Charlotte Rampling is a formidable presence in Laurent Cantet’s 2005 film Heading South, a follow-up to the brilliant Time Out (L’Emploi du temps) in which he depicted the unraveling of one man’s elaborate deception of his own family, pretending for years to travel abroad for a job that never existed.
Heading South is set in an idyllic but troubled place - Haiti in the late 70’s, and a hotel resort in summer where rich, middle-aged white women come to stay each year and take advantage of the exotic young men who tend to their every need, mostly sexual. For the locals attractive enough to appeal to the women it means refuge from the island’s crime and poverty.
Rampling is Ellen, one of the group’s mainstays, for six straight years making the sojourn from America where she teaches French literature. She’s besotted with the attractive 18 year-old Legba (Menothy Cesar), but soon has competition with the arrival of Brenda (Karen Young) who had a memorable first encounter with Legba on her only visit three years previous, the innocent young 15 year-old providing her first orgasm!
The two woman attempt to assert their wills in vying for Legba’s attention but danger lurks on the periphery of this exotic locale for the young Haitians, the threat of violence and ghosts of the pasts threatening to derail the heightened sense of living that they all enjoy at the resort.
Ellen (Charlotte Rampling) getting closer to Legba (Menothy Cesar).
A clever narrative device allows each of the main characters, at intervals, to give a monologue to an unseen listener, effectively us the audience – including Brenda detailing her provocative first visit, Ellen her reasons for returning each year, and the observations of a third member of their group, Sue (Louise Portal).
A film about reveling in escapism as well as casting off identities and inhibitions, Heading South is a fascinating glimpse into a corner of Haiti only faintly touched by the political turmoil of the time when the country was ruled by the despot Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier.
Karen Young as Brenda
It's anchored by Rampling's weighty presence which can be felt in every one of her scenes, whilst character actress Young is an interesting choice as her rival for Legba's attentions. Only Cesar and a few other locals lower the acting standard fractionally with some awkward, slightly wooden, moments.
Rampling has been enjoying a remarkable return to prominance in recent years, when less and less interesting roles are being written for 'mature' actresses; her brilliant turns in Francois Ozon's Swimming Pool and Under the Sand are just two more examples of how she's endured and become attractive to a new generation of French filmmakers in particular.
Director Cantet helped turn this adaptation of stories by Dany Laferriere into a really interesting screenplay which turns the revelry on its head in the third act; from beyond the hedonistic playground of carefree, unattached tourists, the grim elemental forces manifest themselves and the ending is a somber and painful one.
Ultimately, he’s saying, the illusion or fantasy these women cling to can’t be maintained, regardless of the power they believe they have to control it. When the social destitution of Haiti finally intrudes upon their slice of heaven, paradise is lost forever - if the jealousies of lonely white women hadn’t ended it already.
Mike White’s 2007 film Year of the Dog, an offbeat black comedy/drama, bears the hallmarks of two of his earlier screenplays, Chuck and Buck (2000) and the superb Jennifer Aniston indie vehicle, The Good Girl (2002). Also responsible for The School of Rock and Nacho Libre, his characters normally don’t quite fit into what passes for 'normal' society, becoming frayed along its outer edges, and his directorial debut is no exception.
Molly Shannon’s Peggy Spade works in a menial secretarial job but lives vicariously through her beagle puppy, Pencil. Most people surround her like figures loosely assembled in a complicated dream that she can’t be bothered piecing together, even her best friend Layla (Regina King), and her obsessively overbearing brother Pier (Tom McCarthy) and his wife Bret (Laura Dern).
When her beloved dog strays one night into the backyard of a sleazy neighbour, Al (John C. Reilly) and is poisoned, she becomes inconsolable, left without an emotional connection to anything in her world.
Molly Shannon as Peggy Spade
Then she meets a man, Newt (Peter Sarsgaard), responsible for assigning homeless, doomed animals to foster homes. Her need for a companion of a distinctly un-human kind is rekindled, as well as the inconceivable – a human being she might actually have more in common with than anyone she’s ever known.
She soon becomes heavily influenced by Newt’s passions – animal rights, finding dogs new homes, maintaining a vegan diet - but disappointments of many kinds soon emerge from the burgeoning promise, causing her emotions to tip over into dangerous territory and a potential disaster or two.
The lonely Peggy clings to her beloved Pencil in an early scene.
The dark undercurrent is what separates this quirky character study from slipping off the radar; White’s writing comes from an interesting direction most of the time, the perfectly cast Shannon thriving as the socially awkward, unnatural beauty Peggy; the gifted comedic actress, with her Saturday Night Live roots and memorable lead turn in Superstar behind her, shows a talent for subtle dramatics with a diverse empathetic range, providing brutal honesty that never strays into mockery for the sake of cheap laughs.
Does Peggy have a shot at a different kind of love with Newt (Peter Sarsgaard)?
There are heartbreaking moments like the death of Pencil and Peggy’s moment of stark honesty in admitting that human beings have always let her down, and so she simply expects nothing more in life. They may be seen as shamefully manipulative and bordering on melodrama, but White treads that fine line deftly with a purposeful awareness, and lacing his view of the world with otherwise dark undertones strengthens the film’s credibility.
