Almayer's Folly, directed by the late Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman and first released in 2011, is a highly atmospheric and contemplative film that examines, inter alia, the impact of colonialism. Adapted from Joseph Conrad's eponymous debut novel, the film was Akerman's final narrative feature before her untimely death in 2015; during her lengthy career, Akerman made just one other literary adaptation, 2000's austere The Captive, which was loosely based on Marcel Proust's La Prisonnière. Akerman took a similarly liberal approach when it came to translating Conrad to the screen, although Francis Ford Coppola's much-discussed Apocalypse Now remains an even more outré stab at the author's work.
Just as Coppola transposed Conrad's Heart of Darkness from the 19th-century Belgian Congo to 20th-century Vietnam, Akerman updates the author's 1895 novel to the 1950s. Although shot in Cambodia, Akerman's film is set in Malaysia, where it follows the story of Dutch trader Almayer (Stanislas Merhar) and his mixed-race daughter Nina (Aurora Marion). Almayer, trapped in a loveless marriage to local woman Zahira (Sakhna Oum), is clinging to fading hopes of finding gold deposits in the land that surrounds his riverside home (this building, as explained in the book, is the "folly" of the title). Moreover, Zahira's adoptive father Lingard (Marc Barbé) is busy burning through the wealth earmarked for Almayer.
With all else failing, Almayer focuses on securing his daughter's future. After some vague talk of a trip involving visits to Paris and London, Nina is packed off to a colonial boarding school, where it is hoped she will become more in tune with her European heritage; her absence only compounds Almayer's misery. Merhar, who also starred in the aforementioned The Captive, delivers a well-judged performance as Almayer, capturing the title character's slide into madness as he struggles with both his flailing business and the painful separation from his cherished daughter; Belgian actress Marion brings a beguiling intensity to her role, perfectly embodying the dichotomy of a girl caught between two hugely contrasting worlds.
Almayer's Folly requires patience, and it takes some time for its brilliance to emerge; this demanding film is both elliptical and highly reflective of its director's formally rigorous methods. Yet it is not inapt to suggest that Almayer's Folly would form a fine double bill with Apocalypse Now—whose redux version features Akerman favourite Aurore Clément—with Akerman's ice providing a counterpoint to Coppola's fire. Conrad, whose works often hinge on what is left unsaid, proves an ideal fit for Chantal Akerman, with the economy of his storytelling neatly dovetailing with her languid, minimalist approach. This late masterpiece from Akerman is an exemplary meditation on the death rattle of colonialism.
First released in 2000, Chantal Akerman's The Captive is an updating of Marcel Proust's The Prisoner, the fifth volume of his epic novel In Search of Lost Time. This striking, formally rigorous film reframes Proust's study of obsessive control to great effect; perhaps surprisingly, Akerman made just one other literary adaptation, her eponymous 2010 film of Joseph Conrad's debut novel Almayer's Folly. The Captive is one of four of the late Belgian director's features—the others being Golden Eighties, Tomorrow We Move and De Afspraken van Anna—that have recently been restored in 4K by the Royal Film Archive of Belgium.
The Captive follows Simon (Stanislas Merhar), a rich idler who becomes increasingly obsessed with his girlfriend Ariane (Sylvie Testud). Simon dictates and monitors every aspect of Ariane's life, and is particularly interested in her friend Andrée (Olivia Bonamy), with whom he suspects she is having an affair; Ariane, for her part, is compliant yet inscrutable. The long takes and attenuated pacing allow the audience to fully immerse themselves in the characters' fractured psychology, while the immaculate cinematography, by the Léopoldville-born Sabine Lancelin, lends an icy claustrophobia to the proceedings.
Merhar, who later played the title role in the beguiling Almayer's Folly, delivers a fine performance as Simon, deftly capturing the character's vanity and neuroses as he attempts to tighten his grip on Ariane. Testud, who would also go on to reteam with Akerman (on Tomorrow We Move), is equally impressive, with her Ariane embodying an opaqueness that keeps her a mystery to Simon and the audience alike. As the film presents the fraught dynamic between the ethereal Ariane and the controlling Simon, Akerman explores wildly contrasting ideas of love and the blurred lines that sit between devotion and possession.
It may well be that Ariane is as unknowable to Simon as Proust is to the non-francophone; it's been posited that English translations of In Search of Lost Time—of which there have been several—largely fail to illuminate the text. There is also the challenge of another kind of translation: that of adapting Proust, who was openly dismissive of cinema, for the screen. Prior to The Captive, filmmakers Volker Schlöndorff (Swann in Love) and Raúl Ruiz (Time Regained) grappled gamely with other volumes from the same novel, but it is perhaps Chantal Akerman's haunting effort that best captures the essence of Proust's magnum opus.
Hot Milk, the directorial debut of Ida screenwriter Rebecca Lenkiewicz, is a beguiling adaptation of Deborah Levy's eponymous Booker-shortlisted novel. Lenkiewicz's film, which premiered at the Berlinale and was selected for last month's BFI Flare, examines the knotty relationship between Sofia (Emma Mackey) and her controlling single mother Rose (Fiona Shaw), who are staying in an apartment in the Spanish coastal city of Almeria. But despite the sun-dappled locale, this is no holiday: Rose is receiving treatment from a local doctor, Gómez (Vincent Perez), for an undiagnosed condition that confines her to a wheelchair.
