The Birth Of A Nation, La La Land and more (The 60th BFI Film Festival Part 2)

Get up, stand up: Nate Parker's The Birth Of A Nation

Certain critics and commentators have urged a boycott of The Birth Of A Nation WW½, debutant filmmaker Nate Parker's drama about a real-life slave uprising in West Virginia in 1831 - and it's easy to see why. In the fallout from the #Oscarssowhite brouhaha, it was touted as an Academy Award frontrunner but soon became mired in controversy with the revelation that Parker - its star, writer and director - had been tried but acquitted of raping a young woman while he was at college some years before. The woman in question took her own life years later and, to put it mildly, the filmmaker has badly fumbled his attempts at damage limitation since.

I'm usually an advocate of separating an artist from his art but that is extremely difficult here, especially as Parker's attitudes to women are as problematic in his movie as they appear to be in real life.

Deliberately taking its name from DW Griffiths' influential but poisonously racist silent film of the same name, Birth follows Nat Turner (Parker), a literate slave and preacher, whose cash-strapped 'master' (Armie Hammer) hires him out to the owners of other cotton plantations hoping his sermons might calm the ire of fellow captives (Turner uses passages from the Bible to legitimise their suffering). However, following the savagery he witnesses on his travels and ultimately endures himself, Turner snaps and plans a bloody armed insurrection against the slave owners and their families (interestingly, he finds scripture that give this course of action the thumbs-up too).

A difficult Birth: Parker's film is stirring but problematic

Birth clearly owes a debt to Steve McQueen's superior 12 Years A Slave but the final half-hour is genuinely rousing and heart-breaking, culminating in a defiant image that probably deserved the standing ovations the film received at Sundance on its own. The problem is that there have now been enough movies and TV shows about slavery to have generated their own clichés and that is definitely the case here - so we have a whipping scene, a parade of monstrously one-dimensional white characters, a wedding which culminates in the bride and groom jumping a broomstick and an awful lot of cotton being picked. Less forgivably, considering Parker's aforementioned history (which, by the way, also includes an accusation of indecent exposure), are two instances of rape.

Now, neither is shown on screen and it's documented fact that the sexual assault of slave women was routine but here the incidents are used as little more than plot fodder to fire up Turner and the other male slaves, and thereby speed the story into its momentous final act. The women are given no agency whatsoever, their pain all but forgotten once the real action starts. The story of the West Virginia uprising is an important one but it's difficult to shake the feeling that perhaps it should have been told by someone without quite so much distasteful baggage.

On considerably less controversial ground is La La Land WWWW, a warm and witty romantic musical and director Damien Chazelle's follow-up to Whiplash. We're in modern-day Hollywood and Emma Stone is a struggling actress, Ryan Gosling a down-on-his-luck jazz pianist. But when the pair fall in love their passion becomes rocket fuel for their creativity and ambition. Unfortunately, Gosling's success as part of a (frankly god-awful) jazz-fusion band initially outstrips Stone's and their bond soon starts to fracture.

I feel using the word 'lovely' as a superlative is much underrated but lovely is what this is - old-fashioned, kind-hearted and shot through with longing. Additionally, you'd be hard pressed to find two leads as eminently likeable as Stone and Gosling, and the pair possess that lightning-in-a-bottle crackle of true chemistry certain other films this year would kill for (I'm looking at you, Allied).

It's a love letter to Hollywood, a love letter to jazz, a love letter to creativity and following your dreams. More than anything, though, it's a love letter to love - how it can make you walk on air one minute (quite literally here) and plumb the depths of despair the next. There's a breathless, bravura 'What if?' scene right towards the end of the film that is simply stunning and if La La Land isn't amongst the Oscars I'll eat my hat (the horrible woolly blue one that would taste disgusting). Chazelle has conceded his film's debt to the likes of Singing In The Rain and The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg, and I'm sure some critics are going to lambast him for being corny and perhaps a tad indulgent. But the rest us will fall and fall hard for his movie's seemingly inexhaustible supply of bittersweet charm.

