Paris, 13th District

Right, hands up, my views on the following film may be clouded by the fact that I rank Jacques Audiard as the greatest living director. Somebody (maybe Mel Brooks?) once said - and I'm paraphrasing here - they'd forgive their best friend vomiting all over the dinner table, but be appalled if their enemy had their cutlery in the wrong place. That's kind of how I feel about Audiard - I know he can tend towards melodrama, and this might irk me in anyone else's hands, but with him, I let it fly. 

Paris, 13th District (or Les Olympiades) is only his ninth feature, and for me it sits roughly mid-table of the seven I've seen. It's about the 13th arrondissement, south-east of central Paris, which is home to Europe's largest Chinatown. I say it's about the area because the people involved in the story are secondary to the place. The story itself even takes a back seat to the way the 13th is displayed, lovingly shot in black and white by cinematographer, Paul Guilhame. Written by Audiard, Céline Sciamma and Léa Mysius, it's based on a couple of short stories by cartoonist Adrian Tomine. 

Broadly, it follows the lives and loves and shagging, lots of shagging, of three people, Émilie (Lucie Zhang), Camille (Makita Samba) and Nora (Noémie Merlant). The singer, Jehnny Beth (of Savages) also plays an important role as 'adult entertainer' Amber Sweet. But this is Zhang's film, she's incredible in this, her first lead role. She's cute, acerbic, utterly careless and unambitious, as well as showing moments of deep insecurity. A star-making role. Samba plays the over-confident, yet actually caring Camille believably, and Merlant is her usual brilliant self, especially in her fantastic intro scene where she is mistaken for Sweet.

The film stops within its boundaries, only hinting at an outside world when Émilie calls her family in London. Its insularity is the key, it keeps it all contained and comfortable, allowing us to focus on the apartments, the shops, the restaurants, the skyline and the characters, and their complex, very French, relationships. Audiard directs with his usual elan - calm shots, nothing too frenetic - leaving the atmosphere created to do a lot of the heavy lifting. He has a knack of wringing optimism from the bleakest surroundings - most of his films end with a bright spot, despite whatever dire events have preceded.

Paris, 13th District is a fine example of heart over mind filmmaking, of atmosphere over plot, of style over substance even, and though these are usually levelled as a criticism, nothing could be further from the truth here. Audiard and his cast are on fine form.

It's playing now as part of the Alliance Francaise French Film Festival at Luna Leederville, Luna on SX, Palace and Windsor cinemas. 

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It'd be remiss of me not to mention two more Audiard films, let's go with The Beat That My Heart Skipped (2005) and A Prophet (2009). Sciamma also has a film in this festival that's supposed to be great - it's called Petite Maman (2021), but I haven't seen it yet, so can't really comment.

Bergman Island

Now here's a pickle of mine own doing. I saw this film at a preview screening in December last year but it's only due for release now, in March. Precious few notes taken mean I'm vaguing a bit on the finer details, hence a somewhat truncated write-up. I ordinarily like to stew over a film for a day or two before deciding on how I feel about it, but 3 months? Hmmm. Yet, here goes. Bergman Island is a semi-autobiographical film about film-making and film-makers, directed by Mia Hansen-Løve and starring Vicky Krieps and Tim Roth. Both are pretty bloody fine here, and it's a pleasure to see Roth again on the big screen. Sadly, he hasn't made the best choices in his career, but he's a brilliant, naturalistic performer.

The film takes place on the Swedish island of Fårö, where legendary director, Ingmar Bergman made his home. Married couple Chris (Krieps) and Tony (Roth) are booked in to stay for a time while they work on their latest screenplays - Roth seemingly the more successful of the pair. The area reeks of prestige and a form of celebrity tourism that is supposed to invigorate the creative urges - there are Bergman tours, a museum, even screenings of his films. This all seems to work for Tony but Chris finds it tougher to be inspired, perhaps due to some things she learns about Bergman himself - something about him being a great artist but an awful person.

