www.list.co.uk/film Reviews Film
DRAMA/ROMANCE QUIET CHAOS (15) 110min ●●●●●
HORROR THE CHILDREN (15) 84min ●●●●● THRILLER LAKEVIEW TERRACE (15) 110min ●●●●●
Nanni Moretti’s 2001 film The Son’s Room explored a middle-class Italian family’s attempt to cope with the unexpected death of a teenage son. Quiet Chaos, which stars and is co-written by Moretti, but is directed by Antonello Grimaldi, examines the impact of bereavement on a middle-aged husband and father.
On the very day that he and his brother
(Alessandro Gassman) rescue two women from drowning at the beach, media executive Pietro (Moretti) returns home to find his wife has died in an accident. Feeling numbed by his loss and unable to express his grief, he spends his days in the square opposite the school attended by his 10-year-old daughter Claudia (Blu Yoshimi). A gentle, understated fable, the elegantly shot
Quiet Chaos is a film that invites our suspension of disbelief. It’s held together by the impressively restrained performance of Moretti, who appears in practically every frame and who doesn’t have a voice-over to ‘explain’ his feelings. Admittedly Claudia is one of those preternaturally poised and wise-beyond-their-years children beloved of European cinema, and the scenes between her and Pietro can feel mawkish, but Quiet Chaos does convey the strangeness of everyday life during the grieving process. Look out for a cameo from a diminutive and very famous Polish-born director. (Paul Dale) ■ GFT, Glasgow and Filmhouse, Edinburgh from Fri 28-Thu 4 Dec. See interview, page 44.
The current fad for evil kiddie chillers – see Ils (Them) from France, Eden Lake from the UK and While She Was Out from the US – continues with another British horror flick in which children do diabolical things to disbelieving adults. As the title of this one suggests, this time round it’s not teenagers but pre- pubescents and pre-school-agers doing the terrorising. But in keeping with those other kid- phobic films, it’s comfortable and complacent middle-class adults who find the young ones turning on them for reasons they cannot comprehend. Here, the children-heavy families of two sisters (Eva Birthistle and Rachel Shelley) get together for Christmas celebrations at a secluded country house. The children run riot, the parents guzzle chardonnay and everyone seems to be having a peachy time (aside from mopey teen emo Leah played by Rafiella Brooks), when, for no apparent reason, the kids begin acting strangely. At first they’re just withdrawn or anxious, but soon they turn feral on their parents, first with a violent outburst at the dinner table and then with a calculated act that abruptly brings the seasonal festivities to an end.
There’s a nugget of a good idea in all that, but director Tom WAZ Shankland and co-writer Paul Andrew Williams (London to Brighton, The Cottage) ditch the existential horror for simple-minded bloodletting. Any comparisons to John Wyndham’s masterly Village of the Dammed are, therefore, entirely unjustified. (Miles Fielder) ■ Selected release from Fri 5 Dec.
What could be safer than living next door to a cop? Well just about anything if that cop happens to be played by one of America’s leading black actors. Smug young marrieds Chris (Patrick Wilson) and Lisa (Kerry Washington) move to a posh hillside suburb in LA. African-American Lisa and white boy Chris soon attract the attention of anal neighbour and cop Abel Turner (Samuel L Jackson). Turner’s neighbourhood watch quickly turns into something much more sinister. Lakeshore Terrace is directed by but not written
by Neil LaBute (In the Company of Men, Your Friends and Neighbours, The Wicker Man). It’s easy to see why he agreed to be a gun for hire on the project. LaButian issues of identity, race and gender hatred, the unreality of long term commitments and (crucially) nimby-ism – are all played out here with the terse pace of a decent thriller. In trying to avoid the conventions of both the suburban horror and corrupt cop thriller genres LaBute maybe treads a little bit too carefully as many of the scenes here feel blunted by compromise. That aside, Lakeshore Terrace is a dark and menacing thriller for these credit crunch times (Turner’s harassment is aligned with the couple’s own money issues), one that bravely tries to deal with issues of grief and the apocalyptic nature of LA’s geographical and social placing in the world without the intervention of politically correct thought. (Paul Dale) ■ General release from Fri 5 Dec.
DRAMA SUMMER (15) 82min ●●●●●
There is no Shakespearean ‘eternal summer’ for Shaun (Robert Carlyle) and Daz (Steve Evets). Shaun looks after wheelchair bound Daz in an impoverished ex-mining community in Derbyshire. Daz is mouthy, bitter and demanding while Shaun is silent, subservient and guilt-ridden – they clearly share past secrets. When Daz’s health deteriorates, Shaun is forced to confront his past and his future with Daz’s troubled son Daniel (Michael Socha) and old girlfriend Katy (Rachael Blake). Sharing an aesthetic with Mike Leigh’s first film Bleak Moments
(1971) and more recently Irish filmmaker Lenny Abrahamson’s Garage, director Kenny Glenaan’s new film is a grim but humourous portrait of platonic friendship. With his previous films Gas Attack (2001) and Yasmin (2004), Scottish based Glenaan is better known, if at all, for his penchant for Loach-ian inflected naturalism and agit prop. His third feature is a more opaque and nuanced work than his previous efforts, informed more by Hugh Ellis’ excellent script than Glenaan’s political leanings. Riskily switching between modern day and Daz and Shaun’s troubled schooldays (using young actors), Summer could so easily have been another clichéd coming-of-age story. As it is it’s a fairly subtle rumination on large and small industrial migration, dependency, loss, regret, the failures of the English education system and the emasculation brought about by the end of mass mining in the UK.
Summer may not have the cheeriest of subtexts, but in a fitting nod to both Chekhov and DH Lawrence, the film is awash with the humour of despair and emotional illiteracy. The film is also beautifully acted with Carlyle in particular doing some of the very best work he has done in a while here. Though undeniably schematic and featuring a couple of silly continuity errors, Summer is a more than interesting Scottish film, and one deserving of its recent BAFTA gong. (Paul Dale) ■ GFT, Glasgow and selected release from Fri 5 Dec. Hear Glenaan interview at www.list.co.uk
27 Nov–11 Dec 2008 THE LIST 45