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Film: Prey
Year of production: 2010
UK Release date: 6th June 2011
Distributor: Entertainment One
Certificate: 18
Running time: 80 mins
Director: Antoine Blossier
Starring: Bérénice Bejo, Grégoire Colin, Isabelle Renauld, François Levantal, Joseph Malerba
Genre: Drama/Adventure/Horror/Thriller/Mystery
Format: DVD
Country of Production: France
Language: French
Review by: Calum Reed
As a pocket-size 80-minute feature, Antoine Blossier’s Prey, a film with a roaming sense of conviction towards its sequences of horror, is actually fairly compact. Blossier pulls no punches in his debut directorial outing, offering a unique spin on age-old themes. One of the many customs of horror cinema lies in familial drama - going all the way back to Jamie Lee Curtis’ maniacal brother trying to kill her in Halloween, and up to the infidelity and love triangle in 2004’s terrific The Descent; people beset on by predators are, to some degree, already unsettled in their personal lives.
The family dynamic in Prey reinforces this narrative staple of murky backstory, pitting Grégoire Colin (formerly of Beau Travail) as Nathan, a meek accountant up against the tyranny of his prosperous in-laws.
Married to Claire (Bérénice Bejo), he is growing increasingly frustrated with her obligations towards the family’s lucrative pesticide business, and particularly the dependence placed upon her by domineering father/employer Nicolas (François Levanthal). Nathan wants nothing more than to have a child and settle down, while Claire remains wary of adding distance between her and the family.
A gathering at their country mansion gets off to a shaky start, as rampaging deer from a surrounding forest threaten the life of Claire’s father. The male members of the household (including younger son David) venture into the forest to surmise why the animals are behaving erratically, and with the intent to extinguish any potential threats that they encounter.
The expedition unsurprisingly does not run smoothly, and as tempers flare between the gun-wielding alphas, they discover that the primary danger is not each other but the volatile, predatory wildlife lurking in the undergrowth…
Prey is being heavily promoted as a special effects coup of sorts, provided by a Hollywood team somewhat renowned for their visual flair. This doesn’t translate as a particularly valuable commodity on-screen: in terms of production values, Prey appears to have much more in common with minimal-budget, visceral horror films (which is not at all an insult), and rather than manipulate through shock-tactic editing, endeavours to instil tension through internal politics. A canny use of hand-held camera has been the benchmark since 1999’s unsteady Blair Witch adventure, and this indie woodland descendant doesn’t deviate much from that train of thought.
As these men venture deeper into the forest, the question begs: are they targets because they’re ungrateful with their own lives, or just too morally-tarnished as people? It might be that we simply can’t bear for a family with two-point-four children to perish, but biochemical magnates and ageing tycoons are within the realm of acceptable ‘victims’. The further Prey goes, it becomes a lot looser in its desire to expose the allegorical goals of the narrative, eventually revealing its lack of sophistication through utilising platitudinous ideas about society’s preoccupation with land and money, and its ruthless need to preserve it. Moreover, the introduction of Erin Brockovich-style injustice into its explanation of events - as an emotional device designed to provoke ecological outrage and further lessen the appeal of these men - is a shade disappointing.
The exhilarating appeal of Prey lies in its grounded depiction of aggression as a product of legitimate animalistic instinct, and its thematic consideration of what constitutes a ‘predator’. Unconcerned with florid displays of violence, Blossier charts the primal regression of his desperate cast (not unlike Marshall in The Descent, incidentally) and in the heart of this quest for survival unearths a rousing, unexpected reality within the frenzy. This reality reaches its peak when the behaviour of one of the characters severely compromises our view of them, but is executed with a daring dose of finality and allays with the primitive descension of the no-holds-barred war.
With more time afforded to exploring the interworking of the family (the action element of the film begins less than ten minutes in), there would be much more of a symbiotic value to some of the relationships in the film. As it is, we don’t sense enough of the characters’ deepseated traits and attitudes to become immersed in the domestic strife. Nathan’s relationship with Claire, for instance, is founded upon a solitary conversation between the two, and it isn’t fleshed out much more beyond that; while Nicolas remains a corporate antagonist used to punctuate the film’s social commentary. Prey asks questions about what standard of behaviour – if any – we should expect from people essentially out for themselves, and whether we should buy into its ropey, cynical conclusions on human nature. In that regard, one thing is surely for certain: the film has a pretty cutthroat advocacy of reprehensibility and karma.
Prey squanders opportunities to flaunt its grittier aspects, neither fully content to explore the motivations of either of the two female characters, or exploit the situational drama of the opening act to make its issues worthwhile. It’s undeniably impacting as a primitive horror, but what is atoned for by a fascinating shift in tone has already primarily been undone by overt, weary nods to allegory and is finally hampered by a worrying late fascination with rectitude. The main moral of this story is surprisingly not to stay out of the forest. CR
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Film: Love Life
Year of production: 2009
UK Release date: 13th June 2011
Distributor: Yellow Knife
Certificate: 15
Running time: 113 mins
Director: Reinout Oerlemans
Starring: Carice van Houten, Anna Drijver, Barry Atsma, Eline Van der Velden, Pierre Bokma
Genre: Drama/Romance
Format: DVD
Country of Production: Netherlands
Language: Dutch
Review by: Calum Reed
Adapted from Ray Kluun’s novel, the original Dutch translation of “Love Life” is “A Woman Goes To The Doctor” - the first line of a joke used popularly in the Netherlands. It isn’t the most sensitive title for a story of a couple torn apart by cancer, but as an autobiographical work, Kluun remains best placed to tell it, and in chronicling his strained relationship with first wife Judith - from their first ever meeting, to her death from the disease just over ten years ago – he gained considerable acclaim, prompting a film adaptation that hit Dutch screens in November 2009.
The film hurtles fairly quickly through time, beginning with the couple, Stijn (Barry Atsma) and Carmen (Carice van Houten), in an extended honeymoon period, in which they are visibly devoted to each other and have a child, Luna. This somewhat idyllic setup is eventually shattered when Carmen finds a lump on her breast, and is promptly diagnosed as having an advanced stage of Cancer that means she must have a mastectomy in order to prevent further spread of the disease.
Despite the announcement that Carmen is officially free of illness, the couple struggle to come to terms with what has happened, and feel powerless to resolve their relationship as husband and wife. They grow apart, as she spends more time in New York and he buries himself in his healthy business and fiery lover Roos (Anna Drijver).
