Tag Archives: Sexuality

Blush (2015)

20 Monday Aug 2018

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Original title: Barash

D: Michal Vinik / 85m

Cast: Sivan Noam Shivon, Hadas Jade Sakori, Dvir Benedek, Irit Pashtan, Amit Muchtar, Bar Ben Vakil, Hila Gozlan, Einav Levi, Reut Akkerman

Naama (Shivon) is a typical Israeli teenager, living a different life from the one her parents (Benedek, Pashtan) believe she lives. Away from her home – where she’s something of a moody presence – Naama spends time with her best friends, Iris (Gozlan) and Lili (Levi), taking drugs and having casual sex with random boys. Her parents are more concerned with her older sister, Liora (Vakil), who’s a secretary in the Army, but who it soon transpires, has run off with her latest boyfriend. While the search for Liora escalates, Naama meets Dana (Sakori), a confident free spirit who she finds herself attracted to. The two become friends, and soon Dana is introducing Naama to the nightclub scene in Tel Aviv. Naama and Dana become lovers, but what is a serious development for Naama, appears to be less so for Dana, whose past hints at her having unresolved issues that threaten their relationship. When a trip to Tel Aviv takes an unexpected turn, Naama is forced to confront both the reality of her relationship with Dana, and her new-found sexuality…

A frank and appealing exploration of racial, sexual and political tensions in modern-day Israel, Michal Vinik’s debut feature (which she also wrote) is a movie that tells a familiar tale but with an edge that’s borne out of its setting and the parochialism of Naama’s social background. It’s a movie that avoids depicting easy sentimentality or indulging in melodramatic flourishes, and which subverts audience expectations in often clever and unexpected ways. One such occasion occurs when Naama, high on a drug whose effects will last for several hours, is given no choice but to accompany her mother on a trip to the military base where Liora is stationed. What feels like an opportunity for some embarrassing comedy at Naama’s expense, instead leads to an outpouring of rage at an unsuspecting (and inflexible) guard that is a perfect representation of the anger and frustration that Naama feels in her own life. So extreme is this outpouring that her mother can only stand and watch, unable to intervene. Elsewhere, Vinik casts an acerbic eye over a family dynamic that includes a father whose hatred of Palestinians is all-consuming, and a rebellious older sister whose personal liberation comes at the expense of her cultural heritage.

For much of the movie, this family dynamic, with its roiling undercurrents of inter-personal animosity, is the movie’s trump card, and easily more interesting than the somewhat standardised coming-of-age tale that sits at its centre. Though Naama is a wonderfully realised character – thanks to Shivon’s tough, unsparing efforts – and her sexual awakening is handled with a delicacy that’s at odds with the jarring discomfort of the social conventions she’s expected to adhere to, there’s still the feeling that we’re in much charted territory, even down to the inevitable betrayal that lies ahead of her. To offset this, Vinik employs Shai Peleg’s sharply composited cinematography to present a world that is both familiar and alien, and even to its protagonists. Often the frame teems with details that can be easily missed, visual cues that point to the stability of Naama’s emotional state. There are terrific performances from all concerned, with Shivon a standout as Naama, Benedek proving an uncompromising bull-like presence, and Pashtan quietly impressive as Naama’s mother, her passive body language and blank expressions hiding the kind of emotional intensity that has been repressed for far too long. In the end, it’s not the sadness of Naama’s failed romance that resonates, but the idea that it’s her mother’s life that is the future she’s locked into.

Rating: 8/10 – a mixture of the bold and the commonplace (dramatically speaking), Blush offers a fascinating insight into the trials and tribulations of an average Israeli family and the challenges faced when trying to be different; full of telling moments and deft directorial touches that add poignancy to an otherwise familiar tale of burgeoning sexual expression, this is finely tuned for the most part, and with a well-defined vibrancy that makes it all the more engaging.

I Can’t Think Straight (2008)

18 Wednesday Apr 2018

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D: Shamim Sarif / 79m

Cast: Lisa Ray, Sheetal Sheth, Antonia Frering, Dalip Tahil, Nina Wadia, Ernest Ignatius, Siddiqua Akhtar, Amber Rose Revah, Anya Lahiri, Kimberly Jaraj, Sam Vicenti, Rez Kempton, Darwin Shaw

The daughter of wealthy Christian Palestinians (Frering, Tahil), Tala (Ray) is preparing to get married. Hani (Shaw) is a handsome young businessman, and her fourth fiancé. The wedding is due to take place in Jordan, but Tala lives and works in London. There she meets Leyla (Sheth), the girlfriend of Ali (Kempton), one of Tala’s old college friends. There’s an instant attraction between the two, and soon they are finding excuses to spend time together. A trip to Oxford with one of Tala’s sisters, Lamia (Lahiri), leads to Leyla and Tala sleeping together. But where this emboldens Leyla to acknowledge and embrace her sexuality, Tala cites her family and cultural traditions as reasons why she can’t commit to a relationship with Leyla, and this causes a wedge between them. They go their separate ways, with Tala preparing to enter into a marriage that isn’t what she wants, and Leyla choosing to make a life-changing decision. Time passes, but though both women retain their feelings for each other, it takes one more life-changing decision to allow them the chance of being happy together…

A lighter, less dramatic (and contemporary) version of Sarif’s previous movie, The World Unseen, I Can’t Think Straight is also another adaptation by Sarif of one of her novels. It’s a semi-autobiographical tale where Leyla represents Sarif, and reunites Ray and Sheth in similar roles from The World Unseen. It’s a breezy effort, more concerned with applying humour to events than focusing on the drama, and making the romance between Tala and Leyla more predictable. It’s a movie where the outcome can be guessed within the first ten minutes, and where each character fits neatly into a prescribed stereotype, particularly both sets of parents, with the mothers portrayed as controlling, and resistant to truly supporting their daughters’ happiness, while the fathers are entirely accepting and sympathetic. With the majority of the characters being so agreeable, Sarif has to work hard to make Tala and Leyla’s burgeoning relationship the source of any conflict. And when she does, the same issue that hampers the script elsewhere also comes to the fore: it’s all too inevitable to be completely convincing.

