In Contention

Author: Guy Lodge

  • VENICE: ‘Alps’ and other drugs

    The first few days of the Venice Film Festival were so jam-packed with the big-name premieres you’ve been most restless to hear about that, between thrashing out full-length individual reviews of those and negotiating the braided Venice obstacles of crippling humidity and crippled wi-fi facilities, my usual roundups of less flashy fare got a bit shunted. As did anything in the way of an introduction: we may have already reached the close of Day Four, but hey, welcome to this year’s Venice coverage! Hope you’re enjoying it at least as much as I am. More, hopefully.

    As you’ve probably gathered from the reviews I have written, it’s been a quiet festival so far: perhaps I’m more down than most on such titles as “A Dangerous Method” and “The Ides of March,” but even accounting for the more encouraging reviews, no big film has yet set the Lido alight the way last year’s opener, “Black Swan,” did. Indeed, the buzz film of the festival so far may well be Madonna’s “W.E.,” if only because critics, when bored, thrive on schadenfreude.

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  • REVIEW: “A Dangerous Method” (**1/2)

    Venice Film Festival

    “Do you think they know we’re on our way, bringing them the plague?” So asks Viggo Mortensen’s Sigmund Freud of his younger colleague Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender), as the two approach New York City to gift the untreated denizens of America with their equally grueling brands of psychoanalysis, in the closing stretch of “A Dangerous Method,” David Cronenberg’s thoughtfully embroidered account of their professional rivalry.

    It’s the sharpest line in corset-prestige specialist Christopher Hampton’s script, adapted none-too-cinematically from his 2002 play “The Talking Cure.” It is also, as most Freudophiles will recognize, one he didn’t write himself — like so many of a writer’s best moments, it was gifted to him by legend. Freud, luckily enough, had a pretty dry line in irony; drier, perhaps, than that of Hampton, who tackles his historical subjects’ rich battle of wills and philosophies with the requisite scholarly enthusiasm, but is oddly cautious,  even a little po-faced, about the way he fashions intellectual debate into drama.

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  • REVIEW: “W.E.” (*1/2)

    Venice Film Festival

    There’s such a bounty of ripe absurdities in Madonna’s sophomore directorial effort “W.E.” — an over-the-spectacles glance at the supposedly for-the-ages romance of Wallis Simpson and Edward VIII, blending the story of “The King’s Speech,” the structure of “Julie & Julia,” the styling of “A Single Man” and the collected smarts of none of those films — that it seems positively ascetic to begin with the closing credits, but so I shall. Nestled in the final minute of a decidedly over-generous 120 comes the list of “Thank Yous,” upon which you may or may not be surprised to encounter the names John Galliano and Leni Reifenstahl (sic).

    The names may be there for perfectly fair reasons. Galliano is a genius fashion designer, and Madonna’s film is nothing if not well-dressed. Riefenstahl was a genius metteur en scène, and Madonna’s film is nothing if not — well, perhaps she just likes Riefenstahl’s films, even if any claim of creative influence would be on the tenuous side. The irony of thanking two prominent alleged Nazi sympathizers, mere minutes after “W.E.” goes to manful if unconvincing lengths to discredit any suggestions that the Duke and Duchess of Windsor had similar leanings, is incidental, and perhaps a little cheap to pick on, but merely one small symptom of Madonna the Auteur’s astonishing lack of self-awareness.

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  • REVIEW: “Carnage” (**1/2)

    Venice Film Festival

    When the title of Yasmina Reza’s acclaimed 2006 play “God of Carnage” was given a haircut in its transition to the screen, it was hard to read what — if anything — the change implied about the film to come.

    On the one hand, “Carnage” sounds pithier and more aggressive, removing the safety net of metaphor from a text already pretty unreserved in its examination of upper-class ugliness. On the other, shearing the title of any theological implications (though the play’s less-than-incendiary speech in which the titular phrase was coined survives intact) smacked of caution: would Polanski’s treatment blunt Reza’s scalpel, selecting some of the play’s less arguable social transgressions while leaving more troublesome ones on the stage? Or did Polanski simply like the one-word title better?

    As it turns out, the mixed signals were a red herring either way: the newly godless “Carnage” stints neither on the bilious wit the play spewed on stage, nor the formality of its construction, which takes an hour to excavate raw animosity and dysfunction from yards of swaddled politesse. It is, in the final event, very much the play that critics and audiences swarmed around from its Paris debut in 2006, and such fans’ relative satisfaction or disappointment with it will hinge largely on their individual response to the wholly refreshed cast.

