REVIEW - Un Prophete (Jacques Audiard, 2010)

Audiard is renowned for his slow working practices, taking a long time to prepare for each new film. In this case there has been five years between The Heart My Beat Skipped and Un Prophete. In this time Audiard has researched the French prison system and meticulously planned this somewhat epic crime film. The film begins with the lead character Malik, exceptionally brought to life by relative newcomer Tahar Rahim, entering prison. He has six years of incarceration ahead of him. We do not find out what crime he committed in order to receive this sentence but the it is unlikely to have been a very serious crime due to Malik's naivety at the start of the film and his clear fear of violent confrontations.

Malik enters the prison with nothing. He attempts to smuggle in 50 Euros but this taken by the guards. Even the trainers he is given are stolen the second he walks into the prison yard. Malik lacks more than just physical possessions though as it becomes clear he also has nothing outside the prison walls. He seems to have no family, no friends; if he is to survive he needs to use any skills he has at his disposal.

He is quickly marked out as an easy target and a group of Corsican gangsters decide to use him to kill a prisoner they need dead. They bully him into killing the prisoner through threats of violence and make it clear that even the guards will not help him as they are under the control of the Corsicans. Malik goes through with the murder, despite his obvious despair at having to do so. The murder is graphically shown and stands out as a very disturbing scene within the film, with a emphasis on the real physical effects of a violent murder. The audience is placed right in the cell with Malik, confronted with the reality of this gruesome murder.

Once Malik has committed this act he is taken under the wing of the Corsican boss, Cesar (Niels Arestrup), who realises more and more how useful Malik can be. Malik is not treated the same as the other members of the gang though. As a French Arab, the Corsicans see him as a lower class citizen and within a social system that is itself low class this puts Malik at the bottom of the bottom. He is resigned to duties such as sweeping, fetching food and newspapers and making coffee. It is only when Cesar is left more isolated as many of the Corsicans are let out and the guards begin to turn their back on him does he become to increasingly rely on Malik. Malik clearly has his own agenda though and when sent out of the prison on day leave he uses this as an opportunity to make connections and make money for himself.

The scenes outside are a break from the claustrophobic interiors of the drab prison. The cinematography between the two differs, highlighting this contrast, with dreary greys and steely blues dominating the prison scenes and warmer tones for the scenes set outside. The cinematography and direction is expertly crafted throughout and the suitably unremarkable editing for the most part adds to the tone and aids the emotional impact. The scenes of violence in particular are well executed, highlighting the horror and ramping up the adrenalin but never succumbing to Hollywood action clichés. The positioning of the audience within Malik's world alone is further exemplified in one sequence where his hearing is impaired and the sound mix reflects this. In this scene it is implied that Malik has been shot and lies, as if dead, for a few moments before coming 'back to life'. This sequence coupled with other symbolic elements, including 40 days and nights in solitary and a glimpse he has into the future, explain the title but I felt actually added little to the piece overall. More interesting is the politics on display and the position of Malik as a socio-political prophet rather than a biblical one.

The prison is racially divided in Un Prophete and it is the Corsicans who hold the majority of the power despite being in the minority. The Arabs in Un Prophete are poorly treated but have a growing population. This is something that is apparently mirrored in real prisons in France and also France as a whole. The prison is a microcosm and it therefore represents not just an interesting commentary on the French prison system but also the wider French social climate. Malik is the minority in the group of Corsican and he realises he can grab the power and revolt against them. This too is true of the French Arab population of the prison. They realise that they have the numbers and with the influence of Malik they rise up and seize control. In many ways Malik prophecies this, he sees how the future could look and he manipulates the situation to this end. This subtext is one of the aspects of Un Prophete that makes it so engrossing. In a similar way to Edward Bunker's excellent Animal Factory book, and to a lesser degree the film, is a tribal study so to is Un Prophete; it is a work of anthropology and a thoroughly compelling one.