The bend in the film comes from Chris's attempts to iron some sense out of her screenplay. Here's where her characters, Amy (Mia Wasikowska) and Joseph (Anders Danielsen Lie) take over large chunks of the film - a film plays out within the film. This is all formula until the lines begin to blur in the third act - who are the characters, who are in Chris's mind? Kind of an arthouse Inception. It gets a bit tied up in its own 'art' but it's certainly not as pretentious as it could have been. 

This is Hansen-Løve's first English language film and she has a smooth, matter-of-fact style, which I think works pretty well for this type of film.

Bergman Island opens March 10th at the Luna cinemas.

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Hansen-Løve's 2009 film, Father of my Children is another example of her style, and Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (1990) is one of Roth's better choices.

Uncharted

Coming at this film from a non-gamer perspective, I was (and am) only superficially aware of the base IP that spawned it. Probably, this freed me from any quibbles others might have about casting or characterisation or dialogue or anything else that particular subculture could get exercised about. But, that's a double edged sword, in that I had to google some stuff like; who that dude on the beach was; what Pilou Asbæk's doing at the end; and is that character supposed to be Aussie or Kiwi or Pom, or some kind of Commonwealth amalgam? Answers on the back of a postcard.

As a palate cleanser of sheer dumb-arsed frippery, Uncharted ticks all the boxes. It's reasonably short for this kind of blockbuster (at a touch under 2 hours), the leads, Tom Holland and Marky Mark Wahlberg, seem to be having a right old giggle, there are some passable parkour snatches (making use of Holland's Spidery fleet-footedness), and the final helicopter/ship transport sequence is pretty mint. Antonio Banderas is fast becoming a great character actor, with his superb voice work, and all in all, the steps taken in search of Magellan's gold are succinctly plotted and fun to boot. Bond would have approved of the transport plane sequence too - frenetically action-packed but with a light twinkle to proceedings.

It displays its Indiana Jones influence extremely clearly (he pops up in dialogue), but there were times when my youth at the Pearce air base cinema screenings of films like High Road to China or Race for the Yankee Zephyr came flooding back. More recently, the Nick Cage National Treasure films also inform the DNA.

Ok, so I had a diverting time watching this. Sure, there's nothing really fresh or ground-breaking to see here, but it doesn't take itself too seriously and it's pretty spectacular in parts Sometimes, that's all you need.

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Of all the films mentioned above, I seem to recall that Brian G. Hutton's High Road to China (1983) was the most impressive, but Race for the Yankee Zephyr (1981), directed by Swinging 60s actor, David Hemmings, could be a fun, nostalgic rewatch. 

The Batman

The (important definite article attached) Batman has cleared up all the mess of previous DC Batman films and given us a grungy, gothic, dystopian film that has more in common with a Fincher thriller than a comic book. And it's trite to say all they needed to do was add a 'the' but it worked for The Suicide Squad, comes up roses again here. Director Matt Reeves actually sets this up as a detective yarn with a cryptic serial killer as the villain, happily eschewing any kind of Wayne backstory. The plot gets a touch strandy as we follow Batman, played with righteous jaw-work by Robert Pattinson and Lieutenant James Gordon (Jeffrey Wright) as they winkle out the clues set by the Riddler, an incredible Paul Dano.

The film opens with someone watching an obviously rich, probably powerful guy through binoculars. This turns out to be the Riddler staking out Gotham City's mayor, before making him victim number one. The reflection of this scene happens shortly after when Batters himself watches Selina Kyle (an excellent Zoë Kravitz) in her apartment, only this time there's a slightly more voyeuristic feel to it, likely due to Kravitz getting down to jocks and singlet. An early indicator that this is no ordinary Batman film, and that the dichotomy between Ridders and Batters isn't so clear cut.

Thematically, The Batman is on point in its emphasis on corruption and privilege, illustrated in dialogue from Kyle, where she complains about all the rich white men in power, and especially the Riddler, in his fantastic caged soliloquy to Batman. I got a buzz here when Dano seems to exorcise the demon of Daniel Plainview with his 'Brruuuuucce....Waaaaaaayyne' almost reaching the levels of Daniel Day Lewis's 'Draaaaaaainnaaage!' Sometimes it's the little things that tickle.

