Film REVIEWS
DRAMA DETACHMENT (15) 97min ●●●●●
Henry Barthes (Adrien Brody) is a substitute teacher, making his living the hard way in the tougher public schools of New York City. Moving from school to school, he’s less interested in curriculum issues than in the temporary relationships he finds with the pupils he teaches, taking pleasure in defusing their hostility. At the same time, he finds some connection to the permanent staff he teaches alongside, the majority worn down and exhausted by the demands of the job. Yet despite his empathetic character, Henry is alienated from everyone by his own sense of personal detachment.
Director Tony Kaye was widely assumed to have gone missing in action after he denounced the final cut of his acclaimed drama American History X in 1999, for which Edward Norton received an Oscar nomination. Kaye unsuccessfully sued New Line, an action which many observers believed was career suicide. Taking the story of another outsider as his subject, Kaye has fashioned a film that feels uncomfortably personal, right down to the casting of his own daughter (Betty Kaye) as Meredith, a misfit student that Henry befriends. Working from a script by ex-teacher Carl Lund, Kay’s
drama has a remarkable cast, with Lucy Liu, James Caan, and Mad Men’s Christina Hendricks as fellow teachers, plus Marcia Gay Harden as the principal. Sami Gayle features in an affecting subplot as Erica, a teenage prostitute that Henry provides a shelter for. Yet despite Kaye playing with a full deck of cards in terms
of talent, Detachment never lives up to the promise of its opening Albert Camus quote. While Brody is likable enough, Kaye seems so intent on shocking the audience that his film teeters into self-parody, a self-important, humourless exposé of modern education that eventually becomes exhausting to watch. (Eddie Harrison) ■ Selected release from Fri 13 Jul.
HORROR CHERNOBYL DIARIES (15) 86min ●●●●● DRAMA SILENT SOULS (15) 77min ●●●●●
COMEDY DRAMA YOUR SISTER’S SISTER (15) 90mins ●●●●●
From Oren Peli, producer of the Paranormal Activity series, comes yet another entry in the tourist trap cycle spawned by Eli Roth’s considerably superior Hostel. In Chernobyl Diaries, a group of US tourists find themselves engaged in bloody conflict on the site of a recent real-life tragedy, giving this less-than- nuclear genre entry a distasteful edge. After a dull montage of Euro-vacation home
movies, scored to ‘Alright’ by Supergrass, it seems understandable that Chris (Jesse McCartney) and his teenage friends might seek out a more extreme experience while visiting Kiev. They hire unreliable guide Uri (Dimitri Diatchenko) to take them to the town of Pripyat, evacuated since the nuclear reactor meltdown. Unfortunately, the radioactive inhabitants of the town are still pretty active, and long stretches of screaming and fumbling in the dark lie ahead.
The early stages of Chernobyl Diaries promise some tension, with Diatchenko an engaging, enigmatic focus, but visual effect supervisor-turned first time director Bradley Parker quickly runs out of creative ideas, making this disaster-tourism trip well worth avoiding. (Eddie Harrison) ■ General release from Fri 22 Jun.
Following the death of the beloved wife of his friend Miron, Aist joins the bereaved man on a trip to transport the dead woman from their small town to the shore of Lake Nero in western Russia, where her body is to be cremated. This, along with several other rituals performed en route, are the funeral customs of the Merja people, an ancient tribe Aist and Miron are descended from whose culture was assimilated into Russia’s in the 17th century. During the course of the journey, the two men recall various significant – and strange – moments of their past lives, which are shown in flashbacks. In one, Miron bathes his wife in a tub of vodka; in another, Aist, who narrates the film, recalls his father throwing a typewriter into a frozen lake.
Silent Souls, which was written by Denis Osokin and directed by Aleksei Fedorchenko (who has also contributed a segment to the anthology film The Fourth Dimension, which premieres at Edinburgh International Film Festival this month), is beautiful, beguiling, dreamy and mystifying. And quite unlike anything else. An unexpected cinematic treat. (Miles Fielder) ■ Selected release from Fri 22 Jun.
Recent film highlights from the American independent scene have tended to stand out for their honest portrayals of contemporary life rather than for breaking new ground in style and form. And so it is with Lynn Shelton’s latest film Your Sister’s Sister, the low key, but very likable, story of Iris (Emily Blunt), her sister Hannah (Rosemarie DeWitt) and Iris’ best friend Jack (Mark Duplass) who all find themselves staying in a remote cabin in the San Juan islands off America’s North West coast. With large parts of the film improvised, the real joy to be found is in the naturalism of the performances and the frequently funny and believable dialogue. And while the focus is on the characters and the relationships between them, there’s a couple of plot twists thrown in for added satisfaction.
It’s not all perfect – there’s a cheesy montage of Jack miserably cycling around the island accompanied by a bland soundtrack that we could have done without. Fortunately such niggles only slightly distract from what is a very genuine film packed with smart observations about modern relationships. (Gail Tolley) ■ Selected release from Fri 29 Jun.
21 Jun–19 Jul 2012 THE LIST 71