Along the way we’re treated to picture postcard shots of London and Oxford, a battery of supporting characters who are all painted in broad brush strokes, and a polo match where Tala’s hair and make up are immaculate – after she’s taken part (the script does acknowledge this, but even so…). But what really doesn’t help is the dialogue. Clunky and awkward, and often proving the better of the cast – including Ray and Sheth – Sarif and co-screenwriter Kelly Moss have concocted some truly cringeworthy lines that  call attention to themselves when they’re uttered. It’s not helpful either that the script is peppered with lumbering references to the Israeli-Palestinian divide, and Tala’s mother voices as many anti-Semitic remarks as she can manage in any given scene. Thankfully, Ray and Sheth manage to make more of Tala and Leyla than is on the page, though the rest of the performances remain perfunctory throughout. As that commonplace conundrum, the difficult second movie, I Can’t Think Straight lacks the persuasiveness and focus of Sarif’s first movie, and suffers accordingly. It’s lightweight and somewhat superficial, and unsure if it’s a rom-com or a rom-dram. In the end it’s an ungainly combination of the two, and though there are occasional moments where the script does work, there aren’t enough of them to make this anything more than disappointing.

Rating: 4/10 – a movie that betrays its low budget production values, and gives the impression its script needed more of a polish, I Can’t Think Straight tells its lesbian love story like it was a meringue, i.e. light and insubstantial; Sarif does her own novel a minimum of justice, and there’s a complacency to the material that hampers it further, making this something of a curio and nothing more.

FiveFilms4Freedom 2018

29 Thursday Mar 2018

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FiveFilms4Freedom is part of the BFI Flare: London LGBTQ+ Film Festival currently running until 1 April 2018. These five shorts have been shown as part of the festival, and thanks to an intitiative developed by the British Council and the British Film Institute, have also been made available online during the course of the festival.

Devi (2017) / D: Karishma Dev Dube / 13m

aka Devi: Goddess

Cast: Aditi Vasudev, Priyanka Bose, Tanvi Azmi

Rating: 8/10 – Tara (Vasudev) is a troubled teen who challenges her mother’s sense of tradition and moral certitude at every turn, but takes a step too far when she turns her romantic attentions to Devi (Bose), the housemaid who has helped raise her from a child. Dube’s critique of unyielding Hindi cultural traditions and strict morality plays well until you realise that Tara’s actions are entirely selfish and devoid of any consideration of potential consequences – which then leads the viewer to consider if Tara is quite the sympathetic character she’s made out to be at the start. Dube shows that there will always be victims in these circumstances, and the class divide is sharply illustrated by the inevitable outcome of Tara’s decision to act on her impulses. By exploring not just the cultural divide, but the generational divide as well, Dube shows that Tara’s behaviour is too frivolous to be tolerated by the traditions she’s rebelling against, and that acceptance is still a very long way off indeed.

Handsome and Majestic (2016) / D: Jeff Lee Petry, Nathan Drillot / 12m

With: Milan Halikowski, Lynnell Halikowski, Mike Halikowski

Rating: 7/10 – Milan is a twelve year old transboy living in Canada who has suffered more than his fair share of abuse and violence in his young life, and who has been routinely let down by the teachers at his school. Having endured all this, and gone through a period of depression that saw him try to take his own life, Milan has found the strength to come out as transgender, and in doing so, he’s found a friend in another transboy living just a few streets away. There are few of us who can fully understand what it must be like to feel trapped in our own body, and not to look the way we believe we should. Handsome and Majestic goes some way to explaining what that must be like, but spends too much time illustrating it by having Milan looking at himself in mirrors, and with a sad, pensive expression. Contributions from his family offer (perhaps unintentionally) stark comparisons with Milan’s own struggle, but just seeing him playing with his new friends allows the movie to end on a positive note that didn’t seem to be on the cards at all. It’s a moving, humane documentary, and though it doesn’t delve too deeply into transgender issues, it’s still an informative and engaging examination of one young boy’s wish to be accepted for who he is.

Uninvited (2017) / D: Seung Yeob Lee / 20m

Cast: Sum Lee, Keonyeung Kim, Jinseung Moon

Rating: 7/10 – An impending, and largely unexpected visit from his mother (Kim), prompts still-in-the-closet Jungho (Lee) to get his partner, Jae-ik (Moon), to pack most of his belongings and hide out in a nearby coffee shop while she’s at the flat they live in. Despite his best efforts, though, Jungho’s mother discovers evidence that points to his having a flatmate at best, and a gay lover at worst. Ostensibly a comedy, Uninvited lacks the bite needed to make this as funny as it could be, and Jungho is such a moody complainer it’s amazing anyone, gay or straight, would take him on. Still, this is anchored by a surprisingly compassionate and thoughtful performance from Kim, who never lets on if her character is disappointed or ashamed or appalled by her son being gay, but instead translates passive acceptance into determined support. Like Devi and Goldfish, this is another movie where the main protagonist isn’t the person who’s gay or a lesbian, but the parent whose own cultural identity makes it difficult to accept unreservedly their child’s sexuality.

