicity ing – and if these synopses, profiles, inter-
for Candyman (2021) foregrounded pro- view snippets and contextualisations for
ducer Jordan Peele while effacing direc- many hundreds of films and filmmakers,
tor Nia DaCosta. Initially dismissed by some familiar, some obscure, feel like a
most critics but a decade later gaining list, exhaustive and sometimes exhaust-
recognition and a fandom, Karyn Kusa- ing, that is the point. Impressively inter-
ma’s Jennifer’s Body (2009) exemplifies nationalist in its outlook, this revision-
the way in which the subversions of ist history sets the record straight (and
women-directed horror take their time occasionally queer), reinscribing the
to be properly appreciated. Meanwhile, overlooked, the marginalised and the
despite Pet Sematary’s success at the box forgotten women in horror.

BOOKS
This revisionist history sets the record straight (and occasionally queer),
reinscribing the overlooked, the marginalised and the forgotten women in horror
I SPIT ON YOUR CELLULOID: THE HISTORY OF WOMEN DIRECTING HORROR MOVIES

Of the three arms of Hollywood film films and series you want, and been
business – production, distribution irritated at the amount of dreck you
and exhibition – distribution is the least have to wade through to find the gems,
explored. But to ignore the economic then you are essentially in the position
heart of the industry would be to lose of an exhibitor of the 1920s, trying to
substantial insight into film history. get the sure-fire hits to the audience
Derek Long’s Playing the Percentages is all while being tied into block-booking
the more welcome as a rare study of the contracts. It was all about packaging,
money-making part of the film business marketing and complex scheduling of
as it developed from the 1910s and into films of varying appeal, across a hierar-
the sound era of the 1930s. chy of 16,500 theatres, all based on those
“The whole machinery of the manu- individual contracts.
facture of motion pictures depends on Long’s detailed study also presents

Playing the Percentages

the good faith and stability of individual us with several revelations about the
contracts with theatre owners,” said Will rise of Hollywood up to its so-called
HOW FILM DISTRIBUTION MADE THE Hays (yes, he of the Hays Code) when Golden Age: the extent to which film
HOLLYWOOD STUDIO SYSTEM he was head of the Motion Pictures Dis- distribution business models in the US
tributors and Producers Association. developed along the lines of the vaude-
AUTHOR DEREK LONG This is the particular focus of Long’s ville and legitimate theatre circuits that
PUBLISHER UNIVERSITY OF TEX AS book: how the precarious house of cards, preceded it; how special product – A-list
PAGES 296
ISBN 978147 7328941 made up of the competing interests of acts or popular feature films – tended to
theatre managers, booking agents and operate under special distribution con-
REVIEWED BY BRYONY DIXON filmmakers, had to be constantly rebuilt tracts with the more lucrative theatres;
and the particular place of distribution how the distributors tried to smooth
in generating money for production and business transactions by standardising
circulating films to the cinemas. contracts, introducing percentage book-
Long observes many traits that are ing and other strategies to maximise rev-
surprisingly similar to how we receive enue well before the transition to sound
Hollywood product today. As a viewer, film; and how distribution was financ-
if you have ever grumbled at how many ing and influencing production. There
contracts you have to have with dif- is a useful glossary for the unfamiliar
ferent streaming platforms to get the business terms.
 FROM THE ARCHIVE 91

A STAR IS BORN
In nearly eighty films during the silent era the Danish star Asta Nielsen
established herself as one of the all-time greats of screen acting and a global icon
of contemporary womanhood, one whose influence is still felt today
SIGHT AND SOUND, AUTUMN 1973. BY ROBERT C. ALLEN

