Simon Killer (2012)

12 Wednesday Jul 2017

Tags

Antonio Campos, Brady Corbet, Catch Up movie, Constance Rousseau, Drama, La Pigalle, Mati Diop, Paris, Prostitute, Review, Thriller

D: Antonio Campos / 105m

Cast: Brady Corbet, Mati Diop, Constance Rousseau, Lila Salet, Solo, Michaël Abiteboul

There’s a particular sub-genre of dramas where the protagonist travels to another country in order to get away from some trauma or terrible circumstance that has affected them badly, or which they were responsible for. Such is the case with writer/director Antonio Campos’ third feature, Simon Killer. Here the protagonist is recent college graduate Simon (Corbet), who has come to Paris following the break up of his relationship with a girl called Michelle. At least, that’s what he tells people, and especially Victoria (Diop), a prostitute he begins a relationship with, and Marianne (Rousseau), another young woman he begins seeing when things with Victoria begin to go wrong. He tells them that Michelle was seeing another man, and he has come to Paris to do “nothing at all” in the wake of their break up. But there’s more to the story than Simon is willing to let on, and as the movie progresses, just how much of his story is true becomes more and more relevant.

What also becomes more and more relevant is why Simon’s story might not be true. There’s no one to back it up, and no other evidence to support his claims. As he wanders through the city he meets Marianne and her friend, Sophie (Salet). His French is passable, but is enough to keep him in their company for most of the evening. The next day, Simon is cajoled into visiting a sex club, where he meets Victoria. There’s a connection between them, so much so that Victoria tells him they can meet up outside of the club (though he’ll still have to pay to have sex with her). Following an altercation where Simon is assaulted, he turns to Victoria for help. She takes him home, and in the days that follow, they begin a relationship. Simon, however, soon runs out of money. At first he “borrows” money from Victoria, and then he comes up with the idea to blackmail some of her clients at the club.

Their first attempt doesn’t go as planned, so they target another client, René (Solo). And then one day, Simon runs into Marianne and he asks for her number. The second blackmail attempt is more successful than the first, but their first intended victim (Abiteboul) finds out where Victoria lives and he beats her up. Simon tends to her at first but soon turns his attention to Marianne. They start seeing each other, but with no money, Simon decides to blackmail René again, but when he calls him, repeatedly, each time there’s no answer. It’s only when Simon receives a call from René’s wife who tells him that René has gone missing, that he goes back to Victoria. When he tells her they need to leave Paris immediately, Victoria’s reaction isn’t what he was expecting. Unable to get her to understand the seriousness of their situation, Simon reacts in a way that has unforeseen consequences.

Much of Simon Killer is kept hidden and obscured from the viewer by Campos’ artistic decision to be as elliptical and as cryptic as possible. If you’re a fan of movies made as a kind of intelligence test – can you work out what’s going on and why, and explain it in twenty-five words or less? – then this is the movie for you. And while there is definitely a place for these kinds of movies, when the movie itself can’t or won’t explain itself then the test is more about endurance than intelligence. What is clear is that Simon is damaged, and likely in a way that means he should avoid having close physical and emotional relationships (Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley is an obvious progenitor). An arch manipulator – he uses being assaulted as a means of eliciting sympathy from both Victoria and Marianne – Simon is unconcerned with the feelings of others, and he’s always a little off when he talks about his own; he’s the poor, put-upon victim trying just to get by, and seemingly always at the mercy of others.

As the nominally sociopathic Simon, Corbet is in first-class form, his performance the glue that holds the movie together, and which stops it from becoming entirely forgettable. For make no mistake, Simon Killer is not a movie that satisfies or works, even within its own narrow framework. True, it is stylish and colourful to look at, thanks to the impressive work of DoP Joe Anderson, and it has a powerful soundtrack that balances techno rock with a discordant, unsettling score by Saunder Juriaans and Danny Bensi. But it’s also distant and vague in its mood, and bleak in its outlook, using the backdrop of La Pigalle to overstate the sleazy, absentee-morality of most of the characters, and the seedy milieu in which most of it takes place. It’s also a movie that reliably frustrates the viewer by sending its main character off into the streets of Paris with no fixed destination to aim for, and providing only the back of their head as a viewpoint (Campos also includes several shots that are presented at crotch level; whether this has any real meaning is debatable). Why indie moviemakers feel this is an acceptable way of padding out their movies remains a mystery that may never be solved.