As Sofia seeks some respite from her rather suffocating domestic situation, she encounters—and becomes enamoured with—flighty bohemian Ingrid (Vicky Krieps), yet this dalliance eventually proves as frustrating as the fraught relationship with her mother. Sofia decides to mix things up by heading to Greece (which is in fact where the entire film was shot) to visit her father (Vangelis Mourikis), who now has a new family and is unable to provide much in the way of the fulfilment she so obviously craves. In a development that underlines Rose's extremely manipulative nature, Sofia is abruptly recalled from her Greek sojourn.
Clearly, Rose is a very damaged individual, and it's implied that her symptoms are largely psychosomatic. Yet Shaw's immense, nuanced performance leads us to both pity and scorn this troubled soul, who dismisses the incremental academic progress made by Sofia while simultaneously cherishing it as a means to infantilise her daughter, therefore preventing her from growing up and flying the nest. For her part, Sofia—whose doctorate is currently on hold, at least partly because of Rose's treatment—alternates between dutifully caring for her mother and barely tolerating her endless, grating requests for suitable drinking water.
Mackey, hitherto best known for the Netflix series Sex Education, responds to the marker laid down by Shaw and delivers a turn to match that of her seasoned co-star, while Luxembourgish actress Krieps is good value in a rare supporting role. Given that Levy's book is one in which much hinges on Sofia's interior life, translating it to the screen is no easy task. When reviewing a title from last year's Flare—Orlando, My Political Biography—I wrote about the challenges of adapting such novels; as with that film, the haptic, hypnotic Hot Milk takes a sideways approach to adaptation, and the results are highly impressive.
Virginia Woolf's 1928 novel Orlando: A Biography has previously been adapted for the screen by both Ulrike Ottinger (Freak Orlando, 1981) and Sally Potter (Orlando, 1992). While Ottinger's effort veered towards the experimental, Potter's relatively accessible work quickly outgrew the arthouse box it had initially been placed in, and the film became a box-office success as it cemented the star status of Tilda Swinton. While Swinton—who was hitherto best known as Derek Jarman's muse—was joined by an eclectic supporting cast (Quentin Crisp, Lothaire Bluteau, Billy Zane), Orlando proved to be a rather brittle, hollow experience, and Potter ultimately hit the same hurdle as Ottinger: the novel is one in which much hinges on the title character's interior life. That said, the essentially private nature of Woolf's coded book is somewhat tempered by its high-concept premise.
For Orlando: A Biography is a work in which its eponymous male hero—having reached the age of 30, or thereabouts—metamorphoses into a woman, and goes on to live for several centuries (the story begins in Elizabethan times and ends on the day the novel was published). It is not hard to see why this back-of-a-beermat idea would appeal to filmmakers—even those as cerebral as Potter and Ottinger—yet the ease in which the basic outline of the story can be adapted for the cinema is soon offset by the knotty details in Woolf's writing. Largely inspired by Virginia Woolf's complicated love affair with her fellow writer Vita Sackville-West—Orlando's dual existence is said to represent the two sides of Woolf's lover's personality—Orlando: A Biography is a roman à clef that has no particular interest in giving up the secrets swirling around its key.
The latest filmmaker to take a tilt at Orlando: A Biography is first-time director Paul B. Preciado, who opts for a refreshingly different approach from those of Potter and Ottinger in his attempt to crack the novel's subtext. Orlando, My Political Biography is a documentary in which Preciado presents 20 or so different trans and non-binary people, each of whom inhabits the Orlando character while narrating the events of their own life (while Woolf's pioneering book explored the concept of transgender identity, it operated strictly in binary terms). Via this setup, Preciado actively leans into Woolf's surprisingly complex novel, and the results are satisfying in a way that soon outstrips both of the aforementioned film adaptations of this text; it's as if the director has realised that a more aggressive style is required to reach the heart of Orlando: A Biography.
There's a real sense that this is the first screen version to successfully grapple with the source novel's central tenet; perhaps Preciado realised that, while Orlando: A Biography is classed as a work of fiction, its hero is a proxy for a real person and, as such, real people were needed to tease out what Virginia Woolf was driving at. Thus, a fictional biography is both explored and augmented by a documentary film, and it's fascinating to witness the insights provided by each of Preciado's subjects. As an adaptation, Orlando, My Political Biography is both daring and worthy; it's a slippery work, one that effectively plays Woolf's novel at its own game. This ambitious film is one of the most original debut features in recent years, and a late, joyous appearance from author and filmmaker Virginie Despentes ensures it sticks the landing.
In just under 80 minutes, Giorgio Clementelli's documentary USAH completes a whistle-stop tour of the Northeastern United States, taking in seven dozen iconic locations which have served as backdrops for numerous American horror stories, be they real or imagined. As might reasonably be expected, USAH spends much of its brisk running time in the New England states of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont, but it also expands its reach west to New York—both state and city. Here, Clementelli's film references the likes of the brutal murders that inspired the Long Island-set The Amityville Horror; Sid Vicious' girlfriend Nancy Spungen's violent, unexplained death at NYC's Chelsea Hotel; Michael Winner's lurid, sloppy yet strangely enjoyable 1977 shocker The Sentinel; and Washington Irving's 1820 short story "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow"—a classic tale in which the title village's Oude Nederlandse Kerk (Old Dutch Church) features prominently.
The jam-packed USAH - Uncommon Stories of American Horror (to give it its full title) casts its net wide to include horrors both cinematic and literary, with the latter category chiefly represented, unsurprisingly, by famous New Englanders H. P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe, who both figure prominently in the film. As an illustration of how adept USAH is at separating verity from fabrication, it allows us to contrast two real-life medical institutions: the now-demolished Danvers State Hospital—a psychiatric facility that purportedly provided the inspiration for Arkham Asylum in Lovecraft's "The Thing on the Doorstep"—and the notorious Letchworth Village, where abuse and neglect were rampant. Sadly, Lovecraftian terrors are no match for the real-world horrors for which they are analogous, as the unclothed, unwashed and unhappy Letchworth patients would no doubt testify. Likewise, the film notes how New York City's Dakota building has seen both fictional and true horror, given that it doubled as the apartment block in Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby before later becoming the location of resident John Lennon's murder.
