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Film: Infernal Affairs - The Complete Trilogy
Release date: 27th December 2010
Certificate: 15
Running time: 332 mins
Director: Andrew Lau & Alan Mak
Starring: Tony Leung, Andy Lau, Anthony Wong, Eric Tsang, Shawn Yue
Genre: Action/Crime/Drama/Mystery/Thriller
Studio: Palisades Tartan
Format: Blu-ray
Country: Hong Kong/China/Singapore
Infernal Affairs is Hong Kong’s most celebrated export. With awards galore in its native land, and cult attention over the ocean, the trilogy went on to inspire Martin Scorsese’s first Oscar triumph. With The Departed came a resounding success but it is Lau and Mak’s original where the betrayal, shifting allegiances and inner turmoil of the story was born. With a stunning vision of a Triad ridden Hong Kong, this was a true event in Asia, one that sadly many have passed up for its Hollywood counterpart.
Infernal Affairs (2002)
Chan Wing-Yan is part of triad boss Hon Sam’s prestigious collective. He is a hood who enforces the gang's multi-million pound dealings - and he is a police mole. Lau Kin Ming is a decorated member of the Hong Kong police force, his proven track record sees him climbing the police ladder of promotions and accolades - and he is a mole for Sam’s gang.
Tensions between the police and the triads grow when a drug raid goes wrong, and it becomes clear that both sides have an informer playing for the other team. Police superintendant Wong is Yan’s only allie in the police force, and the only man who knows of his true identity - he gives Yan the task of sniffing out Sam’s rat. Meanwhile, whilst balancing the trust of the triads, police and girlfriend Mary, Lau is instructed by Sam to discover which member of his team has been placed by the cops.
As suspicions rise and leads are followed, the two moles fight to preserve their hidden identities. As each side closes in on the truth, an urban battle between both sides of the law is coming dangerously closer to a bloody end...
Infernal Affairs II (2003)
The second instalment of the trilogy begins in 1991, nine years before the events of the original. Lau is a young member of Sam’s gang, preparing to join the police force, whilst Yan, a promising young trainee officer, has been kicked out of the academy for his triad family routes. Howver, he is contacted by Wong to become an undercover agent.
As the two become more involved with their covers, Yan is torn between his police duty and half-brother Hau, who is a triad. Hau’s time as boss is coming to an end as Sam, now an up and comer in the Ngai family, is climbing the ladder in the triad family, whilst working with Wong as an informant. Wong helps Sam as he considers him a mob boss he could control. Lau assists Sam’s rise whilst establishing himself in the force and harbouring secret feelings for Sam’s wife, Mary...
Infernal Affairs III (2003)
Following the deaths of Billy and Yan, Lau is under investigation and has been demoted in the police force. His reputation tarnished, he returns to Infernal Affairs with the knowledge that Sam had installed five moles in the division all along. He suspects SDI Yeung - and is determined to find him out.
Meanwhile, Lau’s impending divorce, fear of being uncovered, and guilt over the murder of Yan are catching up with him. Hallucinations lead him to question his sanity as he begins to feel Yans presence long after his demise...
Each film is a true genre piece, and its American influences are clear. The police/criminal relationship is played out with all the tactics and mind games of Michael Mann’s Heat, and the organised crime of the triads and the decade spanning narrative echo The Goodfather series and Goodfellas - you can imagine the filmmakers’ delight to hand the reigns to Scorsese, someone they have seemingly learnt a lot from.
Lovers of Scorsese’s stylish violence and ever memorable multi-head shot sequence will be less thrilled by killings accompanied by black-and-white, slow motion and haunting opera tones. However, whirring cameras, painful close-ups and the beautiful capture of Hong Kong and its skyscraper roof tops give the trilogy a fantastic spectacle. A lack of excessive violence and action is more than made up for by the installation of dramatic tension that is utterly engrossing.
This is due to writing of the highest quality that is acted with complete conviction by its talented cast. Andy Lau and Tony Leung Chiu Wai play the two moles with all the self-convolution, shame and denial that form the story’s most evocative theme. Mary is writing a novel about a man with twenty-eight faces - a look at a man who plays out so many different identities that he has lost his own true being. She notes, “I don’t know if he’s a good guy or a bad guy.” The two moles have spent so much time on the other side that they are losing touch with their allegiances.
Their connection is strong as they contrast each other’s situation. Yan exclaims, “You don’t know what it’s like to be undercover,” as Lau fakes a smile knowing he too has lost his identity. The tragedy of their rivalry is that they are the only two who know each other’s pain. They are by no means opposites, but they are ultimately living out each other’s lives. Yan is kicked out of the police academy and the instructors threaten, “Who wants to be next?” Lau replies under his breath, “I do.”
The second film sees Edison Chen and Shawn Yue reprise their roles as the young Lau and Yan. Unfortunately, the characters, which Lau and Wai made their own in the original, are considerably less convincing, as you are sometimes left struggling to relate them to their elder selves. The film does build on the relationship between Wong and Sam, and a scene at the beginning reveals Sam to be an informant to Wong. As Sam sits eating a police prepared meal, our memory takes us back to a far more hostile encounter between the two in the first film, which ends with Sam flinging his food aside in anger. Their friendship, mistrust and eventual rivalry is an absorbing layer to the story.
As a trilogy filled with sub-plots, flashbacks and red herrings, this film maintains a great consistency, whilst elaborations and reveals answer nagging questions from the first film satisfactorily, and offer new meaning to the characters’ actions.