Goldfish (2017) / D: Yorgos Angelopoulos / 14m

Cast: Michael Ikonomou, Lissandros Kouroumbalis, Eva Angelopoulou

Rating: 7/10 – It’s Stratis’ (Kouroumbalis) seventh birthday, and all he wants is a pet fish. His father, Yorgos (Iknonomou), wants him to get a warrior fish, but Stratis settles for a goldfish. On their way home, Stratis reveals the goldfish is called Tom, after Tom Daley the British diver. Incensed at what he perceives as yet another example of his son’s effeminacy, Stratis’ father throws the goldfish in the river, causing Stratis to run away from home… While it’s a little too broad in its approach – Yorgos is the kind of unreconstructed Greek male that borders on cliché – and the message is rammed home a little too bluntly, nevertheless, Goldfish is an enjoyable examination of how some men feel threatened by the merest hint of homosexuality, and the often absurd reactions they display as a result. Not a movie about being gay, then, but about the unnecessary fear and paranoia that comes from prejudice about homosexuality, and the terrible emotions that take over when the source of that fear and paranoia – your own child – might never be seen again.

Landline (2017) / D: Matt Houghton / 12m

Cast: Jem Dobbs, Niamh Blackshaw, Oliver Devoti, Bradley Johnson

Rating: 9/10 – In 2010, Keith Ineson, a chaplain from Cheshire in the UK, set up a helpline for gay farmers, one that allowed them to voice their experiences, their worries, and their concerns. With the helpline still being the only one of its kind anywhere in the world, Landline uses original telephone recordings and visual reconstructions of the events being talked about to paint a powerful, and sometimes disturbing portrait of rural prejudice and intolerance. Director Matt Houghton doesn’t just focus on the negative though: one perfectly judged vignette has the camera tracking through the debris and chaos of what appears to have been a terrible bar fight, only for the recording to reveal that it was one man’s coming out party, and probably the best night of his life. From this it’s worth mentioning the excellent cinematography courtesy of James Blann, which makes this docu-drama visually striking and compelling in equal measure.

I Am Nasrine (2012)

03 Saturday Mar 2018

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D: Tina Gharavi / 88m

Cast: Micsha Sadeghi, Shiraz Haq, Steven Hooper, Christian Coulson, Nichole Hall

Nasrine (Sadeghi) lives in Iran with her mother and father, and her older brother, Ali (Haq). One day she finds herself being detained by the police. What happens to her is both violent and distressing. Fearing for her continued safety, her father decides that she and Ali must travel to the UK and seek asylum there. They enter the country illegally and find themselves in another difficult situation: while their application is processed, Nasrine has to attend school, while Ali is forbidden to work. They are given a flat in which to live, but in order for them both to get by, Ali finds work in a car wash and, later, a kebab shop as well. At school, Nasrine finds it hard to fit in, but makes a friend in Nicole (Hall), who is part of the local travellers community. Meanwhile, Ali struggles to fit in socially, his serious demeanour keeping others at bay (his concerns about his sexuality don’t help either). Nasrine also has relationship issues, having attracted the attention of Nicole’s older brother, Leigh (Hooper). But with the events of 9/11, both Nasrine and Ali discover that being refugees in a foreign country has unexpected consequences…

The debut feature of Iranian-born Gharavi, I Am Nasrine is a coming-of-age tale that explores issues surrounding the refugee experience, politics and sexuality, and finding one’s place in the world. But though it addresses these issues in various ways, and to varying degrees, it’s a movie that is about connections, how difficult they are to make, how difficult they are to maintain, and how difficult they are to break when they’ve run their course. In Iran, Nasrine’s actions cause the end of her middle-class lifestyle. In the UK she has to start again. The same applies to Ali, charged with being Nasrine’s protector, but equally unnerved by the changes that have led them to a dingy flat in London, and an uncertain future. Whether they are better off proves more and more debatable as the movie progresses, but it’s the siblings’ attempts at fitting in that provide the necessary dramatic focus. Whether it’s Nasrine’s growing friendship with Nicole and then Leigh, or Ali’s attempts to deal with his feelings for other men, including kebab shop customer Tommy (Coulson), it’s the way that writer/director Gharavi takes these basic desires and shows their universality that makes it all work so well. Refugees or not, Nasrine and Ali deserve the same respect we ourselves feel entitled to.

Gharavi’s approach is often straighforward and/or blunt, but this isn’t a bad thing as it precludes the possibility of any unnecessary sentiment, and allows what happens to Nasrine and Ali to remain unforced throughout. There’s a degree of unexpected and poetic beauty in the movie’s imagery as well, from the shot of Nasrine looking back from the motorbike she’s riding on in Tehran (see above), to the moment when she and Leigh experience their first kiss. Gharavi is also confident enough to minimise the impact of 9/11, safe in the knowledge that it will resonate quietly as the narrative unfolds, an unspoken component of the racial distrust and hatred that follows. She’s aided by a terrific performance from first-timer Sadeghi who instills Nasrine with a naïve yet determined quality that won’t be swayed, and unobtrusive production design courtesy of Chryssanthy Kofidou that anchors the narrative in a recognisable and credible setting. Gharavi occasionally makes some obvious dramatic choices that border on being predictable and rote, but the sincerity and the integrity of the story she’s telling more than make up for these choices, making the movie an absorbing exercise in what it is to try and belong anywhere where belonging comes at a price.

