Jawbone

Great boxing movies are often stories of broken dreams, missed opportunities and the long road back to redemption, and Jawbone adheres to this classic template. An amateur champion at 16, Jimmy McCabe (Johnny Harris) coulda been a contender, he coulda been somebody, instead of being, “just another boring drunk who had it all in the palm of his hand and pissed it up against a wall,” as his trainer Eddie bluntly puts it.

When we’re introduced to Jimmy he is at his lowest ebb. Homeless after being evicted from his flat, he spends his nights drinking by the Thames, gazing into the deep waters. The despairing look in his eyes suggests he has considered jumping in more than once.

Read the rest of my review at Little White Lies

"Everybody is better in black-and-white!" An Interview with François Ozon

The one consistent factor in François Ozon’s career has been his capacity to surprise. Frantz is the prolific director’s 16th feature in less than two decades, and while his genre-hopping oeuvre looks incredibly eclectic on the surface, encompassing an extraordinary range of styles and tones, there’s a common authorial voice and thematic thread uniting these films that ensures they all feel distinctively his. Ozon’s explorations of relationships have been alternately playful, romantic and haunted by the spectre of death, and he is capable of delivering a satisfying narrative while subverting genre expectations and commenting on the act of storytelling itself. In this light, Frantz feels like a natural fit for the director, even as it marks the biggest stylistic departure of his career to date. I met Ozon during last year's London Film Festival to discuss his excellent new film.

Did you discover Frantz as a play or through the Lubitsch film?

I discovered the play. A friend of mine told me about this play written in the '20s about the First World War, and I really enjoyed it. I loved the story about this French guy who goes to Germany to put some roses on the grave of a German soldier. I began to work on it but I realised Lubitsch made an adaptation, so I was very disappointed and depressed. I watched the film of Lubitsch, and I really enjoyed the film, but I realised that this film was in the perspective of the French guy and my idea was to tell the story from the perspective of the German girl. So I realised my film would be quite different from Lubitsch's.

When you are reading a book or watching a play, are you always watching with the eye of a filmmaker, thinking about adaptation?

Yes, that is my problem now. My problem is that when I'm reading a book, if the style of the book is amazing and it's possible to make a cinematic adaptation, I take pleasure in reading it, but if it's not good for cinema adaptation, it's difficult for me to read it. Before I was able to read a lot of books, but now the way I function I project the scene like an adaptation, that's my problem.

What challenges did you face in this adaptation?

The challenge for me was to tell a story with a twist in the middle of the film. That was quite dangerous but exciting for me, because it's unusual, the twist is usually at the end of the film. In the case of this story I wanted the film to be in a mirror structure, between the two countries and the two languages, and yes it was a real challenge. I didn't know if it would work or not, but it was the idea to have this first part with the French guy going to Germany and the second part with the German girl going to France, and to have some links between the scenes in each country.

It's a very timely film with the focus on the dangers of nationalism and the prejudice and suspicion aimed at foreigners. Did the current political climate enter your thoughts as you wrote it?

Yes, it was not my first idea but as I worked on the historical context I realised that there are a lot of things that resonate with today, so I developed that, especially when she goes to France and we realised that nationalists exist in France too. I wrote the script just after the terrorist attack in Charlie [Hebdo], and I had all that in mind. You know the scene in the cafe when there is La Marseillaise? I wanted to give the opportunity to the French to hear this song in another way, with the violence of the lyrics and the context of the war, from the point of view of the German girl.

The scene in which the German doctor meets his old friends in the bar and talks about how the French have also suffered in the war is extremely resonant too.

It's a beautiful scene which comes from Lubitsch, actually. I thought it was a very powerful scene. My producer wanted me to cut it because it is not from the point of view of Adrian or Anna, but for me it was a key scene of the film, because it shows the evolution of the father and it was OK to say that the suffering of the Germans and the French was the same in the war.

Your films often deal with themes of storytelling, truth and fiction. What's interesting here is the suggestion that people often don't want the truth, that they are in fact happier with a lie.

Yes, it was important for me to show that lies and secrets help people survive during very difficult periods, especially during a period of mourning and suffering, and I liked this paradox. It's quite shocking in a period like today when everyone is obsessed with truth and transparency, but I wanted to show the beauty of lies. There is a beautiful quote from Cocteau where he says, "Behind each lie there is some truth", and I think that is the case in this story. Behind the lies of Adrian there is maybe a truth about his feelings, his sexuality.