The third film sees the introduction of Leon Lai as SP Yeung. The character is suspected by Lau of being another mole in the police department, thus ensues a battle of wits between the two. This rivalry never reaches the intensity or intrigue of Yan and Lau’s fight for discovery; attempting to re-create a rivalry between two undercover cops that was so riveting in the first film. This serves to emphasise that, despite the reprisal of Andy Lau and Tony Leung’s roles, the main battle of the trilogy is over. Lau and Yan both occupy different strands of the narrative, and their direct rivalry is sorely missed.
This film does, however, provide closure. With the demise of Yan, Sam, Shen and Wong in the threequel’s predecessors, we are shown the final downfall of Lau. For a character that shows such a personal struggle between good and bad, his loss of control and self educed death seems fitting, as well as tragic.
Truly an Asian giant. The first film alone is enough to make this trilogy a must-see, the second is a worthy accomplice and the third is, as genre dictates, a bit disappointing. With a complex insight in to lives of the undercover, there is enough powerful drama, cerebral pondering and complex characters to make this a classic of the crime genre. LW
Following its HMV exclusive released in October, the Infernal Affairs Trilogy gets its Amazon UK exclusive release on 27th December 2010.
Spanning ten years, likened to The Godfather trilogy, this is the crime epic of our time. Infernal Affairs Trilogy remains a landmark of both Hong King cinema and international crime cinema.
Winning 29 awards and another 38 nominations across the three films, the emphasis on character and cat-and-mouse plotting over action marked this out from previous Hong Kong cinema, while the impeccable production quality showed the rest of the world that Hong Kong cinema could compete with the best blockbusters every other cinema had to offer. It remains as powerful and riveting today as it did on release.
Infernal Affairs
Ming and Yan live parallel lives; one is undercover in the Triads for the Police, the other is a mole in the police. Eventually their paths must cross…
Infernal Affairs II
We go back ten years to see their lives as they first were when they were initially recruited into their respective roles. Friendships fracture, foes join forces and nothing is as it seams.
Infernal Affairs III
Ten months after the first film we see Ming as he attempts to fit into the police force and slowly morphing into Yan as he has to come to terms with the life he has chosen.
Starring: Tony Leung (Hard Boiled, Hero), Andy Lau (House Of Flying Daggers, The Warlords), Anthony Wong (Exiled, Vengeance), Eric Tsang (An Empress And The Warriors, Bodyguards And Assassins), Shawn Yue (Dragon Tiger Gate, Invisible Target), Edison Chen (The Dark Knight, The Grudge 2), and Kelly Chen (Breaking News, An Empress And The Warriors).
Directed by: Andrew Lau (Legend Of The Fist: The Return Of Chen Zhen, Initial D) and Alan Mak (Overheard, Initial D).
Film: Infernal Affairs - The Complete Trilogy
Release date: 27th December 2010
Certificate: 15
Running time: 332 mins
Director: Andrew Lau & Alan Mak
Starring: Tony Leung, Andy Lau, Anthony Wong, Eric Tsang, Shawn Yue
Genre: Action/Crime/Drama/Mystery/Thriller
Studio: Palisades Tartan
Format: Blu-ray
Country: Hong Kong/China/Singapore
Blu-ray Special Features:
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Commentary
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Making of
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Trailer
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Confidential file
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Deleted scenes
Film: Straight
Release date: 27th September 2010
Certificate: 15
Running time: 59 mins
Director: Nicolas Flessa
Starring: Adrian Can, Annabelle Dorn, Beba Ebner, Frederic Heidorn, Marion Kruse
Genre: Comedy/Drama
Studio: Bounty
Format: DVD
Country: Germany
Shining a light on the issue of social misconception, and the pressures created by society’s desire for obligatory conformism, Nicolas Flessa’s short German film plunges straight to the heart of the matter of repressed sexuality. Set in the Berlin district of Neukoelln, otherwise known as the city’s “ghetto,” Flessa looks at the intertwining lives of three young adults as they come to terms with their individual feelings and the implications this may have on them and those around them.
Jana is a social worker yet keeps her occupation hidden from her parents, who she believes would think less of her if they knew. She is stuck in a lacklustre relationship, with her boyfriend David, which is devoid of any spark and romance. She increasingly begins to feel lonely and isolated in the claustrophobic clutches of the capital, and spends her days frustrated - and dreaming of having a family with her close friend Julia.
Her boyfriend, David, spends his days focusing on work, and for the most part completely ignores his significant other. When he and Julia do eventually spend time together, the resulting exchanges fail to produce fireworks, and the two are aware of their continuing and increasing drift, both emotionally and physically, which causes him to turn his gaze towards other people to satisfy his desires.
It is when both of these characters come into contact with a German-Turkish male drug-dealer named Nazim that the landscape of all their lives becomes shifted irrevocably, as a triangle forms that will cause them all to reassess their views about theirs and each other’s desires…
To say the production costs of Straight are low is an understatement, as the cinematography resembles that of a third year media student’s latest creation, but perhaps that is not as big of a criticism as it initially sounds. Being undoubtedly low budget and classifiably independent, director Nicolas Flasse, who has a track record of creating cinematic shorts, is able to be as brutal with his characters as the issues he addresses them with. He deals with the sexuality of his protagonists in a manner that is often treated with contempt in wider cinema, and is bracketed into a comedy genre for cheap laughs at the expense of the individual’s feelings. In Straight, Flessa manages to allow a lot to be said without words, he focuses on gestures and the movements of his actors to transmit the subtext to create the sense of believability needed to engage with their plights.