Once the couple are forced to confront their issues, they reach a surprising decision, but must again revise their outlook when Carmen’s health takes another turn for the worse…
Kluun certainly can’t have shied away from flaunting his own inability to remain monogamous, as Love Life offers a decidedly unsympathetic view of Stijn as a fickle follower of alcoholic spirits and one-night stands. While many would scale the moral high-horse to criticise his infidelity (pre or post-cancer), it’s asserted towards the start of Love Life that he and Carmen mutually accept that he will sleep with other women behind her back. Authorial embellishment on Kluun’s part seems unlikely, too, given that Carmen’s attitudes towards the issue don’t remain so free and easy. Stijn’s guilt is often examined through racy images, the most dramatic and misjudged of which occurs in a scene where he watches an attractive blonde girl strip at a club, only for her then to rip a breast off and seductively smother herself in blood. As an hallucinatory sequence, it does little to detract from the film’s aggressive attitude towards sexuality, or the apparentness of Stijn’s insatiable libido.
Together with incessantly trippy visuals of nightlife, Oerlemans offers ideas of escapism and a lack of faith as ironically more dangerous than cancer itself. While Love Life is expectedly quite episodic with regard to Stijn’s internal dilemnas over Roos, Carmen’s realisations of this, and her many medical dramas, it’s refreshingly brisk towards a proverbially-staged subject. The facetious way in which the couple tackle the cancer issue has its charm, as the underlying tense jolts of brazen humour provide a distracting temperance to the growing disconnection between them. The film is an unorthodox presentation of a topic many find difficult to discuss, and its predominant desire to shy away from being clean and sentimental as a production eventually works wonders. Even Carmen’s final moments, while weepy and somewhat conventional, aren’t handled with a great amount of ease or poignancy.
Euro cinema siren Carice van Houten builds upon her impressive showing in 2006’s Black Book with a subtly enlightening turn, while the relatively unknown Atsma revels in his bad-boy role, delving into Stijn’s perpetual commitment struggle with fearless dynamism. It’s to his credit that we’re able to see so far into the psyche of a man many will likely find detestable on the surface.
Love Life is often brutally honest as a disintegration of a relationship founded upon youth itself. Resignation and acceptance still dominate the characters in the film’s second half, but in a way that correlates with the impulsive nature of the couple as lustful, reckless, and undeniably for-the-moment. One senses that even had cancer not cruelly intervened, their story would likely still not have that elusive happy ending.
The refusal to bow to tradition has inevitably emerged from the honesty and authenticity of the source material, but Love Life still has to navigate the problems of being brash and matter-of-fact about the timidly-talked-about issue of cancer. Rather than capitalise and plug the disease, the film feels resentful of it, displaying some baldly insensitive scenes and finding a repetitive mode within its breathless dash through romance, tragedy, and finally romance again. It’s a film people may struggle to take to its heart, but one that deserves recognition; boldly straying away from the cinematic devices of weepy lifetime drama, and still managing to become a devastating, tragic love affair. CR
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Film: Voyage To The Edge Of The World
Year of production: 1976
UK Release date: 23rd May 2011
Distributor: Go Entertain
Certificate: E
Running time: 90 mins
Director: Philippe Cousteau
Starring: Jacques-Yves Cousteau
Genre: Documentary
Format: DVD
Country of Production: France
Language: French (English dub)
Review by: Calum Reed
“We are witnesses to the vanishing of an eternity,” Philippe Cousteau proclaims in the final breaths of his documentary, Voyage To The Edge Of The World, as his father, Jacques, reaches the end of his journey to the outer-reaches of the South Pole. Of all the faraway cultural landscapes and alien habitats open to exploration, Antarctica appears to be the en-vogue topic of the moment; Luc Jacquet’s March Of The Penguins chronicled the life cycle of its bird-dwellers, while more recently Werner Herzog’s Encounters At The Edge Of The World sees the renowned director ape the Cousteau family’s 1975 cross-continental trip. As mentioned in the film, this journey marks a two-hundred-year anniversary of explorer Captain James Cook’s crossing of the Antarctic Circle during his circumnavigation of the globe in the 18th century.
Despite Cousteau’s established attachment to the underwater world as an oceanographer, evident in his work for National Geographic, and Oscar-winning feature Le Monde du Silence, this marked the man’s most daring endeavour to date.
In 1973, Captain Cousteau set sail for Antarctica in his boat, Calypso, accompanied by a crew that included his son Philippe, a previous collaborator and partner on TV series The Undersea World Of Jacques Cousteau. The film follows the Cousteau and the Calypso from the time that it arrives at the South Pole to the end of the exploration of its waters.
While a prolific filmmaking duo during their time together, Philippe would work with his father just one more time after Voyage – in their search for the lost continent of Atlantis – before a boat crash caused his untimely death in 1979, at the age of 39...
While primarily an ode to the South Seas and their unorthodox array of creatures, Voyage To The Edge Of The World is just that – a voyage – and it manages to convey the sense of journeyman in Cousteau et crew particularly well given that there isn’t a diary-structure as such. One of its most appealing attributes is that Philippe Cousteau doesn’t get too over determined with creating a compelling narrative outside of marine life and glacial terrain. But for a brief segment where he mourns the tragic accidental loss of Michel Laval, the ship’s second-in-command, the emphasis is always placed upon gaining insight into a world we know relatively little about – especially considering that this occurred nearly forty years ago. When Philippe does attempt to inject drama, it’s usually through presenting the landscape as a hurdle for the expedition; the group must first navigate an active volcano and later navigate a pool of icebergs in order to progress safely.
What’s achieved is largely through exercising a patient approach, understated up to its euphoric final moments, even as Philippe pertains to include swooping aerial shots and a graceful musical score. Father and son also alternate between providing voiceover commentary, resisting literary intonation in favour of a more practical impression of the place. The aesthetic qualities of Voyage To The Edge Of The World lie in its faithfulness to the sea – perhaps not surprising, as both father and son are proven pioneers in the field of documentarianism. Their welcome desire to leave this distant climate unimposed allows the forays into penguin behaviour and deepwater organisms to provoke their own inherent allure and magic; the Cousteaus project romantic ideas onto Antarctica, but don’t purport to be above their station as fledgling voyagers. They remain incredibly respectful of it as a haven for sailors, naturalists, enthusiasts in its untouched state.
Above all, Cousteau creates the impression of Antarctica as a tranquil odyssey, aided heavily by editor Hedwige Bienvenu’s fluid, assured style. While Voyage To The Edge Of The World wanes a little in interest in the middle section, that’s more a result of pedantic explanation of processes than it is of the film’s diminishment as a visual showpiece. It’s pieced together with loving delicacy and thoughtful flair; a stripped-bare, simplistic presentation of life in the South, and a reservedly charming engagement with the natural world. As the film builds towards an underwater climax, Cousteau and crew’s passion for this unknown corner of the world is felt – without the need for heavy personalisation or dramatic camerawork.
