Babyteeth (2019)

I’ve still only seen five films in a cinema since lockdown rules were relaxed, because I am still very careful about how much I’m stepping into cinemas (and there’s still a relative paucity of new content available, quite aside from the fact that the institutions I most often frequent, like the BFI Southbank and the ICA are not yet reopened). However, this Australian film tempted me back into a cinema, because it looked like one of the highlights of the London Film Festival last year. It clearly doesn’t work for everyone, presumably to do with its themes and the way it presents them, or perhaps the age differential in the central relationship (her age is somewhat skirted around), but I really liked it.

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There’s basically an entire sub-genre of films about terminally-ill teenagers, and it’s probably also fair to say that they don’t always get the best reception. It’s a strange category because it’s hard-wired to be a weepie, but it’s too often made into this romantic thing given the demographic involved. Of course, the 20-or-so-year-old Eliza Scanlen has recent form for playing dying children, but she plays them well so it’s no surprise she’s excellent as Milla here. However, I think the real focus, because it’s where the greatest pain lies, is in the parents and as far as casting goes, you don’t get much better in Australian cinema than Essie Davis and Ben Mendelsohn. The film itself has a rather arch structure, little chapter headings popping up on screen, and an at times whimsical and stylised presentation. Still, for all that it’s pulled down some fairly mixed reviews, I find myself liking this film quite a lot. The choices that the filmmakers take are pretty bold — although I think the romantic story between Milla and the older Moses (Toby Wallace, playing a 23-year-old to her teenager) required a little bit more thought about the way that age gap would play, although certainly it is acknowledged within the film — and so I think they pay off, but ultimately this is an actors’ film and they excel.

CREDITS
Director Shannon Murphy; Writer Rita Kalnejais (based on her play); Cinematographer Andrew Commis; Starring Eliza Scanlen, Toby Wallace, Essie Davis, Ben Mendelsohn; Length 120 minutes.
Seen at Genesis, London, Sunday 16 August 2020.

乳房よ永遠なれ Chibusa Yo Eien Nare (The Eternal Breasts, 1955)

I went back to YouTube recently to look up this film by Kinuyo Tanaka, the second woman to direct feature films in Japan and herself an acclaimed actor of some renown. I was inspired by the writing of critic Cathy Brennan, who has herself written far longer and better pieces about the actor/director for Another Gaze magazine, and the Screen Queens blog. Sadly, there are few opportunities to watch Tanaka’s films currently, which is surprising given her fame as an actor and the recent interest in women’s filmmaking, but one can dream of proper releases one day I suppose.

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I’ve watched a number of mid-20th century Japanese films recently, but I haven’t seen any quite like this film, one of the handful directed by acclaimed actor Kinuyo Tanaka — and perhaps it’s her perspective that makes a telling difference, or that of celebrated screenwriter Sumie Tanaka (no relation), who also wrote most of Mikio Naruse’s greatest works during the same decade. It’s just that I hadn’t seen many films that deal fairly frankly not just with a difficult relationship — in this case young housewife and budding poet Fumiko (played by Yumeji Tsukioka and based on a real figure) being pushed away by her philandering husband — but also with her subsequent breast cancer diagnosis which gives the film its memorable title. It is, ultimately, a weepie of sorts, with a grand melodramatic arc that deals with this woman turning her back on love, before admitting into her life a big city journalist (well, she lives in Hokkaido and the journalist is from Tokyo), as she tries to recover from her mastectomy in a Japanese hospital while still writing poetry. There are big emotions, but also some delicate observation too, and it’s a film that shows plenty of care in its creation, only a few years after Kurosawa made the rather better known cancer drama Ikiru.

CREDITS
Director Kinuyo Tanaka 田中絹代; Writer Sumie Tanaka 田中澄江 (based on the article by Akira Wakatsuki 若月彰, and the poetry collections 乳房喪失 and 花の原型 by Fumiko Nakajo 城ふみ子); Cinematographer Kumenobu Fujioka 藤岡粂信; Starring Yumeji Tsukioka 月丘夢路, Ryoji Hayama 葉山 良二, Masayuki Mori 森雅之, Yoko Sugi 杉葉子; Length 109 minutes.
Seen at home (YouTube), London, Sunday 19 April 2020.