Rating: 8/10 – an engaging, thought-provoking movie that paints a candid and guileless picture of the need for acceptance, whatever someone’s personal circumstances, I Am Nasrine is severe and heartelt at the same time, and entirely up front about its plea for inclusivity; Gharavi’s passion for telling Nasrine’s story is evident throughout, and the story itself is rendered with compassion and honesty, making this a movie that is far more effective, and affecting, than it might seem at the outset.

NOTE: The quote by Ben Kingsley on the poster translates as: “An important and much needed film.”

Professor Marston and the Wonder Women (2017)

18 Sunday Feb 2018

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D: Angela Robinson / 108m

Cast: Luke Evans, Rebecca Hall, Bella Heathcote, Connie Britton, JJ Feild, Oliver Platt, Chris Conroy, Alexa Havins

The creation of Wonder Woman, or at least, the source of her creation, is the kind of story that should be filed under “so incredible it must be true”. And that’s exactly right. Wonder Woman was the lasso-twirling, tiara-wearing brainchild of ex-Harvard faculty member William Moulton Marston (Evans), a psychology professor who also invented the systolic blood pressure cuff used with lie detectors (though he forgot to patent it). Wonder Woman was born out of Marston’s belief that women could only truly be happy by “submitting to a loving authority”, i.e. a husband. As a result, the early Wonder Woman comic strips were full of scenes of bondage, domination and spanking, with the majority of the female characters passively accepting their situations. Some of this was due to the structure of Marston’s private life. He was married to Elizabeth (Hall), also a professor of psychology, and they in turn lived with a research assistant of Marston’s who became their joint lover, Olive Byrne (Heathcote). Both women had children by Marston, and for a number of years their living arrangements went unquestioned. This polyamorous relationship led to Marston’s creation of the Amazonian princess, but even though the Wonder Woman comic strip was enormously popular, its content ensured that it would fall under the spotlight of Josette Frank (Britton) and the Child Study Association of America, and find itself at risk of public censure…

In telling Marston’s story, and that of Elizabeth and Olive, Angela Robinson’s earnest biopic relates a story of a ménage à trois that succeeded on its own terms, and in flagrant defiance of the societal norms of the period. This is the movie’s focus: not the creation of Wonder Woman, but the creation of a three-way relationship that withstood both internal and external pressures, the addition of children (four in total), long periods where Marston was reliant on his writing to bring in money (Elizabeth was a better breadwinner), and which did so because of the trio’s commitment to each other (though inevitably, there’s a blip). Robinson’s screenplay is firmly on the side of Marston and his two Wonder Women, and the personal and sexual explorations they undertook in order to make their relationship work, and if there isn’t too much in the way of judgment or objective criticism about the nature of their private lives, then it doesn’t hurt the story overall. But there are moments where the narrative seems in need of a dramatic push, and Robinson obliges accordingly.

But this is a movie about feelings, and emotions, and the best way of expressing them. Refreshingly, and aside from a closing scene in a hospital room that seems to go on for far too long (see if you think someone should have come in at some point), the characters make their points succinctly and quickly before moving on the next, and despite some occasionally clunky expository dialogue, the cast all give strong, skillful performances. It’s good to see Evans taking on a more meatier role than of late, and he expertly navigates the twin poles of Marston’s personality, aiming for dominance in his public and working lives, while being submissive in private. Hall is terrific as Elizabeth, hiding her vulnerability and insecurities behind a fearsome exterior, and Heathcote is equally impressive as Olive, the young woman neither Marston nor his wife can live without. As a framing device, Marston’s meeting with Frank doesn’t always tie up with what amount to flashbacks of his life up until then, but it does give the viewer a better understanding of Marston’s views on relationships and submission and all areas in between. This is a movie that’s unafraid to explore issues surrounding marriage and polygamy and notions of what constitutes individual pleasure, and in doing so proves itself to be intelligent and thought-provoking, though a little too matter-of-fact in its approach.

Rating: 7/10 – purposeful and intense for the most part, Professor Marston and the Wonder Women plays it straight, and in doing so, does justice to its trio of lead characters and their unconventional lifestyles; Bryce Fortner’s cinematography adds a layer of nostalgia to things, and Robinson is to be congratulated for interpreting Marston’s life in such a way that the majority of the movie remains plausible if not always entirely convincing.

Closet Monster (2015)

08 Sunday Jan 2017

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closet-monster

D: Stephen Dunn / 90m

Cast: Connor Jessup, Isabella Rossellini, Aaron Abrams, Aliocha Schneider, Joanne Kelly, Sofia Banzhaf, Jack Fulton, Mary Walsh

A coming of age tale, Closet Monster seems hell-bent on making things ultra-difficult for its central protagonist, eighteen year old Oscar (Jessup). Not only is his surname Madly – no, really – and not only are his parents divorced, but he’s pretty sure he’s gay, though at this point he’s still pretty much in the closet of the title. As if that wasn’t enough, when he was much younger he witnessed a brutal homophobic attack that left its victim paralysed from the waist down. The combination of these events has left Oscar with mixed feelings about himself, his life, and his sexuality. The only thing he’s sure about is that he wants to be a make-up artist in the movies, and to this end he’s putting together a portfolio that will hopefully get him accepted into a Joe Blasco training centre. He’s helped in this by his best friend, Gemma (Banzhaf), who, as if he didn’t have enough problems, likes him a little too much.

