LONDON CITY NIGHTS

Saturday, November 1, 2014

'Say When' (2014) directed by Lynn Shelton

Saturday, November 1, 2014 - by londoncitynights · - 0 Comments

Nobody ever says they like Keira Knightley.  At best she gets grudging tolerance, at worst she suffers snide jabs at her features, her acting abilities and her (imagined) haughty demeanour. Well I'm going to come out on the record and say it: I like Keira Knightley.  I liked her in Pride & Prejudice, I liked her in The Duchess, I liked her in A Dangerous Method, I liked her in The Imitation Game and I like her in Say When.  I even kinda liked her in Pirates of the Caribbean. She is a good actor.

Here she plays Megan, a twenty-eight year old suffered from a stalled life.  She's got an advanced degree, a long term boyfriend Anthony (Mark Webber) and a smart metropolitan flat; yet true adulthood hasn't quite 'taken' yet.  Whiling away her time as a sign flipper for her Dad's business, she's constantly subtly (and not so subtly) nudged towards career fairs and development counsellors.  The rapid onset of mature tedium leads to to wistfully recall her teenage kicks; smoking cigarettes, drinking wine coolers and skinnydipping with her besties.  Cut to the present day and those besties have metastasised into prissy, uptight WASPS, accompanied with dull husbands and gaggles of screaming, shitting children.

So when her boyfriend unexpectedly proposes she panics and does a runner. She finds refuge with Annika (Chloë Grace Moretz), a 16 year old girl who reminds Megan of the best times in her life.  Needing some time to figure out her future, Megan lies that she's going to a business seminar and holes up in Annika's house, = reverting to a teenage state. Annika's Dad (Sam Rockwell) is equal parts curious, bemused and concerned by this strange woman befriending his teenage daughter, but as a lawyer he feels he's got a pretty good handle on people and grudgingly begins to trust her and maybe even... love her?

Say When (known as Laggies outside the UK) isn't the most ambitious movie you'll ever see. Exploring the difficult transition between late adolescence and adulthood is the the territory of maybe 90% of low-key indie dramas (the remaining 10% being depressed middle-aged couples having affairs, see Lyn Shelton's previous Your Sister's Sister), so exploring the woes of a character who'd rather get drunk and have a good time bridling against responsibility is very familiar territory

Granted these manchild roles tend to be played by Seth Rogen (or Rogen-a-likes), so it's a nice change to see this transition from a woman's perspective.  The gender flip doesn't really break virgin cinematic ground either; but at least the central relationship between the mature-for-her-years Annika and the developmentally stunted Megan has a few interesting wrinkles. Prime among them is the refusal to sink into easy stereotypes; Annika and her friends are entirely believable teenagers, their outlooks, problems and behaviour perfectly pitched at 16.  Not only that, writer/director Lynn Shelton also effortlessly overcomes the not inconsiderable hurdle of getting us to buy into not only a 16 year girl befriending a 28 year old woman, but that woman entering into a relationship with her 45 year old Dad without it feeling even slightly creepy.

With dull-if-competent cinematography and a suburban American setting that throws up very little of visual interest, the success of the film is borne on the backs of the cast.  On the younger side of the generation gap Moretz makes her teenage neuroses feel important; we buy into her rocky relationship with her divorced parents and respect her intelligence and maturity.  The supporting cast teenagers also impress, particularly a scene-stealing turn from Short Term 12's Kaitlyn Dever as smart-ass best friend Misty.

It's the adults that really shine, particularly the love triangle between Knightley, Rockwell and Webber.  The latter, saddled with a thankless role as the supportive yet dull-as-dishwater long term boyfriend expertly injects pathos into the role, his defeated, hangdog expression allowing us to feel sympathetic even as we silently urge Knightley to dump his boring ass. 

But the heart of the film lies with Knightley and Rockwell.  In lesser hands the woes of an attractive, educated, upper middle class woman torn between two attractive wealthy man might come across as a touch insulting; if this is the worst problem you'll ever have to deal with then you've lead a charmed life.  But Knightley digs deep, exposing a raft of vulnerabilities and paranoias in Megan that elevate her into a fully three-dimensional character.  These problems may not amount to a hill of beans, but at least for the film's 90 minute run time I cared about them.

worrr look at em go!