Through the understated and subtle script, the director can emphasise the underlying pulls that each of the individuals feels, the need to put a façade and pretend that they aren’t how they are. Flasse focuses on the external social forces that drive the need for secrecy, lies and denial that reside within two of the three focal characters. From the imposing pressure of parents and societies ideas on what constitutes a ‘normal’ relationship to the excessively masculine posturing of Nazim’s drug associates, and the need to be someone you’re not to save face, Flasse contrasts the emotions of Nazim and Jana to the laissez-faire attitude of David. He casually drifts from one person to the next, not particularly bothered about the emotions that others may feel towards or because of him. He is a particularly selfish individual who acts purely for self-gratification, which is in stark contrast to the confused activities of the others, who are seemingly searching for their true selves in the process of this complex love-triangle.
If there was perhaps one criticism of Straight, it is that while Flasse does address the need for secrecy felt by both Jana and Nazim, it is perhaps not explored enough, or the pressures not felt enough to create that gut-wrenching emotional pull that films of this nature often need. Straight would benefit more from being slightly longer and allowing there to be a greater feel of danger; a slowly increasing suspicion of Nazim’s homosexual tendencies by his gang-mates; or a sense of continual pressure from Jana’s parents to settle down and start a family. Without the heightened sense of paranoia or anxiety caused by the social pressures that the director acknowledges, yet fails to capitalise on, Straight can sometimes not deliver the punch the predicament desires to create.
Straight is an interesting short film that while not entirely unpredictable, engages the viewer with the style in which it sets about its task. Set in the seedy atmosphere of the Berlin ghetto to highlight the equally seedy and dubious relationships that are failing and being forged. The actors undertake their roles with an understated gusto that befits the relatively lo-fi feel of the photography, and allows the limited script to come to life through the range of emotions that are at the front of this films driving force.
While there are areas for potential reworking and growth that would allow the drama to be exploited to its most engaging, Straight proves to be anything but, as it weaves the lives of its three characters together in a delicate yet brutally believable manner. BL
Film: A Bay Of Blood
Release date: 20th December 2010
Certificate: 15
Running time: 84 mins
Director: Mario Bava
Starring: Claudine Auger, Luigi Pistilli, Claudio Camaso, Anna Maria Rosati, Chris Avram
Genre: Horror/Mystery/Thriller
Studio: Arrow
Format: DVD & Blu-ray
Country: Italy
Mario Bava precedes the American slasher genre with 1971’s A Bay Of Blood (also known as Twitch Of The Death Nerve, Blood Bath and Last House On The Left 2, among others), a violent landmark in Italian cinema. Controversial, with a mixed critical history, it remains one of the most influential horror films of all time, without which Jason Vorhee’s mask would be splatter free, and Michael Myers’ kitchen knife would have remained in the drawer.
An elderly, wheelchair bound countess is brutally murdered. Her killer is swiftly stabbed, and his body disposed of in the titular bay. Shortly after, a flash real estate agent named Frank Ventura (Chris Avram) arrives in the area with his lover Laura (Anna Maria Rosati), with every intention of taking ownership of the sought after bay. All they need to seal the deal is the signature of the countess’ husband, and they almost do, until his rotting corpse is discovered in the bay by skinny-dipping teen Brunhilda (Brigitte Skay).
Her friends are partying in Ventura’s house, when they are picked off, one-by-one by Simon, the countess’ illegitimate son, who has been paid off by the greedy Ventura to secure the bay for their taking. The arrival of another couple of potential benefactors, the countess’ daughter Renata (Claudine Auger) and her husband, Albert (Luigi Pistilli), throws their plan into disarray.
As the body count rises and the allure of the mysterious bay deepens, who will be left to lay claim to the property?
With A Bay Of Blood, Mario Brava has crafted a film which is remarkably before its time. The initial set-up is simple; a group of individuals kill each other off in a race to claim the sought after property of a wealthy old aristocrat, but the execution is such that the audience is kept guessing throughout the entirety of the film’s meagre running time. As the cast pick each other off, it is seldom clear who is killing who, but it is there that the majority of the entertainment lies. The set-up is a simple MacGuffin, and it is entirely irrelevant who is doing all the killing.
It initially appears that each of the brutal murders is a small vignette, crafted with the sole aim of setting up the next kill. The confusing plot is irrelevant - this is cinematic Cluedo without the blind guesses. Any character exposition or expectation of an emotional buy-in from the audience is shattered as the character (or group of characters) that has been set-up as integral to the narrative is swiftly dispatched.
The most startling element of the film is the astounding make-up effects, which rival anything that the torture porn craze of recent years can muster. Characters are hacked, slashed, strangled and impaled, with the machete to the face being a particular achievement. Legendary special effects guru Carlo Lambardi (credited with designing the titular character in E.T., as well as designing the make-up effects in Dario Argento’s Deep Red) has expertly created a series of murder effects (thirteen in all) that both thrill and repulse in equal measure, remaining just on the right side of over-the-top but still entirely believable so that the audience can enjoy the violence without being too repulsed - much in the same way as the equally violent slasher and splatter films of the ‘80s, which were so clearly inspired by A Bay of Blood. This confident approach to the presentation of violence prevents the film from being bogged down by its own slightly convoluted plot.
The characters suffer from either being dispatched too quickly to allow for much exposition, or from being overshadowed by the confusing and complicated plot. Ventura, the suave estate agent is played as equal parts womanizing James Bond and sleazy salesman by Chris Avram, offering a level of comedy to proceedings (whether intentional or otherwise) which lightens the tone - until his true motivations become clear. The group of young people who break into his house for a party are impossible to view as anything other than a tired cliché, until the viewer realises that this film predates anything popularised by Wes Craven or John Carpenter. The scene where the lovers Duke (Guido Boccaccini) and Denise (Paolo Rubens) retire to a bedroom before being interrupted by a large spear impaling them through the bed remains a classic teen-slasher stable, and is often replicated (see Friday The 13th - Part 2).