“She tore a piece of quivering human her “the most fascinating personality of the mouth was too thin, her nose was crooked, The Copenhagen
flesh out and held it toward the light for primitive era”. Lotte Eisner in The Haunted she had no figure, her voice was not a
all to see. Her amazing face had toward Screen refers to her as “an intellectual of female alto but a male tenor. So in 1910,
theatre directors
the end a tragic power without equal.” great refinement . . . the quintessence, the after years of playing an 80-year-old farm- would only cast
Thomas Krag epitome of her era”. Béla Balázs wrote, er’s wife one night and a French coquette her in character
“Dip the flags before her, dip the flags the next, she had little to lose by accept-
“She is all. She is the drunkard’s before her, for she is unique.” To all but a ing an offer from Urban Gad, a theatre art
roles. She would
vision and the hermit’s dream.” few film historians and scholars, however, director, to act in a film he had written for not, they felt,
Guillaume Apollinaire Nielsen’s death in 1972 was noted, if at all, her. Gad had secured 8,ooo kronor back- be accepted as
as merely the passing of a vaguely familiar ing from a theatre-owner friend – exactly
It was Asta Nielsen’s first film perfor- figure from the cinema’s dim beginnings. enough for eight days shooting. The Abyss
a leading lady.
mance, in the 1910 Danish filmThe Abyss, Sixty-three years ago, in Apollinaire’s was made during the summer of 1910 in a Her mouth was
which inspired these panegyrics. These words, “a new light seemed to shine from deserted jailyard, on the streets of Copen- too thin, her nose
two poets were the first of many to laud the screen”. hagen, and in the Frederiksberg Gardens.
the talents of the great Danish actress Nielsen had been working in the Danish Only the cameraman, Alfred Lind (who
was crooked
during her 22-year career. Her 76 films theatre for nearly a decade before she made also thought Nielsen should not have been
reveal a consistently high level of per- The Abyss. Since reading Ibsen’s Brand given a leading role), had ever made a film,
ALL IMAGES: BFI NATIONAL ARCHIVE

formance and a vast range of characters (1865) at the age of eight, she had dreamed and he and Gad frequently quarrelled
which made her one of the first, if not the of being a great tragedienne. But the during the shoot.
first, and one of the greatest, if not the Copenhagen theatre directors would only Gad and Nielsen made no secret of
greatest, international screen stars of the cast her in character roles. She would not, the fact that they were making the film OPPOSITE
1910s and 1920s. Siegfried Kracauer called they felt, be accepted as a leading lady. Her to attract the notice of the Copenhagen Asta Nielsen
92 FROM THE ARCHIVE

