Name Paul Kaye
Place and year of birth Clapham. South London. 1965. Background Born with a broken arm, Kaye and his twin sister were brought up in Wembley where their father ran a menswear shop. A big fan of punk and music in general. he formed the band Smell of Dead Fish while attending private school. After stints DJing and performing in other bands, he started earning a living by doing odd jobs in pubs and cafes to support himself as a painter. During this time he was offered a job on The Big Breakfast but turned it down and stayed on the dole because he said he hated disposable TV. In 1995 Kaye was eventually given a slot on The Sunday Show with his Dennis Pennis character. His own series Very Important Pennis followed and then. unbelievably, Kaye killed off his comic character in 1997. Most critics declared that his career was over, yet Kaye has rarely been out of work since. Career highlights include the duplicitous Bob Slay in sitcom Perfect World. and indoor bowls champion Cliff Starkey in Mel Smith’s underrated comedy Blackba/l.
What’s he up to now? He's in It 's all Gone Pete Tong, another film ‘comedy' about an Ibiza DJ who goes deaf. He is currently shooting a comedy adventure film called Eating Dust, which, according to the tagline. is ‘a story about voodoo. speedway. a drunken undertaker and a mislaid corpse’.
What Kaye says about his theatrical ambitions ‘I'd love to play Fagin on stage. It’s just so me. I’ve never had a career plan and I'm not particularly ambitious. But I'd love to do period drama — something where I could wear a tricorn hat.’ interesting facts Kaye is of Jewish persuasion. a massive Arsenal fan and is separated from wife Orly, who lives with their nine-year-old son Jordan on a kibbutz in Gaza.
I Its All Gone Pete Tong is on selected release from Fri 27 May. See review, page 45.
48 THE LIST 26 May—9 Jun 2005
BLEAK COMEDY ADAM AND PAUL (15) 86min 0000
To misquote Salvador Dali. Adam (Mark O'Hallaran) and Paul (Tom Murphy) 'don't do drugs. they are drugs'. Waking up on wasteland beside a prosperity-proof housing scheme on the outskirts of Dublin. these two hapless heroin addicts begin another day in search of a supply. With no money and a shortage of goodwill from old friends and family. their efferts are by turns pathetic. misguided and cruel. but for the most part wide—eyed and full of hope. Paul and Adam are lost souls Cut adrift from their own realities. one part Laurel and Hardy to two parts Vladimir and Estragon in Waiting for Godot. Their wanderings are pointless and sad but their aim at least is true.
This filthy pearl from director Lenny Abrahamson and writer actor O'Halloran was Ireland's surprise box office hit of 2004 (produced for less than 400,000. it grossed over
700.000 and remains in the top five rental DVDs in the country). It is hard to think of another film that ploughs its naturalistic. blackly comic furrow so seamlessly or less sympathetically. Eschewing the magic realism of most urban drug movies (Trainspotting. Human Traffic) Adam and Paul simply mixes skilful improvisation. physical comedy (Adam is the Keaton to Paul's withered Fatty Arbuckle) with a fatalistic documentary feel. More reminiscent in tone and intention of the early works of the great Liverpool soreenwriters Alan Bleasdale (No Surrender in particular) and Jimmy McGovern (Need/e). this low impact 'life in the day of‘ study is underlined by the kind of brutal bile one has come to associate With the work of Danish master filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn’s (Pusher. Bleeder). This is something quite speCial and unforgettable from the Emerald Isle. and there is not a road Sign or a butcher's bike in sight. Highly recommended. (Paul Dale)
I UGC. Fienfrew Street. Glasgow 8. UGC. Edinburgh from Fri 3 June.
DRAMA
THE CONSEQUENCES OF LOVE
(15) 104min 000
This ultra self-consciously directed. loosely existential thriller from Italian
filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino looks like it is almost afraid of the iiiiiiiol)i|ity of its
fiftysomething central character. Thus it adopts a battery of high angles. low angles. slow zooms. and ostentatious tracking shots.
But eventually the film allows for a sparse tale to evolve. Titta (Toni ServiIIO). we discover. has long since been ostracised from his family. is indebted to the mafia. and has spent the last eight years. like a prisoner. living in a SWISS hotel laundering money for the mob.
The film pretty much hinges on how we take to the taciturn. emotionally petrified central character. and the way the director releases the character's subjectivity to us more through Sorrentino's camera than through Servillo's conventional thespian abilities (though SerVillo did win the Italian Oscar for best actor).
This is figural acting. which we often see in the work of Antonioni (whose famous closmg shot in The Passenger seems referenced here. as if a gesture of admiration Within a broader hon'iage). where the characters' feelings get expressed thrOugh the framing and the use of colour. But Antonioni's work has an ongoing sense of engiiiiy. a sense that the framing and the colour suggest the possibilities available to human beings. no matter the despondency of the protagonists themselves. Sorrentino seems more interested in a n'ielancholic fatalism; a sense that the options are always closing themselves off. and a bit of stoic self- determination is the best we can expect. It makes the film finally feel like little more than an exerCise in style rather than an exploration of being. Efficient but minor. (Tony McKibbin)
I Fl/lil/IOUSO. Edinburgh from Fri 27 May GFT. Glasgow from Fri lOJun. See profile. listings.
gait; HUMAN
(15) 89min .0.
Watching Only Human puts one in mind of Arab American stand-up comedian Ray Hanania's opening gambit: ‘l'm married to a Jew. Unless another Palestinian comic With a Jewish Wife surfaces. I pretty much got that market cornt-ired.‘ Written and directed by Spanish husband and wife team Dominic Harari and Teresa Pelegri. Only Human is a three-act farce about the events that unfold when l_eni Dalinsky (Marian Agtiilera) and her fiancee Rafi (Gtiilleriiio Toledo) come to the Dalinsky family flat to
announce their upcoming nuptials. The trouble is that Rafi is of Palestinian Arab extraction and although this of little concern to Leni's trashy. belly dancing. promiscuous sister Tania (Maria Botto). it is of more than a little concern to depressed mum Gloria (Norma Aleandro. excellent as ever) and grandfather Dudu (Max Berliner). an ex-soldier alongside Moshe Dayan in the Six Day War.
Unable to spin out their interfaith marriage gimmick. Harari and Pelegri have Rafi. in his panic to impress his future in-laws. set in place a whole load of other embarrassing set pieces.
Like early Almodovar or more recently Meet the Fockers. Only Human is lightweight and genuinely entertaining but slightly too unruly and underfed to linger long in the memory. Limp interfaith comedies are ten a penny from Nair's Monsoon Wedding to Norton's Keeping the Faith and in the same vein Only Human may be one of the few Spanish films to address the Jewish/Muslim divide but so what?
On the plus side. the ensemble acting here is terrific. so good in fact that it often lifts the more lacklustre set pieces up. above and beyond what Harari and Pelegri's script really deserves. Also amongst the hysteria. clever observation and aimless charm there is a real attempt here at brevity and economy (the film comes in at a mercifully short running time). it is a lesson that our own chronicler of middle-class mores — Richard Curtis — would do well to learn. (Paul Dale)
I UGC Renfrew Street, Glasgow and Fl/lll/TOUSQ. Edinburgh from Fri 3 Jun.
ANIMATION STRINGS (PG) 88min 0...
Strings is unlikely to make an impact against Revenge of the Sith. which is a shame because as a fantasy it carries greater emotional heft. Shot entirely With marionette puppets. this is a children's film that adults will admire. The plot is a standard guest and coming-of-age saga. a bit of Tolkien. a dash of Hamlet. and this UK- Scandinavian production really stands out for the striking use of characters'