FANTASY/ADAPTATION
HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX (12A) 138min 0
At over 800 Pages Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was always likely to be the hardest of JK Rowling's tomes to adapt and true to form this IS the worst of the little wizard films. The franchise. which has thus far been helmed by experienced and generally skilful filmmakers — Christopher Columbus, Alfonso CuarOn and Mike Newell, is ill served by director David Yates (The Titchborne Claimant, The Girl in the Cafe).
Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) has started to suffer from some severe teenage growing pains and reflecting this Yates abandons frivolity for a darker yet dull approach to the material, which has no adolescent magic in it at all. Having been expelled from Hogwarts for casting a magic spell, Potter earns a reprieve. The enjoyable moments nearly all occur when Potter newcomer Imelda Staunton, playing the latest “Defence Against the Dark Arts' is on-screen. Alas, Yates obsession with exposition over action is this dreary. utilitarian film‘s real undoing. Save your pennies for the release of Philip Pullman adaptation The Golden Compass in December.
(Kaleem Aftab) IGenera/ release from Fri 73 Jul.
DRAM/VROMANCE
NOT HEREég'O BE LOVED (JE NE SUIS PAS LA POUR
ETRE AIM (15) 93min 0.
Divorced. cheerless, well heeled 51-year-old ‘huissier de justice' (bailiff) Jean- Claude (Patrick Chesnais) lives a life of silent misery. Between repossessions and visiting his cantankerous old dad (Georges Wilson) at the nursing home. he has managed to inveigle his plant loving son into his misery by insisting he takes a job in the family business. When his doctor tells him to get some exercise he enrols in a local Tango dance class where he runs into old family friend Francoise (Anne Consigny). The meeting is to affect both their lives in profound ways.
Films about bailiffs are a tough call at the best of times; only Alex Cox can really lay claim to making anything of such sparse material with his seminal 1984 debut Repo Man. French writer/director Stephane Brize, whose prevrous feature Hometown Blue (which has not yet been released in this country) displayed his maudlin affinity for this kind of sly character study, brings touches of surety and control in the early part of Not Here To Be Loved, but then allows everything to get sieved through a cliche filter. What starts out as a drama of tiny strokes and truths ends as a very French ageing male fantasy. If y0u have seen the exeCrable Shall We Dance? (both Japanese and US versions) or are familiar with the oeuvre of Alain Resnais you may feel that you have seen this film many times before. (Paul Dale)
I Fi/mhouse, Edinburgh from Wed 78 Jul.
DOCUMENTARY
:‘SKETCHES OF FRANK GEHRY
(12A) 84min .0 Two minutes into this documentary about Frank Gehry, America’s most famous living architect, the director Sydney Pollack (Tootsie, The Interpreter) admits that the documentary was Gehry’s idea. When the architect suggested it to him, Pollack pointed out that he knew nothing about architecture or documentaries. ‘That’s why you’re perfect,’ said the architect of the Guggenheim in Bilbao and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, just one of Gehry’s many unchecked remarks in this film, which are passed off as the mutterings of a genius. Instead of a well-researched piece of factual filmmaking, we get two old farts driving around Los Angeles confirming each other’s genius. It's like Curb Your Enthusiasm, with no jokes and loads of well-composed pictures of showboating architecture. The closeness between filmmaker and subject in this film is frequently nauseating. Gehry remembers a remark that the director himself once made about the commercialisation of art. ‘You said you made peace with it, by finding this small percentage of space in that commercial world where you could make a difference. That was amazing to me Sydney,’ says Gehry. The next shot shows Pollack, camera in hand, nodding in agreement. There is also some misogynistic guff mixed in with the mutual appreciation. Gehry talks about changing his name from Goldberg and implies he was living in a climate of anti-Semitism. Pushed by his
interlocutor for once, Gehry suddenly blames the change on his first wife who ‘pussy~whipped’ him.
It is no surprise that much of the criticism made of Gehry’s work is dismissed. Hal Foster is presented as a token naysayer and points out that Gehry’s use of technology has turned him into a one-man auteur, sculpting big art rather than making architecture. His Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao does not serve the work it contains. This criticism is submerged in the slather of support from Gehry’s mates who actually do little for the architects cause. Julian Schnabel is the only artist Pollack can find to praise the Guggenheim. He poses in towelling dressing gown and shades: an artist who vies with Jeff Koons for representing what was most vapid about the New York art scene in the 19805.
lnexperience needn’t have been a hindrance to Pollack but he’s easily swayed by charisma. Actor Dennis Hopper’s compares Gehry’s work to a bubble being forced down a drain by philistines. It is the biggest load of bollocks he’s spouted since his performance in Waterworld yet it is treated as somehow profound. Gehry’s architecture represents the best and the worst of contemporary design practice. In failing to look at the big picture, Pollack leaves us with the latter. (Tim Abrahams)
I Filmhouse. Edinburgh, Fri 6— Thu 72 Jul: GFI'. Glasgow. Thu 26-Sun 29 Jul.
Tim Abrahams is the Acting Editor of architecture and design magazine, Blueprint.
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