Serenely mastered, Voyage To The Edge Of The World is Cousteau’s love letter to nature; in particular, the mystery and metaphysics beneath Antarctica’s oceanic expanse. It’s a modestly-played documentary designed more towards developing intrigue through a meditative comb of the location rather than an exciting adventure story, and surely succeeds in opening our eyes to the mystical beauty of a wilderness and the settlers who inhabit it. More concerned with the power of imagery than a need to educate and inform, the film finds a median between postcard admiration and spiritual fascination in detailing – what many believed to be – the point at which civilisation ceased to exist. CR
Film: Blind Date
UK Release date: 23rd May 2011
Distributor: Network
Certificate: 15
Running time: 170 mins
Director: Stanley Tucci & Theo van Gogh
Starring: Renée Fokker, Peer Mascini, Roeland Fernhout, Wouter Brave, Jan Jaspers
Genre: Comedy/Drama/Romance
Format: DVD
Country of Production: Netherlands/USA/UK
Language: Dutch/English
Review by: Calum Reed
Those mystified by the attempts of the characters in Lars von Trier’s Antichrist to deal with the grief of their dead child may be equally puzzled by Dutch director Theo van Gogh’s 1996 film, Blind Date. Like the currently-troubled Dogme founder, van Gogh’s reputation as a cinematic provocateur caused controversy, reaching its peak in his critique of the treatment of female Muslims in 2004 short film, Submission. While von Trier’s recent behaviour at Cannes may lead to him becoming somewhat of a pariah on the festival circuit, van Gogh faced an eminently more dangerous opposition to his work: less than two months after Submission aired on television, he was assassinated by a Muslim extremist.
Blind Date opens with Renee Fokker’s Katja entering a rather tacky-looking lounge bar, in which she proceeds to first order a drink, before, secondly, making an enquiry of the whereabouts of Pom (Peer Mascini). As it happens, Pom has answered her advertisement in the personal columns for a “sweet, honest man” considerably older than herself, and as the two have dinner, they engage in the kind of small talk you’d expect from people meeting for the first time. What quickly becomes apparent is that these two are not meeting for the first time, and as their exchange accelerates towards a more volatile tone, we learn that they are actually married, and are heavily resentful of how their lives have turned out.
The film is divided into chapters based upon the personal ads, which are often shifting in nature according to what Katja and Pom want to learn from each other. As they constantly redress their desires, they discuss the reasons for their marital estrangement – nameably the death of their daughter in a car crash, and the implications of that event on their sexual relationship. During the course of Blind Date, they each adopt interrogative and submissive roles; including he as a reporter and blind man, and she as a psychologist and dancer…
Scissors and clamps are, thankfully, deemed unnecessary for this project about a couple trying to surmise what their marriage means anymore, but that doesn’t make these parents any less radical in their method of confronting harsh realities. As a conceptualised view of self-imposed ‘marriage therapy’, Blind Date holds weight: how to resolve a marriage where both parties can’t be in the same room together without relinquishing their identities? The nature of this coping technique, as a manufactured paradox of escape and confrontation, creates intrigue, and the tense interplay between Fokker and Mascini offers a tentatively balanced dynamic to all of their roleplays. The schematics of the film as a confessional, insidiously motivated acting duel inevitably leads to bouts of self-consciousness, but this doesn’t particularly hamper it until the later scenes.
Since most of Blind Date is essentially acting as a divulgement of exposition, it commands attention while things feel relatively fresh, but when the film runs out of backstory to reveal (and interesting ways to reveal it), the exercise becomes rather stagnant and roundabout. An intermittent voiceover accompaniment by the couple’s dead daughter adds to the extremely macabre humour intoned in some of the more sensationalist crevices of the script, as she launches into critiques of how they’ve behaved after her demise. It’s a device that feels far too facetious for a film that’s banding around so much emotional baggage, and a weak move to realise the daughter as a proponent of the present rather than the past.
While a far more seasoned veteran of the acting branch, Stanley Tucci has tried his hand at directing no less than four times, the most successful of which is Big Night, his 1996 collaboration with Campbell Scott. Tucci’s decision to remake the late van Gogh’s film in 2007 provoked surprised intrigue, and the following year it had its North American premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. While essentially a faithful remake, Blind Date (2008) doesn’t copy the original shot-for-shot, altering the sequence of events slightly to make more sense of the couple’s actions. Tucci also elects to alter the names of the central characters to Don and Janna, casting himself in the former role and Patricia Clarkson to star opposite.
Those familiar with Tucci and Clarkson’s recent partnership as Emma Stone’s easy-going parents in teen comedy Easy A will likely be a little aghast at how far removed from that wheelhouse Blind Date requires them to be. As two actors particularly excellent at instilling characters with natural qualities, this warring couple (no less conceited in nature than in the original) are far too alien and ugly for this acting duo to get to grips with. Playing against-type, the two expose the script’s manipulation of emotion far more than is present in the original - its dialogue falling flat with the familiar, composed actors unconvincing in alluding to the hatred and contempt Mascini and Fokker assumed in its predecessor.
The failure of Tucci’s version isn’t particularly consigned to either acting or casting errors, but reads as more of a misjudged endeavour entirely to take on a project that feels so heavily a product of its then-director. Van Gogh can coax some tremendous moments from his two stars because he’s so heavily involved in its authorial elements; while Tucci remains a sure admirer of the original (even tinkering with it somewhat), he’s still primarily an onlooker staging a reconstruction.
