Prison 77 is a fictionalised story based on the real events that took place in Spain during the transition from fascism to democracy. With the prospect of amnesty for political prisoners on the horizon, the ordinary prisoners demand it cover them as well. After all, what crime is not political?
As the main character is put through intake at the start of the film, a guard welcomes back another inmate, a familiar face, joking that he can’t keep out of trouble even in a democracy. The prisoner asks, there gonna be a job for him in this new democracy? The film follows the burst of hope following Franco’s death as life settle back into the status quo, and it seems democracy is just a word.
The movie covers the development of the Prisoners Rights Association and their various actions. They advocate for an amnesty for all the country’s prisoners. They want freedom.
If you don’t know how that works out, spoiler alert, there are still prisons. I didn’t know how the real events concluded, so it was still really interesting to see how it all played out in the film.
Prison 77 examines the brutality and futility of the prison system, and how we use the excuse of not dealing with our social problems by building four walls around them.
During a traumatic event, your body switches into fight or flight mode, adrenaline and cortisol coursing. Higher brain functions shut down, including the processing of long-term memory. Which is why people who’ve been through terrible events can sometimes have no memory of it, or only fragments, or can’t remember things until long after. This part of recovery, dealing with remembering or not remembering, is what the film Paris Memories is about.
Mia is sitting in a restaurant when there is a terrorist attack. In the aftermath, everyone wants her to talk about it, to support her with what she’s been through. It seems impossible to communicate to them that she doesn’t know what she’s been through. She doesn’t remember any of it.
At first there are just ghosts, folk she passed in the hall, faces of people she saw, appearing like afterimages in her daily life. When she starts to meet other survivors, she gets snatches of sensations, sounds, glimpses, the feeling of someone holding her hand.
Paris Memories is about the long shadow cast by trauma, how its impact is not simply in its immediate effect, but in how it disrupts people’s very sense of self. Virginie Efira is amazing as ever, but it suffers from the French need to crowbar l’amour into every story.
Daniel is a film about a heavy subject but it handles with sensitivity, thought and empathy. After the suicide of a young lesbian in his religious rural community, local gay artist Daniel tries to organise a tribute to her life, but meets with resistance and prejudice. It is based on a true story.
The titular character is one of the few out gay men in his farming community in Poland. He is so unapologetically himself that he seems have been allowed a place as an exception. Like how a guy I knew once said to me, “All gays are sick in the head, but you’re alright.” It helps that Daniel is a devout Catholic and he makes art which venerates his faith. Cutting about on his motorbike, never out his Adidas rainbow stripe trackies, he has no conflict in his identity as rural and religious, and gay and artistic. He protests for the rights of his rural community just as he protests for the rights of his queer community.
That effortless synthesis of identity begins to fracture after a young girl kills herself. Daniel, perhaps without intention, just through the sheer force of his character, is seen as a mother for local queer youth, he is someone they can go to who will be accepting. When she dies, he feels the weight of the failure to see how much she was struggling, how much pain she was in, how great was her need. He tries to organise for her a religious act called The Ways of the Cross.
Now, maybe like me, you have no idea what The Ways of the Cross is, but the film is able to give enough context that you can see it is an act recognising suffering. How she suffered, how we suffer, how Christ suffers, and how that suffering is not meaningless or in vain and we are not alone in it. Daniel builds a cross that he intends for the whole community to carry and walk with through the village. It is an act which will openly acknowledge the pain she was in, that they caused by their hatred or indifference to it, their collective contrition, and speak to a will to do better. It is intended as an act of healing.
It doesn’t go over like that. The priest explains how he can’t support this for a suicide. Some are appalled at this religious rite being used to promote ‘the gay agenda’ (of you know, living safely with dignity and respect). Others accuse Daniel of capitalising on this tragedy to make it about his art, his opinions, a spectacle. Instead of binding the community together, it only shows up how deep the divides, and the veneer of tolerance is tremulously thin.