Inside of Peggy there's a capacity to find love for something, even from the darkness of her lonely despair; for her it may be that only canines will ever be the recipients of what she legitimately has to offer, but with White’s assured direction, idiosyncratic viewpoint, and fine ensemble cast, all underlined by a refreshingly off-kilter Christophe Beck score, that’s a conclusion convincing enough to ensure that Year of the Dog is a rich comedic treat.
Peggy's brother Pier (Tom McCarthy, also a director in his own right of the brilliant duo The Station Agent and The Visitor) and sister-in-law Bret (Laura Dern).
Mike Leigh’s 1992 film is one of the most raw and searing portraits of mankind ever committed to film.
David Thewlis, in the role that has most defined his career, is Johnny, a cynical, amoral man who abandons Manchester after raping a young woman in a back alley in the film’s confronting opening scene. He steals a car and flees to London where he turns up on the doorstep of an ex-girlfriend, Louise (Lesley Sharp).
One of her flat-mates is at home, a disturbed drug addict, Sophie (Katrin Cartlidge) who he’s soon charming with his laconic wit and dire cynicism; despite his disheveled appearance he’s clearly a well-read, intelligent person, but with a twisted worldview not exactly aligned with populist thought.
Within a day or two - and a few rounds of rough sex - Sophie becomes disturbingly attentive to his needs but Johnny is going stir-crazy in the drab flat with conversation at a standstill with the two frustrated women. He eventually bails out, headed for the mean streets of the city where he has various encounters with the seedier elements spotted around the metropolis and its colourful night-life.
One of the film’s best sequences involves Johnny and a bored security guard, Brian (Peter Wight), outside whose door he camps one night. The guard lets him in for the sake of human interaction, giving him a tour of his building whilst Johnny rants in his uniquely elliptical, rambling manner. He may be a purveyor of the bleakest philosophical wares, but he’s genuinely hilarious at times which naturally draws the empathy of strangers.
Housemates Louise (Lesley Sharp) and Sophie (Katrin Cartlidge).
Naked is essentially about one man’s plight into the bowels of a profound, disturbing disillusionment with existence and the state of the human race; it’s full of Johnny’s scathing sarcasm and literate wit - often intertwined and the same – but he seems unable to grasp any sense of life’s day to day meaning in the drudgery of his poverty and debased, hollow sexual encounters.
Sex seems to be a battle between physical forces, for Johnny, in which he must immediately gain the upper hand by abusing the female; clearly, amongst other things, he's also a despicable misogynist who has a hard time relating to women in more than one fundamental way, and resents them for it in the same stroke.
David Thewlis gives an extraordinary performance as Johnny.
The cast is uniformly exceptional, especially Thewlis and Sharp as the transplanted duo from Manchester, and Leigh's usual modus operandi - allowing for improvisation in his exhaustive rehearsals - supplies the end product with a grim conviction.
Whenever a glimmer of light, a tiny moment of tenderness is revealed - mostly through the eyes of the women, but even occasionally flickering in Johnny’s eyes - it’s destroyed just as simply in the next scene as Leigh reasserts his graveyard view of human nature.
Even the final scene usurps the hopefulness of the previous sequence which seems to offer the faint stirrings of a possible redemption for Johnny’s blackened soul.
Has he finally seen the light? Can he finally acknowledge the goodness tearing up inside of Louise?
The last lingering image belies it all, shattering the possibilities into irretrievable shards as Johnny walks away, without a belonging or emotional connection to the world and its inhabitants, only the perpetration of another act borne of moral bankruptcy, another sinful notch in his belt.
Frenchman Michel Gondry had the advantage of directing two Charlie Kaufman screenplays with his first two films – the underrated and under seen Human Nature, followed by the critically acclaimed, mind-bending love story, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
However, turning to his own ideas has led to a lowering of the boom on the talented director, firstly with The Science of Sleep, and now with Be Kind Rewind, a frustratingly uneven comedy about two ordinary guys in suburban New Jersey who are forced to recreate famous movies after inadvertantly erasing a store's limited VHS stock.
Veteran French director Claude Lelouch has made one of his most accessible and entertaining films in years with this alluring mystery, loaded with the genre’s usual trappings – various strands which take time to reveal their interconnectedness and a few clever red herrings tossed in along the way.
Roman de gare (2007) doesn’t break any new ground, but from the moment we see a curiously odd-looking man (Dominique Pinon, instantly recognizable from Jean Pierre-Jeunet films Delicatessen, City of Lost Children and Amelie), we become interested in his motivations. He’s driving out of Paris to an unknown destination, but to where?
Gregory Hoblit’s drama, released in 2000, is a curious concoction, lumbered with a concept, that on paper, shouldn’t work. But mixing elements of serial killer pursuit, supernatural suspense and a painful nostalgia for what might have been, Frequency succeeds mostly because of its two leads - the all-American father who every kid would love to have, Dennis Quaid, matched by the dark intensity of Jim Caviezel as his grown-up son.