With A Bay Of Blood, Mario Brava has produced not only his most aggressively violent work, but also his most revered and imitated. Kick-starting the splatter craze of the late-70s and early-80s, this film is bogged down by a slow-paced and convoluted plot, saved in the most part by the astounding special effects and now clichéd but undisputedly entertaining characters. RB
Series: Soul Eater: Part Four
Release date: 27th December 2010
Certificate: 15
Running time: 271 mins
Director: Takuya Igarashi
Starring: Chiaki Omigawa, Kouki Uchiyama, Akeno Watanabe, Emiri Katou, Houko Kuwashima
Genre: Anime
Studio: Manga
Format: DVD
Country: Japan
The Matrix. Bergman, Burton, Dali, Lynch. The Cabinet Of Doctor Caligari. X Men. Pokemon. Deposit ingredients into a cartoon cauldron. Stir. Simmer for 51 episodes. Serve with a generous J-pop garnish. Whaddayougot? Soul Eater.
Concluding the series, Part 4 follows a questing band of young bloods from a specialist academy of the arcane: the DWMA.
The Death Meister Weapon Academy – mentored by none other than the reaper himself – tutors the plucky punks, who are divided into fighters – ‘meisters’ – and their partners, who morph into weapons. The curriculum serves fittingly macabre ends. Culling a specified number of souls enhances the weapons, transforming them into a death scythe – traditional armament of their headmaster. Each pupil boasts potent, yet inchoate powers, which must be disciplined until they attain mastery. For their unique abilities may soon be called upon.
Episode 40 depicts a world on the cusp of disaster. Evil witch Arachne plots to amplify the madness of an ancient demon, Asura, submitting the population to his infectious lunacy. Death and the DWMA attempt to intervene, but must also contend with the wiles of Arachne’s devious sister, Medusa.
Hypnotically converting a DWMA tutor, Dr Frank Stein, to her cause, Medusa watches from the sidelines as Arachne and Death’s henchmen enter a grim endgame – poised to conquer the weakened survivors.
Appalled by Death’s apparent pact with the serpentine sorceress, disaffected students Black Star, Death The Kid and Maka threaten to turn against their benefactor. But the bony patriarch has a (cunning) plan and, locating Arachne’s base, press-gangs the malcontents into action. The master’s apprentices offer the last, best hope of salvation, but can they overwhelm the might of Asura, a living god?
Adapted from a hugely successful manga series devised by Atsushi Okubo, Soul Eater is a sprawling opus which exuberantly flaunts its inspiration. Fusing fragments of myth, filmic and literary lore into a rich, dayglo mosaic, this is kleptomaniac post modernism delivered at breathless pace.
Okubo has stated that his primary visual sources are David Lynch and Tim Burton, and it’s the latter’s work that provides the most explicit precedent. Soul Eater’s landscape is a vision of candy-coloured expressionism, summoning the foreboding iconography of Sleepy Hollow, only to repaint it with the garish tint of Charlie And The Chocolate Factory. Death City (home of the DWMA) is a deranged gothic folly - a skull encrusted fortress bristling with conical towers that would do Jack Skellington proud. With a nod to Magritte, Death’s chamber is surreally vaulted by azure sky, its windows impossibly built into the air itself. Arachne’s lair is equally impressive – a futuristic, cobwebby boudoir cum-Frankenstein’s lab, customised for world domination. Architecture, in this uncanny parallel world, becomes a projection of the self.
Characters are frequently overwhelmed by their mysterious surrounds. Lost in fog shrouded netherworlds, forebodingly gnarled forests, and disoriented by endless corridors, external landscapes bear the imprint of mental trauma. A cracked mirror: for broken minds.
Anarchic and daring, this stylisation is most flamboyant when it enters a totally subjective mode. A succession of unsettling dream sequences brilliantly showcase expressionist technique, Dr Stein’s warped hallucinations and incarceration in a Twin Peaks-esque ‘red room’ notably eerie examples. As he succumbs to Medusa’s evil machinations, Stein’s environs are redrawn, the witch’s control symbolised by an omnipresent arrow motif. Visualising an apparently Freudian, symbolic logic, a lurid nightmare sees him tempted by forbidden fruit, and ending up as the subject of a fatal dissection which will reveal his “true flesh.” Fragmentary glimpses into Asura’s damaged mind – revealing a flickering purgatory of flames and ashen corpses – even seem to glimpse hell itself. But – in line with the offbeat tone – the malevolent gloom is offset by a lysergic palette. Crimson clouds dash overhead, and the screen frequently erupts into iridescent fireworks as its cast engage in spectacular duels.
Ostensibly a fantasy romp, Soul Eater plays fast and loose with the format, abruptly shifting tone as fluidly as its eclectic visual style. Thematics here – establishment vs. anarchy, and necessity of teamwork – are oft trite. Equally, the plot mechanics – comprising separate quests for magical weapons, high level intrigue and spectacular bouts of occult whoop-ass – are unremarkable. Adopting a playfully irreverent disregard for these formalities, Soul Eater frequently goes AWOL on bizarre digressions which jarringly puncture narrative momentum.
Ominous confrontations are dramatically established then undermined, as when Death’s amoral bargaining with Medusa turns into a comic skit about “pumpkin pants.” Characters devolve into super deformed parodies, subverting their brooding with zany absurdity. Despite this, the series maintains a thrilling tempo, masterfully shifting dramatic gears. Plentiful bouts of magical combat punctuate talky scheming, as our battling brats clash with an outrageous gallery of rogues. Lumbering golems, genocidal clown-bots, and a crawling citadel are foes which inventively splice genre motifs into a bizarre magic-mecha fusion.
