HI." REVIEW
‘Hey, Wayne, is that Sean Connery up a tree in an Amazonian rainforest?’ ‘Shyeeeeaah!
RRiiiggghhhtt, Garth!’ ‘And is The
List reviewing all of the films opening in Central Scotland this fortnight?’ ‘Way.’ ‘No way.’
I Don'lTell Mom The Babysitter’s Dead (12) In a somewhat dubious plot development. the elderly babysitter of five kids left at home for the summer kicks the proverbial bucket, leaving the .eens to learn how to worl; together, accept responsibility, etc. For all that, it’s fairly amusing youth fare that grabs its various sub-plots with both hands. I The Long Day Closes (PG) Terence Davies‘s poetic evocation of his early childhood in Liverpool during the 505 is a tremendous cinematic achievement. Clips from film soundtracks and period songs complement the lingeringly beautiful photography and give an elegiac feel to the story of
i ayoung boy‘s supremely ! happy familylife.See l preview.
I I Medicine Man (PG) ' Change oftack for top 1 action director John . McTiernan and Scotland‘s 5 favourite son Sean , Connery in this tale ofa : scientist whose elusive l cure for cancer lies within ‘ a patch of rainforest due for ‘development‘. Connery and co-star Lorraine Bracco never quite hit it off as a screen duo, but the photography and Big Tam‘s inimitable charm make for a damn good cinema sitting. See preview. I Wayne's World (PG) The nerds who launched a thousand catchphrases hit the big time when their
cable show is snapped up for primetime TV viewing. An array of inspired film and TV pastiches betrays the
movie‘s roots as a
Saturday Night Live
. sketch, but if this doesn‘t
have you rolling in the aisles, then monkeys will fly out ofmy butt. See feature.
IAII'lI (15) In both story and style , Ama bridges the gap between the UK and Ghana, the homeland of the filmmakers. Essentially a story about a young African girl trying to discover her roots while living in London, it blends myth and reality, the visual splendour of Ghana with the concrete grey of
I the British streets.
5 Singlehandedly it
reinvents cinematic
j narrative style, with free
' flights of fantasy working
i within a distinctively
| African storytelling
l tradition. Unfortunately,
its own brand of racial
. stereotyping adds a sour note.
' l— l (VOYAGER
5 Voyager: otters ‘food tor thought and much : nourishment for the eye'
Sam Shepard is Walter Faber, a
: highly-respected American
3 hydro-electric engineer whose work
; takes him all over the world, but which
leaves little time for any deep commitment in his personal relationships. As a man oi science and
3 technology, he’s forced to re-examine
‘ his rationalist outlook when he emerges miraculously unscathed from a plane crash in Mexico. A further chance encounter on a transatlantic liner leads in turn to a passionate romance with the mysterious Sabeth (Julie Delpy), a young woman many years his junior, through whom he discovers a whole new world of unquantiliable desires and emotions. Throwing his schedule to the winds, he travels across Europe with her, but their idyllic sojourn in Greece is
shattered by an unfortunate turn of events which culminate in the unexpected reappearance of his long lost ex-lover Hannah (Barbara Sukowa).
By the lilmmaker’s own estimation something of a return to form, Volker Schloendorft's adaptation oi Max Frisch’s 1957 novel Homo Faber succeeds in both offering lood for thought and much nourishment for the eye, capitallsing on the effect that a string of strikingly visualised intematlonal locations have in shaping the protagonist’s inner journey. Built around a core of obviously literary ideas - the modern technocrat encountering his late, the revelation of art and love to the man of science — and with the ghosts of both doomy post-World War II exlstentlalism and Greek tragedy lurking in the background, Shepard’s gruff underplaylng oi Faber’s lovestruck soul-searching lends the piece conviction enough to hear such thematic supersaturation.
