Film
DRAMA
MRS HENDERSON PRESENTS
(12A) 102min 000
From My Beautiful Laundrette to The Deal. Stephen Frears has carved out a niche by portraying uniquely British entrepreneurial double acts. and the latest appears in Mrs Henderson Presents. which charts the early histOry of London‘s celebrated Windmill Theatre. Long before lap- dances and fantasy cabins. the Windmill's naughty but nice tableaux of plump public nudity provided a tonic for the troops during WWII. and stiffened the resolve and gentlemen's trousers during the Blitz with the famous rallying cry. ‘We never close!‘
Making the business of becoming a stripper appear as wholesome as joining the Brownies — if not a patriotic duty to boot — is the redoubtable Mrs Laura Henderson (Judi Dench). Dench makes the recently widowed battleaxe seem a genuinely invigorating character. Frears offers us comfortable nostalgia for some very disagreeable times. but the dark undercurrents in Martin Sherman's script do manage to make the notion of risking lives to entertain those about to die seem quietly heroic. Through this detailed. lightweight confection. Frears and Sherman play on a jittery modern media obsession with the fresh spate of bombings that London now faces. Mrs Henderson's defiant ‘show must go on' attitude is likely to score a direct hit.
(Eddie Harrison) I General release from Fri 25 Nov.
DRAMA SARABAND (15) 107min 0000
Some pepple have argued that filmmaking is a young man’s game. but what about Eric Rohmer. Manuel de Oliveira and. of c0urse. Ingmar Bergman? Coming out of lengthy retirement in 2003. Bergman made this seguel to his mid-70s film Scenes From a Marriage for a Swedish teleViSion station.
After many years apart. Marianne (Liv Ullmann) Visits her ex-husband. Johan (Erland Josephson) on a remote island. Johan abuses his ineffectual son. manipulates his studious. cello playing granddaughter and isn't always warm to Marianne. He's another of Bergman's frosty solipsists ( see Wild Strawberries.
44 THE LIST 1/ No: 1 Dec 200:3
Autumn Sonata and Fanny and Alexander). As Marianne and the other characters bruise themselves against Johan. it becomes clear that here is a man who doesn‘t understand other people's emotional needs. nor always his own.
Reprising their damaged roles Ullmann and Josephson are remarkable in this excellent yet astonishingly exasperating character drama. It is good to see that this veteran filmmaker is still capable of throwing an audience with a cutting remark. (Tony McKibbin)
One of the very best film books in a long time, Leo Bersani and Ullysse Droit’s Forms of Being (BFI O.” ) E is a handsome, 3 slimmish study of
three films - Le
Mepris, All About My Mother and The Thin Red Line. Bersani and
the notion of
sensation in cinema. ‘ The long-time List ; contributor Kaleem é Aftab looks at the career of Spike Lee -
Denis’ own essays on
I Cameo. Edinburgh from Fri 78 Nov; Glasgow Film Theatre. Glasgow. Fri 2—Sun 4 Dec.
PSYCHOLOGICAL DRAMA STONED (15) 102min 000
The suspicious death of former Rolling Stone Brian Jones on 3 July 1969 has always been one of the more perplexing episodes in British rock‘n'roll. He was dragged from the bottom of his own swimming pool just a month after the Stones had served him his marching orders and some believe foul play was involved. Producer Steven Woolley's (Mona Lisa. The Crying Game) directorial debut depicts the last year of Jones‘ (Lee Gregory) life when he has semi- retired to AA Milne‘s old mansion house in Sussex. Jones' road manager Tom Keylock (David Morrissey) has just installed unwitting Cockney builder Frank Thorogood
FILM BOOKS ROUND-UP
contradictions in the work and life of Lee, an artist who will more readily throw a punch than pull one. The Most Typical Avant Garde . (University of California Press .00. ) is David E James’ exhaustive study of ‘minor’ cinemas in Los Angeles. This might at first sound like a parochial subject for a book that runs to over 500 pages, but it
Droit suggest that cinema is much more than just a narrative medium with characters: it can
of being, of our existence in the fullest sense of the term. This is academic writing at its best.
Martine Beugnet’s Claire Denis (Manchester University Press 0.. ) is also of interest. It’s pitched halfway between a student guide to Denis and an expression of Beugnet’s own ideas on film, and there is enough of the latter to make the book of some import even for readers familiar with
That’s My Story and
I I’m Sticking to It
(Faber use ) in this
I authorised biography.
Lee happily treads on
toes and offers a few i sharp words to
f anybody who doesn’t L quite share his vision. also be an exploration '
Indeed Spike is so
obviously ambitious e that where others
SpdkeLee
might see compromise, Lee sees opportunity. Aftab does a wonderful job of
5 exploring the
covers the distribution of the films by avant- gardists like Stan Brakhage, Kenneth Anger and Andy Warhol as well as the early work of filmmakers who entered the mainstream - Lucas, Coppola and John Milius. This is obviously a major contribution to writing on the west coast’s avant-garde scene and can, as of yet, only be bought via e-mail (www.ucpress.edul). (Tony McKibbin)
(Paddy Considine) in the house to look after the musician so he doesn't have to. As the two become friends. Jones thinks about what has led him to this boozy. drug addled point. little aware that Thorogood's may just be the last face he sees.
By stylistically and thematically pitching Stoned somewhere between Joseph Losey's The Servant and Roeg/Cammell's Performance. Woolley immediately buys into the kind of kudos that was simply not an aesthetic option for Gus Van Sant in the comparable Last Days.
In what is clearly something of a long cherished project. Bond writers Neil Purvis and Robert Wade‘s . excellent feel for the period language l pep up this garrulous. evocative drama. Unfortunately. GregOry and Considine both seem out of whack with the film, indifferent to their own motivations. creating a hole at the i centre of an otherwise interestingly ' offbeat biog flick. (Paul Dale).
I Selected release from Fri 7 8 Nov.
ADVENTURE/THRILLER THE TRANSPORTER 2 (15) 87min 0..
Since his 1983 debut The Last Battle, Luc Besson has paralleled his directing career with over 100 writing and co-producing credits; the French auteur clearly works as fast as his characters shoot. Armoury. technology. drivability and lingerie are the central ingredients of his preposterous brand of Euro-action
_ '1' iii-i thrillers. and The Transporter 2 is one of his best deliveries yet.
This time around. chauffeur Frank Martin (Jason Stratham) takes on kiddie kidnappers and bio-terrorism but. as ever. the plot is just a bonus. What counts here is action. and franchise helmsman Louis Leterrier. working with automotive wunderkid Michel Julienne. son of the legendary Remy. soups everything up nicely.
Within 30 minutes they deliver the best chase since The Bourne Supremacy (leading from a Miami beach onto the roof of a multi-story car park). There's also an amusing fight with a fire hose. peroxide blonde assassins shooting down helicopters with Sub machine guns and drunks double-taking as gleaming Audis fly over their heads. Like Stratham's minimalist performance. it ain't art. but it does the job. (Eddie Harrison) I General release from Fri 25 Nov.