the city's extenSive rail network. Images of trains are a recurrent motif here. Suggesting lives that run on separate tracks.
Shooting in long takes. Hou Hsiao- Hsien's film steers clear of melodramatic confrontations: even when Yoko tells her parents about her pregnancy. her father remains his benignly taCiturn self. There's also a vein of understated humour running through Cafe Lumiere. When Yoko checks up on the health of the cat at a Suburban station. an anonymous employee tells her: 'She's getting older. like all of us.’ There are conscious echoes here of Tokyo Story. yet this is very much HSiao-Hsien's Vision of what it's like to be young and adrift in a contemporary metropolis. (Tom Dawson)
I Fi/nihouse. Edinburgh from Fri 72 Aug (until Wed 77 Aug only).
GAY CLASSIC VICTIM (PG) 90min oooo
Dirk Bogarde gives the performance of his career in this compelling 1961 thriller. BaSII Dearden's taut black and white feature changed Bogarde's life forever: up until this p0int in his career he had only played light romantic leads. Crucially, this campaigning mowe helped change Britain's antiquated laws that classified homosexuals as illegal.
lt's set in and around London's West End where a group of gay men are being threatened by a secret blackmailer. Bogarde's tortured married barrister MeIVille Farr becomes embrOiled when his male ex-lover commits SLiICIde.
Victim provides an almost dOCUmentary insight into the lives of these gay men. whose iobs range from matinee actor and car salesman to barber. The tone is never patronising or stereotypical. and the men’s terror is palpable. as is the sense of furtiveness in their lives only half lived. Victim becomes a plea for tolerance yet it is never po-faced. From its jaZZIIy scored opening shots. this cracking thriller never lets up pace and keeps us on the edge of Our seats. Full of sharp dialogue and great character acting. it keeps us guessmg until its final frames. The most movmg emotional scenes are between Farr and his Wife Laura (SyIVIa Syinsl towards the end. when he has to face up to his past and what he really is.
Go and enjoy Victim on the big screen where it belongs in this lovely new print. and marvel at how ahead of its time it was. (John Binnie)
I GET. Glasgow on Thu 7 7 Aug and Fi/mhouse. Edinburgh from Mon ((-- Wed 7 7 Aug only.
COMEDY DRAMA FOOTBALL DAYS (15) 118min 0000
White. thirtysomething and still waiting for a break in life. Antonio is trying to get on top of his anger management problem. On leaving the prison where he is semng a sentence due to his last Outburst. he is met by his five equally useless and misguided friends. Each of them is suffering from the inevitable grind of life. misplaced love and adult respoiisil‘)ility. The newly evangelised Antonio the has gone through some heavy duty therapy in the clinkl attempts to lift their burdens by making them form a seven-aside football team. Little do they know their problems have Just begun.
Spanish filmmaker DaVid Serrano's follow-up of sorts to his enjoyable 2003 film The Other Side of the Bed has been compared to The Full Monty. but that would be underselling this little gem by guite some margin. Darkly and Wittin reflective on the idiocy of men and their belief in bonding. this is an excellent addition to Serrano's growmg series of sly ensemble comedy dramas anchored by the remarkable talents of comic character actor Alterio. Having said that. many of the Jokes here are very colloquially Spanish so don't expect to get them all unless yOu speak the lingo. A feel good’feel bad mowe about men's emotional incapability ‘ we can only await the Hollywood remake - shoot me now. (Paul Dale)
I Cineworld (formerly UGC). Renfi‘ew Street. Glasgow from Fri 12 Aug. GFT. Glasgow from Fri 26 Aug.
NEW PRINT PICKPOCKET (PG) 75min 00000
When the editors of the Pro/ections film book series asked filmmakers which film. scene. act0r or director meant the most to them -- Paul Schrader chose Pic/(pocket. Where other films by Bunuel. Bergman and Godard moi. ed his mind more than his heart. Bresson was unique: 'Pickpocket moved thrOugh my mind into my head.‘ For many years critics have mused over how Bresson manages to move some of us so completely while leavmg others cold. Susan Sontag believed that 'in reflective art. the form of the work of art
is present in an emphatic way'. before stating tnat ‘form for Bressop is not mainly zistia' . .
