Happy-Go-Lucky

HAPPY-GO-LUCKY, Mike Leigh, 2008

Is there an adjective that means more charming than charming? The complete overload of charm that is more endearing than cute and doesn’t slide slowly into sleazy? Because that is the one word that is needed for this film which I stumbled into seeing last night.

The ‘quirky indie character film’ genre, to which this belongs, is without fail a hit or miss enterprise. One cute anachronism too many and they become an exhausting show. Appropriate a little too heavily and you achieve cookie cut obnoxious-for-the-sake-of-it posers who are largely joyless to watch. Happy-Go-Luckily, manages to get the balance right, chiefly because of stellar casting. Tripping alongside the appropriately naïve Poppy’s (Sally Hawkins) encounters with off the wall adults, the film is definitely a reaffirmation of the fact that most people are completely nuts in their own little ways (the recurring plot in my own life melodrama). Her sister, best friend, flamenco teacher and driving instructor, were an engaging and faultless supporting cast. The acting gave the sense of the unscripted as there was a cacophony of dialogue that overflowed in every frame. It was a busyness that carried over into the style in a way that made the characters intense, or full, rather than being a potentially distracting feature.

I appreciated that they didn’t shy away from queering the plot a little and the cinematography was successfully playful – its focus on the contemplation of unexpected objects and faces gave great colour to the film. I was also quite enamored with costuming that balanced the colloquial and the creative. Everyone had an identifiable style, but did so without rehashing a current mode of alt-style, whatever that may be, that so often can date a film. The happy costuming of the lead is bright but unashamedly daggy and the particularly ‘chav’ style of Poppy’s sister never failed to have me chuckling, all of which added great personality to the script.

What was possibly the most interesting part of the film was the challenge it presented: how do people respond to someone who is truly happy? The response, by its nature, says a lot about the characters, and perhaps our own, relationship to happiness. There are a few moments in the film, Poppy’s encounter with a homeless man and a physiotherapist, which when coupled with her innocent attitude, really made me quite tense. I was waiting for the moment when everything was going to go wrong, the moment when optimism and friendliness wasn’t enough to offset the dangers of chance or the attitudes of others. Like the eventual trajectory of her relationship with her driving instructor, it was just a matter of waiting for the world to propel a come-down. This is a tension that is central to the plot, the threat that the elusive nature of happiness can present to those without; but the sense of waiting for trouble was aspect that was very personally amplified.

MIFF 2008 (Honeydripper)

HONEYDRIPPER, John Sayles, 2007

A simple charmer of a deep south gin house on the rocks. Mostly it sidesteps the possible insensitivities of mainsream cinema’s stylistic whitewash of what is, for all intents, still a race film. While these issues are given a place in the narrative, and are reconfirmed by the necessary clichés that imagine the America of the South such as the gospel church, the cotton pickers and the corrupt white law, they were de-emphasized and subsumed as the backdrop to the story of a man who has hit on hard times.

Tyrone (Danny Glover) runs Honeydrippers, an outskirts night spot for the local black community with a dated commitment to an aging Blues music culture that is losing patrons to another local juke-joint. Their customers are attracted by the vital sounds of the music played from the box, while Tyrone’s live music is going largely unheard. When he attempts to power up his own juke, he finds himself in for the shock and blackout of bad wiring. Electrification as a double for progress, as a potential for deception, and the bringing of a more personal light continues through the film, and the decaying state of Honeydrippers merely mimics his inner psychic state. As with most dramas, the transformation of space becomes the transformation of self.

Tyrone’s daughter China Doll (Yaya DaCosta) was well turned out as an attractive waif with big dreams, Maceo (Charles S. Dutton) was a far more charamatic business partner than Glover and I was more than a little pleased to see child-star Kel Mitchell (Nickelodeon ingénue of 1997s surreal Good Burger) looking as sweet as ever up on screen in a supporting role. There is a collection of excellent stills from the film on John Sayles flickr.





While the film rollicks along in a fairly unchallenging way, its appeal lies in its time and place, the evolution of a musical counter culture in America across the middle of the twentieth century. The audience is treated to the contrast of a number of typical musical renditions of the period, from the piano and performer traditions of Jazz and Blues, the vocal assemblies of gospel worship, as well as the percussive rhythms of electrified guitar and the coming of rock and roll. While none of the music in the film is particularly outstanding they are all musical genres that give me great pleasure to see historicized.

While it was an enjoyable watch for me, some far more transcendent renditions of these styles spring easily to mind.

The breathtaking sound of Mahalia Jackson accompanying to a funeral procession in Douglas Sirk’s Imitation of Life was one of my first introductions to what I would call true gospel singing. It began a long love affair not only with the genre, but also with its arguable master, Mahalia herself. It never fails to make me well up in tears.



I had the pleasure of walking into this scene in The Color Purple as a midday movie not to long ago. I had remembered the movie from along time before as somehow uncomfortable (which still found true for different reasons), but enjoyed it overall far more than I expected. This scene really drew me in not only with the amazing vocals of Shug Avery (Margaret Avery), who has something close to the effortless appeal of Erykah Badu’s best tracks, and the glamour-poverty fusion of space and costuming.