Rockwell isn't stretching quite as far; playing a smart, funny and quietly heartbroken man is firmly within his stable of capabilities.  But in the latter scenes, where needles are jabbed into his psychological wounds he ups the ante, giving us a powerful dose of crushing disappointment as we watch his last dreams of happiness shriveling up before our very eyes. This is aided by some genuine chemistry between him and Knightley, including one slam-wham-bam first kiss that instantly goes down as (so far) my 'Kiss of 2014'.

As well as these characters are realised they're still locked into a largely predictable series of events.  There's a cliched cycle towards the end of the film where Megan does something horrible to each of the supporting cast in turn, for about 5-10 minutes of the run time they'll hate her guts, but one-by-one she miraculously wins them back over until everyone's super chums all over again. Their easy forgiveness feels a bit trite and ill-earned, undermining some of what was so painstakingly built up in the performances.  Also the relationship between Annika and Megan peters out precisely as Megan starts banging her Dad, which you'd think would warrant slightly more than a shrug and an "I guess I'm cool with it" from Annika.

Say When isn't going to go down in history as a stone cold classic.  It's not even going to be in anyone's Best of 2014 list.  But it's a competent, occasionally touching drama that puts its its best assets (Knightley, Rockwell and Moretz) front and centre and trusts them to do their thing.

★★★

Say When is released November 7th

Monday, August 26, 2013

'The Way, Way Back' (2013) directed by Nat Faxon & Jim Rash

Monday, August 26, 2013 - by londoncitynights · - 0 Comments

The plot of the The Way, Way Back is so weirdly specific it must be real.  An awkward, introverted teenager is brought out of his adolescent funk by working in a water park.  It's a strange concept, simultaneously utterly mundane  and off the wall.  The film is set in the modern day yet feels oddly timeless, a cocktail of quasi-retro imagery that feels ripped straight from the 70s or 80s.

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Friday, December 7, 2012

‘Seven Psychopaths’ (2012) directed by Martin McDonagh, 4th December 2012

Friday, December 7, 2012 - by londoncitynights · - 0 Comments

‘Seven Psychopaths’ is a very easy film to analyse as it does all the hard work for you.  Rarely have I seen a film so eager to consciously pick itself apart and explain why it’s ridiculous, silly and half-baked.  This is writer/director Martin McDonagh’s follow up to the transcendant ‘In Bruges’.  On the surface that film is a ‘geezer gangster’ romp in the vein of  Guy Ritchie, but very quickly starts grappling with some big, important themes.  I enjoyed it so much that when I actually visited Bruges earlier this year I was more excited about spotting locations from the film than I was about the medieval architecture.

After I’d taken this trip I found myself wondering what else McDonagh had done, it’d been four years since his last film, what on earth had he been up to?  So it was with some anticipation that I found out he’d been making another film with Colin Farrell to be released later this year.  I don’t really know much about Martin McDonagh, but based on this film I think I can hazard a guess why he's been having so much 'second album trouble'.

‘Seven Psychopaths’ is about a screen-writer living in LA struggling with writer’s block and encountering a series of eccentric weirdoes.  I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to imagine that this roughly aligns with the McDonagh’s actual experiences in LA.  The plot isn’t particularly important, it boils down to ‘guys steal dog, dog’s owner wants dog back’.  What ‘Seven Psychopaths’ is really concerned with is its own writing process. We follow a character writing the film we're watching and struggling how to balance his artistic sensibilities against what an audience wants.  It's almost too obvious to say, but lead character ‘Marty’ is an obvious fictionsuit for the director.

This is basically the director as played by Colin Farrell

Naturally this film doesn’t skimp on the psychopaths, nearly all of the characters are unbalanced in one form or another.  What this means is that the actors have license to ham it up a bit, everyone looks as if they’re having a great time in this.  Sam Rockwell as Billy Bickle comes perilously close to smashing right through the fourth wall.  He’s a character given free reign to pretty much do whatever he wants.  I’ve always admired the way Rockwell can act extremely obnoxiously, yet still somewhere, deep down, retain a kind of wounded sympathy.  Throughout the film, the characters regularly commit atrocious acts, but faced with a hyper-reality, and a gallery of grotesques, we're on their side.

Christopher Walken’s ‘Hans’ is a great creation.  This is Walken playing to his type, slightly off-skewed and dignified, like an alien trying to masquerade as human.  The film is unashamedly emotionally detached, and Walken plays a very stoic and zen-like character, yet if there is a heart to this film, it’s in Walken.  He’s deeply in love with his wife, who’s hospitalised with cancer.  It’s a very sweet relationship, one that seems a little at odds with the arch tone of the rest of the film. 

