Looking to Find the Truth

Beautiful to look at and intensely moving, more than anything, the film Carol by Todd Haynes is a film about looking, spying and voyeurism in general. It is this aspect that makes the film a perfect ode to cinema and its photographic origin.

It starts from the film's material feel; the film has a grain to it that makes it seem, along with its gorgeous costume and set design, like celluloid coming straight from the 1950s. This is due to it having been filmed on super 16 mm film, which can be enlarged digitally to 35 mm (the standard cinematic film size), in this way giving the film immensely textured visuals adding to the authentic 50s feeling. There are various moments in the film that make a clear reference to film, such as a scene early on, shot from the projection booth of a cinema, where we get a brief glimpse of Sunset Blv., one of the most knowingly self-referential films from that era.

Furthermore, the obsession with its medium comes back in the main character Therese's interest in photography. There are various scenes that involve looking through a lens, focusing on the apparatus of the photo-camera as well as the gradual development of the photograph in its solution. Especially in this last scene we can find endless cinematic references to the mid-century era of film, from Peeping Tom to Blow Up. It is also no coincidence that her photography reminded me very much of Vivian Mayer, on whom her work is apparently modelled. A shy photographer, Mayer's work was only discovered after she died, yet the photos showed a keen eye for humanity, to which one conversation in the film clearly points.

However, besides the technical aspects and references in the film, the looks performed by the two main characters, played brilliantly by Rooney Mara and Cate Blanchett, are amongst the most intense you'll ever encounter on the silver screen. It is the act of looking and being looked at that comes back in the very narrative of the film, with an important tipping point in the story relating to being spied upon. There is one particular scene at the very start of the film that is repeated at the end with added context, which has incredibly powerful tension, enhanced by the sound briefly falling away. Something very rare happens at this moment:  for just a few seconds the film becomes pure cinema. The characters are just looking at each other, we only see them and feel a whole raging storm of emotions hiding behind their perfectly composed exterior. The film becomes a pure powerful image without sound or melodrama, to which the immensely involved spectator adds everything. Through this activity we become spectators with agency and it is a wonderful feeling indeed.

There are various moments like these in the film that focus on looking alone: by showing a close up of a gloved hand on the radio, the texture of a fur coat, lipsticked lips, or when viewing someone going home in the distance while the frame is partially covered by the dark curved hood of a car. It shows a world so constricted and superficially beautiful, a place of endless artificiality and pretence, where a look is the only thing that remains when one is desperate to find a shimmer of truth.

An Ode to Pervy Old Men (and the Problematic Female Stereotype in Cinema)

"Human beings really know how to be pathetic when they want to be," is one of the first lines we hear from Jane Fonda's Brenda, a glorious what-ever-happened-to-baby-Jane-type specimen of faded Hollywood femininity. However briefly present, she also happens to be the best thing about the film Youth, Paolo Sorrentino's first foray into the English language.

Many things that were fabulous about his previous film, La Grande Bellezza, are sorely missing from this somewhat underwhelming new work. Clearly referencing 8 1/2, Sorrentino has no problems with Fellini-esque excess, adding melodramatic pathos and lots and lots of visual affectations whenever he can. He does this knowingly, of which the above quote is proof, but not always with clear intention or a necessity to the scene. It nearly always seems to be a frivolous addition to the theme of lost youth and general decrepitude that appears to be present everywhere in the ultra-luxurious Swiss spa where the film is set.

A very problematic moment in the film is the hallucination scene experienced by Harvey Keitel's character featuring every cringeworthy type of female stereotype from cinematic history, from a barbarella-type scif-fi lady to an awful Marilyn-Monroe-like child-woman. It highlights the strange, distanced view on women in the film that is equally problematic in the presence of Miss Universe. Whether clothed or unclothed and apparently "much smarter than you thought," it is suggested that she is DEFINITELY not there for looks alone, despite being an object of pervy visual indulgence not long after. She becomes a cliché that is simply insulting to all womankind.

Which leads me to vomit-inducing Paul Dano, of whom I'm normally a fan, who plays the sycophant to both Michael Caine's and Keitel's character, and proclaims with great sincerity: "you're not a great women's director, you're a great director". His role is to stand by either's side and mildly smile when a joke is made or congratulate either man for being so incredibly successful and yet knowingly cynical about it. He is one of the most infuriating characters with no apparent function apart from being the recipient of one of the most unbelievable lines uttered in the film, by a young girl who supposedly likes one of his more unfamiliar works.

Again Dano's character highlights just how many of the surreal or just plain silly additions are mostly just there for their own sake and don't provide a real contribution to the story or character building. Another example of this is the forcibly 'creative' use of a candy wrapper, which is supposed to suggest musical creativity but mainly becomes highly irritating. It shows the film's very sketchy use of music, which, although sometimes used successfully, often fails completely by being incongruous or worse. Such as in the final scene where we finally hear the much talked about "Simple Songs" that turn out to be torture to listen to. The music, filled with schmaltz and sentimentality, suitably concludes a film that seems not to have very much to say but is desperate to make us feel emotional about it.