characters and locales as diverse as possi-

ble to provide a constant challenge to her
versatility. Once the characters had been
selected and the scripts written, Nielsen
began the laborious process of “becoming”
the characters.
Her efforts were rewarded. By the end
of her contract with Union, in the summer
of 1914, her name was known all over the
world. She was receiving fan letters from
England and South America, and had cin-
emas named for her in Düsseldorf, Naga-
saki and San Francisco. Her films had
begun to reach America early in 1912, but
Nielsen’s success in the United States was
abruptly halted by the outbreak of World
War I. It was to be seven years before her
films would be seen again on American or
English screens. Still very much a Dane,
and for the most part apolitical, she left
Germany at the beginning of the war and,
after a cruise to South America and the
United States, settled in Copenhagen. She
had not been forgotten in Europe, how-
ever; both French and German soldiers
decorated their trenches with her picture.
In 1916 she returned to Germany to
make a series of films for Neutral Films,
of which the best were The ABC of Love
and The Eskimo Baby, both comedies. She
found comedy difficult; she remembered
being “completely devoid of any trace of
humour at all” during her stage training in
theatre establishment. But the theatre her desperation, grinding her body against The character Copenhagen. It was more likely that her
directors boycotted the premiere, held at his, her expression an ecstatic trance. sense of the comic was buried, requiring
the Kosmorama cinema on 12 September The Abyss would hardly have stirred a
which emerges the ego boost of The Abyss and the self-
1910. Director and star hardly had time to ripple of interest had it not been for the from her confidence of continued success to bring
commiserate with each other. As Nielsen acting of Asta Nielsen. Her style was in comedies is the it to the surface. What we see on the screen
recalls in her autobiography: “Soon the direct opposition to the reigning tech- is far from forced, and her acting is so self-
film was being shown all over the world, nique of exaggerated gesticulation. After
unstoppable assured that one might think she had come
and everywhere everyone agreed that... a killing Mr Rudolf, for example, instead extrovert, into film after years in the music hall. The
turning point had been reached in the his- of indulging in wild breastbeating she constantly character which emerges from her com-
tory of the cinema. The papers which had walks towards the camera in the last scene edies is the unstoppable extrovert, con-
never reviewed films before now praised in an almost somnambulistic trance, her
plotting and stantly plotting and endowed with more
this first proof of film’s claim to being an expression hardly changing throughout endowed with energy and determination than all the
artform. In spite of the film being distrib- the sustained shot; yet – as the Norwegian more energy and other characters put together.
uted without our names being mentioned writer Thomas Krag said – her face has “a In 1920 Nielsen formed her own pro-
on it, my name everywhere rose like a tragic power without equal”. Hers was a
determination duction company, Art Films, and chose
phoenix out of the ashes. Letters from all restrained, naturalistic style, her frugal use than all the as its first venture a version of Hamlet
corners of the world began to pour in to of external gesture riveting attention on other characters with herself in the title role. The idea had
me, the adventure of the film had become her expressive face. come from the book The Mystery of Hamlet
my reality.” The success of The Abyss soon came to
put together by Edward Vining, who suggested that
In The Abyss, Nielsen plays Magda, the attention of Paul Davidsohn, Berlin Hamlet had actually been a woman forci-
a young music teacher who becomes theatre-owner and president of projek- bly raised as a man so that a male should
engaged to Knud, an engineer. On a trip tions A.G. Union (PAGU), a forerun- succeed the throne in time of war.
to the country to meet his parents, her ner of UFA. Davidsohn made Gad and Nielsen had played men before and
eye is caught by an advertisement for a Nielsen a handsome offer to go to Berlin she had played women playing men, but
travelling circus featuring the dashing, to make two films, with an option for an only in comedies. The challenge in Hamlet
chap-clad cowboy, Mr Rudolf. She per- extension of their contract. The Moth (1911) was to play a sexually ambivalent role for
suades Knud to take her to the circus, and Burning Blood (aka Gypsy Blood, 1911) its tragedy. Her litheness and energy lend
and Mr Rudolf is struck by his attractive repeated the success of The Abyss, and the credence to her maleness as a decidedly
admirer. That night, while rhapsodising couple, now married, moved to Berlin. unbrooding Hamlet; but we are never
over the debonair entertainer, Magda is Nielsen made over 30 films for Union allowed to forget that Hamlet not only is
startled to see him climbing through her between 1911 and 1914, all but a few writ- a woman but has the feelings and desires
bedroom window. With a profession of ten and directed by Gad. These four years of a woman – desires which can never be
everlasting love and a fiery kiss, Mr Rudolf were a self-imposed and self-supervised fulfilled. The mood of the film is an unu-
carries her away to join his nomadic life. apprenticeship: her goal was the develop- sual mixture of outdoor epic and dimly
Hero soon turns to villain, however, as we ment of a “silent language” which would lit interior intimacy. The costumes and
learn that Mr Rudolf showers his affec- “make the spirit visible”, and she worked sets are lavish and the backgrounds filled
tions on any female within striking dis- towards it in everything from her selection with extras. Battle scenes and banquets
tance. All attempts to contain her roving of roles to her stern self-criticism. Most of anticipate later costume f ilms, while
ABOVE
lover having failed, Magda seizes his lasso the films, made in series of eight, were writ- Asta Nielsen in Bruno Rahn’s
some of the interiors have the shadowy
and coils it round him. Then, in what for ten during the winter and shot in summer. Tragedy of the Street (1927) gloom of expressionist works. Despite
1910 must have been a scandalously erotic Nielsen worked closely with Gad in the OPPOSITE
some unfavourable opinions the film was
dance, she declares both her passion and selection of material – choosing themes, Nielsen in Urban Gad’s S1 (1913) a great success.
 FROM THE ARCHIVE 95

