Film: The Queen of Versailles (Lauren Greenfield, USA, 2012)

This documentary was one of four films that I saw at the first ever Sundance London, which offered a column of 14 features (plus some shorts programs, panels and music) hand-selected from the American inceptive. Both documentaries were amazing (I also saw the insanely well-sourced and devastatingly expansive-in-scope The House I Live In) and both fiction films were kind of limp (For Ellen and Nobody Walks) and I am resisting the urge to declare that experience a cross-section of America's current indie exports. All I will say is is this: goddamn documentaries are getting good. And fiction is good too of course, but is it getting better?

Given the nature of the times, this could be the last great film to epitomize American consumption and excess. The film's becoming is amazing in itself, begun years ago as a portrait of the dynastic Segal family, who were then breaking ground on what would be the biggest house in the country. Then everything went tits up. The crash of 2008 hit and their timeshare empire, built mostly on leveraged finances, began to implode. One asset however, began paying off: the great documentarian gift of rapport. If Greenfield ever intended to capture their twisted value systems or morosely distasteful lifestyle choices, that slant never seemed to percolate. She filmed without judgement and they dug being able to make gregarious displays of wealth while simultaneously displaying their “human side.” And they became close. And as the family's lives began to erode, the show was allowed to go on, ending quite close to the date of its release.

If only all tycoons were such good sports. It helped that they might have thought we'd fancy them martyrs. Sometimes that may have been true, but in other cases one man's harrowing is another's morbidly hilarious. See: 1) Their attempts to fly commercial after losing their private jet. 2) Their attempts manage herds of exotic pets, defecating all over their increasingly filthy house – if not already too malnourished (or dead) to do so – and no domestic staff left to help them. The poignancy of all this, claims the filmmaker, is that this model of unsustainable living pertains to everyone in the first-world, just in varying levels of scale. No one, of course, would want to watch this happen to a middle class family. However, display a collapse narrative in truly operatic proportions, and it becomes compulsively watchable on many levels. And it's not just the thrill of seeing such superficial giants fall from the beanstalk.

There were probably endless opportunities to make the Segals look ridiculous and the family's deficit of self-consciousness would probably leave them oblivious to it all. Instead many choices were made that might evoke the family's softer side. Perhaps because they were too easy a target. Perhaps it was her documentarian duty to layer even grotesque displays of decadence with ambiguity. Cut to: INT. THE SEGAL'S GIGANTIC-FUCK-OFF TOWER IN DOWNTOWN VEGAS: The company's heir is galvanizing his sales team with all the fervor of a vacuum cleaner salesman: “We're saving lives here. The research is in, people who go on vacation live longer.” Is this the menacing plasticity of their industry? Or the stories they're telling themselves to morally justify their expansion? Cut to: the impressive and affordable digs that seem to blindside their very working class clients. Are they at least trying to be good? Cut to: David, the Segal patriarch and company's proprietor: “Yeah I guess I shouldn't have sold all our timeshares on a mortgage basis to any schmuck with bad credit because now I'm completely enslaved to the banks.” Are they victims too? Cut to: matriarch Jackie Segal selling off her extra things (well some of her very hefty amount extra things) for almost nothing in the husk of their disbanded department store. Is she really trying to cut material weight?

Regardless, I found myself cheering for them. We find Jackie revealing herself as, well, rather revealing. Her shamelessness, innocence and candidacy are almost disarming. She quickly becomes the anchor of the film, maintaining a certain consistency of temperament as our protagonist. Of course, it later becomes apparent that her charmed life may have deprived her of the emotional software to be anything but. On pace with our attachment to Jackie, is our detachment from David as he declines on every level, completely absorbed in salvaging his ruined fortress. The third act is a sad, but all-too-expected witness to Jackie's impotence in dealing with real-life family drama. David's familial drives wither and Jackie is utterly lost, not at all used to these brand new sewers of struggle and tension.