There are hints about his sexuality dotted throughout the film. Where did that idea come from?

I think it came from the fact that I realised the writer of the play was gay. He was a pacifist, he was gay, but of course at this time it was impossible to say that, and the play is really about this potential strong friendship between the German and a Frenchman, so the fact that we were telling the story from the point of view of the girl, I thought it would be interesting that the audience and the girl could imagine more than what we see and what we hear. It was a false lead and I play with the audience, like Adrian is playing with the family.

Paula Beer is an inexperienced actress but I felt this was an incredibly mature performance. How did you find her?

We met at a big casting, because I didn't know the German actresses, and she was twenty years old. I was quite nervous because I knew it was a very difficult part, she carries the whole story on her shoulders, and when I met her I was surprised because she was very mature, she had a melancholy in her eyes which was very touching. I asked her to come to Paris to make a test with Pierre Niney and the chemistry was perfect between them, but you never know, you take a risk when you work with someone who has made so few things. I remembered the first day of shooting was the scene with the priest. It's a strong scene but we have no choice, we are obliged to begin with this scene, and she was perfect, she had the tear at the perfect moment and I realised I had made the right choice.

She has a great face for black-and-white too.

Everybody is better in black-and-white!

That's a good point! Some people just have good faces, I guess.

Yes, that is true too.

But I felt that you shot her in a way that recalled the Hollywood studio films of the '40s.

Yes, it was very surprising for me because when I'm shooting I'm watching my actors in colour, and when I go to the monitor to see them it was in black-and-white, and I think, “Oh my God, it is a film of Max Ophüls, or Dreyer, or Bergman!” It awakens your cinephile memories and it was quite surprising. Watching Paula in black-and-white it was like I had Gene Tierney in my film, and the father has a very beautiful, strong face and he looked like Max von Sydow in Bergman movies. It was perfect.

How did you arrive at the decision to introduce colour into the film in emotional moments?

It was difficult for me to forget colour because I love colour, and usually I use it as part of the mise-en-scene. I decided to shoot in black-and-white to involve the audience more in the story, but I couldn't get my head around the idea of not filming in colour, because I love colours. When I spoke to the person who did the location scouting I gave them the reference of the German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich, and when we saw the location it was so beautiful I thought it was a pity not to show it in colour, so I decided to put in some colours in moments, like the blood coming back into the veins of the characters.

So did your DP have to light for both colour and black-and-white?

That was the difficulty for him. You know, when you light you don't light in the same way for black-and-white and colour, you put some filters on to have more contrast, so he kept asking me, "Are you sure you won't be going back to colour for this scene?" He was quite nervous. I knew which scenes would be in colour and which would be in black-and-white so I could tell him each time.

The musical score is again provided by Philippe Rombi, who has worked with you a number of times. He has done great work for you across a variety of styles and genres. How do you work with him?

I think technicians are like actors, you have to direct them, When I work with Philippe I direct him, I tell him what kind of music I need and I want, and because he has a lot of talent he is able to go into different directions, different genres. Sometimes he sends me some music after reading the script. I send him a lot of music I like to give him some inspiration, and when we have our first editing we show that to him very fast and tell him what we want. We have a very good relationship and collaboration, and he has no ego, unlike some musicians, so he's great to work with. In the case of this film I wanted to begin with something like a suspense movie, and after have something more lyrical and romantic in the spirit of Mahler or other romantic musicians.

This is a great film to watch on the big screen but the reality is that many films like this will be watched on televisions or laptops via streaming services. Does that trouble you?

I'm sad but what can I do? I can't fight against everybody, you know. I know that my film will maybe be seen on a telephone very soon, so we don't have the choice, but it doesn't stop us from trying to make the most beautiful film and always thinking of the big screen. In France I think there is still cinephilia and people still go to cinemas, and maybe less in England. In France, this film is a success, at the box office we are more than 500,000 admissions. For a film in black-and-white and German, it's good. In France we are very lucky that we are still a cinephile audience.

I think you're right, that it is to do with the culture. In the past even great British directors like Ken Loach have had tiny releases here but wide releases in France.

Yes, and in France the next one will be more than one million admissions, we know that, because he won the Palme d'Or. People love his movies. In England I think it is more a theatrical culture but in France it is definitely a cinema culture.

