FILM REVIEW
remake, where
I Being At Home With Claude (18) French Canadian sex 'n‘ death shocker that bursts beyond its claustrophobic stage roots with flashbacks and pumped up montage. It’s basically an
I Falling Down (18) A sacked defence worker. complete with briefcase. white shirt and tie. abandons his car in a traffic jam and goes on an escalating rampage across LA. No mere vigilante movie this: Falling DUH'N is the zeitgeist movie of the 90s. drinking deep of white middle-class America‘s fears about its own future. Director Joel
Schumacher and star Michael Douglas deliver their finest work to date. with a film that continually challenges . audience expectations as i it moves from broad comedy to satire to disturbing violence and back again. See feature. r I Frauds (l5) Phil ;
Collins pushes Genesis
aside for a while to
undertake his second
major film role and. rather l
surprisingly. decides on I
this only partially
successful Australian
black comedy. Retaining a
childish malevolence that
; is the result of witnessing
a near-fatal accident involving his brother earlier in life. Roland
, Copping is an insurance
' agent who plays
18 The List 4 l7 June 1993
Forget Michael Douglas and LA traffic jams: we want the Scottish
some guy flips
out as he takes the wrong turning again in Glasgow city centre’s one-way system. But for now, calm yourselves with The List’s guide to the new movies opening in the next fortnight.
interrogation piece between an angry police inspector and Yves. a young gay hustler who slits the throat of a lover during a passionate opening encounter. Avoiding the ‘who‘ focus of a traditional murder plot. the film concentrates on the ‘why‘. as the policeman struggles to understand the perpetrator's motivations. In a demanding role that l.othaire (Black Robe) Bluteau made his own on stage in Montreal and London. Roy Dupois strips Yves down to a fascinating set of raw emotions. A film that refuses to be marginalised as New Queer Cinema.
blackmail jokes on those he discovers to be out to con him. A little too grotesque to hit the right note. Frauds intrigues rather than amuses. but rarely surprises.
; I Close To Eden (15) After her partner is
stabbed during an arrest.
3 New York cop Emily g Eden (Melanie Griffith) is I assigned to a case
involving robbery and murder in the Hasidic community. As she gets
a more involved. the streetwise Eden is taken
under the wing of Ariel (Eric Thal). soon to become the next spiritual leader of the Hasidim. allowing her to discover a group with strong codes of honour and courtesy.
Thriller convolutions hinder what could have
been an interesting exploration ofculture clashes. and even here we
; expect more of veteran
= director Sidney Lumet.
; Despite the best attempts E of movie producers —
Shining Through was
‘ another case in point —
Griffith and her squeaky voice just aren't action
hero material. Hmnit'ide it
isn‘t.
‘ THE VANISHING
The Vanishing: ‘sad dud' What makes this unusual is that Dutch director George Sluizer has been hired to do the Hollywood remake of his own classic 1988 suspense movie. What makes it a disaster is that Sluizer has allowed a rewritten script to totally
; destroy all the elements that made the l original such an unsettling, f memorable experience.
The core of the narrative remains the
; same, with a young woman’s : disappearance at a roadside shopping I centre prompting an obsessive search
l
: hackneyed last reel slugfest. Gne 'couldgoonandon . ..
3 unprepossessing hero and Bridges, no : match for the chillingly ordinary Bernard-Pierre Bonnadieu, the
by her boyfriend and eventual contact with the mild-mannered psychopath who abducted her in the first place. Yet this new version is almost a textbook example of how not to tell this tale: Jeff Bridges plays the villain as an out-and-out fruitcake with a mysteriously peripatetic accent, his working methods are revealed straight away, the first film’s terrifying ending is dropped in favour of yet another
Vlith Kiefer Sutherland an
performances do little to up the
sympathy level. This version of The
Vanishing is by no means the worst
* film ever made - there’s still a terrific % story buried in there beneath a myriad of terrible filmmaking decisions - but - that it should fall so far short of our
expectations makes you rail against it all the more. if you’ve seen Sluizer’s initial offering, even idle curiosity is no reason to sit through this sad dud.