To placate traditionalists, there’s even an apprentice swordsman, Black Star, whose turbocharged braggadocio culminates in an old school martial showdown with the ronin Mifune. But, even mano-a-mano, there’s always time for cod philosophical discourse. It’s not merely physical supremacy that is asserted – but also an explicit personal code. Black Star’s deadly mastery of the blade is, it seems, pyrrhic, if he wields it angrily, succumbing to the “demon” that lurks within. Needless to say, this is existentialism at the level of The Empire Strikes Back, rather than Sartre.
For all its pyrotechnic razzle-dazzle and glossy irony, Soul Eater is a traditional moral fable, with some alarmingly banal wisdom tucked in the tail. Equally haggard is its knowingly rampant pop-cultural pillage. Little is novel here, but, synthesised with vim and flair, the series makes for a splendidly beguiling jaunt into the beyond. DJO
Film: La Cienaga
Release date: 6th December 2010
Certificate: 12
Running time: 103 mins
Director: Lucrecia Martel
Starring: Mercedes Morán, Graciela Borges, Martín Adjemián, Leonora Balcarce, Silvia Baylé
Genre: Comedy/Drama
Studio: ICA
Format: DVD
Country: Argentina/France/Spain
La Cienaga, or The Swamp, is the debut film from Argentine filmmaker Lucrecia Martel. Originally released in 2001, the film announced the arrival of a unique new voice within international cinema. Finally granted a DVD release in the UK, it shows that the director of The Holy Girl and The Headless Woman had emerged with her distinctive and uncompromising vision of cinema already fully formed.
The movie tells the story of two families' summer holiday, spent in a decaying estate in the mountains, as a record hot spell grips Argentina, and the neighbouring town of Cienaga is riveted by the appearance of the Virgin Mary on a water tower.
Tali is minding four small children with little help from her husband, who is preoccupied with the opening of hunting season. Her cousin, Mecha, is a borderline alcoholic living in a dilapidated country retreat with her husband Gregorio and her teen children. During one heavy drinking session, she slips and cuts herself on broken glass, instigating a visit from her son Jose, alongside Tali and her brood, as Mecha recuperates in bed.
What follows is not so much a family reaching crisis point, as one stuck in the deepest of ruts. These are characters that dimly sense something has gone wrong at some point in their lives, even if they do not know at what point, or where to lay the blame.
In the course of a season, two accidents bring the two families together, but together is a loaded term in Martel’s film of decay, dislocation and estrangement…
A group of middle-aged drinkers lounge around a putrid swimming-pool as the camera lingers on exposed flabby and worn-out flesh. The day is hot but not sunny, and thunder rumbles around the surrounding mountains. The incessant clicking of cicadas mixes with the clinking of ice cubes within wineglasses and the scraping of chairs across the patio floor in a combination all the more nerve wracking for never reaching a crescendo, like the sound of a tap dripping in the middle of the night. The children are out hunting in the mountains, where they come across a cow trapped in the treacherous swamp lands. Their semi-feral hunting dogs bark and snap at the visibly distressed animal as it sinks further into the mire. It’s an opening that is horribly effective in creating a mood of unease and tension, one which never quite leaves you, even as much of what follows seems banal and tediously uneventful.
For a while, the only way for British audiences to experience Martel’s latest film, The Headless Woman (La Mujer Sin Cabeza), was at the Tate Modern. In a way, this makes perfect sense for the art gallery seems more of a spiritual home to Martel than the cinema. Her films do away with basic film grammar (establishing shots, traditional film transitions), resulting in work more akin to video installation. The Headless Woman, when first shown at Cannes, was variously jeered at for being a boring muddle, or hailed as compelling and inspired, and it is likely Martel’s debut film will meet with similarly polarised opinion. The overt and more easily comprehensible sexiness of Martel’s international breakthrough film, The Holy Girl (La Niña Santa), feels like an anomaly in this light. Like The Headless Woman, La Cienaga is art-house with a capital A, unapologetically eschewing narrative and easily identifiable character motivation in favour of mood, atmosphere and a subjective approach to our interpretation of what the films means.
Reaching an understanding of La Cienaga’s underlying message is no easy task. At once oblique and blankly opaque, it could mean just about anything. It's filled with ideas and images that are never quite clear, that deliberately remain unreachable, like the image of the Virgin Mary that appears close to a water tank that we hear about but never get to see. Martel’s characters seem to have a life outside of the film; they begin before the film begins and they continue after the film ends. Scenes and even the majority of shots begin ‘in media res’ from actions that are already taking place, and often requiring us, as viewers, to weave the events together ourselves so they acquire meaning.
The American critic Roger Ebert, in a tellingly ambivalent review of the film upon its 2001 release, likened it to the experience of attending a family reunion when it’s not your family and your hosts are too drunk to introduce you around. It’s a useful analogy which touches upon the strange sense of familiarity and apartness we, as viewers, experience as we watch events unfold. We feel within the film, and, at the same time, discomfited by our sense of being voyeurs as we watch a family in quiet turmoil going about their everyday lives. It’s a well worn subject but rarely has it been approached in such an un-movie-like manner. It is literally as if we have been granted a glimpse into the workings of a real family, with all the mundane banality of their everyday reality presented in relentless and painstakingly rendered detail.
