The Rose Maker

Had a little trouble getting to this preview. Hands up, I thought it was a Luna screening but it was actually at the Windsor. No matter, it turns out you can get from one cinema to the other in under 15 minutes. So, just in time to crimp off the end of a Matt Damon trailer, we settled in for The Rose Maker.

This lovingly made light drama, set in northern France, positions itself as one thing, and then not so subtly, takes a different tack. It opens with a prestigious flower show, where Madame Vernet (played with irascible verve by Catherine Frot) and her slightly beleaguered assistant, Véra (Olivia Côte) are clearly struggling to keep their small rose farm’s head above water. It only adds to their feeling of deflation when Lamarzelle, an oily business-oriented operator, wins the ‘rose of the year’ prize for the umpteenth time in a row.

So begins the themes of helplessness and desperation in the face of corporate power. Vernet’s farm was left to her by her father and she runs it like an artisan’s workshop. Lamarzelle (played by Vincent Dedienne), on the other hand, has a high yearly turnover and, crucially, is in the habit of buying up rare roses and denying access to other growers who may want to get into a spot of hybridising. This discovery by Vernet sets in motion the companion thread of the film. Véra comes up with a cash-saving plan to hire staff for the farm via a French version of work-for-the-dole. Three unlikely types arrive - Samir, Nadège and Fred – to the initial distaste of Mme Vernet. Samir (Fatsah Bouyahmed) is fifty and trying to escape his tiny apartment. Nadège (Marie Petoit) is shy and awkward, save for one cracking outburst in the third act. And Fred (Manel Foulgoc, alias rapper Melan Omerta) becomes the centre-piece of the film, the rose of the title. He’s the one who makes the most trouble and consequently, has the clearest arc in the film.

Somewhat irrationally, Vernet decides to steal a rare rose from Lamarzelle, and in a nasty move, threatens to send Fred and the others back if they don’t help her. This robbery is happily consigned to history as the film progresses, as though Lamarzelle’s ‘crime’ of not allowing freedom for others to use his property is worse than Vernet’s theft. Perhaps there would have been a visible form of retribution in the film, were this made in a more conservative film industry, but satisfyingly, it doesn’t happen in The Rose Maker.

There is a sub-plot about Fred’s absent parents to flesh out his character, and the ultimate reconnection with them is a neat moment of rebuke. But the essence of the film is the relationship between Vernet and Fred. Vernet’s realisation that Fred has a gift for recognising smells, and her subsequent warming to him, and the others, is where the focus remains. These final scenes may be predictable, but the way director, Pierre Pinaud and his writers have grafted the two story threads of resilience and regrowth together would make most rose growers proud. 

Incidentally, sister Mandy attests to the (near) accuracy of the flower husbandry/porn on show. For more of this insight, listen to the podcast attached.

The Rose Maker opens at Luna Palace Cinemas and Palace Cinemas on Aug 5th.

[Most of this review was also published on the Film Ink website - https://www.filmink.com.au/reviews/the-rose-maker/]

See also:

This is a lot like the 2000 British film, Greenfingers, directed by Joel Hershman, and similar in nasal terms to Perfumes (2019), directed by Grégory Magne.

MILD SPOILERS AND FLORAL DESCRIPTIONS WITHIN POD!

The Toll

The Toll is a laid-back, Welsh crime drama starring Michael Smiley, Iwan Rheon and Annes Elwy. The key adjective here is laid-back, it may be that somewhere along the production line someone mistook dull for cool. It kicks off with a toll booth operator (Smiley) on a near deserted back road meeting a police officer (Elwy), in order to get something off his chest. The first words in the film are, "This had better be fucking good". Hopeful prescience.

