From French Film to Norwegian Theatre

I wasn’t in the mood for explosions or wearing my rock club earplugs to the movies, so the weekend Iron Man 3 opened, I went to my local movie-house and saw François Ozon’s Dans La Maison (or In the House).  Ozon wrote the screenplay based on Juan Mayorga’s play, with which I am unfamiliar, but the action probably played well onstage.  It’s a seemingly simple story simply told and I was riveted.  Fabrice Luchini plays Germain, who teaches literature and writing at the French version of high school; his wife Jeanne (Kristin Scott Thomas) manages a small art gallery for an owner who just died.  Germain’s newest and most intriguing student is Claude (an intense Ernst Umhauer), whose writing skills grab Germain’s interest. Claude’s writing assignments are based on his visits to a schoolmate’s home as he tutors the other boy (Rapha, realistically played by Bastien Ughetto) in math.  Claude has been watching Rapha’s house from a park bench for some time, hungry for what he calls “the perfect family.”  He involves himself with Rapha and his father (also Rapha, played by Denis Ménochet) and mother Esther (the wonderful Emmanuelle Seigner), insinuating himself into the perfect family he craves.

Fabrice Luchini, Emmanuelle Seigner, and Ernst Umhauer (c) 2012 Mandarin Films

Claude writes his adventures, Germain advises him on empathizing with and developing his characters. Germain also shares Claude’s stories with wife Jeanne, involving her in this questionable journey.  As we willingly follow along, the possibilities for nasty ramifications coming of Germain’s adventures with Claude amplify — not just in terms of how others may interpret Claude’s stories, but what Germain might do to ensure Claude continues writing the stories to which Germain is addicted.  Or is he addicted to Claude, his wife wonders. All the while, of course, we see Claude’s infatuation with Esther growing — Mother?  Lover?  We watch Claude revise his stories to please Germain, then watch as the experiences at Rapha’s house change. Which scenes that Claude wrote really happened?  The originals or the revisions?  How much of what Claude shows Germain is true, how much of what Ozon shows us is true?  How does one tell the difference between fiction and non-fiction?  What is truth in fiction, what is voyeurism?

Mind you, one does not wonder such things during the film.  During the film we are experiencing what Germain experiences, questioning when he does, taking his side when others are unjust to him.  And marveling at the light touch of the delicious Monsieur Luchini, at the clear and natural behavior of Ms. Scott Thomas and Mlle. Seigner, then gleefully watching this young man, Ernst Umhauer, knowing we’re witnessing the beginning of a fascinating film career. 

By the end of the film, Germain and Claude sit on a park bench looking at the windows of an apartment bloc.  Life is taking place through each window, and stories can be assumed or made up about all of them.  Dans la Maison is a fascinating piece of work, each character fully realized by the actor.  Monsieur Ozon captures the imagination and the conscience of his audience, and makes us question our own stories.

^^^^

Last night, I saw David Edgar’s adaptation of Ibsen’s The Master Builder at BAM, as directed by Andrei Belgrader.  Not fascinating.  John Turturro was a little bit of Pacino and a little bit of George C. Scott, but not particularly Halvard Solness, the egomaniacal Master Builder.  Santo Loquasto’s set was practical but disappointing, while the incidental music (by Christian Frederickson and Ryan Rumery, also credited with sound design) was lovely.  Wrenn Schmidt was alternately engaging and annoying as Hilde Wangel, the “other woman” who isn’t quite real.  The highlight of the evening, however, was watching, hearing, and delighting in Katherine Borowitz as Solness’ wife Aline.  Each time she entered the stage, the play picked up.  She was a human being, with ticks and character and a history lending her a fragility that drew us to her.  The rest of the cast paled beside her, but the most amateurish performance was by Ken Cheeseman as the local doctor.  

Katherine Borowitz, John Turturro, and Wrenn Schmidt.  Photo (c) 2013 Graeme Mitchell.

 So ends our spring season subscription to BAM.  Some good, some not, yet always worthwhile.

~ Molly Matera, signing off to get some sleep before the EST One Act Marathon starts.

Angling for Love Among the Salmon

I’m of two minds about Salmon Fishing in the Yemen.  It’s a story filled with hope and faith and love.  Scenes popped into my mind over the past week: charming scenes, funny scenes (these generally with Kristin Scott Thomas or Conleth Hill).  And yet it left me with mixed feelings, and one of those feelings was annoyance.

The basic story of Salmon Fishing in the Yemen is absurd — a Yemeni Sheikh with a really obscene amount of money, a desert stronghold at home, a mansion in Scotland, and a British investment firm, wants to create a river in his desert home and stock it with cold-water-loving salmon.  

