Sunday 17 March 2024

A mixed bag from this lesbian road/caper/crime comedy

Well. Where to start? Ethan Coen’s second feature without his bro, Joel, is a bit of an oddity. Drive-Away Dolls is a lesbian road/caper/crime comedy – not that that that is a bad thing, but it seems too have something of an identity crisis. 

Coen directs, but the screenplay was written jointly with his wife, Tricia Cooke, who has worked as an editor or associate editor on many of the Coen brothers’ films.

This is one case where I’m going to mention people’s personal lives, because the couple are quite open about this and it seems relevant to the film.

Cooke and Coen have two children, but she identifies as lesbian and queer, and describes her marriage as “non-traditional”. They both have other partners.

The point being that this is not some some sort of straight riff on lesbian lives.

Bu back to the film. It’s Philadelphia in 1999. After permissive Jamie is kicked out of her relationship with cop Sukie, she learns that her up-tight friend Marian is planning a trip to Tallahassee, Florida, to visit a relative and enjoy some birdwatching, and decides they should make the trip together.

They use a drive-away car company (where someone can transport a car one-way for another client). However, a misunderstanding means they get the wrong car – with an intriguing cargo.

When the bunch of crooks who had booked the car finds out, they set off in murderous chase.

It’s so hit and miss. It seems like a very deliberate attempt to come up with the trashiest, most lesbo-exploitation flick you could – and perhaps that’s a positive finger to the state of lesbian representation on screen? But yet the film feels conflicted.

There are some very good moments.

Flashback sequences of Marian starting to explore her sexuality are spot on. But a series of psychedelic interludes, which have no explanation until very, very late on, are annoying. And while it’s genuinely funny in places, it’s not laugh-out-loud funny in the same way that it seems to want to be.

It actually has a great core message – that horny women who shag other horny woman are fine!

But problems aside, Geraldine Viswanathan as Marian is really fantastic, bringing a sense of genuine nuance to a generally unsubtle film. Margaret Qualley, as Jamie, gives it her all, but I do wonder about the accent a bit.

Beanie Feldstein is great as the cuckolded girlfriend and cop.

There is a tiny cameo here for Pedro Pascal, a slightly larger one for Matt Damon, and a bigger role for Colman Domingo, all of whom give of their best. Joey Slotnjick as one of the gangsters is very good.

So very much a mixed bag. But while the film itself is more than a tad all over the place, it's most certainly good to see lesbians being represented in such morally non-judgemental – indeed, in such positive ways.

Superb film of August Wilson's Ma Rainey – and not just because of Chadwick Boseman

After yesterday’s early evening football, there was still time for a film and, in this case, it was a re-watch of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.

I’ve seen August Wilson’s play three times – I reviewed the National Theatre’s 1989 production, then went to see it with The Other Half when it played briefly at the Hackney Empire (where the roof leaked onto us). Then we went to see it again in the National’s top-notch 2016 revival.

The release of George C Woolfe’s 2020 film – produced by Denzel Washington as part of his long-term project to bring all of Wilson’s plays to the screen – was overshadowed by news of the death of star Chadwick Boseman at just 43 from cancer, while the film was in post-production.

His performance as the tragic, traumatised trumpeter Levee in Ma’s four-piece band – at once full of contempt for the white men who only tolerate the black musicians because they bring money in, but also overly deferential to them because he wants his own band – is brilliant. Little wonder that he received a hat-load of posthumous awards and nominations.

In a way, though, Boseman’s tragically early passing dwarfed the rest of the cast. The Other Half and I streamed it early after it landed on Netflix, having linked up the TV to one of our phones because we were at the start of two months without the internet after a major blow-out. That was how much we wanted to see it – and see it early.

Yet seeing it again now, I can not only re-engage with the brilliance of Boseman, but also better appreciate Viola Davis’s powerhouse performance as Ma.

I’m also now familiar with Colman Domingo, who played Cutler so well, and can enjoy more fully Glynn Turman’s turn as Toledo.

The film landed barely six months after the murder of George Floyd, illustrating just how topical the themes of Wilson’s – and Woolfe’s film – remain.

