Staying Vertical (directed by Alain Guiraudie)
Given the prominent
erections that featured in Alain Guiraudie's The Stranger by the
Lake, the title of his new film Staying Vertical might suggest more
of the same, an impression that is strengthened when Léo (Damien
Bonnard) stops his car in the opening scene and attempts to pick up a
sullen youth. But Léo is in fact cruising in another direction,
wandering aimlessly through the French countryside until he meets a
shepherd (India Hair) with whom he abruptly decides to settle down
and start a family, despite repeatedly calling on the teen on whom he
apparently still harbours a crush. Guiraudie doesn't give us much
context for his characters' behaviour and Staying Vertical unfolds as
an elliptical series of incidents that grow increasingly strange as
Léo finds himself trapped in a nightmarish and apparently inexorable
downward spiral. Léo is a screenwriter trying and failing to make
progress on a script that was apparently due months ago, but his
every attempt to run away from his responsibilities only leads him
further into trouble. There is no escape.
In fact, Staying
Vertical feels like Guiraudie's own spin on a Charlie Kaufman-esque
creative crisis film. No matter where he turns, Léo remains trapped
by the same handful of characters – people he seemed determined to
milk for inspiration, who subsequently appear to be conspiring
against him – and he is incapable of working himself out of
whatever tight spot he writes himself into. The curious tone that
Guiraudie strikes throughout makes it impossible to pin down the exact
meaning or purpose of Staying Vertical, but as strange and
discombobulating as it all is, there is a sense that the film is
working to its own consistent internal logic, and even if it's hard
to grasp what Guiraudie is trying to say here, his film is so
peculiar and mordantly funny on a scene-by-scene basis it remains
entirely absorbing. Damien Bonnard makes for a terrific protagonist,
his deadpan expression registering a Keaton-like bemusement and dismay as a series
of misfortunes befall him, and the film boasts some of the most
startling moments you'll find in any film this year – from a very
close look at a baby being born to an extraordinary assisted suicide
scene that is largely baffling to comprehend but, in the context of
this film, makes a weird kind of sense.
Further Beyond (directed by Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor)
Ambrose O’Higgins was
born in 1720 in County Sligo. When he died 81 years later, he was
known as Ambrosio O'Higgins, having made his way to Chile, risen
through the military ranks to become the Captain General of Chile and
subsequently the Viceroy of Peru. There's surely ripe material in
this eventful life for a biopic, you might think, and filmmakers
Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor thought so too. But Further Beyond is
not their screen depiction of O’Higgins' life and times; in fact,
by the end the film they have barely made a start on telling that
story. Instead, Further Beyond is all prologue, with the filmmakers
exploring all of the questions that must be tackled before telling
somebody's life story on screen; questions of historical accuracy
versus storytelling necessity, history versus memory, and the
questions of what must be included and what can be left out. The filmmakers take an oblique approach to all of this, hiring two voiceover artists to read their scripted thoughts and muse on the pluses and minuses of any particular approach without settling on one.
As I watched Further
Beyond, I was reminded of Laurence Sterne's The Life and Opinions of
Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, in which the narrator's attempts to tell
his own life story are continually stalled by tangents and
digressions. The most fascinating and unexpected sidetrack Molloy and
Lawlor take here is a diversion into the life of Helen Dowling, Joe
Lawlor's mother, who appeared in a theatre piece they made 18 years
ago and – more pertinently to the film's theme – had the course
of her life altered by journeys between America and Ireland.
As an essay film on the nature of cinematic storytelling and the
history of Irish emigration, Further Beyond is stimulating, playful
and propelled by a genuine sense of curiosity. I don't know if
Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor will ever get to make their Ambrose
O’Higgins film, but this meandering and compelling investigation is
a decent start.
