London Film Fest 2010 Day 5 - PICCO

German writer-director Philip Koch's debut feature is a closely observed prison drama loosely based on Alan Clarke's acclaimed BBC Play for Today, SCUM. Picco translates as lackey, and the protagonist is a quiet, diffident teenage boy landed in a prison cell with three other kids. The prison is claustrophobic, dull and full of sinister threat. The pivotal moment comes when the protagonist witnesses a rape, but is persuaded not to stick his head up above the parapet and report it. From then we see a subtle shift from bullied to bully, as he realises that there is no sustainable middle ground.

Koch portrays this with a fairly straightforward narrative style, and some impressive steady-cam work within the cell. The performances and production design all add up to an authentic feel. I guess my problem with the film is that it doesn't feel fresh or dangerous enough. The director warned the audience at the LIFF screening that it was going to be uncomfortable to watch, but actually it really wasn't. Certainly there was nothing to match the razor-blade scene in similarly themed UN PROPHET, and for those of us who'd watched LEAP YEAR earlier in the day, PICCO seemed like pretty bland fare by comparison.

I guess my overall reaction was that this was a coming-of-age prison drama like many others - quiet inmate turns bully to survive. It is well-told and well-acted, but ultimately, what does it add to the genre? Not much.

PICCO played Cannes 2010 and will be released in Germany on 25th November.

Random DVD Round-Up 3 - DATE NIGHT

There's something almost impressive about the fact that director Shawn Levy has taken two of the funniest comedians working today - Steve Carell and Tina Fey - and create a romantic comedy so utterly joyless and inauthentic. I honestly would not have believed it possible. This movie misses the mark so badly it's like the PEARL HARBOUR of romantic-comedies. Fey and Carell play a happily married but tired couple whose regular date night turns into a caper movie when they are mistaken for a couple that's blackmailing a local politician. Chased by organised crime and some bent coppers, it just so handily happens that Mrs Suburbs was a realtor to a super-buff Mission Impossible type special agent. Whenever I get mistakenly chased down by gansters, I am definitely going to ensure that I too can call on my friendly neighbourhood James Bond type. Anyways, there are shenanigans, and the couple turn out to be far more plucky and ingenious than is plausible, and it all ends with Tina Fey in a strip club. The only reason you might possibly watch this flick is for the James Franco-Mila Kunis scene in which they show the grown-ups how to do it. Presumably you can just you-tube that clip.

DATE NIGHT was released in April 2010. It is available on DVD and on iTunes.

Additional tags: Jimmi Simpson, Josh Klausner, Leighton Meester

A PROPHET/UN PROPHET - Powerful, tense, exhilarating.

French writer-director Jacques Audiard's new film, UN PROPHET, is a devastatingly good film - even more searing than the already impressive 2005 flick THE BEAT THAT MY HEART SKIPPED. It's the kind of film that has you on the edge of your seat, wincing with unease throughout, and yet leaves you exhilarated and re-energised in your belief of what cinema, at its best, can be capable of.

The movie opens with a teenage kid being admitted to prison. Malik El Djebena is a zero. He has no politics, no religion, no friends, no ambition and no clue. Within ten minutes of the two and a half hour run-time his fate is sealed. The Corsican chief Cesar has demanded that Malik kill the Arab chief Ryad, or be killed himself. The means by which the murder has to be committed, and Malik's practising it, is one of the most insanely horrific scenes in recent cinema history. Half an hour into the run-time and Malik has established his modus vivendi, protected by the Corsicans, educating himself, working up his own network. He's still an outsider: too Corsican for the Arabs and too Arab for the Corsicans, but he is on the ascendancy. Once again, while he shows some initiative, this is basically success by default. When Sarkozy's new policy sends Cesar's goons back home, Cesar has no choice but to depend on Malik, and to exploit his day-release passes. During this middle-section, the movie seems to drift a little. There are excursions and petty deal-making - it all seems rather banal. But this is, in fact, the genius of the film's structure. Because it comes almost as a surprise that, inch by inch, Malik is now the man in control - and Cesar just a pathetic, lonely old man.

I shan't say more because I feel that UN PROPHET is a movie that works best when you know as little about it as possible. Suffice to say that I think this is a movie that is a worthy contender for Haneke's DAS WEISSE BAND as the foreign-language film of the year. Moreover, Tahar Rahim and Niels Arestup, as Malik and Cesar respectively, deliver powerful and nuanced performances worthy of praise in their own right.

Not to be missed.

UN PROPHET played Cannes, Telluride and London 2009 and Sundance 2010. It opened last year in Belgium, France, Russia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Greece and Portugal. It is currently on release in the UK. It opens in February in the Netherlands, the USA, Argenina and Spain. It opens in March in Germany, Israel, Taiwan, and Finland. It won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes.

