FILM LIST
learns a little oflife‘s simple pleasures.
A lyrical. melancholy examination of the foibles and eccentricities of mankind with some delightful moments. An ambling. discursive treat. Edinburgh: Filmhouse 0 Lou Lou ( 18) (Maurice Pialat. l’rancc. 198(1) (ierard Depardieu. lsabelle l luppert. (iuy Marchand. 105 mins. lluppert leaves stable. earnest and not a little dull hubby Marchand. a middle class businessman. for mad. bad and dangerous to know Lou Lou. a scruffy but dashing biker played by Depardieu.(ilasgow; (iFl‘
0 Love Letters ( 18) 9 (Amy Jones. US. 1983) Jamie Lee Curtis. James Keach. Amy Madigan, Bud Cort. 89 mins. See Caption Review. Edinburgh: Filmhouse
0 Mrs Soffel (PG) (Gillian Armstrong. US. 1984) Diane Keaton. Mel Gibson. lllmins. Repressed warden‘s wife Keaton shocks turn-of—the-ccntury Pittsburgh when she takes flight with charming condemned murderer Gibson in this elegant period piece redolent of a genteel Bonnie and Clyde. Edinburgh; Filmhouse
0 My Little Pony (U) a (Michael Jones. US. 198(3) With the voices of Danny De Vito. Cloris Leachman. Madeline Kahn. 1()(lmins.
Bland animated cartoon designed to clear the shelves of the pathetic My Little Pony toy range. Chuck Jones is probably throwing up lidinburgh: ()deon. (ilasgow; ABC Clarkston Road. ABC Sauchiehall Street. Cinema. (irosvenor. Rio. Lothian; ABC. Regal. Strathclyde; ABC (ireenock. ABC Kilmarnock. Kelburne. 1.;iScala. Rialto 01984(15) (Michael Radford. UK, 1984) John Hurt. Richard Burton. Suzanna Hamilton. llllmins. Although faithful to the novel. boasting impressive sets and laudable performances from Hurt and Burton as prisoner and interrogator. this fails to imbue the proceedings with any vestige of emotional resonance. Edinburgh; Filmhouse 0 One Way 0r Another ( 15) (Sara (iomez. Cuba. 1974—77) 72 mins. Another in the current season of films by black film-makers. this is the first Cuban feature to be directed by a woman. Skilfully weaving together fiction and documentary. actors and real people. it examines several problem areas for the Castro regime including the persistence of typically l.atin sexist machismo and the position of women in a post revolutionary society. Edinburgh: Filmhousc
0 Peter Pan (U) (Walt Disney Production. US. 1952) 76 mins. Typically beguiling Disney magic about the little boy who cannot grow I up and three London children who join his adventures in Never Never
' lidinburgh: Dominion. Cilasgow; ABC Clarkston Road. Cinema. (irosvcnor. Rio. [.othian: ABC. Regal. Strathclyde: ABC Cireenock. ABC Kilmarnock. Kelburne. La Scala. ()deon Ayr. ()deon Hamilton. Rialto
24 The List 25 July - 7 August
O Pinocchio (U) (Walt Disney Production. US. 1940) 77 mins. Disney‘s painstaking craftsmanship reached an unrivalled peak with this utterly charming feature that hasn‘t aged a jot in 46 years. Edinburgh; Odeon. Glasgow; Odeon 0 Plenty (15) (Fred Schepisi. US. 1985) Meryl Streep, Charles Dance, John Gielgud. 124 mins. One woman‘s disillusion with her lot in post-war Britain symbolises the malaise ofa class-bound nation in decline. Plenty is a weighty. literate and overly ambitious epic with the expected high standards of performance throughout. However,
‘ the characters are made to carry too
l
emblematic a burden in the depicted slide into mediocrity and the film fails to realise the full potential of
f i» . Love Letters (18) (Amy Jones, US,
; 1983) Jamie Lee Curtis, James Keach,
Bud Cort. 89 mins. Love Letters is the
3 second feature by director Amy Jones 3 who, along with Penelope Spheeris
(Suburbia, and The Boys Next Door), is a rare instance of a woman film-maker working in exploitation cinema. These two were both given their break by Roger Corman, head of sex-and-violence factory New World Pictures, with Jones receiving the opportunity to make Slumber Party Massacre, a feminist slasher flick (scripted by respected novelist Rita Mae Brown) where the women prove more than equal to the evil intentions of the psycho on the loose. This proved profitable enought forJones to undertake the present, more personal work, which lies towards the low-budget American Art Move end of new World’s output.
