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Reviews
The Lobster (2015)
Emperor's New Suit?
Plenty enough people assured me I would "love" Yorgos Lianthos's first English-language film, and I went in expecting quirky/surreal/bizarre. The Lobster is all of these things, without being remotely engaging. Whoever is behind the hype machine is the real genius of the piece; well before we punters were suckered into chancing our arm, a cast of some of contemporary cinema's shining lights signed up for this dog's dinner. Like us, they had no doubt been promised a film the likes of which they had never encountered before and, in this at least, there's some truth. It's hard to recall a more outstandingly irritating movie for many a long year. There's an absurdist central concept and a curious, curious setting that could have given rise to something weird and wonderful. Instead we got abstract, self- conscious irony that quickly became silly and, ultimately, silly. The Lobster is the type of boring, unfunny film that critics seem determined to praise and whose cleverness can be appreciated only by the Curzon enlightened. On this one I shall have to remain in the dark.
The Violators (2015)
Lyrical, harsh & uplifting debut from a rising star of cinema
I was fascinated to see how Helen Walsh would navigate the transition from novelist to auteur, and was not surprised by the poetic and lyrical film she has created. Make no mistake, The Violators is raw; its subject matter, its (very) young and precociously talented cast, its desolate locations and its sometimes intrusive, sometimes unsettling, always arresting hand-held shooting style is all rough, brutal and right in your face (much like Walsh's novels.) Yet, just as in novels like Brass and Once Upon A Time In England, Walsh finds the humanity amid the horror; she finds the beauty in everyday, ugly tableaux. The crude story of The Violators sees Shelly, the young, unwittingly beautiful head of a dysfunctional family having to use all her street wiles and nous to keep her little step- brother safe from their soon-to-be-released father - an abusive monster. In planning a safe haven, Shelly falls under the sinister gaze of two more predators - one of them not much older than herself. She has to think on her feet and try to work out who - if anyone - can be trusted on their godforsaken estate; yet there are moments of purity and childlike innocence amid all the squalor and hardship. If you have read Helen Walsh's novels you'll know that she doesn't pull any punches. Yet The Violators is visually stunning and unexpectedly beautiful, too, with its streaky pink skies and silver dockland vistas. Walsh has coaxed definitive performances from future stars Lauren McQueen, Callum King Chadwick and Brogan Ellis and, along with writer/directors like Clio Barnard and Carol Morley is surely a rising star herself. Another Northern Classic!
The Selfish Giant (2013)
Bleak Is Beautiful
The best films I have seen recently have been directed by visionary female directors. Clio Barnard's The Selfish Giant is a bleak but beautiful masterpiece that, through its elegiac settings and panoramas and its understated central performances manages to excoriate the ravages of capitalism without speeches and sermons. The comparisons with Kes are fitting - not just in terms of the harsh Yorkshire setting, but in the way both films use small details in seemingly humdrum lives to make profound observations about society's iniquities. You don't want to overload such a composed, assured and (in the best sense) quiet film with hyperbole but, for all it's still-life framing and underplay, some of The Selfish Giant's themes of fate and misfortune are Shakespearean. It's completely fair to call this film a modern classic.