As far as the Dakota is concerned, the tragic death of Lennon soon eclipsed the building's murky past as the centre of Polanski's movie, but it isn't always the case that truth wins out over fiction. In terms of a work that best symbolises horror's slippery relationship with the factual, it is hard to think of a better example than the aforementioned The Amityville Horror: while Ronald DeFeo Jr. was convicted of the murders of his mother, father and four siblings, these appalling true crimes are largely forgotten in the face of a rather silly book and even sillier film, both of which detail the supposed paranormal experiences of the Lutz family, who bought the DeFeo house for a knockdown price a year or so after the murders. Although The Amityville Horror effectively ignores the terrible story of the DeFeos—whose once-happy Dutch Colonial home has long since been reduced to a trope—Clementelli's film provides a welcome reminder that the real Amityville horror occurred long before the Lutzes entered the picture.
USAH - Uncommon Stories of American Horror is predominantly focused on the blurring of the lines that occurs between real-life violence and imaginary tales, and although the film features some fine purveyors of the latter—notably Lovecraft, Poe and Irving—it works best when digging into true crime cases. While the exploits of fictional boogeymen like Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees get a passing mention, it's clear that Clementelli has a much greater appetite for examining, say, the trial of Lizzie Borden, who was famously accused of the axe murders of her father and stepmother; in another example of how the truth can be obscured by the most trivial means, Miss Borden's acquittal has been rendered all but meaningless by the playground song, such is the way the mischievous rhyme has cemented itself into popular culture. Its slightly puzzling title aside—it's debatable whether any of the stories told here can be considered to be uncommon—USAH is a film that covers familiar ground in a fresh, entertaining way.
With a title as lurid as the name given to the subject it examines—the so-called satanic panic of the 1980s—Sean Horlor and Steve J. Adams' documentary looks, at first glance, as if it might be a worryingly glib kitchfest that makes light of mass hysteria; such sensational labelling can easily mask the fact that this particular moral panic was anything but a laughing matter for those whose lives were destroyed by spurious allegations. Thankfully, it turns out that this thoroughly absorbing film takes a respectful, but not overly reverent, approach as it digs into a dark and painful episode in Canadian and US history. Having debuted at this year's SXSW Film Festival, Satan Wants You will have its UK premiere, quite fittingly, on Halloween at the Raindance Film Festival. The film will be followed by a Q&A session with producer Melissa James, but the fun doesn't stop there: anyone who buys a ticket for Tuesday's screening will be given a complimentary wristband for entry to Raindance's Halloween party.
Satan Wants You is a Canadian production, and for much of its snappy running time its focus is on Victoria, that fine Vancouver Island city that has long since been saddled with a rather unfair, if somewhat amusing, soubriquet: home of the newly wed and nearly dead. Back in the early 80s, however, a semi-affectionate nickname was the least of the British Columbia capital's problems, as one of its residents, Michelle Smith (née Proby), claimed that she had been abused by a Victoria-based satanic cult which numbered her late mother among its members. Smith was an adult when she made these accusations, the supposed basis for which was unearthed by psychiatrist Larry Pazder. Smith had been under Pazder's care for some time on account of a depressive episode brought on by a miscarriage, but it was approximately 600 hours of hypnosis over the course of 14 months that led to the assertions that would kick-start satanic panic—a name that might be funny if the reality wasn't quite so tragic.
Following the apparent surfacing of these hitherto-buried childhood memories, the doctor and his patient wrote a bestselling book—Michelle Remembers—detailing the five-year-old Smith's alleged ordeal, and the pair would go on to marry. Horlor and Adams spend a good while examining the couple's relationship, and what emerges is a picture of a setup that, even at its best, was highly unethical. As Smith and Pazder turned their professional arrangement into a personal one, a number of people close to the couple were hurt: Pazder's wife and children; and Smith's father and sisters. Yet the unfortunate reach of the Smith–Pazder alliance would extend way beyond their respective family circles as satanic panic began to take hold; to date, it is estimated that some 12,000 unsubstantiated cases have been raised. While it may be a tad harsh to blame Smith and Pazder's book for every one of these instances, there is little doubt that its publication sparked a hysteria, one that was largely supported by venal motives and, worse, may well have obscured actual abuse issues.
While both Michelle Remembers and the the recovered-memory technique employed by Pazder have now been discredited, this will prove cold comfort to those who found themselves on the business end of baseless allegations. Larry Pazder died nearly 20 years ago, and Michelle Pazder—who was effectively satanic panic's patient zero—declined to take part in Satan Wants You, but Horlor and Adams' film is nevertheless packed with insightful interview subjects, with Michelle's younger sister Charyl proving the pick of the bunch. While the filmmakers' position is fairly clear, they have been careful to include a range of opinions, and they steadily paint a picture of a climate of fear that would eventually spread beyond North America to other countries, including the Netherlands; just a few years ago, journalists from Dutch radio show Argos conducted a lengthy investigation into alleged organised ritual abuse, the findings of which were aired in an episode called Glasscherven en duistere rituelen. The impressive Satan Wants You is an intense and engaging experience—but also a deeply chilling one, for reasons that have nothing to do with its title character.