(C) 2012 CBS Films

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen has marvelous acting throughout, from Amr Waked as the Sheikh (his warmth and gentle philosophizing make him an enormously likeable man); Emily Blunt as Harriet Chetwode-Talbot, who works for the investment company that manages the Sheikh’s money and will move heaven and earth to get him what he wants; Tom Mison as her cute boyfriend, Captain Robert Mayers; Ewan McGregor as Dr. Alfred Jones, a fisheries expert having an adventure or a mid-crisis; the brilliant Kristin Scott Thomas as Patricia Maxwell, press secretary to the Prime Minister, with whom she communicates by texting; Conleth Hill as Bernard Sugden, the hapless, not noticeably competent middle manager Dr. Jones works for; and Rachael Stirling as Dr. Jones’ wife Mary.

Yes, wife.  All those snippets and hints of two people falling in love in the trailers — he’s married, and she’s dating a soldier. 

Reeling in at a little over an hour and a half, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen is a sweet, smooth film in which everything rotten in the world is softened with faith or humor.  Images of salmon swimming upstream to spawn are dropped in throughout the film, but they’re about more than salmon.  They can signify a brainstorm from a dyed-in-the-wool scientist who thinks the Sheikh’s idea is ridiculous. 

Amr Waked and Ewan McGregor in Scotland (c) 2012 CBS Films

These swimming scenes are also about DNA.  Dr. Jones’ marriage is companionable, quiet, they’re good friends — they just may be in a slump when it comes to passion. Then Dr. Jones starts falling for Ms. Chetwode-Talbot.  That’s when the “DNA” comes into play — if it’s in the salmon’s DNA to swim upstream to spawn even if they’ve never been in a stream because they’ve been farmed for generations, then it’s also in the human male’s DNA to move on from the wife of his own age to seek a new, younger mate with whom to procreate. 

Men stray because of DNA.  Swell.

Dr. Jones starts off on this madcap project because he’s forced to — he’s a government employee, something having to do with fisheries and lake fishing and all sorts of fishing — and press agent Patricia needs a good story from the Middle East.  What better than transforming a bit of desert and stocking its river with hardy Scottish fish.  Dr. Jones takes the requisite meetings, not taking them at all seriously.  He extemporaneously lists obstacles to the Sheikh’s notion, what unreachable contrivances would be required to overcome those obstacles, creating a seemingly valid plan to fulfill the Sheikh’s dream.  Ms. Chetwode-Talbot follows up on his off-the-cuff suggestions, and lo, the project is real. These scenes between Blunt and McGregor are absolutely charming.  They make it work.

 

Despite the skill of these actors, everything about this film’s plot is absurd, so no time should be allowed for the audience to contemplate the inconsistencies and ill-defined time frame.  The story focuses more on the slowly building, sweet love story between Dr. Jones and Ms. Chetwode-Talbot.  And perhaps, just perhaps, allows the audience a little too much time to think.

It’s a pretty fantasy and I enjoyed living in it for 100-odd minutes.  Exploring the fascination with fish — fishing, flies (not the buzzing kind, the kind fly fishermen make to put on their hooks), this lifestyle that can make strangers into lifelong BFFs — was a lark.  The passion that anglers of the United Kingdom felt and acted upon was one of the high points of the film for me.  The ugly real world intrudes a few times, not humorously, but all is forgiven, at least by the Sheikh.  Luckily for the audience, most of the time the ugly world is Kristin Scott Thomas’s job, and she makes it bearable by making it funny.  Sweet scenes live on in my memory.  And then I get annoyed when I remember the writer’s theory of “biological imperative.”  You can always tell a man’s going to leave his wife when he tells a younger woman that he and his wife married very young. 

Emily Blunt and Ewan McGregor in the Yemen (c) 2012 CBS Films.

 So, the movie is leisurely, warm, romantic, its characters engaging.  It is beautifully filmed, with claustrophobic workplace and city scenes, traveling to the extraordinary Scottish mansion with its cold river naturally stocked with salmon to the vast desert of the Sheikh’s homeland that he’s trying to fill with a cold-water fish.  The Sheikh loves fishing.  It’s not just about standing hip-deep in cold water, though.  It’s clearly very zen.  This immense, impossible project, if at all feasible, would bring in immediate and future employment to his people (which clearly frightens and angers some of them), not to mention beauty and the potential peace of a bunch of people fishing.  It is, after all, a quiet sport.  It’s a daft idea, to run a river from a dam and fill it with a cold-loving northern fish.  But maybe, just maybe, it’s mad enough to work.

Kristin Scott Thomas is sharp, cruelly funny, and quite wonderful.  Ewan McGregor keeps growing into his leading man status as a mature, interesting, and attractive actor.  Emily Blunt is a pleasure to watch, not just because she’s pretty: her face is mobile, her moods run through her entire body, and she’s just a charmer. 

Lasse Hallström directed Simon Beaufoy’s screenplay (based on Paul Torday’s novel of the same name) smoothly, eliciting witty performances across the board.  Everyone did their jobs very well, especially if the job was to irk me.  No, really, it’s a fun movie in most ways.  Just that one little thing….