Oscar lives with his dad, Peter (Abrams), and sometimes spends time at his mother’s new home. His mother, Brin (Kelly), has another family now (“the Brady Bunch”), and Oscar still hasn’t forgiven her for being the one to leave. But he’s also got issues with his father, and their relationship is nearly as strained. Add a drab, dead-end job at a local hardware store to the mix, and Oscar has so many problems he could keep a TV soap opera going for months. And then, as if things couldn’t get any more confusing or difficult, Oscar meets Wilder (Schneider), a guy at work, and straight away he’s head over heels in – well, not love per se, but definitely infatuation. The only problem (as if)? Oscar can’t tell if Wilder is definitely gay. What’s a horny, probably gay young man to do?

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The answer involves one of Wilder’s shirts and a bathroom cubicle at work, and it’s here that writer/director Stephen Dunn begins to pull together all the jigsaw pieces that make up Oscar’s life. As Oscar indulges in a spot of self-release he experiences flashbacks to the assault he witnessed when he was younger. These images shock him out of his sexual reverie, and point toward the reason why he hasn’t “come out” yet: if he does, what happened to that other teenager could happen to him. It’s a recognisable and understandable fear, and goes some way to explaining why Oscar, through his make-up ambitions (his designs are all heavily influenced by fantasy and horror), retreats so often into a world where he feels safe, and where his best friend isn’t Gemma, but his talking hamster, Buffy (Rossellini).

Yes, that’s right, a talking hamster called Buffy. Now, if at this point you’re asking yourself, can this movie get any stranger, well, yes it can, and it does. But Dunn is canny enough to introduce us to Buffy when Oscar is younger, where a small boy talking and listening to a hamster doesn’t seem so strange. And so well established is Buffy’s presence in Oscar’s interior life, it makes it that much easier to accept when he’s eighteen and still struggling to make sense of things. And the way in which Rossellini brings Buffy to life, so to speak (excuse the pun), is charming and agreeable. And Buffy proves to be pretty much the only source of humour in a movie that’s often deliberately downbeat and angst-ridden.

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The movie is based on Dunn’s own experiences of growing up as a gay teenager in Canada, and while it’s probably safe to assume that he’s taken a degree of artistic licence with his own life, there are times throughout the movie where it seems that he’s trying a little too hard in getting across the message that making sense of being gay when you’re a teenager isn’t easy. While this may be true – and the movie goes some way to make sure the audience understands this – Dunn’s message isn’t helped by Oscar being resolutely unsympathetic (and let’s hope Dunn wasn’t like this when he was younger). Yes, Oscar has a lot of problems, and yes, getting out of his hometown will probably go a long way towards helping him get past some of those problems, but in the meantime all he does is act petulantly, antagonise or upset everyone (except Wilder), and generally behave in a selfish, dismissive manner. Though Jessup is very good as Oscar, he can’t quite bring the viewer over to Oscar’s side, and by the time he’s punting his father into a wardrobe and heading off to a party to (hopefully) get somewhere with Wilder, you can’t help but wish for him to experience a massive fail (and in some ways he does).

There are problems too with Oscar’s father, Peter. In the beginning, Peter is the kind of dad every child wishes they had: loving, supportive, and there. But divorce brings out the moody, boozy homophobe in him, and the character quickly descends into a slightly more challenging stereotype than usual, but a stereotype nonetheless. By the time he’s shouting at Brin on the front lawn and the movie is morphing into a David Cronenberg body horror, his transformation is complete, and Oscar’s view of him as Deadbeat Dad has come to fruition. It’s a shame, but you can see why Dunn has chosen to make Peter such a douchebag: it’s one more thing that Oscar has to deal with, and it adds a degree of conflict that doesn’t exist solely within Oscar’s head.

CLOSET MONSTER

With all this – and more – Dunn’s narrative stumbles from time to time, and certain scenes don’t flow as easily as others. As mentioned already, Jessup is very good as Oscar, and even if he can’t make him sympathetic, he does make his predicament a credible one. There’s fine support from Abrams, who does his best to ground Peter even when he’s behaving badly thanks to the script, and Schneider as Wilder, who may or may not be gay, or straight, or bisexual; neither Dunn nor Schneider makes any attempt to confirm Wilder’s sexual orientation, and this ambiguity is something that strengthens the movie and makes the potential in Oscar and Wilder’s relationship all the more intriguing.

Dunn has made a movie out of his own personal experiences that looks and feels like the fevered imaginings of a kid in great need of psychiatric help. Oscar behaves foolishly and without due care for the people around him, and the movie doesn’t offer him any happiness, which amounts to a bitter pill indeed – for Oscar, and the audience. It’s a movie that paints a portrait of an angry, confused young man, then puts him through even more of an emotional wringer than he’s already been through, and finally offers him a way out through the experience of a waking nightmare. It’s a tough love movie about a teenager who doesn’t know how to love, and thanks to Dunn’s confidence as a director, where his script lets him down, he’s able to compensate by showing us Oscar’s world as he sees it: compromised, disheartening and frightening. And unfortunately, that’s a world that many teenagers will recognise.