‘o" Bresson frin‘ is no'.
a plastic but a narrative experience' For Andre Ba/in. the films are SpeCIflcally theological. ‘a phenomenology of salvation and grace.’
How to explain all these comments through Pickpocket? Ostensibly it's a stery of petty thief Martin (Martin LaSalle) who happens to find he really cares about a woman after he's been locked up in prison. Bresson always tells his stery obliquely. so he never lets narrative suspense build. or emotional intensity be foregrounded. Initially. as Schrader says. and as Sontag proposes. we View a Bresson film With our minds. With an intellectual engagement. He remains one of the few filmmakers -- along most obViously With Dreyer and Tarkovsky — who have searched the truth out to the detriment of conventional cinematic deVIces that are so often used for extracting emotion. In short. a masterpiece. (Tony McKibbin)
I Fi/rnliotise. Edinburgh from Fri 12— Sun (4 Aug only.
Spirit Trap has a vague selling mm in that it's Billie Piper's first lead role in a feature film. She certainly proved herself in Doctor Who. but here a baggy script leaves her floundering. Cliches abound as four students move into a creepy abandoned man3ion. They tinker around With a dilapidated Russian spirit clock and soon things are going bump in the night as they all come to grips With various dark episodes in their past. You can't help but feel like you've seen it all before. as it shares more than a passmg resemblance to recent Brit fright flick Long Time Dead. You can only take slow building horror so far before it drifts into tedium. There's a lot of talk and overflowmg sinks but very little action. It's not awful — it would be hard to feel that passionately about it. It's just totally forgettable and a trifle dull. (Henry Northmore) I Cinewor/d (former/y UGC). Renfrew Street. Glasgow from Fri 72 Aug.
HORROR SPIRIT TRAP (15) 91 min 00
It is ama7ing the amount of nondescript mowes that are churned out. Where do they come from. who makes them and why? And why are so many of them British? At least
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(PG) 125min O...
A gleaming new print for the third in Antonioni’s trilogy of black and white films about the fragility of relationships in the contemporary world, this haunting study of emotional estrangement unfolds in early 19605 Rome, where a translator Vittoria (Monica Vitta) breaks up with her lover and begins a tentative affair with her mother’s dashing stock-broker Piero (Alain Delon). The plot is minimal: what’s remarkable here is how the formalist Antonioni creates and maintains the atmosphere of alienation, finding visual correlatives for his characters' psychological states.
There are two key settings in L’Eclisse. Firstly there’s the soulless EUR district, where Vittoria resides, with its modernist architecture, half- completed buildings and eerily deserted streets. Secondly there’s the noisily chaotic stock exchange, where a collapse in the market triggers panic amongst dealers and investors. It’s an environment that perfectly suits Piero’s shallow exuberance. Meanwhile, glimpsed newspaper headlines (‘Peace is dead’) heighten the mood of Cold War anxiety.
Antonioni's director of photography Gianni de Venanzo frames the characters with precision, shooting them at doorways or behind windows or in front of railings and fences to suggest their entrapment. ‘Here it’s all a big effort, even love,’ sighs the enigmatic thoria, yet there’s something compelling about this woman’s self-absorption and elusiveness as she wanders endlessly through the city and responds ambivalently to Piero’s advances. The final montage sequence, in which the protagonists are completely absent and the camera visits the site of a rendezvous they have missed, is a daring conclusion to a strikingly acted film that’s rich in mystery and artistry. (Tom Dawson)
I Fi/mhouse. Edinburgh Fri 72—Sun 14 Aug only. GET. Glasgow. Tue 76— Thu (8 only.
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