Film Review – The Whistleblower

Canadian filmmaker Laraysa Kondracki’s extraordinary debut feature, The Whistleblower, starring Rachel Weisz and Vanessa Redgrave, focuses on sex trafficking in post-war Bosnia. Co-scripted by Kondracki and Eilis Kirwan, the film also exposes some of the wider issues associated with war – in particular,  how violence and brutality often persist though the uneasy transition into peace.

Based on a true story, Kathryn Bolkovac (Weisz) is a Nebraskan police officer who is offered a lucrative job as a peacekeeper with the United Nations. Unlike other countries participating in the international peacekeeping mission, the US government outsources contracts to private firms who hire staff on its behalf (an issue that continues to cause controversy in both Iraq and Afghanistan).

Kathy is good at her job and is swiftly transferred to the UN’s Gender Office, which deals with investigations into sexual assault and sex trafficking. Inevitably, post-conflict, it is women and children who are the most vulnerable and Kathy is horrified at the extent of the immoral trade in human beings. She discovers a local bar where young, traumatised women, who have been sold into prostitution, are forcibly held in appalling conditions. When she discovers that UN workers and members of the international police force are engaged in the trade and abuse of these women she begins to gather evidence of their complicity.

Kondracki gives a human face to her political thriller by interweaving the story of two Ukrainian girls who have been sold into prostitution with Kathy’s own emotional journey. After being rescued from the bar, Kathy promises to help them but the criminal gangs’ network is deeply entrenched and her intervention has tragic consequences.

Kathy finds herself increasingly alienated by her male colleagues. After relaying her concerns to her superiors she discovers that many of the peacekeepers are protected by diplomatic immunity. Her bosses prefer to turn a blind eye to atrocities so as not to threaten the rebuilding project. Kathy is labelled a troublemaker and her job is abruptly terminated. In order to clear her name, she blows the whistle on the UN and US State Department’s cover-up.

Weisz is excellent as the principled police officer who risks her own life in taking on the powers that be and there is strong support from Redgrave as her sympathetic boss and David Strathairn as the senior diplomat who helps Kathy.

The Whistleblower is a bold debut from Kondracki. It sheds light on the horrors of sex slavery that continues to this day without feeling preachy or over-worthy. Filmed largely on location in Romania, an evocative setting and a country that has its own share of problems regarding trafficked women, this is an intense, gripping thriller that marks out Kondracki as a talent to watch.

Originally published by Cine-Vue

Film review – Miss Bala

Dir: Gerardo Naranjo

Running time 113 minutes

The violence of Mexico’s drug cartels is impinging daily on the lives of ordinary people. Since 2006, decapitations, corpses left hanging from bridges and body parts found on the beach are just some of the reported atrocities. President Calderon’s decision to use the army to fight the cartels has made little difference and, if anything, has resulted in more bloodshed.

Gerardo Naranjo’s salient film, Miss Bala, offers a vivid portrait of this darker side of Mexico. But rather than just focus on its criminal underworld, Naranjo, and co-writer Mauricio Katz, have painted a broader canvas that confronts head-on Mexico’s socio-political problems, namely the poverty and corruption that have created a lawless vacuum filled by the criminal gangs.

Set in Tijuana, on the Baja California Peninsula, Stephanie Sigman stars as twenty-three-year old Laura. She lives with her father and young brother and they make clothes for a living. Laura and her best friend Suzu decide to enter a local beauty queen contest. The night before their formal audition they visit a local nightclub. It’s raided by a criminal gang who open fire on the clubbers. Laura manages to escape but concerned for her friend, she begs a local cop to help her find Suzu by radioing to his colleagues – instead the policeman delivers Laura into the hands of the criminal gang.

This is the beginning of Laura’s nightmare. Lino (Noe Hernandez), the leader of ‘La Estrella’, takes a liking to Laura and instead of killing her – which would have been the more likely outcome in another border town, Ciudad Juarez – he enlists her help.  First he makes her park a car full of dead bodies outside a US government building as a warning to the Drug Enforcement Administration. When she tries to return home to her family, Lino and the gang follow her there.