‘IT FELL TO ME TO DISCOVER

THE SILENT, COMPLICATED
LANGUAGE OF THOUGHTS’:
Many regard Lulu in Tragedy of the Street as Nielsen’s THE LIFE OF ASTA NIELSEN
best and most sustained dramatic performance. Asta Nielsen was born into a poor working-
The simplicity of this, her last great silent film, provides class Copenhagen family in 1881; her father,
often unemployed, died when she was 14 years
a showcase for the display of her ‘silent language’ old. Despite her humble origins Nielsen was
accepted into the prestigious Royal Danish
Theatre aged 18 to train as an actor. When she
was 21 she gave birth to a daughter, but never
Another outstanding film of this period ‘street’ films, Tragedy of the Street (1927), for OPPOSITE revealed the father’s identity, raising the child
Asta Nielsen as Hamlet in
was Earth Spirit (1923), directed by Leo- Bruno Rahn. Nielsen plays Auguste, an her 1921 film of the play
on her own.
pold Jessner. Based on the play by Frank ageing prostitute, first seen sitting at her After graduating from the theatre school in
Wedekind, the film features one of the shabby dressing table before a cracked 1902 Nielsen spent the next few years touring
in stage shows, establishing herself as a
most fascinating characters of the German mirror applying shoe polish to her grey-
fixture in the Scandinavian theatre scene. Her
screen: Lulu, the ultimate femme fatale, the ing hair with a toothbrush. Many regard first film role was The Abyss (1910), directed
heartless siren whose life is spent in gratifi- this as Nielsen’s best and most sustained by Urban Gad, an erotic melodrama about
cation of an insatiable physical passion. To dramatic performance. Certainly her rep- a woman who tragically falls for a wayward
those who have only seen her photograph resentation of a woman fighting off the circus performer. The combination of
it is perhaps difficult to imagine Nielsen approach of age has an inevitable ring of Nielsen’s perfectly pitched naturalistic acting
as a sex symbol; but from the fragments truth – Nielsen was 46 when the picture and her erotic allure, the latter most apparent
of Earth Spirit which have been preserved was made. The simplicity of this, her last in a celebrated ‘gaucho dance’, made her an
overnight sensation.
it is easy to understand why some of her great silent film, provides a showcase for
She and Gad married and made many more
admirers regarded her as the most erotic the display of her ‘silent language’. In the films together, moving to Berlin in 1911 where
screen actress of her time. True, on appear- early scenes, rejuvenated by love for a the producer Paul Davidson, recognising her
ance alone, she does not have the immedi- young man, she reaches back towards the still burgeoning potential, provided Nielsen
ate attraction of a Garbo or a Dietrich; but innocence of Magda in The Abyss – an effect with her own studio facilities (eventually to
her not unattractive features, combined made more powerful by her age and the become UFA) and an eyewatering annual fee.
with an intense power of expression, make accoutrements of her profession. Following the further success of films such
her Lulu just as erotic as Dietrich’s garter- The sound film made its debut in Ger- as The Girl Without a Country (1912) and Jugend
und Tollheit (1913), Nielsen was by now the pre-
belted Lola Lola. many in 1929, but Nielsen was reluctant
eminent female film star of the era.
By the mid-1920s, films of the calibre of to try the medium, feeling that the stage She parted ways with Gad as war broke out,
Earth Spirit were becoming scarce. Many rather than the screen was the place for setting up her own production company in
studios had fallen into the hands of greedy theatrical dialogue. In 1932, however, she Berlin which gave her unprecedented control
distributors, and American interests had agreed to play the role of Vera Holck in over the films she starred in. In 1921 she was
invaded the German industry, reducing Impossible Love, directed by Erich Wasch- a female Hamlet in a screen adaptation of
some domestic producers to grinding neck). The original novel dealt with a Shakespeare’s play. As the German industry
out ‘quota films’ necessary for American middle-aged woman artist who falls in love became more director-focused, Nielsen had
less control of her projects, but continued
imports. It was fortunate, therefore, that with an elderly sculptor, marries him and
working in Berlin until 1932, starring
G.W. Pabst, wanting to add some ‘names’ lives happily. In the film version the sculp- alongside Garbo in The Joyless Street (1925),
to his production of The Joyless Street (1925) tor became a young man with a deranged directed by G.W. Pabst. She retired from
after deciding on an unknown (Garbo) for wife, and the ‘impossible love’ ended screen acting as sound was taking over,
one of the leads, turned to Nielsen and tragically. Once bitten, twice shy: Nielsen spending the last part of her life in theatre
Werner Krauss. retired from films. She continued to live in and writing her autobiography. Nielsen died
Nielsen’s role is a development of her Germany until 1936, when she returned on 24 May 1972.
Magda in The Abyss. She plays Maria to Copenhagen – not before, she claimed,
Lechner, a girl caught up in the poverty of refusing an offer from the Führer himself to
post-war Vienna who sells herself to a rich head her own studio.
THE ORIGINAL ISSUE
speculator so that her boyfriend can make While her screen life faded into the
a profit on the stock exchange. She discov- limbo of a retired star, Nielsen’s last 35 PUBLISHED IN
ers him being unfaithful, however, stran- years remained full and active. She wrote SIGHT AND SOUND, AUTUMN 1973
gles her rival and resigns herself to being short stories, two volumes of autobiog-
BY
the speculator’s kept woman, letting the raphy, and articles on film, politics and ROBERT C. ALLEN
police think her boyfriend committed the social matters. After the war she unsuc-
murder. But a spark of conscience returns cessfully applied 13 times for a licence to
and she confesses the crime. open a cinema in Denmark. The official
The real poignancy of the film comes reason for her being turned down was
from Maria, who although she does sell her advanced years, but there was also the
out to the parasites of society, shows her- threat of a scandal involving the release of
self to be the only really moral character certain ‘evidence’ that she had once been
by choosing to accept the consequences too friendly with the Nazis. Although she
of her actions. Whereas the moral nadir had never been even vaguely sympathetic
of The Abyss occurred with the rope- to the Nazi cause, the government bowed
dance, in The Joyless Street it comes in a to the pressure.
brilliant scene in which the speculator In 1968, Nielsen made a short documen-
enters a shady hotel room accompa- tary of her career with Poul Reumert, Mr.
nied by a frizzy-haired woman in a see- Rudolf of The Abyss. In the final scene she
through, sequined dress. The woman sits among the art treasures of her Copen-
turns towards the camera and is seen to hagen apartment and says, “I am only wait-
be Maria, a vacant, lifeless expression on ing to die,” a single tear trickling down her
her gaudily painted face. cheek. After the scene was shot she is said
After an almost two-year absence from to have told the cameraman, “I hope you
the screen, during which she toured in got that. I don’t think I have another screen
a play, she returned to do the last of the tear left in me.”
 1998
96

