Suite Française

Michelle Williams and Kristin Scott-Thomas

In a picturesque village on the outskirts of Paris, time seems to stand still. Young bride Lucille Angellier (Michelle Williams) goes through the routines of daily life, under the brusque supervision of her domineering mother-in-law (Kristin Scott Thomas), as both quietly wait for news of her husband at the front. Suddenly, during an ordinary drive in the countryside, both women are confronted by the shocking and violent realities of war.

Sensibly, director Saul Dibb (The Duchess) selected the second half of Suite Française, Irene Nemirovsky’s brilliant and memorable novel about what happened to ordinary people, when France fell to the Nazi army. The snobbery of an elderly, aristocratic couple (Lambert Wilson and Harriet Walter) sets in motion a chain of terrible events which leads to tragedy and tests the mettle of all the characters. The result is a big, beautiful weepy, with outstanding and utterly convincing performances from Williams, Scott Thomas, Sam Riley and Ruth Wilson.

The film is not about the brutality of the Nazi occupation. Although the anti-Semitism of the Nazi regime is shown, the fact that it is little remarked upon, and not made an issue by the population, is in itself telling. In fact, life under the Occupation goes on much as before, with the added tension that a huge troop of young men brings to a village full of women. The petty jealousies, snobbery and venality of the villagers is laid bare: the Occupation is only an occasion for these to come to the fore.

At the heart of the story is the gradual and tentative relationship between Lucille and Bruno (Matthias Schoenaerts), the young German officer who is billeted in her home. Music brings them together, and Dibb’s film finds a fresh way to communicate the old story about the healing power of art, to unite people across social and ideological boundaries.

But Lucille is no passive recipient of love or attention: she learns to act, as her loyalties are tested to the utmost. The film captures the golden ease and beauty of a long warm summer, a perfect backdrop to a romantic story. Yet the story isn’t about romance as much as it is about the tentative, yet necessary, desire to tenderly reach out a hand to a fellow human, in spite of the all-encompassing brutality and corruption. Lucille’s heroism is that she dares to do this.

120713SH_605.nef

Michelle Williams is an actress who carefully chooses her parts, and this is her best role yet. She manages to tread the fine line between portraying a credible 1940s housewife, and a relatable contemporary woman. If you look at films actually made in the 1940s about wartime, such as William Wyler’s Mrs. Miniver (1942), it’s clear how difficult a task that actually is.

Likewise, Sam Riley delivers an excellent turn as a disabled young farmer who, as well as being frustrated with the social structure of the community and the behaviour of his “betters”, clashes with the smug and brutal German officer Bonnet (played with creepy brilliance by Tom Schilling). Riley is an increasingly impressive actor and he does not disappoint here, perfectly capturing Benoit’s frustration of being physically disabled, yet immensely strong-willed to protect his wife and family against all odds.

Saul Dibb’s attention to detail and realism is a fresh approach to the period drama, since Suite Française is anything but twee. The production is sumptuous without being lavish. Period detail is captured well, with excellent use of locations and particularly good work by costume designer Michael O’Connor and production designer Michael Carlin.

The director of 2004’s award-winning East End gang-pic Bullet Boy was probably the best choice to adapt for the screen Irene Nemerovsky’s coruscating study of character under pressure. He has carefully and cleverly exercised restraint, not hiding the sex and violence around which the plot turns, yet never indulging them either.

By focusing on human frailties and courage, Suite Française tells us much more about war than a film about military escapades. Although the film has little of Irene Nemirovsky’s acid wit and deep psychology, it delivers a compelling, mostly unsentimental and credible picture of the Occupation.

The only unconvincing note is one that probably can’t be helped. The film is about the German occupation of France, yet all the French characters unnervingly have British accents, while the Germans emote Teutonic-ally. This issue came up last year over the game Assassin’s Creed, about the French Revolution’s British accents and it’s been affecting many other films. It was not resolved then, and it won’t be now.

Suite Française is released in UK cinemas on March 13^th 2015

WHITE GOD

[origially published in Candid Magazine. Pub.  Feb 26, 2015]

Hagen is a handsome youth who, through no fault of his own, is violently cast out from his family. Learning to survive on the streets with the help of other homeless, he finds there love and companionship. But mainstream society permits no place for Hagen or his friends; only exploitation or incarceration. This is the story of Hagen’s revenge.

Kornél Mundruczó has done something wonderful with White God, Cannes 2014’s Un Certain Regard award winner, because Hagen, the centre of this archetypal hero’s journey, is a dog, a big brown mastiff cross-breed. Mundruczó’s film can be enjoyed on a number of levels: as an allegorical tale about oppression and injustice, as a coming-of-age story, as a love story, and as a dog story. The brilliance is that White Dog doesn’t force any one of these readings on the audience: it offers them all up, and the viewer gets to choose.

Set in Budapest in the present day, it begins with 13 year old Lily and her dog Hagen. Their relationship is destroyed as a consequence of her parents’ bitter divorce and the busybody neighbour. Without the only creature whose love she is assured, Lily (Zsofia Psotta) embarks on a fruitless quest to find her beloved dog. As Lily gradually descends into a downward spiral of alienation and rebellion, Hagen makes his way among his own kind, finding unexpected loyalty and solidarity.