Rating: 6/10 – Dunn the screenwriter lets down Dunn the director too many times for Closet Monster to work completely, but there are enough good ideas and directorial flourishes for Dunn to be someone to keep an eye on as their career unfolds; slow-paced but aided by a terrific soundtrack and some effective, roving camerawork courtesy of Bobby Shore, the movie has enough thought behind it that it shouldn’t be dismissed as superficial, and is surprisingly rewarding despite its flaws.

Nymph()maniac Vol. II (2013)

28 Saturday Jun 2014

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Nymphomaniac Vol. II

D: Lars von Trier / 123m

Cast: Charlotte Gainsbourg, Stellan Skarsgård, Stacy Martin, Shia LaBeouf, Jamie Bell, Mia Goth, Willem Dafoe, Michael Pas, Jean-Marc Barr, Kate Ashfield, Christian Slater, Udo Kier, Caroline Goodall, Sophie Kennedy Clark, Ananya Berg

Now living with Jerôme but still unable to achieve orgasm, Joe falls pregnant; she has a son, Marcel, but her maternal instincts are dulled by her efforts to reclaim her ability to orgasm.  Her sexual demands begin to alienate Jerôme, who suggests she takes other lovers as it’s clear he can’t give her what she wants.  She does so but it triggers a jealous reaction in Jerôme and proves unsatisfactory as well.  Joe then learns about K (Bell), a sadist, and visits him in the hope that by exploring this aspect of sexuality it might help her.  Her visits require the services of a babysitter while she is gone, and one afternoon the sitter fails to show up; Joe leaves to see K anyway, leaving Marcel alone in their apartment.  When she returns, Marcel is safe but Jerôme is aware of her desertion, and eventually he challenges her: be a better mother or he will leave with Marcel, and Joe will never see them again.  Unable to stop seeing K, Joe visits him again; when she returns home, Jerôme and Marcel are gone.

Having stopped seeing K, Joe reverts to having sex with any man she wants, particularly at work.  Told by her boss that her behaviour is unacceptable, Joe is pressured into attending a therapy group for sex addicts.  The counsellor (Goodall) tells Joe that in order to control her sexual addiction she must first remove anything that might provoke a sexual response; this will make controlled abstinence that much easier.  This proves impossible and Joe realises she is denying her true nature.  When she next attends the group, she rails against them before leaving for good.

The next part of Joe’s story sees her working for a man called L (Dafoe).  She works for him as a debt collector, using her knowledge of the darker aspects of men’s natures to get them to pay up.  Joe is successful in her work, but as the years go by, L suggests she takes on and train a successor.  L has a candidate for her, a fifteen year old girl called P (Goth) who comes from a family of hardened criminals and who is lonely and shy.  Unconvinced at first, Joe takes P under her wing.  Their relationship deepens over the years until, when P is of age, Joe reveals the work she does and P’s planned part in it.  P isn’t put off and begins to take a more active role in Joe’s work, though when she pulls out a gun and threatens to shoot a debtor, Joe is angry with her.  This leads to an estrangement between the two that leads to disaster when P is given her first solo assignment.  The debtor proves to be Jerôme (Pas).  Unbeknownst to Joe, they begin a relationship, seeing each other whenever P has to collect a payment for the debt Jerôme owes.  On the night of the last collection, Joe follows P to Jerôme’s house and sees them together.  She is unsure at first at what to do, but decides to kill Jerôme and is making her way through the alleyway where Seligman found her when she hears Jerôme’s voice.  He is with P.  Joe tries to shoot him but the gun doesn’t work and he beats her up, thus bringing the story full circle.

Nymphomaniac Vol. II - scene

With the playfulness and abundant humour of Vol. I toned down from the outset, Nymph()maniac Vol. II is a different movie altogether, darker, more austere, less spirited (there is still humour to be found, though).  Joe’s quest to reclaim her orgasm makes her more sexually adventurous, but it also makes her more vulnerable, and her brief foray into motherhood shows how self-destructive she really is, placing her physical needs over the needs of her child.  The correlation between drug addict and sex addict is also given its strongest expression through her visits to K, as Joe desperately seeks a solution to her predicament.  In the same way that a drug addict will take stronger and stronger drugs in an effort to boost their being high, so too does Joe seek more extreme sexual experiences in her attempt to feel again.  (There’s an argument that Joe is also punishing herself during this period but as she finds release by manipulating the mode of K’s sadism, it doesn’t really hold true.)

If Joe’s addiction leads her into more and more “dangerous” territory, it also leads her to the re-confirmed belief that her sexual appetite is validated by her refusal to love.  But, in truth, it’s a defence mechanism, and shows just how scared Joe is of commitment; her inability to feel anything is brought about through Jerôme’s return and their relationship becoming more meaningful.  By reinforcing Joe’s avoidance of her emotions, von Trier shows the loneliness that she tries to hide, and how it distances her from the people around her.  Having her become a debt collector makes a certain kind of sense, as her neutrality in the face of others’ fear or pain makes her a perfect enforcer.