Though nothing quite matches the overpowering vividness of the opening, Martel takes naturalism to a degree rarely seen in modern cinema. Her knack for establishing tactile hyper-reality can be overwhelmingly palpable; you can almost smell the sweat and unwashed hair, the dank bedrooms and festering swimming-pool. Heightening the uneasy mood is the movie's busy sound design, which itself is amplified by the absence of a musical score. While seemingly improvised, La Cienaga was actually carefully scripted. It is testament to Martel’s skill, as well as the naturalistic performances of the largely non-professional cast (particularly the younger members), that nothing appears on screen that does not feel completely intentional.
Tentative themes do emerge, like murk from the eponymous swamp. Many of the children carry wounds or are disfigured in some way – one has a scar instead of an eye; one young boy is mysteriously forever being cut; another breaks his nose in a fight. These wounds are indicative of hidden dangers which seem to lurk just off screen, as well as portents of a tragic accident which will befall one young child towards the end of the film. Close ups linger on the mouth of one boy whose mangled gums bear the trauma of adult teeth coming in, one tooth coming in through the roof of his mouth - a painful process of entering adulthood. The matriarch Mecha lies in her bed, the cuts on her chest slowly turning into scars. Every time the children look at the adults they seem to sense what lies in store for them. For all their self-involvement, these are characters that do not stop to think and are constantly at risk of repeating life based on the dysfunctional models lived by their parents. Mecha, in a rare moment of lucidity, wonders whether she will end up a bed-ridden alcoholic just like her mother before her. Tali, the most sympathetic adult character and seemingly most clear-sighted, justifies speaking about familial problems in front of the children by insisting they must know so as not to repeat the same mistakes. It is ironic that her negligence leads to that final accident involving her own child.
Other themes touch upon problems within Argentine society in general. That Mecha’s family own a country house indicates this was a family that were once rich; but the building is run down, the pool fetid - the apparent downturn in their fortunes seems linked to the collapse of the Argentine economy. The casual racism practiced by both the adults and children towards the native servants offers a further glimpse of that society’s dysfunctional class dynamics and problematic race relations.
Martel’s major theme, though, is ennui; and it is her willingness to explore everyday ennui and treat it with the same dramatic presence as any other great subject which most characterises La Cienaga. It certainly won’t be to everyone’s taste, and even those who buy into Martel’s cinematic vision will undoubtedly find much of the film a gruelling and, it has to be said, often boring experience. In keeping with the extremity of Martel’s oblique method, the real drama is destined to occur only after her film is over. The young boy’s accident, which may be fatal, occurs out of sight of the other characters, and is left undiscovered as the film ends. It says something about the film’s murky ambivalence that the possibility of something good may come of this - at the very least, it might shock the characters out of their rut. Of course, that could just be grasping at straws, in a film that offers very little in the way of optimism.
Beneath the surface banality of La Cienaga lies a resonant and troubling picture, the work of a filmmaker with a considered and singular artistic vision. Even if Martel’s particular vision is likely to repel as many as it attracts, her film possesses a lingering, haunting power. Not especially enjoyable, but undeniably affecting. GJK
Film: Backyard
Release date: 27th December 2010
Certificate: 18
Running time: 117 mins
Director: Carlos Carrera
Starring: Ana de la Reguera, Asur Zagada, Marco Perez, Joaquin Cosio, Alejandro Calva
Genre: Crime/Drama/Mystery/Thriller
Studio: Scanbox
Format: DVD
Country: Mexico
Backyard is a fictionalised version of events that actually occurred in a small Mexican/American border known as Ciudad Juarez. The film covers similar ground to The Virgin Of Juarez and the better known Bordertown. In Backyard, though, Director Carlos Carrrera attempts to take a grittier, more realistic approach to telling the story.
Juarez is one of many Mexican border cities sustained by American-owned factories, or ‘maquiladoras’, that sprang up on the Mexican side of the border after the NAFTA agreement went into effect. Populated by blue collar and migrant workers, corruption has invaded every level of society, from indolent municipal executives to casual labourers who lack the intelligence to benefit from their skills and work ethic, and merely support the one sided way of life. Women are on the bottom rung, subjugated by all, including themselves, but especially by significant others and guardians gripped by all sorts of appetites.
In a stereotypically corrupt local system, one police officer, Blanca Bravo (played with a serious intensity by Ana de la Reguera) challenges the status quo. A system which tolerates and ignores the routine misogynistic beating and murders of young women.
As the story unravels, we see Blanca’s crusade for justice slowly deteriorate into a thirst for vengeance, as she faces up to the maddeningly low priority the system has given to solving and stopping these crimes…
Backyard is a strange film. The ‘true story’ tag always ensures films are viewed perhaps that little more critically and, at times, it just doesn’t stand up to the levels of scrutiny applied. There are so many inconsistencies in quality that it beggars belief.
There are some genuinely ingenious, if obvious, touches - Carrera’s apparent dismay at the continual Americanisation of the border towns manifests itself through the ‘Gringoismo’ of the antagonists. Many of the films most heinous characters speak English and are of a markedly lighter complexion to the rest of the cast. One particular scene, which shows a young girl strangled to death during penetration to induce a change in vaginal pressure (an act portrayed as apparently widespread and common) is a truly gut wrenching and heartbreaking moment.
Unfortunately, while some scenes are tremendously evocative, and play as a genuine reminder that the real world can be just as evil and terrifying as any fictitious one, the remainder of the film’s conscience is shouted down. Drowned out by inane dialogue, contrived essays at violence-threatening tension, and a sour desert-sepia colour scheme that seems better suited to lower-echelon, late night TV-crime melodramas. Bravo’s superior’s assertion that "women make good nurses and bad cops!" is as cheesy and lazy a line as you’ll find in a film this year.