The two strands of the narrative take place in different eras: Quaid is Frank Sullivan, loving family man and fire-fighter, who on a 1969 New York night comes across a lonely voice on his old, recently-repaired ham radio as strange weather activity encloses the city in the form of the Aurora Borealis.
This starkly-filmed recreation of the famously accused heretic’s last days in Rouen 1431, defending the validity of the voices of angels and saints that visit her, is another fine example of Robert Bresson’s minimalist, detached style.
As in the earlier Pickpocket (1959), one of his masterpieces, he uses no music (other than in the first and last scenes) and more crucially, a cast of non-actors which makes for slightly wooden but dour, sincere performances. Florence Delay in the title role of Joan is excellent, burdened with the majority of the film’s dialogue, her earnestly devout portrayal giving it a feeling of authenticity.
Bernie Lootz (William H. Macy) is a loser, a walking curse, the embodiment of bad luck, “kryptonite on a stick” according to his employer Shelly Kaplow (Alec Baldwin), owner of downtown Las Vegas casino the Shangri-La.
In Wayne Kramer’s directorial debut, Bernie is a “cooler”, sent to the tables where a hot streak in taking place - his presence alone, or making slightest contact to the player, is enough to stop the winning surge in its tracks.
With the likes of Hotel Rwanda, Traffic and Crash behind him Don Cheadle’s status as a heavyweight actor has rarely been in doubt and his perfectly controlled performance is the foundation on which Traitor is built. This engrossing new film directed by Jeffrey Nachmanoff, with its fascinating cultural and political dimensions, provides a fresh perspective in the way it portrays Muslims on screen whilst remaining true to the formula of successful action/suspense films.
Cheadle is Samir Horn, born in Sudan but raised mostly in Chicago by his mother after witnessing his father’s demise in a traumatic bombing. Because of this mix of cultural influences, the full extent of his allegiances remains ambiguous for a lot of the film, providing genuine intrigue.
Young British director Steve McQueen has burst onto the scene with one of the most stunning debuts in years. His fact-based drama Hunger, set in Belfast’s Maze prison in 1981, is one of the most traumatic, gut-wrenching film experiences you’ll ever have.
With devestating visceral force, McQueen has pried open the wounds of Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender) - a symbol of the Irish Republican Army movement - with the rusty scalpel of history, and in doing so announced to the world an extraordinary, uncompromising artistic vision of the darkest side of the human condition.
Teresa, I loved the first two books in the series with Caffery, but I lost a lot of my enthusiam for Hayder after reading Pig Island which I absolutely hated with a passion!! I'll definitely pick this up at some stage though once it's in paperback.
Thanks Tracy! It's a very good film. And it's interesting to see another place depicted on film. Though I read that Cantet couldn't actually film the resort scenes in Port-au-Prince because of the huge levels of violence and disorder at the time but instead shot them in the Dominican Republic...........so it's not all Haiti in the film!
I don't really know her but her books look interesting Teresa, I'd love to get around to one some day soon.
I only read the occasional true crime book, the most recent was a superb one by Helen Garner called Joe Cinque's Consolation. She writes such elegant prose and had me spellbound the whole way.
I absolutely agree Teresa, she's an amazing actress who looks incredible for somebody now over 60! I'm intending to watch Swimming Pool again very soon too, I loved it at the time. Along with a couple of other Francois Ozon films.
Some interesting films turning up from Canada by the sound of things Cib. I don't mind Diane Kruger at all - she certainly gets around! (American, Canadian and French films - and she's German, maybe one or two of those as well?). I didn't mind her in the first National Treasure film (I'm embarressed to admit!), whilst she was also excellent in a French film I saw a year or two back called Mon Idole.
Great quote by Arcand about comedy too. He's right, when you get right down to it, we are all pretty ridiculous and the best form of comedy exposes that without needing to go overboard.
No worries MM! We all have gut reactions to films, there's nothing wrong with being harsh the first time around, it can only get better next time!!
I remember Leonard Part 6 too Steve! I used to be a big Bill Cosby fan back in the day.......................... ....................hang on, did I just say that aloud!!??
He definitely should have begged Kaufman for another screenplay Cib, Gondry's own ideas will never qualify as genius at this rate, but you still have to admire him taking a shot at something offbeat, even if it's far less successful in its execution.
Thankyou MelGee, I appreciate that, but Anon, when he has the guts to own up to his real name (which is rarely) is just a work friend of mine trying to be funny - he likes to extract amusement from his tiny little existence by bagging films he's never seen nor capable of understanding. And trust me, film is not exactly his forte!
Hey Cib, yes, Molly Shannon is excellent in this. I wouldn't touch her latest incarnation in Kath and Kim with a barge pole, but I always thought she was hilarious in Superstar which was an adaptation of a character she played on Saturday Night Live. She has an unusual look, that's for sure, especially for playing a straight dramatic role here with a dark comedic side to it. Maybe she's playing against type just enough, in a way, to make it work as well as it does.
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Comment by David O'Connell
on RITUAL - MO HAYDER
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