At its heart, the film is about relationships. Lily cannot be sure of her relationships with her parents: her mother dumps her, and her father, clearly embittered, is uncomfortable and constantly irritable. Nor can she trust the shifting allegiances of her friends. Without Hagen, she is cast adrift. Hagen in turn discovers for the first time how brutal human beings are. Chased by a dog catcher, captured and sold to a dog fighter, and eventually incarcerated, Hagen continuously suffers at the hands of humans at all levels of society.

With its themes of love, loyalty and betrayal, White God plays out its allegory of the oppressed in a nuanced way, never didactic or preachy. We see very clearly how tribal identity operates, from the collaboration of the street dogs working together to escape their oppressors, to the unity of the humans who band together to contain the dogs. But Mundruczó points out the weakness of human solidarity compared to that of the dogs: humans appear to be cruel for the sake of it, or for gain. The nasty neighbour has no particular reason to be so unpleasant, yet she is. The criminals at the dogfight beat and rob each other. Even family and friends are unreliable.

Yet the story of exploitation is also a story of vengeance. The oppressed rise up, “like a well-regulated army” with Hagen as their general. The dogs mass across the city, and take their revenge. It is an eerie and frightening reminder of the simmering social tension experienced across much of the world at the present day, and the potential horror that it could bring. It reminds us that this is what revolution actually looks like, red in tooth and claw. Even if we feel sympathy for the dogs, it is still terrifying.

In interviews, Mundruczó has said that he started out wanting to make a film about the political situation in Hungary, but found to his surprise that instead he has made his first truly international film. Making White God also opened his eyes to the way animals are treated, and he says that making this film has changed him. One strong message the film carries is that the worse we treat the animals in our society, the worse we treat each other – and the worse we treat ourselves. The cruellest of the characters, the criminal dog fighter, also lives under the most unpleasant conditions.

White God may have a political subtext, but it is also a really good dog story. The expert work of dog handler Teresa Anne Miller is stunning, working with over 250 dogs, all of them from shelters (and now all adopted). The film’s action is dynamic, as the dogs race through the city, moving with the grace of a corps de ballet, and it is all made without CGI, just excellent camera work by Marcell Rév.

Combining animal fable with social critique, wrapped in a genuinely exciting thriller, White God will have huge appeal to the dog-loving British audience. In the screening I attended, there was a universal sigh of appreciation when the magnificent Hagen appeared on the screen, and much surreptitious eye-wiping during certain scenes. If sometimes Lily’s traumatic coming-of-age human story feels a little forced, Hagen’s dog story, his suffering and transformation into a canine Che Guevara, is heart-wrenching, uplifting and ultimately rewarding.

White God is released in UK cinemas on February 27th

Gillian McIver

Kicks – a film review

at the Sideshow [image source: http://www.focusfeatures.com/kicks]

