The past day has presented me with two films that made their first appearances at high-profile festivals early in the year: Scottish auteur David Mackenzie’s first U.S. effort “Spread” — a “look ma, I can act” venture of sorts for Ashton Kutcher — played at Sundance in January, while Rachid Bouchareb’s “London River” was a favorite (and an award-winner) at February’s Berlinale. Suffice to say that winter festival bows are all these titles have in common.
LONDON RIVER (***)
American filmmakers have been combing the ashes of 9/11 for inspiration for some years now, but the British have been far more reticent in taking the London bombings of July 2005. Indeed, it has fallen to Algerian director Rachid Bouchareb (a recent Oscar nominee for his excellent WWII drama “Days of Glory”) to make the first major fictional exploration of this territory, and happily he doesn’t fumble the catch by presuming importance.
The story of two culturally opposed parents (an impoverished Francophone Muslim and a middle-class British widow) who travel to the eponymous city after the attacks, in search of their missing children, “London River” infuses a standard-issue story of parental grief with social and racial tensions that mine the Western suspicion of Islam that has become commonplace in the wake of 9/11. (“The place is crawling with Muslims!” Brenda Blethyn’s culturally sheltered rural character exclaims about London, in one of the film’s few stabs at humor.)
The combination should really make for histrionic schmaltz, but Bouchareb works the same gentle, character-oriented groove as last year’s “The Visitor.” If it shares the occasional thematic patness of that film (“Our lives are not so different,” Blethyn rather banally states to her Muslim ally late in the film), it remains unavoidably moving, in no small part due to the subtleties and interesting contrasts of the two lead performances.
Malian veteran Sotigui Kouyate won the Best Actor award at February’s Berlin fest, and it’s easy to see why: his marvelously characterful face and spare vocal style imbue the character with immense dignity, though I wish his character gave him more notes to play beyond mere stoic strength.
Blethyn has the more interesting assignment, playing a woman whose situation is wholly sympathetic, but whose behaviour isn’t; she plays the character’s racism and self-absorption with admirable empathy, while her climactic breakdown is simultaneously unmoored and restrained, and all the more affecting for it. It’s easily her finest work since her Oscar-nominated turn in “Secrets and Lies”; if this worthy, likable film finds a sympathetic U.S. distributor, it might be worth her taking another run at the gold.
SPREAD (*1/2)
Local son David Mackenzie (“Young Adam,” “Hallam Foe”) is something of an Edinburgh mainstay, having brought all four of his previous features to the festival, but he was unable to present “Spread,” his first American effort, in person. Instead, he sent a note of apology to be read before the screening, explaining that he was “too busy prepping the next one.”
Upon watching the new film, one can only be grateful that he has already moved on, because “Spread,” which opens Stateside in August, is an unmitigated embarrassment – one that sees the Scot’s typically nasty wit and sensual daring wilt in the L.A. sun. Starring Ashton Kutcher as a self-professedly vacuous Hollywood gigolo who makes a living off the charity and sexual desperation of older women, this strives for the currency and cool of “Shampoo” or “American Gigolo,” but is fatally hamstrung by a script with all the nuance and irony of a “90210” episode. Shallow lives have dramatic stakes too, a truth that seems to have escaped scripter Jason Dean Hall as he saddles Kutcher with a ceaseless stream of archly disaffected voiceover that recalls nothing so much as the Sex Shrink advice in your average issue of GQ magazine.
“Spread” will likely attract a modicum of attention for its explicit (if excessively choreographed) sex scenes and the canny art-imitating-life casting of Kutcher as a toyboy figure. (He’s about as good as the character allows, which is to say not very.) But Mackenzie mined this erotic territory with infinitely more style and insight in “Young Adam” (and even the overly precious “Hallam Foe”), and for a filmmaker so often dependent on atmospherics, he has little feel for the Californian milieu beyond what he (and we) have seen in countless previous films. The resulting film is as sleek as its protagonist’s waxed chest, and as empty as his immaculately coiffed head.
Comments
2 responses to “EDINBURGH: ‘London River,’ ‘Spread’”
Guy – have you seen “Clubland”? I consider it Blethyn’s best work. It might be considered old hat to some – she’s played this kind of character many times – but she plays this monstrous character with such honesty, compassion and understanding that we are forced to look at her from many different angles at once. And I consider her audition scene to be one of the best acting moments of ’07. A great and undersung film and one you should watch if you haven’t seen it already.
Yikes, I’m afraid “Clubland” — and Blethyn’s performance in it — did very little for me. I find Blethyn has a weakness for hamming if not kept in check, and strictly from my point of view, that film indulged it. But she’s lovely here.