The urban, secular queer community take up Daniel’s cross as a piece of art, try to frame it in a city exhibition space, to gawk at and intellectualise. Here Daniel is also alienated, he tries to make them understand that this is not a sculpture using religious iconography to provoke, it is an act of sincere faith.
The film handles the matter so well, giving enormous space to the full gamut of grief, and treating this community as a place with as much nuance, politics, art, culture and social dynamism as the city. A hard but worthwhile watch.
The opening scene of this film tells you everything you need to know about the main character, Howard, and his relationship with his daughter, Grace. She drives out to his house in the arse-end of nowhere, bringing with her a cake for his birthday. He sits in the musty dark of his livingroom, doing the crossword, surrounded by stacks of old newspaper and general detritus and clutter. He doesn’t look when she calls his name, barely glances at the birthday cake she’s brought him. When she goes into the kitchen, it’s full of dirty dishes, rotting food, and a sink full of old drawers for the wash. She’s bought him a washing machine, but he refuses to use it. He gives not a fuck about her, expects her to pick up after him, and won’t even meet her halfway, because why would he? Why would he care how much work he makes for her or how exhausted she is?
He brightens when his sons show up for their annual drop-by, there to enjoy the party after Grace has tidied and cleaned and prepared food for them. They brag about their latest holidays and bring their dad expensive gifts. Then fuck off never to be seen for the rest of the movie, leaving Grace with the day-to-day drudgery of looking after their father.
And I just looked at Howard and thought, “Ye auld bastard”. Auld, dirty, bastard. Probably stinks of piss coz he never bothers to air the house or change his trousers and leaves his washing to pile up for someone else to do. Fucking picked up after all his life, by his mother, then his wife, and now his daughter’s to do it, because of course she is, that’s what she’s for.
Grace is a nurse who works long hours, her marriage is crumbling because, by putting herself last in everything, she’s left her partner alone in their relationship. Every spare minute she has is spent worrying about her father, because he takes no responsibility for looking after himself.
When she hires Annie as a home help, against Howard’s wishes, it’s in the hope it might give her just a fraction of relief. But unexpectedly a romance blooms between Annie and Howard.
This is a love story, but it’s also a lack of love story. Howard spends Christmas with Annie and her family, doesn’t even bother to invite Grace or mention his plans with his new circle, leaving her to turn up as an unwanted guest in own childhood home. At dinner he gives a toast, thanking for all she’s done, all the help she’s been, all the light and love she’s brought into his life, Annie. Grace, invisible at the other end of the table, is the ghost at the feast. Later, when Grace asks what it is about Annie that has turned him around so radically, made him this laughing, joking, story-telling life of the party, he tells Grace that he loves Annie. The implication being that he never made any effort to laugh or joke or be his best self with Grace because he doesn’t love her. It’s so brutal and cold and callous.
The main plot is the love story between Howard and Annie, and Grace’s objections are the hurdle they have to clear. But Grace warns Annie that her father is so enamoured with her now, after she’s come to him as a paid servant, after she’s cooked and cleaned and made him comfortable in all his wants and needs. And while she’s shiny and new, he will be jovial, but Annie should be warned that it will not last. Because he’s a selfish auld bastard and he loves her only in so far as it costs him nothing and serves him. And quite frankly Grace is right on the money.
Annie is a domestic abuse survivor, and Grace’s warning shakes her, because going through something like that makes you constantly question yourself, question your judgement, look with suspicion upon people who profess their love for you. And it would be easier for their romance if Grace was wrong, but she’s not. To the last in this film, Howard puts himself first, his ego, his enjoyment. He is exactly who Grace tells her he is.
In some ways I resented that Howard gets this beautiful romance, because he doesn’t deserve it. But love doesn’t come because we deserve it. This will be the last love of Howard and Annie’s lives. It’s up to them whether to embrace it.
Beautifully shot, beautifully acted, very emotive.
The blurb for this movie describes it as nerve-shredding, and boy does it deliver. So tense. Not been on the edge of my seat like that since watching Land of Mine.
