Film Reviews
MYSTERY/THRILLER NIGHTWATCHING (18) 134min ●●●●●
Amsterdam – in the middle of the 17th century. Successful artist Rembrandt accepts a commission to do a huge military portrait of the company of noblemen Frans Banning Cocq and Willem van Ruytenburch. As he prepares the painting he believes he has uncovered a conspiracy to murder among the regiment and uses the painting to indict the guilty. The resultant fall out marks the beginning of a downturn in Rembrandt’s career.
No one painted like Rembrandt and no one makes films like Peter Greenaway. This muscular, adult, clever, funny and unapologetically perverse reading of the events that led to the creation of one of the world’s great paintings really has only one art director,
and his name is Rembrandt. It’s all about detailed tableaux and chiaroscuro (the relationship between the very dark to the very light) here. Greenaway orchestrates his bewildering detective story with all the wit and showmanship of a ringmaster. It’s a mighty achievement, one greatly helped by a domineering central turn by The Office’s Martin Freeman as the egomaniac money obsessed painter, plus suitably vulgar performances from Jodhi May, Toby Jones and Natalie Press. Greenaway’s refusal to make things easy for the viewer means you will be none the wiser to the mystery by the end of the film, but I suggest you seek out Greenaway’s excellent supporting documentary Rembrandt’s J’Accuse...! if you are intrigued. (Paul Dale) ■ Filmhouse, Edinburgh from Mon 19–Thu 22 Apr. See interview, page 44.
DRAMA/COMEDY LIFE DURING WARTIME (15) 97min ●●●●●
Todd Solondz’ sequel to his 1998 film Happiness with the characters played by the different actors is slickly (and sickeningly) achieved but pathetically irrelevant. Ten years on from Happiness and
we are back in the suburbs of Miami. Incarcerated paedophile husband Bill (Ciaran Hinds) is released and his ex- wife Trish (Allison Janney) is about to be married again. Trish’s sister Joy (Shirley Henderson) is in town to get away from her degenerate husband (Michael K Williams) but is being haunted by the ghosts of past lovers. Around these three hover the perverse, unhinged, abhorrent, disaffected and disturbed. Moments of kindness are fleeting. Displacement and emotional pain are longer lasting.
As we have learnt, the name of
Solondz’ game is satire. Dark, diseased and diseasing satire. His targets are what he perceives as ridiculous institutions – marriage and families particularly. Then there’s the shock quotient – paedophilia; sex with old women; suicide; abuse; accusation; sexual harassment. It’s all set up to either make us laugh or squirm. Solondz dresses this up in theatrical, portentous but occasionally great dialogue that alludes to the Iraq war and how that is the cause of everyone’s unhappiness. Of course it all means nothing, and you just want to take a bath after watching it. For diehards only. (Paul Dale) ■ GFT, Glasgow from Fri 23 Apr.
DRAMA SHE, A CHINESE (18) 103min ●●●●●
London-based Chinese novelist Xiaolu Guo adapts her own novel about a young Chinese woman who travels from a remote village to the London metropolis for the big screen with mixed results. The winner of top prize the Golden Leopard at last year’s Locarno International Film Festival, the film is at its best in the section set in China in which the unobtrusive camera observes how Li Mei (Lu Huang) survives the harsh masculine world. She is sexually assaulted on a date with a truck driver and dates a bizarre DVD shop owner before becoming the floozy of a local gangster. This all feels remarkably everyday. However when the story takes an improbable
turn and Li Mei comes to London in search of ‘the West’ and the good life, director Guo loses control of her subject. Life in the English capital feels like a series of clichés about a dog eat dog metropolitan world with Mei’s relationships with London men echoing those she had in China. The picture suffers from poor pacing, and while the slowness doesn’t seem such an issue in sleepy China it’s oddly out of place in London. The formal approach taken to the subject is part of an attempt to show that we live in a global village, and will frustrate as many as it delights. (Kaleem Aftab) ■ Filmhouse, Edinburgh from Fri 23–Mon 26 Apr.
46 THE LIST 15–29 Apr 2010