Fay Grim

The last of my London Film Festival movies (boo hoo! sniff!) but brilliantly, four out of four have been great, and they are all as different as possible from each other. 'Fay Grim' is Hal Hartley's most recent effort, a follow-up to 1997's 'Henry Fool'. Now I am a devotee of Hartley, I worship at the altar of Hartley, and yet I didn't see 'Henry Fool', largely because at the time of release I was suffering from a pretty major vomiting phobia and I'd heard there was on-screen puking. Turned out I was the Fool in this scenario, because with the phobia behind me, it turns out that you can't get 'Henry Fool' on DVD any more. So not a clue what happened in that film. My guess it was a vaguely realist protrayal of a piss-poor novelist down on his luck.

'Fay Grim' focuses on said piss-poor novelist's eponymous abandoned wife, played by the distractingly beautiful Parker Posey (I spent at least half the film vowing to master the art of black eyeliner, and my usual cinema companion got all squirmy in his seat during the lengthy Posey In Paris Inexplicably Wearing Only A Long Coat And Sexy Underwear section.) However, vaguely realist it is not. It is in fact the most stagey, hammy, ridiculously over-the-top spy chase thriller movie spoof thing you are ever likely to see. It's absurd. it's ridiculous. It is utterly implausible. I loved every minute of it. In fact I adored it. And yet I am not one hundred percent convinced it is not secretly a terrible movie.

The thing is, Hal Hartley and I are soulmates. (He doesn't know this yet. I should also probably find out what he looks like, because I am shallow enough that this would make a difference. I always imagine him to look just like Martin Donovan.) I get Hal. What he finds interesting, I find interesting. What he finds funny, I find funny. What he finds beautiful, I find beautiful. He cannot be too self-indulgent for me, because when he is indulging himself, he is indulging me too. Just maybe not you.

Ultimately, if you loved 'Amateur', which you also, goddammit, can't get on DVD, you will love 'Fay Grim' because it's very much in the 'Amateur' school of Hartley's work. It is not as good as 'Amateur', but then what is? if you didn't love 'Amateur', it might be best to avoid. But if you have never seen 'Amateur', and don't know Hartley's work, and can't, for crying out loud, get any of it on DVD, then this is not a bad place to start. Just don't come crying to me if you hate it, because that probably means you hate me too.

The Savages

After the overwhelming inventiveness of 'I'm Not There', it was probably inevitable that 'The Savages' would prove a bit of a disappointment. Only a bit, mind. It is a brilliantly-acted film - what else would you expect from Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney - well-scripted, carefully made, and full of warmth, insight and humour about its subject: two dysfuntional siblings (Hoffman and Linney) brought together to care for their estranged, abusive father, who is suffering from dementia. It works a treat, it is enjoyable and thought-provoking from beginning to end, and much funnier than you'd expect, given the subject matter. It's just, well, not all that surprising; it perfectly fits of the mold of a superior American Indie movie without pushing any of the boundaries. A film like this reminds you that Indie can be a genre like any other. Can quirky still be quirky if it's quirky in such a specifically-designated way? Probably not. And yet, if you like the Indie genre you'll really enjoy this film, because it does everything as well as can be. Just not more. Never mind; writer-director Tamara Jenkins (a woman! a woman director! several hundred cheers!) is pretty inexperienced and on this evidence she has it in her to get better and better and better. Let's just hope for a few more risks next time.

I'm Not There + Director Q&A, Curzon Mayfair

When a genius makes a film about a genius starring a genius, you expect it to be good. Todd Haynes, Bob Dylan and Cate Blanchett are all at the top of their respective professions, and all known for making wonderful, strange, surprising pieces of work, so it is no surprise at all that I'm Not Scared is strange and wonderful and very surprising indeed.

In the director Q&A, Haynes - friendly, relaxed, in an old shirt and jeans, drinking coffee from a polystyrene cup - said that his intention in making the film was to preserve the essential weirdness of Dylan. In this he succeeded beyond the call of duty. I'm Not There divides the Dylan role into six - seven if you include the dual role played by Christian Bale, as trobadour Dylan, then pulling the short straw as Christian Dylan in a jewfro wig - the most Dylanesque of which is played by Cate Blanchett, in the most uncanny, spooky way, more of a possession than a performance, as 'Jude Quinn' i.e. 1966-era electric "Judas" Dylan. It's an incredible feat, she somehow morphs into him, but it is not just an imitation, rather a channelling, a scrutiny, a magnification. You utterly forget that you are watching a woman, but nor is she a man, she is more like a creature, the tarantula you see crawling across the screen in one of the party scenes. Her central role is surrounded by all of the other parts of Dylan, so that instead of a straight biopic you get a sense of the many aspects of Dylan as a person, the private, the public, the young, the old, most of all the developing creative and political mind, and all of it swirling and intercutting between fictional stories that somehow tell you a composite truth. At times it is the most pretentious thing you can imagine. At times it is completely baffling. The Richard Gere story, in which his character is in some kind of modern-yet-ancient American folk theme park Halloween past, based on Fellini and Billy the Kid, with added ostrich and giraffe, epitomises both these tendencies, and yet what is Dylan but pretentious and baffling? Contrast these with the stark images of Ben Wilshaw as raw 20-year-old 'Arthur Rimbaud' Dylan, in bright light and unforgiving black and white, sitting twitchily, stating his mission plan. This is also true. As is the precocious black kid, the shy protest singer, the selfish star...

This works so much better than any conventional biopic. I'm not a Dylan devotee, and I didn't know much about Dylan when I went in, and in some ways I still don't know anything about him. I don't know where or when he was born, how he got into music, what his albums were called, whether or how many times he married, how many children, how many hits he had, whether he had any breakdowns, drugs, rehab, what he's doing now, whatever. My factual knowledge of Dylan, in other words, remains sketchy. And yet I feel like I know Dylan, where he came from, who he was, what he did and why and in what context. It's an extraordinary film, it shouldn't work but it does. An amazing celebration of the power of genius.

Lust Caution: a postscript

You may have noticed that my review of Luct Caution (below) contains absolutely nothing about the plot. That's because I went to see it knowing nothing about it aside from that it was set in WW2 China, and I think it's the kind of film where the less you know the better. Go, enjoy.

Lust Caution

There's an old cliche about actresses getting interviewed about nudity and saying that they will do it if it's essential to the plot. And everybody laughs because when is nudity ever essential to the plot rather than a pleasing piece of titillation to tide you through the movie? Answer: in Ang Lee's incredible new film, 'Lust Caution'. I have never seen such explicit sex in a film, equally I have never felt so strongly that every frame of it was essential to the story. And titillating? Only if you're the kind of person who enjoys googling beheadings. This is the only time that I have seen sex on screen depicted in all its true complexity and intensity, albeit from a very dark place. This is the kind of thing that the term "adult movie" should really describe: a true film for adults, exceptionally bravely acted by Tony Leung and Tang Wei, and directed with such skill by Lee that it knocks Brokeback Mountain into a cocked (so to speak) hat. Be warned however that it is very upsetting, very long and absolutely the worst possible thing you could go to on a first date. I'd post the trailer here but it is about the least accurate depiction of a film I have ever seen while still being cut from the same scenes.

On a personal note, could I just add that I might have enjoyed this film even more had the woman sitting next to me not taken *two* mobile phone calls during it?