Ring Around the Rosy
June 4, 2016
Love & Friendship (2016).
D/W: Whit Stillman. DP: Richard Van Oosterhout. Starring: Kate Beckinsale/Xavier Samuel/Morfydd Clark/Emma Greenwell/Justin Edwards/Tom Bennett/Jemma Redgrave/James Fleet/Chloe Sevigny/Stephen Fry. (Based on Jane Austen’s epistolary novel Lady Susan)
Writer and Director Whit Stillman’s newest venture, Love & Friendship, is out in theaters just in time to save us from the comic book boredom of films like X-Men: Apocalypse. Even non-Austenites will enjoy such a scintillating tale for both the eyes and ears.
Love & Friendship is based on Jane Austen’s epistolary novel, Lady Susan, that was published posthumously. Although very familiar with the Austen canon I have not read this particular work as it mostly made up of letters. Yet Stillman’s film is a self-conscious work that is aware of the Austen film adaptation history as well has heritage cinema. Working with conceits aware to him and the assumed audience, Love & Friendship introduces its cast of characters more like a play than a film, presenting each in vignette with a snarky description beneath their face. Immediately wit wins all in this palpable play of society chess.
At the center of the story is Lady Susan whose new widow status leaves her hopping houses, relying on family and friends hospitality for herself and her daughter. Kate Beckinsale stars as Lady Susan and looks the part which is not surprising since she played the lead role in Emma in a boring 1996 version for A&E on US television. Normally wooden this part suits a now older Beckinsale and her delivery of the script is a testament to Stillman. She helps to center the world around herself and covers her wickedness in a heavy head of curls. Xavier Samuel is a fine young suitor not unlike his fleshier role in 2013’s Adore. His earnestness is a bit Bingley-esq, but he eventually has enough Darcy to find his way. Morfydd Clark is an excellent Federica, Lady Susan’s daughter, and gives youth a frantic rage rather than a demure submissive role.
Stillman resists the urge to show off every home and make his film one centered on English heritage. Instead he hints at the tedious nature of rich country life in this time and focuses on the intricate verbal play of his characters and Lady Susan’s maneuvering between homes. Stirring up little pools of melodrama, her check ins with American friend Alicia Johnson (Chloe Sevingny) allows scheming to be the name of the game. Love & Friendship provides all the sleuthing of Emma, but uses a character we are never asked to like. Lady Susan is manipulative, clever, and ultimately treacherous yet Stillman thankfully never berates the audience into liking her. Rather he presents his film as fun and clever mischief to be enjoyed.
A Golden Time For Love
November 27, 2015
Carol (2015).
D: Todd Haynes DP: Edward Lochman. W: Phyllis Nagy. Starring: Cate Blanchett/Rooney Mara/Sarah Paulson/Kyle Chandler/Jake Lacy/John Magaro. (NOTE: Based on the Patricia Highsmith novel originally titled The Price of Salt)
Every now and then a movie lives up to its hype. The buzz around Todd Haynes new film, Carol, has been strong since its debut at the Cannes Film Festival back in May. To most it is certainly, arguably, the film of the year. I would quite agree with my heart also still with Brooklyn.
Set in 1952/1953 New York the film follows Therese (Rooney Mara) who works in a department store as the Christmas holiday approaches. After an encounter at her shop counter with Carol (Cate Blanchett) the two women begin a slow mounting love affair that is set against the dissolution of Carol’s marriage to Harge (Kyle Chandler) and a custody battle over their daughter.
Mara’s Therese is all short bangs and blossoming independent womanhood, taking pictures of a world she’s still deciding if she’d like to blend into. Her chemistry with the elegant enchantress that is Blanchett’s Carol is subtle and sustains the film. She, and the audience with her, is caught in the glow of Blanchett’s mesmerizing turn. Blanchett balances the mother and the woman in her performance giving the struggle between societal duty, motherhood, and personal happiness and sexuality such precise sophistication and desperation it will make your heart break. She is seen through Therese’s camera, aware of her own image as much as we are aware of the palpable feeling of falling in love we experience.
Much can be gushed about Carol, but Sandy Powell’s costumes must be mentioned. A three time Oscar winning designer for Shakespeare in Love, The Aviator, and The Young Victoria, Powell elevates the mood and look of the film. From Therese’s pompom striped hat of her youth to the jewelry that jangles from Carol’s wrists above heavily lacquered fingernails, the world is alive in every detail. The look of the early 1950s is given a grainy haze by veteran cinematographer Edward Lachman and Haynes decision to shoot on 16mm. The pair have worked together on all of Haynes’ projects including the Mildred Pierce series for HBO set in a similar time like his film Far From Heaven. Carol is all its own and is given warmth and depth by the 16mm decision and is heightened by a great score from Carter Burwell.