For its second edition, watchAUT Austrian Film Festival showcases some of the best new cinema and a silent-era classic from—you guessed it—Austria. The first watchAUT, which took place in late 2019 at London's Picturehouse Central, included such prestigious titles as Marie Kreutzer's The Ground Beneath My Feet and Jessica Hausner's Little Joe. For watchAUT 2023, the festival shifts to another London venue, South Kensington's Ciné Lumière, where it runs from Thursday to Sunday (click here for tickets). Among the titles on offer are David Wagner's military tale Eismayer, bodybuilding documentary I Am the Tigress, and Adrian Goiginger's WW2 movie The Fox, the latter of which opens the festival on Thursday evening. The 2023 lineup is rounded out by Asia Argento-starrer Vera, environmental documentary Matter Out of Place, and two science fiction films made nearly a century apart.
The earlier of these SF films, Fritz Lang's Frau im Mond, serves as the festival's closing film, and this year's watchAUT provides a rare opportunity to see Lang's final silent movie in its full-length version with live piano accompaniment. Based on the eponymous novel by the director's wife Thea von Harbou (who also wrote the script), this 1929 space exploration epic is still a remarkable work, and its prescience is quite breathtaking; that the film contains the first ever countdown to a rocket launch is nothing short of incredible. While the acting in silent films can often be rather broad, Frau im Mond features some fine performances, with the best turn coming from German star Willy Fritsch as the entrepreneur who acts as the catalyst for the lunar mission. Variously known as Woman in the Moon and Girl in the Moon, this near three-hour spectacle is not without its lulls, but its inclusion here is most welcome—especially considering how the film has long taken a back seat to Lang and von Harbou's other science fiction masterpiece, Metropolis.
Sticking with the space theme, Leni Lauritsch's debut feature Rubikon is a thoughtful sci-fi movie which takes place in a time when the earth has been polluted beyond all habitability. Virtually all of Lauritsch's claustrophobic film takes place inside the space station of the title, where a soldier, a scientist and a geneticist attempt to find consensus on a critical issue: should they head back to earth in the hope of helping any survivors, or remain in the safety of their fully self-reliant environment? It's a decent premise, and the film has its share of tense moments; while it's perhaps a bit too long for what is essentially a three-hander centring on one core argument, Rubikon is an inventive and generally engaging affair, and Lauritsch and her crew work wonders with the €3 million budget. There are times when the movie recalls William Eubank's haunting 2011 film Love, another microbudgeted science fiction effort that tends towards the cerebral. While Rubikon contains more than a passing nod to green issues, environmental concerns are front and centre in another festival selection: Nikolaus Geyrhalter's Matter Out of Place.
Geyrhalter's impressive documentary opens with one of the most arresting sequences in recent cinema: a digger scoops away at a small section of green field, and it isn't long before the topsoil gives way to a jumble of barely-degraded landfill, including glass, plastic, tyres, and even a scrap of newspaper on which the type is still legible. None of this makes for a pretty sight, but the real horror comes from learning that they stopped burying waste here in the 1970s, which is when a nearby incinerator was built. After this dialogue-heavy opening—two observers comment on the various items that are unearthed—Matter Out of Place is a largely wordless affair until it gets to its final sequence, which records the painstaking cleanup operation at Nevada's Burning Man festival, an event which coined the phrase that lends the film its title. Between these bookends, Geyrhalter's film goes on a globetrotting odyssey as it documents the ways in which different countries deal with waste collection and disposal. It's an engrossing film, one in which the director's stunning cinematography stands at odds with the detritus on show.
The renowned writer Marguerite Duras enjoyed both a successful career and a highly eventful personal life, and it is the latter that forms the focus of Claire Simon's I Want to Talk About Duras. Simon's new film is not concerned with the author's teenage escapades in Indochina—that much-publicised period was covered in Jean-Jacques Annaud's eponymous screen adaptation of Duras' The Lover—but rather examines the relationship between the writer and youthful Breton Yann Andréa, a Duras überfan who, after many years of correspondence, found himself in the rather surreal position of sharing a home and bed with his idol. There was an age gap of nearly half a century between Andréa and Duras, both of whom are now deceased, and their unlikely union could be compared to the one experienced by the title characters in Hal Ashby's Harold and Maude. Simon's film, which screens as part of this year's BFI Flare on March 20 and 22, concentrates on Andréa's 1982 interviews with Marie Claire journalist Michèle Manceaux, during which the subject spoke candidly about his then-ongoing relationship with Duras.
I Want to Talk About Duras isn't the first film on this subject: 2001's Cet amour-là, which starred the legendary Jeanne Moreau as Duras, also set about telling this most atypical of stories; coincidentally, Moreau served as the narrator for The Lover. I Want to Talk About Duras differs from Cet amour-là in a key sense: Duras herself is largely absent from Simon's film, although the author does appear via archive footage that underlines some of the points being made in the interviews. Instead of focusing directly on the author, I Want to Talk About Duras places Swann Arlaud's Andréa and Emmanuelle Devos' Manceaux front and centre, although Duras' presence is still keenly felt; not only is the writer the main topic of discussion, but we can hear her clumping around on another floor of the home she shares with Andréa. What's more, she frequently resorts to a disruptive tactic in the form of calling the telephone which sits just next to her partner. As such, Duras is a ghostly, unnerving presence, one who always seems to be hovering around the edges of the action.
