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.

Believable Boyhood

Is there any praise that hasn't yet been given to this film? I went into the cinema with great expectations and for more than two and a half hours I couldn't give a damn about any of them, lost in the story as I was. This is a film as close to real life as it gets without becoming a documentary or without losing its luscious cinematic qualities. As you probably know it was filmed over twelve years with the same core of actors. We can see influences from some of Richard Linklater earliest films, such as Dazed and Confused and Slacker, the same laid back view on youth culture, a bit like Kids without the terrible bleakness. Later on the film takes on some qualities of his philosophising films like Waking Life, without ever losing the natural flow of the story or becoming too forced like some of his later films did. 

Everything just happens to the characters as we take the ride with them, as one of the characters describes it: "You don't seize the day, it seizes you." What I found particularly interesting was how involved the audience got with these characters. With all of them, but particularly with the main focus of the story: Mason. As we see him physically grow up we become his parents when we see him behaving stupidly playing with saw blades in a construction yard and we just want to shout at him to make him stop or he'll hurt himself. We become his best friend as he confides his doubts and insecurities about what he wants to do with his life. I just wanted to hug him and tell him that everybody experiences this and that nobody knows anything for sure. And then there are the small moments that shine through the main story, like a waiter telling the mother how she helped him with some advice she had given him years ago. Absolutely beautiful and heartbreaking.

The film made me remember what a fantastic actress Patricia Arquette is and how we haven't seen nearly enough of her glorious performances since True Romance. Her easygoing attitude along with Ethan Hawke's awkwardness and sketchy facial hair matches the flow of the story so wonderfully, it feels like they are Mason's real parents, and just try to make do with all their flaws and failings.

It would be impossible for anyone not to identify with at least one of the characters in this film. From the hardworking pushover mom, the well meaning but immature musician dad, the overachieving quirky sister to Mason himself, the confused slacker with a longing for constancy in his family life, desperately trying to finding a purpose. I can only recommend you see this film for yourself and take out of it what you need. By finding the moments that feel familiar and truthful to you and give a new resonance to your own struggle just to try to do the best you can with the moments that seize your life.

The Filthy and Glorious Chaos that Only God Forgives

Views of this film seem to be extremely positive or negative. In many films where this has been the case, the cause was often extreme or gratuitous violence. This film is no exception. Only God Forgives is a certainly a violent film, although not as violent as some horrified viewers might make it seem. It is visceral, over-the-top and relishes in slow motions. Yet under the neon shine and beautifully composed shots, so much more is brewing.

Despite the dark picture it paints of the Bangkok underworld, it creates a lush image of a surreal tropical place that made me want to take a plane to the equatorial lands straight away. The atmosphere is sweaty, sticky and sultry, full of dank alleyways and open restaurants with plastic seating and fans whirring. There is a clear line through the film of South-East Asia's most popular past time: karaoke. We get to see many versions of it that contribute greatly to the film's fascinating brand of surrealism. Extreme kitsch and artificial lights make the violence seem unreal and dreamlike. And like a Bataille novel, we start relishing in it. We don't get to know a great deal about the motivations of the most violent characters and that makes the gestures more visual then emotional. When a carcass is cut open, we are completely aware of the neat line of ribs, the deep luscious red of the meat and the blood glistening in the lights.

Meanwhile, we get a nearly unrelenting soundtrack of minimal atmospheric sounds and electronic beats. It is rare to see a film nowadays that gives the music such a key presence. This made me feel the film is more than a little inspired by certain dark controversial masterpieces of the seventies like Taxi Driver or Straw Dogs. At the base of it lies psychoanalytical theory; in this case the symptoms of an Oedipus complex are certainly present. But even a film like The Shining came to my mind occasionally when the main character wanders through the corridors of a brothel, that feature carpets with graphical patterns and the ever-present blue and red lighting. Everywhere the spaces of the film are throbbing, sweat dripping from the walls and with sexual and violent tensions infesting every frame.