If 1996’s Blind Date was an experiment with mixed degrees of success, its descendant is an ill-conceived stab in the dark. Van Gogh introduced a gimmick capable of luring an audience into a state of studious fascination, but even then that gimmick didn’t have the legs to last eighty minutes. It’s unsurprising, then, that the mishandled remake feels like even more of a drag – loaded with two of the finest actors of their generation, but who are completely unsuited to the darker, and, frankly, bizarre complexities of this particular story. However seedy it sounds, one wishes there were more columns in the vein of ‘Man Seeks Less Talk And More Action’, since a dearth of impact is the chief common denominator between the two episodes. CR
Film: The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets’ Nest
Year of production: 2009
Release date: 11th April 2011
Studio: Momentum
Certificate: 15
Running time: 147 mins
Director: Daniel Alfredson
Starring: Noomi Rapace, Michael Nyqvist, Lena Endre, Sofia Ledarp, Annika Hallin
Genre: Crime/Drama/Thriller
Format: DVD & Blu-ray
Country: Sweden/Denmark/Germany
Language: Swedish
The politically-outspoken Stieg Larsson left this world in a blaze of controversy, but his legacy remains a lasting one. His Millennium Trilogy has gained a massive fanbase, some awards attention, and has even been successful enough to get David Fincher on board for an American remake of the franchise, as Hollywood inevitably cashes in on the popularity of the books themselves. Many have been captivated by the exploits of his heroine Lisbeth Salander; her troubled past and volatile present, and it looks as if we’ll have to endure more of the girl for a few years yet. If rumours are to be believed, there’ll also be a fourth book (there were originally intended to be ten), penned by Larsson’s long-term partner, Eva Gabrielsson, and directly following on from the relatively open-ended The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets’ Nest. For now, however, this film represents the culmination of Salander’s tumultuous relationship with men.
Even those who are indifferent towards the first two instalments will find Hornets’ Nest required viewing – given that it sews up a lot of the girl’s incurred wounds. The Girl Who Played With Fire left Lisbeth bloodied and bruised after being shot in the head by her father, who she then attempted to kill with an axe.
While both lie in hospital, a Soviet spy ring worry that the secrets of Lisbeth’s past will be revealed to the world by Mikael Blomkvist’s magazine Millennium and endeavour to put a stop to the people that stand in their way.
Lisbeth herself must cope with an impending ‘attempted murder’ trial and the emergence of Dr. Peter Teleborian, the murky figure who oversaw her stay at a mental institution at the age of 12...
Divulging all of the key plot details would probably need a handbook in itself, but many of the events in the narrative all serve a similar purpose. It’s well documented that this series of books was intended to be titled ‘For Women Who Hate Men’, and that would certainly have been apt. You can count on one hand the number of positive male characters in all three films combined. Not content with having plagued Lisbeth with an abusive father, a sadistic serial killer and a rapist for a Legal Guardian, Hornets’ Nest dredges up the paedophile doctor who kept her strapped to a hospital bed for over a year. The film demonises the doctor as a sinister, evil liar, and does so to once again extricate sympathy for its weary heroine, who you feel has had to put up with far too much by the time the courtroom scenes roll around. From the aged villains involved in the conspiracy during her childhood, to the stilted lawyers who oppose her, the film acts as a final, determined effort to make the white male seem as thoroughly corrupt and sub-human a species as is fully possible. This might be a film intent on flaunting the abilities of its principal female character, but it victimises her through sexuality rather than empowers her through it, and shies away from considering the ambiguities within her thought process. In making her a statement of subculture, Hornets’ Nest strips her of identity, and has more in common with fascism than feminism.
While finely-paced and staunchly faithful to its literary roots, it’s difficult to accept much of what happens in Hornets’ Nest as credible crime writing. None of the issues involving Blomkvist and his magazine are particularly insightful or interesting, and the creative decisions often lean towards cartoonish depictions of villainy. Lisbeth’s brother, for instance, has a disorder which means he cannot feel pain, and proceeds to roam the wilderness Michael Myers-style, killing everyone and everything in sight before returning to enact some form of family vengeance in the film’s clumsy final act. In many ways, Hornets’ Nest is a subdued epilogue to the events that have gone on before it, devoid of real intensity beyond the trial scenes, and overwhelmed by the sprawling impression that the characters are picking up the pieces. If all ten books were to be completed and adapted, this would more likely serve as one of the fillers of the series, tying up exposition and achieving relative equilibrium, before it’s ready to introduce another callous male antagonist.
Too much of the film’s genuine drama either stems from relaying events in its heroine’s past, or creating overtly-shocking displays of sexuality and violence. The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets’ Nest has a propensity towards displaying violence as both a poison and an antidote, dangerously promoting vengeance as a quenching cure for bitterness. The previously-interesting Blomkvist becomes a fairly moot figure, and the dynamic between himself and Lisbeth is more frayed and uncertain here than in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played With Fire.
Regardless of its hard-hitting techniques, this latest addition to Scandinavian crime-drama falls on the wrong side of ugly, and more unforgivably is the dullest part of what, for now, remains a trilogy. CR
Film: Il Posto
Year of production: 1961
UK Release date: 25th April 2011
Distributor: Mr Bongo
Certificate: U
Running time: 92 mins
Director: Ermanno Olmi
Starring: Loredana Detto, Sandro Panseri
Genre: Comedy/Drama
Format: DVD
Country of Production: Italy
Language: Italian
Characterised by grim, authentic locations and a mundane sense of the 'routine', neo-realist cinema had had its heyday by the time Ermanno Olmi's Il Posto entered the fray. Part of a wave of post neo-realism, his film (the English translation of which is ‘The Job’) stresses the precarious fiscal position that families find themselves in, and the introduction of a culture which promotes economic benefit as a substitute for happiness. While many see 1961 as belonging to Federico Fellini’s lavish La Dolce Vita, Il Posto represents a drastically different side of Italian society, devoid of cocktails, buxom blondes and moonlit terraces.
Part of a post-war generation, graduate Domenico (Panseri) is put under pressure to work by his strict parents, who encourage him to attend a recruitment event for a large, well-known corporation. In doing so, he undergoes an exam, an aptitude test, and meets love interest Antonietta (Detto), whose striking features and comparable family situation attract his attention.
Many days pass until Domenico is informed that he has been given a job at the company, and from there the film follows his efforts to fit into his new workplace, as well as his endeavours to secure the affection of his attractive colleague…
Particularly in the first half of the film, Olmi’s style draws us into the tentativeness of his leading man, but is also fiercely satirical towards the subject matter. The recruitment process Domenico takes part in consists of a simple problem-solving task, and an interview comprising of thoroughly absurd questions which probe his level of alcohol dependency and physical fitness. A medical exam consists of candidates taking it in turns to hold out their palms and squat in front of a panel of physicians. Olmi mocks corporate ideals of what makes a perfect ‘candidate’ in a similarly wry way to how Sofia Coppola critiques ‘celebrity’ in her films Lost In Translation and Somewhere, reducing characters to pawns within a commercial network.