Another mystery involves the nature of his Stateside relationship with Michelle, which is addressed around the halfway mark via an e-mail from said character, but in such a way that it opens up a whole other conundrum that isn’t addressed by Campos, and which only serves to throw confusion into the mix as to Simon’s behaviour and the motives for that behaviour. Sure, he’s a borderline narcissist and sociopath, but something must be driving him. Alas, Campos either knows but doesn’t want to tell us or give us any clues, or he doesn’t know and doesn’t think it’s important. Either way, we can only guess at the true nature of Simon’s mental and emotional malaise. But only if we want to, though, because again, it’s only Corbet’s terrific performance that keeps the viewer anywhere near interested. Campos may be interested in focusing on making the movie a chilly, atmospheric thriller with a decidedly villainous central character – an odious one, even – but it’s not enough to make the movie as compelling or as enthralling as he might believe.

Rating: 5/10 – technically ambitious yet emotionally sterile thanks to the approach to the material by its writer/director, Simon Killer is beset with issues relating to pacing, tone and clarity; a laudable effort then on some levels, but as a whole, this is a movie that frustrates more than it rewards, and which is undermined by a reluctance to let its audience fully engage with its central character (not that you’d necessarily want to). (12/31)

Safelight (2015)

19 Sunday Jul 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Christine Lahti, Drama, Evan Peters, Juno Temple, Kevin Alejandro, Lighthouses, Photography competition, Prostitute, Relationships, Review, Tony Aloupis, Truck stop

D: Tony Aloupis / 83m

Cast: Evan Peters, Juno Temple, Christine Lahti, Kevin Alejandro, Jason Beghe, Ariel Winter, Will Peltz, Don Stark, Joel Gretsch, Ever Carradine, Meaghan Martin, Gigi Rice

California, the Seventies. Charles (Peters) is seventeen, attends high school, has an absent mother, a deceased older brother, a seriously ill father (Beghe), legs that cause him difficulty in walking, and a job working in the diner at a truck stop. One night he sees a teenage girl named Vicki (Temple) accosted by a man called Skid (Alejandro). Charles intervenes and threatens Skid with a baseball bat. Skid is amused by Charles’s attitude and drives off. Over the next few nights, Vicki – who is a prostitute – comes into the diner for coffee, and she and Charles begin a fledgling relationship.

Meanwhile, Charles decides to enter a school photography competition. For his theme he picks the lighthouses of the California coast but his disability stops him from driving. However, when he mentions his idea to Vicki she volunteers to drive him to each location. With each successive trip they grow a little bit closer, and Charles introduces Vicki to his father and his boss at the diner, Peg (Lahti). She impresses them, so much so that Peg invites Vicki and Charles to a girls’ night at a local bar. They dance together for the first time, and later, Vicki takes Charles back to the hotel room where she lives (and which Skid, who’s her pimp, doesn’t know about).

Some time later, Charles persuades Vicki to visit her estranged family: mother Lois (Carradine), and younger sisters Kate (Winter) and Sharon (Martin). The visit doesn’t go as well as Charles had hoped, with recriminations on both sides, and it leads to Vicki disappearing. When Skid begins asking Charles if he’s seen her, he can honestly say no, but Skid makes it clear he’ll find her, no matter what. Charles completes his entry for the photography competition, and goes back to his regular life at the truck stop. It’s when Skid finally does locate Vicki that things take a desperate turn, one that will either bond them together forever, or part them irrevocably.

Slow moving but character driven, Safelight is a contemplative look at how two teenagers (Vicki is eighteen) form a relationship while viewing themselves as outsiders, Charles because of his physical condition, Vicki because of her occupation. It’s an often wistful tale, with sterling performances from Peters and Temple, and assured writing and direction from Aloupis.