Criterion Sunday 221: 生きる Ikiru (1952)

Clearly one of Kurosawa’s greatest films, it’s also perhaps a little forgotten — possibly not amongst hardened cineastes, but that at least is the feeling I get when talking about Kurosawa with other casual film lovers. Part of this is undoubtedly that it’s not set in the shogun era of samurai and peasants (like, say, Seven Samurai), but rather contemporary Japan. It’s about a humble bureaucrat (played by Kurosawa regular Takashi Shimura) who mournfully realises the failure of his life as he gets a cancer diagnosis, and has to deal with that. There’s a hint of Rashomon to the latter half of the film, as people argue at his wake about his lasting achievement — the construction of a children’s playground — but the framing of it, as flashbacks from his funeral, clearly indicate that it is altogether too late in his life. It is, however, poignant and heartbreaking, and feels like a movie that’s not so much depressing in its accounting of a person’s life, as perhaps a little hopeful that some may at least achieve something despite all the obstacles placed in their way.

CRITERION EXTRAS:

• A fairly easygoing documentary (an episode of a TV series, It Is Wonderful to Create, which pops up on most of Criterion’s Kurosawa releases), which uses interviews with surviving members of Kurosawa’s cast and crew to shed light on how he made his films. This one features Miki Odagiri (the young woman who befriends Kanji after his illness is diagnosed, and then finds him a little creepily intense) talking about Kurosawa’s methods of inspiring her performance, as well as screenwriters and technicians. There’s not a huge deal of insight, but it’s pleasant enough.

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FILM REVIEW: Criterion Collection
Director Akira Kurosawa 黒澤明; Writers Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto 橋本忍 and Hideo Oguni 小国英雄; Cinematographer Asakazu Nakai 中井朝一; Starring Takashi Shimura 志村喬, Miki Odagiri 小田切みき; Length 143 minutes.

Seen at a friend’s home (DVD), London, Sunday 8 July 2018 (and earlier on VHS at home, Wellington, June 1997).

Burn Burn Burn (2015)

I fundamentally liked this film, even if there was a lot of stuff I didn’t believe at all: because it’s set up as a sort of kooky comedy, it often seems a little too cutely precious in the way characters come together, while some of them seem to have been introduced just to push along a magical sense of healing (particularly re: mothers, which provides a little bit too much sentimentality towards the end for my personal liking). Indeed the entire framework — a road trip by two women to scatter a dead friend’s ashes, who addresses them via self-recorded videos (and quotes Kerouac) — could easily be too much self-conscious quirk. And yet there’s something about those three central performances (by Laura Carmichael and Chloe Pirrie as Seph and Alex, and as Jack Farthing as their dead friend Dan) that gets to a kernel of emotional honesty that I found unexpectedly moving. At its best it reminded me of Inside Llewyn Davis (a film I adored) in acknowledging the way that emotional pain can cause people to act horribly to one another. Meanwhile, gosh, British filmmaking has no shortage of tall pretty posh young women with cut glass accents acting atrociously while being funny (see also the Fleabag TV series just for a start), though it also makes the all too brief appearance of Alice Lowe (most recently seen as director/star of festival favourite Prevenge) all the more delightful.

NEW RELEASE FILM REVIEW
Director Chanya Button; Writer Charlie Covell; Cinematographer Carlos De Carvalho; Starring Laura Carmichael, Chloe Pirrie, Jack Farthing; Length 106 minutes.
Seen at Curzon Bloomsbury, London, Thursday 3 November 2016.

Tig (2015)

Now that I’m a regular habitué of online streaming services, I’m increasingly wading into the murky but usually very time-friendly (given most are around an hour long) subgenre of stand-up comedy sets. One of the recent stars of this scene, who’s been doing the stand-up round for years, is Tig Notaro, though filmically I’d only previously seen her in a small cameo in In a World…. This documentary, however, isn’t just a record of one of her stand-up sets, so much as how that set in August 2012 intersected with her life and those around her in some surprising ways. Those who have seen Louis CK’s TV show, or the film Obvious Child (and if you haven’t, seriously, rectify that) know that stand-ups frequently draw from their own experiences in ways that can sometimes be quite uncomfortable for audiences, and in drawing on her recent diagnosis of breast cancer, Notaro ends up challenging a number of ideas about the disease. The most notable, perhaps, is that she can’t have a baby, and indeed although her body may not be capable of carrying a child anymore, we see her enter a stable relationship and forge forward with plans to have children. Because of its likeable subject, the documentary feels like a relatively easygoing watch despite some tough subject matter, but that’s not to diminish its achievement, and one can only hope for the best for Notaro herself.