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  • REVIEW: “The Ides of March” (***)

    Venice Film Festival

    “I’m not a Christian. I’m not an atheist. I’m not a Muslim. I’m not Jewish. I believe in the American constitution,” intones a spiffily-suited and even fresher-faced-than-usual Ryan Gosling as the opening line of “The Ides of March,” George Clooney’s crisp, diverting and typically (even overly) studious political thriller.

    Standing at the podium, he hesitates a moment — teasing us with the tantalizing possibility that he might launch into an even less rhythmic rendition of the rap interlude from Madonna’s “American Life” — before the camera pulls back to reveal the context of the rhetoric: he’s merely timing an address that his boss, a Brylkreem-slick presidential candidate played by Clooney himself, will deliver later.

    It’s the first of several occasions where the film strips political speech down to its mere machinations, and where the mind of one character is filtered through the voice of another. It’ll come as no surprise to anyone familiar with Clooney’s work as a filmmaker and as an activist that “The Ides of March” takes a wearily disapproving stance on the manipulations and (mostly bad) manners of US politics, prizing the candid idealism of Stevie Meyers, Gosling’s gifted 30 year-old press secretary, over the more urbane truth-parsing of Clooney’s Democratic hopeful Mike Morris — loosely inspired, as in the play, “Farragut North,” from which the film is adapted, on failed 2004 campaigner Howard Dean.

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  • VENICE: Follow the Lido — a festival preview

    “Why Venice and not Toronto?” a colleague asked when I mentioned I was heading to the Lido for the world’s oldest film festival for the third straight year. Given the North American bent of this site, it was a fair question, but also one I found easy to answer — and not just for the dully practical reason of relative airfare expense.

    Toronto may have become the bigger and, depending on your field of interest, more influential festival (certainly so if you’re in the Oscar-watching business). But with its abundance of pre-premiered films and no juried competition, it’ll never have the grandeur or ever-so-slightly scuffed glamor of the Venice event, with its beachside location, soaring marble delegate halls and saturated aroma of overpriced espresso — not to mention the artsier exclusivity of its film programming, a once hit-and-miss virtue that scored a bulls-eye with a 2010 lineup that beat last year’s Cannes for range, relevance and vitality.

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  • ‘Tinker, Tailor’ joins the December club

    American viewers already frustrated about waiting two months longer than the Brits to lay eyes on Tomas Alfredson’s “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” — welcome to our world, guys — won’t be pleased by Pete Hammond’s revelation in a recent column that the wait has been extended by three weeks.

    Yes, Focus Features has pushed the film back from its original November 18 release date to December 9, a move that some will interpret as indicative of bolshy awards-season hopes for the star-studded John Le Carré adaptation — though the pre-Thanksgiving berth wasn’t exactly Oscar-unfriendly either.

    That said, Focus might have picked a date with less intimidating high-end competition: originally set to precede “The Artist,” “The Descendants” and “Hugo” by only a few days, the film now need only stare down limited releases of Madonna’s “W.E.” and Jason Reitman’s “Young Adult.”

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  • Gervais invited to repeat at Globes — but what about Oscars?

    Obviously it’s too early to be concerned about who’s hosting next year’s Golden Globe ceremony. The day before next year’s Golden Globes ceremony would to be concerned about that. But the pre-weekend news that Ricky Gervais has been invited (if not confirmed) to emcee the show, in his typically irreverent manner, for a third straight year is more interesting for a disputed side note: his claim that the Academy requested his services too.

    Gervais is currently playing coy about his offer from the Hollywood Foreign Press — claiming that he’s considering it, but is wary of outstaying his welcome — though I have a hunch he’ll end up accepting. He’s more adamant about refusing the Oscars gig, dismissing it as “a thankless task for a comedian.”

    Oscars broadcaster ABC, however, denies that the Academy ever approached Gervais in the first place. Take whoever’s word you find more fun to believe.

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  • ‘Tyrannosaur’ trailer

    Paddy Considine’s directorial debut was one of the international success stories at this year’s Sundance fest, nabbing awards for both Olivia Colman and Peter Mullan’s performances, as well as one for Considine’s direction. I saw the film, a bruising, thoughtful portrait of abuse and emotional isolation in suburban England, and found the hype more than justified on the acting front. Mullan is as superbly tender-tough as we’ve come to expect from him, but it’s Olivia Colman — perhaps best known for her expert underplaying in the UK sitcom “Peep Show” — who’s the revelation here. I’ll save my full impressions of her stunning performance  for a review soon, but I will say that if Meryl Streep makes half as worthy a case for an Oscar nomination later this year, I’ll eat my literal hat.