At the core of this film is a lesbian love story, but unsurprisingly its universality still rings true over fifty years after Highsmith’s novel was first published. Yet it is so important that a same sex couple story will get a wide release platform and hopefully awards attention. A flawless film, Carol drops a gauntlet for every other filmmaker to pick up. Go see it the minute you can.
Look Through The Window
November 25, 2015
Room (2015).
D: Lenny Abrahamson. DP: Danny Cohen. W: Emma Donoghue. Starring: Brie Larson/Jacob Tremblay/Joan Allen/William H. Macy/Tom McCamus/Sean Bridgers. (NOTE: based on Donoghue’s book of the same name)
This year’s Oscar race will be a dense one in the best actress category. Between Saoirse Ronan’s performance in Brooklyn, Cate Blanchett’s performance in Carol, and this performance from Brie Larson it will be a competitive year. This is frankly, exciting! With television becoming the hot place for pithy and complex female roles it is great to see cinema stepping up again. Of course, all the leads are white actresses, but the racial imbalances of Hollywood deserves its own post (or you can simply look at The Hollywood Reporter‘s recent ridiculous justifications for this).
Room is based on Emma Donoghue’s novel with her also penning the screenplay. The novel is told from the perspective of five year old Jack, played in the film by Jacob Tremblay, as he lives in a singular room with his Ma (Larson). Naming all the things around him, he’s nurtured to believe this trap is all that exists. After his birthday Ma decides Jack is old enough to be told about the outside that lies beyond Room and the basic details of her kidnapping by Old Nick (Sean Bridgers). This leads to Ma and Jack’s escape plan for getting out of Room.
Donoghue’s script partially replicates this point of view as Jack provides voice-over, lending the audience to understand his wonder at the world and ignorance of it. As he climbs into the wardrobe to sleep and hide from Old Nick during his visits you feel the breath of the novel in the film. The snips and changes to the story work and the second chapter of the pair’s new life allows for great exploration of Ma’s mental state and family chemistry. Larson is given more to work with than the novel, which helps balance her adult trauma with her son’s.
Larson has been steadily working since she played Toni Collette’s daughter on the Showtime series United States of Tara created by Diablo Cody. Her starring role in the indie hit Short Term 12 was memorable and she’s been popping up in supporting roles in films like Trainwreck, Don Jon, and The Spectacular Now. Here she can truly shine handling Ma’s frustrations with her seclusion and repeated violations while also creating a safe space for Jack. Her generic looks allow Ma to remind you of any girl at university you might have known. Larson is all things at once, but with the pure subtly that allows the devastating circumstances of the story to ring true. She is well supported by Joan Allen who does a heart wrenching turn as Ma’s own mother.
I cannot rave enough about Tremblay as Jack who captures your attention from start to finish. He performs little and lives it all. A tracking shot over a truck as he attempts his escape will have you barely breathing for minutes. The camera aligns itself with Jack, not showing things his Ma shields him from. This works to build palpable tension and menace that director Lenny Abrahamson skilfully paces. Known for Frank and What Richard Did, he and cinematographer Danny Cohen build a sense of space and intimacy without merely using intense close-ups on their actors. Their atmosphere allows pain to live no matter the space it is confined to. The film is not trauma as spectacle, but rather as experience of character. Credit must also be give to Stephen Rennicks for the score, its placement lacks sentimentality only amplifying not indulging the emotional register of scenes.
Room has been on the festival circuit and will only reach UK cinemas at the end of January, but releases today in the US. A sure contender this award season it is simply a beautifully made film that joins the ranks of recent superb film adaptations. Hopefully the success of these lower budget films continues and we will see more films like this and less of the typical three act studio trauma sprawls of late.
All That Shimmers
October 26, 2015
Brooklyn (2015).
D: John Crowley. DP: Yves Bélanger. W: Nick Hornby (based on Colm Tóibín’s novel of the same name). Starring: Saoirse Ronan/Emory Cohen/Domhnall Gleeson/Julie Walters/Jim Broadbent/Fiona Glascott/Jesscia Paré.
One of my many pleasures in reading is seeking out books that are to be adapted for the screen. This has lead me to read many a novel I would otherwise never pick up or indeed challenge myself to read a 900 page Russian novel (I’m looking at you Anna Karenina). Rarely am I pleased with an adaptation to the point where I might slightly prefer the film. This is the case with Brooklyn and Nick Hornby’s adaption of Colm Tóibín’s novel, which was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2009.