How To Blow Up A Pipeline is about, funnily enough, people blowing up a pipeline. A group of young people from disparate backgrounds come together to take direct action against the oil industry. The film follows the execution of their carefully prepared plan, while showing what led them to this moment in flashbacks.
My worry with the film was that it was going to do the predictable thing, show young people taking direct political action and portray their naivety, their short-sightedness, their ego and lust for a rush. That their valid concerns would be given ‘balance’ with the unthinkable possibility that one person on the other side have a single hair on their head harmed. That this would be an exploration of how people could be lead on such an extreme and misguided path.
That is not this film. How To Blow Up A Pipeline explores the multiple ways this industry is killing people here and now, even as it drives towards our collective annihilation through climate change. It shows indigenous kids trying to prevent the destruction of the last of their land, of folk losing people they love in the heat waves that are already taking hold, of the hopelessness of young people being robbed of their future. This film is not about to balance that by cutting to – what exactly? Some billionaire having his portfolio returns disrupted by fluctuating oil prices? What are you going to balance that with?
I love that the cast reflected the reality that the people doing most of the heavy lifting in the fight against climate change are the people most directly effected and least likely to be in positions of power. Young people of colour, especially women. All the young actors are just great, and make their character clear and distinct, even in a large ensemble cast.
Thoroughly recommend How To Blow Up A Pipeline. Tight, tense and as urgent as its message.
How to sell this film… It has Colin Mochrie in a leather chest harness.
The End of Sex is about Josh and Emma, a middle-aged middle-class couple, who after 10 years of marriage, are experiencing bed death. A week away from their kids for the first time makes them realise that it’s been a long time since they had genuinely satisfying sex together, and increasingly adventurous attempts to spice things up only lead them to dread whether the sexual element of their relationship is even recoverable.
That sounds grim, it’s actually hilarious. Like they decide to have chem sex on MDMA, and then just sit there, staring, wondering where the hell they are gonna find MDMA. They decide to go to an orgy, then just sit there, staring, wondering where the hell they are gonna find an orgy. What I love about it is this juxtaposition of attempting to have care-free sex, while being chronically self-conscious of how awkward it is. Like trying to mingle at a sex club, or approach equally middle-aged, middle-class people in their social circle for a threesome.
Always this is balanced against the safety and understanding of a long relationship where they know each other really well. The familiarity that is really neutering is also incredibly comforting.
I loved the character of Marlon. They’re like, “Wow, you have no filter!” and it’s yeah, he’s clearly autistic as fuck. His flirting reminded me of myself so vividly it was almost too hard to watch.
The End of Sex is a good fun rom-com about long-term relationships, about the ups and downs that beset you after you’ve thought you’ve won and got your happy-ever-after.
Punch is the story of Jamie, a boy in a backwater, small town in New Zealand who is training as a boxer under the tutelage of his alcoholic father, and who has a coming-of-age romance with a local openly queer Maori boy, Whetu.
I came to this film wanting to like it so much. Queer romance with an indigenous lead character? Yes please! But Punch is absolutely all over the place. I could nitpick over the overuse of slow motion, but it’s a first feature, you expect the director to still be learning the ropes. But Punch has bigger problems.
Midway through the film Whetu is the target of a hate crime, and is physically and sexually assaulted. I think the filmmaker did not understand how that scene changed the entire film. I think they thought that, as long as you don’t show the penetrative act, it’s not graphic, but massively underestimated how graphic and traumatic it felt. After that the film goes back to following Jamie preparing for this big match he has coming up, and you are like, “Seriously, do you think anyone gives a fuck about this now? Why is the white kid’s boxing match being forefronted? Literally nothing else matters compared to this.”
It changes the whole trajectory of the film. Their tentative romance storyline treats it as a blip, as though that wouldn’t have any impact on your first romantic sexual experience. And you are waiting for these attackers to get their comeuppance, for a movie called Punch centred on a boxer whose lover has just been assaulted to move towards some kind of confrontation. But it’s put on the back burner for much less interesting stuff, and when it finally is addressed, it’s so clunky, reacted to so unnaturally, and even stevens as though that’s the end of things in a way that’s wholly unbelievable and narratively unsatisfying.