For a film centring on Marguerite Duras to relegate the title character to the periphery seems rather perverse—doubly so when it stars the incomparable Emmanuelle Devos, whose casting here tantalisingly hints at what she could have done if handed the role of Duras (anyone who doubts Devos' suitability for such a part need look no further than her terrific turn as Violette Leduc—another author who was no stranger to scandal—in Martin Provost's excellent biopic Violette). It is to Simon's great credit that I Want to Talk About Duras survives both this daring move and the equally bold stroke of splicing in a sequence from Duras' 1975 film India Song, which practically invites the viewer to think about which film they'd rather be watching. Devos' Michèle Manceaux doesn't have to say a great deal while her tape recorder absorbs Andréa's thoughts on Duras, but there are numerous occasions when the camera remains fixed on her face as she listens intently; Simon clearly understands how best to use Devos' wonderfully expressive features.
Much of what Andréa has to say conjures up a most unflattering picture of Duras, who is painted as a domineering control freak, one who dictates virtually everything in the relationship, ranging from Yann's diet to his sexuality. It's a disturbing arrangement, yet one in which Andréa seems to have found some sort of contentment—even if he fails to truly comprehend the setup's unwholesome nature. With this film, Simon has set herself several stiff challenges—in this sense, it recalls Lars von Trier and Jørgen Leth's The Five Obstructions—but what is perhaps the biggest potential pitfall of all comes in the form of the film being a two-hander, a format which may be fine for the stage yet often founders in the far less forgiving medium of cinema. Simon sidesteps this by opening the film up whenever a flicker of staginess threatens to creep in; in addition to the aforementioned extract from India Song, there's a mesmerising crepuscular scene detailing Mancieux's walk home after a long day of interviewing. Of course, much can be overlooked in a film starring these two fine actors, and Swann Arlaud exudes the same sort of sensitive fragility he channelled so effectively in François Ozon's outstanding By the Grace of God. Despite the myriad obstacles Claire Simon places in her own path, I Want to Talk About Duras is an engaging, invigorating work.
The late Alain Resnais (pictured above, courtesy of Eureka Video) was a true giant of cinema, and his 1963 film Muriel, or The Time of Return is a longstanding favourite of mine. While Resnais made several films widely considered to be classics (including Last Year at Marienbad, Night and Fog and Hiroshima mon amour), I have an unshakeable belief that the shattering Muriel remains his crowning achievement. For some time, I had wanted to write a detailed study on this extraordinary film, and in early 2020—just before COVID cast its long shadow over the world—I started work on Looking for Muriel, which has just been published simultaneously in hardback and paperback by BearManor Media. I thoroughly enjoyed both working with the team at BearManor and exploring the many diverse areas surrounding Muriel, and I hope this comes across in the writing.
I'm very grateful to each and every person who buys my books, so should you choose to order Looking for Muriel: A Journey Through and Around the Alain Resnais Film, please know that your purchase is greatly appreciated. The book is available directly from the publisher, as well as from a number of retailers, including Walmart, Amazon and Google, the last two of which are linked to at the very bottom of the page (to find these buttons, be sure to use the desktop version of the site and scroll all the way down). If you'd like to check if the book is available from your country's Amazon, simply visit that particular store and plug the following number into the search box:
Utrecht native Huub Bals may be best known as the creator and director of the International Film Festival Rotterdam, but right up until his premature death—aged just 51—he worked hard to set up what was then known as the Tarkovsky Fund; following his death, the fund would take on its creator's name as it sprang into action to aid filmmakers in the developing world. Bals firmly believed that, with the necessary support, many fine films would come from outside of Western Europe and coastal North America; he also held forthright views on the quality of Dutch and American movies, and felt that great cinema was more likely to come from Asia, Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe. For more than 30 years, the Hubert Bals Fund has assisted in the production of numerous prestigious, well-received titles, including Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Cemetery of Splendour, Alejandro Landes' Monos, and Carlos Reygadas' Japón.
One of the fund's most recent beneficiaries is Tatiana Huezo's Mexico-set feature debut Prayers for the Stolen, which plays today at the London Film Festival. An adaptation of Jennifer Clement's eponymous novel, Huezo's film focuses on a rural mountain community under the thumb of the cartels; here, forced disappearances are a regular occurrence, and the frequent, ominous rumble of 4x4 vehicles headed for the village instils fear among the residents—particularly those who have young daughters. Should the day arrive when the cartel's footsoldiers come calling, village girl Ana (played by Ana Cristina Ordóñez González and Marya Membreño) has a contingency plan in place: a concealed, child-sized hole in the garden. As the film begins, Ana is shown being helped into this space by her mother, and it soon transpires that this is a drill the two will need to carry out fairly regularly if Ana is to remain out of harm's reach.
Just as the roar of SUVs is rightly feared, so is the drone of the helicopters that haphazardly spray a noxious substance on the nearby fields; it is in these pastures that many of the villagers eke out a living by collecting poppy sap, which is later used to make heroin. It's clear that several girls have already been taken from the village, and when Ana visits a hairdresser for a radical cut—on the pretext of preventing lice—it's chillingly clear that a boyish look may go some way towards keeping the local girls off the gang's radar. The entire community lives under the Damoclean sword of the cartel, and a meeting at the local school reveals how staff there are forced to abandon their pupils at short notice; while the parents clearly want this sympathetic and well-liked teacher to stay, it's equally obvious that everyone in the room knows the penalty for defying orders.
Much if not all of Prayers for the Stolen's tension comes from wondering how the seemingly inevitable abduction attempt is going to play out; from the outset—and in line with the principle of Chekhov's gun—it's a given that Ana will eventually have to climb into that cramped burrow in her garden, but not knowing what will happen when she's in there is precisely what keeps us hooked. It's a brooding, lyrical film, one that occasionally sees childhood innocence transcend the brutal violence of the criminal gangs, and the two young actresses who portray Ana at different stages of her life give fine, authentic performances. While the futility of taking on the cartel is plain to see, there are several moments when the sense of oppression is supplanted by the quotidian, which might suggest that normality isn't necessarily a thing of the past. One suspects that Huub Bals would highly approve of this subtle, confident work, which serves as further proof of the ongoing value of his filmmaker fund.