CREDITS
Directors Kristina Goolsby and Ashley York; Cinematographer Huy Truong; Length 95 minutes.
Seen at home (Netflix streaming), London, Saturday 31 October 2015.

Miss You Already (2015)

It appears to be the time of year for what are often dismissively termed “chick flicks”. I hate that term, like “women’s pictures” for the melodramas of the 1940s, it smacks of snobbish derision. There are already too many self-satisfied dude auteur films dealing with alienation and violence courting the film school pseuds, not to mention all those deadening superhero epics, so there can never be too many contrasting visions of the world. That all said, I’m not a huge fan exactly, though as far as a melodramatic ‘weepie’ goes, Miss You Already does fine. Drew Barrymore remains a potently charismatic and cheerful presence on any cinema screen even as she reaches her (shock!) 40s, but this film is all about Toni Collette’s English rock-n-roll chick (her accent doesn’t grate, thankfully), with whom Drew’s character grew up, as she acts out, gets into trouble, then has a family (apparently adjusting with ease) and, as we catch up with her, is now coping with a cancer diagnosis. Being set in London, everyone has those kind of perfect London homes that surely don’t really exist (Barrymore and boyfriend played by Paddy Considine live together on a boat overlooking Battersea Power Station!), and meaningful moments take place in picturesque locations — though at least the geography isn’t strained too far beyond credulity. More to the point, Collette gets through the tearful and angry scenes with her dignity intact, which is more than can always be said for whomever scored the film, though leaning on late-80s alt-indie classics is I suppose in keeping with the characters. It’s certainly not a bad film, and it’s even heartwarming in its way.

CREDITS
Director Catherine Hardwicke; Writer Morwenna Banks; Cinematographer Elliot Davis; Starring Toni Collette, Drew Barrymore, Paddy Considine, Dominic Cooper, Jacqueline Bisset; Length 94 minutes.
Seen at Cineworld Wandsworth, London, Sunday 27 September 2015.

The Fault in Our Stars (2014)

I suppose it would be really easy to write a review about how this flagrantly tearjerking melodrama of two teenagers falling in love while living with terminal cancer is the worst kind of emotional heartstring tugging, but that would probably be because I somewhat fell victim to it. It’s very hard not to, after all, given the premise, even without the little flourishes that are added to help you along the path. Those flourishes, thankfully, generally steer clear of big string-laden orchestration or gloopily grandstanding sentimental speeches from the parents (at least, as far as I recall).

What’s interesting is that the story is very much told from the point of view of the central character, Hazel (Shailene Woodley), and this — along with just basic business sense on the part of the filmmakers — perhaps accounts for some of the peculiarly airbrushed depictions of the dying kids and their love affair. They are the heroes of their world; their friend Isaac (Nat Wolff) is almost rock-star like in his blindness, looking for all the world like Ferris Bueller in his prime. It’s directed by the maker of the most comfortably middle-class film I saw last year (Stuck in Love.), so everything’s just-so here as well.

In fact, without Hazel’s ever-present breathing apparatus and a few scenes in hospitals, you’d be hard-pressed to spot that they were terminal, and that, presumably, is precisely the point: this is a teen love story, first and foremost, a film about living. When Hazel and the always goofily grinning and cheerfully upbeat Gus (Ansel Elgort) finally share a kiss, the bystanders applaud. They APPLAUD. I might add that this takes place in the most allegorically-loaded of locations, but then the film is at pains to create a world of metaphor and allusion. “It’s a metaphor” is practically the film’s motto, a refrain used to refer specifically to Gus’s habit of keeping an (unlit) cigarette in his mouth. And then there’s Hazel’s quest to find out what happens after the abrupt end of her favourite novel within the film (a novel about cancer, of course), that sends her to Amsterdam to track down its prickly and reclusive author, Peter Van Houten (Willem Dafoe).

We might wonder what happens to her and her family when this particular story ends, but as Hazel discovers, that would be a mistake. The only thing that matters is what happens during the story’s telling. The key, then, is just to go with it, and as such it helps that Woodley is such a watchable and radiant presence at the heart of things. Many of us may know what happens when this story ends; it’s not worth thinking about.

CREDITS
Director Josh Boone; Writers Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber (based on the novel by John Green); Cinematographer Ben Richardson; Starring Shailene Woodley, Ansel Elgort, Laura Dern, Nat Wolff, Willem Defoe; Length 125 minutes.
Seen at Cineworld Shaftesbury Avenue, London, Friday 20 June 2014.