True, the exploitation requirements of sex and often quite gratuitous nudity remain, but the handsome Ms Curtis and director Jones handle them as discreetly as the circumstances allow. What we are left with then, is an agreeably pastel love story. The narrative revolves around an up-and-coming DJ (Curtis) who discovers a cache of letters which reveal that her mother was engaged in an affairwhen the former was still a child. With her mother now deceased,
and feeling under pressure from her
David Hare‘s play. Glasgow: OFF
0 Police Academy 3: Back in Training (PG) (Jerry Paris. US. 1986) Steve Guttenberg. Bubba Smith. Bobcat Goldwait. George Gaynes. 83 mins. More wacky mayhem with those oh-so comic boys in blue. Edinburgh: ABC. (ilasgow; ABC Clarkston Road. ABC Sauchiehall Street. Cinema. (irosvenor. Lothian; ABC. Strathclyde: ABC Greenock. ABC Kilmarnoek. Kelburne. ()deon Hamilton
0 Pressure ( 15)(lloracc ()ve. CK. 1974) Herbert Noville. ()scar James) 1le mins. Horace ()ve’s film centres on the growing disillusionment of a British-born Black youth as he discovers that the racialisin rife in our society bars him from achieving the conventional goals of a good income and a steady career. Like
LOVE LETTERS
cantankerous, drunken father, the letters awaken her own romantic desires, and she becomes embroiled in a messy affairwith a married man (James Keach) who refuses to leave his family.
Jones concentrates on the protagonist as an outsider; as a woman, as the loverthreatening the family group, and as the daughter isolated within her own family; and shows how she goes onto benefit from her experience and take strength from it. The film is not without its Freudian aspects, including a dream sequence where the redoubtable Curtis kills her father with a pistol. but the substance of the work is its deflation of damaging, ever-idealistic romanticism. The film plays with the conventional iconography of romance, from love letters to flowers to idylls on the beach, and shows how these things serve to delude, to take one dangerously away from the difficult truth.
It is a welcome thing to see this familiar sort of material treated with a good deal more refreshing honesty than it usually receives, and as a result the film, quite intentionally, is not as flamboyant as others of its ilk. Butthis, and a strong, sympathetic performance from Jamie Lee Curtis, makes it all the more worthy of your attention. (TrevorJohnston)
steel sinks. Vastlv ambitious and ~ . l.
many others he drifts into unemployment. but later finds a new purpose by joining a Black political grouping. A striking documentary-style technique adds a sense of urgency to this deeply-felt study of alienation
Filmhouse
o A Room With A View (PG) (James Ivory. UK. 1985) Helena Bonham Carter. Maggie Smith. Daniel Day Lewis. 117 mins. Elegantly mounted l with an agreeable lightness of tone this is a near perfect screen version of l the Forster novel with some dandy I acting. Civilised entertainment at its
‘ best. Edinburgh: Dominion. GlasgowzfiFI'
O Rumblefish ( 18) (Francis Ford
Coppola. US. 1983) Mickey Rourke.
Matt Dillon. Diane Lane. 94 mins. Electrifyingexpressionist monochrome visuals grace an existentialist parable about the need to forge one‘s own identity. and the
; alienation it can bring. Glasgow; ;
(iFI‘ O The Shining ( 18) (Stanley Kubrick. CK. 1980) Jack Nicholson. Shelley l)iivall. Scatnian Crothers. 144 mins. I .lack ‘l'oi'ranee ( Nicholson) and 1 family move into the isolated ()vei‘look l lolel high iii the Rockies as caretakers for the winter. Kubrick‘s grand horror lilm «.lispcnses with much of the psychic .ipparatiis ol'Stephen King's novel to concentrate on the deeper terror of a family turning in on itself. Nicholson is quite demonic as the father bringing much aggression to bear against his son. 'l‘he final scenes are. literally. chilling. (ilasgow: (il‘osvcnol‘ o Sunless ( 15) ((‘ln-is Marker. France. 1983) lllll mins. A visually exhilarating collage of material shot by different cameramen all over the world. from fascinating footage from Japan to shots filmed on the locations of Vertigo in San Francisco, is pieced together by A Chris{\larkerintoanextraordinary i meditation on personal memory. Market's concern is the visual docmentation of the past and its relation to the subjective response of the viewer. the gulf between images and reality and its ramifications for the future. A quite remarkable film which demands several viewings to begin to appreciate its abundant riches. lidinburgh: liilmhousc o Teenwolf(l’(i) ( Rod Daniel. LS. 1985) Michael .1. Fox. James Hampton. 92 mins. Wafer thin j I iiivciiile lycaiilhropic caper that 'l scarcely exploits its fired central notion. (ilasgow; ABC Sauchiehall Street 0 Tex Avery— Red Hot Radical (U) ('I‘ex Avery. US. 1942—1953) 80 mins. A programme ofwork from i the wonderfully deranged mind of animator Tex Avery who invented Droopy. Titles include Red Hot Radical and Who Killed Who? Glasgow: GFl‘ 0 That Sinking Feeling (PG) (Bill Forsyth. UK. 1979) Robert Buchanan. John Gordon Sinclair. Richard Demarco. 92 mins. A group of bored. unemployed youngsters plan a daring robbery. . .ofstainless