As for the songs, having only seen the film once, it's hard to tell if they are strong enough to make La La Land a copper-bottomed classic but I suspect it's awfully close.

Dancing in the street: Stone and Gosling in La La Land

On the subject of love, Toni Erdmann WWW arrived at the festival on a wave of critical adoration (its exclusion from any of the prizes at Cannes was met with absolute fury in some quarters). But while director Maren Ade serves up a couple of genuinely hilarious set-pieces, this German comedy does sag somewhat in the middle.

Chronicling the fractured relationship between Winfried, a fun-loving father (Peter Simonischek) for whom no prank is too silly, and his workaholic businesswoman daughter Ines (Sandra Hüller), it's really about the horrors of corporate life; how Ines and her similarly uptight colleagues are never off duty. If they aren't in the office, they're having drinks with clients or checking emails at home. Their job isn't so much a part of them, it is them.

Following the death of his old dog, Winfried surprises Ines with a visit in Bucharest, but all attempts at bonding with his frosty offspring are rebuffed. However, instead of flying home to Germany as intended, he assumes a new identity (the Toni Erdmann of the title, resplendent in ridiculous wig and comedy teeth) and sticks around to get under her skin. 

The first hour is terrific, as are the final 40 minutes or so, and it is genuinely very funny at times (Hüller's rendition of 'The Greatest Love Of All' was my personal favourite of the comic set-pieces although the naked birthday brunch ran it close). But Ade's problem is simply that at two hours, 42 minutes, her film is decidedly flabby and could have done with a hard edit. Some people actually walked out of the screening I attended and I don't think it was because they were laughing too hard. It was because they were bored.

If anything, it reminded me of one of those '80s Hollywood comedies, usually starring John Candy, in which an overbearing but preternaturally wise man-child uses unorthodox means to teach the squares (parents, bureaucrats, fuddy-duddies) an important life lesson. Thing is, unlike Toni Erdmann, the likes of Uncle Buck didn't come garlanded in enough positive critical baggage to sink a battleship. They never ran close to three hours in length either.

The odd father: Toni Erdmann is hilarious but too long

If Toni Erdmann could have done with a chop then what of American Honey WW½, which runs even longer? Andrea Arnold's sprawling road movie resists a couple of obvious opportunities to bring itself to a neat end; instead, eventually, it just sort of shrugs and gives up the ghost like a knackered marathon runner.

Filmed in the old-fashioned, but seemingly quite hip again, square academy format (see Mommy, Meek's Cutoff and Ida), it focuses on Star (promising newcomer Sasha Lane), a young woman facing a bleak future as she 'skip dips' for food, accompanied by grubby kids that aren't even hers, and fends off the boozy advances of an older man who may or may not be her partner. After a chance encounter at a supermarket with Jake (Shia LeBeouf) and his gang, Star abandons her old life and jumps into their van, setting off across the American Midwest to, um, sell magazine subscriptions to people who really don't want or need them.

Apart from its punishing length, my biggest bugbear is that pretty much everyone in it is profoundly annoying and unsympathetic. The kids with whom Star shares her great subscription-selling adventure are just awful - a gibbering, braying, squealing, drugging, boozing, boring collection of unmitigated gits you'd leave the country to avoid. Oh look, here's the weird one who goes on about Darth Vader a lot, and here comes the one who keeps getting his cock out for some reason.

The chance to travel across the States with little money in a smelly van packed to bursting with some of the most objectionable people on Earth is not my idea of fun. Christ, if this is what modern American youth has come to it's little wonder that Trump got in. And that, I suspect, is precisely the point Fish Tank director Arnold is trying to make here - this is what 21st Century US capitalism has done to its working class young; marginalised them, and made them desperate. Just how desperate is something the British filmmaker returns to again and again in the course of her movie and suffice to say it isn't pretty.

