The Way He Looks
(seen 9 October 2014)
Giovanna is clearly finding that her childhood
friendship with Leo is developing into stronger feelings, but Leo is totally
unaware of this. She is protective of him, but their relationship has always
been close and easy, and of course Leo cannot see the wounded look on her face
when he says things that clearly show her feelings are not reciprocated. This
is all conveyed in a few early scenes of unforced naturalness as the two
friends discuss their boredom threshold while sunbathing beside Giovanna’s
family pool, attend classes, and generally hang out together.
Leo’s relationship with his parents is affectionate
but also confining. They too are extremely protective of their blind son, and
he resents the constraints of their carefulness, being unwilling to concede
that his blindness should justify their concerns. But this is only the
particular manifestation of typical teenage rebelliousness, and it is clear
that underneath the growing pains there is a warm and comfortable family
dynamic. There is a wonderfully understated scene between Leo and his father
Carlos as Carlos tries to explain his doubts about the wisdom of Leo’s plans while teaching him how to shave. Leo’s
instinctive obedience to his father’s instructions (a quick apology when his
father tells him not to talk while using the razor on his cheek, and, a few
minutes later, when his father asks for his agreement to a proposition, a good
humoured question, “Can I talk now?”) speak volumes for mutual love and
respect.
Gabriel arrives at the school and sits behind Leo in
the class, this being the only available seat, though everyone else complains
about the noise of Leo’s braille typewriter. Soon perforce the two become
friends, and Giovanna is interested in the handsome Gabriel, as are other girls
in the class. But equally she feels left out of the growing friendship between
the two boys, especially when Gabriel takes over the role of accompanying Leo
home (she has been going out of her way to do this for years).
Feelings become stronger between the two boys, and
there are growing tensions with Giovanna, portrayed through their attendance at
a party and at a school summer camp.
This is a fairly breezy coming of age film, with
the twin complications of Leo’s blindness and the fact that the primary romance
is between two boys. What makes it so refreshing is the brilliance of Ghilherme
Lobo, the young actor playing Leo, who gives what appears to be a convincing
rendition of a blind boy’s navigation of his world. The supporting roles are
also excellently done, not only the other principal characters (Fabio Audi and
Tess Amorim), but also the general school environment of unthinking bullying and
foolish teasing, not really malicious but all too ready to spiral into
something unpleasant (although this does not actually happen). One of the
hallmarks of successful acting (in my estimation) is the convincing rendition
of easy friendship, and more especially of infectious laughter between young
people. Here, this is excellently done in the various light-hearted
conversations between Leo and Giovanna, and between Leo and Gabriel, while the
occasional embarrassments and confusions are also lightly rather than
portentously managed. There’s a real sense that these youngsters enjoy one
another’s company. Likewise the affection underlying the sometimes fraught
confrontations between Leo and his parents; this is subtly conveyed and hence
all the more believable.
The director spoke afterwards and remarked that it is
currently Brazilian education policy to include blind students in mainstream
schools (rather than in specialist schools of their own); and that there had
been special audio-described screenings of the film for blind audiences which
had been well received, and that a blind gay journalist had praised the film
and endorsed the family dynamics in it (though they were not like his own, as
his parents had encouraged his independence more aggressively). He also
remarked that it was the sort of optimistic film that he would have liked to
see as a youngster.
The director was asked if he wanted to make a ‘what
happened next’ film, but he laughed and said he had been living with these
characters for several years (a short film was made first, which I have seen on
You Tube), and he would not be interested until at least ten years afterwards.
Perhaps this question is more in people’s minds now with Richard Linklater’s
example in front of them.
Something Must Break
(seen 10 October 2014)
This is a Swedish film following the fraught encounter
between Sebastian, a young transgender boy who prefers to think of himself as
Ellie, and Andreas, an attractive but rather dangerous young man who is ‘not
gay’ but who finds Sebastian extremely attractive.
The film is made from Sebastian’s point of view, with
a voiceover from him shaping the mood and narrative flow. It is very much a
film of late teenage or young adult angst, intensified by the confusions swirling around the transgender issues. Sebastian dresses androgynously, with
long hair emphasising a somewhat feminine cast to his face – but unlike the
character in ‘Romeos’, he appears to have no interest in physically altering
his gender by surgery or hormone treatment. (Perhaps this comment is irrelevant
and shows my ignorance concerning the categories of gender issues.)
The overall atmosphere is rather dark and doom-laden
due to Sebastian’s general state of mind and the added pressures of dealing
with Andreas, whom he first meets as a protector when he is being attacked in a
public toilet. They have an intense physical and sexual relationship which is
checked by Andreas’s claim not be gay (Sebastian’s reply: “I’m not either.”);
but they cannot leave each other alone. Their time together includes an
escapade of shoplifting (alcohol from 7/11) and an invitation to cut each
other, which leads to a revolting short scene in which Sebastian nearly severs
Andreas’s femoral artery.
The director (himself transgender, with the names
Ester and Martin) spoke afterwards but was not especially articulate in
response to questions. The answers were often rambling and indeterminate,
ending with an “Oh – I don’t really know”, or with turning the question back on
the interlocutor. But in some cases this was quite justified as the film raises
questions without answering them, so that the viewer can decide, and so of
course the director is not going to resolve them if they are not resolved
within the film.