The film tries to spin a bunch of strands together, personified by big city gangsters, small city gangsters, village hoods, farmers and a local ambulance driver, who's fond of a spot of dogging. Sadly, these strands don't make much of a garment, they start to fray and hang loose around the film's saggy waist. The confusion is even alluded to in the dialogue, but that doesn't make up for the supposed clever clogs writing. The performances aren't too bad, and Elwy is really solid, but everyone seems laboured and weighed down by the material. Smiley is better in everything else I've seen him in (starting with the peerless Spaced, as bike courier, Tyres). It showed promise early on but quickly lost itself in the over-telling, the climax was unnecessarily 'Spaghetti-westernised' and some of the characters' choices were exceedingly hard to square with likelihood or common sense.

I've seen it compared to Fargo or The Guard but, apart from the attempted dry humour or casual violence, it really pales in comparison, even to those slightly above average films. Elwy could use this as a springboard to success but, unfortunately, there's not much else to recommend about this film.

The Toll opens on July 29th at The Luna.

See also:

The fantastic Twin Town (1997), directed by Kevin Allen, is how you do Welsh films, and because Thoros of Myr (Paul Kaye) AND Ramsay Bolton (Iwan Rheon) are both in this, do yourself the good deed of watching Game of Thrones again.

Black Widow

The fact that I'm not sure how I feel about Black Widow probably means the part of my brain that wanted it to be better is still fighting with the part that realises it isn't. And that pile of word spew is all down to my brain too. Just be thankful you don't have to deal with it on a daily basis. I'll try to unpack. I admire many, and quite like a few of the Marvel films. I have a Lost in Translation-based soft spot for Scarlett Johansson. I also trust Kevin Fiege and assorted minions to put together a cast and crew that know what they're doing. And so, I didn't walk into the cinema with any chips on my shoulders. But, but...I can't help thinking that this film, for all its good intentions, may have missed a golden opportunity. Setting this chunk of Natasha Romanoff's back story just after the end of Captain America: Civil War meant that the writers (Eric Pearson, Jac Schaeffer and Ned Benson) had references points, but basically carte blanche on where they could go, what they could do. It had a chance to be much more raw, more stand-alone, and maybe less formulaic. Instead we have one villain in Dreykov (Ray Winstone), who seems a faxed copy of many gone before, another villain in Taskmaster (NAME REDACTED), who isn't utilised well enough, and another - SPOILER AHEAD! - unfeasibly large structure falling from the sky. Honestly, it's getting silly, it's as though this Marvel mob have the Branson/Bezos/Musk affliction of Earth aversion.

Scars is as good as usual in the role, which has come a long way from the sexy aggression of Iron Man 2 and the many poster stances she had to strike in the past. There's a meta-piss-take from her sister, Yelena (Florence Pugh), complaining that she always does that 'thing with her hair and her arm' when she's getting ready to fight - calling her out as a poser. Pugh is pretty good, as are Rachel Weisz and David Harbour as the sisters' faux parents, Melina and Alexei. Aussie Cate Shortland directed this and the female gaze marks an improvement, especially for Romanoff's character. No more flinching, like in the first Avengers, instead there is a grudgingly warm relationship with her sister and attempts to reconnect with people. The theme of family runs deep through the Romanoff story, as does forgiveness and guilt, and here we get to know what happened in Budapest, a running motif between her and Hawkeye in previous films. On the note of guilt, this is one of the points where I think they chickened out, but to detail it would give away too much (we'll likely do that in the podcast though).

I've just read this back and I feel like I'm slagging it off a bit too much. It does do some nice things. The opening sequence from 1995 is well handled, as are the country hopping segments; from Norway, to Hungary, to Russia - it all feels a bit Bondy (maybe no coincidence Romanoff watches Moonraker in her caravan at one point). The showdown with Dreykov is satisfyingly reminiscent of a similar one with Loki in The Avengers, even down to a particular line (no, not the 'mewling quim'). And there's one particular scrap on a bridge, which stands out as a great example of how to block a fight scene. There are several call-backs to earlier lines or moments in the film (song, dog, upside down, whistle, even bioluminescence), and while I may be happy to countenance one or two, the number here just seems like smart-arsery. 