Un Prophete is also an incredible character piece, one aided by an excellent central performance and a naturalistic and nuanced script. The dialogue never feels forced and all the characters are instantly believable. My only complaint is that the film often slips into stylised flourishes that feel entirely unnecessary. The inmate that Malik kills early on comes back to 'haunt' him throughout the film, appearing physically alongside Malik and actually helping him. There are also captions and names that appear on screen but these offer little information that is not in the film already and actually instantly pulled me out of the film. This is made more infuriating as they are not used frequently enough to become accustomed to as they are in many of Kinji Fukasaku's films which results in a feeling of slipping back into the film only to be pulled out again by a filmic device. One could also argue that the level of realism is undermined by the almost romanticised rise of Malik and the comparisons that one could make to films such as Scarface. Malik even has a scar across his face that is never explained. This is a minor complaint though as the film does not have the excesses of those antecedents and the ending of Un Prophete is a somewhat ambiguous one, tonally perfect for the story that has just unfolded.

Un Prophete is a deeply affecting film, a solid crime film and a anthropological study of the French prison system. Within the story Audiard also manages to widen the scope of the film to larger issues of social mobility, race, education and class in France as a whole. In doing so he never loses sight of the personal story at it's core and succeeds in transcending the genre the film inhabits. The film does have a few weaknesses but Un Prophete is an excellent film and an interesting socio-political discourse.

REVIEW - Lovely Bones (Peter Jackson, 2010)

The Lovely Bones is Peter Jackson's recent adaptation of the 2002 Alice Sebold book of the same name. Set in 1970s Pennsylvania it centre's on the murder of Susie Salmon, played by Saoirse Ronan, the attempts by her family to deal with the grief of losing their daughter/sister and also the gradual uncovering of her murderer. The whole story is narrated by the dead Susie, who looks over her family and the murderer from an in-between world, seemingly between the physical world and Heaven. This is a somewhat similar concept to Noe's Enter The Void but the two films are otherwise very different. Where Noe's film deliberately confronted the viewer throughout, Jackson constantly pulls his punches.

The film begins rooted in the real world as we are introduced to the Salmon family, Susie's friends and the creepy neighbourhood child murderer George Harvet, played by Stanley Tucci.. Susie is a pleasant 14 year old girl, intelligent but not bookish, sweet but not too saccharin, she likes taking photographs, she has a high school crush, she is a good approximation of a relatable teenage girl. She is also deftly played by Saoirse, who is very close to Susie's age in real life. Unfortunately, despite the premise, the film gives Susie's character very little in terms of interesting dialogue, plot development, or characterisation. One element missing from the film which is detailed in the book, is the rape and murder of Susie. Although we are made aware of the murder, Jackson cuts away before anything is seen and the rape present in the book is not even mentioned in the film. Including these scenes or referencing them more fully would have been deeply unpleasant but it is this unpleasantness that would have helped make the film more emotionally resonant and help counter the frankly silly flights into CGI fantasy.

The film constantly cuts back to scenes set in the inbetween world where Susie is joined by a reasonably irritating companion Holly, whose final act twist is painfully obvious from the moment she is introduced. The scenes in the afterlife are well put together and full of psychologically appropriate symbolism but left me emotionally cold. The scenes felt more like showy CG than an important element to the story. There is one exception though in the scene where Susie re-imagines George cleaning up after the murder which is quite stunning and brings some of the horror lacking in the depiction of what is an appalling act. There are overlaps between the inbetween world and the real world and there is even a character who can see Susie, kind of. This character, Clarissa, seems baffling pointless in the story, with really only one significant scene, and her special ability only adds an extra level of ludicrousness to the film. She contacts Ray, the boy Susie has a crush on, and they form a friendship that affords Susie the opportunity to get the first kiss, in manner reminiscent of Ghost, she has always dreamed of. The scene feels so massively contrived and clumsy that it loses any of the aching emotional beauty the scene could have captured.

Whilst Susie exists in the inbetween world her family slowly crumbles as her father becomes obsessed with finding the murderer, constantly in contact with the investigating detective Len, played by the underused Michael Imperiolo, her mother breaks down and even abandons the family and the other daughter Lindsey becomes more and more unsettled by the creepy neighbour George. In order to keep the house in order the Grandmother is called in to help out. This role, yet another mostly pointless one, is played by Susan Sarandon whose performance is actually quite amusing, but tonally completely out of place.