Above all, Il Posto and Panseri instil awkward tension into their depiction of what is a very daunting ordeal. It details all of the intricacies of the protocol of starting a new job; not knowing where to put yourself, gauging what your superiors want to hear, etc. Domenico enters an alien environment with the convincing trepidation of a kid thrust into the world of work, with a healthy degree of interest and promise in tow. The film shows how his inherent expectations become moulded with the realities of working life (especially at such a tender age) and rarely surrounds the boy with overly-uniform representations of restriction. But for some fussy moments with his parents, Domenico encounters people who you can believe were once as fresh and hesitantly self-aware as he, and who have been believably indoctrinated into a capitalist way-of-life. These folks aren’t obstacles, but rather signifiers of the bigger picture, and watching this kid try to suss them out and try to adapt somewhat to their way-of-thinking helps to make Il Posto a truer story of fledgling professionalism.
As is usually the case with social commentary, the film is by no means a celebration of this lifestyle choice (neither is La Dolce Vita, really) and Olmi is carefully selective not to make the tender moments of relativity between Domenico and Antonietta too open or electric. They aren’t sure of how they feel about each other, and it shows. Their time together feels precious, but not so distracting as to take away from the central conceit of tackling the pressures of instantly getting on the career ladder, and Il Posto doesn’t get too romantic or sentimental until much nearer the close. Instead, Olmi (not even 30 when this movie was filmed) uses Panseri’s raw and beautifully adept performance to chronicle the difficulties of having no bridge between education and employment. The final scene, in which Domenico comes across his first spar with workplace politics, perhaps demonstrates best the unforeseen implications of being a young professional, and the film’s bleak ending and grinding final credits only serve to reinforce the sense that this young man has been sold out.
The patience of Il Posto is one of its strongest features, and it succeeds through not being too overtly opposed to the attitude its character is pushed into. We aren’t made to rally valiantly behind him in the moments where he does face resistance, and for large periods Olmi’s well-observed style proves an effective way of studying this pocket of social transition in Italy.
Some may find the sparse narrative and anti-climactic ending a tad slight, but as a cultural examination, the pickings are so rich that it’s difficult to complain. As mundane as the workplace is, Il Posto uses that to its advantage, summarising a commonplace arc in the new age of social mobility and reworking it as a personal portrait of the solitude of youth. CR
Film: La signora senza camelie
Release date: 21st March 2011
Certificate: PG
Running time: 105 mins
Director: Michelangelo Antonioni
Starring: Lucia Bosé, Gino Cervi, Andrea Checchi, Ivan Desny, Monica Clay
Genre: Drama
Studio: Eureka!
Format: DVD & Blu-ray
Country: Italy/France
Having already released two of Michelangelo Antonioni’s films onto DVD, Il Grido (1957) and La Notte (1961), the Masters of Cinema series has now endeavoured to showcase his earlier works, including 1953’s La signora senza camelie. Long before the days of Oscar nominations and Jack Nicholson, Antonioni was busy building a career by making films about women thrust into social circles that they aren’t familiar with. This is particularly true of La signora senza camelie, which follows the career of a shopgirl-turned-actress propelled into the enticing new world of Rome’s Cinecitta film studios.
Shop Assistant Clara Manni (Bosé) has been handpicked by movie executive Gianni (Checchi) for his new film, ‘Woman Without Destiny’. When test screenings reveal that the public are enamoured with Clara, but less enthusiastic about Destiny itself, producer Ercole sees an opportunity to take advantage of his actress’ shapely presence and spice the film up a bit, with less attention to detail and more overt displays of passion.
Clara becomes compromised when she marries Gianni, who subsequently gets jealous at how provocative the marketing for her film is, and categorically states that he doesn’t want her involved with it anymore. She reluctantly agrees, and after requesting a more serious avenue of filmmaking, they set about on a new version of the daunting trial of Joan of Arc, with Gianni in the director’s chair. Suffice to say, the film fares terribly when premiered at the Venice Film Festival, and with both their reputations in tatters, Clara is forced to evaluate their marriage and the career that she has embarked upon…
La signora senza camelie actually begins as a more brisk, satirical jibe at the movie business in its opening act, as the producer commands his bewildered director to change the feel of the film with very little regard to authenticity. A year after Hollywood’s own insular critique, The Bad And The Beautiful, it is as scathing a depiction of art versus commerce – if much more comic and resigned about the whole enterprise. Filmmaking is promoted as a fun but altogether shallow experience, defined by money, jealousy, and other trivial external factors that have nothing to do with artistry. If nothing else, Antonioni feels contemptuous of this brand of cinema – a suggestion to film on location is lambasted despite neo-realist cinema being presented as an example of how it can work – and La signora senza camelie represents a commentary on the regressive and opportunistic nature of the film world.
The opening shot of the film stalks Clara as she tentatively waits outside a test screening of the film for a general reaction, unsure of herself, questioning whether this is the right path for her. We feel her pressure and her uncertainty even at this early stage, weighing up the situation as if to say: can things really be this easy? It’s remarkable how Antonioni evokes an era in order to expose the emotional solitude of his characters; whether that takes the form of the espionage revival of the 1970s, the voyeuristic sexuality of the ‘60s, or the cosmopolitan distraction of the ‘50s. He’s so in touch with how these worlds can engulf and impress upon people, create a faux sense of belonging, and cajole them into giving too much of themselves.
Nicknamed La Manni, Carla’s newfound fame turns the heads of many men, but particularly Nardo, who comforts her after Joan of Arc is trashed by Venice critics. Although key in Carla’s grand journey of discovery, her romance with Nardo represents the dullest portion of the film – largely because there’s very little chemistry between them, and partly because it feels so far removed from the rest. This section of La signora senza camelie is more attuned to the feel of later Antonioni films, but doesn’t really sit well amidst the more biographical elements. This is not a compact narrative by any means. But while it lulls somewhat, there’s always a lingering curiosity towards Carla; why she’s acting so recklessly different to her earlier, studious outlook on romance. Bosé charts Carla’s self-awareness deceptively astutely through the film’s second half, to the extent where the more sudden, bleaker realisations of the character feel like a natural culmination of where this woman has been heading.
The resounding success of La signora senza camelie is in the impact of its heroine’s Ophulsian arc, and Antonioni, in his ability to show how the movie business uses people, colours their sense of self-worth, and exploits their aesthetic qualities to pigeon-hole them into archetypal signifiers. Antonioni has made a film that’s largely understated yet remarkably effective. Joan of Arc may be used as an example of a legacy leagues ahead of the fickle talent in this filmmaking world, but the final shot of La signora senza camelie is one that almost references the Maid Of New Orleans in its harrowing indictment of male regulation of the female form. It’s hard out there for an actress. CR
Film: He’s My Girl
Release date: 21st March 2011
Certificate: 15
Running time: 100 mins
Director: Jean-Jacques Zilbermann
Starring: Antoine de Caunes, Mehdi Dehbi, Elsa Zylberstein, Judith Magre, Catherine Hiegel
Genre: Comedy/Romance
Studio: Network
Format: DVD
Country: France
It’s been over a decade since Antoine de Caunes broke through the French cinema barrier with a starring role in Jean-Jacques Zilbermann’s Man Is A Woman. Zilbermann and De Caunes - who earned a Cesar nomination for his depiction of closeted, married gay man Simon Eskenazy – return with He’s My Girl, a sequel which sees Simon much more settled in his new life, and with significantly different emotional problems to conquer.