What about the infrastructure for making movies in France? Is it easy for you to find funding for a film like this?

I am not representative of the French cinema because I think I am now in a place where I am very lucky, because my films are quite successful so it's not difficult for me to get produced, and because my films are not very expensive. For this film, it's a co-production with Germany, and actually we found the German money very easily, because the Germans were very excited about the project and the fact that a French director wanted to make a film about Germany, they were very touched. We found about €6 million in France and €3 million in Germany.

Next year marks the 20th anniversary of See the Sea. Do you ever look back at your own work?

I was obliged because I made a digital copy of See the Sea, and I was quite surprised because it was shot in 16mm and in digital it was beautiful. I said to my DP maybe I should shoot my next film in 16mm because it's very beautiful, and it was a good surprise. The film is still shocking, no? I was shocked by my own film! I thought, "Oh my God, what have I done?" But no, I was quite happy to watch it again. I would change things if I shot it again today. It was quite an aggressive movie, quite sadistic, and it was what I wanted to make at this age.

Do you have a sense of how you have changed as a filmmaker over these two decades? Do you think you could make a film like, say, Sitcom today?

I would make it differently today, but I would love to have the opportunity to make a remake of one of my films. It would be very funny as an exercise, but I'm not sure I would find a producer. Especially for the films which were a flop.

How do you react when your films are a flop and poorly reviewed?

I think the best critic is time. It's true, we know in the history of cinema there are so many films that were hated when they were released and they are now considered masterpieces. There is a kind of relativity you have to have in yourself. Of course, it is difficult for me when everybody says your film is shit! I say, "Maybe in time, you know..." I think I was lucky from the start to be hated and loved at the same time. From the start some people enjoyed my films and some people said I was terrible, so I have always had that, I have never had a consensus. I am used to that and in a certain way it's better than indifference.

When researching for this interview I noticed you were invited to join the Academy last year.

Ah, The Oscars! Yes! I voted last year for the first time.

Did that feel like a big deal? Like some sort of milestone?

It is very expensive! That's what I thought. It was $600...or $500, something like that to be part of the committee. It's funny, it's a game. I get all the DVDs but it's quite surprising because you don't vote in all the categories. You know, I don't belong to Hollywood and this industry, in France we are nothing for them. It's good that it is not just the Americans that vote. It's supposed to be an honour, no?

Yeah, I suppose it is.

OK, so I will take the honour!

You are known for being a very prolific filmmaker. When you finish a film, do you already know what your next project will be?

I need to finish the movie first. I need to finish the editing, actually. When I've finished the editing I begin to think of something else, and a new story arrives.

And is the motivation always to push into a new direction from your last film?

Not especially. After a strong experience - because to shoot and make a film is something very powerful, and takes a lot of energy and work - I don't want to repeat the same thing. So yes, of course I want to take another direction, but it's not a conscious choice. I think it comes very naturally. After a drama you want to go to comedy, you know. It's quite natural and I follow my unconscious.

So do you already have your next picture in mind?

I begin a new shooting in two weeks, and it will be a thriller. In French. See you next year!

Fat City in Sight & Sound

John Huston was a pretty good boxer in his youth. He claimed 23 wins from his 25 bouts as a teenager, winning the Amateur Lightweight Boxing Championship of California in the process, until a broken nose prompted him to consider less painful ways of making a living. One of the towns where he fought was Stockton, California, 80 miles east of San Francisco. When he returned there decades later to make Fat City (1972), the place had changed. The film opens with images of life on Skid Row: dilapidated buildings, boarded-up doorways, weary souls on the streets drinking their days away. Within a few years of the film's production, much of what we see on screen had been razed to the ground. “I wonder where all the poor devils who inhabited it have gone,” Huston mused in his autobiography An Open Book (1980). “They have to be somewhere.”

Read the rest of my article in the June 2017 issue of Sight & Sound.

"I really believe you can make magical things when someone is looking at you with love." – An Interview with Katell Quillévéré

While watching Katell Quillévéré’s Heal the Living, it’s so easy to imagine the many ways it could have gone wrong. In the hands of another director this remarkable film – which unfolds in the 24 hours between the untimely death of young surfer Simon (Gabin Verdet), and his heart being transplanted into Claire (Anne Dorval), a middle-aged woman – could easily have lapsed into soapy sentimentality. Many more experienced filmmakers than Quillévéré might have struggled to balance the narrative’s two halves, or incorporate its large cast of characters, or would have need much more than a sleek 103 minutes to tell this story. Quillévéré’s third film is her most ambitious yet, and it may also be her best. It’s an intelligent, graceful and emotionally rich piece of work, and I met the director in London recently to discuss it. 

