From Venice to London 2023: Chiara / The Matchmaker

Festival edit From Venice to London—which runs from Friday until Monday—takes a selection of titles from the Venice Film Festival and showcases them in London's Curzon Soho (click here for tickets).  This special season includes five films which played at the 79th edition of the world's oldest film festival, with all titles presented as UK premieres.  The first From Venice to London—which took place in late 2021—featured the likes of Paolo Sorrentino's The Hand of God and Maggie Gyllenhaal's The Lost Daughter, and the lineup for this second edition includes an equally impressive clutch of titles, one of which is Susanna Nicchiarelli's Chiara.  Incidentally, Chiara is one of three films in the festival with a woman's name as its title—the other two being Carolina Cavalli's Amanda and Andrea Pallaoro's Monica; From Venice to London 2023 is rounded out by Benedetta Argentieri's documentary The Matchmaker and Pippo Mezzapesa's Burning Hearts.

Like Nicchiarelli's fine 2017 film Nico, 1988 and her follow-up feature Miss Marx, Chiara is both a biopic and a Belgian co-production; also as with the two earlier films, Chiara sees Nicchiarelli draw a knockout performance from the actress playing the title character, with My Brilliant Friend star Margherita Mazzucco delivering a mesmerising turn as the eponymous Italian saint.  Chiara charts the life of Clare (Chiara) of Assisi, follower of the substantially more famous Francis of Assisi and founder of the religious order we now know as the Poor Clares.  As far as anyone knows, Clare was the first woman to write a set of monastic guidelines, and her egalitarian nature is very much at the forefront of Nicchiarelli's film.  It's a strange, beguiling work, one which recalls Bruno Dumont's Jeannette as the religious austerity that is the film's stock-in-trade is punctuated by the occasional musical number.  While not without humour, Chiara leans away from the kind of tropes familiar from other, more excitable films detailing cloistered life, such as Paul Verhoeven's Benedetta and Ken Russell's The Devils, and is all the better for it.

Behaviour that is light years away from Chiara's saintly conduct is dissected in Argentieri's absorbing The Matchmaker, which attempts to fathom the strange case of young student Tooba Gondal.  In 2015, Gondal left London to join ISIS in Syria, from where she allegedly worked on persuading Western women to marry jihadist fighters.  Argentieri's film begins in 2019 with Kurdish-led coalition troops completing the rout of ISIS, a development which led to thousands of women and children being detained in refugee camps—such as the one on the outskirts of the Syrian town of Ayn Issa, which is where the filmmaker finds Gondal and her two infant children.  Most of the film takes place in this camp, where Argentieri observes Gondal's daily routine and quizzes her subject on the events of the previous few years.  Gondal is quite happy to answer these questions, and she comes across as affable and repentant—but it is hard to reconcile this person with the one who, inter alia, rejoiced in the aftermath of the Paris Bataclan attacks.  The film frequently highlights Gondal's highly incriminating social media past, and it is left to the viewer to decide if The Matchmaker's subject has fully turned her back on extremism; as with all good documentaries, Benedetta Argentieri's film is certain to spark debate.   

Darren Arnold

Images: 01 Distribution

Babi Yar. Context (Sergei Loznitsa, 2021)

Babi Yar. Context was one of just two titles to fly the Dutch flag at last month's London Film Festival, the other being Paul Verhoeven's mildly outrageous Benedetta.  Cannes favourite Sergei Loznitsa—whose Den Haag-based production company Atoms & Void has been behind every one of the director's films from 2014's Maidan on—has quite a pedigree, with his past projects including Donbass, In the Fog and The Event.  Loznitsa is a filmmaker who's as at home with the documentary format as he is with drama, with Babi Yar. Context falling into the former category; as with the director's previous non-fiction efforts, the film mainly lets its footage speak for itself—although there are a smattering of title cards to signpost the way.  If you haven't read up on the film prior to watching it, the early stages might prove quite difficult to get a grip of, but it's not too long before Babi Yar. Context provides a bit of, well, context.     