Laura is then sent to across the border to San Diego as a mule, carrying money for weapons. On her return to Mexico she is caught in a shoot-out between the army and Lino’s gang. Saved by Lino, he delivers her to the beauty pageant, which she wins. But even this is rigged, it turns out, so that Laura can be used again as bait to lure a prominent army General into a hotel ambush.

Wisely, Naranjo steers clear of too many violent action scenes and leaves the gorier side to the audience’s imagination. Miss Bala is not just a fantastic thriller – it also illustrates how the drug gangs infiltrate everywhere and are the main architects of the savagery that is infecting every level of Mexican society today.

Naranjo does not shy away from exposing all those who have contributed to the nightmare: It’s the American demand for drugs that finance the cartels; the police are shown to be in the pay of the drug barons; and President Calderon’s deployment of the army is represented as chaotic (and ineffectual); With the character of Laura, Naranjo also captures brilliantly the fear and hopelessness felt by ordinary Mexicans who get caught up in the violence.

The cinematography is impressive with Mátyás Erdély’s carefully composed action shots, perfectly balanced by quieter, suspenseful scenes. Interweaving politics (without preaching) into an essentially mainstream film, Naranjo has forged a compelling drama from Mexico’s violent war.

 

 

Originally published by Latineos.com

Film review – The Ides of March

Directed by George Clooney

98 mins

The Ides of March (2011), directed by and starring George Clooney, takes a swipe at the ruthless backroom deals and media hype that lie at the heart of American politics. Governor Morris (Clooney) is running against Senator Pullman in a presidential primary race for the Democratic Party ticket. The film opens at a critical stage on the campaign trail with the two candidates battling for Ohio.

Based on the play, Farragut North by Beau Willimon, who himself worked on the staff of a presidential hopeful, the main focus of The Ides of March is the political machinations of the two campaign teams.

Clooney’s film adaptation (co-written with Willimon and Grant Heslov) differs from the stage version by having Morris present throughout – the governor is the catalyst for much of the drama but he’s not the main player. Ryan Gosling takes on the central role of Stephen, Morris’s idealistic press spokesman, and Philip Seymour Hoffman is his veteran campaign manager. When Stephen makes the fatal mistake of meeting with their opponent, Tom Duffy (Paul Giamatti), he becomes embroiled in a series of power games that make a mockery of the whole democratic process.

Echoing Shakespeare’s Julius Caeser, The Ides of March is about political backstabbing, betrayal and revenge. It is also Stephen’s rites of passage. Driven by ambition, he undergoes a dramatic transformation from an earnest campaigner, who truly believes in his candidate, to an embittered Brutus-figure who is prepared to go to any lengths for the sake of his career.

Clooney directs this political thriller with clear-sighted precision and a light touch, which makes it both accessible and entertaining. He has also assembled a top-notch cast. Through numerous close-ups, Gosling effortlessly conveys both Stephen’s inner turmoil and, later, his steely-eyed determination to succeed whatever the cost.

Clooney also gives a nuanced performance as the smooth talking statesman with a guilty secret that threatens to ruin his career – the full force of the governor’s hypocrisy hits home when he gives a speech on how integrity and dignity matter.

Giamatti and Hoffman are spot-on as the two world-weary campaigners and Marisa Tomei also impresses as the cynical journalist who is herself prone to manipulation and blackmail if it involves a good story.

The Ides of March may not cover any new ground in its exploration of the shadier side of American politics, but it’s nevertheless an enjoyable journey down the campaign trail, where the stakes are high and dirty deals are cut for political gain.

Originally published by Cine-Vue

 

Film review – Not My Life

Not My Life, directed, written and produced by Robert Bilheimer and narrated by Glenn Close, is a documentary focusing on the brutal world of human trafficking and modern slavery.

Filmed on five continents over a period of four years, Not My Life concentrates mainly on the selling of women and children who are often the main victims of commercial exploitation – sexual or otherwise.

Bilheimer covers forced labour in Ghana and child soldiers in Uganda; street begging and garbage picking in India; sexual trafficking in Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia; domestic slavery in the United States; and various forms of other child abuse in both North and South America. Poverty is key – often it is relatives who sell children to pay off debts or just for food. What comes across forcefully in Not My Life is the betrayal of these children, often by people they implicitly trust.