The film suffers from a failure to show, don’t tell. People state the obvious repeatedly, like saying, “You’re drunk” to a swaying man, as though the audience don’t have eyes. The main character has a monologue about how it still isn’t safe to be gay, in what feels like the filmmaker just using the character as a puppet to speak through, unnatural and not actually touching on the character’s emotional state, and utterly redundant after we just sat through and watched a homophobic sexual assault.
I’d love to be able to recommend Punch, it has some fine performances from Tim Roth as Jamie’s father, and from the two young actors playing Whetu and Jamie. But it’s a film that is unknowingly traumatising, and doesn’t handle the weight of what it’s dealing with mindfully enough.
The Ordinaries is one of the most original films I’ve seen in years.
In life, there are Main Characters, Supporting Characters, and Outtakes. Paula is in training for her exam to see if she will be a Main Character like her deceased father, or be relegated to the sidelines like her Supporting Character mother. All she wants in the world is to pass her exam, that is until she ends up drawn into the world of Outtakes, the people the film has no use for.
Now, making a movie in which casting is a metaphor for class sounds cool, but it could be very one-note and on the nose. The Ordinaries is anything but. The film is just so inventive and creative. The film starts from that concept, then spills out in so many directions, playing with its central premise in different ways.
And it’s funny. Sending up the tropes and obvious cues to the audience. Something so Brechtian might be more clever than funny or so meta might be more irritating than humorous were it not for the extraordinary warmth and playfulness of The Ordinaries.
The Ordinaries is about whose stories matter. The Main Characters are all fitted with little panels on their hearts that convert their emotions into transcendent, sweeping scores. Everyone else’s emotions remain silent, self-contained. As the plot develops more into a political-social satire, you see Outtakes with pixelated mouths, censored further to silence them utterly.
But it is not just about those done-to, but about how regardless of what has been decided in the world at large, people on the margins do have their own stories, their own agency, their own narratives.
One of the most interesting characters for me is the maid that leads Paula into the world of Outtakes. She works in the house of Paula’s wealthy Main Character friend. While their musical genre family jump up on the dinner table and sing about how happy they are, her job is to actually set it up for the meal they’ll eat when the singing stops. They call her Miscast, and at her first appearance you think she is a throw-away sight gag. Because at first glance she is a not-that-attractive, middle-aged man in a French maid’s outfit. But as the film goes on you learn her name is Hilde and she is exactly who she is, just a woman, looking after her sick brother, trying to make ends meet and keep her head down enough to get by. At the same time, she is politically active, protecting and supporting those targeted by the police, and speaking out about the erasure of the experiences of those on the margins. She is just Hilde, but it’s been decided she doesn’t look like she’s supposed to, so she is relegated to being Miscast, her existence reduced to a joke in the background of others’ world. I have never seen such an interesting and succinct way of describing what it’s like being trans. That is literally all it is, society deciding you don’t look like you’re supposed to to be who you are.
I was so impressed with The Ordinaries. Nothing is done in a boring and expected way if it can be done in a more interesting one. Like when the police fire at you, the scene starts to cut to black in chunks as they try to delete your scene. So cool, so creative, great film.
Cards on the table, I’m maybe not the best person to review this film. Back in my 20s all my pals got into reading Haruki Murakami, and were like, “You have to read him, you’ll love it!” And I read some, and was like, “Eh… I don’t like this guy.” They were appalled, like I had just said The Godfather was shit or slagged off early Black Sabbath.
Murakami has a very clear literary voice, something which Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman does a very good job of carrying into the film. I just… don’t like that voice. And his depiction of women always makes my skin crawl, attempting to elevate to poetry this sexualisation of sad women, a fetishisation of the noble struggle to negotiate pussy out of these unknowable, mysterious creatures. All of which is to say, I hold opinions which do not make me the most objective judge of this film.
