High Life (2018)

I’m doing a week theme around Polish films, as today sees the UK cinematic release of Agnieszka Holland’s latest film Mr. Jones. It’s an English-language co-production, and so is today’s film, which I’m including for that tenuous reason. One of the co-producing companies is from Poland and Agata Buzek co-stars, but aside from that there’s not much particularly Polish in it, although there’s something about the film’s very weirdness that puts it up alongside Has or Żuławski or other out-there auteurs.

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Claire Denis has made two of my favourite films of two successive decades (that’s Beau travail and 35 Shots of Rum, and a few others I adore besides), but yet I guess I’m not fully subscribed to this latest one. It’s not that it’s broaching new experiences — science-fiction setting, English language screenplay — because a lot of the idiosyncrasies that lie within it are vintage Denis, but I think it may need more time to work itself into my psyche (like L’Intrus, another film of hers that I feel I’ve slept on). It primarily feels like a mood piece, evoking an extraordinary atmosphere of isolation, in a story of one man (Robert Pattinson) and his baby — its helplessness and reliance on him only magnifying the starkness of their situation — as they live on a prison spacecraft flying out towards a black hole. His story is intercut with flashbacks both to his childhood life on Earth (the 16mm photography evoking the infinity of time having since passed), and to a time when there were others on the ship with him, and how he has come to be on his own. There are some really quite indelible scenes, and some incredibly outré setpieces, but always there’s that sublime atmosphere, with its grinding Stuart A. Staples score adding to the mystery, a mystery that never quite resolves but extends outwards, a film drifting inexorably (like the spaceship) towards its own event horizon.

CREDITS
Director Claire Denis; Writers Denis and Jean-Pol Fargeau; Cinematographer Yorick Le Saux; Starring Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, André Benjamin, Mia Goth, Agata Buzek, Lars Eidinger; Length 110 minutes.
Seen at Curzon Bloomsbury, London, Saturday 11 May 2019.

Les Innocentes (The Innocents, 2016)

With some of the same actors as in Paweł Pawlikowski’s recent films Ida and Cold War is this Franco-Polish coproduction, with a more polished costume drama sheen from journeywoman Anne Fontaine, who has made some solid films (I’ve reviewed both Gemma Bovery and Adore on this site, and it’s fair to say I liked one more than the other).

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Photographed by Caroline Champetier, there’s an austere beauty to this Poland-set World War II film about nuns in a convent dealing with the outcome of an earlier Russian occupation, with the help of a French Red Cross nurse, Mathilde (Lou de Laâge). It’s a terrifying prospect, even in wartime, and there are no easy answers with this kind of material. Perhaps, then, the truth and the intersection with faith overwhelmed the filmmakers, or perhaps they felt it better to set up the conflicts rather than guide the audience. I found it strangely distanced but I must concede this may be more a matter of my response.

CREDITS
Director Anne Fontaine; Writers Sabrina B. Karine, Pascal Bonitzer, Fontaine and Alice Vial; Cinematographer Caroline Champetier; Starring Lou de Laâge, Agata Buzek, Agata Kulesza, Vincent Macaigne, Joanna Kulig; Length 115 minutes.
Seen at Curzon Mayfair, London, Monday 14 November 2016.

Hummingbird (aka Redemption, 2013)

I think it’s fair to say that Jason Statham has carved himself out a fruitful corner of the action film genre and his oeuvre already incorporates a number of familiar elements. It was said upon Hummingbird‘s release that it marked something of a departure, a more serious actorly turn for this most unchallenging of screen presences. Indeed, there is a bit of subtlety to his backstory as a former soldier in Afghanistan who is scarred by some enigmatic (and ultimately, never fully satisfying) event in his past. Yet, there’s also plenty to link it to Statham’s already burgeoning filmography. There are the revenge plot elements (he has the most perfunctorily set-up relationship with a young woman at the start and we have to endure that peculiarly reprehensible trope of character-building: a woman dying to further a male lead’s emotional depth) and there’s even a young daughter (it’s always a young daughter or daughter-surrogate in his films) with whose mother he clearly has a very strained relationship. However, I don’t mean to denigrate the film’s evident strengths, which are mostly expressed through the central relationship between Statham’s character Joey — initially seen as a homeless outdoor sleeper in London’s Soho — and a Polish nun, Sister Cristina, who works at a Covent Garden soup kitchen. It strains credulity at times (though not as much as the plot contrivance which sees Joey gain unrestricted access to a swanky Covent Garden loft apartment for nine months), but the relationship between this unlikely couple is even touching at times. Statham continues to make enjoyably silly action films, but there’s hope yet for some extension to his actorly range.

CREDITS
Director/Writer Steven Knight; Cinematographer Chris Menges; Starring Jason Statham, Agata Buzek; Length 100 minutes.
Seen at home (Blu-ray), London, Wednesday 2 July 2014.