www.list.co.uk/film
TERRORIST BIOPIC CARLOS (15) 333min/165min ●●●●●
The release of French director Olivier Assayas’ Carlos – an exhilarating epic chronicling the career of ‘superstar terrorist’ Carlos the Jackal – is one of the cinematic events of 2010. Made in three parts for French television, it’s showing in UK cinemas in two different versions, one lasting 165 minutes, the other clocking in at over five and a half hours. The full-length cut is highly recommended.
Billed as fiction based on actual events, Carlos begins in 1973 with the twentysomething Venezulean-born Ilich Ramirez Sanchez (Edgar Ramirez) – who takes ‘Carlos’ as his nom-de-guerre – travelling to Beirut to enlist in Waddi Haddad’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). While operating in Europe for the PFLP, Carlos is entrusted with leading the December 1975 raid on the OPEC headquarters in Vienna. Financed by Saddam Hussein, the mission aims to fly the hostages to Baghdad and execute the oil ministers of Iran and Saudi Arabia. Carlos’ decision to spare his captives and accept an enormous ransom sees him evicted from the PFLP. He proceeds to make contact with German revolutionary activists including Johannes Weinrich (Alexander Scheer) and Magdalena
Kopp (Nora von Waldstatten) and sets himself up as a freelance terrorist, lucratively backed by governments in the Middle East and the Soviet Bloc. Effortlessly switching between various languages, Ramirez delivers an impressively charismatic central performance, embodying the character’s many contradictions. He pays lip-service to the notion of fighting for the proletarian revolution, and defines himself as a ‘soldier, not a martyr’, yet he seems more interested in pursuing a jetset, hedonistic lifestyle. His sexual appetite powers his actions: he tells one of his many female conquests that, ‘Weapons are an extension of my body’, while getting her to caress a grenade. Repeatedly, Assayas depicts his protagonist bungling his terror operations, undermining the myth of ruthless expertise. One of Carlos’ great assets though is that he understands the power of spectacle: for the OPEC siege the then 26-year-old sports dark glasses, a Che Guevara beret and a leather jacket, projecting an image of revolutionary chic worldwide.
Dynamically shot in Cinemascope, and constantly switching between international locations, Carlos is a film which, in focussing on one reckless individual, illuminates a whole era and offers a vivid perspective on global terrorism. (Tom Dawson) ■ GFT, Glasgow; Filmhouse, Edinburgh, from Fri 22 Oct.
REVIEWS Film
TEEN COMEDY EASY A (15) 92min ●●●●●
Hollywood is going gaga for Emma Stone at the moment, and on the strength of her performance in this hit American teen comedy, it’s easy to see why. Stone channels Molly Ringwald in her heyday, playing a gauche outsider teen desiring popularity at high school. Olive (Stone) tells a little white lie about losing her virginity to a college student, which escalates way out of control when she gains and cultivates a reputation as the college slut. As many a glamour model will attest,
there is money to be made in selling the promise of sex and Stone starts a business where she won’t contradict a statement that she’s been with a guy for the right price. What she doesn’t bargain for is the fall-out, in which both the Christian Society and her best pal Rhiannon (Aly Michalka) turn against her. Scriptwriter Bert V Royal and
director Will Gluck take a leaf out of John Hughes’ college book in ensuring that the teenagers are vulnerable but endearing, ambitious yet awkward, worried about becoming an adult and the need to make a mark on the world without knowing how to go about it. One of Hughes’ finest attributes was his ability to incorporate confused parents into the story, even when they are not seen on screen as with The Breakfast Club, and Gluck gets brilliant turns out of Patricia Clarkson and Stanley Tucci playing the wisecracking, eccentric folks. Not since Mean Girls and Election have the trials of a teenage school girl provided such entertainment. (Kaleem Aftab) ■ General release, from Fri 22 Oct.
COMEDY DRAMA THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT (15) 106min ●●●●●
High Art director Lisa Cholodenko has made one of the funniest films of the year by taking aspects of her own life — most notably the use of a sperm donor to father a child — and turning it into a comedy of social dilemmas. Woody Allen himself no longer echoes the heyday of Woody Allen as well as Cholodenko does here. Cholodenko eases the audience into the film by letting us hang out with the central lesbian couple, breadwinner physician Nic (Annette Benning) and her dislocated partner Jules (Julianne Moore), as well as their two kids Joni (Mia Waskiowska) and Laser (Josh Hutcherson). When 15-year-old Laser decides to track down his sperm donor father, their world is turned upside down by the arrival of loveable rogue Paul. At this point Cholodenko ups the stakes by resurrecting Mark Ruffalo’s reputation as an actor of note. Paul is a co-op farmer and restaurant owner who thinks nothing of breaking girls’ hearts and doing his own thing. Jules, seeing echoes of her children in him, is immediately seduced by his charms, and cad Paul can’t help himself. Cue social mores. Cholodenko’s film is brilliant witty, but also notable for the way that Cholodenko
deals with a character that has sexual partners of both genders without that becoming the main issue. An all too rare example of a funny, heart warming and insightful adult American comedy. (Kaleem Aftab) ■ Selected release, from Fri 29 Oct.
21 Oct–4 Nov 2010 THE LIST 45