Made with assistance from the Babi Yar Holocaust Memorial Center, Loznitsa's film takes a long, unblinking look at an atrocity that happened just over 80 years ago, when Sonderkommando 4a of Einsatzgruppe C massacred more than 33,000 Jews in Kiev's Babi Yar ravine. Like numerous horrors of WWII, the events of Babi Yar have largely remained out of public consciousness, but Sergei Loznitsa places us firmly in the centre of a nightmare as we witness civilians being brutalised for the duration of a journey that will culminate in their slaughter.  As appalling as this crime is, Babi Yar. Context mines much of its horror from something beyond the obvious: the indifference of many of Kiev's citizens, who carried on with their daily business as the bodies piled up. The apathy on display recalls the words of Albert Einstein: "The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything".

When the Nazis invaded Ukraine in 1941, many welcomed their presence; posters of Stalin were torn down, and Hitler was widely viewed as a great liberator.  Although the Red Army retook Kiev in late 1943, this was long after the executions at Babi Yar, which had since become the elephant in the room for locals understandably keen to brush over the atrocity that had taken place in their back yard.  Loznitsa doesn't shy away from showing us the victims of Babi Yar, and while no film exists of the actual killings, there's no shortage of footage of the endless mound of bodies scattered across the ravine.  Yet what is arguably Babi Yar. Context's most horrifying moment occurs when we are shown a dozen Nazi criminals being hanged in Kiev's packed main square; while we've already seen footage of the trials that preceded these executions, it does little to take the sting out of these graphic, distressing images.  The inclusion of such material is indeed a brave move, one that poses some very difficult questions; most viewers will be pleased to learn that these men were sentenced for their awful crimes—but how many will truly want to see the death penalty being carried out?             

While Babi Yar. Context cannot be described as an enjoyable experience, its real value lies in its assembling of this footage into a coherent whole, one which chronicles an event that has been all but erased from the history books.  The film is primarily of importance as a document of record, yet its director quite reasonably hopes that it also contains lessons for today and tomorrow.  Given its rather unusual content, Babi Yar. Context is a tough work to evaluate in typical terms, but the extremely worthwhile nature of the project eclipses any requirement for the film to entertain (or even engage) the viewer.  Some may wish for a little more in the way of commentary, but the film invites the viewer to read around the events of Babi Yar and other, similar atrocities.  Sergei Loznitsa's film makes for a chilling, sobering experience, and it operates firmly outside of our expectations of cinema—documentary or otherwise.   

Darren Arnold

Images: The PR Factory

Benedetta (Paul Verhoeven, 2021)

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.

Darren Arnold

Images: MatejFilmu [CC BY-SA 4.0]

Rutger & The Wreck: A Chat with Ken Rowles

The late Dutch actor Rutger Hauer left behind a highly impressive CV, one which includes the likes of 80s classics Blade Runner and The Hitcher, along with four Dutch-language films directed by Paul Verhoeven: Katie Tippel, Turkish Delight, Spetters and Soldier of Orange.  In his later years, Hauer was more often than not seen in supporting roles, and during this century he appeared in several big-budget productions including Luc Besson's Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets and Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins; towards the end of his life, he had a part in Jacques Audiard's outstanding The Sisters Brothers.  Back in the late 1980s, Hauer was due to star in a film called Torment, yet there's virtually nothing in the way of information regarding this title, despite it occurring during the height of the actor's popularity.  Although there are a few scant production details listed on the British Film Institute's website, Torment has always presented something of a mystery, so I'm pleased to have finally learned a bit more about it, courtesy of the man who was in place to direct the film.

Back in October, I spent a very pleasant couple of hours or so with filmmaker Ken Rowles, who has numerous credits dating back more than fifty years.  I actually met with Ken to ask him about his work on Jean-Luc Godard's Sympathy for the Devil, but our conversation also covered a number of Ken's other projects, both realised and unrealised, with Torment coming under the latter category.  In Ken's many years in the film industry, he's encountered and/or worked with the likes of Stanley Baker, Tony Curtis, Dick Emery, Simon Ward, Ken Russell, Peter Sykes, and Ian McShane, and his film with Rutger Hauer sounds like an intriguing project, one which will sadly never come to fruition.  Torment was to be written and produced by Christian Bel, who took on the same duties for the Anthony Quinn–Lauren Bacall love story A Star for Two, a project that was made after Torment failed to get off the ground.  A Star for Two is a remarkably difficult title to track down, although Bel has uploaded a promo reel for the film to YouTube; Bel, like yours truly, has a solitary feature film to his name on the IMDb, and it seems that he left the film industry following the 1991 release of A Star for Two, which was directed by Canadian Jimmy Kaufman.

