Comic adaptations may be big cinematic business right now, but Tamara Drewe comes from a very different world to the various effects-driven blockbusters that have drawn inspiration from this art form. Posy Simmonds' story, which ran for two years in The Guardian, takes place in the genteel environs of the English countryside, in a small village that's whipped into a fervour by the arrival of the title character. She's played by Gemma Arterton, giving an appealing lead performance as the reporter returning to the quiet place she grew up in, armed with a new nose, some tight shorts and an ability to catch the eye of every man who crosses her path. Tamara Drewe follows the fallout from the various sexual entanglements that her appearance prompts, events that bear more than a passing resemblance to Far From the Madding Crowd, although Stephen Frears' light-hearted romp is far more frivolous than the Hardy comparison suggests.
Frears brings his customary sense of simplicity to the film, ensuring the film proceeds at a steady pace and that the various plot strands weave together without any hitches. Moira Buffini's screenplay keeps switching the film's narrative perspective between Tamara and the large cast of supporting players, which is a good thing for the movie, because many of those characters inhabiting smaller roles are a lot more interesting and fun than Tamara herself. Much of the film takes place on a writers' retreat run by philandering crime novelist Nicholas Hardiment (Roger Allam) and his long-suffering wife Beth (Tamsin Greig), who keeps believing her husband when he promises he won't cheat on her anymore. There's also a neurotic American writer (a funny Bill Camp) who is chronically blocked as he tries to complete an academic study of Thomas Hardy, and there are two bored teenagers (Jessica Barden and Charlotte Christie) whose sense of mischief is generally restricted to throwing eggs at passing cars, until circumstances offer them a more serious way to cause trouble.
What has always been consistent in Frears' films as he hops from genre to genre is the high level of performance offered by his cast, and once again in Tamara Drewe he benefits from a superb ensemble. Allam once again shows that nobody can play smug entitlement with quite as much relish as he can, while young Barden and Christie are outstanding as Jody and Casey. But it's Tamsin Greig who really impresses, giving an excellent and delicate performance as the put-upon Beth, with her slowly dawning realisation of her husband's repeated unfaithfulness being the most touching aspect of the film by a long way. Aside from that small hint of emotional depth, Tamara Drewe exists mostly on the surface, and for a film about people being ruled by lust it's a surprisingly passionless affair. The glib tone and the too-neat storytelling count against it, but Tamara Drewe can still be hailed as a success because of its genuinely funny moments and the uniformly fine acting. This may not be a film to live long in the memory, but you'll have a good time watching it.
Cyrus has an intriguing premise and a first-rate cast, but Jay and Mark Duplass – who wrote and directed the film together – seem unwilling or unable to develop their film to its full potential. We're left with half of a decent movie, with that opening section seeming to set up a more compelling film than the one we're subsequently presented with. The film's most frustrating drawback is its failure to delve into its characters and their relationships in any kind of realistic way. For example, it's hard to understand why Molly (Marisa Tomei) is attracted to John (John C Reilly) at a party after hearing him make a drunkenly confessional speech and then crossing his path outside while he pisses into the bushes. Even John seems stunned by the development ("Why are you flirting with me? I look like Shrek!" he exclaims), but Molly is taken enough by him to end up sleeping at his apartment.
Left in a rut after learning of his ex wife's (Catherine Keener) forthcoming nuptials, John is delighted at this turn of events but also wary, and when he follows Molly home one night he discovers the big catch. Her son Cyrus is 21 years-old and very, very weird. He's played by Jonah Hill in a nicely modulated performance that finds the right note of ambiguity in Cyrus' too-earnest politeness and weird intensity. John is immediately unsettled by this odd character, even if he can't quite put his finger on what it is that feels off with him, but as he spends more time at Molly's house, the relationship he observes just gets stranger. Cyrus blithely wanders in and out of the bathroom when his mother is taking a shower, and Molly insists on sleeping with the doors open at night, as her son is prone to nightmare-induced screaming fits in the middle of the night. He's also jealous, possessive and devious, and the tension between John and Cyrus quickly escalates into a tit-for-tat feud.
All of which is very bad news for Marisa Tomei, one of the most beautiful and likeable actresses currently working in the movies, who is forced to take her practically non-existent character and spend most of the film as a passive observer while these two men squabble over her. Molly never questions the fact that John only discovers Cyrus after stalking her through the night; she never seems to notice that her son's behaviour is particularly odd; she never does much of anything, except smile sweetly and dimly and act as a catalyst for the central drama. The relationship (at times bordering on the incestuous) between Molly and Cyrus is not explored and her relationship with John never convinces. This is not the fault of John C Reilly either, who is as affable as ever in the leading role and whose befuddlement at the situations he finds himself in is the basis for most of the film's funny moments, but these fine actors have been given nothing to play.
