Film
www.list.co.uk/film
IT’S A BRUTAL, UNPLEASANT ENDURANCE TEST Hitlist THE BEST FILM & DVD RELEASES*
✽✽ Certified Copy Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami’s first film made outside his homeland is a thoughtful and beguiling romantic drama starring Juliette Binoche. See review, page 85 and profile, listings. GFT, Glasgow from Fri 3 Sep. ✽✽ The Leopard Seminal Italian epic remastered and reissued. See Also Released, page 86. Filmhouse, Edinburgh, Fri 27 Aug–Thu 2 Sep. ✽✽ The Girl Who Played With Fire The film adaptations of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy continue. See review, page 86. General release from Fri 27 Aug. ✽✽ Mother Superbly weird South Korean thriller. Selected release, out now. ✽✽ The Illusionist Sylvain Chomet’s lovely, old-fashioned animated fable set in Edinburgh over half a century ago. Selected release, out now. ✽✽ Scott Pilgrim vs The World Inventive adaptation of the cult comic and video game. General release, out now. ✽✽ Piranha 3D Very decent attempt to make a modern day creature feature B movie. General release, out now. ✽✽ The Secret in Their Eyes Oscar scooping Argentinean noir. Filmhouse, Edinburgh, until Thu 9 Sep. ✽✽ Mon Oncle These matinee screenings of Jacques Tati’s brilliant 1958 comedy is a homage to a key scene in The Illusionist (see above) featuring the Cameo cinema. Cameo, Edinburgh, Fri 27 Aug–Thu 2 Sep. ✽✽ Sus Sharply written and claustrophobically-directed British police procedural set on the eve of Margaret Thatcher’s 1979 landslide election victory on DVD. See review, page 87. Out Mon 6 Sep (4Digi).
Cherry Tree Lane
Vintage violence When it comes to going to the cinema, how much screen violence is too much? Or is it more to do with the type of violence? Paul Gallagher ducks the punches
P aul Andrew Williams’s Cherry Tree Lane is a real-time enactment of the break-in and torture of a middle class suburban couple by vengeful teenagers. At a mere 77 minutes, it’s still a brutal, unpleasant endurance test, and much of its power comes from Williams’ stylistic choices. From the film’s opening – a portentous ultra-slow zoom onto a front door – he eschews the furious editing of modern American horror, as well as the more camp vagaries of the genre, in favour of something less comfortable, more shocking, and closer to art house in form. Torture scenes unfold in long takes, and most of the gut- wrenching violence takes place just beyond the camera’s line, with sound filling in the blanks in audience members’ pummelled imaginations. It’s an impressive display of technical expertise, but I struggled to understand why Williams would want to put anyone through such an experience. It’s not a question that he convincingly addresses at any point in the film.
I had a similar reaction recently watching another horror of sorts. Michael Winterbottom’s The Killer Inside Me features two protracted scenes of brutal and humiliating violence against the film’s female characters; powerfully shocking scenes that have no justifiable place in what is an otherwise traditional, even unremarkable, noir. These examples represent a growing number of British filmmakers employing the extreme tendencies of art house cinema in mainstream horror films, in a universally empty-headed manner. In the wake of what James Quandt referred to in 2004 as the ‘New Extremity’ – European filmmakers including Gaspar
84 THE LIST 26 Aug–9 Sep 2010
Noé, Catherine Breillat and Bruno Dumont who consciously provoked with painstakingly realised sex, violence and debasement – burgeoning British filmmakers have a new reference, more immediate and shocking than stylised Italian giallo, but they are doing nothing constructive or insightful with it. In fact, with their ‘realistic’ aesthetic, James Watkins’ Eden Lake (2008), Thomas Clay’s execrable The Great Ecstasy of Robert Carmichael (2005) and Cherry Tree Lane serve only to reinforce the inaccurate stereotype that the only teenagers this country produces are fearsome amoral troublemakers. The film that Cherry Tree Lane immediately brings to mind is Michael Haneke’s home-invasion grueller Funny Games, in which the divisive Austrian director dared audiences to withstand the extreme humiliation and pain he put his characters through. Haneke was making a point about screen violence though; you can disagree with him, but his motivation is clear. Williams claims that his motivation was ‘to see if I could create what it would be like if this really happened’, while Winterbottom has simply said ‘I was surprised that people were so shocked by the violence’, suggesting a distinct lack of reasoning behind their provocative presentations of violence. Film is primarily a means of communication; on this evidence, extreme violence is the current easy option for directors with nothing to say.
Cherry Tree Lane, selected release, Fri 3 Sep. The Killer Inside Me is released on DVD and Blu-ray on Mon 27 Sep.