FILM | Reviews
5 MINUTES WITH . . .
DEAD BY DAWN This year’s horror festival features original debuts; an appearance by director Frank Henenlotter; and a new strain of ‘recession horror’. Festival director Adele Hartley talks about her hopes and the audience’s fears . . .
What stands out in this year’s programme? Modus Anomali is one of those gorgeous, mind- melt movies that demands an extra pint in the bar afterwards just to figure out what the hell went on! We have a clutch of amazing feature debuts this year – Jug Face, Dead Shadows, The Battery, The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh – which shows the genre to be in fine hands. In an age of prequel, sequel, franchise and remake, it’s incredibly important to me to revel in the excitement of filmmakers who try to tell original stories. Also, without gibbering too much: Frank Henenlotter!
What qualifies a film for Dead by Dawn? It comes down to story. What I want is filmmakers who are attempting to breathe new life into subgenres, who aim high and who care deeply about trying to engage the viewer. Have you noticed any trends in current horror? This year there’s a strong trend of stories from the States about the fall-out from aggressive house repossession. That seems to be a direct response to the fear and uncertainty brought on by the global recession – it definitely feels like a timely howl of despair.
What distinguishes Dead by Dawn, and what makes Edinburgh the right location? Edinburgh has a Gothic heart, which is why I love it. We take our programming very seriously – we spend around 15 months watching hundreds of submissions to find the very best. Our approach to the genre is broad: ‘horror’ is an umbrella term, and the genre is incredibly subjective. Are attitudes to gender and sex in the genre a cause for concern? No more than they are anywhere else. There’s as much laziness in horror as there is any other genre but snobbery marks horror out as an easy target. I will reject a film out of hand if it thinks the visual shorthand for shocking is to strip, beat, rape and kill a girl. Happily, of our four debut features this year, the women are all driven, smart and self-aware – not a single feeble victim amongst them! (Hannah McGill)
■ Dead by Dawn, Filmhouse, Edinburgh, Thu 25–Sun 28 Apr. Read more of this interview on film.list.co.uk
60 THE LIST 18 Apr–16 May 2013
DRAMA WHITE ELEPHANT (TBC) 110min ●●●●●
In this unique and impressive drama, Argentinean filmmaker Pablo Trapero (Carancho) invites us into the lives of a team of dedicated Catholic priests. Led by Father Julián (Ricardo Darin), they work with and live amongst gang members, drug addicts and outcasts in a huge Buenos Aires slum. Just as these Fathers have chosen to face the reality in one of the world’s darkest places, Trapero and his co-writers dive into wrestling with the grey areas and compromised principles that, in this context, become inescapable for these men of faith. Rather than following a conventional plotline, the
film is shaped as a series of episodes in the priests’ lives, from mediating gang conflicts to celebrating baptisms and dealing with personal crises of faith. The exceptionally well-drawn main characters remain in sharp focus through this sometimes unwieldy structure; Darin and Jérémie Renier (who plays Father Nicolas) are both terrific, and another Trapero
regular, Martina Gusman, is equally good as a passionate social worker. Trapero’s film examines the real cost of a life of faith – the servanthood and the sacrifice – and is itself a long dark night of the soul, offering much to contemplate. (Paul Gallagher) ■ GFT, Glasgow from Fri 10 May.
THRILLER A HIJACKING (15) 99min ●●●●●
Tobias Lindholm’s seafaring thriller explores contrasting claustrophobic environments through the eyes of two protagonists. Mikkel (Pilou Asbæk) is the ship’s cook on board a hijacked freighter in the Indian Ocean, while freight i rm CEO Peter (Søren Malling), trapped in the company HQ’s boardroom while he negotiates with the pirates’ maybe-victim, maybe-perpetrator translator, Omar (Abdihakin Asgar).
A fast-paced Hollywood hostage thriller, this is not. The negotiations drag on for weeks and months as Peter attempts to reach a compromise with Omar. This isn’t a parable of corporate greed as Peter is genuinely concerned about the welfare of his employees, but he is advised by negotiation professional Connor (Gary Skjoldmose Porter) to haggle lest the pirates reject the i rst offer and ask for more.
This lengthy timespan is both a strength and weakness for the i lm. As the weeks pass, we see the effects of the sustained pressure on both Mikkel and Peter. Asbæk (Borgen’s Kasper Juul) does a remarkable job of portraying Mikkel’s deterioration, passing from fear and desperation through shades of Stockholm Syndrome to i nal catatonic despair. Also praiseworthy is the performance of Malling (The Killing’s Jan Meyer), although by necessity it’s far more restrained with Peter having to keep calm both in the face of Omar’s aggressive bargaining and under scrutiny from the company board members.
Unfortunately, this drawn-out, unrelenting sense of fear exerts a toll on the audience as well as the
protagonists. Lindholm prefers lingering over a scene to moving sharply onto the next set-up, and even moments of levity – such as Mikkel bonding with his captors while i shing – are dragged out. Lindholm could arguably be praised for succeeding in making the audience experience his characters, but a more stringent editor would have given the i lm a much keener sense of pace. (Niki Boyle) ■ Limited release from Fri 10 May.