Jay and Mark Duplass are making their first step out of the mumblecore movement with Cyrus, but they have retained their old filmmaking sensibilities. Shot in a scruffy fashion, with occasional quick zooms zeroing in on the actors, the film feels loose and shambling, and perhaps that's part of the problem. A film like Cyrus surely needed to be tighter, to drive its core conflict towards boiling point, but the Duplass brothers seem happy enough for it to drift and the film lacks the abrasive tension that one might expect it to possess. Instead of capitalising on the darker and more potentially anarchic aspects of its plot, Cyrus settles for a predictable narrative arc (will there be a big bust-up between John and Cyrus at the wedding? Will all of the characters learn lessons from this and become better people in the end? You bet). The filmmakers might make a token gesture towards an unconventional sensibility, but their picture actually grows less adventurous and less interesting with every passing minute.
After today's press launch for this year's London Film Festival, much of the discussion centred on films that didn't appear in the programme. I had certainly expected to see pictures like Love and Other Drugs, Somewhere and Rabbit Hole in the line-up; I had hoped to see Caves of Forgotten Dreams, Outrage and In a Better World; and I had clung on to the tiny possibility of a True Grit screening (and the infinitesimal chance of Tree of Life making an appearance). None of these pictures did appear in the 30 minute preview reel that played at the Odeon Leicester Square, but some very interesting features are in the programme (although the first three are all Surprise Film contenders), and here's my take on the programme for LFF 2010.
Opening and Closing Night Galas
I'm not a fan of Kazuo Ishiguro's novel Never Let Me Go, so this adaptation was an underwhelming choice for the opening film, and the brief snippet I saw this morning didn't excite me. The film is directed by Mark Romanek, making his first feature since the striking but sterile One Hour Photo, and it stars the three go-to British actors of their generation: Keira Knightly, Carey Mulligan and Andrew Garfield. It's sure to be an awards contender, but this is not top of my list of films to see at the festival.
The closing night picture, however, is a much more enticing prospect. 127 Hours, Danny Boyle's first film since the runaway success of Slumdog Millionaire, is the story of Aron Ralston, a mountain climber who found himself trapped under a boulder in Utah and was forced to cut off his own arm to survive. It's an astonishing true story and will prove a demanding challenge for both Boyle and star James Franco, with the central character being alone and immobile for much of the picture.Gala Screenings
Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan, a psychological thriller about rival ballet dancers, is one of the films I'm very much looking forward to at this year's festival, with Natalie Portman reportedly giving a superb performance in the lead role. Aronofsky has been on an uneven streak, but at his best he is capable of creating vivid sequences that deliver a real emotional punch. I'm also intrigued by Biutiful, even though I've liked Alejandro González Iñárritu's films less and less since his outstanding debut Amores perros. However, a lot of that was down to the contrived screenplays provided by Guillermo Arriaga and this film marks Iñárritu's first feature since that pair went their separate ways. He remains a truly gifted director but he also has a weakness for melodrama and portentousness that may well be exposed by the story of a dying man (Javier Bardem) who can connect with the dead.
For his latest film Another Year, Mike Leigh has called upon a cast of familiar faces, including Jim Broadbent and Lesley Manville, in a story about ageing and loneliness, while Apichatpong Weerasethakul (thankfully, he also answers to "Joe") brings his distinctive Palme d'Or winner Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall Past Lives to the festival. However, of all of the films that were announced this morning, The Great White Silence was the one that actually made me gasp with excitement. A documentary that details Captain Scott's fateful journey to the South Pole, it was shot by the Terra Nova's official cameraman Herbert Ponting and it has now been fully restored and will be presented with a live score at the Archive Gala. The images shown at the press launch were breathtaking, and I can't wait to see the rest of this invaluable documentary.
The Film on the Square
Despite a warning from a friend who saw the film at Cannes, I'm still looking forward to seeing Cristi Puiu's Aurora, in which the director himself plays a disgruntled man slowly drifting towards murder. The key word there is slowly, as I've been told that the picture's pacing makes it something of an ordeal, but having directed the brilliant The Death of Mr Lazarescu a few years ago, Puiu is a director who has earned my trust. Similarly, the enormous leap directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck made from Half Nelson to Sugar ensures I'm eagerly anticipating their third feature It's Kind of a Funny Story, which once again takes them in a new direction. Olivier Assayas is another director who constantly seems to be reinventing himself, and his biopic of Carlos the Jackal is surely his most ambitious film yet. It was originally made for French TV, but I'm looking forward to devouring all five and a half hours of Carlos in one sitting, even if it will take up the whole of my Saturday afternoon.