    The film will get a fresh blast of wind in its sails at next month’s Toronto Film Festival; Strand Releasing already has the US distribution rights, but has yet to announce a release date. (UK audiences have only until October 7 to wait.) Meanwhile, The Guardian unveiled a trailer this morning that gives but a hint of the acting firepower on offer here. Check out the embed after the jump.

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  • ‘The Artist’ poster

    I recall our learned friend Anne Thompson responding with scepticism when I mentioned over a Cannes lunch that I expected Michel Hazanavicius’s “The Artist” to be a major player in this year’s Oscar race. Looks like Anne has come round to the idea over the summer, as she — together with Steve Pond and David Poland — placed the film in her top spot on the Gurus o’ Gold’s Best Picture chart. I’d be right there with them. The Weinstein Company’s marketing push for the audience-friendly silent-cinema homage begins today with a supremely elegant poster that puts its Cannes-honored star to the fore, and nails the film’s vintage romantic allure. Nicely played. Check it out after the jump.

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  • Meirelles’s ‘360’ to open London fest

    I’m trying not to think too much about my hometown film festival right now — with the chaos of Venice only a week away, the idea of diving into another five-films-a-day fortnight shortly afterwards seems somewhat deadly. Still, with this week essentially amounting to the calm before the storm, now is as good a time as any for the London Film Festival to announce that they’ll be kicking off their 55th edition with Fernando Meirelles’s starry erotic drama “360.”

    It’s a choice that’ll bring the requisite glamor to the fest’s opening night — the cast includes Jude Law, Rachel Weisz (set to be the fall festival season’s most ubiquitous face), Anthony Hopkins, Eminem and Ben Foster — but I must admit to being somewhat disappointed.

    The LFF raised its international profile considerably in 2008 and 2009 by opening with major world premieres (“Frost/Nixon” and “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” respectively), and while I’m aware of the difficulty of securing such coups, a curtain-raiser that has already been seen and critically assessed at Toronto — whatever its merits — just doesn’t carry the same level of excitement.

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  • Three more join the foreign Oscar fray

    With the deadline for submissions not even six weeks away, expect a number of posts in this vein before then; for now, however, the number of formal entries for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar has swelled to a modest five.

    While the first two in the game, Greece and Poland, were reasonably high-profile contenders — the latter’s entry, in particular, sounds like something of a perfect Oscar storm for this category — the most recent three are rather less prominent. Romania, Morocco and Venezuela are all angling for their first ever nomination in the Oscar race.

    Of the three, Romania’s running duck in this race is perhaps the most surprising. The Academy has remained wholly resistant to the country’s critically hailed cinematic renaissance in the last decade; indeed, the snubbing of Palme d’Or winner “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” was one of the final straws that prompted a new voting system in the category. It’d be just like the Academy to finally relent for a film low on the radar, so perhaps Marian Crisan’s “Morgen” could be the one.

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  • Penn on Malick, part deux

    I originally posted this in the previous comment thread, but since the web seems to have latched onto this story, I think it’s worth highlighting more prominently. The media is determined to interpret Sean Penn’s fairly reasoned personal reservations about “The Tree of Life” as some kind of ego-driven attack — but before everyone starts taking sides in the Penn-Malick Celebrity Deathmatch, it’s worth reading the second half of his statement to Le Figaro, which doesn’t seem to have been translated by the English-speaking press. My rough translation below paints a rather more gracious picture:

    But it’s a film I recommend, as long as you go in without any preconceived ideas. It’s up to each person to find their own personal, emotional or spiritual connection to it. Those that do generally emerge very moved.

    So, what we have have here is a statement of respectful artistic dissent from someone clearly still proud to have been involved with the picture. Not as much fun as a highbrow bitchfight, granted, but there it is. At ease, everyone.

    [Photo: Fox Searchlight Pictures]

  • REVIEW: “One Day” (***)

    “I love you, Dexter, I just don’t like you anymore,” a radiantly moist-eyed Anne Hathaway tells a radiantly plastered Jim Sturgess at a crucial emotional juncture in “One Day,” Lone Scherfig’s attractive, involving and curiously unmoving attempt to replicate the cosy, literate-but-not-too-literary British comforts of her 2009 “An Education.”