I'm interested in the fact that you have expanded the scope of your filmmaking with each feature. From focusing on one young girl's experience with Love Like Poison to a family story with Suzanne, and now you have this large cast of disconnected characters that you have to bring together. Are you conscious of pushing your boundaries and working on a bigger scale each time you make a film?

I think it's a mix of the conscious and the unconscious. What I'm conscious about is trying to be aware of my strengths and my weaknesses in each film that I make, and in the next film I make I always try to push the boundaries of where there was a fragility in the previous film. I want to keep a very personal vision, so you can find a thread in the films, but at the same time to put myself in danger, to go beyond.

Your previous two films both had a very strong protagonist, so I guess the main challenge here is that you don't have a central character. You have multiple perspectives that you have to switch between.

I started off with this reticence because I really don't go for ensemble films. The trap you can fall in with an ensemble film is that you sense what really interests the filmmaker is the artistic direction of the film, the mise-en-scène itself, more than the story or the characters existing in their own flesh. I worked against that quite consciously to not fall into that trap. I like characters and story, and the directing or the mise-en-scène must always serve the characters and the story as opposed to the other way around.

It was actually surprising to me that you managed to make this film run to just one hour forty minutes. I could easily imagine another filmmaker taking this material and making a two-hour or two-and-a-half hour film, or even a TV miniseries. You manage to get across a lot of information and incident in a brief timescale.

Yes, I thought it would be interesting to tell the story in a duration that I call 'classical', but at the same time without watching the clock and being in a state of emergency. I wanted to be in a more intimate relationship. As a result, I knew I had very little time to make the characters come to life, so every scene and every detail was crucial to make that come across.

That makes me think of the scene where Monia Chokri is taking a break and imagines her boyfriend being with her. It's such a beautiful character detail. Were moments like that in the book?

That scene in the script is not in the book, but in the book this nurse has just spent a sleepless night with her lover and she is waiting for the text message from her lover that doesn't come. She is still haunted by his body, so it's inspired by the book but it is not the story in the book.

So when you read the book, did you instantly see the story? Were there images that grabbed you as being inherently cinematic?

I think like any reader I have my imagination and images and emotions that come to me, but because of my work I have a specific intuition that comes to me. Another director would not necessarily see it cinematically, or see the same bits that I think would work as a film. So the challenge originally was to fish out of the book what would work in a cinematic way, and equally seeing what I left out and how that would affect the whole thing. What do I need to flesh out more or add to?

Was it easy to find this balance in the screenplay, with the multiple characters and the two halves of the story, or was that balance something you had to find with Thomas Marchand in the edit?

The challenge starts at the writing stage and you have to keep following it throughout, it's present through the whole development of the film. There's a kind of crisis at each stage when you have to find this balance again, and by the end you have something quite different from the original script. There's a strange sensation that you have when you've made a film, that you realise it's really not the script that you wrote, but at the same time it is the same story.

The film has a very touching lyrical quality and there's also the fact that it's a heart at the centre of the film. The movie wouldn't have worked with a different organ, if it had been a liver transplant or something like that. There's this metaphysical and romantic association that adds an extra layer of emotional resonance. It's more of a love story.

Yes, the liver is not quite the same thing. Definitely for me I treated it as a love story, as a melodramatic love story. I tried to keep these three elements on the go, the physical side, the emotional side and the metaphysical side. The challenge was how to go from one dimension to another and do it in an organic way, and the answer to those questions is in the aesthetics. I had to find a coherent form and shape that complemented the film.

My favourite scene in the movie is the flashback to Simon chasing his girlfriend on the bike. I love that you use this scene to show the strength of his heart, in both a physical and emotional sense.

Definitely, you see it is a good heart in both senses. It is beating so strongly.

I want to ask you about some of your casting choices. Anne Dorval is an unusual choice as she works in Canada, and you have so many great French actresses who could have played this role. How did you make that decision?

