Films Seen - February 2007

[Pre-'96 films not included.]

PERFUME: THE STORY OF A MURDERER (69) (dir., Tom Tykwer) Ben Whishaw, Rachel Hurd-Wood, Dustin Hoffman, Alan Rickman Most cunning aspect of this unexpected drama may be in playing its third quarter off the figure of Rickman, apparently a modern man surrounded by illogic and superstition; he's the only one who talks in terms of 00s serial-killer psychology - e.g. in pointing out the culprit is a "collector" - lulling us into thinking of the film as something like Caleb Carr's "The Alienist", a Thomas Harris clone in a period setting - which is why the climax comes as such a shock, revealing the psycho as in fact a Visionary (the distasteful emphasis on the victims' naked bodies can also be put down to the film's sly misdirection, deliberately painting itself in trashy-pulp colours, though it's still pretty distasteful). The twist within a twist, of course, is that his Vision is flawed - and he actually is a modern killer in being scientific to the point of dehumanisation, seeking to extract the essence of people as if they were objects; he's like an olfactory Dr. Mengele, an obvious reference-point with a German director and German source-material (no surprise that he acts as an Angel of Death, leaving a trail of corpses wherever he goes), and what he learns at the end is a humanist credo - he literally dies by human contact - that to feel for people is better than to control or comprehend them; the power of the Scientist (or Artist) is nothing compared to the passion of the man who can "love and be loved". Third quarter still lets it down - though it might improve on second viewing, knowing it's something of a red herring - and close-ups of cut plums, spices, muddy feet etc. still can't express (only evoke) what those things smell like, but Whishaw is fearlessly alienated in the main role, and even hammy Hoffman makes for light relief. Also: Best Location Scouting of the year - fields of lavender! houses on the bridge! - and Best Direction of Extras. You know what I'm talking about.

THE GRUDGE 2 (52) (dir., Takashi Shimizu) Amber Tamblyn, Arielle Kebbel, Jennifer Beals, Matthew Knight, Sarah Michelle Gellar Almost scare-free, and I found the American GRUDGE quite frightening. It's like Shimizu chose not to work on the shocks this time round - the ghostly apparitions are almost an afterthought, and even the slam-dunks (like having victims be discovered with a terrified expression on their faces) are pointedly not taken. One for academics more than horror fans, the plot now totally fragmented, the ghosts spreading from past to future, Tokyo to Chicago, home to school to hospital (even in the girls' showers; bad ghost!); the result is a general fear, a vague 21st-century fear of global virus or indeed globalisation itself - spreading its tendrils, making everything the same, impossible to stop (yet also motivated, like Samara in THE RING, by bringing people closer, making them "feel what she felt"). Both heroines are fearful young girls - one girl is contrasted with her sister, who "knows how to face Life" - their main trait being helplessness in the face of a greater force; the only real counterpoint to the ghosts is Shimizu's camera (style our only weapon in a globalised world?) carefully mapping out the action in often-creative shots like the boyfriend glimpsed in the mirror as he showers in the background (behind the heroine, who's lying in bed and assumes he's the thing crawling towards her under the covers). How obvious is it that Amber Tamblyn must be Russ's daughter? So very obvious.      

SURVIVE STYLE 5+ (65) (dir., Gen Sekiguchi) Tadanobu Asano, Vinnie Jones, Kyoko Koizumi Wide angles, slo-mo, colour-coded rooms, design like a psychedelic playpen (the word 'style' is right there in the title); also cartoon effects - tinkly music playing whenever the ad exec bats her eyes - which is apt since there's no real people, just a series of sketches that develops, for about a half-hour in the middle, into one of the year's funniest films, the kind where you never really know what's coming next (a Japanese family head-banging in the car, WAYNE'S WORLD-style? a guy in a rabbit costume doing a musical number? a Janus-faced schizo in an unlikely ad for "Monkey Records" (*)?). Goes on too long, esp. since at least one of the five stories (the ambiguously gay crooks) is both undeveloped and unfunny, and the ending, trying for a symphony of misfits - it's okay to laugh when no-one else does! it's okay for Dad to be a bird! - scored to Cake's (imho annoying) cover of "I Will Survive", falls far short of poignancy. Still hard to beat for comic invention, though I'm still trying to work out why they say "masturbation" in English. Is there no (ahem) handy Japanese word?

(*) hoo hoo hoo!

MANSLAUGHTER (60) (dir., Per Fly) Jesper Christensen, Pernilla August, Beate Bille Tricky stuff, starting out as May-December romance - with hang-gliding, a reckless leap into the void, as the guiding metaphor - then turning political, equating Bill Nighy-ish hero's emotional sympathy for the girl with his political sympathy for her 'terrorist' activities (both illicit, given that he's married). Then gets really interesting, questioning both emotions and politics - hence the whole lefty mindset that supports both radical activism and sexual freedom - but it doesn't follow through. An important question is raised, whether violence by the State can excuse violence by the individual (a "terrorist" attacks a weapons factory, but why should his/her violence be condemned while the violence of using those weapons in Iraq is accepted?), but the film isn't clear - or didn't seem clear - on how its second half impinges on that question; could be pointing out that all violence has victims and the State (like the individual) must take responsibility for its actions or in fact the opposite, that the atomised equation of self and State is founded on hubris, and can only end in tears. Maybe the political angle is a red herring and it's really just a tale of mid-life crisis, in which case it's capably done though Christensen's hero is too obviously an actor's tour de force; in fact, he's a bit exhausting.

BREAKING AND ENTERING (63) (dir., Anthony Minghella) Jude Law, Juliette Binoche, Robin Wright Penn, Martin Freeman This "Cyprus Mail" review is short but pretty good, I think (managed to make it denser than usual); reviewed together with SCOOP, which is why I went for the London angle. Not much to add, except does anyone else find Juliette Binoche really annoying? Her scrunched-up face is so needy, and she seems to turn everything into a guilt-trip. When she says "We survived" and "Think of your [dead] father", it's with the approximate inflection of "I've got such a  headache"...