THIS MONTH IN…

With the REVIEWS THE BUTCHER BOY
current Labour Charlotte O’Sullivan was impressed
with the way in which director Neil
administration Jordan takes us into the mind of a child
experiencing murderer, in his adaptation (pictured)
of Patrick McCabe’s celebrated novel.
a bumpy start “What the boy sees, we see. Francie’s
in its first few lonely, feverish brain makes jubilant
months, a look use of the images and language of
comic books, television and films
back at the early THE BLACKOUT
and they fill the screen with an exotic
days of the Blair Kim Newman was excited by Abel
Ferrara’s film about an actor with
brilliance that turns Francie’s dour
reality into a savage wonderland.
government addiction issues, starring Matthew What begins as a trickle of whimsy
in 1998 finds Modine and Béatrice Dalle (pictured). turns into a flood of special effects:
men acquire wasps’ heads; a town is
“At this stage in his career, a Ferrara
a similar tale movie commands respect and
reduced to apocalyptic dust. This is
of cuts and demands multiple viewings. If The
similar to the unpredictable, kitsch
world of Dennis Potter’s The Singing
Blackout seems not quite up to the
criticism, as level of his most recent masterpieces…
Detective (1986) – as we enter hospital
outlined in nevertheless, no one in US cinema is
wards, we expect the patients to break
into song.”
willing or capable to go as far as this,
Nick James’s and Ferrara must be classed as one
editorial in of the greatest directors, currently Images fill the screen
March that year. working at the top of his form.” with an exotic brilliance…
The focus is on the £1.5 million reduction to the Arts what begins as a trickle
Council of England’s grant, dramatically affecting of whimsy turns into a
the more experimental end of UK filmmaking. flood of special effects:
This comment in particular by James has the ring men acquire wasps’ heads;
of familiarity: “Whether the current hard times are a town is reduced to dust
merely a symptom of staying within preset Tory
spending limits or not doesn’t matter, because one GOOD WILL HUNTING