MIFF 2008 (The Drummer, Redacted)

*extra extra, newborn blog suffers as author struck with RSI...*

So, as one does, ihave been spending a little bit of time at MIFF over the weekend. I feel remarkably spoilt to be able to go to the cinema so often. The whole experience is definitely aided by dwelling near the city.

Thus far:

THE DRUMMER, Kenneth Bi, 2007
This definitely falls into the category of a beautiful film, with on the money pathos and a few quite transcendent scenes delivered by Bi.

The central character Sid, played by Jaycee Chan offspring of the preeminent Jackie, was the mobile pivot between the visual city/nature and thematic social/zen-individual dichotomy that is often typical of spiritual quest films. Here, Sid escapes from the troubles of having a gangster father, played by Tony Leung who was visually commanding though crafted unsympathetically in the script, and while in exile finds himself compelled to journey towards sounds in the mountains. Here he finds and joins a zen drumming group, their lessons and their drums helping him find his inner heart beat and self. A quintessential love plot was included without being a cloying addition to what is essentially is Sid's enlightened coming of age.

The visually commanding drumming sequences (which were placed somewhere between meditative or martial arts performance) would have been all the more compelling with a better sound mix. Both the soundtrack and the general sound quality were given a disappointing lack of emphasis considering the centrality of the transformative potentials of sound in the plot. Besides this small point, these dance like performances were the highlight of the film. They were as much about bodies as they were sound. Bi's interpretation of these bodies in movement and bodies as personality was right on the money.


REDACTED, Brian De Palma, 2007
I love De Palma, which is what attracted me to this film, unfortunately it was utterly problematic. While I was willing to allow that a film on the brutalities of the Iraq war wasn't likely to include a dose of his quintessential camping and excess, I don't feel like it offered any substantial substitute.

The film making felt uncomfortable and confused - which clearly was the point entirely of a film questioning the representational and narrative making processes surrounding the depiction of the Iraq conflict. But as an approach, I'm not sure that it worked. I felt antagonized as an spectator, rather than productively challenged, which made his polemic and its stylistic accompaniments difficult to swallow.

The proto-documentary style, which often slipped into artifice and tableau, made the 'realism' of a digital handheld camera seem just as constructed. Unfortunately it was also unwieldy to the point of vertiginous. The constant multiplication of narrators, occasional propaganda infusion, unfortunate actors, and random inclusion of war casualties in a tone of schlock-horror made it all the more noisy. Too much content, too much visual and thematic noise, meant that the politic was unheard, the atrocity from which it took its plot still ignored.



I also managed to catch HONEYDRIPPER, which I enjoyed alot and which you will surely hear my opinion of shortly :)

Introductions

As this girl sits contemplating when the MIFF catalogue will come online, or whether or not I will have to actually buy a copy of The Age to find it, alongside wondering how it is possible that I am developing a wrinkle on my nose, it seems an appropriately time (between the cinematic and the shallow) to introduce myself to my will-be readers.

Im a 23 year old mademoiselle from Melbourne who somehow finds that her life revolves around screens. Partly the result of the character flaw of complete occularcentrism (or ooooh-shiny-syndrome-x) and the fact that apparently my definition of hedonism is to stay at university indulging this trait as long as possible. Hello, why yes that is MA in cinema that traps me indoors like a house cat.

As a result I watch alot of films, television and surrounding internet paraphenalia. To offset this constant consumption I thought it was about time to produce something from it. Something readable as opposed to my many academic titles that go underground, apparently to Sweden.

I always say that my favorite film is the spaghetti classic The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, because every inch of the three hour celluloid makes me grin. Sometimes I wonder if it is just that the Ennio Morricone's opening theme really just sets me up joyously for everything that follows. I also really enjoy the stylization of the titles. Listen loud:



But I wonder that, shamefully, if I haven't watched this gem in at least two years can it really be the one?

I really think that the Leone classic is slowly being eclipsed (though its hanging on for the love of the Clint-poncho) by the magnificent Agnes Varda's Cleo from 5 to 7. Cleo is one of those films that just speaks straight to my heart and the films own obsession with mirrors just doubles how much of myself that I see in Cleo. I had the chance to get really intimate with it while writing my honors thesis and is now a rainy Sunday morning type of classic: comforting, inspiring and lyrical.
The beauty and vulnerability of Corinne Marchand is, for me, what really anchors the film. Apart from the delicious Parisian outfits, she really captures me with her movement and a gaze of quite etherial longing - always reaching up, up, up.

Mirror, mirror on the wall... Varda's amazing depth of frame

A surprisingly acrobatic apartment and angelic protagonist.

Surely, Cleo as a singer with a beautiful white apartment filled with kittens, sets off some deep longing for my life (given that decorating my abode in less that minimal chic, singing along to anything with a melody and petting fluffy animals are my main hobbies).

xoxo - gala hallelujah