It's just that she's the actress in that age, in her 50s, who moved me the most in recent years when she was in Mommy, from Xavier Dolan. She is so amazing I just wanted to meet her and work with her, and I wanted to propose this part because it's a mother but it is the opposite to the performance she is making in Mommy. That was interesting for her and for me. This was her first French movie and that was really important for her. She was obsessed by the idea of having a good French accent in the movie, and she was scared that all he French actresses would be jealous of the fact that I chose a Canadian actress to play this part.

And you have Monia Chokri so you are collecting all of Dolan's favourite actresses.

Yes, but I really chose Monia because of her performance in a French movie that I saw, the name was Gare du Nord from Claire Simon. I saw her in that movie and I didn't even know she was Monia Chokri because she was physically so different from Dolan's movie. I didn't recognise her, and I saw what an amazing actress she was and I wanted to meet her. I didn't care about the fact that she was another Dolan actor.

I expect a lot of actors wanted to make this movie with you, particularly with the book being such a bestseller.

Well it would be a bit sad for me if that was the only reason, but maybe. [Laughs] It was not a bestseller when I first started but when I formed the cast it was. I think it must be one of the reasons in a way, because it's reassuring to everybody and you feel like this kind of story can be a success, it can talk to people. It's also linked to my previous movie Suzanne, the fact that the four main actors were nominated for the César. It helps you as a director because actors can trust you and they see that you can direct them. I think they were also convinced by the screenplay. And maybe they liked me, I think! [Laughs]

How do you work with your actors? You have actors from wildly different backgrounds, some very experienced and acclaimed and others, like Gabin Verdet, who are newcomers. Do you have to direct them in different ways?

I never read any book or anything on how to give actors direction. I only trust myself and the relationship I can develop with someone. For me, it doesn't matter if it's a child or a famous actor or a non-professional teenager, it's just a one-to-one relationship. I'm trying to let myself go and feel the person inside of me and understand the way she works. What is important for me is the discussion I can have with the person before, to observe her, the way she moves and everything, and to give people love and trust. I really believe you can make magical things when someone is looking at you with love. When I direct, I always have inside me the same feelings that the actors do. I am strongly connected with her, I am in the same state, and I think she can feel that and I can transmit things just like that with my body and my voice.

You said you never read a book on directing, but you started making films at a young age. You did your first shorts in your 20s. Were you always going to be an director?

I didn't go to any film school. I just went to university and then I started making shorts and the features. I think I just had this belief, which started when I was 17 or 18, that I could do this job, but it's just a belief, something that protects you from your fears. Then this belief becomes a reality, you created that for yourself, to help you do something with your life. So that's what I did. [Laughs]

I guess it helps to be in a supportive film culture in France. We've seen a wave of very exciting female directors coming from France, while we are constantly asking questions here and in the US about why female directors aren't getting the breaks.

Yes, I think that's because we have a great protective system. Every foreign moving coming out, we tax it, and with the tax on the cinema ticket we finance our own movies. That's a great idea, and that's why we have so many movies. You need to make many movies to have some good movies, and if you have many then you have more women, it's kind of mathematical, you know? I think there is also a tradition of feminism, in cinema and society, and the place of the woman is something that we always fight for, and I think that's why we have so many women in cinema.

Finally, given that this is your first adaptation, how was the experience of showing the film to Maylis de Kerangal? Did you get any feedback from her?

Sure, she was one of the first people to see the movie.

Was that a nervous moment for you?

Oh yes, I was so nervous. It was the first screening of the movie and we had all the actors, which is kind of scary too because they are all really nervous themselves. There was Maylis, and there was also Roman Polanski because he is the husband of Emmanuelle Seigner. And he came to see my movie! That was just awful for me. I remember I saw him just before the screening and I was drinking champagne. We didn't know each other and he told me, "You know, you shouldn't drink so much because you'll have to listen when people tell you what to cut." So I said okay, let's drink another one! [Laughs] I don't know if I was more scared by Maylis or Roman, you know, but the fact is it had a happy ending because he really loved the movie – but he really loved the movie – and he doesn't like anything so I was really surprised. She loved it too, so that was a really great screening. After that some people did not like the movie, but they both did so it was okay for me.