But as with all the best melodramas – and ultimately this is exactly that – Joe falls in love again, unexpectedly, with P.  But it’s a brief, not too convincing affair, with Joe seemingly ambushed by P’s feelings for her.  As P begins to assert her own identity, it becomes inevitable that Joe will not survive the encounter emotionally, and P’s betrayal of her with Jerôme sees her become an avenging angel, determined to destroy forever whatever fragile happiness she’s ever had.  It’s inevitable though that Joe’s plan will backfire because she’s only ever had control over her own body, and her distance from others precludes any influence she thinks she might have (except when she’s backed up by two heavies collecting money).

In the end, the viewer will find Joe’s emotional detachment either difficult to appreciate – it makes her hard to like, particularly in Vol. II – or a necessary conceit without which the movie would struggle to maintain any sense of coherence.  Either way, her selfish attitude to those around her, and her efforts to control them, make Joe a bold but regrettably galling human being to spend four hours with.  Some of her assertions during her badinage with Seligman are so pompous as to defy von Trier’s obvious intelligence: anyone who knows even the slightest bit about organised religion will know that the statement, “the Western church is the church of suffering and the Eastern church is the church of happiness” is so far from the truth to be almost (in its own way) heretical.  With quotes like these weighing things down, Joe’s assertions serve only to highlight just how remote she is from the rest of society, and even though von Trier champions her need to be true to herself, her lack of real introspection makes her appear, by the movie’s end (or beginning), shallow and intransigent.

There have been complaints that Vol. II, by being darker etc., is less of a movie than Vol. I.  But Joe’s story is one that follows a natural progression and the decision to split the movie in two appears to be more of a commercial decision than a creative one.  It is better to see both volumes in succession so as to retain the natural flow of what was always meant to be one four-hour movie, but, ultimately, von Trier’s decision to split the narrative makes no difference to the effect of the overall story.

On the performance side, Gainsbourg’s fearless approach to the material benefits the movie enormously and there’s rarely a moment where her conviction is in doubt.  She does her best to make Joe a sympathetic character but is equally unafraid to show her in a less than pleasant light, her commitment to the role going some way to mitigating the missteps in von Trier’s script.  As the outwardly concerned Seligman, Skarsgård maintains his inquisitive, supportive stance in the light of Joe’s revelations, but is given an horrendous final scene that destroys everything the character has come to stand for.  Martin’s presence, despite Gainsbourg’s proficiency, is not as missed as might be expected, while LaBeouf remains as hard to watch as in Vol. I.  The newcomers to the tale – Dafoe, Goth, Bell – acquit themselves well (Bell in particular is unexpectedly creepy as K), and it’s nice to see Slater and Berg (ten year old Joe) in flashback.

As before, von Trier’s technical control over the material remains in place, though some of the aforementioned missteps make it difficult to give him the benefit of the doubt when some scenes appear included merely for effect (the restaurant scene involving a number of spoons is a case in point, but it redeems itself by being very, very funny).  He’s on less firmer ground with the philosophical digressions that occupy Joe’s time with Seligman, and they become more and more contrived as the movie develops.  And the photography by Manuel Alberto Claro is as beautiful and decorous as in the first movie (which shouldn’t be a surprise).

Rating: 7/10 – no better or worse than Vol. I, Nymph()maniac Vol. II concludes Joe’s story in semi-triumphant style but maintains the faults found in the first movie; archly effective in places, and dismaying in others, von Trier’s conclusion to his Trilogy of Depression shows the wily old fox of arthouse cinema still as infuriating and entertaining (in equal measure) as he’s always been.

Nymph()maniac Vol. I (2013)

27 Friday Jun 2014

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Nymphomaniac Vol. I

D: Lars von Trier / 118m

Cast: Charlotte Gainsbourg, Stellan Skarsgård, Stacy Martin, Shia LaBeouf, Christian Slater, Uma Thurman, Sophie Kennedy Clark, Hugo Speer, Connie Nielsen, Ananya Berg, Jesper Christensen, Nicolas Bro

In a secluded alleyway, a man called Seligman (Skarsgård) finds a woman (Gainsbourg) lying unconscious on the ground; she’s been attacked.  He takes her back to his home, where she tells him the story of her life, and how she came to be in the alleyway where he found her.  The woman’s name is Joe, and she tells Seligman that from a very young age she was aware of her vagina and the pleasure it could give her.  She relates a number of instances from her childhood, and mentions her father, a doctor (Slater) whom she loved very much.  As a teenager (Martin) she chooses a boy, Jerôme (LaBeouf), to take her virginity, and so, begins a relationship with him that will continue off and on for the rest of her life.

Joe relates her time having sex with strangers on trains as a game she played with her friend B (Clark), and the club they subsequently form where members are not allowed to have sex more than once with the same person.  However, B falls in love and Joe ends their friendship in disgust.  Some time later, Joe applies for a job at a printing house, and despite having no skills or experience, is taken on.  This proves to be because her boss is the same Jerôme who took her virginity.  Jerôme wants to have sex with her but she refuses his advances, while at the same time she has sex with all the other men in the office.  But her willingness to see Jerôme suffer has a different effect and Joe stops having sex altogether; like B she too has fallen in love.  She builds up the courage to tell him but takes too long: when she arrives at work one day prepared to tell Jerôme how she feels about him, she finds he’s now married and travelling abroad.