RED RIDING - 1980 - Arguably the best of the trilogy

Peter Hunter: You don't like the police much, do you?

Martin Laws: No love lost, no.

Peter Hunter: So when someone kicks down your front door, kills the dog and rapes the wife, who you gonna call?

Martin Laws: Well it certainly wouldn't be the West Yorkshire Police - they'd already *be* in there, wouldn't they.

RED RIDING: 1980 is perhaps the best in the trilogy of Channel 4 films, in that it has both the best of the lead performances (Paddy Considine as Peter Hunter), the most thematically dark and obscure material, and the best direction. The film opens with the West Yorkshire police under pressure from the public for not finding the Yorkshire Ripper - a serial killer who preys on whores. Hunter is brought in to investigate the Ripper case, but to covertly investigate corruption in the West Yorkshire police. Rozzers who were in the minor leagues in 1974 have now risen to positions of power in 1980 and will be even more ruthless in the attempt to protect the status quo. Hunter's case rest on tip-offs from BJ - a male prostitute - and the insane ramblings of former Yorkshire Post journo Jack Whitehead - both of whom believe that the Ripper murders are being used to cover up non-Ripper murders.

The strength of the material is its willingness to deal in endemic corruption. The idea that you cannot escape from the evil, even when you have uncovered the truth, continues. The impotence of all good men is the tragedy. Paddy Considine is always impressive and nowhere more so than here: conveying both Hunter's ambition and earnest good intentions, but also his flaws and vulnerability. Just as Eddie Dunford, Hunter is no saint. I particularly liked David Morrissey in the increasingly important role of bent copper Maurice Jobson. As villains, Joseph Mawle and Sean Harris impress as the Ripper and copper Bob Craven respectively.

Acting aside, what raises this film above its predecessor is the shooting style. British director, James Marsh (MAN ON WIRE, THE KING), conveys a sense of claustrophobia and moral quagmire through the way he frames and lights his characters. DP Igor Martinovic's use of technoscope is inspired, because it gives the grainy feel of the 16mm DV used on 1974, but without the hazy dream-like quality. The lines are more defined and precise, which makes sense in a chapter where we are starting to see the truth more clearly, but are still helpless to make it stop.

The only flaw is the soft-pedalling on the sexual and verbal brutality seen in the novels. Which is not to say that this film is anything other than dark and disturbing. Nonetheless, as in 1974, our eyes are spared the worst of it. Worst of all, as in 1974, there seems to be a need to foreground a romance - this time between Hunter and his assisting policewoman Helen Marshall - out of proportion to its importance in 1980, the novel. The continuing foregrounding of the relationship also detracts from the power of the final revelation in the novel. As in 1974, the complexity of the final chapters is significantly reduced to tie in with the simpler ending in 1974 and to keep the story moving, presumably. I feel that this is to the film's detriment.

Despite these flaws, one has to be thankful that something this dark and subversive made it on to our screens at all, not least with the resources of first-rate casting and direction. But before I sign off, a few words on the producers decision not to shoot the novel 1977. You can, sort of, see their logic because Hunter will investigate, in 1980, the same crimes being investigated by Jack Whitehead in 1977. The problem is that if you just have Hunter investigate in 1980, and then the opening revelations in 1983, the motivations of the police come a little out of the blue. Whereas 1977 goes right to the heart of the money motive and the sheer scale of the police corruption at the heart of the novels.

1980 was first shown on British TV in 2009 and is available both on DVD and on Channel 4's video on demand service.

RED RIDING - 1974 - Less slippery and subversive than the novel but well put together nonetheless

1974 is the first of three films produced for television by Britain's Channel 4, based on the "Yorkshire noir" novels of David Peace. Each of his four books, 1974, 1977, 1980 and 1983, is about the corruption of policeman, priests, politicians and businessmen who murder and extort for no reason other than that they can. There never seems to be much money or success to be had from it, other than protecting the status quo. These crimes are posited as endemic in a region crippled with obsolete heavy industry and chippy toward outsiders. The greatest tragedy is to think you can remain an outsider - a cool observer - and that you can affect change. West Yorkshire is a law unto itself, and that law is policed by West Yorkshire's Finest, and spun by the compliant journalists of the Yorkshire Post. David Peace's world is one of almost complete corruption and casual evil. There are no heroes, but there are characters through whom we investigate the world and with whom we come to empathise.