An essential watch.

 

Saturday 16 March 2024

Rashomon: Superb filmmaking from Kurosawa

More catch-up cinema, as I increasingly appreciate streaming. This afternoon’s choice came from browsing the ‘international’ section on Sky Cinema. I’ve seen a couple of iconic Japanese director Akira Kurosawa’s films, but I only knew of Rashomon by name.

In the last period of classical Japanese history, a woodcutter and a priest are sheltering from a torrential downpour in Kyoto’s Rashomon Gate. Joined by a commoner, they are discussing a recent case of the rape of a woman and the murder of her Samurai husband.

Having both given testimonies at the subsequent trial, they are bemused by the how much all of the accounts differ, including that of the murder victim, which the court receives via a Shinto medium.

The priest insists that the dead can’t lie, but even he has doubts. Who to believe?

The screenplay is by Kurosawa and Shinobu Hashimoto, from Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s short stories In a Grove and Rashomon, while cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa contributed plenty of ideas. He’s particularly famous for his tracking shots and there’s a superb one early in the film, as the woodcutter travels through a forest.

The music from Fumio Hayasaka is also worth noting – not least a bolero that echoes Ravel’s iconic one, using exactly the same beat, though changing the melodic line.

In terms of the cast, Toshiro Mifune (pictured above) shines as Tajomaru, a notorious bandit.

Machiko Kyo as the wife, Masayuki Mori as her Samurai husband, Takashi Shimura as the woodcutter and Minoru Chiaki as the priest all deserve praise.

It was awarded the Golden Lion in Venice in 1951 and an Academy Honorary Award at the 1952 Oscars and is generally credited with introducing Japanese cinema to an international audience.

Rashomon also gave its name to the Rashomon effect, which notes the unreliability of witnesses.

And it’s not difficult to see why this work has regularly featured in lists of the greatest films of all time. Extraordinary filmmaking, with an enigmatic story that ultimately finds a reason to continue having faith in humanity.

Friday 15 March 2024

Joyous take-down of racism and fat-shaming

More catch-up film. This time, John Waters’s 1988 comedy, Hairspray. As with Studio Ghibli, I find myself wondering how on earth have I have missed this previously?

But on the other hand, what a joy to discover such pieces now!

The plot is simple – teenage Tracy Turnblad is a brilliant dancer who dreams of being on The Corny Collins show, a dance off. On the way to realising her dream, she fights racism and, given that she is chubby, fat-shaming.

But there’s plenty of racist opposition to her ideas, from individuals and institutions. And Tracy has a job on to win.

It’s a joy. Wonderfully camp, and with the positive messages mentioned above – plus a wonderful cast. Rickie Lake is marvellous as Tracey. Then there is Divine as her mother, Jerry Stiller as her father and Debbie Harry as the mother of her fiercest – and most bitchy – opponent.

One question, though: how do you make a ‘musical’ of this, given the music that’s already an integral part of this original version?

Tuesday 12 March 2024

A reminder that Ghibli is every bit as good as Disney

I’m back on catch-up film. This time, more from Studio Ghbli, in that studio’s 2004 adaptation of Diana Wynne Jones’s novel Howl’s Moving Castle, with direction and screenplay by the legendary Hayao Miyazaki.

Sophie is a shy young hatter in a Victorian era setting who believes herself unlovely. But after a chance encounter with a wizard – and the Witch of the Waste – she is cursed into being an elderly woman, and becomes drawn into a battle that reflects the start of a war in the human world.

Utterly astonishing – not least in its portrayal of the positives of age – this is simply wonderful, but also its deeply anti-war position. It nods to The Wizard of Oz and much more, but it’s also very much of itself.

It’s fabulously animated, with a wonderful steampunk look, and a very real sense of morality as well as humour.

I watched the English dubbed version, with a fabulous voice cast – not least the utter legend that is Lauren Bacall as the Witch if the Waste, and Billy Crystal as a little fire demon.

Quite simply wonderful.

Monday 11 March 2024

Macho or not? In & Out remains a charming gay comedy

The Frank Oz 1997 film In & Out has been described as being one of Hollywood’s first efforts at making a ‘comic gay movie’ – can somebody mention Blake Edwards’s 1982 Victor/Victoria please, so I don’t have to!