Gradually the father and Lindsey both come to conclusion that it is George who is responsible for the death of Susie leading Lindsey to search his house, in the film's best scene. As Lindsey searches and George arrives home there is an incredible sense of tension and it is an excellent sequence in an otherwise disappointing film. This scene as well is a sharp contrast to the unintentionally hilarious scene in which the father, Mark Whalberg, realises that George is the killer.

Full of classic Jackson tropes such as the use of wide-angle close-ups and wild fantasy imaginings it is a shame that this does not reach the impressive heights of his previous films. A lot in Lovely Bones has been done much better in his previous films. The use of practical effects and CGI in both the Lord of the Rings Trilogy and King Kong add to the stories in a way that Lovely Bones is lacking. The ideas surrounding youth, and the loss of innocence in teenage girls is more poignantly delivered in Heavenly Creatures and I would even argue that Frightners offered a more interesting take on the afterlife than Lovely Bones ever manages to capture.

Shot entirely on the RedOne digital camera, the sumptuous colours in the 70s recreations are striking and there are elements to the CGI that are impressive to view on the big screen but any amount of stunning visuals cannot take away from the sum of it's parts which sadly leaves a pretty sizeable failure. Jackson can do so much better and it is a shame that Lovely Bones is not a good addition to his wonderfully diverse and enjoyable filmography.

REVIEW - A Bay of Blood (Mario Bava, 1971)

A Bay of Blood is a film that has been distributed under a large number of different titles, including Bloodbath, Carnage, Chain Reaction, Twitch of the Death Nerve, Reazione a Catena (which roughly translates as 'The Ecology of Murder') and it was even baffling released in the USA as Last House on the Left Part II. The film is directed by Italian visual master Mario Bava and is perhaps best known as being considered by many to be the first 'slasher' film.

A Bay of Blood begins with two murders, the first an inventive and twisted hanging in which a woman in a wheelchair, the Countess, has a noose tied around her neck and then her wheelchair pushed out from under her. The perpetrator of this murder is then stabbed by an unseen second murderer. This little comic twist in the opening is a taste of the film that unfolds as Bava injects black comedy into the film's dark and lurid plot. The film then cuts to pastoral music and shots of the lake that is the film's setting and only location. The camera then settles on a fly that dies, dropping into the lake.

The plot of the film centres on the struggles by the various characters to seize ownership of the lake area which is somewhat up for grabs following the death of the Countess. The characters are all willing to commit acts of violence in order to get the area for themselves and deaths begin to start stacking up. The plot is actually somewhat complex and with a lot of the characters given limited screen time it is sometimes hard to keep track of their motivations and keep up with the plot's twists and turns. There is a definite Shakespearian influence to the story, even down to the Lady Macbeth figure of Renata and an allusion to the play in Albert's blood stained hands.

That said it is not the story that grabs one's attention when watching A Bay of Blood and it is not it's strongest point. The violence, gore and proto-slasher elements are what makes A Bay of Blood such an entertaining watch. It is quite surprising when watching A Bay of Blood quite the impact that it clearly had and it's huge influence on the Friday the 13th series. The setting of course is very similar in both and there is even a reference made in the diary entry in A Bay of Blood to the date of Friday the 13th. There are also 13 murders in this film and it is two of these murders that are so noticeably similar to murders in Friday the 13th Part II, in the scene where one of the characters has a machete embedded in his face and also in the sequence where a couple having sex in bed are impaled with a spear that goes through them both and out through the bottom of the bed. There are many other small similarities between the films, the most amusing probably being the use of the same knitted jumper being worn by a killer in A Bay of Blood and Mrs Vorhees in the first Friday the 13th.

A Bay of Blood is perhaps the first true slasher film, and it is without doubt definitely a hugely influential one. The visuals that Bava creates, he was credited as both cinematographer and director, are stunning. In particular it his expert use of colour and composition that makes each frame look so exquisitely crafted. One criticism of the Itallian Giallo masters has always been an accusation of style over substance and although the film does touch on ideas surrounding greed and man's impact on the environment these are not well developed and add little to the film. There is substance but it is perhaps overshadowed by the masterful direction and stylistic choices. The style of the film is impressive though and with the blackly comic tone and thrilling pace the film is enjoyable and beautiful if a little lightweight. It is a pleasure to watch though and the ending is enough to warrant checking the film out, with a dark sequence that would not look out of place in the films of Todd Solondz.