    Cribbed by screenwriter David Nicholls from his own mega-selling novel — the kind of fast-digesting doorstop that’s been a ubiquitous presence on London public transport for the past two years — the line is one of those reductively heart-on-sleeve sentiments that Richard Curtis sharpened to a blunt point in his 1990s heyday; when Hathaway drops it, you can hear the film straining for its own place in the pop culture quote bank, somewhere between “Is it still raining? I hadn’t noticed” and “I’m just a girl standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her” in the swoon-cringe stakes.

    If the film surrounding that moment seems unlikely to carry it to such relative heights, that’s because it’s at once less appealing and more adventurous than the bulk of the calculated Working Title charmers on which it is modelled. For starters, it’s one of the more neurotically male-minded films ever to be marketed as a lavender-scented chick flick.

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  • FIPRESCI names ‘The Tree of Life’ film of the year

    Well, did anyone expect otherwise? FIPRESCI, the international association of film critics that routinely hands out its own award at film festivals, has named Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life” the winner of its annual Grand Prix award — for the film voted the year’s finest in a poll of their 200-plus membership.

    (Before anyone protests that it’s a little early to be dishing out Film of the Year honors, the eligibility bracket is an autumn-to-autumn deal, scheduled to fit with a presentation at the San Sebastian Film Festival. A 2010 critics’ favorite like “The Social Network,” for example, would have been up for consideration this year.)

    A slight irony is that Malick’s film didn’t actually win FIPRESCI’s own award at May’s Cannes Film Festival — it was pipped to the post by Aki Kaurismäki’s still-unreleased “Le Havre.” The discrepancy, of course, can be explained by the difference between jury and mass voting patterns: the Cannes prize is determined by a select handful of members, while a collective membership vote is more likely to favor big-league critics’ darlings.

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  • Hey Academy, why not Brendan Gleeson?

    For a series of not-entirely-connected reasons, a little Irish indie called “The Guard” has been on my mind today. For starters, a reader named Stephen asked me on Twitter when it would reach US theaters — only for me to discover that it’s been in limited release there for several weeks already. (UK audiences can see it on Friday.) Then, coincidentally enough, my brief review of the film for Heat magazine hit shelves today; it was already on my mind, however, thanks to a tweet this morning by Telegraph critic Tim Robey:

    A proper Brendan Gleeson awards push needs to happen for The Guard. He’s so often the bridesmaid, disturbing image though that may be.

    I’m not one to ignore a hat-trick of signs, however tenuous, pointing to a particular film — particularly one I saw over six months ago and could otherwise have stored on the dusty top shelves of my memory. Someone, somewhere, on high clearly wants me to blog about “The Guard” today; more to the point, I do, because I couldn’t agree more with Tim’s order.

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  • ‘Coriolanus’ poster

    Another day, another poster. Interesting that they’re selling this one less as The Ralph Fiennes Show (he is Coriolanus, after all) and more as a two-hander. It’s worth playing up Gerard Butler’s contribution — his performance here is a career highlight — but I maintain my broken-record position that Vanessa Redgrave is the real story here. Meanwhile, I’m slightly surprised at what a slick marketing push this one is getting: the film is more of a curio than you might think. Interested to see how this pans out. Full poster after the jump.

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  • Glenn Close’s “lifetime achievement” wagon gets rolling

    In the grand scheme of the awards season, an honour from the high-end but small-scale San Sebastian Film Festival doesn’t mean much on its own. But seen potentially as the first stop on a tour of similar recognition, the festival’s announcement of a Lifetime Achievement Award for Glenn Close — conveniently attached to the European premiere of her film “Albert Nobbs” — suggests the shape Close’s 2011 Oscar campaign could take. From the press release:

    Glenn Close, one of Hollywood’s most feted actresses, will be the film personality to receive this year’s Donostia lifetime achievement award at a ceremony on September 18th at 21:30 in the Kursaal Auditorium.

    In San Sebastian, the actress will introduce the European premiere (out-of-competition) of her latest film, Albert Nobbs. Helmed by Rodrigo García, the movie is set in 19th Century Ireland, a society dominated by men where women have no opportunities and are condemned to a life of servitude. The star of the film (Close) is a woman who disguises herself as a man to get a job in a hotel and earn the money she needs to fulfill her dream.

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