In 1974, that character is a cocky young journalist called Eddie Dunford, newly back from a failed stint as a journo in Fleet Street, and desperate to make a name for himself by proving that someone is serially killing little girls despite the obfuscation of the rozzers; competition from senior crime reporter Jack Whitehead; and the powerful forces protecting a successful local property developer, John Dawson.

The movie is directed by Julian Jarrold, whose previous directorial efforts included the painfully superficial and hi-gloss remake of BRIDESHEAD REVISITED. 1974 is a far more successful film. Shot in sepia tones through the perpetual haze of cigarette smoke, the movie feels claustrophobic and sinister - just as it should. There's a superb scene where the camera looks over Dunford's shoulder through the patterned glass to a distorted image of Paula Garland - mother to a murdered girl - and soon to be Dunford's lover. That sums up Dunford: he sees through a glass darkly. And the tragedy of the film is that his eventual knowledge brings no relief. In a pivotal scene, he hands over a bag of documents - the research of his dead colleague Barry Gannon - to the one policeman he thinks is honest. Dunford is relieved - elated - as he drives toward his lover for an escape to the South. What a fool, the film-makers say, to think that he could actually escape the clutches of Yorkshire corruption. What a selfish, naive fool to think he could dump the files and fuck of to the South, where the sun shines.

Andrew Garfield is superb as Dunford - with his performance in THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS - he has become an actor I will go out of my way to watch. Rebecca Hall is moving as his lover, Paula Garland. In John Dawson, Sean Bean finds yet another role that capitalises on his slightly sleazy charisma. But the real strength is the depth and quality of British character actors filling the cast, from John Henshaw as the harsh-but-fair Editor, to Peter Mullan's Reverend Laws.

The resulting film is atmospheric, sometimes like a bad dream, hard to hold on to, unnverving, and very hard to let go of. Tony Grisoni has done a good job in adapting a ferociously complicated novel for a hundred minute runtime, and cleverly compresses characters. What the film looses, however, is the sheer force of its brutality. The novel is hard work, both in terms of language and descriptions of violence and sex. Every time Julian Jarrold cuts away from a blackmail photo or pans away from a scene of torture, David Peace takes you into the mind of the aggressor. And where the worst crime Grisoni's Dunford can be accused of is naivety, and a final loss of temper, Peace's Dunford is a far more ambivalent character. If policemen casually rape whores, then in the novel Dunford treats women as casually and cruelly, though playing, as it were, in the minor leagues.

And, without ruining either, I found the "solution" of 1974 and the closing scenes too neat and twee, where they should've been more slippery and open-ended. Presumably this was the result of the compression of a large conspiracy into a single culprit but the result was that the ending felt rushed and just plain bizarre - the logic behind the killing was almost given as a throw-away line, and significantly undermines the slow build-up.

RED RIDING was shown on UK TV in 2009 and is available on DVD and on the Channel 4 4oD video on demand service.

HARRY BROWN - the only permissable bigotry

These days you can't hate people on the grounds of their race, sexual orientation, religion or political views. The only permissable form of bigotry in the UK is the hatred of the white working class, and in particular, white working class kids. The right-wing middle-class media make a living from depicting chav kids as feral, dope-addled, knife-wielding granny botherers and social menaces. English society is in decay! Suburbia is lawless! And it's all because a bunch of uneducated kids have taken to drinking cans of Super-tenants outside Burger King at 11 at night while wearing fake Burberry caps, and driving modified Novas. It says a lot about how insecure post-modern, recession-bound Britain is that the only new cinema we seem to be capable of producing is either lauding the "glory" days of 1980s soccer hooliganism (punching people IS our proud heritage) or decrying working class violence. Whether the films are glorifying or condemning chav-violence, they are still making the lethal assumption that this is the way life is. And you think to yourself, does Mike Leigh work in vain?

HARRY BROWN is a good film. It's technically well-made, visually impressive, suspenseful, and features a great central performance from Michael Caine as a pensioner who turns violent on the teenage drug-pushers terrorising his estate. There's a satisfyingly slow-build to a pretty convincing revenge thriller. Caine has some nice Tarantino-style one-liners while dispatching a dope-peddler. There's even some astute critiquing of how the police are riven by spin and politicking. Emily Mortimer gives a nuanced performance and Iain Glenn is absolutely menacing. There's no denying it - this is a good film. I would have really loved it had I not been continually wary of the fact that I was watching a sort of middle-class angst-porn, designed to push all my buttons as a tax-paying constructive member of society meant to be living in fear of being knifed on the Central Line.

I don't buy the Daily Mail and I'm not buying this. I don't care how nice the packaging and how gritty the performances.

HARRY BROWN played Toronto 2009 and is on release in the UK. It opens in the Netherlands on February 25th 2010.