Brooklyn is a story of homesickness, of being of two places, two minds, and of learning who you are, no matter where you live. The film, like the novel, is structured into three acts as Eilis (Saoirse Ronan) leaves her Irish village to live and work in Brooklyn, N.Y., but return home when a family tragedy occurs. Her emigration to the States is not an act of will or dreams of a her own, but rather the wish of her elder sister Rose’s (Fiona Glascott) desire for her to have better life. As revealed in the trailers, Eilis falls in love while in Brooklyn and is presented with another romantic option when she returns to Ireland.
Nick Hornby, who most recently adapted Wild, excels here with his adaption of the novel. The story is trimmed in the right places and is able to hit all the ranges of Eilis’ physical and emotional journey across the Atlantic. There are few actual changes, with the ending being the main one as it is dialed up to deliver a proper cinematic punch that the novel did not provide. Hornby’s fluency in fiction and clear skill at knowing what works in cinema is one of the highlights of this project. Director John Crowley and Canadian cinematographer Yves Bélanger (Wild, Dallas Buyers Club) make an excellent team focusing on Ronan’s face as the axis of emotional action for the film. Costume designer Odile Dicks-Mireaux works wonders with color and clothes so the 1950s remains a setting and not an overcooked look.
This is the first Irish set film for Irish actress Ronan, known for her brilliant child performance in 2007’s Atonement and subsequent films like The Lovely Bones, The Host and The Grand Budapest Hotel. Her eyes are a translucent cerulean blue that shimmer in an open round-face, that registers even the slightest flicker of emotion. In nearly every scene of Brooklyn Ronan is the compass, and delivers the audience the shades of Eilis’ journey. Her chemistry with Emory Cohen (who plays her Italian American love Tony in Brooklyn) is fabulous. Cohen’s smile brings Tony right off the pages of the novel. Domnhall Gleeson, whose career is on a fiery trajectory, gives a restrained performance as Jim, the Irish love option back ‘home.’ Julie Walters is also brilliant as the woman who runs the boarding house Eilis’ lives in; greater humor is given to the veteran actress.
Brooklyn will surely soar through awards season, and it is rightly deserved for a film with such a low budget it could only shoot two days in Brooklyn, its main location. Released at a timely moment in the UK with emigration a hot topic here, the film is ultimately an exploration of our definitions of home. What happens when you are no longer of the place you were born, but don’t quite fit into a new place yet. Languishing in this nebulous emotional space, the film remains true to the idea that people make our lives. All I can conclude with is, go see it.
A Room of One’s Own
October 8, 2015
I have delved back into reading a large stack of adaptations that are coming our way. I started with The Martian moved onto Brooklyn and am now reading Room. Written from the perspective of a five year old living in a solidarity room with his mum, the new film has already gotten acclaim from the Toronto film festival. Starring Brie Larson, a tremendous young actress, I am eager to see how Emma Donoghue adapts her own work. The film will be released in October in the US, but won’t make it to the UK until January.
Room
The Final Stretch
June 10, 2015
The final installment of The Hunger Games adaptations is here in trailer form before it hits theaters in November.
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2
Love in the Country
May 22, 2015
Far From the Madding Crowd (2015).
D: Thomas Vinterberg. DP: Charlotte Bruus Christensen. W: David Nicholls. Starring: Carey Mulligan/Matthias Schoenaerts/Michael Sheen/Tom Sturridge/Juno Temple/Jessica Barden/Bradley Hall. (Based on Thomas Hardy’s novel of the same name)
Heading into summer we are hit with a barrage of huge films, from budget to scope to locale. Thankfully smaller gems can pop up between these colossal projects and hit you right where you need it to. Far From the Madding Crowd does just that, flaws and all.
David Nicholls adapts Thomas Hardy’s monthly serialized novel that was then published in novel form in 1874. A novelist and screenwriter himself, Nicholls has adapted two of his own novels into films, Starter for Ten and One Day. I do not know which is more stressful, adapting your own work or that of a great writer like Hardy. Nonetheless, Nicholls is deft here at condensing the novel’s time and cutting out smaller tangents that the film logistically cannot tackle. Following the rise of Bathsheba Everdene (Carey Mulligan) as she comes to fortune in her own right in 1870 rural England. A small voice over in the beginning of the film lends voice to Bathsheba’s acknowledgement of her independence despite her time, a moment she is never given in the third person written novel.