This inconsistency filters through every aspect of the film. While many of the victims are portrayed as well rounded three-dimensional characters, too many are shallow ‘Tex Mex’ caricatures. While Reguera’s performance is excellent, the path her character follows is too contrived and well trodden. Barrera may be on record as saying that Backyard is not entertainment, but he would be hard pushed to deny that some of the major aspects of the film - Jimmy Smits’ chewing scenery, or even An de la Reguera herself (her beautiful but determined police woman would fit right in with many of today’s police procedurals - CSI, Law & Order) are lifted straight from the ‘Big Book’ of Hollywood clichés.
Backyard is a film that could have been so much more than it is. While it times persuasively, and sensitively highlights the ignored plight of many young Mexican women ensnared in a chronic and sometimes terminal cycle of hard labour and machismo battering, the potentially thousands of Juarez victims deserve more than cartoonish stereotypes.
While it’s hard to argue with Ana de la Reguera’s performance, one can’t help wondering if this film would have benefited from a heroine that didn’t take makeup and modelling classes while attending police academy. An important story told badly. PD
Film: Aftershock
Release date: 27th December 2010
Certificate: 15
Running time: 135 mins
Director: Feng Xiaogang
Starring: Jingchu Zhang, Daoming Chen, Chen Jung Li, Yi Lu, Fan Xu, Jin Chen
Genre: Drama/History
Studio: Metrodome
Format: DVD
Country: China
As China’s highest-grossing film, and their entry for the Oscars Best Foreign Language Film 2011, Aftershock has a lot to live up to. It spans the thirty-two years between the 1976 Tangshan Earthquake and the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake, both traumatic events within living memory. While dealing with this deeply emotive material, director Xiaogang Feng chose to concentrate on the effect of these disasters on an average Chinese family.
Fang Daqiang, a hard working father, is having a normal kind of day. He picks his children up and sends them home with a new fan for their mother, Yuan’ni. On the way home, the twins are set upon by bullies - Deng protects her brother Da, a pattern that will be repeated with far more dire consequences. That evening, Fang and his wife steal a moment of intimacy in the back of his truck; they are a happy family. Seconds later, the earth begins to shake. Suddenly, their world is quite literally crumbling around them. The parents run back to their home only to find the building collapsing around them. Yuan’ni attempts to run to her children but is held back by her husband who goes to find them himself, sacrificing his life.
As the dust settles on the ruined city Yuan’ni finds Deng and Da trapped beneath a twisted heap of concrete. She is forced by rescuers to make a choice - if one child is rescued the other will be crushed to death. They ask her repeatedly, beating her down, until she eventually chooses her son. With her son free but in urgent need of medical attention, Yuan’ni leaves to find him medical help.
Against all odds, Deng survives and wakes up next to her dead father - her mother’s words ringing in her ears. Tattered and filthy, the fragile child walks through the destruction, where she is found by a soldier and later adopted by a childless couple in the People’s Liberation Army. Deng and Da, once so close, are forced to live separate lives…
The opening shot of dragonflies fleeing from the impending disaster, following the train tracks, brings the viewer neatly to the crossing where the truck containing Fang and his family waits patiently. It is a clever way in which to show how vulnerable humans are in the face of nature. The family are completely unaware of the fate that awaits them, while the humble insect is already taking action. The children’s gold fish also try to escape by jumping out of their glass bowel and are shown flapping helplessly on the wooden cabinet onto which they fall, another metaphor for hopelessness.
Aerial shots are used to document the change in the city from the low-rise 1970s buildings to the high-rises of 2008. They also chart the city’s destruction and subsequent development. While useful, they can appear repetitive. The economic shift depicted in these three decades shows the effect of the reform and opening-up policy during this time in China. As a film Aftershock has been criticised for brushing over the political realities of this period and, although they are occasionally alluded to, there is no in-depth examination.
Chairman Mao is evident in the background of many of the scenes from Deng’s childhood in the People’s Liberation Army barracks. His photo hangs on the wall in the adoptive families flat, and his death is mourned. However, what was in many ways a traumatic time in Chinese history is viewed in a warmly reminiscent manner, with the sets created from a collection of donated, original props. There is an air of cosiness that some would argue is inappropriate. Yet, it is possibly more accurate, within the context of this film, to describe it as such.
The power of the party is also shown through colour. Green and red are often predominant in scenes, more so during Deng’s life with her adoptive family, and allow bridging when the action shifts. When the film moves to Da and Yuan’ni’s narrative, the colours are often muted, except when they honour the dead, and are in a sense reunited, or during celebrations.
Aftershock centres heavily on the psychological impact of the Tangshan Earthquake and the relationships that were made and broken by the disaster. Deng’s character remains removed and cut off from others until she can come to terms with the choice her mother had to make. Yuan’ni remains married to her dead husband, accepting no advances, in deference to his sacrifice, and carries the guilt of her daughter’s presumed death. Yet in spite of this, the characters survive emotionally and the film is hopeful.
As a film, Aftershock has not pleased everybody, despite it being a box office hit. When dealing with recent and sensitive subject matter, it is hard to get it right. In many ways, it can be applauded as an emotive family drama, but it is possible that a greater historical and political perspective would have given it depth and made it more satisfying to those still dealing with the fallout from these events. EM
Drenched in sex and style, Straight ploughs right through to the tantalizing details of a ménage à trios.
Jana is a social worker who tries to help local prostitutes. She tells her judgmental and racist mother that she works for a publishing company as a cover for the truth; she lives in the slums.
