Film
DRAMA/COMEDY LI'l'l'LE RED FLOWERS (1 2A) 87min so”
Based on the semi-autobiographical
novel by the bestselling enfant terrible of Chinese literature Wang Shuo, Little
Red Flowers is the story of a precocious four-year-old boy, Qiang
(Dong Bowen), who rebels against the
conformity in his kindergarten. Set in
the early 19503, Qiang’s railing against
convention, and authority in the form of strict teacher Li (Zhao Rui), is obviously an allegory for life under Communist rule in post-Cultural Revolution China. But as directed by Zhang Yuan (who previously collaborated with Shuo on 2003's/ Love You and who remains best known for 1993's Beijing Bastards), the allegorical dimension of the story isn’t laboured. Instead, the film has a
more liberal outlook that suggests both individual behaviour and mass conformity have their uses in society. In any event, the socio-political comment never overshadows the drama, at the centre of which is a remarkable performance by Bowen. It’s no easy thing to play a brat and an anti-hero, but this charming young tyke pulls it off. The boy’s turn, along with some fantastical elements and a certain dream-like atmosphere, will
DRAMA THE FAMILY FRIEND (15) 102min om
The Neapolitan writer-director Paolo Sorrentino follows up his sleek Mafia thriller The Consequences of Love with the wonderfully eccentric and unpredictable The Family Friend, which he has described as ‘a dive into humanity and its degeneracy’. Burrowing into the psyche of an elderly, lecherous loan shark Geremia (Giacomo Rizzo), who scuttles around a town built by Mussolini’s fascists in the Agro Pontino region of Italy, the film defies straightforward categorisation — it’s simultaneously a beauty and the beast- style fairytale, a baroque homage to Fellini’s provincial tragi-comedies, and a bizarre con artist drama.
Sorrentino takes a real gamble in The Family Friend by presenting us with such a dislikeable protagonist. Living alone with his invalid mother (Clara Bindi) in a leaking apartment, the physically unattractive Geremia is, in his own words, ‘a pathetic and disgusting person.’ He presents himself to his clients as a generous benefactor, boasting that ‘My last thought will be of you!’ And he relies on his mysterious assistant, the cowboy-batted Gino (Fabrizio Bentivoglio), to ensure that the customers don’t default on their payments. Falling for the stunning young bride-to-be Rosalba (Laura Chiattl), Geremia discovers that those he once trusted are more than capable of betrayal.
Drawing on an eclectic soundtrack, which ranges from Antony and the Johnsons’ superb lAm a Bird Now to Elgar’s Cello Concerto, and Teho Teardo’s discordant cello score, The Family Friend sees Sorrentino and his cinematographer Luca Bigazzi effortlessly blur the boundaries between dreams and ‘reality’, in fact Sorrentino has said that quite often when he was shooting The Family Friend, the actors would ask him, ‘Is this sequence a dream or reality?’ and he didn’t feel the need to clarify the situation. Partly because he didn’t know the answer himself.
‘I have an excessive desire to stylise everything - I want to get closer to painting than to the chaos of reality’, admits Sorrentino, and, true to his word, he arranges his characters in tableaux, in which they are dwarfed by the fascist-era architecture of their surroundings. Boldly enigmatic images predominate throughout The Family Friend - a nun appears buried up to her neck in sand; there’s a shot of an ecstatic-looking female volleyball player lying on a brick-red outdoor court, while the townsfolk carry their own chairs in a nocturnal procession to watch the local beauty contest. A single viewing doesn’t do justice to this film’s strange riches. (Tom Dawson)
I GFT, Glasgow, Fri 30 Mar—Thu 5 Apr. Filmhouse, Edinburgh from Fri 4 May.
38 THE LIST 29 Mar—12 Apr 2007
engage younger viewers. Nevertheless, this is that all too rare thing: a kid's film for grown-ups. (Miles Fielder)
I GFI', Glasgow from Mon 9—Thu 7 2 Apr only.
HISTORY/DRAMA/ ROMANCE 'l'I-IE NAMESAKE (12A) 121 min 0000
Not only is Mira Nair one of the world’s pre-eminent women directors, she has also taken over Spike Lee’s mantle as the most intuitive director making movies about ethnic minorities in America. Having started off making documentaries (search out So Far From India if you can) her best fiction films until now have been Salaam Bombay and Monsoon Wedding. Now, with her adaptation of Jhumpa Lahiri's award—winning novel The Namesake, she manages to build on ideas she developed in 1991 ’8 Mississippi Masa/a (a film also about the many conundrums faced by second generation children living in America).
Ashoke (lrfan Khan from The Warrior) survives a massive train crash in Calcutta and is convinced that the short story he is reading — The Overcoat by Russian writer Maxim Gogol — had a pivotal role in saving his life. Hot on the heels of his arranged marriage to Ashima (Tabu) he moves to New York City in pursuit of the limitless opportunities apparently on offer. Life is tough and they name their first born son Gogol after the Russian writer. As Gogol (Kal Penn) grows up, he struggles with the demands of his parents.
Gogol's The Overcoat is a tale of duty, bad fortune, hierarchy and the minute wrongs that keep the dead walking among us. Nair and screenwriter Sooni Taraporevala use many of these ideas as a bridge into this adaptation of Lahiri's novel while cleverly juxtaposed sequences show the similarities between Calcutta and the Big Apple. What sets Nair apart from her British equivalent Gurindha Chadha is that she sides with the first generation immigrant experience rather than the second. East is East, Ae Fond Kiss and all Chadha's films (Bend it Like Beckham, Bride and Prejudice) mistakenly believe they are striking a blow for multicultural harmony by making pictures in which second generation youth abandon their parents' culture in order to feel at home. This gives a false picture of what is a far more grey and unpredictable choice being made by second generation youths and looks even more outmoded in the wake of the bomb attacks in London, which
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highlighted a sense of alienation that is oft-ignored in films of this ilk.
Like Edgar Reitz' Heimat epics, The Namesake is an unhurried, insightful and deeply moving generational drama that cannot be recommended highly enough. (Kaleem Aftab)
I General release from Fri 30 Mar.