Ultimately, the characters are in themselves about as interesting as carbon, nitrogen and phosporous, but like all good educational shows on outer space, the way those ingredients behave during a supernova is riveting. The film captures such a cosmic weave of family, economics, and all the consumptive sludge you can pile on top of it with real energy and vibrancy. Its narrative pace would ensnare those on the strictest of Hollywood fiction diets. One casualty of this is occasionally feeling waylaid by segues into the real lives of the maids and surrounding people affected by the crisis. I felt guilty considering such elemental doc material like that a bit superfluous, but it's hard not to let your expectations get tainted by the fireworks show at center stage. You can't help yourself: it's a genre film with all the thrills of the“I-can't-believe-this-is-actually-happening” factor. This is an especially powerful combination to frame all the obscenities of lifestyle that the American one-percenters seem to so generously provide. And the ability of Greenfield to deliver this material with narrative precision impresses me in ways that fiction filmmaking hasn't seemed to lately. But it's the moments that you just can't find in fiction. Moments that could only burst out of such a fevered and thoroughly-filmed system of excess. (I dare Terry Gilliam to conceive of something more cartoonish than a Segal shopping spree...and this is after the crash).

Film: The Future (Miranda July, USA, 2011)

Apparently when you begin to think outwardly, your life is over. A couple decides to adopt a cat that only has 6 months to live. The comfort of this non-comittal arrangement is shattered when they find out that it might live for up to five years. The characters endeavour to start really plunging into the world (existentially, I guess? There's gotta be a better word for “being involved in meaningful shit”), because soon their obligations will narrow down to this not-so-insignificant adult responsibility. After the cat is gone, they'll potentially be 40+, and will have passed from the age-band that is privy to genuine experience.

It's a two-man show kind of set-up, where the characters are mostly isolated from the outside world and progressively augmenting their own perceptions and surrounding environment (although there isn't quite the horrific spiral into degeneration favoured by this narrative, i.e Deadringers). The characters in this form tend to render themselves human experiments, driven to the obligatory impulsive-life-change gestures to “see what happens”. They strip things down and open up to a new course, pulling themselves off the electrical grid, quitting their jobs and drawing new relationships from uncertain sources (i.e. randomly-acquired phone numbers). But a loss of momentum inevitably follows as their new occupations bob in the water and their new friends provide no shortage of tedium to swim through.

Seasoned with many comically awkward moments and whimsical, searching dialogue, this is the kind of film that makes a lot of reviewers use the word “generation”. It's interesting that the work of Miranda July, as elven as it might seem, has established her as some sort of arbiter of contemporary life. The Future's particular way of navigating our own misguided Peter Panism does emanate a “currentness,” as though speaking more directly to young(ish) thinking people than most. We, the over-exposed (sub)urban masses, braising in our own mythopoetic possibilities and constantly getting stung by the feeling of “oh shit, everything must happen now!” Drunk on romanticism, but emotionally-stunted. Charged by a sense of immediacy, but without a sense of direction.

Where is this all going? Life is just too aesthetically overwhelming to know how to act. If only we could stop time and take it all in (hint: you can, but as the film warns in its lyrical flight into the supernatural, don't use this power as a form of escape). Either way, Miranda July's vision of the sensory bouillabaisse of today's experience is so elegant and enigmatic, the word “postmodern” would just kill the mood. The wonderfully kaleidoscopic Me And You And Everyone We Know might have been more satisfying for me, but the intensified focus of The Future is a very prescient beam of a talented filmmaker's singular style. Did I mention it's narrated by a cat who seems grafted directly from a Don Delillo novel? Although I've never seen him use a non-human speaking part, I think this could be his inspiration to start.  

Film: The Raid: Redemption (Gareth Evans, Indonesia, 2012)

“I'm still thinking about The Raid,” said Gareth Evans (not the director, but a friend with exactly the same name), a week later. I realized then that the film remained with me as well, but I wasn't exactly thinking about it. Just as one doesn't really think about internal bleeding. I still felt The Raid. It resonated with the pitch of being beaten with several bags of cement.

Gareth saw the film again: “It's even better the second time because you go in knowing that there's no real storyline to worry about.” Sure there is, there's a crime boss, the hero's pregnant wife, the obligatory brother-mixed-up-with-the-wrong-crowd sub-plot, and, uh...

Okay so there's basically just those things. And yet the Curzon eagerly slapped it onto its film programme. In terms of meeting the criteria for entry into indie/art-house cinemas I guess it's grainy-looking and in another language, but that is the end of its rather thin artistic crust.  The rest is icing, a sugar rush for any 20-year-old male in search of the Valhalla of ass-kicking. It's a martial arts film that is mostly the martial part, all very purpose-driven and militaristic. There's no flouncy dancing around one another. We cut to the intimate parts. Horns lock quickly and bodies are broken vividly and thuggishly.