thing Labour’s leaders are certain of – and rightly Liese Spencer found plenty to enjoy
in Gus Van Sant’s latest, especially the
so – is how precious the taxpayer’s money is.” compelling performance of ‘new face’
Matt Damon.
COVER “A rites-of-passage story of how a
Erik Bauer’s revealing cover interview with Quentin Tarantino, to mark 20-year-old orphan comes to terms
his third directorial feature Jackie Brown, starring Pam Grier, brought forth with childhood abuse and his
this arresting explanation on how he writes scripts. exceptional mathematical gift,
Good Will Hunting is the most
“I try not to get analytical during the writing process. I try just to keep the
mainstream movie Van Sant has
flow from my brain to my hand and go with the moment and go with my guts.
directed to date. Its character-driven
To me, truth is the big thing. Constantly you’re writing something and you get
drama could have been sentimental
to a place where your characters could go this way or that and I just can’t lie.
were it not for its caustic and often
The characters have to be true to themselves. And that’s something I don’t see
very funny script by star Matt Damon
in a lot of Hollywood movies. I see characters lying all the time. They can’t do
and co-star Ben Affleck.”
this because it would affect the movie this way, or this demographic might
not like it. To me a character can’t do anything good or bad, they can only do
something that’s true or not.”

INSIDE STORY
Geoffrey Macnab spoke to Shane Meadows about his new
film TwentyFourSeven, starring Bob Hoskins (pictured below)
as an old bruiser who starts a boxing club in a town which
ELSEWHERE IN THE ISSUE
has fallen on hard times, asking why he chose to shoot in
AMISTAD · Simon Beaufoy gives an appreciative
black and white.
Steven Spielberg’s take on the 1839 slave take on Ken Loach’s Riff-Raff (1991).
“British films have earned a reputation in certain
revolt follows a classic crime-story · An exploration of how video
quarters for looking like they’re made for television.
pattern but ended up as something of technology has changed both the way
I think people associate black and white with
a mixed bag for Philip Strick. we live and the film industry.
cinema, and I wanted the film to have a dignity.
· Obituaries of James Stewart,
There are two types of black and white: “Except for the startlingly clumsy
King Hu and Shirley Clarke.
there’s the gritty, “we had to make it on sequence in which the Africans
· A look at the career of one of
16mm black and white because it was discover for themselves the story of
the giants of American cinema,
cheaper”, and there’s the black and Christ… Spielberg puts it all together
IMAGES: BFI NATIONAL ARCHIVE

Sam Fuller.
white which is more expensive, with great polish, only to fall on
shot on 35mm through a bleach his face at the end as the hard
by-pass process. This type is facts of history preclude his A 12-month subscription to Sight and
Sound includes full access to the 92-year
quite beautiful, and it’s trademark scenes of reunion archive of the magazine. Visit bfi.org.uk/
what I was going for.” and reconciliation.” sight-and-sound/magazine/subscriptions
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98

ENDINGS

Golden Eighties (1986)

Despite the practical advice on matters of the heart
that closes Chantal Akerman’s musical comedy of love,
loss and consumerism set in a Brussels shopping mall,
the film reveals her to be an incorrigible romantic