Joe’s reaction is to have sex with as many men as possible, and to keep a string of lovers.  She tells of one man, H (Speer), who she tried to break up with by telling him he’ll never leave his wife and family, but this is exactly what he does, and it leads to an uncomfortable visit by his wife (Thurman) and their children.  But Joe admits the whole thing left her unmoved.  It’s only when her father dies in hospital that Joe is moved at all.  Continuing to juggle both work and several lovers, Joe finds herself feeling sad at times and while walking in a park one day, she is reunited with Jerôme.  He tells her his marriage isn’t working, and they go back to Joe’s place and have sex, but partway through she realises that she can’t feel anything physically.

Nymphomaniac Vol. I - scene

With all the hype surrounding von Trier’s Nymph()maniac duology (particularly the explicit sex scenes – always guaranteed to draw people’s attention), the casual viewer might be put off by a movie that revels in its bad taste highlights and caustic humour, but with Vol. I that would be a mistake.  After the dreary, depressing Antichrist (2009) and the mock-opera bombast of Melancholia (2011), the wily old fox of arthouse cinema has decided to make a comedy about sex, and not just about sex itself, but a vast array of preconceptions about sex, and its relationship with pain, betrayal, neglect, lust, sacrifice, and perhaps worst of all, love.

As a young child, Joe is presented as thoughtful, intelligent, acquisitive and precocious.  Her relationship with her father appears to hold the key to her future behaviour – Joe seeks what her father can’t give her – and on a basic psychological level it’s obvious why Joe behaves in the way she does.  But Joe isn’t interested in the emotional mechanics of sex but in the overriding physical need that pushes her to seek out so many men and so many sexual experiences.  Joe wants to be true to herself – to her vagina – but what she learns, and resolutely pushes to one side, is that emotion can enhance her encounters.  And yet, as her relationship with Jerôme shows, feelings and emotions can augment her experiences and enrich them.  It’s her refusal to admit this, or even trust it, that makes Joe such a sad figure: she’ll never find true happiness unless she allows herself to love.

In telling her story, Joe and Seligman indulge in some philosophical game-playing as Joe keeps referring to herself as sinful, while Seligman refutes her assertions at every turn. These interludes often find von Trier at his most mischievous as Joe seeks to justify her behaviour where clearly she has no need to.  Alluding to various topics, such as fly fishing and Fibonacci numbers, Seligman acts as the audience’s representative, taking Joe’s revelations in his stride and remaining unaffected throughout.  Some of the connections von Trier comes up with hail from the wrong side of contrivance, but despite this they have a certain élan to them that keeps them amusing even if they do sound pretentious.

Again, it’s the humour that counts, whether it’s Joe and B trying to be sophisticated while seducing men on the train, or Joe and Seligman arguing over the attributes of a cake fork, or even LaBeouf’s horrendous English accent (even worse than Dick Van Dyke’s Cockney horror in Mary Poppins).  Joe’s bed-hopping behaviour has its own in-built jocosity, appearing in stark contrast to the laboured protestations of guilt that the older Joe regales Seligman with.  It’s fun to see her treat men in the same way that men often treat women – as objects there to provide pleasure and little else – and even the tirade offered up by Mrs H. is entertaining with its desperate, cloying sarcasm projected as barely disguised venom.  There’s also a nice line in visual humour – Jerôme stopping an elevator in order to seduce Joe and finding out when he’s rebuffed that it’s stopped between floors; Seligman envisioning Joe’s somewhat different approach to “education”; the penis montage – although the equivalent verbal humour isn’t quite as prominent.

On the dramatic side, Joe’s encounter with Mrs H is the movie’s highlight, while Joe’s (one-sided) romance with Jerôme appears more of a plot device to keep Joe shagging lots of men than a real development for either character.  That she meets up with him again at the end isn’t much of a surprise – there’s unfinished business to be dealt with, after all – but the movie’s cliffhanger ending successfully pulls the rug out from under the audience’s feet with aplomb.  Her relationship with her father is honest and straightforward, and the scenes where he’s in hospital are genuinely moving (thanks largely to the playing of Messrs Slater and Martin).

As the younger Joe, Martin gives a stand-out performance, Joe’s initial enjoyment of sex before it becomes more and more of an addiction is so well depicted that it comes as a bit of a shock that this is her first movie.  But even when things begin to get darker, Martin keeps her focus and keeps the audience watching: it’s a bravura turn and easily award-worthy.  As the older Joe, Gainsbourg is mesmerising, her care-worn face telling of hardships that not even she can adequately talk about.  She dominates her scenes with Skarsgård, his nervous, twitchy style of acting at odds with her confident, self-assured determinism.  Skarsgård makes the most of Seligman’s “learned” naiveté, while there’s sterling support from Slater, Thurman and Clark.  Sadly, the same can’t be said for LaBeouf, who provides the worst performance in the movie, his attempts at creating a realistic character continually being undermined by his limitations as an actor.

Von Trier’s direction, as you might expect, is controlled and tightly focused, and he uses a variety of shots – often in the same scene – to show the fractured nature of Joe’s unique view of the world.  He’s on less solid ground with his script, with Joe’s often brittle approach to other people and her own feelings going some way to making her a little less sympathetic than expected.  Having said that, there are plenty of clever touches, and von Trier has a sure knack of cutting away from a scene at the right moment.  His cinematographer, Manuel Alberto Claro, gives the movie an appropriately clinical look that reflects the sense of detachment that Joe feels with regard to her life and history.

Rating: 7/10 – brimming with ideas (not all of which are effectively rendered), Nymph()maniac Vol. I is a cinematic confection dressed up in serious attire; an intriguing movie for the most part, but hampered by its unnecessary lack of an ending.