As I write this review I am listening to Craig Armstrong’s score, is there higher praise for a film composer? A frequent Baz Luhrman collaborator, Armstrong’s score is just the right augmentation for what is on screen. His use of violins is exquisite while its solos matching the tumultuous heroine of the film. Juggling three suitors while asserting her own responsibilities as mistress, Bathsheba has no easy task. Mulligan is the right amount of rural beauty here, a beauty routinely mentioned and harped in the novel. The faults of the film don’t lie with her or two of her suitors.
Michael Sheen’s neighbor farm master Boldwood is the most stirring performance in the film. Tasked with the most layered of men, his balance of desperation and practicality brings Boldwood out into the forefront of the film. Not to be outmatched is Belgian actor Matthias Schoenaerts whose quite physicality as farmer Gabriel Oak does the novel and the heroine justice. Not much can be said for Tom Sturridge who gets the sillier lover part, but he does manage to bring compassion to his love for little Fanny Robbin played by Juno Temple. Temple is long overdue for a massive film lead.
Janet Patterson, an Australian costume designer who has been Oscar nominated four times, brings tremendous skill in her expertise of the 19th century. Responsible for films such as 1996’s The Portrait of a Lady, Patterson clearly illustrates the connection between garments and a ladies’ status. In this rural life Bathsheba stands out, but not too far and the farm itself appears effortlessly dressed as it should.
Unfortunately, the film is shot rather inconsistently. Brilliant stretches of farmland are captured with amazing sequences of Bathsheba riding. However the rhythm of the film is lost many times, maybe through miscommunications between cinematographer and director. Specifically, a pivotal forest sequence although at times beautiful is shot so strangely and edited so similarly to the meadow sequence of Twilight (yes I am gasping too) it nearly ruins the mood. Other persnickety flaws exists to do with accents and story changes, but overall Far From the Madding Crowd is a worthy adaptation.
The Right Amount of Yes
January 22, 2015
Wild (2014).
D: Jean-Marc Vallée. W: Nick Hornby. DP: Yves Bélanger. Starring: Reese Witherspoon/Laura Dern/Gaby Hoffman/Thomas Sadoski/Keene McRae/Michiel Huisman/Kevin Rankin. (Based on Cheryl Strayed’s memoir of the same name)
Setting out on the Pacific Crest Trail in 1995, beginning at Mojave and ending at the Bridge of the Gods, writer Cheryl Strayed attempted to literally walk the pain out of her life. This tremendous feat resulted in not only a new life, but a successful memoir and now a film.
Producing Wild under her Pacific Standard banner, Reese Witherspoon steps deftly into a role and world she championed through buying its source material. Witherspoon is a great balance of blonde Americana and twenties wayward whose grief over her mother’s death wrecks her life. She plays Strayed with the right amount of sugar you can imagine works to hide the grit inside. You can clearly see why this woman renamed herself Strayed.
Having read Strayed’s memoir I can say that Wild embraces its visceral quality into a cathartic and captivating film. All adaptations are difficult, but this one provides specific challenges as for the majority of the book Strayed is alone and grappling with her own fears and memories. Nick Hornby, in his first screenplay since 2009’s An Education, tackles this with aplomb. He is able to balance flashbacks, voiceover, inner monologue, and dialogue while synthesizing fellow hikers and trails into compelling elements that don’t merely feel like plot mile markers. Kudos must be given to the sound, music and editorial departments in blending music, voices, and sounds to generate meaning with and without images.
What was fearless about Cheryl’s journey was not only hiking this trail, but also going it alone as a woman. Witherspoon is mostly on her own here as well, though Laura Dern deftly supports her in her mother flashbacks scenes. Michiel Huisman is a delicious choice for Jonathan and is a nice contrast to Thomas Sadoski’s Paul. Gaby Hoffman, in a much deserved career resurgence also surfaces as one of Strayed’s friends. To be fair, she still has my heart from the Veronica Mars Movie.
Director Jean-Marc Vallée, known for Dallas Buyer’s Club, keeps this tight, reminding the audience that the story lies mostly in Strayed’s head not in the expansive landscape. Her hunger, thirst, and pain is on Witherspoon’s body yes, but is complimented by a camera without conventionality. Cinematographer, Yves Bélanger, evokes both his past films (his other being 2012’s Laurence Anyways) and is able to handle all the differently leveled moments in the script. Wild is genuinely not to be missed either in book or screen form. It remind you that even a little bravery goes a long way.