Nazim prowls the neighbourhood with his crew, in search of drugs and fist fights, hiding his true identity as a bi-curious hoodlum who picks up male strangers for an impersonal quickie. David is one of his first conquests, but Nazim is ashamed and throws him out as soon as their session is over.
David finds himself back in the arms of his girlfriend, Jana, who is constantly awash in a haze of sex and drugs, including when she performs a striptease at a bar and picks up a mesmerized Nazim, who knows nothing of her relationship with David. As David, Nazim, and Jana begin to discover each other’s secrets, Straight tightens the screws until the tension is almost unbearable.
This highly erotic drama, which is like a carnal cross-up of Chasing Amy and Shank, is tinged with biting humour. It also features a moody, enveloping mix of songs, courtesy of Kitty Solaris. Straight isn’t just a movie, it’s a mind set, where monogamy is nothing more than a pipe dream.
Film: Straight
Release date: 27th September 2010
Certificate: 15
Running time: 59 mins
Director: Nicolas Flessa
Starring: Adrian Can, Annabelle Dorn, Beba Ebner, Frederic Heidorn, Marion Kruse
Genre: Drama
Studio: Bounty
Format: DVD
Country: Germany
From the studio that brought you Fullmetal Alchemist and Cowboy Be-Bop.
Soul Eater is an anime that centres around meisters and their weapons, and their mission to collect 99 evil souls and 1 witch soul. Upon doing so, the meister's weapons will become a Deathscythe, which is the highest title for a weapon.
Maka, Soul Eater, Black Star, Tsubaki, Death the Kid, and Patty and Liz Thompson are the characters Soul Eater revolves around. Besides taking the time to gather souls these students of Shibusen defend Death City from some of the most powerful of creatures while still attending school and trying to become stronger.
Series: Soul Eater: Part Four
Release date: 27th December 2010
Certificate: 15
Running time: 271 mins
Director: Takuya Igarashi
Starring: Chiaki Omigawa, Kouki Uchiyama, Akeno Watanabe, Emiri Katou, Houko Kuwashima
Genre: Anime
Studio: Manga
Format: DVD
Country: Japan
In the village, hidden in the leaves, ninja reign supreme, and school is literally a battlefield.
Naruto, Sasuke and Sakura are teenage classmates and ninja in training, working together - sort of! - under the instruction of their teacher, Kakashi. Sasuke is training to win revenge... Sakura is training to win Sasuke... And Naruto, the class clown, insists that he'll become the greatest ninja in the land!
Contains episodes 40 - 52.
Series: Naruto Shippuden Box Set 4
Release date: 27th December 2010
Certificate: 12
Running time: 206 mins
Director: Hayato Date
Starring: Chie Nakamura, Junko Takeuchi, Noriaki Sugiyama, Akira Ishida, Hideo Ishikawa
Genre: Anime
Studio: Manga
Format: DVD
Country: Japan
Mexican filmmaker Carlos Carrera directs this fictionalised account of the unsolved rapes and murders of hundreds of women in the violent Mexican border town of Ciudad Juarez.
Since the mid-1990s, young women have been mysteriously disappearing in and around the town, only to turn up later as corpses in the surrounding desert, having been raped and murdered. Most of the victims are low-paid workers drawn to the town by the possibility of work at American-owned factories.
When Mexican police officer Blanca Bravo (Ana de la Reguera) is drafted in to investigate the situation, she runs into resistance from the authorities and local businessmen.
Film: Backyard
Release date: 27th December 2010
Certificate: 18
Running time: 117 mins
Director: Carlos Carrera
Starring: Ana de la Reguera, Asur Zagada, Marco Perez, Joaquin Cosio, Alejandro Calva
Genre: Crime/Drama/Mystery/Thriller
Studio: Scanbox
Format: DVD
Country: Mexico
Chinese disaster film based on events surrounding the 1976 earthquake in Tangshan, which took the lives of 240,000 people.
In the aftermath of the devastating quake, a widowed seamstress (Xu Fan) must choose which of her brother-and-sister twins will be saved after rescuers find them pinned down by a single concrete block. She chooses her son, Fang Dan (Chen Li), unaware that her daughter Fang Deng (Jingchu Zhang) has in fact also survived the ordeal.
The film then follows the divergent lives of the two siblings from this point until their eventual reunion in the Sichuan earthquake of 2008.
Film: Aftershock
Release date: 27th December 2010
Certificate: 15
Running time: 135 mins
Director: Feng Xiaogang
Starring: Jingchu Zhang, Daoming Chen, Chen Jung Li, Yi Lu, Fan Xu, Jin Chen
Genre: Drama/History
Studio: Metrodome
Format: DVD
Country: China
This is a majority English-language release.
Brad Haynes directs this Australian World War Two drama based on real events.
In 1944, a group of Japanese soldiers held in a P.O.W. camp deep in the Australian outback make an escape attempt. One young soldier, Masaru (Shingo Usami), ends up hiding in the remote hilltop farm of reclusive farmer Jack (Jai Koutrae), a World War One veteran who never recovered from the traumas he experienced as a soldier.
Despite their differences and mutual suspicions, it soon becomes evident that the two men share the understanding that war is not simply a question of good versus evil but a complex set of rules by which each of them is duty-bound to abide.
Film: Broken Sun
Release date: 27th December 2010
Certificate: 15
Running time: 92 mins
Director: Brad Haynes
Starring: Shingo Usami, Sam O'Dell, Kentaro Hara, Kuni Hashimoto, Mark Redpath
Genre: Drama/War
Studio: Metrodome
Format: DVD
Country: Australia