One questioner expressed extreme irritation with
Andreas as too weepy (he cried at least once, if not twice) – wouldn’t
Sebastian have tired of him sooner? But the director pointed out that this was
a 20-year-old just finding his way with a big romance; surely Andreas would be
attractive in these circumstances. The questioner seemed to think that 20 years
was sufficient to show more judgement but the director very properly pointed
out that when 20 years is your whole life things are not so clear. He also
mentioned that it was a film for his 16-year-old self – this might account for
its adolescent seriousness; it seemed quite as likely that Sebastian would
attempt suicide as that he would be affected by a rather clunky observation
about beauty on top of a rubbish dump.
Sebastian is played by a non-professional young
transgender actor who (the director said) was entirely natural; therefore the
professional actors in the film could not be allowed to ‘cheat’. I took this to
refer in particular to Andreas whose performance did not seem remotely
‘actorly’; but did this refer for example to the scene leading up to the
cutting episode, in which the two slapped each other in the face several times?
Their faces were certainly reddened in a way more consistent with slapping than
with clever make-up. (One presumes that the sex scenes are simulated.)
Madame Bovary
(seen 13 October 2014)
This is an English-language adaptation of Flaubert’s
novel made by a half-French female director now living in New York. Mia
Wasikowska, Ezra Miller and Paul Giamatti (at least) speak with American
accents while others (Rhys Ifans, Henry Lloyd Green, and so forth) speak with
English accents, an arrangement that must be constantly ignored as an unwelcome
distraction. The director explained that the screenplay had been presented in
English and so there was no reason for her to find a French cast or to
translate the screenplay; the questioner on this point was evidently far more
dissatisfied with the jumble of accents than I was.
The film is lushly designed in exquisite seasonal
colours with costumes to match, and the director remarked that the interiors
were deliberately made more restrained than would have been the case in
aspiring 19th century middle-class households, in order to let Madame Bovary’s
dresses in particular show more conspicuously the development and debasement of
her position.
Mia Wasikowska looked good; Henry Lloyd Green looked
too handsome I thought as Charles Bovary; my impression was that he was more
stolid physically as well as mentally. It is so long since I read the novel
that I could not spot the departures from the text, though the director
remarked that the whole episode of Emma’s motherhood and her extreme
ambivalence in mothering her daughter was deliberately excluded from the film because
it would have altered the entire dynamic of what she (the director) had set out
to do. She remarked engagingly that perhaps another adaptation should be filmed
around this neglected plot development. The book ends with the depiction of the
daughter reduced to factory work after the death of both her parents.
There was a coolness about the whole presentation
which I guess was a reflection of Flaubert’s own detachment; quite difficult to
bring off in a film, but not badly done. Perhaps M. Lheureux was somewhat too
stereotypically mendacious, making his financial entrapment of Emma look less
claustrophobic and more melodramatic than it should have – but then Emma lives
in a melodramatically Romantic dream of her own devising.
Is Emma’s predicament – her head unreasonably filled
with notions from women’s magazines and romantic novels, with too much time to
brood about the disappointments of her situation – markedly different from
Sebastian’s naïve expectations of a great passion to solve the confusions of
his situation?
The Lamb
(seen 15 October 2014)
This Turkish film depicts a poor family in crisis over
providing a celebratory feast for the circumcision of their son, a feast they
can ill afford. The father has only recently secured a job in a nearby abattoir;
at the opening of the film he has no money to buy a lamb for the proposed feast
so the shepherd sends him packing. There is an undefined tension between him
and his wife – does he have an illness which occasionally makes him abusive?
The little boy is puzzled by all the talk of a feast
and its attendant problems, especially when his older sister (a self-important
child obviously going to be kicking against the restrictions on women in her
society when she grows up) explains to him that if they can’t afford to buy a
lamb for his circumcision feast, then his parents will be forced to serve him
up to the guests instead. Why else do they keep referring to him as ‘their
little lamb’?
The setting is believably bleak, with the villagers obviously poor and the landscape harsh in winter and early spring. The picture of village life, with long-standing tensions between generations or families, the need to keep up appearances, the power structures that govern the small society, are familiar but well-portrayed, as are the attractions and dangers of the nearby big town.
For much of the film there is a realistic take on the poverty of the family’s life, the accidental fecklessness of the father, the misunderstanding of the boy (abetted by the strong but wayward personality of his elder sister), and so forth. What is one to make of the denouement in which the the whole tone of the film shifts to something almost larky? It makes for something of a mish-mash.
For much of the film there is a realistic take on the poverty of the family’s life, the accidental fecklessness of the father, the misunderstanding of the boy (abetted by the strong but wayward personality of his elder sister), and so forth. What is one to make of the denouement in which the the whole tone of the film shifts to something almost larky? It makes for something of a mish-mash.
The opening of the film shows a motor-bike rider
staring at the landscape then setting off. At one stage the boy meets him. He is ecstatic to be given a ride in the sidecar and is convinced that
the rider will provide a lamb – but we never see or hear from the rider again.
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