But for every positive footstep the movie makes there’s an annoying misstep – sometimes in the very next scene – as Aloupis tries to explore aspects of both lead characters’ lives that don’t immediately add to the central storyline or overall plot. A case in point is the harassment Charles receives at the hands of three bullies. It serves to highlight just how difficult his life is, and the problems he has to face, but it all seems contrived and unnecessary, as if having legs that don’t work properly isn’t enough. It also leads to a scene where Vicki arrives in the nick of time and scares off the bullies with a handgun that she conveniently has in her bag – as if that’s nothing more than the writer/director adding in a bit of wish fulfilment to perk up the audience.

Vicki’s visit to her family is another area in which the script dares to travel where it has no need to go. By the time of the visit, Vicki has already told Charles about her upbringing, and her mother’s abusive boyfriend, so any information we glean has been rendered redundant, and the whole thing isn’t helped by an awkwardly judged performance by Rice as the mother doing her best not to feel guilty at failing to protect her daughter. It leads to the necessary break up of Charles and Vicki, but still it seems like an afterthought in the scriptwriting process.

Thankfully, these missteps don’t hurt the bulk of the (short) running time, but they do seem like intruders, disrupting the movie’s flow and causing the viewer to stop short. Away from these errors of judgment, Apoulis is on firmer ground when dealing with the nascent relationship between Charles and Vicki, and garnering the aforementioned sterling performances from his leads, and in particular, from Alejandro. Where Peters gives Charles a diffidence and lack of confidence that makes him immediately sympathetic, Temple takes Vicki in the opposite direction, making her too worldly-wise yet with a streak of tough vulnerability that she can drawn on when needed. The two characters complement each other, and Peters and Temple display a winning chemistry. At odds with their more structured performances, Alejandro is a sweaty, broiling, unpredictable Skid, his manic movements and unnerving laughter leaving the viewer uncertain as to what he’s going to do next (it sometimes feels as if even Alejandro didn’t know). The movie also picks up some energy when he’s on screen, a valuable counterpoint to the considered perspective offered by Peters and Temple.

At its heart, of course, the movie is an unconventional love story, and it’s here that it’s at its most effective. While the idea of two professed outsiders finding common ground isn’t unusual in the movies, what Aloupis has done is to make a virtue of Charles’ emotional reticence, and Vicki’s need to be loved for herself and not just her body (which leads to an uncomfortable and telling moment in Vicki’s motel room). With their relationship falling into place so neatly and plausibly, Aloupis moves the supporting characters around with ease, eliciting strong performances from Lahti and Beghe, and showing a flair for spare, unshowy dialogue. The desert landscapes and coastal cliffs are beautifully photographed by DoP Gavin Kelly, and Charles’s photographs of the lighthouses and Vicki are rendered in wonderful black and white by Darrell Lloyd, making the movie a visual treat at times and surprisingly poetic.

Rating: 7/10 – some narrative flaws stop Safelight from being more accomplished, but there’s lots to enjoy here, from the performances to the writing, and all backed by an evocative visual style that keeps the drama from becoming too gloomy; while some elements may be predictable to seasoned viewers it’s Apoulis’ approach to the material that keeps it interesting.

The Equalizer (2014)

30 Tuesday Sep 2014

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Action, Antoine Fuqua, Corrupt cops, Denzel Washington, Drama, Prostitute, Review, Robert McCall, Russian mob, Thriller, TV show

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D: Antoine Fuqua / 131m

Cast: Denzel Washington, Marton Csokas, Chloë Grace Moretz, David Harbour, Haley Bennett, Bill Pullman, Melissa Leo, David Meunier, Johnny Skourtis

Robert McCall (Washington) is a quiet, reserved man who works at a hardware store in Boston and is generally well liked by his colleagues. At home he lives a somewhat monastic, ordered lifestyle, and the only time he appears to go out is when he goes to a local diner and reads his latest book. As a regular he gets to know Terri (Moretz), a teen prostitute with ambitions to be a singer. When McCall witnesses her being mistreated by her pimp, Slavi (Meunier), and then she ends up in the hospital, badly beaten up, he decides to do something about it. He pays Slavi a visit, and when negotiations don’t go as he’d hoped, he kills Slavi and four of his men.