If it isn’t giving too much away, Schloendorff’s interpolation of grainin attractive footage from the engineer’s ever-present home movie camera subtly ioregrounds the act of vision in a way that underscores the Dedipal aspects of the narrative. What’s more, it gives rise to a genuinely breathtaking moment when the film ilnally runs out. (Trevor Johnston)
Voyager (15) (Volker Schloendortt,
France/Germany, 1991) Sam Shepard, i
Julie Delpy, Barbara Sukowa, Dieter Klrchlechner. 100 mins. From 22 May: Edinburgh Cameo.
VOLKER SCHLOENDORFF
Writer/director. born Wiesbaden. Germany. 1939. Former assistant to Louis Malle, Alain Resnais and Jean-Pierre Melville. his features include The Lost Honour of Katharina Blunt (1975). the Oscar-winning The Tin Drum (1979) and The Handmaid's Tale ( 1989).
‘l was in my apartment in New York and all ofa sudden I said to myself. “It‘s almost eight years since you did a decent movie! Maybe you just lost your track!" Through all the upheavals travelling between Germany and America. my private life was also in a total mess and that was really the moment when Homo Faber pointed his finger and said “Here‘s a brother".‘
‘I had known the book for a number of years, but [hadn‘t read it that recently. so I‘d sort of forgotten the rather downbeat resolution and only remembered the good parts; the travelling around Europe. the love story. No Greek tragedy. No existential despair. No ideological conflicts. All through the process of developing the novel into
3 Voyager. 1 never thought
. of it as a sad story. more a
I celebration oflife.
UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD
The year is 1999 and Solveig Dommartin’s heroine Claire Tourneur finds herself torn between two men, Paris-based novelist Eugene (Sam Neill) and the mysterious fugitive Trevor (William Hurt), a wanted man with whom she finds herself crlss-crosslng the continents with various bank robbers, private detectives and bounty hunters in hot pursuit. It's only when the pair reach Australia that Trevor’s enigmatic identity becomes clear and his strange obsession with taking photographs starts to make sense. As nuclear confrontation escalates, the action
shifts to a cosseted underground
laboratory deep in the Aussie
hinterland, where his eccentric
; scientist father (Max Von Sydow) edges
l closer to the technological
l breakthrough that will restore to his
; blind wile (Jeanne Moreau) the gift of
vision.
Wim Wender’s most expensive and
; expansive project to date, this
, rock’n’roll-poweredtransglobal
i odyssey takes the lllmmaker's
l favoured narrative trajectory of a
journey in search of truth and
{ affirmation to its furthest possible
; extension. However, having started Ille as two distinct screenplay ideas (a sci-fl piece and ‘a sort of female Peer
3”, glen? . ' Until The End Of The World: ‘rock’n'rolI-powered transglobal odyssey'
Gynt’), it never quite shakes off the feeling that the two elements have been rather forcibly linked. Still, with a groovy soundtrack and quasi-futuristic hardware to captivate the attention, even a flawed offering lrom one of Europe’s major movlemakers has its own kind of fascination. (Trevor Johnston)
Until The End Of The World (15) (Wim Wenders, Germany/US/Japan/ Australia, 1992) Solveig Dommartln, William Hurt, Sam Neill, Max Von Sydow, Jeanne Moreau. 158 mins. A special free preview for readers of The List takes place at 1 .3me on Sat 30 May at the Cameo, Edinburgh. To get tickets, take this issue to the box olflce from Wed 27. The film opens at the Cameo on Fri 5 June.
VAN GOGH AR
In this low-key but utterly absorbing chronicle of the artist‘s last months, director Maurice Pialat
hangs back and lets us watch Jacques Dutronc,
totally convincing in the
j title role. go about his
daily round ofpainting.
drinking and carrying on with his host‘s daughter. Less an art history than a
look at a painter in his 2 times. Van Gogh offers a
kind of 19th century cinema-verité that somehow manages to work in visual references
to the work of fellow
artists like Renoir and Seurat. The palpable feeling of real lives passing before your eyes makes this an altogether remarkable movie experience. (TJ)
Van Gogh (12) (Maurice Pialat. France, 199]) Jacques Dutronc. Alexandra London. Gerard Sety. 185 mins. From Sun 24: Glasgow Film Theatre.
16 The List 22 May - 4 June 1992