There may be shortcomings, then, but American Honey does boast a very fine soundtrack (Rihanna, Mazzy Star and a bunch of great hip-hop) and, most significantly of all, Riley Keough is superb as Krystal, the gang's flint-hearted boss. She may be every bit as unpleasant as the other characters, but at least has the decency to be a fascinating force of nature with it. The movie's most memorable scene features Krystal wearing a skimpy Confederate flag bikini as she barks instructions at LeBeouf, who she is making apply suntan lotion to her body while Star watches in horror and embarrassment. The corporate ladder-climbers in Toni Erdmann might be made to suffer for their supper, but it has nothing on this.

A taste of Honey: Newcomer Sasha Lane

UK cinema release dates
The Birth Of A Nation: December 9
La La Land: January 13 2017
Toni Erdmann: February 3 2017
American Honey: in cinemas now (DVD, Blu-ray and VOD February 20 2017)

Ratings
WWWW - Wonderful
WWW - Worthwhile
WW - Watchable
W - Woeful

Paul Verhoeven's Elle is provocative, outrageous and horribly timely (The London Film Festival review Part 1)

The British Film Festival: Twelve days of movie heaven

Please note: This article contains spoilers.

Two-hundred-and-forty-five movies, spread over 12 days and 14 cinemas. Unless you're rich, have a press pass or rather too much time on your hands, you'll struggle to do anything more than scratch the surface of the cinematic riches on show at the BFI London Film Festival, which celebrated its 60th anniversary this year. And scratch the surface is pretty much all I did, seeing seven films over four days in the capital.

My personal highlight was Elle WWWW, a powerful but provocative black comedy-cum-thriller from veteran Dutch director Paul Verhoeven (Starship Troopers, Total Recall). Isabelle Huppert – ubiquitous this year in the likes of Valley Of Love, Things To Come and Souvenir – is Michèle Leblanc, the wealthy owner of a video game company. We first meet her when she is being violently sexually assaulted in her Paris home. After her ordeal ends, she doesn't call the police, she sweeps up broken dishes, has a bath and continues with her life almost as if nothing has happened.

The first her friends and family know of the attack is when, in one of the film's most jaw-dropping scenes, she casually mentions it over dinner in a restaurant. Michèle's life and past are complicated. Her company is in the process of producing a video game featuring a monstrous troll character who violates young women with its tentacles (she criticises the designers for failing to make it extreme enough). Then there's the fact her father is a notorious mass murderer and that she, as a 10-year-old, was implicated in his crimes but never charged. Oh, and she's having an affair with the husband of her best friend/business partner. On second thoughts, perhaps 'complicated' doesn't even begin to cover it.

Despite the assault and the fact her attacker is sending texts and seemingly able to break into her home at will, Michèle makes little effort to change her schedule or living arrangements. In fact, she takes more and more outrageous risks with her safety, turning the situation into a very dangerous game, which only intensifies once she discovers the identity of her rapist. It's at this point I can see people getting upset because rather than outing him or calling the police, the pair commence a bizarre relationship of sorts, with Michèle seeming to take masochistic pleasure from further assaults ('seeming' is a very important word here).

Shock and awe: Elle is multi-faceted and rewarding

I have a horrible feeling that, in some quarters, Elle is going to be reduced to the "LOL rape" movie with critics and commentators bringing up Verhoeven's past as the director of titillation fests such as Basic Instinct and Show Girls in an attempt to skewer his motivation for making it. And that would be a great shame because the film - adapted from Philippe Djian's French novel Oh... - is so much more multi-faceted and rewarding than that caricature. Its central message is that it doesn't matter what kind of person Michèle is - like most of us, she's a mass of contradictions - rape is repulsive, brutal and ugly, and how she reacts to her experience of it is entirely her affair and no one else's. Verhoeven practically dares you to put Michele on trial for her aberrant behaviour, knowing full well any case against her has more holes than a bullet-riddled slice of Emmental.