Believe it or not, half a century has now passed since the release of Dutch director Paul Verhoeven's first feature film, Wat zien ik!? (aka Business is Business). In the years since, Verhoeven has shocked audiences both in Europe (Spetters, De vierde man) and across the pond (Robocop, Basic Instinct), all the while cementing a formidable reputation as an enfant terrible with major box-office clout. As time has gone on, Verhoeven has slowed down—perhaps understandably, given that he's now 83 years old—and significant gaps have appeared between his projects; the Dutch-language Zwartboek was his first film in six years, and a full decade would pass between its 2006 release and his return to cinemas with Elle. While his new film, Benedetta, has appeared a mere five years on from Elle, you do wonder when Verhoeven might decide to call it a day. It will be a pity when he does as, ever since the mid-1980s, the release of a new Paul Verhoeven film has always been something of an event, and neither his reduced output nor his return to Europe from Hollywood—it is now over 20 years since his last English-language effort, Hollow Man—has impacted on the anticipation that precedes a new Verhoeven movie.
Benedetta premiered in competition for the Palme d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival, and while it didn't win—Titane, which will be reviewed here shortly, scooped the main prize—the film nonetheless enjoyed a high-profile outing at the first post-COVID edition of the festival. As is almost always the case with Verhoeven's films, Benedetta is a work that sets out to ruffle more than a few feathers, yet it falls some way short of the transgressiveness of many of the director's prior films, including its immediate predecessor, the enjoyably trashy Elle. The success of the controversial, highly successful Elle owed much to the committed performance of Isabelle Huppert, who received an Oscar nomination for her electrifying turn; I fully expected Huppert to turn up in Benedetta, and I can only speculate that the role filled by the excellent Charlotte Rampling was originally penned with Huppert in mind. Given that Huppert played a similar part in Guillaume Nicloux's 2013 adaptation of Diderot's The Nun, perhaps it wouldn't have been the best idea for her to be cast here, if indeed she was offered the role; plus, it's always good to see Rampling at work.
Benedetta is adapted from Judith Brown's book Immodest Acts, and the title character is played one of Isabelle Huppert's Elle co-stars: the terrific Belgian actress Virginie Efira, who can consider herself very unlucky not to have been among the winners when Albert Dupontel's superb Bye Bye Morons netted a glut of César awards earlier this year. In Benedetta, Efira's nun has been in a convent since the age of eight, and during her time there she's claimed to have been on the business end of several miraculous happenings—such as visions of Jesus and the acquisition of stigmata. All of this is viewed with some scepticism by Rampling's stern abbess, whose demeanour grows yet more severe upon the arrival of a new charge in the form of Bartolomea (Efira's fellow Belgian Daphné Patakia), a rebellious type who wastes little time in entering into a romantic relationship with Benedetta. On Bartolomea's frantic introduction—she's trying to escape her abusive family—the abbess points out that the convent isn't a charity, and asks the desperate girl if she has money; this frank discussion brilliantly illustrates how quick God's earthly ambassadors can be to move the goalposts when the time comes to help those in need. 1-0 to Verhoeven.
With Benedetta, Paul Verhoeven has set out his stall somewhere between Jacques Rivette's stately La Religieuse and Ken Russell's scabrous The Devils, yet the end product serves up neither the emotional point of the former nor the biting critique of the latter; furthermore, Verhoeven's film doesn't give the viewer much of an opportunity to invest in its characters, despite the sterling efforts of both Efira and Rampling. And in spite of its best efforts to offend, Benedetta feels an oddly tame, muted affair—compared to 30 years ago, the bar has been raised considerably vis-à-vis what is considered to be outré, and Verhoeven is doing little more than treading water here as he rifles through the index cards of his past successes; in all honesty, it's quite disappointing to discover that this director's attempt at nunsploitation has resulted in one of the subgenre's milder entries. It all feels a bit reheated, and the casting of Lambert Wilson and Olivier Rabourdin only serves to recall their work in Of Gods and Men—a much more affecting tale of monastic life. Still, for all that, Benedetta generally works as lurid, pulpy fun, which is pretty much what we all want and expect from a Paul Verhoeven film. You won't change him now.
Mothers' Instinct gives Belgian actress Veerle Baetens a great opportunity to flex her acting muscles; the Brasschaat native has previously impressed with strong turns in the likes of Robin Pront's The Ardennes and Felix van Groeningen's The Broken Circle Breakdown, with her performance in the latter receiving wide acclaim while netting several Best Actress awards from film festivals around the world. These three films provide evidence of Baetens' considerable range as a performer, and the most recent of these titles, the 1960s-set Mothers' Instinct, is a sly, clever work, one in which the actress appears to be having a great deal of fun as she plays a character who keeps us guessing all along; there's a great game going on between Baetens and her co-star Anne Coesens, as both play equally inscrutable characters in this mischievous, simmering thriller.
