FILM | Reviews 72 THE LIST 16 May–13 Jun 2013
HORROR THE LAST EXORCISM PART II (15) 88min ●●●●●
The Last Exorcism was a curiosity of the found-footage genre in that it purported to be a documentary exposé of fake exorcist, the Rev Cotton Marcus. This created a believable background to the drama before the film reverted to genre expectations. The possession of Nell (Ashley Bell), therefore, worked as a pay-off to a rather nasty joke about how a minister’s disrespect of supernatural lore came back to bite him.
The Last Exorcism Part II abandons the shaky-cam aesthetic in favour of a more straightforward possession story, following Nell (Bell again) as she attempts to rebuild her life after the harrowing exorcism featured at the end of the previous film. After moving into a halfway house where her housemates’ view of her is coloured by watching disturbing online clips of her possession, Nell finds that the demon Abalam is still hungry for her soul, and she struggles to fight him off. As with the misbegotten sequel to The Blair Witch Project, The Last Exorcism Part II is fundamentally misconceived by not using the same visual approach as the original. Since the only potential audience for this is those who liked the first film’s styling, the results are decidedly wayward; only Bell’s somnambulistic performance provides any continuity, despite the return of Eli Roth’s name on the executive producer credits.
The box office success of mediocre films like The Devil Inside and The Possession shows that this demonic possession genre is still of interest to audiences. But writer/ director Ed Gass-Donnelly’s film offers little ironic edge or incisive imagery, pushing far too hard with an unpleasant emphasis on sexuality, and ending up as a by-the-numbers rehash of the original film’s weakest elements. (Eddie Harrison) ■ General release from Fri 7 Jun.
DRAMA SOMETHING IN THE AIR (15) 122 min ●●●●●
French writer-director Olivier Assayas follows up his epic chronicle of legendary terrorist Carlos the Jackal with this bittersweet portrait of countercultural youth in early 70s France. ‘Diffusely autobiographical’ is how the filmmaker has described his latest work, the story of Gilles (Clément Métayer), an aspiring artist attending a lycée outside Paris. Gilles is in love with the bohemian twentysomething Laure (Carole Combes), but he and fellow student militants decide to flee to Italy for the summer, after a security guard is badly injured in an incident involving a Molotov cocktail. Drawing romantically closer to one of his politically committed female colleagues, Christine (Lola Créton), Gilles has to choose between his own creative ambitions and the Leftist cause. It’s precisely because this coming-of-age story is so specific in its depiction of the era’s
countercultural artifacts, and to the disparate factions within leftwing politics, that it becomes such a credible portrait of a generation. Assayas ensures that nostalgia and cynicism are kept at bay, keeping us aware of the doubts and insecurities of his youthful characters. Relying on a cast of mainly non-professional actors, Something in the Air has a dreamy feel to the way it’s shot and edited, conveying the sense that we are experiencing its creator’s subjective memories. (Tom Dawson) ■ Limited release from Fri 24 May.
MUSIC DOCUMENTARY BEWARE OF MR BAKER (15) 92min ●●●●●
No offence to our rock star readers but it is, if not a given, then at least a damn good bet, that a talented and successful musician will be a somewhat unstable character. This goes at least double for musicians who made their names amid the very strong drugs, sexual excesses and large, large record company paycheques of the 1960s. This has tended of late to persuade documentarians that any survivor of that era’s rock scene will make a good subject for a film. But there are different ways to be damaged, some more compelling to a viewer than others. The line between “entertainingly/poignantly eccentric” and “just a total git” has now been decisively identified, and its name is Ginger Baker, the former drummer for Cream and Blind Faith. American filmmaker Jay Bolger pursues the now elderly and seriously embittered Baker to his current home – a compound in South Africa which bears the titular self-aggrandising sign – and asks his subject some gentle questions about his life and career. Baker, in response, barks, boasts, bitches and is generally completely vile. The film backs up his uninteresting complaints about other people not thinking he’s enough of a genius with patchy biographical information, some vague or fawning interviews with fans and associates, and dodgy animation which at one point illustrates Baker’s interest in African drum rhythms by showing him rowing on a slave ship. (Hannah McGill) ■ Limited release from Fri 31 May.