Anyway, Ken informed me that Torment was to be a film centring on the Algerian War, or, more accurately, the aftermath of the conflict, as the lead character struggled with his memories of the war as he tried to live out his life in Paris, and this mental anguish is presumably what the film's title referred to.  As the director, Ken spent a lot of time in Paris as the film entered its pre-production phase, and he also flew out to Tunisia to look at potential locations.  But, despite all the groundwork, the film never made it into production; while Torment is by no means unusual in this regard, it does sound like a film that had real potential, and it would have been interesting to see Hauer at work in such a project.  The efforts Ken described served as a reminder of the huge amount of work that goes into each of the many films that never get made, and so often it's merely a simple matter of luck that determines if a film goes ahead or falls by the wayside.

I thoroughly enjoyed speaking with Ken, and much more of our conversation (particularly the material regarding Jean-Luc Godard) should eventually surface as part of a writing project I'm currently working on.  Ken still makes films, and in recent years he has directed a documentary about the wreck of the SS Richard Montgomery, an explosives-laden vessel that sits just 30 miles from London.  The Wreck is narrated by Ian McShane, and I've been lucky enough to see a workprint of the film; it provides a fascinating look at a remarkable situation: despite this ship and its deadly cargo remaining on a seabed close to densely populated land, the authorities apparently have little interest in tending to the issue.  You can view the film's promo reel below.

Darren Arnold

Images: DWDD [CC BY 3.0] / UniFrance

[CANCELLED] BFI Flare 2020 (18/3/20–29/3/20)

UPDATE (16/3/20): 
This event has now been cancelled.  Click here for more info.

The 34th edition of BFI Flare: London LGBTIQ+ Film Festival unveiled its full programme tonight [18/2/20] at BFI Southbank. One of the world’s most significant and long-standing LGBTIQ+ film events, BFI Flare will present over 50 features, 85 shorts and a wide range of special events, guest appearances, family-friendly and free events, club nights and more.

The Festival will open with the World Premiere of Matt Fifer and Kieran Mulcare’s remarkable feature debut Cicada, about a young man forced to face past traumas when he embarks on a new relationship. The Closing Night Gala is the UK Premiere of acclaimed theatre director Jessica Swale’s Summerland, a moving Second World War drama about a woman rediscovering her ability to love, starring Gemma Arterton and Gugu Mbatha-Raw.

Bumping into an ex the day she moves into a new apartment makes Anne reflect on her past in Valerie Bisscheroux’s Anne+ (Episodes 1-6), a smart and sexy web series. Taking refuge in an idyllic lake house following her recent break-up, Karen meets the mysterious Lana in Clementine (Dir. Lara Jean Gallagher), a moody and atmospheric debut. This year the Interbank LGBT Forum Members will support debut director Monica Zanetti’s Ellie & Abbie (& Ellie’s Dead Aunt), a delightful rom-com where Ellie’s dead aunt has the perfect dating advice for her. But will she listen to it? A kiss between two childhood friends has dramatic repercussions in Matthias & Maxime, Xavier Dolan’s eighth film.

Don your best Ver-sayce and leave your inhibitions at the door for a night you will never forget. Join award-winning Baby Lame as your host for a trash-tastic interactive screening, Showgirls Shade-Along (Fri 20th March), bringing Paul Verhoeven’s outrageously camp classic to life as you’ve never experienced it before. This special event will screen alongside Jeffrey McHale’s fascinating Showgirls documentary, You Don't Nomi (Fri 20th March, Sun 22nd March) which puts one of cinemas most baffling creations under the microscope.

