Film Review - Solaris (1972)

Kelvin stops to smell the roses

Renoir - 13/6/2013. Introduced by Will Self

This was a special 35 mm screening of Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris, with an amusing and very personal introduction by Will Self, organised by A Nos Amours, a cinema enthusiast collective fronted by Joanna Hogg and Adam Roberts.
The film is an adaptation of the Stanislav Lem's 1961 SF novel of the same name. Set in the near future, it opens with a shot of reeds under water, a motif familiar from Tarkovsky's Stalker, and the first act is played out in a dacha in the countryside where the psychologist Kelvin is visited at his father's house by the cosmonaut Burton, who has returned from the planet Solaris. They discuss what Burton saw on Solaris and the future of the exploration programme. Kelvin himself is shortly to be on his way to Solaris. There is a strange but potent long scene where Burton and his son travel back from the dacha through heavy traffic - no attempt is made to conceal what is quite clearly a Japanese city. Though this film is supposed to be largely apolitical, I wonder if this scene is a vision of a future wider USSR empire?
Kelvin arrives at the station on Solaris to find one of the three occupants dead by his own hand, and the other two oddly evasive. It doesn't take long for Kelvin to discover why. Solaris, or something on it is alive and as the humans are probing it for information, the alien intelligence probes them by materialising as characters from the astronauts' memories or psyche. Kelvin's dead wife Hari appears to him, but only to the extent that he remembers her. Thus she cannot remember what she looks like, or any of her own past, except Kevin is directly involved. Initially resistant to this alien psychic neutrino being, Kelvin is haunted by his role in the original Hari's suicide and grows to love the proxy. What follows is a very Russian meditation on love, loss and the nature of reality and illusion. The cosmonauts however, though they are absorbed by their relationships with these manifestations, realise that having them around isn't healthy, and hatch a plan to bombard the surface of the planet with an x-ray transmission of Kelvin's brainwaves, which will provide the alien with the information it wants and make it leave them alone. The film ends with a chilling scene with Kelvin back at the dacha with his father.
The set design is basic, almost theatrical, but this isn't a pristine minimalist intergalactic vessel like those on Star Trek or 2001, it has a messier, almost steampunk or Jules Verne feel. The acting performances are quite remarkable, especially given the many long takes and the fact that many scenes were reportedly single takes due to the shortage of film. The film stock changes throughout, with different colour grading and abrupt shifts to black and white, probably by necessity unless there is some artistic intent I am missing completely. There is much to explore in this film - the imagery, literary (Tolstoy and Cervantes are quoted), philosophy of love and the human condition - and the slow pace encourages the viewer to slow down and take a look around. I am sure I will be watching it many times over on DVD. 5/5

Film Review - Thérèse Desqueyroux

Thérèse: I wish I was in The Place Beyond The Pines

Curzon Richmond 8/6/2013

Thérèse Desqueyroux is the last film from Claude Miller who died last year at the age of 70. It’s based on a novel by François Mauriac set in the 1920s about a bright young woman (Thérèse, played by Audrey Tatou) who marries her slightly dull neighbour Bernard, played by Gilles Lelouche so that their estates can be united and they will have thousands of acres of pines.

It is established early on that though Thérèse is intelligent, she ‘thinks too much’ and ‘has too many ideas’, she has a dissonant desire to unite the families – ‘I'll marry you for your pines’, she says to her fiancée, straight-faced. Her childhood friend Anne (Anaïs Demoustier) becomes her sister in law, and though Thérèse, frustratedly, finds her ‘simple’, for a while she is a proxy through which Thérèse discovers the possibilities of a life lived with passion through Anne’s dalliance with another neighbour. Thérèse’s loyalties to the family are tested when she is assigned the task of speaking to the Jewish neighbour to put him off. Boorish Bernard and the marriage are insufferable and stifling and something has to give way. The stress of dealing with forest fires on the estate one summer is the trigger for Thérèse to hit out, and the illusive equilibrium is blown apart.