To sum up, Black Widow was a fun enough watch and it was nice to see Scars in the role one last time. The end credit sequence leaves a few interesting possibilities re: Marvel's phase four slate of films (and TV shows) and I guess this was the fitting send-off that Romanoff's character deserved. I read somewhere that this was Marvel's Bourne Identity, and while that's utter bollocks, I can kind of see why the critic wrote that. It was set up to be this antidote to a behemoth, as Bourne was to Bond, but didn't quite administer correctly.

See also: All the Red Room stuff is quite similar to Red Sparrow (2018), directed by Francis Lawrence, and David Leitch's Atomic Blonde (2017) has some echoes, especially in the Soviet spying stuff.

A MULTITUDE OF SPOILERS WITHIN POD!

Revelation Film Festival 2021 - Wrap up

Yep, that was a hoot. I'll just summarise the ten films I saw, but unlike last year, I thought I'd list them in order of least to most liked. So here we go:

The Killing of Two Lovers ★★

Here's a muddy, tension-soaked drama set in frosty Utah about a couple with four kids who are undertaking a trial separation. The fella, David, isn't as keen as the woman, Nikki, and a third, smarmy wheel in the form of a new boyfriend, Derek, doesn't improve the mood. The discordant soundtrack and the naturalistic, grungy setting try hard to overcome the amateurishness of the production values but ultimately, it's a losing battle. Not terrible, just not much good. For a little more on this, see my earlier post.

Nimby ★★½

This is a Finnish comedy/drama about couple who don't really fancy telling their respective parents that they're lesbians. Neo-Nazis and refugees are seamlessly (!) stitched into the plot and all manner of shenanigans occur. The biggest issue with Nimby is that it can't seem to settle on a tone. It wants to be a farce about political equanimity - a contrived speech given by one of the protags near the end underlines this - but it loses it's way quite early on. Is it a free speech romp? Is it a statement about intolerance? Is it a Finnish Carry On movie? It might be all of the above.

Oh It Hertz! ★★½

A documentary about sound and how it affects people. People like Stig, who collects sound systems; Yoko, who works on cleaning up hospital noise; and Professor Toby Heys, who talks about the weaponisation of sound. It's a bit up and down this, it tries to spread itself a bit thin and follows a Nazi conspiracy thread a little too far but I enjoyed parts of it. An admirable effort. See my extended Film Ink review for more...

Aalto ★★½

Here we have a doco about Finnish architect, Alvar Aalto and his wife Aino, a partnership that created seminal designs of furniture and buildings in the first half of the last century. The film uses Aalto's most famous works as stepping stones through his career while documenting the love story that ran alongside. Some of his (their) creations are pretty amazing, from the Paimio Sanatorium, to the Viipuri Library, to Finlandia Hall, and the visuals are spectacular. My main issue with the film is that, sadly, I almost drifted off to the land of nod on occasions. Maybe it was too long, maybe I was just sleepy. Or maybe I would have preferred to be walking around one of his actual buildings. 

The Most Beautiful Boy in the World ★★★

This is a doco about Björn Andrésen, the Swedish lad who was 'discovered' by Luchino Visconti for his film Death in Venice in 1971. It's a fascinating peek at how this 15 year old boy became a commodity (see every pretty young girl in the industry before and since) for the adulation, and possibly worse, of too many adults. The footage of Andrésen's screen test for Visconti is gob-smacking and the juxtaposition of the boy to the man he became is equally hard to square. The guy's been through some heinous shit and it's a fairly hard watch at times, but it's a compelling film about a stoic, yet clearly troubled character.

Jumbo ★★★½

Well, this was the film I highlighted when I first got the Rev schedule and it very nearly fulfilled my expectations. In saying that, it's a fine film about outsiders and how other people deal with them. The wrinkle is that all this is couched in a love story between a young woman, Noémie Merlant, and a....ummm....a fairground ride she calls Jumbo. Apparently, this is an actual phenomenon - Objectum Sexuality - and the film takes its idea from a documentary called Married to the Eiffel Tower, about, well, the clue's in the title. Anyway, I quite enjoyed Jumbo, not least for Merlant's performance and the sheer noodle-ness of the conceit. You don't see films like this every day.