BY HENRY K. MILLER
Mado loves Robert, but Robert loves credits and cue the very catchy theme
Lili, but Lili is carrying on with M. Jean, music. It is a line Billy Wilder would
the married landlord of her hair salon. have been proud of. In the very last
Robert’s father, who runs the clothes second, just as he finishes delivering it,
shop opposite with his wife Jeanne, just before the cut, Jeanne turns to her
says he should marry a nice girl anyway, husband with a smile of assent, because
and so Robert proposes to Mado – but these are the words they have lived by
is caught carrying on with Lili. Poor – he too, we know, was in love with a
Mado, and poor Lili, who is kicked out passionate, “impossible creature” before
by M. Jean. Three months later, Robert he met Jeanne. “We’ve worked hard
is re-engaged to Mado, and managing a together. It’s a real love match.”
new shop in what used to be Lili’s salon, M. Schwartz, played by Charles
but then the irresistible Lili returns. Denner in his last role, is the first father
Poor Mado. For all but the last two min- to have a significant part in any of Chan-
utes and last two shots of Golden Eighties tal Akerman’s films, and practically the
(1986) we are in an underground shop- last. The next father of signif icance
ping mall in Brussels with nary a shard in her work is the real M. Akerman,
of natural light to illuminate the ineffa- recounted after his death in A Family
bly 80s decor. But now it’s closing time, in Brussels (1998), a book she wrote
the final song has been sung and Rob- mostly in her mother’s voice: “A very
ert’s parents are going to give the jilted strong man who was never sick and who
Mado – wearing her wedding dress – a had already survived so many things,
consolatory dinner, and we emerge with notably his sister’s suicide and the fact
them into the Saturday afternoon sun. that one of his daughters had no chil-
The mood changes, but the melo- dren and wasn’t married.” Akerman’s
drama continues: they instantly bump mother Natalia is a more familiar figure,
into Eli and his new bride – Eli, the appearing both “as herself ” and in vari-
man Jeanne loves, the man she met dec- ous fictional guises, including Jeanne
ades earlier, when he was an American Dielman. Both Jeannes are played by
soldier and she was a survivor of the Delphine Seyrig, and both have similar
camps. He never married, he waited life stories – namely, both are Holocaust
for her. We know this because, while survivors, and this is more explicit in
the Mado-Robert-Lili-M. Jean quad- Golden Eighties – but they are quite differ-
rangle was unfolding, Eli re-entered her ent performances, different women.
life and asked her to come away with Like her other work, Akerman’s film
him, and she said no – “The love you’re both is and is not autobiographical.
talking about is for the young.” On the Golden Eighties represents the side of
street Jeanne simply introduces him Brussels she needed to get away from: I
to her husband and bids him farewell. think she was perplexed by the way her
But for the rest of the scene she looks parents, having endured hell, seemed to
in the direction he has gone in, while M. embrace the petit bourgeois values that
Schwartz – Jeanne’s husband, Robert’s their lives as shopkeepers demanded,
father, never given a first name – tries to but she wasn’t contemptuous of them.
cheer Mado up with words that might It’s drippy Mado and preening Robert
apply to Jeanne as well. Lili and Robert who the film has little time for; at least
won’t last, he says, but you shouldn’t the Schwartzes have chosen their path.
wait for him. But the life of hard work and frequent
“You’ll see how fickle the heart is: it weddings wasn’t for Akerman, whose
has to love somebody.” Warming to his lyrics for the songs that make up the
well-rehearsed theme, he says it’s like body of the film (composed by Marc
Like her other work, Akerman’s film
dresses: you see one you like, but maybe Hérouet), particularly the last, ‘Puisque both is and is not autobiographical.
it’s too expensive, maybe on inspection l’amour est plus fort que tout’, reveal her Golden Eighties represents the side of
it’s badly made, or maybe it looks better as an incorrigible romantic. She had to
on the rack than it does on you. “So walk around naked.
Brussels she needed to get away from
you have to choose another. After all,
The retrospective, ‘Chantal Akerman: ABOVE Lio as Mado, Delphine Seyrig as Jeanne and Charles Denner as
you can’t walk around naked. If people Adventures in Perception’, is playing at M. Schwartz (top and bottom); M. Schwartz, Mado and Jeanne meet
did that, we’d be out of business!” Roll BFI Southbank, London, until 18 March Jeanne’s former love Eli, played by John Berry, and his new bride (middle)
 and

Sarah Kodi Eric Nick Jacki

SNOOK SMIT-McPHEE BANA CAVE WEAVER

★★★★
“Charming And Poignant”
THE GUARDIAN

,
rds but
wa we
back hav
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SCREENDAILY

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ACTRESS IN A ACTRESS IN A
BEST PICTURE
INTERNATIONAL ADAPTED ORIGINAL ORIGINAL SONG ORIGINAL SONG
DIRECTING
LEADING ROLE SUPPORTING ROLE FEATURE FILM SCREENPLAY SCORE “EL MAL” “MI CAMINO”
JACQUES AUDIARD
KARLA SOFÍA GASCÓN ZOE SALDAÑA EDITING MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING SOUND CINEMATOGRAPHY