I have embedded a trailer below and although it goes under the title Carnage and does little to give a good sense of the film it is a well put together trailer that has unique style of it's own and is well worth watching.

REVIEW - The Girlfriend Experience (Steven Soderbergh, 2009)

Following Soderbergh's epic Che, which told the reasonably epic story of Che Guevara and the Cuban revolution, Soderbergh made a much smaller film, a film that focused on a New York call girl, played by adult film star, Sasha Grey. Grey plays a character who is referred to by the names Christine and Chelsea (I shall use Christine for convenience). She is an expensive call girl who does not just supply her clients with quick sexual thrills but offers 'the girlfriend experience'. This involves a deeper and more complex service where in addition to the sex Christine plays the part of a companion, someone to talk to and spend time with as well as someone to sleep with. Christine is clearly highly paid for her services and her clients are connected men with wealth and power. She also has a somewhat more traditional relationship with her boyfriend Chris, who is a a personal trainer and also has well paid professional clients who he also gives a personalised service to.

The film is set in 2008, roughly a month before the US presidential elections and during the beginnings of the economic crisis that struck much of the world. The film was mostly improvised throughout and features many performances by so called 'non-actors'. During filming Soderbergh ensured newspapers were delivered to the set every day and scattered around the set. The makes the film incredibly up-to-date and relevant but to that precise moment in time. In many ways, The Girlfriend Experience is a modern period piece, it captures a moment in time with minute detail but unlike period projects this film was made at the time rather than in retrospect. The conversations throughout focus heavily on the issues of that time, with characters discussing the upcoming elections, who to vote for, how to safeguard their money and what the future might hold for the political and economic climate. It is worth noting the similarity between Christine and her clients, she looks them in the eye and lies, and as we have found from the stories surrounding the recession, people such as Bernie Madoff were doing the same thing.

On one level the film is about hyper-consumerism, as Christine represents an extremely expensive commodity, a service for the super rich. She faces problems in her career from the free-falling economy, competition from rival call girls, a slimy reviewer, played by former Premiere film critic Glenn Kenny who she needs to impress in order to keep a good reputation and the realisation that she needs to diversify to provide a future. The film explores this delicate structure of consumerism collapsing, not in the emotionally dramatic way that Hollywood audiences are used to but in a more cold subtle way. Christine and Chris, the names I am sure are deliberate, are both attempting to survive in their service of the wealthy in their respective careers. They both try and push their clients for more as their clients slowly back away and the in the failing economy their services are more and more an extravagance that is not truly needed.

Central to the success of the film is the performance by Sasha Grey, a performance that I feel has perhaps been misunderstood by many critics. At one point in the film, in a damning attack, Christine is 'reviewed' and the reviewer criticises her "affectless blankness" alluding to the lack of emotion she shows and the almost vacant stare that she permanently exhibits. This is both a description of Christine's performance with clients and of Grey's performance in the film and it is something that is crucial to the character. There is a blankness to what Christine does as she calmly excepts what she does in a way that would probably shock many people. This obviously mirrors Grey's other career as an adult film star, a job that many feel has a lot of similarities to prostitution but also one that has a lot of similarities to acting. It is this blending of the three jobs, prostitution, mainstream acting, and pornography that add a further fascinating level to the film. Soderbergh also plays with this concept by not showing scenes of sex, with almost no nudity throughout the film. Soderbergh did not choose Sasha Grey because he was worried about another actress being unwilling to do nude scenes; I am sure it was a calculated choice based on her career. It was also, undoubtedly, a result of meeting Grey and being intrigued by her oft reported intellect and her interests in art and philosophy.

Sasha Grey is not the stereotypical bimbo that many people may expect from a adult film star. Her chosen name, her real name actually being Marina Ann Hantzis, is allegedly inspired by industrial band KMFDM and Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray and she even flirted with the idea of being known as Anna Karina. This is a particularly interesting choice considering the conceptual interest Jean-Luc Godard, Karina's husband, had in prostitution and also the roles that Karina played, such as the exotic dancer in Une Femme est Une Femme. It is this depth to Grey's interests that has led artists such as Richard Kern and Steven Soderbergh to work with her and it will hopefully help her move into more roles that stretch her more as a serious actress and at just 21 she could be an interesting actress to watch.