Other fine directors bringing their work to the festival include Errol Morris with Tabloid and Kelly Reichardt with Meek's Cutoff. I'm tentatively looking forward to Gregg Araki's Kaboom, even though I suspect this may be closer in tone to his earlier work (which I hated) than his recent Mysterious Skin and Smiley Face. I'm not really a huge fan of Jean-Luc Godard either, but the hugely divided opinion that greeted his latest film at Cannes has piqued my interest. Film socialisme is another of Godard's cinematic essays, with the director utilising a wide range of footage to say...well, what exactly? One way or another, it's sure to provoke much debate and a number of heated reactions.
I'll probably also try to make time for George Clooney in The American, Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling in My Blue Valentine, Jerzy Skolimowski's Essential Killing and 21 year-old sensation Xavier Dolan's Heartbeats. Richard Ayoade presents his directorial debut Submarine at the festival, while Thomas Vinterberg returns with, er, Submarino, and Jan Švankmajer is back (hooray!) with Surviving Life.
World Cinema
Of the French features at the festival, I'm glad to see another effort from Catherine Breillat, whose recent fascination with gothic fairy tales has resulted in an adaptation of Sleeping Beauty. Benoît Jacquot and Guillaume Canet are back with Deep in the Woods and Little White Lies respectively, while the ever-excellent Isabelle Huppert plays a prostitute in Jeanne Labrune's Special Treatment. Further afield, The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceauşescu is a documentary telling the story of the Romanian leader's rise to power, Hunting & Sons is a Dutch feature exploring the breakdown of a marriage over an unplanned pregnancy, and Daniele Luchetti – director of the acclaimed My Brother is an Only Child – returns to the festival with Our Life. Eva Green and Matt Smith star in Benedek Fliegauf's Womb, Mars uses intriguing animation techniques to tell an unusual sci-fi story, and Lemmy is a documentary about the legendary Motorhead frontman. The clip shown from this film at the press launch drew big laughs, when Lemmy disputed the claim that sleeping with 1,000 women was a big deal ("I'm 63 years old. If you work it out, it's not that many a year").
To be honest, one of the chief pleasures of the LFF is always finding unexpected gems from all over the globe. After a quick glance at the programme the following films caught my eye: Southern District (Bolivia), Sawako Decides (Japan); Life, Above All (South Africa); Joy (Netherlands); Sandcastle (Singapore); The Magic Tree (Poland); Mysteries of Lisbon (Portugal); Cold Water of the Sea (Costa Rica); Orion (Iran); Revolución (Mexico).
Archives
This year's archives strand is tremendously exciting. Aside from the screening of The Great White Silence that I've already covered, there are restored versions of The Bridge on the River Kwai, Pandora's Box, Boudou Saved From Drowning, Man With a Movie Camera and Picnic. Above all, there will be a presentation of Edward Yang's 1991 film A Brighter Summer Day, which was recently restored by Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Foundation. This is a film I've wanted to see for years, and I was delighted to see it in the programme.
In Person
There's an impressive line-up of actors and filmmakers appearing at the NFT this year for onstage interviews about their career and their craft. Peter Mullan, Hilary Swank, Mark Romanek, Javier Bardem, Olivier Assayas, Darren Aronofsky and Alejandro González Iñárritu are all scheduled to appear.
Surprise Film.
At this early stage, I'm putting my money on Somewhere, which would be both predictable and disappointing. I'd like to think it could be True Grit or The Way Back, but of course I'm still dreaming about Tree of Life. Yeah, I know it will never happen...but wouldn't it be the best surprise film ever?
Ask Pedro González-Rubio if his new film Alamar is a documentary or a fiction, and you will receive a very simple answer: "It is a film." In fact, Alamar is much more than that. It's actually an extraordinary film in which the young Mexican director explores the bond between a father and son as they share a fishing trip together, and finds moments of great beauty and emotional resonance in their experiences together. Alamar is one of the cinematic revelations of the year, and when González-Rubio visited London earlier this summer, I took the opportunity to ask him a few questions about it.
How did you first meet Jorge and Natan, and when did you decide you wanted to make a film about them?
