A Film For December: Cry-Baby

The Big City about a middle class women from a conservative family in Calcutta getting a job was meant to be my film for December but it wasn’t available so a replacement was found for me – could it be any more different?! Cry-Baby is a 1990 teen musical rom-com written and directed by John Waters.

Set in Baltimore in 1954 teenage culture is divided between the ‘Drapes’ and the ‘Squares’. Johnny Depp stars as rebel Wade ‘Cry-Baby’ Walker who drives the girls wild with his ability to shed a single tear and Amy Locane is Allison Vernon-Williams, the Square he falls for.

A Film For November: The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie

A film about six metropolitan sophisticates trying to meet for dinner. Exuding status the friends are completely sure of themselves and their place in society but under this bland exterior of flimsy manners there’s greed and lust, drug dealing and military coups all wrapped up in peach chiffon, pussy bow blouses, platform heels and loudly checked suits, well it’s 1972!

For a group of people always used to getting their own way this satirical comedy of manners puts their quest for the most conventional of evenings out of their reach.

A Film for October: Poetry

A body floats along the river. Mija, (Yun Jung-hee) always dressed in light florals is a quiet, unassuming 66 year old who lives in a small apartment in Korea with her teenage grandson, Jongwook (Lee Da-wit). She is diagnosed with early onset dementia and remembers that at school she was praised for her poetry – something she has given up. Now that words are being forgotten she enrols on a poetry class at her local college.

What is poetry? How do I find inspiration? How do I begin to write? The film is punctuated by her asking these questions of her teacher, other students and poets she hears at recitals. Observe says her teacher. It’s about the importance of seeing. Look closely at everything he advises as he picks up and examines an apple. Mija studies an apple in her kitchen, and starts to carry a notebook and pen around with her constantly taking notes. But still she struggles to find the inspiration she’s looking for.

A Film For September: The Headless Women

The film begins with a group of children playing on their bikes by a road. Later the same day elegant, middle aged Verónica (Maria Onetto), is seen driving along a deserted road when her phone rings, looking down at it she hits something in the road, bangs her head and suffers mild concussion. We follow her as she gets treatment and we see that she is having a relationship with someone other than her husband. So far, so simple.

But as the days go by with her family and extended family her emotional realities of everyday life start to become a bit hazy. Gradually all her activities from the previous day seem to disappear and under intense observation we watch as her grip on reality starts to unravel. Did she hit a dog or was it worse, was it a child? And this we don’t know, from the opening scene of the children playing it’s a possibility. And is her detachment from her world purely the result of the concussion or is it also guilt? Because of her affair, or is there more for her to feel guilty about? Verónica’s murky, disoriented mindset is portrayed as dreamlike and foggy as her paranoia makes her increasingly isolated.

A Film For August: Do The Right Thing

Set on one street in Brooklyn on one boiling hot day, Mookie (Spike Lee) delivers pizza for Sal (Danny Aiello) the owner of ‘Sal’s Pizzeria’, while Mister Señor Love Daddy (Samuel L Jackson) is the DJ watching the street and providing the soundtrack.

Smiley (Roger Geunveur Smith) wonders along the street trying to sell pictures of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X; a Korean couple have opened a convenience store; Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn) blares Fight the Power from his boombox and three men sit like a Greek chorus opposite Sal’s passing comment. As the camera follows them through the day we get to know them all and watch as the temperature rises and hate and bigotry smoulder. It’s hot, bold and provocative from the very beginning when Tina (Rosie Perez) dances to Public Enemy’s Fight the Power, from then on its like a ticking bomb.

A Film For July: Elephant

Written and directed by Gus Van Sant, Elephant chronicles the events of an ordinary day in a fictional high school in the suburbs of Portland, Oregon – a day when two of the students carry out a shooting based in part on the Columbine High School Massacre.

Using new and unprofessional actors who largely keep their own names, the characters are introduced by name and then followed through their day but in a fragmented style that goes over the same events but from multiple points of view. The camera catches up with the students as they walk along corridors, meet up in the cafeteria or the locker room or the library and we hear snatches of frivolous, inane conversations which are often quite funny. Of course we feel tense because we know what’s going to happen and an early scene of the gunmen walking towards the school, before the camera skips off to show another group, is an example of how we can try and piece the fragments together to build up some sort of time line; but what’s extraordinary is the blankness.

A Film For June: Persepolis

Written and directed by Marjane Satrapi in collaboration with Vincent Paronnaud, Persepolis is based on Satrapi’s autobiographical graphic novel of the same name. I must admit that although this has been on my radar for a few years I’ve always been put off by the animation, so I’m glad I’ve been made to watch it for my film challenge because it was brilliant.

A coming of age story set against the background of the Iranian Revolution, it’s both harrowing and exuberant. Marjane is 9 when the film opens in 1978, a precocious child who wants to be a prophet and obsesses over Bruce Lee.  Growing up in comfort with her liberal, politically active family they have high hopes for a better society post the revolution.

A Film For May:Cleo From 5 to 7

It’s  5 o’clock in the afternoon in Paris in 1962 and Cléo (Corinne Marchand),a beautiful young singer is waiting for the results of her biopsy, which she is to collect from the hospital at 7 o’clock.

Beginning with a tarot reading that shows the ominous cards in full colour before turning to black and white, the time span is split into chapters counting down the minutes as she goes to a café, rehearses with her band, meets a friend. She is a superficial young women who revels in her beauty, skipping lightly through life, she believes herself to be more alive than others because of it. And yet, in the time that is traditionally meant for lovers to meet, she is having to face her mortality and she’s scared.

Produced and directed by Agnès Varda the Parisian streetscapes were refreshingly real, people walking along look directly at the camera in curiosity and overheard fragments of conversation form a wonderful collage of city life as Cléo walks, takes a bus, a taxi or two. At one point she meets a friend, Dorothée, (Dorothée Blanck) who’s modelling for a  sculpture class.  Cléo asks her why she isn’t embarrassed about being naked, she says she would be worried the students would see a flaw.  Dorothée says she isn’t embarrassed at all she’s happy with her body not proud of it. I loved that subtle scene that showed the vulnerability of Cleo.

I don’t want to give anything away about the ending, obviously it’s not a thriller, but it was lovely to watch unknowing.  This is 90 highly recommended minutes viewing.

A Film For April: Our Little Sister

Sachi (Haruka Ayase), Yoshino (Masami Nagasawa) and Chika (Kaho) are sisters in their twenties, living together in their family home in the sea side town of Kamakura. Left by their father fifteen years earlier and by their mother a year later, the girls’ are a tight knit, happy group who, although they had a grandmother, have ostensibly bought themselves up.

When they hear about the death of their father they agree to go to his funeral and meet for the first time their fourteen year old half sister Suzu (Suzu Hirose). They easily form a bond and since she is now orphaned they ask her to come and live with them. Directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda, this is a beautifully delicate look at the lives of the four young women.

A Film for March: Paris, Texas

Winner of the Palme d’Or at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival, this is a simple story about family ties, love and redemption directed by Wim Wenders and written by Sam Shepard.

Travis (Harry Dean Stanton) mysteriously wanders out of the desert and is found unconscious by a German Doctor who calls the only number in his pocket.  Having been missing for four years, his brother Walt (Dean Stockwell) is amazed when he comes to collect him and drives him from Texas to his home in Los Angeles, which he shares with his French wife Anne (Aurore Clément). On the road we find out that Travis’  eight year old son Hunter has been living with them after Jane, his mother (Nastassja Kinski) also disappeared. What has happened to Travis and where is Jane?