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night and Takes Her Revenge on Patriarchy

Sometimes it can be easy to forget what a glorious cinematic spectacle black and white film can produce. With A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, Ana Lily Amirpour has delivered a dazzling, highly stylized film, in the most beautiful black and white stock I've seen for a while. The film is an ode to cinema starting with its beautiful soundtrack consisting of Ennio Morricone-like sweeping orchestral pieces, 80s-style pop and fabulously moody Iranian songs. The main characters, a young vampire girl in Nouvelle Vague dress covered by a large veil that effectively becomes the ominous black shape of a traditional vampire cape, together with a young man in James Dean getup create a marriage of the classic cinema of the 50s and 60s, with perhaps a touch of silent movie horror.

The titular girl has hilarious stand-offs with men of various ages and characters, creating a wonderful mix of Western, Horror and Film Noir. The movie is mostly set at night in the abandoned streets of an Iranian town. Together with its fondness for slow-motion and very present soundtrack, the film presents a dreamlike yet very intense atmosphere dead-set on pursuing its victim, much like its main character. In Iran, a world not known for its progressive treatment of women, the young vampire girl becomes a meaningful symbol for wreaking vengeance on men who disrespect women.

Just like the visually referenced Rebel Without a Cause, a classic film about youngsters resisting the status quo, the 50s car provides the main tool of independence as it cuts through the landscape of a dilapidated town and endless oil fields. As the car is taken away from the young man and returned by the actions of the vampire girl, the young man regains his power for acquiring distance from his deadbeat father and the bad habits of his friends.

It contains almost graphically stylized scenes with plenty of lens flare of Fellini-esque transvestites, dancing prostitutes and the ever-present dark silhouette of the titular Girl looming in the background. Not only great to look at, the film is filled with dark humour and the most patient cat in movie history. This film deserves to be seen, not just because of its fantastic style, but also because of the great importance of having strong women in film, in front of the camera in the form of young vampire girls, but most of all as incredibly talented female Iranian film directors.

Fifty Shades of Fill-in-the-Pun

Well, I finally had a chance to see the much anticipated "erotic" drama Fifty Shades of Gray tonight. I must be honest, I never felt any urge to read the books nor was I particularly excited about the prospect of seeing this film. What made me watch it in the end was my curiosity about the involvement of director/video artist Sam Taylor-Wood. I enjoyed Nowhere Boy, for the easy entertaining flick that it was, although I expected something more experimental from someone who started out as well-respected artist. This film will not help anyone to take her very seriously in the future, although, in this case, I cannot imagine the source material gave her a great deal to work with. Let's not forget that it is a project that was burdened from the start with an ever-changing cast and various rewrites.

Dakota Johnson is suitable as the demure and inexperienced Anastasia, but I cannot believe anyone could have been very convinced by Jamie Dornan's portrayal of Christian Grey. What a curious choice of casting this was. His sufficiently convincing role as a rapist-murderer in The Fall might have been the inspiration, here he is uninspired, inexpressive and worst of all, completely unattractive. His ostensible sexiness is something the film desperately tries to make us believe during the multiple moments he randomly takes his shirt off and in the scene where various female bystanders can't help but express how incredibly sexy he his. To me it seems hardly surprising that there is absolutely no chemistry between the two main protagonists. The sex scenes are mild and often just plain boring, made even worse by the terrible dialogue that precedes them. How can anyone in their right minds take a stranger seriously who tells them "if you were mine, you wouldn't be able to sit for a week"... Honestly, we are supposed to believe that Christian is a conflicted man, but there is no expression of emotion in Dornan's acting that requires us to do so.

But let's go back to what it is that makes most people go and see this movie: the sex and bondage scenes. Everything feels like a caricature created by someone who fantasizes about what S&M could be like, never the real thing. I couldn't help but be reminded of Lars von Trier's Nymphomaniac, which was ten million times as visceral as this film (surely a vital element for a so-called erotically stimulating film). There are plenty of moments where we are shown female nudity, although always "tasteful" (I would say, to the point of being kitsch), but nowhere is there a penis in sight. How could this even be called a heterosexual erotic film with this extremely significant lack? For the most part it felt like an early-nineties film not dissimilar to something like Indecent Proposal, swooning over the ridiculous wealth and conspicuous consumption of its main male protagonist. Endless private helicopters are flying us everywhere, while we stay in luxurious hotels and are given exuberant gifts. This is what we women want, after all? The bad taste that all these scenes leave behind cannot even be equaled by the even more ridiculous scenes where we are made to believe Christian's sensitive side. Is there anyone who didn't burst out laughing when we discover that Christian is an accomplished piano player, who can't help but express his feeling of sadness during midnight private renditions of various pieces of melancholic classical music? What a profoundly vintage melodramatic feel this film had, with not a hint of irony in sight!

There must be people leaving the cinema thinking that what they have just seen is a risqué piece of art. To those people I just want to say that there are many films out there that you should watch now, if only to rinse away the taste of the expensive cheapness that has just been washed over you. Watch Polanski's recent Venus in Fur, Shainberg's Secretary, or even better, wait a few weeks to watch Peter Strickland's Duke of Burgundy, but please, do us all a favour and do not spend any more money and encourage the makers of this terrible film.