The Monopoly of Violence ★★★½

Here's a very French examination on the use of violence by the state to put down the Gilets Jaunes protests in France from late 2018 to early 2021. It rolls out various individuals to comment, sometimes watching themselves on the smart phone or police footage of the melees. A neat angle is that the participants aren't named or given titles, so the viewer isn't sure which side they represent (though some are perfectly clear). Another successful method of illustrating the action is the matching shots of streets - first calm and clean, with folk going about their shopping or work, then cut to the same street but with all manner of mayhem occurring. It's like a dirty negative has been plopped onto the screen. Some of the conversations get a bit ponderous but this film is top documentation.

King Rocker ★★★½

Music docos have always been festival faves and here's another. This is in a similar vein to the recent Edgar Wright film, The Sparks Brothers, in that it zeroes in on a relatively unknown muso (Robert Lloyd of The Prefects and The Nightingales) and documents his career, and lack of success. The framing device here is the long-bow comparison between Lloyd and a statue of King Kong that the people of Birmingham didn't want. Quality comedy bastard, Stewart Lee fronts this doco and his moody, disdainful style works wonders for this format. There are some fun interviews with famous and not-so famous folk, who line up to contradict most of what Lloyd remembers. And it's directed by Michael Cumming, who did Brass Eye, Snuff Box and Toast of London. Superb pedigree, that.

Paul Dood's Deadly Lunch Break ★★★½

Now this could have gone either way, but fortunately, it mostly hit its marks. It's the story of an awkward, near middle-aged fella who lives with his old mum and really wants to make it big on an internet talent show. When he's prevented from getting to the audition by a number of feckless twats, he sets out to wreak his revenge. Tom Meeten as Paul is exceptional but the rest of the cast - including Katherine Parkinson, Steve Oram, Alice Lowe, Pippa Haywood and June Watson - hold their own too. Top drawer 80s tunes (Together in Electric Dreams feels bang on for this film), some comic gore and a fair chunk of heart, make Paul Dood a satisfying serve of silly. There's a bit more on this over on Film Ink.

The Last Horns of Africa ★★★½

I couldn't really split the last three in this list - they're all fine films but it felt right to give The Last Horns the headline spot. It's a great doco about the fight against the rhino horn poaching 'industry' in South Africa. Broadly, it's set out in two parts - the practical and the emotional. One section follows the police and Kruger Park rangers in their attempts to halt the killings, and the other looks at the work being done at Care for Wild Rhino Sanctuary, which rehabilitates orphan rhinos. There are moments of tension - the crew get some amazing access to a police operation against some of the poaching kingpins - and, of course, there are moments that provoke anger and sadness. A crucial, immensely watchable film.

SPOILERS IN POD!!

Nine Days

Nine Days is a directorial debut from Brazilian Edson Oda, starring Winston Duke, Zazie Beetz and Bendict Wong. It's a pensive, fantasy film that explores what would occur if there were 'observers' of life, making decisions on who could or couldn't enter. Duke plays Will, the observer of around a dozen or so people, one of whom suddenly dies, leaving a 'position vacant' on earth. The process begins with neat intercutting of applicants, all quite different folk. One of them is extremely tardy and is about to be rejected until Wong's character, Kyo, pleads for a chance. This is Emma, played by Beetz, and she promptly becomes the heart of the film.

I was concerned that this would be a quasi-religious tract and it does centre on the idea of a higher power, but this is done in a thoughtful, even nuanced way. Wong ponders at one point that there may well be other watchers watching them, and so on. The 'job interviews' for a place on earth are just as squirm-inducing as a regular one - 'Should I have said that?', 'Is that the answer he wants?', 'Why is he wearing a vest?', etc. At times, the film strays into the dreaded twee forest but it usually manages to bring itself back with  inventive touches from Oda and attention-holding performances from Beetz and Duke.

There are more questions than answers in Nine Days but that's to be expected from a film of this ilk. You can read it any way you like, ultimately.