From 18th – 29th March at BFI Southbank, the Festival will showcase the best of the latest global LGBTIQ+ features and short films. BFI Flare is divided into three thematic strands: Hearts, Bodies and Minds.

Source: BFI

Images: image.net

Instinct (Halina Reijn, 2019)

Dutch actor Marwan Kenzari enjoyed a huge international breakthrough just a few months ago, starring as Jafar in the live-action version of Aladdin.  His role in Instinct - which opened in the Netherlands last week and plays at the London Film Festival on Saturday - is markedly different to the one he played in that Disney blockbuster; while still very much the villain of the piece, his character in Halina Reijn's directorial debut is far removed from the pantomime shenanigans of the Grand Vizier.  In Instinct, Kenzari conveys a very real menace which underlines his abilities as a serious dramatic actor.  Unfortunately, he and his co-star Carice van Houten are let down by a faltering script and rather uncertain direction, and Instinct never lands the knockout blow which, judging by its arresting early stages, it seems certain to deliver.

Van Houten's Nicoline is a psychologist who moves from job to job and doesn't appear to have much interest in staying in the one place for too long; her latest gig involves working in a prison for those convicted of serious offences.  Nicoline is experienced and assured, and few things seem to faze her, but this soon changes when she's charged with evaluating Idris (Kenzari), a man with multiple convictions - all of which pertain to violence against women.  Idris, who is on the verge of some unaccompanied parole, is clearly a very dangerous man but seems to be a fairly compliant inmate, and can often be quite charming - which is, presumably, how he snared many of those who went on to become his victims.  Idris' act - if it is an act - seems to persuade Nicoline's colleagues that he has been rehabilitated, but his assigned psychologist has real doubts.

While Nicoline appears to have the measure of Idris - you get the impression she's seen similar men countless times - there's something about this particular prisoner which gnaws away at her in a way she can't rationalise, and it's not long before her icy professionalism goes out of the window.  What follows is an increasingly preposterous game between Idris and Nicoline, one which sees the psychologist unravel as the prisoner toys with the mind of a woman who could well determine which side of the prison wall he ends up on.  Who's kidding who?  More pertinently, who cares?  In pitching the charismatic Idris against the aloof Nicoline, Reijn has created a strange level playing field, of sorts: Idris, unlike Nicoline, often seems to be doing things by the book, but does this current state of affairs mean we should blot out his terrible crimes?  After all, Nicoline's transgressions appear to be limited to this anomalous instance of unprofessionalism.  

Instinct's promisingly pulpy setup is the sort of thing which might just have worked in the mischievous hands of, say, François Ozon or Paul Verhoeven (side-note: Van Houten and Reijn both starred in Verhoeven's Zwartboek); the material really needs cranking up to a level where it would become enjoyably absurd (cf. Elle, L'amant double).  But Halina Reijn - who we're far more used to as a presence in front of the camera - seems to consciously pull back from such an approach, rendering Instinct an ostensibly trashy yarn that's had its guilty pleasures excised; it's a film caught between two stools.  It isn't a terrible movie - but it is a very frustrating one; while the two leads are very good, they're chained to a script which misses many opportunities to open up into something much more satisfying.  While Reijn hasn't made a bad job of her first feature film, she has opted to play it far too safe; given the subject matter, it seems most ironic that Instinct comes across as a film in which very few risks have been taken.

Darren Arnold

Images: Topkapi Films

Rutger Hauer (1944–2019)

Dutch actor Rutger Hauer will probably be best remembered - at least by Anglophone audiences - for his performances in 80s classics Blade Runner and The Hitcher.  But long before these Hollywood adventures, the Breukelen-born Hauer had featured in a slew of Dutch-language films, including four for Paul Verhoeven: Katie Tippel, Turkish Delight, Spetters and Soldier of Orange; prior to these features, Verhoeven had directed Hauer in 60s TV series Floris.  The pair would also collaborate in the mid-80s on the English-language historical drama Flesh+Blood, which failed to replicate the duo's earlier successes.  Despite this misstep, the 1980s proved to be Hauer's most successful period, and it was during this decade that he began to star in a series of hugely popular TV ads for Guinness.