Gender is brought into question with many of the characters. From the beginning of the film where one character asks how many of the prostitutes are actually girls; the question is raised that makes us ask who is a woman and who is a man. In one scene we see someone masturbate, but we only see it from the back. The character of the mother functions as the most powerful force that drives most of the violence and the quest for revenge. Interestingly enough we never get the typical satisfaction of revenge-based story.

This is a film that will not be as easily accepted by a large audience as Drive was. It might seem slow at times, there are a great deal of slow motion shots, but it functions to make everything feel dreamlike and make us wade through the seemingly simple story-line like a thick soup. It is a film that is rich and soiled, oppressive and brutally resplendent in every way.

The Feeling of Injustice

Having just seen In A Better World I am convinced Susanne Bier is one of the best filmmakers currently around. After Brothers and After The Wedding she brings us another film not afraid of tackling difficult themes, and yet without ever losing the ability to tell a good story.

When I saw the poster I was afraid of one of those extremely ethical films focusing on problems in Africa, one you feel bad about, but one which would never get close to your own world. And here it is where Bier succeeds where others with better intentions have failed: this is a fantastic film that actually reaches out and touches you. By mixing the stories of two young lonely boys and their difficulties with the far more serious and yet remote problems in an unnamed country in Africa where one of their fathers works, the film achieves a perfect but troubling metaphor on the nature of violence in all its forms.

Especially from the point of the 'innocent' as Bier herself mentioned in an interview. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, a statement that has never rung more true. We have been manipulated by a long history of (Hollywood) film to sympathize with motives of revenge and the process of achieving power and self-confidence while helping others. And yet, what is it that drives us when we search for violence? Is there ever a situation where it can be tolerated, even needed?

When watching a film there is nothing more satisfying than seeing evil being punished, in fact the pleasure is so great that when it is prevented we cannot help to feel frustrated, angry even, for there is nothing more thoroughly infuriating than injustice. It is this frustration with the powerful triangle of injustice, revenge and violence that Bier tackles in her film.

And yet, at the heart of it remains a simple and thoroughly recognizable story of a family with difficulties; parents on the verge of divorce, a family death from cancer and a boy being bullied. Actually, it is this bullying that echoes throughout the film. On many levels characters are being subjugated to the will of another, violated in several different ways. It burns under your skin and it makes your blood rush, it is hard not to feel an anger rise within. This film has a powerful message but also makes us feel very strongly. It has been a while since I have wept in front of the screen.

Spiceless Splice

Before last night I had a great deal of respect for actress Sarah Polley and a reasonable amount for actor Adrien Brody. Now both have greatly fallen in my esteem. Rarely have I seen a couple that has less chemistry than these two. In a movie where the sexual undercurrent is supposed to play an enormous role, I felt completely unaffected by the torments the characters have to suffer. Sarah Polley plays Elsa Kast, a slightly traumatized but very successful geneticist. At the moments of great suffering in the story Elsa is played with the agony of a small child not getting the ice-cream she wants. Elsa is whiney and sentimental for the most part, a severe problem for a woman who is supposed to be an extremely professional and intelligent scientist. How can a true scientist suddenly decide to discard the most important rule of genetic research: that cloned or manipulated DNA must be kept in complete isolation at all times?

But fair enough, this is a modern day Frankenstein story so I was prepared to suspend my disbelief for a while. The premise was promising; two important scientists working on revolutionary DNA recombination technology face the closure of their research project at the point where they might have just discovered a way to integrate human DNA into their subject. So what do they do? Right, they continue the research secretly to disastrous effects. So far so familiar. At that point the obligatory statement ‘It’s Alive’ is made with just about as much convincement as ‘your dinner is ready’. But after this, the story becomes a lot more sordid, with some incestual and psychopathological details I will not go into here. They try very hard to make the movie into something more than the B-monster-flick I thought and was kind of hoping it to be. I do not mind big ideas, but they were hardly executed in a convincing way. What I missed mostly was the plain fun of the monster-film. The problem was that it takes itself far to seriously. A bit of humour would have done so much to alleviate the dreary pressure that lies on the story and its characters. This said, it might have been a tough task combining humour with some of the developments near the end of the story, but it would have made the whole thing a lot more enjoyable and help it to fit the genre. There is no reason why big ideas can’t be combined with some laughter. I remember precisely one very lame joke (‘at least it has some rustic charm’) made by Adrian Brody’s character, which was a dud before it was even uttered.