So credit where credit is due: this film has serious force. And in the last decade, martial arts movies had looked to be waning in popularity, consigned to flashy costume dramas, or overly polished gangster dramas with too many tacky suits and metal briefcases and members-only clubs with the name “Dragon” in the title. The Raid's answer to this: crime-lord sure, but no drugs, no money, and no pretty surroundings. The setting is almost macabre in its slumminess. It's a gritty, beastial, and claustrophobic survival show. You can feel the character's desperation, locked in with the savage bottom-rung of society and having to fight their way out of hell.

And we're in Indonesia. This is unknown territory, shimmering with ruthless uncertainty.  There are no movie stars and probably very little in the way of employee protection. Basically anyone can die at any minute and everyone is probably actually getting hit – if they want the job that is. (When the credits rolled I looked for multiple extras playing one part, imagining scenes with take after take where at one point the guy just didn't get up so they called in another unlucky soul to put his internal organs on the line for the most realistic-looking head-being-destroyed-from-smashing-scene possible).  

For such a seemingly lo-fi endeavour, The Raid no doubt beats to the rhythm of video game culture. The first act is all guns and explosives, used more generously than most war films. In some way this lends torque to its many melee scenes to follow, channelling those primal video game feelings of terror you get when your bullets run out.  

Tarantino will undoubtedly endorse the film as he does with all things that are so brutal they are silly and probably sidle over to its inevitable sequels, stamping it with a good ol' “Tarantino Presents” marquee. But this seems like something that will be crushed by whatever money and publicity lands on it. Although it will no doubt inspire martial arts films to come, it in itself might be a one-off.   Its thrills are organic.  Our sense of the film-maker's conceits are temporarily suspended.  But as with so many sequels, its duplication can give us diminishing returns, seeming transparent in attempting to continually pound us with The Raid Thing.  How much can you build on this? Grainier cinematography? More elaborate and glorious displays of pain?  Will we become numb, or, as with all good video games, is this viscerally pleasurable enough to have replay value? After all, those Youtube montages of people falling down never seem to get old.  

Film: Le Havre (Aki Kaurismaki, France, 2011)

This is a lovely little film, and I will get into that later, but I find this little bit interesting: 99% positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. 99%. There is currently a 97% approval rating for Casablanca*. What is the gravitational force around Le Havre that makes no one able to say anything bad about it? May I now speculate the unspeculable and predict the core feeling that we, the hardened, world-weary film audience left the theatre with: guilt. The guilt of 1) having your own tainted expectations of cinema revealed to you and 2) potentially being the kind of person that doesn't like this film (since they are probably also the kinds of people that hate puppies).

The set-up of Le Havre could not help but prepare us all for a tale of hard lessons: “How do I overcome a system that will do everything in its power to seize the illegal immigrant in my protection?” Shit's gonna get harrowing. And yet, this is how it goes down:

-Every character did the right thing without even questioning it.

-For every obstacle there was a fairly straightforward solution, and every character effortlessly summons the resources to transcend it.

-Everyone just keeps giving each other a break, without betraying even a twinge of self-interest...oh yeah, and everything works out in the end.

-People don't even die when they're supposed to. The final scene could not have been a better culmination of Kaurismaki's alternate universe.  A touching, but almost mocking inversion of our expectations.

Every corner of the film provoked expectations of darker tidings. And we felt a cynical bunch, sitting there blue in the balls for the pathos that never came. It all felt a little cheeky on the Finnish master's part, especially as a gesture to anyone familiar with his work. My memories of his films go as follows:

-Characters cannot seem to do the right thing ever.

-With every obstacle, characters get deeper into the shit and are not even given a chance to transcend the absolutely fungal hand they are dealt.

-Character's punishment continues beyond what is normally considered narratively just and you wonder when this ruthless bastard of an auteur is going to give them a break.

-People die when they don't even have to.

So you can imagine an audience just sitting there either bewildered or in waiting for the other shoe to drop and rain down some good old familiar tragedy and hardship onto this little fairy tale. After all, most films, not just ones from sun-deprived Finnish minds, involve some sort of struggle. Did he change medications? Is this a different angle on some kind of subversiveness? Or is Kaurimaki just reminding us of the simple pleasures of a film: “Things could work out like this, right? Wouldn't it be nice if they did?”

