Film
Blood ink
it at 7':
This gruesome documentary about the Buenos Aires tabloid Cronica shows very little blood. But there are plenty of vivid anecdotes by the journalists to prey on our imaginations. ’We make our own movie in our head and come back to reality,’ one half-defeated humanist explains. Another journalist, a little further down the road to dehumanisation, reckons ‘man is a born brute'. Blood Ink unobtrusively wonders to what degree the paper reflects man's inhumanity to man, how much the paper helps fictionalise that inhumanity. In the distancing process, the film avoids sensationalising a sensational subject. (Tony McKibbin)
a Blood Ink, Fi/mhouse 2, Mon 17, 3.30pm, Filmhouse 3, Thu 20, 9.45pm; Fi/mhouse 2, Sat 29, 8pm, £6. 50 (£4).
La Parole 'Amore' Esiste
Mr )‘K
With delicate deep-focus and emotions no more foregrounded, Mimmo Calopresti's film is a pleasant but insignificant look at a 30-year-old woman’s fear of loneliness and her search for love. Valeria Bruni Tedeschi (the lead in Calopresti's earlier and superior La Seconda Volta) is good at capturing a comfortably well-off woman with no intrinsic reason to do anything with her life. Nevertheless Calopresti nudges a story into being, as an interest in a middle-aged music tutor (Fabrizio Bentivoglio) suggests an exit from her torpor. Calopresti’s quietest style resembles recent Claude Sautet, though there may be less to this than meets the eye. (Tony McKibbin)
a La Parole ’Amore’ Esiste, Cameo 1, Mon 17, 5.30pm; Cameo 1, Fri 21, 5.30pm; Cameo 3, Fri 28, 7.30pm, £6. 50 (£4).
Temenos
*ir
A slab of meditation to quell the frenetic festival spirit is probably how the proponents of Nina Danino’s Temenos would put it. A waste of an hour and three quarters of anyone's life, the detractors would scream. Largely shot in glittering black and white, the star of the film is a series of
landscapes and sites of apparitions, so ybu get lots of close-ups of bark, peat and roses while female voices moan, weep and wail. Film meditation at its most strained. (Brian Donaldson)
a Temenos, Fi/mhouse 2, 19 Aug, 5.30pm, £6.50 (£4).
Blood, Guts. Bullets And Octane ear I
Someone should tell the independent filmmakers of America that Reservoir Dogs was made eight years ago. Even when not aping Tarantino — with men in black suits and white shirts, pop culture set-piece monologues (on Johnny Cash and sodomy here), and funky guitar soundtracks - Joe Carnahan’s movie is full of people trying to be characters in movies, not real life. Car salesmen Sid and Bob are about to lose their business, but are offered a cool $250,000 to keep a red Pontiac on their lot for two days - so what's in the boot, eh? The fast edits and non-stop motor-mouth talking guarantee an instant headache.
(Alan Morrison)
a Blood, Guts, Bullets And Octane, Cameo 3, Mon 17, 7.30pm; Filmhouse 2, Sun 23, 3.30pm,“ Cameo 2, Fri 28, 7pm, £6.50 (£4).
Buttoners
1k *‘fi'
The six episodes here — one set in Japan in 1945, five more in modern- day Prague - deal with the themes of chance and fate. Buttoners is intellectually respectable enough but, with its surreal humour, it’s more adventurous than just that. The title, for example, is derived from a tale about a man who eats buttons from sofa cushions with a second set of teeth located in his bottom. Unfortunately, other episodes - reminiscent of the cult filmmaking of Jim Jarmusch and Aki Karismaki — fall flat. Uneven as Buttoners is, it's worth seeing for.the opening story, an ingenious, black-humoured joke about the bombing of Hiroshima.
(Miles Fielder)
fl Buttoners, Fi/mhouse 3, Mon 17, 9pm; Fi/mhouse 2, Thu 20, 10.30pm; Fi/mhouse 2, Mon 24, 8pm, £6. 50 (£4).
Chine girl: actress Joan Chen (Min Peaks, The Last Emperor) makes her lrectorl
'- "t
debut with Xiu Xiu. Cameo 1. Thu 20. 5.30pm. £6.50 (£4).