Not long after I saw Justin Tipping’s debut feature film Kicks, I somehow came across a whole pile of those “cinema is over” and “cinema is dead” pronouncements from the likes of Martin Scorsese, Ridley Scott and others. Aside from the fact that these pronouncements were all made at times when these iconic filmmakers had new films to market, it struck me as interesting that their particular generation of filmmakers were lamenting the current stage of filmmaking precisely when new filmmakers from outside of the traditional filmmaking demographic were finally getting their work out there for all to see. I mean, film artists like Tipping, Ryan Coogler, Jordan Peele, Barry Jenkins and Amma Assante, to name a few. The great Kelly Reichardt has just been the focus of a huge BFI retrospective and symposium. Yes, these are not the traditional “white male” directors, but surely by now we should be past the stage of expecting that all film directors are white men. Plenty of them are, and that’s fine, but not all. What this means is that other kinds of stories can be told, new ideas are coming out and this can only enrich cinema and take it further. I suppose I was just a bit surprised that Scorsese doesn’t see a link between his early film-making, films like Mean Streets and Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, and films like Kicks by Justin Tipping.
I was very fortunate to be able to host a master class by Tipping at Central St. Martins, to the BA and MA students studying film. Tipping had many interesting things to say, which I’ll get to, but first I want to give a mini review of the film.
It is a deceptively simple story of a teenage boy on the cusp of young adult hood, but very self-conscious about his scrawny physique and lack of masculine identity when he compares himself to his friends. He comes to believe that the best way of gaining status in his social circle is to have a truly desirable pair of kicks – sneakers – and after some effort requires a pair. However, these become the focus of local bullies, and he is soon relieved of them. This sparks a rage in him that he barely understands, as he goes off on an increasingly violent quest to retrieve his precious shoes and assert himself in the world.
Robert de Niro, who liked the film, is quoted as describing KICKS as a “portrait of a young man drowning in the expectations of machismo.” The film addresses notions of status and power as well as masculinity, and it shows how these ideas are embedded at a young age. The film makes us question these toxic narratives of masculinity, not only as they exist within the smaller circle of Bay Area teens portrayed in the film, but within the wider culture which we all inhabit.
KICKS has been compared to de Sica’s Bicycle Thieves and it certainly has an affinity with that neorealist film classic, but what is interesting to me, and what’s really different, is the commodity fetishism of the shoes. It’s very recognisable, but also very disturbing. The shoes don’t just mean shoes; like the bicycle in Bicycle Thieves, the shoes represent a whole way of life and position in the world and sense of self-esteem. However, unlike the bicycle, the shoes have no utility, they are simply commodity fetish. Tipping’s film does an excellent job of really conveying to the viewer the real importance of the shoes, and their core necessity in the life of the protagonist Brandon (Jahking Guillory), as well as their function within the wider social circle – while never detouring from the stark reality of the complete uselessness of the shoes and their inability to actually give any concrete benefit to Brandon or anybody else. Which is the tragedy of our times.
At the heart of the film is the relationship between three friends, Brandon and his bigger and somewhat more self-assured buddies Albert and Rico (magnificently played by Christopher Jordan Wallace and Christopher Meyer). The friendship is tested many times during the story, and the dialogue is well-written and well directed, with an authenticity that almost hurts as we see the three talking and joshing around and constantly on the edge of saying and expressing what they really want to say and really feel, yet always just holding back.
Another very interesting aspect of the film is the “villain,” Flaco (Kofi Siriboe), a local thug who steals the shoes. Siriboe, who is excellent and definitely an actor to watch out for, soon reveals Flaco to have a surprising motivation for the theft and the character is much more well-rounded, interesting and (dare I say it) even sympathetic, than one expects. The violence in the film, which is sparingly and effectively used, is never gratuitous and never justified. One of the great set pieces of the film is a “sideshow,” a big gathering of young people on a vacant lot, where they spin their cars, drink and smoke weed and show off. It is a buoyant, exuberant social scene, but one which can turn ugly in a split second. The great Mahershala Ali appears as Brandon’s uncle and the father of a clan of young men who are just getting into a way of life that may not end well. Again, Ali’s character is multidimensional and although the part is small, it makes a powerful impact. Altogether the film demonstrates convincingly the limited lives framed by poverty and lack of opportunity, where aspirations are small, local and potentially deadly. Figures of authority – Brandon’s mother (who clearly sees a different path for her son), teachers, police and so forth – are not seen in the film at all.
The film boasts beautiful camerawork by Michael Ragen, that preserves the necessary realism of the film but at the same time aetheticizes it, without prettifying the conditions. If I have one aesthetic criticism, it is that slow motion is used a little bit too much; in my view it would have been better if the slow motion appeared only in the last third of the film. However, this doesn’t spoil the film experience at all.
In the master class Tipping was very generous with his time and shared many insights with the students, who clearly appreciated the opportunity to meet the director. Tipping revealed some very interesting things. Although the film appears to be about the African-American community in the Bay Area, Tipping points out that the story is much more universal, just as in the area is quite multi-ethnic. Tipping, who has a Filipino heritage, grew up in the Bay Area and elements  of the films are semi-autiobiographical. The production held very open-minded casting calls and was prepared to cast actors of any race who appeared right for the part. However, after exhaustive searching through youth groups and many casting calls, he has ended up with a predominantly African-American cast of uniform excellence. It is interesting to understand that the film is not specifically about an “African-American cultural situation” but is deeper and broader than that.

The film’s subject matter is close to his heart.  Tipping wrote the film while doing his MFA at the American Film Institute. Once he won the Student Academy Award and the Director¹s Guild of America Student Filmmaker Award with his short film NANI, the opportunity was there to finally realise Kicks. But it took time, luck and a lot of support from people who were willing to ignore the prevailing “wisdom” that films about Black people (or made by anyone other than a white male) would never “sell.” I think we are all aware how unwise that “wisdom” is. We want and need films that offer us a variety and range of voices and visions.

Tipping hopes that the film will make a contribution to opening up the question about hyper- masculinity in contemporary society. Kicks is a powerful film and certainly one which young people would do well to see. Unfortunately, in the United States the film received an R rating simply because, in his quest for authenticity, it uses “bad language.” The irony of this is hilarious yet sick-making: the film is only rarely violent, and the violence as mentioned is not gratuitous, unlike the vast majority of films which receive much lower ratings. Luckily the film is out on streaming media, which completely bypasses the rating system which is purely for cinematic exhibition. However, it does mean that the film will not be shown in schools and youth clubs, which to me is very shortsighted and unfortunate.

Hopefully the film will reach its intended audience, and hopefully the British audience will find the film and take it on board. It’s on iTunes and all usual streaming outlets.
http://focusfeatures.com/kicks/

Trailer:

‘THE CALLING’ FILM REVIEW

‘A slip of the tongue would allow you to confuse Canadian police procedural The Calling with Scandinavian police procedural The Killing. What they share is the sense of profoundly disturbing and unpleasant things happening in a proverbial quiet, peaceful, even complacent Nordic country, expressed in cool, desaturated tones and myriad shades of white.’

My new film review in Candid Magazine Online