The passing of the film's events probably wouldn't seem so striking if it was an all-the-way comedy. Kaurismaki, after all, also trades in the “dark satire” markets of storytelling. Yet the film only attempts to be cutely humorous. And yet it's also not even that sentimental. Right off the tone is more mannered than that of say The Visitor's (which is my rushed example of the story's American equivalent; a wonderful film that couldn't help but end tragically).

There is stagedness to Le Havre, which lends itself to the fantastical nature of its story. Characters enter scenes purposefully, as though on cue. They speak in announcements, trying to reach the viewer at the back of the room even though they're mic'd and rendered polyphonic by any given venue's surround sound. The pace of the film is determined but even, maintaining the demeanour of someone taking a stroll, head up and still enjoying all the charms around them. A calm remains at its core, and its many lapses into silence provide some beautiful moments of breath and contemplation.

The whole thing smacks of the modern transcendentalists (i.e. Abbas Kiarostami, Hirokazu Koreeda, and apparently every director from Taiwan), more direct in approach, but not without an enigmatic sense of wonder. Best enjoyed on an overcast day. Bring a cup of tea and some good karma. (Puppy, optional).

*I have since learned that Rotten Tomatoes has been re-printing critiques from the time of a classic film's release. It's one “thumbs down” was from a 1942 Time Magazine article, made available in their online archive and thus thrusting it into “Tomatometer Scale” relevance. The film seems to be a pass with contemporary critics, thank god.   

Film: Carancho (Pablo Trapero, Argentina, 2010)

Everyone seems to be experiencing the same thing with Carancho: the suddenness of its acceleration. Not sudden in the sense of pulling the Hollywood-thriller plot-twist lever (not even just Hollywood...thrillers the world over) because we tend to feel the onset of all that about as subtly as acid reflux. The effect is very different here and it culminates in the third act when we are suddenly taken by a feeling of “holy shit, the stakes are really high, when did this even start happening?” There is almost no precedent for it, yet it feels completely earned and natural. This feeling of abruptness comes, ironically, from the film's initial reluctance to even narratively grip its audience. 


The film begins as an anti-thriller. As opposed to the genre's usual dependency on time to give all that titillating thrust and tension, Carancho's characters live in a world of timelessness. Night and day fold into each other. They sleep at night, they sleep during the day, she wakes up at work and sets out as the sun is setting, he makes her breakfast (after they attempt to make love but she falls asleep for 12 hours) but it's dark out. And there's very little appearance of technology – phones (not to mention call display, which feels almost omnipresent in plot-driven cinema these days), computers and even clocks apparently get confiscated at the front gate of modern day Buenos Aires (what year is it anyway?). There isn't even – to my memory anyway – any music, just a lot of tired people trying to deal with shit. The shit piles up, we cut away from the scene. New day, new shit. A doctor on shift work dealing with both a wild west health care system and soul-chaffing (sometimes explosive) patient situations. An ambulance chaser attempting to help people without making too many ethically-disastrous manoeuvres (while also constantly looking for a way out of the game).


 It all seems very fragmentary, almost documentarian, as we meander through neo-realistic shards of glass and metal for two acts, nipping at bleak little samples of the country's insanely corrupt accident compensation system. Then, in the third act, the film does something I've never seen done like this before: Contrary to most films that establish itself as a thriller from the very beginning, thus preparing you, baiting you, playing with you and finally paying off with some “Shocking! Unexpected!” thriller stuff, Carancho just sort of finds a thriller narrative without betraying its intention to do so. All of the dross just sort of languidly comes together to form a tremendously immediate feeling of being cornered and needing to thread a needle to get out. Things have seemed to close in and its now all Darwinian claustrophobia. As though the film became a thriller out of necessity rather than design, as all of the monkeys in the little cage were too close to each other for too long and had to start eating each other's heads. It maybe wasn't the most fun or satisfying system of delivery, but a very effecting way of saying “life is hard, wear a helmet.” I'd recommend seeing it, but I may have diminished your experience of it a little (I went into the film almost completely ignorant of what was in store). Or maybe not: watch closely and see if you can notice...when do you shift from detachment to dread?