From the 1990s on, Hauer's profile was significantly lower as he opted for a number of roles in low-budget films; that said, he still appeared in the occasional lavish production, such as Luc Besson's Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets and Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins.  His final film (of those released in his lifetime) was Jacques Audiard's outstanding The Sisters Brothers, which we reviewed back in April.  In addition to guest starring in HBO's vampire show True Blood, he also played Van Helsing in legendary horror director Dario Argento's Dracula 3D, a role which sat in direct contrast to his turn as vampire king Lothos in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  He died on July 19 at his home in Friesland, after a short illness.

Darren Arnold

Image: DWDD [CC BY 3.0]

Suspiria (Luca Guadagnino, 2018)

Moordvrouw star Renée Soutendijk is back on the big screen in this lavish, controversial remake of Dario Argento's classic 70s horror.  The past few years may have seen Soutendijk become a fixture on RTL 4, but recently both the Amsterdam-born actress and her Moordvrouw co-star Thijs Römer have enjoyed parts in theatrical films.  Soutendijk, of course, is well acquainted with the silver screen, with her many film credits including some of Paul Verhoeven's early work; she also gained much attention for her portrayal of Hannie Schaft in The Girl with the Red Hair.  Her presence in Suspiria appears to be the result of some homage casting by director Luca Guadagnino, who has also included Fassbinder favourite Ingrid Caven and "slow cinema" doyen Fred Kelemen among his eclectic ensemble.  At the other end of the spectrum, the film features the likes of Fifty Shades starlet Dakota Johnson and Marvel actor Tilda Swinton (admittedly, the latter is no stranger to arthouse fare, and both actresses have worked with Guadagnino before).  Argento, who has a producer credit on the new film, also went with some surprising actor choices for his original, casting old pros Alida Valli and - in her final film role - Joan Bennett.

Guadagnino's film is set in 1977 - the year Argento's film was released - and the basic premise is the same as the earlier movie: young American Susie (Johnson) arrives in a wet and windy Germany to study at a prestigious dance school.  Susie's arrival coincides with the disappearance of fellow student  Patricia (Chloë Grace Moretz), who's convinced that the academy is run by a coven of witches.  It's no real secret that Patricia is actually telling the truth, and she tries to impart this information to her psychotherapist, who in turn tries to tell the police that the girl's disappearance is the work of the women in charge of the school.  The West Berlin police have little time for such tales, given that both the city and the country are in the grip of a fear perpetrated by the Red Army Faction; as Suspiria unfolds against the backdrop of the German Autumn, you could say that two types of terror are simultaneously at work here.  Such a move grounds proceedings in a reality that was wholly absent in Argento's film - a work which could easily be viewed as a colour-saturated fever dream.  As fascinating as the Baader-Meinhof story is, I'm not convinced that Guadagnino's idea is the better of the two.

While either one of these two plot threads would be enough for one movie (cf. Argento's Suspiria and The Baader Meinhof Complex), Guadagnino and his scriptwriter David Kajganich add on another layer involving German national guilt and the holocaust; at times, this aspect provides some poignant moments, yet at other points it feels borderline distasteful.  Linked to this element, however, is a sad and touching story involving Patricia's psychotherapist, the inconsolable Dr. Klemperer (Lutz Ebersdorf), whose wife (Jessica Harper, star of the original film) vanished in the chaos of 1943.  Klemperer regularly crosses divided Berlin to visit the couple's East German dacha, where he feels the sadness especially keenly.  The doctor's tragic story is obviously a motivating factor in his determination to solve the disappearance of Patricia, but his enquiries inevitably lead him to the sinister dance academy and its icy lead choreographer Madame Blanc (Swinton), who presides over a number of matrons (played by Soutendijk, Caven and Sylvie Testud, among others).  Klemperer tries to warn another student, Sara (Mia Goth), of the sinister nature of the academy, but she angrily dismisses his claims; Sara has befriended Susie, who we should remember is both the film's main character and the star of ominous dance show Volk, which the students are preparing for a public performance.