Heal the Living is released in the UK on April 28th

Free Fire

Ben Wheatley's Free Fire is set in the 1970s, but the era it conjures is the 1990s. Like Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, the film is set largely within the confines of an abandoned warehouse, with a group of suspicious crooks turning on each other in the aftermath of their best laid plans going awry. The film could easily have been part of the torrent of imitators that Reservoir Dogs spawned; in fact it did bring to mind one of them, Guy Ritchie's Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. “I don't fucking believe this. Could everyone stop getting shot?” Frank Harper says in the middle of that film, which sounds exactly like the kind of glib throwaway line that one of Free Fire's characters might utter. “I've forgotten whose side I'm on!” one of them wails as he limps across the screen, bullets zipping around him.

The bullets start flying after about twenty minutes and they keep going until the film's end, with only a few lulls for characters to catch their breath, check their wounds and trade quips. If this isn't your kind of thing then Free Fire might prove to be an arduous experience, so make the most of that opening sequence. Wheatley and his co-writer Amy Jump do a very efficient job of making the introductions and setting up the various loyalties and rivalries that will become muddied over the course of the movie. Michael Smiley and Cillian Murphy are IRA operatives in the US to buy some machine guns, in a deal facilitated by two Americans, played by Armie Hammer and Brie Larson. The seller, a sleazy and cowardly figure in a garish Savile Row suit, is played by Sharlto Copley, who sadly doesn't catch a bullet in the head the first time he appears on screen and is therefore free to give one of those uniquely Copley-esque turns that will antagonise as many viewers as he entertains.

These actors are the central figures in the ensemble, although it's a dispute between two minor henchmen – Sam Riley and Jack Reynor – that provides the spark in this tinderbox situation. The couple of minutes surrounding this skirmish, as tensions rise and the protagonists start reaching for their firearms, are the best in the film, but when the starting pistol has fired and everyone has scrambled for cover, Free Fire settles into a mode of furious gunplay, although nobody here is a crack shot. Aside from Babou Ceesay, who immediately takes one in the head, the bullets in Free Fire tend to clip characters' shoulders (“It's okay, it's mostly the suit”) or strike them in the leg, doing enough to slow them down but still keeping them in play. There is talk of a “golden hour-and-a-half”, apparently the time it takes for somebody to die from a bullet wound (Free Fire, incidentally runs for a shade over 90 minutes), and as the film reaches its final stages the characters still alive are reduced to crawling, lethargic, dead men (and woman) walking, with barely enough strength left to lift their guns.

It should be fun to watch all of this mayhem unfold in real time, and to watch Wheatley attempt to stretch a scenario that might be a third-act climax in most movies to feature length, but it soon descends into a noisy mess that's hard to stay invested in. On a recent visit to the Curzon Soho I noticed a hand-drawn map of the warehouse on the wall as part of Free Fire's promotional materials, and I found myself longing for such a visual aid while watching the film itself and trying to make sense of its spatial incoherence. For much of Free Fire it's impossible to tell where these characters are in relation to each other and who's firing at who, and while some might suggest that this is intentional, to place us in the middle of the carnage and make us share the characters' confusion, that feels like a very weak defence. When Wheatley attempts to stage two parallel sequences in which characters attempt to get to a phone that's somewhere in the building – Copley chasing Smiley and Noah Taylor crawling after Larson – the staging and cutting makes it unreasonably hard to ascertain who exactly is where. If only the visuals could keep pace with the sound, as the way the bullets, dialogue and music have been mixed by Rob Entwistle to give us a sense of location and distance is one of Free Fire's unqualified successes.

But maybe this film was never going to work for me. I've watched all of Ben Wheatley's six feature films and found myself alternately intrigued, perplexed and irritated by them, and ultimately feeling distinctly unsatisfied as the credits have rolled. Sometimes a filmmaker just isn't on your wavelength and there's no bridging that gap, and Ben Wheatley is certainly beloved by enough film fans to suggest that the problem is more mine than his, but I still can't get on board with how shoddy much of his work is and how often it is little more than a solid premise botched in the delivery. One minor but telling detail in Free Fire has stayed with me: Armie Hammer taking a moment in the middle of a gun battle to admire his reflection in a wing mirror. It's an obvious joke, but between Hammer spotting the mirror and actually fixing his mussed hair, Wheatley inexplicably cuts to a random shot of Brie Larson, thereby destroying the rhythm of this simple gag. This throwaway moment seems to sum up my reaction to the films of Ben Wheatley: nice idea, shame about the execution.