I have been living for seven years in the Mexican Caribbean, south east of Mexico, and I have seen how the city has grown very rapidly and has destroyed a lot of the mangrove and natural areas. I wanted to talk about the fragility of things and of nature, but also the impermanence of happiness, so in the beginning it was the idea of this man going to his place of origin and through very basic activities he would go back to his ancestral nature, and then he would die. When I was location scouting I found the first location and then I found Jorge, the young father, and it was an instant decision to include Jorge in the film, but he seemed very fit for someone who was going to die [laughs]. I just focused on the meaning of what I wanted to do, why someone would be spending his last days in this specific place, and by getting to know Jorge, his background, and people around him, I found out about Natan, so the story became about Natan spending his last days with his father and having this voyage of discovery.
Because Natan has this other life in Italy, we get the sense that it's particularly important for Jorge to pass down these traditions and this culture to his son, before he leaves it behind.
Yes, that's definitely the case. I mean, it's not the real situation, Natan still lives in Mexico with his mother, but I wanted to create a story of farewell and to make that more powerful I wanted to have the mother and the kid moving to Italy.
So how did you find that balance between the real relationship and the fictional story you wanted to tell?
It was not that hard, actually. I come from a documentary background and I had previously co-directed a feature documentary, but I have also seen the process of fiction filmmaking, because I worked behind the scenes on Babel, Iñárritu's film, so I saw the whole process of constructing a fiction there, and at film school as well. But my way of developing a story is through daily activities, so I put people with real relationships into these activities – like painting a house, cleaning the boat, sleeping and eating – and it's through these activities that I created the story.
Was the story something that came together as you shot it rather than having a clear plan from the outset?
There was an outline, and I described some activities that I wanted to include so I could talk about the bond between this father and son. In the beginning, I wanted them to be distant, and instead of through dialogue, I would portray how the bond grows little by little through activities, touching and the daily routine, and then I would end the film in Italy with his mother. On paper, it was a very abrupt ending, and it still is in the film but I think it works better in the film.
Both Jorge and Natan are very natural on screen. Did you have to spend a lot of time with them before they became comfortable with your presence and your camera?
Actually, the way I approached the process of filming Alamar was that I spent six weeks in total in this location, and in those six weeks my main activity was not filming, but was actually cooking or fishing. I did all of those things that you see on camera, and it was important to create a better intimacy with the characters and the situation.
You had to become a part of this community.
Yes, I had to feel comfortable living that lifestyle. I was a sleeping in my own hammock and the sound operator was also there, it was just a crew of two. So rather than arriving to this place and manipulating things for the film, it was the other way around, so it was about how these things would affect the film and the story. The pace of the film is the same as the pace of the lifestyle there.
Was your previous feature Toro negro created in a similar fashion to Alamar?
No, that was a pure documentary. It's similar in style, but it's 100% documentary. I think my next project will be very similar to the Alamar process. There are maybe some things I would like to change but I am comfortable with filming the way I did Alamar.
There's a great contrast between the calmness of life on land and the excitement and energy of the fishing trips, what was it like to shoot those scenes on the boat?
There is a lot of emotion involved in getting fish out of the sea and it's a very exciting process, but it was very difficult to handle the camera in those elements, with the movement and water spilling over the equipment.
I was interested to see Alexis Zabe credited as part of the underwater photography unit, because he shot Silent Light, one of my favourite recent films. How did he get involved in the project?
A friend of mine is also a very good friend of Alexis, so she told me to ask Alexis because I didn't have any budget for the underwater shots. I only had enough to pay for the gas to get to the place and the food for when we were shooting, but he's a very accessible person and open to new things, and when I told him about the project he had no doubts at all. He was great to work with and he was the perfect cameraman to take to Bancho Chinchorro, because for me it was such an intimate environment and we had managed to accomplish such a familiar dynamic during the film, that I needed somebody who would be peaceful and trustworthy for the kid, you know? Alexis is a very human and very spiritual person, and because we just had the bare essentials of equipment, I also needed somebody who wouldn't judge the project, like "What are these guys doing? Just a crew of two?" [laughs] I think a good cameraman is someone with great intuition about where they're filming, the pace, the characters, the framing and so on, and he got it right away.
Does your background as a photographer have a big influence on your filmmaking style?
Yes, as a cinematographer and a director, I am interested in what the images have to say rather than the dialogue. I want to know what the images mean.
You wrote, directed, shot and edited Alamar. Did you ever feel like you were taking on too much?
Well, I just had to do it [laughs]. I don't think I could have made this film with a different structure. I think I shot in total around 35 hours, and compared to the documentaries I did before, this is not that much. As I said, I mainly focused on other things rather than filming while we were there.