While Man Is A Woman was primarily about Simon confronting homosexuality, the allusion of gender play in He’s My Girl is a reference to Simon’s current on/off male lover Naim (Dehbi), who dresses up as a waitress for a local entertainment venue. In their early scenes together, Simon appears to be tiring of Naim and his slender, feminine frame, cooling sending him packing the morning after a sleepover. He seems much more concerned with courting the affections of young student Raphael, who’s in a relationship with a woman, but clearly struggling with his sexuality.
Simon is forced to address his living situation when his mother Bella (Magre) injures herself in a fall and moves into his home to recover. While he himself grows resentful of her presence there, Naim develops a bond with Bella, managing to convince her that he is a female law student, and eventually becomes the woman’s full-time live-in nurse.
Simon’s life is further complicated by the arrival of his estranged famous ex-wife Rosalie (Zylberstein) and Jewish convert son Yankele (Gasman), who come back into his life while on a visit from New York…
Simon’s existential crisis ceases to be about sexuality itself, but rather how to embark upon a lifestyle change, and the difficulties of trading in one rulebook for another. There’s a definite charm about He’s My Girl in the way that it doesn’t milk its characters’ faults to generate humour, more whimsically comedic as a film of little manners, rather in the vein of 1978’s La cage aux folles. It’s admirably never overwrought or gaudy with the more serious elements of the narrative, keen to focus on the intricacies of Simon’s interaction with the people in his life, hinting at the reasons why those relationships are frayed by interspersing their exchanges with sprightly quips and tense glances.
The general disappointment of the film lies is in how alarmingly ordinary it feels, even as it portrays a fanciful, occasionally interesting view of family-life. Essentially, it has a very conventional narrative, bearing overly familiar tropes of the selfishness of the bachelor; his inability to fully commit to the people around him, and a general dearth of emotional intelligence. While it maintains a flavour of camp, He’s My Girl can’t escape the pitfalls of compartmentalising its central character into a vain male paranoid jerk, who is only capable of realising what he wants when everybody else in his life bends over backwards to tell him. The film is by no means exceptionally offensive in the way that it telegraphs this philosophy, but nevertheless lacks real insight into the crux of Simon’s disconnection, surrounding him with people who rarely challenge the status quo.
He’s My Girl debilitates in impact by being too non-committal about its characters (ironic since it’s about a non-committal man in the first place), and seems continually afraid to create genuine dramatic conflict amidst this cavalcade of people who have no idea how they stand with one another. This becomes particularly clear in the weak final act, where the film admirably doesn’t make Simon’s epiphany too clear-cut, but leads us to speculate how big of an ‘epiphany’ this is in the first place.
While De Caunes is introspectively thoughtful, his character’s arc is so uninteresting, and the ensemble exhibits such a conciliatory lack of self-respect that it’s difficult to care about them at all. The weakly-conceived eventualities in the script make us dubious about how things will be better for Simon; how on earth the communication issues in his life can be resolved.
‘Competency’ shouldn’t be the primary attribute for a follow-up that promised to be so colourful, but however much He’s My Girl does the basics right, coaxing an able performance from De Caunes, and relative newcomer Dehbi, there’s an overall slightness to the film’s themes. It’s a slow-burning flaky, ineffectual tale that finds solace in not rupturing the products of the first film, without building solidly upon it, and feels strangely like a sitcom pilot with its ephemeral storm-in-a-teacup attitude to melodrama. Confidently-played, but limply finalised, He’s My Girl represents a fine look at the life of a perpetually unsettled man, but one ultimately wonders whether it’s more of a shrewd capitalisation than a natural necessity. CR
Film: Accidents Happen
Release date: 14th February 2011
Certificate: 15
Running time: 92 mins
Director: Andrew Lancaster
Starring: Geena Davis, Harrison Gilbertson, Harry Cook, Joel Tobeck, Karl Beattie
Genre: Comedy/Drama
Studio: Matchbox
Format: DVD
Country: Australia/UK
This is an English-language release.
In 2002’s The Hours, troubled authoress Virginia Woolf states that she is killing off the heroine of her most famous book because “someone has to die, in order that the rest of us should value life more.” Don’t be fooled by the breezy title; Andrew Lancaster, helming his first feature-length project, Accidents Happen, has made a film that re-iterates a similar theory, placing tragedy at the epicentre of familial strife, and the catalyst for emotional blockading and forced self-evaluation.
Accidents Happen introduces us to the seemingly happy Conway family, consisting of mother, father, and four young children, whose routine is abruptly halted when their car collides with another. We aren’t shown the immediate aftermath of the event, and instead the film jumps forward eight years to a point in time where the surviving members of the Conway clan are being forced to address the impact of the accident on their lives, and search for some form of closure.
The implications of the crash are that Linda, the Conway daughter, has died, and that one of the sons, Gene, is in a vegetative state in hospital. Gloria (Davis) and husband Ray (Tobeck) have also since divorced, provoking bitterness towards Ray’s new fiancée Becky. By default, youngest son Billy Conway (Gilbertson) is the principal figure in the film, as everyone else in his family are either voiceless or unapproachably volatile. His unflinchingly direct mother, plagued by a medical condition as a result of the accident, hates everything around her; his alcoholic older brother is a destructive force within the family.
Billy, much less vocal about his feelings, becomes caught in the crossfire of all these frayed relationships, but also must deal with the guilt of his own wrongdoings…
If this all sounds unbearably overwrought, then that’s a fair assessment; there are plenty of ways to instigate familial issues without resorting to such brazen attempts at melodrama. Writer Brian Carbee has approached a heavy subject matter by giving the characters irredeemable flaws and grating oversensitivity to the point where it’s relatively impossible to see this family dynamic as genuine, or even credible.