~ Molly Matera, signing off to go outside on a gorgeous spring day, but not to stand hip deep in a river. 

"Nowhere Boy" is the place to be

Generally I don’t care for biopics. I’m reasonably certain they’ve not much in the way of ‘bio’ in them, and a great deal of fabrication, for how else can a real human being’s life be consistently interesting?

Luckily, “Nowhere Boy” does not try to cover the entire life of John Lennon, with all its stories about the Beatles and conflicts and life after the break up. This charming film about young John Lennon is a story of a lad that may offer insight into the music John created in the late 1950s, the world-changing 1960s, and into the 1970s that still resonates with us today. John and the lads are in Hamburg at the film’s end, so still not the John we all remember -- relatively safe territory, the film is based on a memoir by John’s half sister, Julia Baird, transformed into a screenplay by Matt Greenhalgh.

We meet John living with his Aunt Mimi and Uncle George, his mother an unknown entity since John was five. We occasionally see her as he remembers her, through a frosted window in a door slammed by Mimi. He appears to be a perfectly ordinary teenaged boy who doesn’t wish to wear his glasses, does look at girlie magazines, gets into scuffles at school and the bus stop, gets suspended from school – the usual stuff. The unusual bit is what’s hiding inside him waiting to come out.

John is very well played by Aaron Johnson, who resembles John, though the actor is nicer looking. Johnson gives us John’s expressions, the mile-a-minute patter with many voices we first heard in “A Hard Day’s Night.” Johnson has that all down pat, and does an excellent job showing us John’s frustration, pain, and possibilities as he grows in those critical teenage years.

Mimi is played brilliantly by Kristin Scott Thomas. She is strict by today’s standards, chilly, with a brittle smile hiding a volcano inside. While John, in typical teenage fashion, doesn’t see how much she cares, we do.

Uncle George is a grown up boy, making John giggle with delight, and promising mouth organ lessons. David Threlfall’s George is as warm as his wife is cool, but he is a man who knows when he’s loved – unlike John. We lose George early in the film, a tragic loss that unites John with his mother Julia for the first time in a decade.

Julia is first seen at the edge of the graveyard, her exile from her family so complete that she may not come to George’s funeral. John’s cousin, however, knows how to find the missing Julia, and on a day when Mimi is told they’re going to Blackpool, the two boys walk across a park to another part of the same town, and knock on John’s mum’s door.

The glorious, fragile, brilliant, slightly off Julia is played by Anne-Marie Duff. She wants John, but has accepted her sister’s unofficial adoption and her own exile – until John makes the choice to reconnect. Julia has two young daughters by her present husband, Bobby, played by a quiet and wary David Morrissey. Bobby is understandably reluctant to have the volatile teenage boy take his wife’s attention away from their young daughters, but he is kind and solicitous of Julia. It’s as if Bobby knows every blow up that will happen long before it does – if only because he knows the truth about Julia and her first husband Alf, and remembers being a teenaged boy himself. Bobby’s disapproval is protective. No one, in fact, in this film, is cast as a ‘bad’ guy. Everyone is imperfect, everyone has foibles, everyone is lovable one moment and despised the next as happens between friends and family. Everyone is quite real.

Julia is talented and teaches John to play the banjo. Julia also dances, Julia sings, Julia is the life of the party, Julia is a flirt. She flirts with men on their excursion to Blackpool, she flirts with John’s friends, she flirts with John. John is discomfited by this; the stark contrast to her sister Mimi is unstated, but clear. Mimi always made responsible choices; Julia did not. The reactions to choices and behaviors are of their time, while quite understandable in our own.

The story is filmed in muted tones, giving its postwar England setting reality with some distance. Dialogue and scenes of the film evoke songs that we’ve known for years; words and phrases here and there will grow up to be lyrics. It’s a pleasure to watch the creation of our John, the beginning of his relationship with Paul -- who assures John that the poems John writes will become songs when they’re set to music. Mimi and Julia differently and vitally contribute to the making of John the musician/poet.

John forms the Quarrymen, his mother always a bouncing fan looking at the enthusiastic young girls with something resembling jealousy. A girlish-looking boy smirks in the audience one night, and he is introduced as George, who, says Paul, “should be in the band.” And so we at last have three of the Fab Four playing together.

“Nowhere Boy” is a sweet story well told, deftly directed by Sam Taylor-Wood. Period costumes, mores and music color in the story of another time, in which no houses are locked, everyone smokes an enormous amount, cursing was an aberration instead of the norm, and everything was possible. Fans of the Beatles, Kristin Scott Thomas, and Anne-Marie Duff (I am now!) will enjoy “Nowhere Boy.” Other noteworthy performances came from Thomas Brodie Sangster as Paul and Josh Bolt as John’s buddy Pete. But then, all of the performances were excellent.

All in all I had a wonderful time and went home to play all my old Beatles records. You will too.

~ Molly Matera, signing off to dance to the music of the Beatles.