What McCall doesn’t know is that Slavi was part of the East Coast Russian mob, and he’s singlehandedly taken out the Boston hub of that organisation. The mob sends a fixer, Teddy (Csokas), to find the person responsible, but it takes a while, during which time McCall gets on with helping others who are experiencing crime-related problems. When Teddy finally tracks him down, McCall decides to turn the tables on him and become the hunter instead of the hunted. Striking at the mob’s operation while staying one step ahead of Teddy’s efforts to find and kill him, McCall reveals further aspects of a past that no one knows about, and which he keeps hidden.

When Teddy discovers a potential weakness in McCall’s character, his friendships with the people he works with, he holds them hostage and gives McCall an ultimatum: either give himself up or they all die. But McCall has other ideas…

Adapted from the US TV show that ran from 1985-1989 and starred Edward Woodward, The Equalizer is a big screen reboot that trades that series’ subtlety and clever plotting for a more direct, impactful approach, despite its slow burn opening and attempts at deft character work. It’s a long while before McCall’s visit to Slavi, and during that time we get to see him at home, at work, at the diner, leading a normal life of sorts, but obviously lonely rather than a loner. We learn that he’s a widower, and that he’s working his way through a list of books his wife was aiming to read before she died. He helps a co-worker, Ralphie (Skourtis), prepare for a security guard exam, jokes with other co-workers that he was once one of Gladys Knight’s Pips, and encourages Terri to change her life and follow her dream of being a singer. He’s kind, attentive, supportive, fair, but still a bit of an enigma.

It’s all “good stuff” and gives Washington a chance to show off his acting chops (which are considerable), and serves to introduce McCall as just more than the violent avenger he’s soon to become. But the drawback is that once McCall faces off against Slavi and his men, all that character build-up is jettisoned in favour of a more traditional action thriller style movie, and Washington stops being Mr Average and becomes an invincible righter of wrongs. In many ways this is unavoidable, the nature of the story giving the director and his star little option but to revert to the tried and trusted approach of blowing shit up and killing a whole bunch of stuntmen. But thankfully, and despite the increasingly derivative nature of the narrative, Fuqua’s distinctive visual style and Washington’s reliable acting skills hold the viewer’s attention, and offset some of the more ludicrous moments (McCall walks away from a series of huge, multiple explosions at such an insanely slow pace it’s less a case of a cool looking moment than a clue that Denzel can’t run that fast anymore).

In the end, The Equalizer reveals itself as an origin story, prepping the way for potential sequels (though Washington has yet to make one). On this evidence, any further outings will need to address the issue of how much McCall’s character will be focused on, and whether or not aspects such as his borderline OCD is dealt with (it’s featured, but isn’t developed, the same as his use of a stopwatch to time certain moments and incidents). The storylines will need to be a bit more impressive as well, and a more serious adversary to give a much needed sense of threat; Teddy is certainly psychotic but McCall outwits and dispatches him too easily, leaving any possibility of tension or doubt about the outcome so far behind it’s practically invisible.

As a vehicle for Washington, The Equalizer is a good fit, and he’s ably supported by Csokas, Moretz and Harbour, while Pullman and Leo appear as old friends of McCall who know his history. Richard Wenk’s script works best when focusing on McCall as Mr Average, and his relationships with Terri and Ralphie are skilfully drawn. The action scenes are expertly choreographed (though a fight between McCall and one of Teddy’s men is scrappily edited: blows are landed but who’s being hit is mostly a mystery), and Mauro Fiore’s cinematography adds a vitality that helps counter the familiarity that builds once Slavi bites the dust.

Rating: 7/10 – although it eventually proves an entertaining introduction to Robert McCall and his “set of skills”, The Equalizer is too formulaic to have much of a genuine impact; a good vehicle for Washington but not a movie to stay in the memory for too long despite the positives (that the movie then squanders).