The set pieces are great - rainy car chase, numerous brawls (including bullets bouncing off the Bat), an escape from a police station, where Batman becomes something more like Sugar Glider Man, and a superbly shot fight where the only illumination between black screens comes from gunfire. But the best for me was the extended sequence around the funeral service - this is very well paced and effectively shows the chaos and bafflement the Riddler wants.

The cast are fine, though an unrecognisable Colin Farrell seems to be trying to summon both Tim Burton and Martin Scorsese in his Penguin, and Robert Smith's eyes make an appearance on Pattinson, sans mask/helmet. And it's a nice touch having Andy Serkis talk about his days in the Circus (MI6). Serkis...Circus? The little things...

The revelation that Thomas Wayne wasn't squeaky clean is an honest move, it opens up Bruce's eyes and gives the Riddler motive to do what he does. The film even hinted at sympathy for the Riddler - he is after all wiping out the corruption of Gotham, but his final flourish felt a bit samey (Baney?) and also a little like a way out for the filmmakers to make sure we all know he's really an evil nutter. The Riddler's explanation for involving Batman, playing him like a fiddler, scans well enough - "I couldn't have got into that club - aggression, "focussed violence" was what was needed."

Where I felt the film wavered was in Batman's personal arc, from pure nightcrawling vengeance to admirable altruism. It doesn't really come across, pictorially, as an arc, more like a straight line, then a kind of paper clip turn at the end. His attempted sacrifice (which wasn't anything of the sort), followed by his 'light leading the flock through the flood' was a gigantic sour note for me. 

All (most) things considered, this is a success and will probably make squillions for DC, and after their initial missteps in trying to catch and match Marvel, they seem to be finally on track.

The Batman opens in Australia on March 3rd (today!).

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I haven't seen this, and I'm loathe to suggest anything I haven't seen but Zoë Kravitz was the voice for Catwoman in The Lego Batman Movie (2017), directed by Chris McKay. Does this mean she was preparing for this role for years before physically doing it? And Pattinson walks a bit like his characters in David Michôd's The Rover (2014) and Benny and Josh Safdie's Good Time (2017). Both interesting films.

MILD SPOILERS WITHIN POD

Flee

I caught this Perth Festival preview screening at the Backlot last week and it's an ambitious film that also feels quite low-key, almost like the filmmaker, Jonas Poher Rasmussen wanted to downplay the fortitude of those involved. This works in its favour, as the hardships and menace that the 'characters' go through are accentuated all the more by the lack of histrionics. Flee is about a man, Amin (not his real name), who escaped Afghanistan and the Mujahideen in the 1990s and is now, on the verge of settling down to marriage with his husband, ready to tell the tale to his old school friend. 

It has an interesting structure - it's mostly animation created to match documented audio interviews, voice actors doing 'recreations' of events, with archived footage of news events of the 90s (human trafficking, Afghan bloodshed, Russian supermarkets during the fall of communism, etc). Rasmussen says:

“I wanted to add this footage to the movie so that every time you see a newsreel, you are reminded that this is at heart a documentary,” says Rasmussen. “It’s creating a historical context for the movie, but it’s also telling the audience that this story is real — it’s not fiction.”

The film's success lies in the way it gets its message of inclusion, empathy and tolerance across without resorting to finger-pointing (when it really could have gone nuts with the fingers), and the very intimate family moments that underpin the film. Starting with Amin skipping through the Kabul streets in his sister's clothes, to the scene in Sweden when he comes out to some of his family, there are plenty of nicely weighted moments.

There are many ANONs in the credits, presumably this is a method of protecting those still at risk, as Amin says at one point, 'There is no word for homosexuality in Afghanistan'. The buzz Flee is getting, especially now around awards season, might hopefully shine a light on some of the issues, though I can't help thinking, people will just go on peopling. 

Incidentally, this is the first time a film has been nominated in the categories of Animation, International and Documentary at the Academy Awards. It's not clear favourite in any of them (at time of writing) but it might nab at least one. 

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There are hints of Barry Jenkins' Moonlight (2016) and, due to some funny Van Damme references, I'll point you to his best film, Mabrouk El Mechri's JCVD (2008).