Besides, although Elle is in part a traditional revenge fantasy, anyone expecting a 21st Century I Spit On Your Grave will be sorely disappointed. It is keener to explore Michèle's reaction to her ordeal; how she goes about processing it and refusing to let it define or defeat her. She keeps calm and carries on, remaining steadfastly in control, even when it looks like she isn't. Perhaps a criticism of the movie is that everyone outside of the central character is either weak or hopelessly compromised in some other way; from the husband she ditched for hitting her and the son bullied by his domineering girlfriend, to the arrogant man-child with whom she's conducting an affair and the business partner she walks all over. Maybe the only person to truly get Michèle is her dad, but he's in prison and she refuses to see him (she's either genuinely appalled by his crimes or there are 'other reasons' for her reticence).

In lesser hands there would be a danger the shocking subject matter could completely eclipse the cast and director, but that was never really going to be the case with Verhoeven in the director's seat and Huppert as his lead. I'm not sure there is a better or braver film actor right now than the star of White Material and The Piano Teacher, and here she exudes an almost supernatural serenity and authority. Michèle is a genuine enigma, one you struggle to ever really get a handle on. There is a vulnerability and a danger about her, and I doubt anyone could sell that dichotomy better than Huppert. You spend pretty much the entire film trying to work out what's going on in her head and I'm not sure you're really any closer at the end. If that sounds frustrating, it really isn't. Elle is partly about what Michèle might have done - both in her past and in her present. She's playing games with the viewer, too.

Dream team: Huppert and Verhoeven at Cannes

Despite its moments of family melodrama and envelope-pushing comedy (there's a line in the restaurant scene that made me gasp and laugh at the same time), Verhoeven never loses sight of the fact Elle is, first and foremost, a psychological thriller. The 78-year-old director serves up a masterclass in unease every time Michèle is alone, either at home or at work, unsettling us with shots of Huppert sitting with her back to the glass door through which her attacker gained access, and a moment when pet cat Marty jumps into Michèle's arms from out of shot that drop-kicked my heart into my mouth. The fact we have, at least initially, no idea who the rapist is, lends every interaction she has with a male character an extra frisson, while the scenes in which we see Huppert tussling with her ski-masked attacker brought to mind slick but schlocky '90s fare such as Jagged Edge, as well as Verhoeven's own Basic Instinct. Its running time might be fairly lengthy - 130 minutes - but Elle is a pacy affair, too, and surprisingly light on its feet. There are times you could be watching a French family comedy as Michèle's verbal jousts with her mother, ex-husband and son's girlfriend provide particular highlights.

One of the problems with certain movies (and, while we're about it, novels, TV shows and comic-books, too) that depict sexual violence against women is that they can't help but make it titillating in some way. I'll give you an example from this year. Black is a well-reviewed film from tyro Belgian directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah. A modern West Side Story-style tale about a forbidden romance between members of rival gangs, it boasts slick direction, some decent performances and a couple of genuinely powerful moments. Unfortunately, it also featured a scene of gang rape that was extremely problematic and, for me, pretty much torpedoed the good work done elsewhere in the film. It may be damning Elle with faint praise for not being that movie but its depiction of rape as something to repulse and disgust is, for want of a better word, refreshing when you consider what's on offer elsewhere in the culture right now.

Elle may be transgressive and outrageous - a genuine provocation, in fact - but it is also a powerful anti-rape (and anti-rape culture) statement in an age when you have a man running for President of the United States who is happy to brag about sexually assaulting women while, in this country, a footballer gets a rape conviction quashed when his defence team rubbish the sexual history of the young woman involved. As well as being genuinely magnificent, Verhoeven's film is horribly timely, too.

Elle opens in UK cinemas on 24 February, 2017

In Part 2: La La Land, The Birth Of A Nation and more...

Ratings
WWWW - Wonderful
WWW - Worthwhile
WW - Watchable
W - Woeful