Film
digitally shot Play examines two contrasting lives intersecting on the summer streets of Santiago.
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Cristina (Viviana Herrera). a young woman of Indian descent from the countryside is an arcade video games enthusiast and a nurse for an elderly and ailing Hungarian man. One day she discovers a briefcase belonging to an architect, Tristan (Andres Ulloa). who's undergoing various woes: he's experiencing a painful relationship break-up from his wife. his cherished construction project is threatened by a strike. and now he‘s been mugged. Donning his l-Pod and headphones. Cristina proceeds to follow this stranger's wanderings.
Right from the credits sequence. in which names and titles appear on buildings and streets. Scherson proves to be an accomplished storyteller. She confidently handles
(Tom Dawson)
only.
DRAMA
(15) 91 min 000
COMEDY RUNNING WITH scussons 0.5)].35'11‘". 99'! .,
Nip/Tuck writer/executive producer Ryan Murphy does a very fine job of cutting/pasting onto the big screen the horrific and hilarious teenage memoir of journalist Augusten Burroughs. Abandoned first by his alcoholic father Norman (Alec Baldwin) and then by his domineering mother Deirdre (Annette Bening), the young, gay Burroughs (Joseph Cross) is adopted by mom’s psychiatrist Dr Finch (Brian Cox) and the oddball family the patriarch lords over: meek wife Agnes (Jill Clayburgh), rebel daughter Natalie (Evan Rachel Wood), dippy daughter Hope (Gwyneth Paltrow) and surrogate psycho son Neil Bookman (Joseph Fiennes). It’s a period of domestic dysfunction that would drive any normal person insane, and that’s exactly what aspect of Burroughs’ book Murphy has embraced, which makes for an enormously enjoyable
44 THE LIST 1—15 Feb 2007
temporal shifts and dream sequences. gradually fitting in the pieces to her jigsaw-puzzle narrative. The characters too are enjoyabiy idiosyncratic individuals. not just the melancholic Tristan. who's ‘tired of thinking' and the ever resilient Cristina. but also the former's flamboyant blind mother and her magician lover. Moreover. beneath the visual stylisation and ironic humour. there lies a perceptive enquiry into identity and class. with Cristina's lowly social status making her a seemingly invisible city- dweller. If you enjoyed Miranda July's Me and You and Everyone We Know. Play should strike a chord.
I GIL—1'. Glasgow from Fri 2—Thu 8 Feb
NOTES ON A SCANDAL
Barbara Covett (Judi Dench) — note that grasping surname — is not a popular figure at the North London comprehensive where she teaches history. To the staff and the students she is. in her own words. 'a battleaxe'. and to the headmaster. she is an obstacle to reform. Living alone in a cramped flat. she confides to her diary her feelings of despair and loneliness.
Enter the new art teacher. Sheba (Cate Blanchett). an artfully dishevelled thirtysomething blonde. full of noble intentions about inspiring her charges. To Barbara's surprise. they become friends. and she's invited home to meet Sheba's husband (Bill Nighy) and their two kids. But when the older woman discovers a secret about her colleague. their relationship shifts a gear into something much darker and more sinister.
Much of the pleasure of Notes on a Scandal lies in watching Dench. shot from unflattering angles. play an increasingly crazed lesbian stalker. who's consumed by misanthropic bile. Her acerbic voice. one of the key features of Zoe Heller's original novel. is retained in screenwriter Patrick Marber's and director Richard Eyre's adaptation: an unfortunate fellow teacher is ‘a pig in knickers': Sheba's son with Down's Syndrome is 'a
black comedy of eccentric manners.
With its eccentric characters, deeply dysfunctional family relations and kitsch 70$ retro styling, this oddball comedy very much resembles the films of Wes Anderson (The Royal Tenenbaums in particular, in which Paltrow also appears) and the more recent The Squid and the Whale (made by sometime Anderson collaborator Noah Baumbach). Running With Scissors is a pleasing addition to those tales of absent fathers and kids suffering from arrested development, but the film has much to recommend of its own. The performances are across the board spot on, particularly Bening and Clayburgh, who represent a kind of yin and yang of motherhood. And it’s the focus on Burroughs’ bittersweet relationship with his real mom and then trauma free one with the woman who becomes his surrogate mom with which the film sets its own agenda. (Miles Fielder)
I General release from Fri 2 let).
tiresome court jester.‘
Blanchett proves an excellent foil in this black comedy. her bourgeois bohemian Sheba a woman of guileless charm. who still recognises ‘the distance between life as yOu dream it and life as it is.‘ Accompanied by Philip Glass' overblown score. Notes on a Scandal becomes less convincing in its melodramatic final stretches. but throughout it illustrates how timeless anxieties about class propel its characters' actions.
(Tom Dawson) I General release from Fri 2 Feb. See feature, page 74.
FAMILY DRAMA CHARLOTTE’S WEB (U) 96min 0..
As a farmyard community story. EB White's much loved kids story fits somewhere between cutesy fantasy Babe and Orwell's bleak political parable Animal Farm. with cheery talking animals Sugar-coating a bittersweet finale that touches on practical matters of life and death.
Chirpy tot Fern (Dakota Fanning) rescues Wilbur the pig from a potentially cruel farmyard fate. This allows him time to become close friends with clever spider Charlotte and eventually transcend his environment through his friendship with assorted animals. including sarcastic sheep Samuel (voiced by John Cleese) and Ike. an easily frightened horse (Robert Redford).
Taking White's tactful considerations of mortality intact from the book. Disney offshoot Walden Media bring their full CGI armoury to bear on the barnyard world. most successfully on the l‘fard-to-visualise character of Charlotte herself. Lovable arachnids are few and far between. but voiced with wholesome clarity by Julia Roberts. any anxieties about her scaring children are quickly flushed away.
Director Gary Winick (Tadpole. 73 Going On 30) makes a wise choice by not re-imagining White's familiar characters as Stuart Little-style dudes. And even if the narrative is slightly cloying and slow in patches. Charlotte '3 Web should draw in children and nostalgic adults alike. (Eddie Harrison)
I General release from Fri 9 Feb.
RE-ISSUE
DIRTY DANCING: 20TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION (15) 100min 0000
For the few who don't know the plot of Emile Ardolino's 1987 romantic musical: it's the summer of 1963 at Kellerman's Holiday Resort. Misunderstood. frustrated in-house dance teacher. Johnny (an