74 THEM 13-20 Aug 1998
{Velvet Goldmine ****
Glam rock: the tarted-up pub rock of : Mud and Slade. or the art-schocri ' androgyny of Bowieand Roxy chi'm latter. lipids (butt, in Todd Velvet Goldmine. ‘as the director explores a more meaningful side to an era many ‘ remember only “as a tacky party where Gary Glitter wanted eyeryone to be in his gang. Ten years rock starlrla‘n sia'de (leviathan Rhys Meyers) fell ,. from grace following {a botched “ publicity stunt. journalist Arthur ‘ Stuart_(Christian' Bale) is
commissioned to'writ'e a 'where are
now‘I'. piece. As he interviews Slade’s friends and colleagues. their different perspectives throw light on the period, bot the central figure 5 remains elusive. At the centre of the film is a neat
Personality crises: Ewan McGregorand lonathan Rhys Meyers in Velvet Goldmine
The mascara. cross-dressing and theatrical onostage personas
:aiiawad singers to become enigmas behind a painted mask; but the whole
glam phenomenon. blurring the edges of gender distinction, was a sexual
revolution that allowed hidden persOnallty traits to surface.
Velvet Goldmine is glam rock transformed into film. On screen, surface
images sparkle while the music sends'out an electric charge. At times the
_' narrative structure sails close to Citizen'Kane pastiche, but within its temple): whole, individual moments are allowed to shine. A quiet conversation between Arthur and Slade‘s err-wife (Toni Collette) is a sad realisation of what has been lost now the glam party is over, while Ewan
' showstopper. (Alan Morrison)
. McGregor’s lggy Pop-style live rendition of 'Tv Eye' is an absolute
. 3 Velvet Goldmine, Odeon, Sun 16, 10pm,1£6.50(£4).
Terra Nova at a 1k
Mentally ill mother Ruth flees from her over-protective parents with young daughter, Tuesday, taking with her only medication and the desire to start a new life. To this end she takes up residence at the run-down Terra Nova building, amidst the place's off-beat lodgers. But her parents are closing in and her mental condition is worsening. Unfocused and episodic, this gritty Australian drama wastes too much time on peripheral characters and doesn‘t go nearly deep enough into the mother-daughter relationship at the crux of the film. Proof, were it needed, that not all Aussie
neighbours are good friends.
(Graham Rae)
a Terra Nova, Tue 78, Cameo 7, 5.30pm; Glasgow Film Theatre, Sun 23, 5.45pm; Cameo 2, Fri 28, 9pm, £6. 50 (£4).
Birth Of A Butterfly
«k 1r at
The sublime, beautifully photographed landscapés of Iran and Azerbaijan, lyrical narrative and naturalistic performances of this Iranian film are a welcome tonic to increasingly fraught Western filmmaking. Three stories — one concerning a boy, his dying mother and his gruff uncle; a second about a religious pilgrimage; and a third about a teacher who rediscovers
the purity of life in a rural village - are
told with an assured, minimalist style. This meditation on spirituality, particularly its closing epiphany, shares that gorgeous sense of wonder of the Latin American magic realist tradition. (Miles Fielder)
fl Birth Of A Butterfly, Cameo 3, Wed 79, 7.30pm; Fi/mhouse 2, Sun 23, 5.30pm, £6.50ff4).
The Tichborne Claimant ease
The Tichborne Claimant is a film debut as grandly conceived and boldly executed as Citizen Kane. Director David Yates takes on the might of imperial Britain with a story so tall it could only be true. Abandoned by his employers while searching abroad for the lost heir to the Tichborne estate, African manservant Bogle returns with a claimant who may or may not be the heir. Striking visuals — such as the claimant pissing over the bow of a ship, silhouetted against the moon — broadside with biting satire and an eye for Victorian eccentricity worthy of David Lean's Dickens adaptations. (Miles Fielder)
l The Tichborne Claimant, Cameo 1, Tue 18, 8pm; Cameo 1, Wed 26, 5.30pm, £6.50 (£4).
STAR RATINGS tithe mm“
1le