’ If you haven’t seen the original, it’s ' available on sell-through video and
possibly available for rent in some of the better-stocked libraries. no i make myself clear? (Trevor Johnston)
The Vanishing (15) (George Sluizer,
US, 1993) Jeff Bridges, Kiefer Sutherland, Hancy Travis. 110 mins. From Fri 4. Glasgow: Odeon, Grosvenor, MGM Parkhead. Edinburgh: Odeon. Central: Cannon. Strathclyde: Cannon, Gdeon Ayr. All llCls.
} :— ' JAMON, JAMON
, Spanish lesson first: ‘iamon’ equals
. ham, while ‘una mulier iamona’ is a
;. hot hispanic babe. Put them together and you get Bigas Luna’s wild Spanish
‘ paella of meat, sex, nude bullfighting,
men with overstocked bikini briefs
. and enough breast sucking to give you chapped lips. It’s a rum ’un this
1 though, loads of reprehensible
. depravity, the teasing pretence of social significance, but it still isn’t all that great.
luna, it has to be said, doesn’t quite
j measure up to his countryman
. Almodovar in orchestrating
2 freewheeling multi-character chaos. The narrative tries to keep in focus pregnant Silvie (Cruz) as she swithers
, between prissy middle class boyfriend
‘ Jose luis (Mulla) and bulgineg
becrotched bit 0’ rough Manuel. However, it is almost as interested in
the mums — Jose’s snooty mater
; Conchita (who runs a men’s underwear
.lamon. Jainon: ‘too ny targets' business and is having an affair with new model Manuel) and Silvie’s single mama Carmen (Ana Galiena, of Hairdresser’s Husband fame), who keeps a brothel.
Perhaps there are just too many targets - machisrno is pricked, the figure of the Catholic mother undermined, the hypocrisy of materialism and snobbery exposed - and, lacking that One Big Idea, the
movie crumbles into unsatisfying j bittiness. All in all, it proves that
loads of farcical sexual activity and mucho leering exploitation of the male and female figure do not necessarily a fine film make. Even if it’s not a bad start. (Trevor Johnston)
Jamon, Jamon (18) (Bigas luna, Spain, 1992) Penelope Cruz, Javier Bardem,
Jorde Mulla, Stefania Sandrelli, Ana
Galiena. 93 mins. From Sun 6 June.
Glasgow: GFT. Edinburgh: Filmhouse.
_ one BEHAVIOUR
Bad Behaviour: 'chaos of real life'
Ellie and Gerry McAllister are reaching that point in their lives when things are getting a bit out of hand at borne. The kids are growing up. North London seems a long way from Dublin. she‘s envious of her single professional friends who aren't tied to domesticity. he‘s struggling with the bureaucracy of his job in the planning department and a builder friend says that their house is falling down.
Not. you might think. the stuff from which great cinema is made. But Les Blair‘s improvised drama hits the spot. with an intelligent eye for detail which provides a refreshing and relaxed portrait of the chaos of real life. without being bogged down by harrowing or over-worthy point-making. It is precisely this refusal to judge the ‘bad behaviour‘ of Howard the builder and Ellie‘s friend Jess which transcends potential soap material.
Rea and Cusaek provide particularly understated and controlled performances in the lead roles. Theirs is hardly domestic bliss. but their on-screen intimacy lends credibility to what could be a major case of thirtysomething wish- fulfilment. Phil Daniels's
crafty portrayal of
Howard‘s side-kick will leave you with a wry grin when you see the credits. As a Channel Four production, this is hardly in the Class of My Beautiful Laundrette. but its gentle humour is worth seeing on the silver screen before it comes out on the small one. (Thom Dibdin)
Bail Behaviour ( l 5) (Les Blair. U K . [992 ) Stephen Rea. Sineat/ Cusm'k. Phillip Jar/(sun, Clare Higgins. [04 Mins. From
Fri 4. (Ilusgtm': ()(lt‘ml. Edinburgh: ()(lenn.