www.list.co.uk/film
OLIVIER ASSAYAS The French filmmaker talks to The List about his globalisation drama, Summer Hours
‘To commemorate its 20th anniversary, the Musee D’Orsay museum in Paris had the idea of getting filmmakers from around the world to contribute to a collective film. The project fell through, but the ideas I had scribbled down inspired Summer Hours. I started in an abstract way with the notion that art comes from real life and your own lived experience and your relationship to nature. If it gets buried in a museum, something essential gets lost along the way. Gradually, I realised that if you start to tell that story using flesh and blood characters, those issues are very dramatic and universal in their resonance.
“When I was writing Summer Hours, I had no idea who would act in the film. Some of the actors I cast, such as Charles Berling, Dominique Reymond and Valerie Bonneton, I’d already worked with on my period drama Les Destinees Sentimentales. Juliette Binoche saw a copy of the screenplay and rang me up to say she wanted to be in the film, even though I thought the role of Adrienne was too small for her. When you give actors a collective story about a family, they bring in their own experiences about what it is to be a parent, a sibling, a son or a
daughter. Juliette ended up reinventing Adrienne - she made her nastier than I had written that character. And Jeremie Renier is much younger than I imagined Adrienne’s brother Jérémie, which changed the chemistry of the family.
‘The film shows how globalisation is affecting our lives at the most essential level: our world is changing, our values are changing, and the way we relate to our past is changing. Yet, in dealing with these dramatic issues, I wanted to be as light as possible, to be close in spirit to the Impressionists. I didn’t want Summer Hours to be a loud film, but instead to be quiet and simple and straightforward. To me there’s very little dramaturgy to this story. It’s about moments and it’s as though fate is guiding events, with everything moving toward organically. The more you learn about the characters, the closer you become to their emotions, and you get involved in the issues in the same way they do. I could have made Summer Hours some sort of domestic shouting match, with lots of angry scenes. That’s been done before, though, many times. I tried to show people attempting to act decently, and hopefully that way viewers can relate to them and share their concerns.’ (Interview by Tom Dawson)
I Summer Hours is on selected release from Fri 78 May. See review, page 45.
CHILDREN'S SCI-Fl FANTASY MEET DAVE (PG) 90mins O.
dreadful first collaboration.
erratically and imitating humans.
meeting Dave. (Robert Carnevale) I General release from Fri 78 Jul.
7 DRAMA i IRINA PALM 1 $151.19???“ '9 -. -
Maggie (Marianne Faithful) is
desperate. Her grandson is dying, her husband is dead and she needs
' money so her son can take his sick
i boy to Australia for radical treatment.
i In her mid 508. she is apparently too
old to do anything, until she wanders
into a seedy Soho club. misunderstanding a ‘Hostess‘ job offer and winds up being hired to give relief to men through a glory hole. As the punters line up around the block,
{ her pimp Miki renames her Irina Palm.
While there is some humour in how
this premise is handled. the film can't
decide whether it‘s a low budget British comedy about the sex industry or a more serious social commentary on the plight of older women. Like Maggie. the film is at once a dowdy housewife and a sex worker, but the latter still wears a floral apron and goes to work with a Thermos. There are some avenues in the film that could have been more thoroughly explored. but Maggie's relationships with her friends and family are dealt with as quick asides. and the supporting characters aren't fleshed out. Instead, we‘re treated to numerous drawn out shots of Maggie walking along. downtrodden, to a low. ponderous piano score. which becomes increasingly jarring as the
film progresses.
(George Wilson-Powell) I GFT, Glasgow, Fri 25—Tue 29 Jul.
The last time Eddie Murphy united with director Brian Robbins, audiences got Norbit as a result. Now. one of the least eagerly anticipated reunions in cinema history invites us to Meet Dave. The result is only marginally better than their
No stranger to dual roles. Murphy plays Dave Ming Chang. a spaceship made in the image of its miniature-sized captain (also Murphy) who has landed on Earth on a mission to save his planet. In spaceship form, Dave can venture about New York (his voice and actions controlled by the miniature crew inside) attempting to find a device that will drain the Earth's oceans and supply his own planet with the minerals it needs to survive. But complications occur when Dave starts falling for an attractive single mother (Elizabeth Banks), whose son (Austin Lynd Myers) holds the ocean-draining device. and when the ship's crew starts behaving
The ‘high-concept’ comedy that follows mostly revolves around juvenile toilet gags and Murphy's ability to pull silly facial expressions. But, while younger viewers may chuckle. older ones will rue the numerous plot lapses, wafer-thin characters and a go-for-broke finale that attempts to fuse Terminator-style carnage with Honey, / Shrunk the Kids-inspired fantasy. You really shouldn't bother
17—31 Jul 2008 THE LIST 4"