Another strong point to the film is the visual style which is clean and expertly shot using the RedOne digital camera. This is very appropriate for the film with it's sharp, clean interiors, the modern consumerist theme. There were mostly likely benefits to shooting on digital considering the constraints of the shoot. The lighting in the film is almost entirely natural, something that would have been hard to achieve with film, and with the improvised dialogue, the allegedly seven page script and the short shooting schedule, the freedom of the RedOne would have had incredible advantages.

Shot for a little over a million dollars and many of the work on the film done by Soderbergh himself, under his usual aliases, The Girlfriend Experience is in many many ways an experiment as Soderbergh takes a simple idea and freely explores it on film. The result though is not a simple film. The Girlfriend Experience is an interestingly layered film and a film that I am sure will seem ever more significant in the future as a film that captured a moment.

REVIEW - A Colt Is My Passport (Takashi Nomura, 1967)

In 1967 Joe Shishido starred in three films for Nikkatsu, perhaps the most iconic roles in his 170 film career at Nikkatsu. These films were Seiijun Suzuki's Branded to Kill, Yasuharu Hasebe's Slaughter Gun and Takashi Nomura's A Colt Is My Passport. Most famous internationally is Branded to Kill which was an incredibly dark and almost nihilistic Film Noir that resulted in Suzuki being fired from Nikkatsu but became a defining film in the careers of Suzuki and Shishido. A Colt Is My Passport was released just a few months before Branded to Kill and shares a lot of similarities.

The film centres on hired contract killer Shuji, played by Joe Shishido, who is contracted to kill one gang boss by a rival gang boss. Shuji proceeds to carry out the contract, killing the boss with a sniper rifle in a scene shot predominately through the scope of the rifle. Once he has carried out the job, the boss that originally hired him double crosses him and the boss and the son of the dead boss try and hunt down and kill Shuji and his sidekick Shun (Jerry Fujio). Shuji and Shun hide out in a hotel where they encounter Mina who is working there and clearly anxious for a way out. Shun is captured and in the final stages of the film Shuji agrees to give himself up for the release of Shun, who escapes on a boat with Mina. Shuji tells those chasing him that he will be at a landfill site at 7am if they want to kill him. What seems at first to be a suicidal move on Shuji's part turns out to be a set up for a last stand and a thrilling climax filmed with intensity and memorable action sequences.

A Colt Is My Passport is a stunning Film Noir and one that deserves a place in film history. It is perhaps unfortunate that the film was released in the same year as Branded to Kill which is admittedly the better film. That said, when judged on it's own A Colt Is My Passport really shines. With clean, precise direction, especially in the camera movement, the action is a joy, especially in the climax which pits Shuji against a group of hoods on foot and then finally in a bulletproof car. Throughout the film the camera often zig-zags around the set before settling on the main focus of the scene and in the sniper scene it even rests on a bird for some time before coming back to the target, mirroring a similar scene in Branded to Kill and also later emulated by Jim Jarmusch in Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai. This adds to the unsettling mood in the film that has double crosses on double crosses and where few people can be trusted. Indeed, it is Shuji who stands out as honourable and loyal, seeming to stick to his own moral code despite the back-stabbering gangsters that he encounters. This provides a fantastic protagonist for the audience to relate to and Shishido is incredibly cool in the role, an effortless cool that seems to be innate to Shishido as an actor. Famed for the plastic surgery that left him with his slightly hamster like cheeks, Shishido's move into darker roles such as this helped make so many of the 60s Nikkatsu output so iconic.

Also excellent is the score by Harumi Ibe which moves through lounge jazz, orchestral pieces, ballads and even to pieces which sound very similar to the Spaghetti Western scores of Ennio Morricone and Bruno Nicolai. The audio track on the Criterion Edition DVD helps highlight this impressive score. The Criterion DVD also has near perfect picture quality with no visible marks. Presented in 2:35:1, the film looks stunning and comes packaged in their excellent Nikkatsu Noir box set.