A Girl & A Gun

Pray the Devil Back to Hell (2008), Virginia Reticker

The film won the Tribeca Festival award for Best New Narrative Filmmaker, and it's my pick for film of the festival. Taking on the complex and tragic story of Liberia's recent social and political struggles, the director managed to create a narrative that was neither soul destroying or unrealistically positive; and to tell an adult, inspiring story which makes it clear that there are no easy solutions to hard problems.

The films title is taken from one of the women interviewed during the film, who comments that former warlord Charles Taylor, president of Liberia from 1997 to 2003, was so publicly devout that  he appeared to be able to pray the devil back to hell. Unfortunately, at the same time he also seemed to be largely unconcerned about the wholesale rape, murder and toucher of ordinary Liberian people, or his involvement in the use of child soldiers. The film focuses on the achievements of the women of Liberia, who came together across religious divides to confront Taylor and the oppositional warlord-run factions to bring peace to their country. Their nonviolent protest contributed to a sea change in national politics and to the election of Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Africa's first elected female head of state. It's an amazing story, which avoids being sentimental or sensationalist, and manages to give you hope while reminding you that in life, there are no easy, or entirely happy, endings.

   

Les Deux timides (aka Two Timid Souls ) (1928), René Clair

René Clair's last silent film, Two Timid Souls  was screened at two sold-out special performances during the Tribeca festival, with live accompaniment by the NYC Chamber Orchestra. The commissioned score worked well, although I can't say I'm a big fan of impressionistic composition. It helped kick out the memory of a particularly nightmarish screening of Pandora's Box that some idiot had decided to accompany with Ein Klein Nacht Music. On a loop. So my preference for something a little more experimental can only seem ungracious by comparison. I always think having live accompaniment is a treat, and the atmosphere in the theater was great. I wasn't so keen on the decision to have someone read out the titles; I found it a bit intrusive and would have preferred additional English subtitles since my French isn't up to much.

Frémissin (Pierre Batcheff), a shy young lawyer, is the first of the timid souls of the title. The film opens with a farcical courtroom scene, where Frémissin spectacularly fails to defend his client, the burly, bullying Garadoux (Jim Gérald), who is on trial for abusing his wife. The story fast forwards to Frémissin failed attempts to ask Thibaudier (Maurice de Féraudy) - the second timid soul - for his unfortunate daughter Cecile's hand in marriage. Poor Cecile (Véra Flory), in love with Frémissin, finds herself stuck between two men who are seemingly unable to rise to any action of their own accord. Her father, in the meantime, has been bullied into accepting a proposal from Garadoux, who is now out of prison, a widower, and hiding his criminal past. 

It's a charming rather than hilarious movie, with some great scenes featuring street urchins and imaginary masked bandits. Pierre Batcheff, the films fey hero, went onto star as a radically different kind of leading man in Buñuel's Un chien andalou, released the following year, and to commit suicide three years after that at the age of 25.

The Cottage (2008), Paul Andrew Williams

The Cottage is UK comedy/horror and isn't, as many of you will be disappointed to learn, adventures in the underbelly of public toilets.

There are a couple of laugh out loud moments, and the horror is of the very visceral kind -people not obsessed with gross special effects will find themselves wanting to look away as the next horribly gory interlude looms. At least the plot requires you pay attention, and there's a decent enough narrative running through the film.

The story revolves around two brothers (Reece Shearsmith, Andy Serkis), who have kidnapped the daughter of a mob boss, hide out in a cottage, and watch their night going from crappy to just-about-as-bad-as-possible.

Andy Serkis (Kong, Gollum) is very good and has the advantage of being given the only half-way likable character to play, as feckless, boat-loving, lead kidnapper David.

All of the actors are competent; the problem is with the characterisation - although everyone plays their roles naturalistically (thank you!), what they have to work with is a role call of hideous stereotypes. Unfortunately this doesn't work as the hilarious parody it was no doubt intended to: it just clutters the film with a too large assortment of irritatingly 2D people, including 'psychotic Chinese gangsters'  'London mob boss', 'hen-pecked looser' etc.

Worst of all is the unfortunate casting of Jennifer Ellison, who has apparently been brought up apart from the rest of her family in a Liverpudlian tanning salon run by vipers. It must always be a temptation for any writer/director to produce a film that has more swear words per square centimeter than any other in the history of cinema, and usually I'm keen on a good salty dose of Anglo-Saxon. Half way through this though I started dying a little inside each time Ellison spat out the F word.

End of film heads-up: There's an additional chunk after the credits for those who don't like missing that kind of thing.

Guest of Cindy Sherman (2008), Tom Donahue & Paul Hasegawa-Overacker

Essentially the video diary of Paul Hasegawa-Overacke, creater of Gallery Beat, a public access TV show featuring light-touch reporting on the NYC Art scene, as he meets, interviews, and dates Sherman. You can't help but guess that making the documentary wasn't a hugely positive contribution to the relationship, which ended before filming did. Sherman additionally disassociates herself from the film in this statement.

Like Paul's cable TV shows, Guest of Cindy Sherman can't really be said to offer particularly reaching analysis of the art world and market, or of Cindy Sherman's work. Paul's critisism of the 90's Art world being characterised by a bullish, Hemingwayesque masculinity (with the A list making bigger and more expensive work) sits uneasily with his own unreformed grappling with gender issues, and doesn't really illuminate the success of the very different approach Sherman took. His insecurity about being eclipsed by his hugely more famous girlfriend doesn't get much further than the recognition that it isn't uncommon for men to find being the less important one hard, although there's a very funny radio interview about it.  As a social diary of an extremely interesting set, and as a snapshot of Shermans approach, it's very good.

The film ends up being a multi-layered but slight meditation on identity and its representation, a bit 90's itself in terms of hyper-self-referentialism. It worryingly teeters over an abyss of indulgence and vanity film making, but the directors honesty about his personal limitations and interests, and (ironically) the sheer magnitude of his ex-girlfriends talent pulls it back. The only film I've ever watched that made me glad not to be Cindy Sherman.

Rated PG for scenes where Julien Schnabel is present.

Tropa de Elite (aka Elite Squad) (2007), José Padilha

Slick, pacey action film set in 1997's Rio de Janeiro, won the 2008 Golden Bear Award and one of the most popular films in Brazilian history. Under the slick gloss of high-end American TV drama production values, beats the heart of Søren Kierkegaard.

The main protagonists take the odd-couple form of two of Brazilian law enforcement agencies - the Military Police, and the elite Police Special Police Operations Battalion - BOPE. Corruption within the Military Police is depicted at breathtaking levels of audacity. BOPE, on the other hand, is shown free of corruption but also of any humanity - as a killing machine prepared to go to any lengths to meet its objectives.

The film has been accused of promoting fascism as the only solution for the hideous complexity of criminality and social deprivation in Rio. Capitão Nascimento (played by Wagner Moura), the film main character, doesn't really support this argument. Nascimento is a man struggling with mental disintegration and disillusion, battered against the impossibility of being a good father and husband while working as a BOPE commander, and desperate to replace himself in order to make an escape which doesn't involve his death. His induction and brutalisation of his potential replacements is a giddying and nauseous spiral of spiritual corruption which makes the Military Police's squabble for power and money seem guileless by comparison. It's a powerful and astonishing film in which the director and writers seem to have been channeling Antonin Artaud passing himself off as Michael Mann. Kicking sound track too.