That being said, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman is pretty much what I’d expect. It’s masculinity in crisis in a meandering set of virtual non-events.
In the aftermath of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, two men in Tokyo experience a crisis. Komura’s wife leaves him suddenly, and Katagiri takes a nervous breakdown and starts hallucinating a talking man-sized frog. Komura’s wife briefly has a short vignette telling a story about her 20th birthday, but the majority of the film follows Komura stumbling through the shellshock of his marriage ending. Both Katagiri and Komura’s wanderings are less about events and more a vehicle for introspection as they question the choices they’ve made up until this point.
The film is a mixed bag. Some of the animation is beautiful and to be commended, some of it I could take or leave. It was weird to watch the English dub of what is originally French, because it’s set in Tokyo, and you just feel like they should be speaking Japanese. The drifting, dislocated nature of Komura’s emotional state is communicated effectively, but it doesn’t exactly make for riveting engagement with this character who is insular and numb. Katagiri is more sympathetic because he is so profoundly lonely, but it’s not as if that resolves itself in any satisfying way. So there’s no real emotional pay off for investing in these characters.
I think if you like Murakami, this will be your bag. If you don’t, it won’t. And if you’re coming to this cold with no expectations, it’s going to seem like a lot of nothing happening, which you may or may not enjoy.
From the director of powerful and nuanced short film Expensive Shit, comes Adura Onashile’s first feature film, Girl. An emotional portrait of a young girl and her mother, living in a Glasgow high-rise.
Firstly, beautiful. Stunning cinematography, you know when a shot can only be described as delicious?
Secondly, powerful performances. This isn’t a film driven by events, but one that asks you to sit in the characters’ emotional state. It has a more meditative pacing and tone. The journey of the film isn’t one you can chart from plot point to plot point, but one that invites you into the interiority of the characters, where so much is expressed even without dialogue.
Grace is Ama’s mother. She’s a young woman, only 25, and raising Ama alone. Fiercely protective of her 11-year old daughter, Grace has come to the attention of social work as she has been keeping Ama out if school. The trauma that caused her to fall pregnant at 14, that has left its mark on her in panic attacks and periods of dissociation, is never explicitly stated, but is conveyed through its impact on her relationship with her daughter.
They have a tight-knit bond, deeply loving, but blighted by the burden of Grace’s trauma being handed onto her daughter. Grace is trying to be invisible, doesn’t trust anyone, and it’s this that causes her to isolate herself as well as Ama. Ama is confined to their flat much of the time, and her tentative friendship with another girl at school is seen as a potential vector for the ingress of danger into their lives. Without intention, Grace’s protection of Ama veers into controlling and abusive.
What marks this film is the profound empathy it has for its characters. Despite highlighting the damaging impact of generational trauma, no judgement is placed on Grace. She is a very young woman who has survived god knows what, and is coping as best she can. And it’s not as if her fears are unfounded. Everything she’s worried about could happen. She plucks Ama’s underarm hair and refuses to let her wear deodorant, and while it seems extreme, you understand what she is doing, don’t let them smell it on you, don’t let them believe you are now fair game. It’s infantilising but the threat she’s trying to protect Ama from is one she herself has experienced first hand.
What’s great about Girl is there is no need to underline things. Without having to state anything explicitly, you can see the dangers of being a young, Black girl on the cusp of puberty, from an immigrant background and living in a high poverty neighbourhood. Girl doesn’t try to explain gender, class and race to you, like you’ve never heard of it before. It allows the characters to just be, without needing to explain themselves to the audience as an observer.
I also loved that Girl explores generational trauma without having to make anyone the villain. The damage this is doing to Ama is mirrored in the damage it has done and is still doing to Grace. Grace is equally the Girl of the film’s title as much as Ama. And because there is such genuine love between the mother and daughter, there is hope this can be overcome. That it is possible to heal.
Just a thoroughly moving film, deftly using the visual language of filmmaking and superb performances to take us on a journey of the invisible, the unspoken.