In a way it is a strange performance from Tatou. Gone is the cutesy doe-eyed gamine from Amelie and even the straight-laced Sophie from the execrable Da Vinci Code. She plays Thérèse with a determinedly sullen, blank expression throughout and an uninflected voice through which she aims her pointed asides at the dullards around her, which suits the role but makes it hard to empathise with her. Gilles Lelouche for once does not play himself and does a pretty solid job playing the macho, yet weak husband. I’m not convinced the director does a great job of convincing the viewer of Thérèse’s sharp mind (she is shown reading books and writing letters), but on the other hand I think that not spelling out her competing motivations really makes the film. These things are never simple and if Thérèse isn’t fully aware of the reasons behind her actions, why should we be?

The film also steers clear of making easy judgements – though Thérèse is trapped in this unsatisfactory situation, it is almost entirely of her own doing, and her actions as she hits out against the suffocating regime show she is unbalanced, we are led to sympathise more with Thérèse than Bernard. The cinematography does full justice to the beautiful châteaux and country estates, whose bright pastel tones contrast with the oppressive interiors and Thérèse’s sombre appearance. Aside from the jarring change when the adult Thérèse suddenly looks 15 years older than her still adolescent childhood friend, there is plenty to like about this film, and plenty of food for thought and scope for interpretation, but ultimately I’m not sure it hangs together as well as it could have. 3.5/5

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=En2OZWquQzY

Film Review - What Richard Did

Riverside Studios 26/4/2013
Set in Ireland, this is a tale of the eponymous late teen Richard, sports jock, popular, ambitious and clever, and seemingly with the world at his feet. Richard's world comes undone as a result of a drunken altercation that gets out of hand. In the aftermath of the tragedy, the film goes some towards exploring the implications of the attempted cover up, which weighs heavily on the parties involved, and the issue of his culpability is somewhat glossed over.
The first act takes an awfully long time to set the scene for 'what Richard does', or perhaps it just felt that way because the trailer gives so much away. Unfortunately, charming as he is, Richard does not elicit a great degree of sympathy precisely because his charm and obvious intelligence suggest that he should be above these actions and smart enough to know better. In the end it is his father Peter, played by Lars Mikkelsen, looking much older than in his role as Troels in The Killing, who steals the show and the sympathy of the audience. 3/5

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXTcSCp8R6E

Film review - Easy Money

"You should have seen me when I had finished adjusting my cufflinks" - Joel Kinnaman (middle), Matias Varela (L) and Dragomir Mrsic (R).

Preview at Odeon Covent Garden, 25/4/2013

Joel Kinnaman, previously seen in the US version of The Killing, shines in this hard edged and gritty Swedish crime thriller based on a novel by Jens Lapidus. Kinnaman plays JW, a poor business student who yearns to live like his wealthy classmates in a Stockholm business school and maintains his outwardly glamourous lifestyle on the cheap by living a secret double life as a taxi driver. In the meantime he is on the lookout for a rich girlfriend or business opportunity to provide him with the means to lead the life he craves. He appears to get his big break, but things soon unravel.

He is drawn into the Swedish drug trade by Jorge, played by Matias Varela, and Mrado, played by the bank robber turned actor Vladimir Mrsic. Soon enough the strain of leading a double life begins to tell, and JW begins to realise that he is no longer in control of his own fate. Loyalties are tested to breaking point.

Although it doesn’t entirely resist the melodrama and moralising that blights Nordic noir, the film excels in developing the characters of Jorge and Mrado so that we sympathise with both even as we appreciate their criminal intent. Kinnaman’s performance in particular is superb, his gradual transformation from insecure student to criminal mastermind and down is subtly and masterfully played. Mrado is convincing too, oscillating between sensitive father and menacing heavy. Director Daniel Espinosa never lets the tension slip and the shocking violence, thrills and drama add up to a very good film indeed. 5/5 

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-Ms770WTe0