Combining testimony from survivors, opinion and analysis from their advocates with vivid depictions of the exploitation, Bilheimer covers a lot of ground and his film makes it clear that modern day slavery affects millions of human beings the world over.

Produced as part of CNN’s Freedom Project, Not My Life undoubtedly has its heart in the right place but by concentrating on the victims, Bilheimer deflects attention from the perpetrators of the abuse. There are a couple of interviews with Romanian traffickers, serving woefully inadequate prison sentences, but there is only passing reference to the thousands of men who engage in sexual tourism, like those who travel to Cambodia to “buy” traumatised children who they can then abuse for weeks at a time.

It’s also too simplistic to say that the trade in human beings is about “good and evil”. It’s also about demand and about changing people’s perception of slavery – for example, the purchase of sex; too many people don’t stop to think that trafficked women and young girls, terrified for their lives, are not in a position to offer consensual sex. Those who engage in the abuse of trafficked persons, whether buying or selling, need to face criminal prosecution and harsh sentences, but Bilheimer barely touches on these issues.

Despite its shortcomings, Not My Life is a powerful indictment of the global trade in human beings and the abuse of vulnerable people. Human trafficking takes many forms, but the consequences are always devastating for the victims. By shining a light on these dark corners of the world, Bilheimer’s message is clear: We all have a responsibility to these people and the first step is awareness. Watching Not My Life is an important first step.

Originally published by Cine-Vue

Film review – Everything Must Go

Loosely based on a short story by Raymond Carver, Everything Must Go follows the fortunes of an alcoholic salesman, Nick Halsey (Will Ferrell), who loses both his job and his wife on the same day.

Nick is a high-powered salesman but his frequent lapses, drunken antics, and the weeks he’s had to take off in recovery have taken their toll. The film opens with him being fired after sixteen years service. He is presented with a Swiss Army penknife as his leaving present which he promptly sticks into the tyres of his boss’s Mustang.

On arrival home, Nick discovers his wife has left home, changed the locks and dumped all his possessions on the front lawn. She’s also put a stop on their joint account and cancelled his credit cards. When the firm reclaims his corporate car and mobile phone, Nick is left with nothing except his memories.

He spends the next few days, sleeping outside, drinking beer, meeting the neighbours and ruminating on his lot. Nick is befriended by Kenny, a lonely neighbourhood kid who wants to learn how to play baseball and offers to help him sell his stuff. When the beer finally runs out, Nick is forced to confront his shattered life and to make a new start.

One of the most memorable scenes in Everything Must Go has Nick visiting Delilah (Laura Dern), a friend from High School who he has not seen for twenty years. She lives on the outskirts of town, and is bringing up two small children on her own.  Life has not been particularly kind to her either, we realise, when she recalls the highlight of her acting career – an advertisement for Japanese Television in which she co-starred with Brad Pitt. Like Nick, whose best memories are of his sporting prowess when young, she failed to live up to her early promise and both fall back on recollections of these happier times to sustain them.

Nick also connects with Samantha (Rebecca Hall), a young pregnant woman, newly moved in across the road, who is waiting for her husband to join her. In the course of their tentative friendship, they both teach each other valuable lessons.

Dan Rush’s pitch-perfect film is an excoriating study of loss and disillusionment. There is humour in Everything Must Go, mainly in Nick’s cynicism and witty retorts to his detractors but, despite this comic gloss, it is the film’s darker side that remains with you. Alcoholism is an illness and this is brought forcefully home when Nick is reduced to begging for beer on the street. Although there is an upbeat resolution to Rush’s version of Carver’s tale, there is also the implicit suggestion that Nick may not yet have found his feet and maybe never will.

Originally published by Cine-Vue

George Harrison: Living in the Material World

George Harrison: Living in the Material World

Directed by Martin Scorsese

DVD release

Martin Scorsese’s moving biopic of George Harrison, Living in the Material World, succeeds on a number of levels. Combining interviews with old footage, snapshots of George and, of course, the music, Scorsese creates a portrait of a man full of contradictions. George’s wife Olivia (who also co-produced the film) describes how “He had karma to work out. And he wasn’t going to come back and be bad, he was going to be good and bad and loving and angry and everything all at once.”