Nine Days opens July 15th at Palace Cinemas and the Luna.

See also:

Beetz has a different kind of job interview in Deadpool 2 (2018), directed by David Leitch, and Frank Capra's It's Wonderful Life (1946) has Jimmy Stewart in limbo.

The Sparks Brothers

Here we have Edgar Wright's first stab at documentary film making, and it's something of a departure from his style. The chuckles are there but he seems to have gone for a reasonably risk-free structure - lots of talking heads, ups and downs of the subject, a chronology of their career and some pretty good music (a given for a music doco, I'd guess). 

The subjects are Ron and Russell Mael of the band Sparks, admittedly unknown to me (aside from one song that was on the Kick-Ass soundtrack - This Town Ain't Big Enough for Both of Us). One of the taglines is 'Your favourite band's favourite band' and the folk that front up to wax lyrical about Sparks are fairly glittery. You have Beck, some of Duran, Duran, Flea from Chili Peppers, Bernard Butler from Suede, Alex Kapranos from Franz Ferdinand, some of New Order, Roddy Bottum from Faith No More, Mike Myers, Weird Al Yankovic, Jason Schwartzman, Neil Gaiman, Giorgio Moroder, Adam Buxton, Mark Gatiss, bloody hell, this is near endless. I'll stop there.

The Sparks Brothers benefits from having the Mael brothers as its focus - these are two driven, uncompromising fellas, and watching their career unfold from Glam 70s, to Electro 80s, to all sorts of pop throughout, to their 'comeback' of recent years is pretty intriguing stuff. They take the act of not taking themselves too seriously, very seriously indeed. When badgered into writing a song that people could dance to, they released 'Music That You Can Dance To' as a supreme piss-take. A quick scan of some of their tracks read like a Smiths or Ween playlist. You have top titles like 'I Can't Believe You Would Fall for All the Crap in This Song', '(She Got Me) Pregnant', 'Let the Monkey Drive', 'What Are All These Bands So Angry About?', 'Angst in My Pants', 'I Thought I Told You to Wait in the Car', 'Everybody's Stupid' and 'Tits'.

This is a fine doco about a band that not enough people know about but more should. These guys made pretty esoteric music (and still are), and the theme, if any, is that they singularly didn't give a fuck what anyone else thought about them. Bravo, gents. 

The Sparks Brothers opens at the Luna and Palace Cinemas on July 8th.

See also:

This might be the first time I've recommended a film that hasn't been released yet but the Mael brothers have written a film for Leos Carax called Annette (2021) - Marion Cotillard, Adam Driver starring. Another mint, recent music doco is Crock of Gold: A Few Rounds with Shane MacGowan (2020), directed by Julien Temple.

Night Tide

Ok, real quick, here's the second film in the double bill from the Black Maria Film Collective and byNWR from late last month (scroll down for the first). This is Night Tide, directed by Curtis Harrington (who plied his trade in TV mostly) and starring a young Dennis Hopper. Now, this is a pretty neat, kooky little oddity about a sailor who falls for a girl who may or may not be a mermaid. It's ok and I'd probably have thought much less of it had it not screened straight after The Nest of the Cuckoo Birds. But in comparison, it's a fucking masterpiece. 

There are some over-wrought performances, possibly a hint at the director's future work on Charlie's Angels and Dynasty, but it had clean camera movements, functional editing and crisp enough sound design - things all devoid from the earlier film. Hopper is fine, very perky even, a world away from:

"What are they going to say about him? What? Are they going to say he was a kind man? He was a wise man? He had plans? He had wisdom? Bullshit, man!" or "HEINEKEN!? Fuck that shit! PABST BLUE RIBBON!!"

Once again, this is a film I can safely say I would never had seen if it weren't for these kind of events, and in this case, I'm grateful to Refn and the BMFC.

See also:

Although I didn't think much of it, Guillermo del Toro's The Shape of Water (2017) seems to be roundly appreciated, and it has a fish man in it. Much better is Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979), with Hopper in a small but memorable role.