Accidents Happen has a difficult time finding fresh ways to articulate the perceived tropes of guilt-laden grief, content to follow the black-comedy style of accentuating the stony-faced, bitter persona that tragedy can invoke. There’s a tendency towards chronicling grief through bitingly-honest quips – particularly courtesy of Davis’s Gloria. One feels that the film is striving to be The Upside Of Anger, in terms of viewing standoffish, comic hostility as a substitute for grief, but the one-liners and general limitations of Gloria as a person (she’s more of a badass sister to her kids than a mother) just make the entire setup feel infantile. Davis herself opts for the Julia Roberts method of rabid, quickfire delivery, but has neither the charisma nor the material to pull it off.
As a framing device, the crash itself doesn’t prove effectual enough in binding the family together, so it’s very difficult to gauge what might have gone on in the eight years that have passed. Accidents Happen does everything it can to feign bravery (and even novelty) by making none of its main characters particularly sympathetic amidst their seriously unenviable state of collapse, but then expects us to rally for them in its final act. Examples of clinical Solondzian humour litter the film, almost as if it’s satirising guilt itself; maintaining a coolly distant but assuredly fervent perspective on dysfunctionality. When the script lurches towards staging misfortune to introduce its ruminative philosophies on loss and blame it gets particularly schematic, embellishing poignancy in an unmistakably conventional style.
Lancaster does manage to build a community around these characters, which harks back to the 1970s, in the way that Linklater’s Dazed and Confused did. Youths engage in boredom-fuelled acts of minor, concentrated criminality, while struggling for affection or a sense of purpose. And while it’s true that this makes Accidents Happen slightly more interesting as a generational conversation piece, it would be generous to suggest that it takes advantage of the era, much more adept at providing a soundtrack than connecting this pocket of time to Billy’s legitimate concerns. A redundant, pompous voice-over occasionally chimes in to heighten importance; shots of floating fragments of shattered glass act as emblems of transition – but the question remains: what has this film, with its fleeting, commonplace title, really told us about blame or acceptance?
Accidents Happen appears perfectly committed towards alienating its audience at first, but falls back on itself, reverting to encourage emotional identification through climactic, wrenching clichés. Lancaster’s film is murky, certainly, but fatefully not involving enough – a pallid version of Running With Scissors that never really clicks, and can’t fulfil the cutting personality intoned in the frosty dialogue and effacing actions of its disconnected troupe. It may bear enough of the hallmarks of a self-destructive family dramedy, but scratch beneath the surface and this is an ill-conceived genre film effort. CR
Film: Confessions Of A Dog
Release date: 14th March 2011
Certificate: 15
Running time: 195 mins
Director: Gen Takahashi
Starring: Shun Sugata, Harumi Inoue, Kunihiko Ida, Gen Idemitsu, Jun'ichi Kawamoto
Genre: Crime/Drama
Studio: Third Window
Format: DVD
Country: Japan
The DVD cover of Confessions Of A Dog is emblazoned with the words, “banned in Japan,” a false claim which nevertheless mirrors the film’s struggle for justice. The political motivation behind Director Gen Takahashi’s barely-allegorical story of corruption within the Japanese police force is evident in this brazen marketing ploy, and certainly in its scathing depiction of bureaucracy. This three-hour-plus indictment of a state’s entire justice system spans several years, and is based upon the investigative work of Yu Terasawa, a journalist who has since campaigned against pro-police propaganda and for amendment to the way that the service is overseen.
The themes of the film are mainly chronicled through Takeda (Sugata), who begins as a lowly neighbourhood officer and eventually rises to a powerful detective position in the force, with the help of a tyrannical chief inspector.
Despite some early scepticism, Takeda becomes a mentee of the inspector, and heavily involved in his questionable mode of operation, which entails physical intimidation, bribes, and appeasing gangsters who serve him best. He also adopts the untouchable attitude which many of the officers in the film demonstrate, an arrogance that extends to bully-tactics, drugs, infidelity, and a general distancing of his familial relationships, content to ply his wife and child with corrupt money instead of giving them emotional affection.
Increasingly frustrated with the police’s conditional attitude towards crime, renegade Kusama (Kawamoto) seeks to uncover their ways and expose them publicly, first happening upon a photo which demonstrates their laissez-fair attitude towards drugs, and then filming a fake gun-siege designed to enhance the force’s reputation. He and photographer Chiyoko attempt to use Chiyoko’s links with a prominent newspaper to force the issue into the public sphere, but later resort to more desperate measures in the heart of the city’s criminal underworld…
As a social commentary, Confessions Of A Dog is incredibly single-minded in its view of the Japanese police, setting up situations designed to flaunt their exploitation of power. In the first scene, a young cop collars a teenage girl for not being at college, in the hopes of eventually seducing her, only to be prevented from doing so by an aghast Takeda. The scene is repeated later in a different form, as an inebriated citizen is cruelly cajoled into sub-consciously committing a crime he ordinarily wouldn’t. They are juxtaposed as the first scene of two acts, as the film is split either side of an invisible intermission that simply reads: “Five years later.”
Even if the flash-forward narrative device reads as a mechanism of stretching the story to create a bigger, somewhat falsified level of scope, the decision to make the second half of the film feel more of a product of the first is definitely a wise one. There’s an element of Godfather-style ethics; that protecting the brethren of policemen, judges, and officials will allow this breed of law enforcement to be preserved. Takahashi’s success comes from emulating that film’s insight into mafia reverence of trust and the volatile barriers between inclusivity and exclusivity that are bound by psychological impulse. In the end, however, the film has more in common with Lumet’s Serpico in the way that Takeda ultimately suffers for realising the extent of damage his profession is having on his city’s infrastructure - just as Al Pacino’s cop did in the 1973 classic. Visually the film also bears more Lumet traits, assuredly dense without being so off-putting, and visually thoughtful in its confined, dour depiction of seedy illegality. Its final, arresting scene captures this influence more than any other; capping its assessment of the devolved nature of state protection with a harrowingly regressive image of a man’s final fall from grace.
The main issue with Confessions Of A Dog is that it reiterates this point without altering the dynamic between the characters, so we don’t necessarily see things shifting for ourselves – just a ‘before’ and ‘after’. It consistently spurns opportunities to create new dilemmas for its characters, or chart their descent into profligates in fresher terms. We aren’t encouraged enough to delve deeper into the lives of college dropouts burgeoning into power, or explore their moral consciences — and even when we are, a particularly severe act of violence by previously naïve local beat cop Kunii comes as such a radical about-turn that it is difficult to take seriously. The instantaneous indoctrination of these men expose the too-freely-integrated motivations of the project, crudely manifested in some of its characterisation. It reads as much too eager to initiate a rebel-rousing rally cry, intent on making us sit up and listen by focusing predominantly on indefensible action and general injustice.