It was these many contradictions that caused George to fluctuate between periods of drug taking and intense meditation. As one contributor remarked – his spiritual practice was a search for the truth and for peace of mind and was an attempt to replace the chemical high he experienced when taking LSD.

The film is in two parts. The first is mainly taken up with George’s time with the Beatles. Through a careful selection of clips, Scorsese captures the camaraderie between the Fab Four right up to their break-up and the seminal moment when George’s argument with Paul (over artistic differences) at Abbey Road Studios is captured on film. It is clear that this was the beginning of the end for the Beatles and yet George’s friendship with John and Ringo endured. Despite their uneasy relationship in later years, Paul generously attributes the success of And I Love Her to George’s guitar riffs.

Part Two of Living in the Material World focuses on George’s solo career: The release of his triple album, All Things Must Pass (produced by Phil Spector) and the surprise success of his single My Sweet Lord; his deepening friendship with Indian sitar virtuoso Ravi Shankar; the concert for Bangladesh to provide humanitarian relief; and his marriage to Olivia.

In 1978, George co-founded HandMade Films in order to help his Monty Python friends make Life of Brian. Its success was replicated with several landmark films including, Withnail and I, Mona Lisa and Time Bandits. A decade later, George formed the band, the Travelling Wilburys with ELO frontman Jeff Lynne, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty and Roy Orbison, and Scorsese includes some interesting footage of the band rehearsing and recording – they went on to produce two successful albums.

Some of the most moving observations come from friends – racing driver Jackie Stewart and musician Ray Cooper (in tears at the beginning) are especially memorable. There are also some candid interviews with George’s lifelong friend, Eric Clapton, who fell in love with and later married George’s first wife, Pattie Boyd, and Olivia, who hints at George’s affairs during their own long marriage.

It’s no mean feat to have assembled such a lucid biography from hours of footage. Living in the Material World skims over George’s fight with cancer. But Olivia provides a fascinating (and terrifying) description of their fight with an intruder, at the time George was being treated for cancer, which resulted in him being stabbed. Olivia also talks frankly about how George’s spiritualism was always a preparation for death. When the end finally came, in 2001, she describes how the room was filled with light, suggesting that the iconic musician died with the same spiritual intensity as he had lived.

Originally published by Cine-Vue

Film Review – Mademoiselle Chambon

A film by Stéphane Brizé

France 2009. 101’

In Cinemas now

Mademoiselle Chambon is one of those films that the French do best. A slow burn of a story focussing on suppressed desires and an erotic obsession.

Jean (Vincent Lindon) works in construction. He is happily married to Anne Marie (Aure Atika). One day, as he is picking up his young son from school, he meets Mademoiselle Chambon (Sandrine Kiberlain), his son’s teacher. When Melle Chambon invites Jean to speak about his work at the school, his account of building a house might as well be a description of an enduring marriage. Later, Melle Chambon asks him to replace a broken window in her apartment and he finds himself strangely drawn to her and she to him.

Based on Eric Holder’s novel, (Stéphane Brizé and Florence Vignon won best adapted screenplay at the 2010 César Awards) this is a story about ordinary people living in a rural town in France. Brizé brings this vividly to life by filming Jean’s daily building work, and the banality of his wife’s work in a factory. The film’s central conflict comes from the fact that Jean and Anne Marie are actually happily married. She is both attractive and kind and they are loving parents to their young boy.

It is Melle Chambon’s playing of the violin that first captivates Jean and this soon turns into an erotic obsession. Brizé conveys this through close-ups Melle Chambon – the nape of her neck and fragmented images of her body glimpsed by Jean through a crack in a door or from his car’s wing mirror. Both Melle Chambon and her violin playing stir new and unexpected emotions in him.

Jean, essentially a decent man, finds himself overwhelmed by his feelings and is forced to face a poignant dilemma. It is a simple story of an impossible love, but the film’s power lies in Brizé’s ability to capture his characters’ fragile emotions on screen.  In many scenes, very little is said, but the smouldering looks and awkward silences between Lindon and Kiberlain (who were once married to one another) speak volumes about their characters’ suppressed desires.

Brizé cleverly conveys location through the use of car number plates and the Southern Mistral helps place the film geographically as well as evoking the characters’ emotional turmoil. He also tips a wink to Brief Encounter and, like this earlier classic, one of the film’s most suspenseful scenes takes place in a train station.

