PREFACE
This is the sporadically updated blog of reviews by Harriet, author of In the Aquarium: a londoner's life.
I have kept the reviews separate to enable them to be indexed and therefore more easily accessible (see listing below).
FAVE FILMS DEAD MAN What an idea, the man is dying for almost the entire length of the film, the music is fantastic, its black and white, ideology, mythology, funny, sad, Johnny Depp sex god...
THE DRAFTMAN'S CONTRACT The first Peter Greenaway film I saw and possibly the most accessible. Beautiful set, costumes, direction. Fantastic soundtrack.
MULHOLLAND DRIVE I knew exactly what was going on right up until the last 15 minutes and damn it but then I lost it.
NIGHT ON EARTH Jim Jarmusch made the only film with Winona Ryder worth watching and it had Beatrice Dalle (say no more)
O BROTHER WHERE ART THOU? Roar out loud with laughter and tunes that make you love country music. My sister had to sneak out of the cinema ahead of our dad and me cos she was so embarrassed at our laughing.
ORLANDO Quiet, passionate, time travel.
PITCH BLACK Bails and I watched this with its bleached scenery and its whoar factor star. We LOVED him, Mr Diesel take a bow.
RESERVOIR DOGS Tight Tarantino gang heist gone wrong. Great soundtrack. And there's something about Michael Madson, dancing just before cutting off the cop's ear...
ROMUALD ET JULIETTE Truely lovely romance comedy.
THREE COLOURS TRILOGY Blue, White and Red. I liked them all. Quiet stories, beautifully shot.
THE USUAL SUSPECTS Its a story told. And the first time I saw it I didn't get the twist until just before it happened.
Seen The Reviews
19 June 2004 Confidences Trop Intimes (Intimate Strangers) Curzon Soho
"Anna (Sandrine Bonnaire) walks into tax lawyer William Faber's (Fabrice Luchini) office and starts telling him about her serious relationship problems having mistaken him for his psychoanalyst neighbour. Initially too dumbstruck to point out her mistake, Faber is soon finding himself unable to pull out of the situation, trapped by his curiosity, moved and charmed by his 'patient'. He maintains the quiproquo until Anna wises up, confronts him, and storms out. But soon she is back for more..." Murielle Gandre, Curzon Soho Film Notes
Its sort of a story of two people talking to each other and both finding freedom for themselves from their own repressed lives. He gradually gets closer to his ambition to travel and she gets more sure of herself until she eventually leaves her husband. This is shown in her change of clothing gradually becoming more feminine, lighter and sexier. He starts to consult the psychoanalyst for help and guidance.
Its a very seductive tale as french films can be. A thousand nuances in a plunging neckline and a frilled blouse. An uptight man dancing to disco music. A turkey basted with a thick creamy sauce. Click of a zippo lighter being closed.
Quiet and beautifully played out. Funny. With a happy ending.
We hung around in the bar in the big tent waiting for the performance to start. A lone accordian player mingled with the arriving audience. A woman come out onto a high ledge and tendered her flowerpots. A man climbed up into a bath high up in the roof, took his shirt off and blue smoke into bubbles. A man arrived with a suitcase and climbed onto the bar resting it on the dentist's chair that was there. He opened his suitcase and brought out a smaller case. He opened that case and brought out a handbag. In the bag was an apple, a pair of ladies shoes and a cut-throat razer. He peeled the apple with the razor in one long coil. He ate the skin. A woman typed away on a typewriter writing poems and prose that people could collect.
And when the performance started it was definitely more circus than a theatre - there were acrobats, trapese artists, rope artists, a woman who swang by her hair, juggler's, tumblers, a hoola-hooper. Lighting, music, french flavour. All dressed up in old fashioned costumes - lots of old style clothes, dickensian, 40s, frilly knickers and bustiers. Marvellous.
Theres something fascinating, sexy and awe-inspiring about circus. I love it.
Its a commission of the Cultural Olympian 2001-2004. He assembled a group of renowned composer/performers to collaborate on an evening-length work in a multinational format which reflects the character of the Olympiad.
This is what I thought of through the performance:
Australia - with Mark Atkins on the Didgeridoo. Gutteral, resonant like wild animals, lions.
Then joined by China - with Wu Man on the pipa. Pipa is a sort of stringed instrument like a harp/guitar played upright in the lap. Twangy, but capable of big noise. Very oriental sound. Birds, wind and falling rain. Westerns.
Canada - violin played by Ashley MacIsaac - fiddle really. Felt wholesome. Like spring water in the mountains and redwood trees. Deer and mouse wantering through clean air. And then he fiddled like busy docks, fishing and hard work. Railways.
The Gambia - Foday Musa Suso on the Kora and Nyanyer - both stringed instruments one like a violin with a bow the other like a huge lute. The canadian and the gambian fiddled together - the violin and this slightly odd sounding instrument sort of squeeky and sharp like instruments made out of found materials. Then the calmest, sort of settled, pieces. Beautifully melodic, like wind in crops. Horses. Mining for tin. Sunny days. Reeds and big birds like flamingoes. And he sang - a deep male african voice. Drums. And then he started sounding sort of spanish, more sticcato.