Kusama’s strand of the narrative is easier to digest and his relationship with Chiyoko gets much more convincing in the film’s second half. Ironically, the film succeeds more in its portrayal of outsiders to the police force than the members of this insular racket, considerably less definite about these people and therefore less preachy or overwrought. The film owes a great deal of its intermittent success as an internal affairs drama to Shun Sugata, particularly compelling scenery-chewer Takeda in the second half of the film, and without being as cartoonish an orchestrator of villainy as his inspector predecessor.
Confessions Of A Dog is a mammoth, meaty slice of crime drama, which is too long for what it essentially contributes. It bears a vehemently sure sense of direction that carries it through its sketchier moments, but requires more intrigue, variation, and a bigger network of characters to truly make the most of the running time. Projects like this are probably reserved for the term ‘ambitious failure’, but as long as people see it, one doubts Takahashi will care. The primary purpose of the film is to educate, and it definitely does that. CR
Film: The Whistleblower
Running time: 112 mins
Director: Larysa Kondracki
Starring: Rachel Weisz, David Strathairn, Vanessa Redgrave, Roxana Condurache, Monica Bellucci
Genre: Drama/Thriller
Country: Canada/France
This film (which is an English-language release) will be screened at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival, which takes place in London between 23rd March and 1st April, 2011. Find out more about this event by clicking here.
Larysa Kondracki’s issue-driven The Whistleblower emerges at an opportune time to raise public awareness, since the issue of sex trafficking has been particularly prevalent in the news lately. Kondracki’s directorial debut received its premiere in Toronto this past September, and will likely make its way into Western cinemas in the second half of 2011. It features Rachel Weisz in a role that resembles in nature her Oscar-winning performance as a humanitarian activist in 2005’s The Constant Gardener, and establishes an eminently happier ending for her character here.
The Whistleblower is the real-life account of Kathryn Bolkovac (Weisz), who encountered and exposed a large-scale cover-up of sex trafficking in post-war Bosnia.
Assigned to a peacekeeping role in 1999, Kathryn excels, successfully securing a domestic violence conviction, and attracting the attention of women’s rights advocate Madeleine Rees (Redgrave). Madeleine offers her a job heading a branch of the United Nations, which she accepts despite her keenness to move back closer to her ex-husband and teenage daughter.
When Kathryn’s position leads her to a raid on a local bar, she discovers two beaten girls, who later admit that they have been trafficked into the country under false pretences. Acting swiftly to assess the severity of the situation, Kathryn finds herself under pressure from senior figures, and her attempts to address this issue and enact justice are continually thwarted by internal conspiracies and community kingpins. The dawning conclusion is that this is a far bigger web of corruption than anticipated, which reaches beyond the confines of her department and involves many of her colleagues in the UN…
Aesthetically severe, The Whistleblower has elements which hark back to Lukas Moodysson’s alarming Lilya 4-Ever, concerning the ease at which young girls can be lured into the sex trade. The women are splayed across grubby scenery, presented in lewd images of torture, and engaged in particularly harrowing depictions of sexual abuse. Impassioned first-time director Kondracki has amped up the degradation well, but is far more competent at instigating shock through de-humanising imagery than developing insight into the underlying factors that have propelled the women into such a compromising position. Kondracki litters the film with confined close-ups of victimised souls (whether that be Weisz or one of her women) in dingy apartments, exercising a brand of sinkhole cinema that gives us little idea of the surrounding community or the network of criminality which governs it. External shots and neutral surrounding scenes would certainly aid this problem in providing scope, but the real problems lie in the muddled, wafer-thin script.
The Whistleblower has been written in the vein of a political disquisition; coursing through an unambitiously lineated narrative path to justice with few interesting dramatic shifts or relationships to speak of. It’s assumingly political, thematically brave, but seminally lacking in cinematic worth to justify existence beyond the duty of the documentarian. The attempts to branch off from the main strand are so terribly underdeveloped, featuring a back-story for one of the trafficked girls which tells us virtually nothing about their way of life other than “domestic violence is commonplace.” The film is constantly re-iterating this same theme without truly making these families accessible, reproaching their frayed relationships with pale single-mindedness.
The villains of the piece aren’t sketched with any more shade either, recalling the two-dimensional depictions of corporate and ego-centric opposition to justice as last year’s Green Zone - albeit without a performance quite as bad as Greg Kinnear’s. Even Kathryn’s allies, the chief of which comes in the form of political-humanist project stalwart Vanessa Redgrave, who waltzes into scenes in an array of dinky hats to dole out solemn advice, hardly convince us that they know what they’re talking about.
If nothing else, The Whistleblower at least places us firmly on the side of justice, and expresses the procedural difficulties encountered when facing corruption through emotive force rather than boardroom chatter. A scene where Kathryn is trying to persuade one of the girls to go into protective custody with her, while one of her corrupt colleagues is intimidating the girl in the same room, is a particular highlight in terms of rousing our emotion. Kathryn’s palpable frustration at being continually undermined in her profession is laid bare, and her fury at the dissolving degree of control she has over these women is one of the film’s more emotionally honest moments. Weisz, too, is good in this scene, and fine overall, despite being shoehorned into the Charlize Theron/North Country role of battling sexual discrimination and political injustice while simultaneously trying to rescue a relationship with her family.
Kathryn’s familial difficulties are outlined in three moments: where she clutches a letter of rejection to her state police transfer request; where she cries during a telephone conversation with her daughter; and when she’s asked by a diplomat why the courts gave custody of her child to the father because that’s “so unusual.” The final instance of this trio of unthinkably lame methods of lumping a murky history onto our professionally-compromised heroine asserts that Kondracki really doesn’t have a handle on who Bolkovac was at this time, apart from a troubled divorcee (for reasons unbeknownst to us) and a valiant crusader. At one point, Kathryn even cites her daughter as a reason for defending these young girls, as if the mere issue itself weren’t enough to capture all of her moralistic fibre.
As a political thriller of sorts, The Whistleblower is a tired venture, content to place its subject on a pedestal (like a documentary would) without endeavouring to make the story cinematic, or allude to the motivations of the characters involved on both sides. It feels strangely throttled as a conversation piece, with half-hearted attempts at generating interest beyond an historical timeline - all of which are rendered irrelevant anyway. There’s surely passion behind this project, but it’s made with such colourless labour that it’s difficult to care about what’s presented on screen, and almost impossible to recognise who Bolkovac was in the first place. Stick to the news. CR