 Brizé has said of the film that he is “looking to capture something very invisible.” It’s a risky venture but he manages to pull it off; with the help of a terrific cast, Mademoiselle Chambon works as a sublime deconstruction of love and loss.

Originally publshed by The Playground

 

 

 

 

Film review – Circo

Circo

Dir: Aaron Schock

74 minutes

DVD £12.99

“The circus is tough and beautiful” says Tino, the ringmaster and central character of Aaron Schock’s documentary, Circo, charting the ups and downs of a Mexican troupe. One could say the same of Schock’s film.

The Ponce clan has worked in the circus for over a hundred years but mounting debts and Mexico’s erratic economy strain both the business and family life.

Schock follows one branch of the family through rural Mexico and charts the breakdown of Tino’s marriage to Ivonne. Despite its name the Gran Circo Mexico is a small outfit, although Tino dreams of one day being successful enough to tour Mexico’s major towns and cities.

The grim reality is that often the villagers cannot afford the luxury of entertainment, so the family are forced to offer tickets for free. While Tino’s children work day and night to make the circus a success, training for hours, unpacking and setting up the tent, feeding the animals, amongst other chores, it is Tino’s father who pockets the meagre proceeds.

Such perceived injustice riles Ivonne to the point of wanting to split up her family. Throughout, she expresses her worries about Tino putting the circus before her and claims that she wants her children, all illiterate, to have an education. Her youngest looks in amazement at some children they pass and comments “all they do is go to school and play”. No such normality for the Ponce offspring. Life in the circus, Schock suggests, is both a blessing and a curse.

Of course their work is exotic – the family travel with caged tigers and a lion, miniature ponies, llamas and a camel – and they are all skilled performers. Tino’s eldest son has no difficulty attracting adoring girlfriends in every village. But as any good performer knows, practice makes perfect, and Schock carefully captures the endless toil that lies behind the children’s acrobatics, the clowning and daring feats of endurance.

There’s no denying that the circus exerts a pull on both performer and spectator. What is remarkable about Circo is how Shock manages, in such a short space of time, to capture both sides of circus life: The glamour and the grime, the thrills and the hard graft.

As well as documentary, Circo is part road movie. Schock shows us the real Mexico, not the picture postcard variety. Here, stunning landscapes are set against rural poverty. The changing scenery gives us an idea of the vast distances covered by the troupe, at the same time as suggesting the monotony of continuous travel. By the end, one realises that life on the road is as constrictive as it is liberating.

The domestic troubles of Tino and Ivonne invest the film with a gritty realism that is reflected in Schock’s cinematography – he gives as much importance to the lines of clothing hanging out to dry between trailers as he does the performers on the tightropes. The message is clear. The Ponce clan are as confined by the circus as the animals that accompany them.

Originally published by Cinevue

Film review – Jane Eyre

Cary Joji Fukunaga’s invigorating new version of Jane Eyre (2011), starring Michael Fassbender and Mia Wasikowska, should appeal to Charlotte Brontë purists as well as attracting new fans. The film couldn’t be more different than Fukunaga’s award-winning debut Sin Nombre (2009), a violent thriller about a group of immigrants travelling through Mexico to the U.S, yet there are surprising similarities between the two stories.

Both of Fukunaga’s films tackle hardship and loss, involve characters who want to improve their lot and explore difficult familial relationships. Working against Brontë’s linear narrative, screenwriter Moria Buffini opens the film with Jane Eyre’s flight from Thornfield Hall. Her childhood and the beginning of her love affair with Edward Rochester are subsequently told through flashbacks.

Wisely, Buffini does not dwell too long on Jane’s early years, focusing instead on her defining moments. As a young orphan (played with great assurance by Amelia Clarkson) Jane is entrusted into the care of her cruel aunt Mrs. Reed (the excellent Sally Hawkins).

Aged ten, Jane is packed off to a charitable boarding school where the children are given an education in exchange for regular beatings and inexplicable cruelty. During a typhoid epidemic Jane’s best friend dies in her arms. After her schooling, Jane works there as a teacher for two years before deciding it’s time to move on. She accepts a position as governess at the grand Thornfield Hall, teaching Adèle, a young French girl and ward of the manor’s enigmatic owner, Mr. Rochester.