Christopher Walken doing his thing.

Aside from this, there are a plethora of amazing character actors; Woody Harrelson, Harry Dean-Stanton and Tom Waits standing out.  If you see any of these people on a cinema screen, you know you’re in for something special, even if their appearance is all too brief.  McDonagh gives all three excellent opportunities to play up to their type, it’s some very clever casting.  There’s also a blink and you’ll miss it cameo from Crispin Glover, someone who it’s always nice to see on screen.

The only slightly weak link in the cast is Colin Farrell as our lead, Marty.  It’s not a criticism of his acting, rather that his character doesn’t really have much to do other than react to what’s going on around him.  After seeing him in loads of pretty bad movies, when I saw him in ‘In Bruges’ I finally realised why he kept getting cast, and I was expecting a similar calibre of performance here.   But for all the crazy events that he gets swept up in, we never really learn much about him.  His artistic motivations are wrapped up in the film’s slightly awkward criticism of gratuitous violence in film.  From what we can gather he’s become disillusioned with Hollywood clichés in film and wants to make a film where people sit around in the desert: “just human beings talking to each other.”

Sam Rockwell being enjoyably wacky.  He's good at this.

 The problem with criticising a film like this is that it’s all too ready to do the job for you.  At times, this feels like McDonagh undergoing a process of self-flagellation.  People point out that the in-film script of ‘Seven Psychopaths’ doesn’t have any well-rounded female characters, and any that are introduced tend to be brutally killed soon after, and as the script in the film says, so the film we're watching does.  Now, just because a film outlines what’s wrong with it, does than invalidate criticism?  

Towards the mid-way point, ‘Seven Psychopaths’ begins to feel like it’s a collection of vague ideas and sketches for stories haphazardly stitched together.  There are so many subversive moments where what would ‘normally’ happen in a major studio film doesn't happen that the film becomes a compilation of ‘wouldn’t it be neat if…?'s. The net result of all this self-referential dialogue, dream sequences and films within films is that we don’t particularly care how the film we're watching ends up.   But, of course in this film it’s difficult to work out whether or not elements in it are consciously half-baked to make a point about other films and screenplays, or just genuinely not quite there. 

Frankly you begin to get a headache.

Walken and Farrell in a dream-sub-film-script-writing meta sequence.

All this fourth wall nudging and self referencing is on one hand very funny, and on the other a little off-putting.  McDonagh writes great dialogue and has a perfectly developed sense of the absurd.  The narrative freedom that the structure and tone provides gives him the perfect excuse to be unpredictable.  Characters react to events in bizarre ways, almost consciously screwing with established rules of film-making and storytelling.

The flipside is that the film for all its irreverence, has a bitter and cynical heart.  It’s a critique of things in modern film that I presume McDonagh genuinely finds annoying and boring.  I agree with a lot of his arguments, the points the film makes about use of gratuitous violence, coincidence and the role of women in film are all valid.  It's just that the film tends to be a little too smug in its cleverness.   It’s as if McDonagh is lashing out at his employers, saying, in effect “I’m too smart for this crap”.  This is unattractive, and it should be noted that while the film rails against a lot of narrative devices and problematic cliches, the solutions it presents are pretty damn vague.

Tom Waits and some rabbits.

‘Seven Psychopaths’ is compelling enough while you're watching it, you’re never sure which filmic convention they’re going to ignore, or what bizarre turn the plot is going to take.  Afterwards the whole exercise feels a bit hollow, perhaps because there’s no emotional core here.  The nearest filmic comparison I can think of would be Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze’s ‘Adaptation’ which features a similarly fictionalised version of the author struggling with writer’s block.  ‘Adaptation’ uses many of the same tricks that ‘Seven Psychopaths’ does, yet manages to also make us care about the plight of its leads.

Disappointingly, this is a big step down from ‘In Bruges’.  That film dealt with big universal things: redemption, revenge, guilt, grief and the afterlife.  ‘Seven Psychopaths’ is more concerned about exposing silly writing clichés.  It’s very much the equivalent of a band's ‘difficult second album’.  The first album is written before the band are big, the songs have been developed at the band’s own pace with not much pressure and are about things people can identify with.  The second album tends to be written on the road, and invariably becomes about the travails of being famous or pressure to perform.  ‘Seven Psychopaths’ is Martin McDonagh’s difficult second album.  I hope writing and directing it has at the very least cured him of his writer’s block.