Name Ken Adam
Born 5 February, 1921, Berlin. Germany.
Background Born Klaus Adam. he and his family moved to England from Germany in 1934 to avoid the Nazis. When the war started, he joined the Royal Air Force and became their only German fighter pilot. After studying architecture in London, he worked as a draftsman on two now rarely seen post war drama/horrors The Brass Monkey and The Queen of Spades. Adam’s gift for art direction and set design was pretty evident early on and by the 19503 he was working with relatively big budgets on Around the World in 80 Days (for which he received his first Oscar nomination) and The Trials of Oscar Wilde. His big break came in 1962 when he started work on the first of many James Bond films with Dr No, and as the series' budgets increased, Adam constructed more elaborate. spectacular sets for Thunderba/I, You Only Live Twice. Diamonds Are Forever. The Spy Who Loved Me (his second Oscar nomination) and Moonraker. He was also the production designer on the Harry Palmer spy films. Dr Strange/eve. Barry Lyndon (which won him the first of two Oscars), Pennies From Heaven, Addams Family Values and The Madness of King George. What he up to now? Adam has spent the last few years as production design consultant on a handful of video games. the best known of which is GoldenEye: Rogue Agent.
What he says about working with a much younger team on video games ‘In one way it was so sweet and in another so naive - when I went over to their offices and various design teams were trying to imitate my style by inclining surfaces and so on but what they did of course was to incline them the wrong way!’ Interesting tact Adam was knighted in 2003 for services to British cinema.
I Reel Life: Ken Adam, Cinewor/d, 623 8030, 22 Aug, 2.45pm, £7 0. 45 (£7. 70).
THRILLER/DRAMA THE BEAT THAT
MY HEART SKIPPED
(Jacques Audiard, France, 2004) 107min oooo
Minor real estate gangster Thomas (Roman Duris) has got the property game in his blood. He and his friends spend their days and nights managing
i The Great Ecstasy of Robert Carmichael
refugee squatted flats for greedy Parisian developers. They beat the crap out of anyone in their path and get rich 1 off the percentages. Thomas’ father (Niels Arestrop) is a low life. mostly i unsuccessful moneylender and wannabe tycoon but his now dead mother was a pianist. Thomas is torn between the two worlds. His secret ambition is to become a concert 3 pianist. but dreams are not that easily attained. Director Jacques Audiard and ' screenwriter Tonino Benacquista's second feature together (their first was the superb Read My Lips) is a stunning remake of James Toback's 1978 small thriller Fingers (which in turn was inspired by Scorsese’s Mean Streets) starring Harvey Keitel (also showing by : way of contrast at this year‘s Festival). In opening up Toback's wantonly machismo indie flick to include many of : Audiard and Benacquista's favourite themes (mistreatment of refugees. marginal characters caught in vaguely Hitchcockian melodramas etc) they have achieved something very unusual : — a remake that surpasses the original. Duris (Pot Luck) is phenomenal in the lead role — a good-looking wire ball of tightly wound ill temper — as are the rest of the cast. Beautifully upholstered by Stephane Les Amants du Pont Neul Fontaine's moody beautiful photography, this really is one of the treats of the festival. (Paul Dale) ; I Filmhouse, 623 8030, 20 Aug, 7pm. , £7.95 (£5.20).
44 THE LIST FESTIVAL MAGAZINE 18—25 Aug 2005
ADULT DRAMA
BATTLE IN HEAVEN (Carlos Reygadas, Mexico/ France/Germany/Belgium, 2005) 98min oooo
The opening scene of Reygadas' film shows a beautiful yOung Mexican girl giving a middle-aged. overweight man a blowjob. but slow-panning cameras and a delicate soundtrack remove the action from pornography. impregnating it with s0rrow and longing.
The film goes on to tell the story of Marcos. a man who fights with his conscience after he and his wife kidnap a baby. who dies in their care.
ln homage to Italian neo-realism. director Reygadas casts non-actor Marcos Hernandez as Marcos. It's a gamble that pays off: Hernandez imbues the role with a placid Quality of a character lifted from the pages of Albert Camus.
His seeming detachment from reality neither elicits Sympathy, nor seeks to condemn. As with his preVious film Japdn, this effort's greatest strength is the resolute refusal to pass judgement. (Robert Dabrowski)
I Filmhouse, 623 8030, 20 Aug. 9. 75pm and 22 Aug, 70.20pm. {7 7. 95 (£5.20).
THRlLLER/RECONSTRUCTION THE PRESIDENT’S
LAST BANG
(lm Sang-soo, South Korea, 2005) 104mm oooo
On 26 October. 1979 Major General Park Cheung-heui was assassinated by
There’s always one film every year that turns up to the party, throws up in the corner and then shits on the patio. In recent years there has been Irreversible and Dans Ma Peau and this year it is Thomas Clay’s visceral ‘protest film’ (according to him) about one young man’s fall from grace when he falls in with the wrong crowd in some awful British coastal town. Bizarrely, this is shot by the truly great Greek cinematographer Yorgis Arvantis (Ulysses’ Gaze), and is certainly the most luscioust dangerous ticket of the Festival. Take a sick bag.
I Filmhouse, 623 8030, 24 Aug, 70. 75pm, £7.95 (£5.20).
Kim Jae-kyu. long-time friend the director of the SOLith Korean Central intelligence Agency lKClAi. The killing was Supposed to be part of a larger c0up d'etat to end the authoritarian but progressive preSident's more dictatorial policies (Kim had introduced the Yusin Constitution in 1972 to dramatically increase his power). In the hypochondriac Kim's hands the coup turned into a pointless disaster which just paved the way for the far worse General Chun Doo-hwan to seize power. but that's another stery.
lm Sang-soo's immaculate. darkly comic reCreation of the events of that fateful night is something to behold. A series of puzzling. conspiratorially flavoured scenes finally give way to a set up of betrayal inside a KClA headquaners. Playing Wlth the different levels of po-faced ab8urdity a la Pakula's The Para/lax View or Huston's brilliant Winter Kills. this comes on like Tinto Brass' Salon Kitty as filtered through Hirschbegel's Downfall and Kubrick's Dr Strange/eve. It's a daring glance into the past and has understandably attracted some condemnation in its home country. where four minutes of doCumentary footage from it were censored by the c0urts which claimed that it would confuse viewers who may believe the film is non-fiction. The filmmakers. in their madness. opted to leave four minutes of black screen where the scenes were Cut. Uniquely cherishable. (Paul Dale)
I Cinewor/d, 623 8030. 22 Aug. 7.45pm and 25 Aug, lOpni. both £7.95 (£5.20).