Nocturama (directed by Bertrand Bonello)
There's a disconnect between how I felt as I watched Nocturama and
how I feel about it afterwards. As a cinema experience, Bertrand Bonello's film
is something to behold. The long opening section of the film gives us little
context or characterisation to grip onto, but we are swept along by the film's
rhythm as a group of French youths criss-cross Paris in a way that reminded me
a little of Out 1, but also had echoes of Elephant. Bonello plays tricks with
time and perspective as he teases out the this set-piece, and it takes some
time for us to realise that this is a coordinated terror campaign, with bombs
being planted across the city and timed to detonate simultaneously. The opening
hour of Nocturama is exhilarating in its fluid, kinetic thrust, but the second
half of the film is more deliberately paced and composed, with the young
insurgents taking refuge in a department store overnight, waiting for the panic
on the streets and the city-wide manhunt to subside before returning to their
homes.
Aside from brief forays outside by the antsy David (Finnegan
Oldfield), the film remains locked inside this multi-level building for the
rest of its duration, a potentially inert scenario rendered hypnotic by Bonello’s
astounding formal precision and the brilliant production design. There’s
something eerily dreamlike about this location, with the characters cut off
from the chaos outside and with little sense of time passing, playing loud
music to avoid being left alone with only their own thoughts and consciences to
contend with. They eat and drink, they play in the toy aisle, they raid the
clothing ranges, and they do what they can to allay their fears. (What happened
to the one member of the group of failed to arrive at the rendezvous point? Was
he captured? Is he dead?) At some point, however, I started to wonder what it
is that these freedom fighters were fighting for. Bonello begins to give us
flashbacks showing them plotting the attack but stops short of going back to
the point where their ideological identities were formed, and all we get are statements
like “We did what we had to do.” The director has said that he conceived this
film over five years ago and was in production before the attacks in Paris, but
the film’s attempt to depict these acts as the inevitable reaction of a disenfranchised
youth feels off. Perhaps recent events have simply created a context that we
can’t help but apply to this film, a weight that it cannot bear, but Bonello
doesn’t help himself by having one of his darker-skinned characters talking
about going to heaven when they die. These are the questions that troubled me
after I’d finished watching Nocturama and left me wanting more, although none
of these queries crossed my mind as I watched it. As a piece of pure filmmaking I’ve seen little to match this in 2016, and the climactic twenty minutes had me
holding my breath, but the plaintive cry of one character just before the end
credits strikes me as an expression of a glib vagueness that undermines Bonello’s
undeniable artistry.
Mascots (directed by Christopher Guest)
A decade has passed
since Christopher Guest's last film as a director, but very little
has changed about the filmmaking itself. You might wonder why anyone
would advocate tinkering with a winning formula, but the Guest house
style was starting to look a little creaky in 2006's For Your
Consideration and there's a definite sense that the formula needs
shaking up in Mascots. Guest's latest film sticks to the template
established by Best in Show, following a disparate group of oddballs
and obsessives as they prepare to compete at a major tournament, in
this case the 8th World Mascot Association Championships (or The
Fluffies), and finding comedy in their delusions and insecurities.
Some of these characters are nicely drawn and played; for example,
Tom Bennett's Owen Golly, Jr., proudly continuing the family
tradition of being the mascot for their local football team, and
there's a touching sense of broken dreams being partially fulfilled
in the relationship between Parker Posey and Susan Yeagley as
cheerleading sisters.
Bennett and Yeagley are
newcomers who impress here, but others – such as Chris O'Dowd and
Zach Woods – fail to make an impression, and the bigger
disappointment is how uninspired the returning members of Guest's
regular ensemble feel. Bob Balaban, Jennifer Coolidge and Fred
Willard play characters barely distinguishable from those they have
appeared as before, while Guest himself underlines the lack of
freshness with his inexplicable decision to reappear as Corky St.
Clair, last seen twenty years ago in Waiting for Guffman. Of the
Guest regulars who don't figure here, I wonder if Eugene Levy is the
most notable absentee, as he has had a screenplay credits on their previous collaborations and might have helped to give this film a greater sense of
shape and identity, or helped establish a stronger narrative
through-line. It's not like Mascots is completely devoid of laughs –
there are too many funny people involved for that to be the case –
but everything here feels secondhand. Even the faux-documentary
conceit, always shakily applied in Guest's work, feels completely
half-assed here. More often than not, Mascots just comes across as
another badly shot comedy, with the uniqueness and element of surprise that we anticipate
from Christopher Guest sorely lacking.