CLASSIC REISSUE PERFORMANCE (18) 105min .0000
‘l’lI tell you this. The only performance that makes it, that really makes it, that makes it all the way, is the one that achieves madness.’
Turner (Mick Jagger) in Performance.
Warner Brothers had no idea what was being handed to them back in 1970 by young filmmakers Donald Cammell and Nic Roeg. They were horrified. A puzzle box of paradoxes and complexities, something about a gangster who pisses off his mob and then goes into hiding in a fading rock star’s basement. Cammell told them it was predominantly influenced by the work of Jorge Luis Borges (inverted laws of domain, androgynous characters, conflict between life, work and identity) and Nabakov’s book Despair (the meeting of doubles or alter egos). All Warners could see was a rip off of Bergman’s excellent Persona (which had been released in the UK when Cammell was writing the script to Performance) and a few moments of homo-erotic stylisation courtesy of Francis Bacon. Needless to say, Cammell was told to re-edit it while Roeg dissociated himself from the project to go and wander around the Aussie bush with wee Jenny Agutter for Walkabout.
As with all great films, the BFI finally got its act together to save what was left of this peach of a movie and represent it to a new generation of film lovers and cult cinema junkies - and it is an offer you would be a fool to refuse. Cammell/Roeg’s surreal, visceral, mysteriously perverse experimental art film is a stunningly unique artefact of post-war British cinema.
Chas (James Fox - never better than here) is a violent gangster who has to go into hiding to avoid retribution from an oddly shrill bunch of old school
Droll cliché and nuptial disagreements
scary/em L coMi-iov LAWS OF ATTACTION
same cannot be said of Julianne
gangsters headed by the Ronnie Kray-esque Harry Flowers (a brilliant turn by Johnny Shannon). By chance he ends up in the Notting Hill house of Turner (Jagger - a superb performance - albeit playing himself). Turner sees Chas as a source of rekindling his creativity and starts tormenting him with drug-induced mind games with the help of the beautiful Pherber (Anita Pallenberg) and the androgynous Lucy (Michele Breton).
What is most surprising about Performance, even at this remove, is how it still manages to throw up such suprising templates - its fractured
(PG) 89min .0.
GIRLY LIFE LESSON DRAMA CONFESSIONS OF A TEENAGE DRAMA QUEEN
Film
Nothing is real, everything is permitted
timelines and vicious juxtapositions of soundtrack and visuals may have been mimicked by the likes of Soderberg (Out of Sight, The Limey) and Paul McGuigan (Gangster No 1) but never really been surpassed.
Shot in two halves, one a gangster film, the other a requiem to psychedelic enhancement and the belief in the self. Performance looks, feels and sounds like nothing else, it’s a miraculous piece of cinema that will stand the march of time. Miss at your peril. (Paul Dale) I Cameo. Edinburgh from Fri /' Liar;
Before 9' l 1 Hollywood used cocksurerress. self-aggrantiiseirrent {l'lil ove' confidence as the traits wrth which to attack New Yorker‘s. Now tii‘se; tout." :s celebrating these (itrrntessential personality traits and it's no 'onger a case of ii ca;- City. shame about the assholes who live there. New ork directors .".£t‘.’-f§- sung the praises of the Big Apple so it was hardly surprising tl‘af both Spike l -:,-<,- and Woody Allen made odes to the city after the destruction o‘ tin-:2 \K’o' ;: Trade Centre. And now Hollywood is doing its bit to make sure all the kids in A'r‘e' ya don't miss out on this new~found love for New Yorkers.
Lola (Lindsay Lohan) is devastated when family circtirrrstarrces dictate that :1"t': has to move from the greatest city in the world to live in Nos: Jersey. suburban surrounds Lola rs determined to prove that you car: take the til‘." ;x.: a" New York, but you can't take New York out of the girl. as site rrrakes 2"»;2 mast 0‘ her native sassrness to land the lead role in the lllgl‘. schoo n‘iiscaa l’iI":’i-l1"i‘<7:‘::§:§ she makes enemies of the rich kid Carla Santrni Megan l-ox zt'itl be?" engis '."‘-t‘: :;»:=" doubting Ella (Alison Pl“). The friendship betweer‘ lola and l‘ la s test-st: ‘.'."t-’i-" 1w:-
best friends head into New York to woo a drunken British rock star Aan (tan: a
it were. (Kaleerrr Aftab)
Above average. simplistic moral life lesson rrrovre. a kind of pre Se». TM" (’36., as
(12A) 90min 0
Stealing its premise from Adam's Rib. the 1949 l-lepburriTracey screwball comedy about a husband and wife who must pit their legal minds against each other while defending feuding spouses in court. Laws of Attraction. by Peter Sliding Doors llowrtt. sorrielrow manages to be neither funny, fast paced nor well acted.
As with the Coen Brothers Intolerable Cruelty. the idea of a deliorrarr‘ divorce lawyer falling in love proves a tried and tested. vaguely rewarding concert and Pierce Brosnan rs perfectly cast as the rogue lawyer Daniel Rafferty. a man only interested in puttr‘ig briefs on show. The
Moore. who plays Audrey Miller. the straight-laced lawyer with all the rest of an employment lawyer. It is impossible to work Out what law of attraction Brosnan has been sentenced wrth. especially as Moore's socialite mother. played by the absolutely fabulous Frances Fisher. seems the far better catch.
The clients in question are a British rock star Thorne Jamison (a bizarrely cast Michael Sheen) and fashion designer wife Serena (Parker Posey). who wants rid of him.
The predictable fare will make you want to divorce your burn from the cinema seat.
(Kaleem Aftab) I General release from Fri 7 May.
I General release from Fri 7 May
Little ladies with a Big Apple attitude
."J Apr (.1 r. 1 THE LIST 29