Suspiria is something of a paradox: there was absolutely no need to remake Argento's masterpiece (which is now available on an outstanding 4K UHD disc), yet the very idea of doing such a thing provided a level of intrigue which made it, at least for me, one of the most anticipated films of 2018.  An inherent weakness of the new film is that Guadagnino is no director of horror, let alone an Argento, and it's obvious that he's looked to other areas to compensate for this; the film is never scary, and it falters whenever it has to deal with familiar genre tropes - although it is occasionally unsettling.  It is, incredibly, nearly a full hour longer than the original, and wears its pretension on its sleeve as it languidly moves through its "six acts and an epilogue".  And, while immaculately photographed, it doesn't come close to replicating the unique visual aesthetic of Argento's film.  There are lots of other reasons why the film shouldn't work, but, just like the witches featured here, it sure knows how to cast a spell.

The closest point of comparison for the movie is Gus Van Sant's Psycho - both films share a perverse aim in remaking an established masterpiece, and the two remakes stand as bizarre art exercises whose existence is infinitely stranger than any of their content.  Which is saying something in the case of Suspiria, which is an elliptical, fragmented rumination on motherhood and collective memory masquerading as a horror film.  However, the movie does very much succeed in creating a strong sense of time and place: Bowie's Berlin is that most atmospheric of settings, and the film is certainly an immersive experience which pulls you down the rabbit hole right from the off.  The performances are committed, too, with Johnson making for a surprisingly appealing lead, while Goth continues to impress.  But the film very much belongs to Swinton, whose work here is nothing less than staggering - it's best if you can go into the movie without doing too much reading up on it, as you'll find the experience to be all the more rewarding if you're ignorant of certain facts; at the very least, make a point of avoiding the film's IMDb page until after the screening.  Guadagnino's take on Suspiria, then, is a quite unique beast: pointless, yet also a must-see.

Darren Arnold

Images: image.net

Souvenir (Bavo Defurne, 2016)

It's not too often that we see Isabelle Huppert starring in something as light and breezy as Souvenir, as the acclaimed actress is far more likely to turn up in much heavier fare such as the severe, austere works of Michael Haneke or Paul Verhoeven's feather-ruffling Elle.  Souvenir carries more than an echo of Copacabana (another Belgian film starring Huppert), and, as with that film, it's nice to see the actress operating in a different gear.  While Souvenir may be so slight it could just about blow away, Huppert's performance is typically magnetic and she glues the whole flimsy affair together; you strongly suspect that, without her presence, the film would be at the level of a forgettable TV movie.

Huppert's Liliane is a lonely factory worker who, several decades earlier and under the name Laura, nearly won the Eurovision European Song Contest (legal reasons?) but was pipped at the last by a Swedish act known as ABBA (who, it's alleged, cheated their way to the title).  Following this near miss, Laura separated from her husband-manager Tony (Johan Leysen) and drifted into obscurity.  Jean (Kévin Azaïs), a young temp at the factory, recognises her (his dad is a big fan, which highlights how many years have passed since the contest) and tries to convince her to come out of retirement just for one evening.  Although Liliane would rather stay out of the limelight, she agrees to help out this rather sweet young man, but soon the two are in a relationship and Jean is Laura's new manager, with the goal being to relaunch her singing career.

While Jean doesn't lack enthusiasm, he has no real clue about showbiz and has only just recently ditched plans to become a professional boxer.  While her youthful lover is able to secure several low-key (and very dispiriting) gigs, things hot up when Laura decides to again audition for the European Song Contest.  As Jean has very limited knowledge and experience, Liliane turns to Tony for help with her preparations for the big event; unsurprisingly, she doesn't tell Jean about this, thus telegraphing the drama which will unfold as the film reaches its climax. 

While Souvenir is all a bit too predictable, it again provides proof that Isabelle Huppert, arguably the world's greatest living actress, is capable of elevating the thinnest material into something worth watching.  It makes for a fun hour and a half (wisely, Defurne resists the temptation to spin things out for any longer), and while the May-September romance on display is hardly a new screen concept, there are a few touching (and amusing) moments along the way.  Souvenir made its way round most European countries in 2017, but a limited US theatrical release is planned for March; a region 2 DVD is available now.

Darren Arnold

Images: UniFrance