There are a number of moments in the film that are clearly completely spontaneous, like the bird suddenly arriving in Jorge and Natan's hut, which then becomes part of the story. Did you have to be constantly on your toes to capture unexpected moments like that?
Yes, definitely, I always had my camera next to me. When the bird came it was sheer luck. She came because she saw the bugs in the house, and the first images I have of her are of pure curiosity, but when she came the second day I realised she was an important character or factor for the film. I knew she wouldn't come back every day, so when she flies away it's like Natan flying away, and it's a perfect metaphor for Natan's own destiny.
At the end of the film there is a message emphasising the importance of preserving these locations. Has this aspect of the film received any reaction in Mexico?
It has been screened in Mexico but just at festivals, we don't have a commercial release yet. That was a big responsibility for me because I was allowed to go there with my camera even though it is a protected area. I think there needs to be more special consideration about how to protect these fragile environments, especially now with this oil spill [this conversation took place at the height of the BP oil crisis]. Today Obama said it was like 9/11, and if you look at the news you can see what we are losing every single day.
In terms of incident, not a great deal happens in Alamar, and it runs for little over 70 minutes, but this is still one of the best films of the year. The secret of its success lies in its simplicity, and in director Pedro González-Rubio's infectious sense of fascination in both his subjects and the world they inhabit. The film is a semi-fictional narrative built around a real relationship, and González-Rubio shows little interest in maintaining the boundaries between documentary reality and a filmmaker's artifice, as he strives for a greater sense of truth through the interactions between a man and his son. Alamar is bookended by two brief scenes in Italy, but its prime location – and the place in which it comes to vivid life – is Banco Chinchorro, an idyllic coral reef in Mexico.
This is where Jorge Machado will take his young son Natan for a final fishing trip together, before the boy leaves to live in Italy with his mother Roberta. The relationships in the film are real, but the story González-Rubio has woven around them – the breakdown of Jorge and Roberta's relationship, and the separation of Jorge from his son – is not. This scripted portion of the film does give it a sense of narrative shape, however, and it adds a melancholy undertone to the picture, with Jorge and Natan knowing that they will soon have to leave this beautiful place, and they need to make every moment they spend together count.
Not that dramatic urgency is at the forefront of the director's thoughts. For much of Alamar, González-Rubio's camera is simply an attentive observer as Jorge teaches Natan the skills and traditions that have been handed down to him through the generations. We see Natan nervously attempt to swim with a snorkel for the first time, learn how to bait a hook and then catch his first fish. Back on land, the pair de-scale and gut their catch, and all the time Jorge is a patient and generous teacher while Natan is an ever-curious student. The naturalness of their emotional connection gives the film its heart, and González-Rubio allows us to experience their developing bond through the activities they perform together. Many scenes in Alamar unfold in silence, as the two quietly work side by side, with both father and son seeming to be completely comfortable in front of the camera and unaware of González-Rubio's presence.
The director imposes a rhythm on his film that mirrors the steady pace of life in the community Jorge is part of, although the quiet nature of the film is occasionally disrupted by the frantic action of their fishing expeditions. González-Rubio is a filmmaker as keenly aware of Jorge and Natan's environment as he is of the pair themselves, and he sometimes cuts away to view a cockroach crawling through their cabin, or a crocodile who sits a few yards away as they clean their boat. The film is also full of delightfully serendipitous incidents, with the most notable being the sudden appearance of white egret that wanders into their hut one day in search of food, and briefly becomes a supporting character in the film. That sense of unexpected moments being caught on film, of González-Rubio capturing lightning in a bottle, gives Alamar a wonderfully vibrant sense of life. This is also one of the most beautiful films I've seen this year, with González-Rubio's crystal-clear cinematography adding a luminous texture to every shot.
The most remarkable thing about Alamar is how real it feels, despite the fictional story that the director has developed for his protagonists. In a moving sequence towards the end, Natan weeps when he realises that his time with his father is coming to an end, and in just over an hour, González-Rubio has absorbed us so fully into his story, and involved us so completely in his characters, that we are deeply touched by this scene of farewell. Before they separate, Jorge takes Natan diving one more time, and the boy who earlier took to the water so anxiously and tentatively now swims confidently alongside his father. During their time together, the boy has become a man. He has learned things and shared experiences that he will remember forever, even if Alamar suggests how fleeting such moments of happiness can be with its striking final image.
Read my interview with Pedro González-Rubio here.