When Jane and Rochester meet, there is an immediate connection. Film audiences can enjoy an electric screen dynamic between Fassbender and Wasikowska. Fassbender’s Rochester tends towards the Byronic; craggy good looks, brooding and cynical, his gallantry is tainted by arrogance and frequent mood swings; at times his behaviour verges on the sadistic. But his love for Jane redeems him, just.

Despite being only 21, Wasikowska displays a remarkable maturity as an actress and effortlessly inhabits her character. Adriano Goldman’s frequent close-ups means that she has to work hard to express her character’s thoughts in her eyes or reveal Jane’s innermost hopes for love through the merest twitch of her lips or the hint of a smile. Jane’s beauty comes from within and Wasikowska allows it to creep up on you.

Jane Eyre is an intensely romantic story, and the Gothic undertones and elements of horror, have ensured its enduring appeal. Not surprisingly, since 1910 there have been 18 feature versions of Bronte’s classic (and 10 TV adaptations).

Fukunaga’s Jane Eyre stands out on a number of levels. As well as boasting a star-studded cast – with the likes of Hawkins and Judi Dench playing cameo roles – Wasikowska perfectly captures Jane’s sexual and emotional awakening, a major theme in the book and one that is notoriously difficult to convey on film. Fukunaga also retains the darkness of Brontë’s original story through a careful combination of muted colour, harsh landscapes and eerily dark interiors. Veering towards Jane’s feminist, rather than romantic, side brings to the fore her desire for respect, equality and freedom and gives a contemporary resonance to the film.

Originally published by Cinevue

Film review – Lou

Directed by Belinda Chayko

Released by Matchbox Films (rrp  £15.99)

Certificate:  15 Running Time:  82mins 

LOU, directed and written by Belinda Chayko (BORED OLIVES) and starring legendary British actor John Hurt, is a tender, heartfelt film about one girl’s rite of passage. Set against the dramatic landscape of rural New South Wales, harried single mum Rhia (Emily Barclay) struggles to bring up her three daughters, hounded by debt collectors and the fear of being left on the shelf at twenty-seven. She’s also having problems with her eldest daughter, eleven-year-old Lou (a stunning debut from Lily Bell-Tindley) who she relies on to look after her younger sisters when she’s at work. Both mother and daughter feel abandoned and blame the other for the abrupt departure of Lou’s dad ten months earlier.

Desperate for money, Rhia agrees to temporarily take in her father-in-law, Doyle (Hurt in a pitch-perfect performance), who is suffering from Alzheimer’s and waiting for a hospital bed to become available. But it is Lou, rather than Rhia, who gradually befriends and looks after the former merchant seaman.

At first, Doyle is confused and causes chaos with his frequent outbursts, erratic wanderings and irrational night-time fears but things take an unexpected turn when he starts to believe that Lou is actually his former wife who left him for another man. In between bouts of paranoia, Doyle softens and begins to court Lou who, flattered by the attention, goes along with his fantasy.

Relations between mother and daughter become further strained when Rhia, worried where it might all lead, forbids Lou to play along with Doyle. Lou, already dealing with the uneasy transition from childhood into puberty, has to confront her own fledgling feelings for the boy next door which, in turn, arouses Doyle’s jealousy. Inevitably it all comes to a head and Lou decides to take flight with Doyle.

LOU is Chayko’s first major film in a decade (her main body of work is in television) and it is impressive how much she achieves on a low budget. There is much to admire, from Hurt and Barclay’s finely nuanced performances to Bell-Tindley’s assured debut. Australian Hugh Miller’s wonderful cinematography, in particular the burning of the cane fields, interspersed with the claustrophobia of the domestic scenes, adds a dreamlike quality to the film. Miller also captures the shimmer of the heat haze and the sense of wide open space stretching for miles around.

As a dissection of familial relations, LOU is flawless and the deliberately understated emotions of its principle characters are also part of the film’s charm. But despite some stunning landscape shots, and a terrific cast, this low key drama about finding love when you least expect it, remains essentially a small screen rather than a cinematic experience.

Originally published by Cine-Vue