Baetens' Alice and Coesens' Celine live next door to one another and are on very good terms, yet even this close friendship is eclipsed by that of their two little boys, who spend a great deal of time together; the film isn't that old before Celine's son falls to his death from an upstairs window, and it is from this tragedy that the film's setup clicks into place: Alice feels that Celine is tacitly blaming her for what happened. While Alice was the sole witness to the accident but didn't have enough time to alter the terrible course of events, she was in no way responsible for the child's death; but whether it's a form of survivor's guilt or something else, Alice is uneasy around Celine, and even suspects that the bereaved mother is consumed by a jealousy that will drive her to take revenge on those on the other side of the wall. But is any of this real, or simply a state of mind on the part of Alice? Celine certainly seems very fond of Alice's son, but the boy's jittery mother just can't take this kindness at face value.
Based on a novel by Belgian author Barbara Abel, Mothers' Instinct is a taut, imaginative work, one which comes to the boil nicely as all the passive-aggressiveness eventually gives way to something more overtly hostile. While many have likened the film to the work of Alfred Hitchcock, it actually feels more closely related to Claude Chabrol's thrillers of the 60s—although, given that Chabrol was known as the "French Hitchcock", perhaps it doesn't really matter which, if either, of these masters you choose to reference. The decision to set the film in the 1960s means that we're treated to an immaculate recreation of the decade's styles and fashions, all wrapped up in a sumptuous colour palette; you strongly suspect that Mothers' Instinct wouldn't be quite as much fun without these sets and costumes, given that the production design is as big a star as either of the excellent leading ladies.
While Veerle Baetens' performance may be the more eye-catching, Anne Coesens matches her co-star every step of the way, and there's a lot of nuance in her portrayal of the grief-stricken Celine. The classy all-Belgian affair that is Mothers' Instinct seems a rather unlikely work from Olivier Masset-Depasse, a filmmaker previously best known for 2010's Dardennes-esque Illegal, but it's always nice to see a bit of versatility behind the camera as well as from stars like Coesens and Baetens; Masset-Depasse is actually married to the former, who has been an ever-present in her husband's theatrical features, which date back to 2006's Cages. While he hasn't made too many films, Mother's Instinct proves that Masset-Depasse continues to grow as a filmmaker, and it will be worth keeping an eye on his next career move.
Following on from both her eponymous 2014 big screen adventure and 2018's The Honey Games, lovable bee Maya makes a welcome return to cinemas with The Golden Orb. Maya's third feature film was due to be released last year but was put back on account of the COVID-19 pandemic; rather than go direct to streaming—a route that has become commonplace over the past year or so—The Golden Orb has been held over until cinemas are able to reopen. Although it's a second sequel, The Golden Orb works just fine as a standalone film, so no prior knowledge of Waldemar Bonsels' apian creation is necessary; it's hard to believe that it's now well over a century since the publication of the book featuring Maya's first adventure. With its simple message, vibrant colour scheme and appealing, top-drawer animation, The Golden Orb, like its two predecessors, is aimed squarely at younger children, but there is much here for older children and adults to enjoy, too.
When Maya and her friends finally reappear in cinemas (on May 17), you will soon discover that the title character and her best friend Willi don't share the patience of the film's distributors, as their eagerness to say goodbye to lockdown sees them emerge prematurely from their hive; one calamitous glowworm-related incident later, and the bees' queen decides to separate the pair before they can cause any more trouble. In all fairness to Willi, it was Maya who was the architect of the situation, but irrespective of how the blame should be apportioned, the queen feels it will take something remarkable to make her change her mind regarding the sanctions she plans to impose on the young bees. Thankfully, something remarkable does come the way of Maya and Willi when they are entrusted with the orb of the title. Spoiler alert—the orb is actually an egg, from which an ant princess duly hatches.
While this development occurs quite early on in the film, there's still plenty of well-paced excitement to come as the two bees strive to deliver the princess to the other ants; it's quite a mission, and there's an added complication as some dastardly beetles—who are engaged in a turf war with the ants—are going to extreme lengths to get their claws on the cute newborn, who has formed quite an attachment to a surprised Willi. Along the way, the bees encounter a couple of well-meaning but rather clueless soldier ants who, as so often seems to be the case with ants in animated works, are sporting army helmets. The energetic proceedings are occasionally punctuated with songs, with nefarious beetle Bumbulus proving to be the real star of the show when it comes to taking the mic. As the pursuit rages on, the princess' party offer an olive branch (or rather, a leaf) to the beetles, which hints that unity may be a better option for all concerned.
Given the uncertain futures of cinemas and the films which play in them, The Golden Orb's release provides an excellent opportunity for families to get along and support both the film and the venues that will be hosting it; filmgoing is a part of life that can be hard to return to once you've been away from it for a while, but a trip to your local cinema is fairly certain to provide a quick reminder of the joys of watching a film on the silver screen. Three years ago, I saw The Honey Games in a cinema in France; back then, none of us had any idea of the drastically changed world its sequel would be released into. While there is little doubt that the viewing habits of many will have changed permanently during lockdown, the efforts of those behind the The Golden Orb's release deserve to be rewarded with solid footfall as the film rolls out in cinemas; this cheerful, optimistic slice of animation is just the thing to jump-start your year at the movies. Showtimes and tickets are available here.
For most of us, the name Tove Jansson will always be synonymous with the Moomins, those lovable Hippo-like trolls who have captured the imagination of so many children (and adults) via their adventures spanning nine books and countless comic strips. In addition to their appearances in print, the Moomins are no stranger to the screen, and back in 2014 the excellent Moomins on the Riviera treated us to several rather unexpected sights, including Moominpappa nursing a raging hangover and Snorkmaiden in a bikini. Moomins on the Riviera was a work that fully tapped into the slightly anarchic sense of mischief that was often lurking around the edges of the pages of the Moomins' escapades and, as this excellent new biopic proves, an impish sense of adventure was a key component in Jansson's life away from the page. Tove Jansson was a bestselling author whom the general public knew very little about, and it is probably fair to say that many readers in the Anglophone world didn't even know if Jansson was male or female, much less what she looked like or how she lived.