Brazil - with a band called Uakti (Artur Andres Ribeiro on flute, Paulo Segio Dos Santos on percussion and Decio De Souza Ramos Filho on percussion). One played flutes of many sizes. And they all seemed to be playing various types of plumbing - white pipes with curves that were patted and banged. And the percussionist played a sort of xylophone thing. Birds soaring on an updraft. Girls bathing in a lake. Trains rumbling by. Humming birds. Flying fish. Horses. Carts laiden with produce. Men on street corners playing tin cans. Whistling.
Brazil and India played together. A sitar and this funny tubey thing that was spun on strings while someone held metal sticks against it. Like gentle shattering (if you can imagine such a thing). Gently breaking glass. Night time crickets and wind in chimes or leaves being ruffled. Slight rain.
India - Gaurav Mazumdar played sitar - a piece composed by Ravi Shankar and Philip Glass. Sounded more city than the others. Crowded Indian buses and trains with people sitting on the roof. Human. Driving cattle. And then thunderous rain like monsoons. Massive rivers full of muddy silt. And more trains.
And finally Greece. A singer called Eleftheria Arvanitaki singing a traditional greek song. A deep female voice, dusky and sort of sad. Like lovers on white bleached rocks, wind thats warm and dry hillsides. Then all the others came back in gradually building up to a massive ensemble of all sorts of sounds together.
And behind it all was that sort of trainlike sound and repetativeness that Glass likes. Its sort of comforting.
8 June 2004 Cyrano de Bergerac Olivier @ the National Theatre
Its all about the words - like Shakespeare - the stories have been told and retold so many times since first invented so to experience the plays themselves is to listen to and hear and see the words.
The stage was sparce, some scaffolding that moved round and represented trenches, buildings, walkways, battlements etc etc. The costumes were of the time - victorian (although this is France). The accents were cockney and irish.
Its a romp. Fast and furious. Stephen Rea played Cyrano.
I thought it was excellent, if a little long (we have so become the TV generation - can't sit still for two minutes). Some Olds in front of us didn't approve of the modernist set (and I use the term loosely since my Dad took me and he's 71 and therefore slightly older than the particular Olds I'm talking about, although you'd never have guessed if you put them all together).
Its a disaster movie. The latest form to be given the 21st century treatment. Political message? Perhaps. Good effects - lots of graphics - in the weather, New York being engulfed in tidal waves, Los Angeles attacked by 5 tornados at once, earth in an ice-age etc. Scary in that eyes wide open sort of way that always ends with you feeling exhausted but unbelieving. I'm not sure if the science is accurate. It sometimes got really really slushy. There's nothing worse in a disaster movie when they have to do that human interest segment with the "I love you"s and promises to save each other. Good graphics, pretty crap, though it did pass the time.
Its a story of unrequited love. A country girl who likes romantic novels falls in love with the friend of her friend's fiance (he is visiting from the city and bored out of his brains). He's a really arrogant and obnoxious character. The poor country girl dreams of him all night and writes him a letter declaring her love. At the party for her birthday he continues to be bored with the delights of the country and starts to flirt with his friends fiance. His friend takes offence at this and challenges him to a duel. They fight with pistols and he kills his friend (the fiance of the other country girl). He goes away for many years. One day he returns to the ball of the Prince only to find the country girl has married him and is now a great sophisticate. And he discovers he is in love with her and writes her a note declaring his newfound love for her. While she loves him. She decides to stay with her husband the prince. He is heartbroken. I think he gets what he deserves.
Very traditional ballet, lots of men in tights and girls in wafty dresses. Very lovely. But quite affected really. Music by Tchaikovsky was good. I thought the audience was over-wowed.
12 May 2004 Keith Johnstone's Lifegame Cottesloe @ National Theatre
This was like an improvisation game show of the life of someone who worked at the National Theatre. Tonight we saw Wayne Kirby, a window cleaner at the National. The way it went was that one member of the cast interviewed him about his life and the band of players acted out scenes from his life.
Interesting idea.
Sadly he wasn't terribly interesting. Or perhaps it wasn't to do with him at all but was to do with the questions that the interviewer was asking - almost like the interview was such that each evening the basic questions and therefore the basic answers were around a defined set of themes - making it seem rather formulaic. We had scenes from school, first attempted foray into dating, family get together. And then at the very end he confessed his alcoholism, recent trip to AA and the hope that he could save his marriage. And it all felt a little bit too much like a talk show (bit cringy).
The acting part of the performance was a bit stilted - I thought when Dad told me about it that the acting would happen in the background as the interview when on - that there would be a scene going on as the discussion happened, sometimes acting out a part of what had just been said. The interview might have moved on but the action was still a couple of ideas behind. However the acting took place as a break from the interview, leaving a very stop/start feel. And trying to persuade a non-actor to join in and act was probably too much of a jump for the poor man being interviewed.
Alan Rickman was in the audience. As were a couple of other famous actors whose names have escaped me and still not returned. A blond british actress, who seems quite demure and a character actor with enormous bushy eyebrows and a bald head who I think plays characters like Fagin (and I've seen him on kids TV) - not that these descriptions will shed any light onto who I'm meaning!