But to the point: Howard Brackett is an English teacher in a small Indiana town. He is due to marry colleague Emily Montgomery within days, but then the Academy Awards ceremony sees a former pupil of his not only laud him in a winning speech, but out him.

But Howard is not even remotely out to himself. The media descends on his small town and harasses him, while the entire community questions what he’s really like.

Very light, very funny – full of lots of truths (arguably tropes, but then they’re tropes because they’re often true, if you get my meaning). It also very nicely pokes fun at the idea of 'masculinity'.

And it’s a fab cast.

Kevin Kline is lovely in the central role of Howard; as is Oscar-nominated Joan Cusack as his finance. Debbie Reynolds and Wilfred Brimley as his parents are fab too. Then there’s Bob Newhart as the school principal – the expected joy.

In a way, the surprise here is Tom Selleck as gay TV reporter Peter, who helps Howard actually understand who he is. It’s a really good performance.

Here’s a fun little fact. At the end, all the characters – including Cusack’s Emily – dance to Macho Man by The Village People. She danced to the same song on film again in 1993, in Adams Family Values.

Genuinely charming and heart-warming.

Streaming on Sky Cinema and well worth a watch.

Saturday 9 March 2024

An exquisite mediation on loss – and observing life

It's 30 March 1924, and the Sheringham, Niven and Hobday families have gathered for lunch by the Thames at Henley – a Mothering Sunday ritual that they have performed for some years and maintain, even though both the Niven sons and two of the three Sheringham sons were killed in the 'Great War'. Yet the reality of their collective loss is unspoken.

This time, the lunch is taking place just days before the remaining Sheringham sibling, Paul, is due to marry Emma Hobday. Neither of them is particularly enthusiastic about the situation, but feel they have no alternative.

For Paul, it’s complicated by a long-standing affair he’s been having with Jane Fairchild, a maid at the Nivens’ home. On the morning of the annual lunch, he tells his parents he’ll join them later, as he needs to cram for his law studies.

Instead, he’s surreptitiously called Jane and arranged for her to join him at the family home. The staff have also been given the day off (as has Jane) and they’ll have the place to themselves. But when Paul finally leaves for Henley, tragedy strikes.

Told from Jane’s perspective, Eva Husson’s 2021 adaptation of Graham Swift’s 2016 novel of the same name jumps between 1924 and further stages in Jane’s life, including her marriage to Donald, a philosopher, and her own development as a successful writer.

The film’s been described as working “at a frustratingly chilly remove”, but this does actually work in a number of ways. First, as Donald notes to Jane, her having been a maid has turned her into an observer of people.

Second, in a state of grief, Mrs Niven questions Jane about her past, checking that it really was the case that she has no family (she’d been abandoned at birth), before saying that that means she’s lucky, as she has nobody to lose.

Third, the bottled-up emotions of the upper classes also plays out here – so it’s shocking when Mrs Niven breaks down at the lunch and swears that all the children have gone.

In other words, an emotional remoteness is pertinent to the film.

In many ways, it’s a meditation on grief and loss – and pushing through that. The screenplay from Alice Birch is very good, while Jamie Ramsey’s cinematography is lushly sensuous, Sandy Powell’s costume design is sumptuous and Morgan Kibby’s music is spot on.

The supporting turns are excellent – not least from Olivia Colman and Colin Firth as the desperately unhappy Nivens, but also from Sope Dirisu as Donald and Josh O’Connor as Paul.

But the film rests on Jane and Odessa Young gives a really fine performance in a film where so much is about the camera on her face.

As an added attraction, there’s a delightful, sparkling cameo from Glenda Jackson, in her penultimate role, as the older Jane.

I’d bought the disc on a visit to the BFI Southbank late last year, remembering having seen the film advertised and also aware that I am becoming a big Colman fan.

It’s pure coincidence that I decided to watch it today, given that tomorrow is Mother’s Day, but it will be on Channel 4 tomorrow (Film4 was one of the production companies involved) and is well worth a watch.