Although not exactly a writer who shunned all publicity à la J. D. Salinger, it is fair to say that the Moomins were always the public face of Jansson, but as Tove—which screens at BFI Flare until March 28—proves, she led an interesting, full life, one that was by no means lacking in drama. The film begins as WW2 is drawing to a close; once the conflict ends, Tove, now in her early thirties, is swept up in the new sense of optimism and freedom that is swirling through society, and she sets up in her own place where she spends her days honing her skills as a painter. Tove's stern sculptor father is critical of his daughter, not so much because of the paintings she produces, but rather because of her unconventional approach to both life and work; her mother, on the other hand, is far more sympathetic. Tove mixes with a bohemian circle, and open relationships are quite common among those she socialises with; it's not long before she enters into such an arrangement with Atos, a prominent member of parliament. While both Tove and Atos seem quite content with this setup, a complication soon arrives in the form of the aristocratic Vivica, a theatre director who quickly captures Tove's heart.
While Tove is soon completely besotted by her new love, such devotion isn't reciprocated; the flighty Vivica thinks little of jetting off to Paris, and when Tove eagerly heads to the airport to meet the returning director, she's more than a little surprised to find that Vivica is accompanied by another woman. Shaken but not completely undeterred, Tove puts on a brave face and persists with her relationship with Vivica, but there's a sense that the author is simply being toyed with and is just one of many women in Vivica's life. A surprise (and not entirely unwelcome) marriage proposal from Atos ultimately brings its own complications, and it's clear that Tove still has some way to go if she is to achieve personal happiness. Meanwhile, in career terms, things really start to pick up for both Tove and the Moomins, and the author signs a lengthy, lucrative contract to provide Moomin comic strips to London newspaper The Evening News.
Tove is a stylish and engaging work, one which features a superb turn from Alma Pöysti as the title character. Pösyti, in her first starring role, delivers a well-judged performance as she deftly wraps the clearly sensitive (and occasionally troubled) Jansson in a puckish exterior. It is hard not to feel the jolt of pain Tove experiences as she unexpectedly catches a glimpse of Vivica across a crowded Parisian café, especially when we can clearly see that she has far better options than chasing after the fickle theatre director. Yet it is from her personal relationships—with friends, family, lovers—that we discover the inspiration for the various Moomin characters; like so many authors, Jansson used real-life encounters as part of the basis for her fiction. With Tove, it feels as if numerous blanks have been filled in regarding the author—assuming we've ever given much thought to the Moomins' creator; for so many of us, this engrossing, intelligent film tells a story we didn't know we were waiting to hear.
Film theorists Peter Wollen and Laura Mulvey were married for 25 years and made a number of films together, including Amy! and Riddles of the Sphinx. As a filmmaker, Wollen—who died late last year—branched out on his own to make Friendship's Death, which was to be his only solo feature film. While Wollen will always be best remembered for his seminal 1969 book Signs and Meaning in the Cinema, his 1987 rarity Friendship's Death is a film that fully deserves its new 4K remaster, which plays as part of the Treasures strand at the London Film Festival from Saturday until Tuesday. If you happen to miss its festival screenings, a much-needed Blu-ray of this new version will be available at some point over the next year; the disc was due to be released this year, but scheduling issues have pushed it back, with the ETA now being June 2021.
Friendship's Death is effectively a two-hander between Bill Patterson's war correspondent and Tilda Swinton's alien. Friendship, the extra-terrestrial, is on her way to Massachusetts Institute of Technology when she drifts off course and finds herself in Jordan, which happens to be in the middle of the Black September conflict of 1970. There, she's steered away from danger by Patterson's Sullivan, and the two go on to enjoy a number of conversations that both sides appear to find equally fascinating. Sullivan isn't sure whether to believe Friendship's story—she looks and sounds completely human, and he voices suspicions that she might be an agent—but he's certainly interested in finding out more about her. As the Palestinians and Jordanians go at it outside, Friendship and Sullivan hole up in a PLO-controlled hotel; over a bottle or three of whisky, the pair discuss a range of topics including technology, humanity, football, and of course the conflict that rages around them.
Although it was made 33 years ago, much of Friendship's Death's dialogue feels remarkably fresh and relevant, with both the man–machine interface and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict remaining two ongoing issues that aren't going away anytime soon. The point, or at least one of several, appears to be that Friendship is much more sensitive than many humans, and this is something we've witnessed in many a sci-fi tale, with Steven Spielberg's A.I. Artificial Intelligence featuring an especially poignant example. Does Friendship have as soul, or just a facsimile of one? It doesn't really seem to matter to Sullivan, who enjoys Friendship's company regardless of what may or may not lie beneath her warm, inquisitive exterior.
Perhaps the only gripe with Friendship's Death is that is often feels a bit too much like a filmed play, with two actors and as many sets forming the bulk of the snappy running time. But that isn't too much of a problem when you have characters and dialogue as engaging as this. The two leads are both very good here; Swinton, currently starring in Pedro Almodóvar's The Human Voice (which also plays at this year's LFF), gives an appealing performance in a role that's very different from the sort we're now used to seeing her play, while Patterson, just a few years on from his great turn in Bill Forsyth's chronically underrated Comfort and Joy, imbues the world-weary Sullivan with a compassion that belies his cynical, battle-hardened demeanour. Friendship's Death is something of a minor gem, and its new lease of life is extremely welcome.
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