The character of Dren, the creature they create by combining human with several forms of animal DNA looks quite haunting in a later stage when played by actress Delphine Chaneac but is much less convincing in CGI. What is most hilarious is the first introduction to their research, a creature that looks remarkable like a large floppy penis and is an example of some of the worst CGI done recently. Why couldn’t they have made this creature as a puppet? It would not have allowed for some of the specific interactions they wanted the creature to make but it would have given the film infinitively more charm and believability. But back to Dren, although she is created from the DNA of about five creatures she looks remarkably human, but this can be allowed in a Star-Trek-kind-of-way. It also makes the sexual tension between her and the human characters a lot more believable, although it felt a bit much like ‘Species’ to me. What is problematic is that Dren cannot speak and displays her emotions in an often laughably pantomime way. The corny dance scene half way through the movie made me cringe for the 80s type superficial sentimentality of it, ‘this… is music..’ oh how lovely. Overall the film just makes for a joyless overproduced underacted movie that could have been so much more…

The very Sordid Killer Inside Me

The experience I had this evening was a combination of shock, horror and surprise I haven’t felt since I saw Last House on the Left and maybe even Funny Games. The film I saw was an investigation into the mind of a killer, into its emotional detachment and unreasonable violent solutions to problems. I heard the movie was violent (it didn’t have an 18+ rating for nothing) and that people had walked out of the screening at the Sundance festival. There were even rumours that leading actress Jessica Alba had walked out of a screening, though that rumour is completely unsubstantiated and seems a bit unlikely to me.

At times the scenes of violence approach the intense unpleasantness of Irreversible, especially when we see the continuous deterioration of a woman’s face when Lou Ford keeps beating on it, though it never fully goes to the same lengths. What stopped that happening for me was the luscious period design (it is set in Oklahoma in the fifties) and the odd hints of extremely black comedy in it. This comedy had taken me aback when it first occurred but especially after a gruesome murder near the end of the film that was somewhat unexpected. A comedic western song accompanying a chase follows this last mentioned scene of violence, which gave it an incredibly strange slapstick moment, especially when Lou slips on the urine of the person he just killed and is met with an eerie post-mortem smile. This moment was what reminded me of Last House on the Left, the very sordid combination of sincerely meant comedy and authentic feeling violence when a slapstick moment follows a very nasty gang rape. Winterbottom, the director, said that he meant this strange transition from horror to comedy to reflect the mentally confused state of mind that the main character finds himself in together with his inability to connect consequences to his actions.

It must be said that Lou Ford, the main character, is extremely well played by Casey Affleck, who has had experience with playing loathsome but internally troubled figures in The Assassination of Jesse James and Gone Baby Gone. He plays a man who seems very detached, who hardly thinks twice about brutally beating the woman he loves to serve his purposes in an odd convoluted way. Kate Hudson and Jessica Alba seem odd choices for the two women characters in this quite daring project, but they both played aptly, though their beauty somehow seems a bit out of place in this gruesome story of sadism and masochism.

What is fascinating though, is the reaction this film has received from audiences everywhere, even the one that I sat in. A woman couldn’t stop asking the director why there had to be so much violence in it, even though this question seemed pointless after the director had explained that he wanted to make a film where the violence doesn’t just pass quickly as a way to advance the story easily as it does in most films. He wanted to make a film where the viewer is extremely aware of the horrible reality of what is happening on screen and I admire this sentiment very much. It is only too easy to make a film in what now seems to be the Tarantino-style film making where violence is extreme but the momentum of the film never gives us time to dwell on it. It is because of this that I allowed a comparison with Funny Games although The Killer Inside Me seems a bit too confused to tackle this problem directly. This is also the reason why I think this film is not completely successful. It seems unsure of what it wants to be, a black comedy, a commentary on violence, a psychological investigation into the psychopathic mind or a film-noir pastiche. Its ambitions are extremely laudable but not focussed enough. A fascinating try, though I would rather recommend seeing a film by Michael Haneke.