Lars von Trier is a man obsessed by technique: ask him about his films and he won’t talk about what he is trying to say, but the way in which he is trying to say it, as Thom Dibdin found out when he talked to the Director at the Munich Film Festival.
Hypnotism plays an overt part in Europa. While Max von Sidlaw counts down from ten, the camera follows a railway track through the night, back to the Germany of 1945, where Leopold Kessler. an American of German descent, arrives to help reconstruct the ravaged country. Quickly ensconsed as a sleeping car attendant on the railways, he meets the elegant
Hypnotronic
Katherina Hartman. fallsin love and I
. photographic device into the film of
is led into an affair involving violent nationalism, collaboration and murder.
Using a classic noir formula, this is the most accessible of von Trier‘s films. ‘It is a kind of service film to make things easy for the audience.‘ he says. ‘The fact ofwriting a historic film with a realistic basis and a clear plot enables me to hypnotise the audience much more easily.‘ Once hypnotised though, the audience is confronted with images which, although effective. do not necessarily add to the plot. ‘I am trying to be very clear with my story,‘ says von Trier, ‘but sometimes I get a little tempted to do some images also, and then I am a very weak person, so I kind of forget the story and do some images instead.”
Von Trier has also introduced the tricksy, ifeffective, new
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INDEX 77: LISTINGS 79
shooting extreme close—ups in colour against backdrops shot in the same black and white as the rest of the film. ‘I think this can be used in any film, it is just a matter ofthe audience not finding it very strange when the colour comes on and when it doesn‘t,‘ he points out. ‘I would
compare it to a working on anew letter for the alphabet: ifyou want to develop the language. maybe it would be nice to have a new letter. It's a game for me. and I enjoy it.‘
Europa (15) plays the Glasgow Film Theatre from Thursday 20 A ugusr.
I Homework ( 18) Seen briefly at last year‘s Latin American Film Festival at the OFT (the third tourof
their flirting and foreplay with a hidden camera for a class project — allows
LETHAL WEAPON 3
Mel Gibson and Danny Glover return tor the third time as cop partners Riggs and Murtagh in a series that's proved more lucrative with each succeeding instalment. Here our two heroes go through the usual motions of tracking down crooked real estate agent and narcotics entrepreneur Jack Travis
. (Stuart) along the way. All this action
’ tare ls livened up considerably by the comic relief ettorts of Joe Pesci’s hyper estate agent and Rene Russo's karate-kicking love interest tor our
director Jaime Humberto Hermosillo to develop his : familiar themes of sexual politics and gender roles. ! while always forcing the audience to confront its hungry desire to peek through the keyhole.
Mel.
Dazzlineg original it is not, but Gibson and Glover have grown into the roles with such ease over the years that the wisecracking chemistry between the two ol them is really what powers the film lorward. Although setting the proceedings in the week beiore Murtagh’s proposed retirement does iniect a note at urgency, lor the most part Donner’s movie is content to shamble through the plot development —there are tar too many coincidences ol the ‘Oh, look what’s happening across the street' variety— and let the two leads simply do their crazy nggs/curmudgeonly Murtagh stutt with practised spontaneity. result, a son Orbigscrccn , Given producer Joel Silver’s Springtime For Hitler for a ; professed admiration tor the action new generation. (TJ ) i movies he watched growing up in the
x “*7...
Latin American movies ., Lethal Weapon 3: ‘spectacular explosions, car chases and shoot-outs'
comes north of the border in mid-September). Homework is witty depiction of voyeuristic sex. The plot — a woman invites her boyfriend to her apartment and films
60s, there’s a sense in which the ‘Lethal’ series is turning into the successor to the James Bond tranchise, reinventing 007 as a buddy duo but retaining the poweriul combination of charismatic male star(s), eye-boggling stunts and winning one-liners. This one could run and run. (TrevorJohnston)
Lethal Weapon 3 (15) (Richard Donner, US, 1992) Mel Gibson, Danny Glover, Joe Pesci. 118 mins. All Cannons. All UCIs. Glasgow: Salon. Edinburgh: Dominion. Central: Allanpark, Caledonian, Regal. Flte: Glenrothes, New Picture House. Strathclyde: Odeon i Ayr, Odeon Hamilton, La Scala, WMR.
city paperboys‘ successful strike against the profit-hungry press barons with kiddies' ringleader Christian Bale taking on Robert Duvall‘s heavily bearded media magnate Dale Carnegie
I The News Boys (PG) There‘s always been something wonderfully silly about the great tradition ofthe Hollywood musical, but this latest attempt to breathe new life into the genre reaches an unparallelled level of zen master dumbness. Set in the New York of 1899. it tells through song and dance the true story ofthe
it‘s all transfixingly awful but curiously entertaining as a
imam i136 REESE—62‘