My Son The Fanatic (1997)

As I’ve written before, while I love Hanif Kureishi’s ferocious intelligence, I’ve always found it hard to recognise his vision of London. So, My Son The Fanatic, which is set in Bradford, offers an interesting chance to view his work in another context.

Adapted by Kureishi from his own short story, the script tells the tale of Parvez (Om Puri), a Pakistani taxi-driver in the city. At the start of the film, he is thrilled that his son Farid (Akbar Kurtha) is assimilating into British culture to the extent that he’s engaged to the daughter of a senior police officer.

However, his life starts to unravel through two strands of action that highlight the gap between his native culture and that of his adopted country. Firstly, Farid calls off the engagement and becomes entranced by Muslim fundamentalism. Secondly, Parvez begins to develop a relationship with Bettina (Rachel Griffiths), a local prostitute who is one of his regular fares.

The film is Puri’s, for his moving portrayal of the compassionate Parvez, but it’s a lot less successful in explaining how his son becomes radicalised. However, the image of Farid and his three friends walking away near the end, complete with backpack, was oddly prescient of the 7 July bombings.

Parvez and Bettina embark on a physical relationship that scuppers his already poor standing in the community and finally drives away his wife and son. He’s alone at the end of the film, but enjoying the freedom represented by the whisky and blues music that were previously restricted to his basement den.

In addition, despite everything that’s happened, he’s achieved dignity and a level of redemption by dumping the degenerate German businessman (Stellan Skarsgard) who hired him to procure girls for sex parties.

The script operates on a more domestic level than some of Kureishi’s other work, and particularly succeeds in playing out political, religious and social tensions through personal relationships. It also provides a compelling portrait of an immigrant who’s pulled in two directions by the duties and pleasures of his native and adopted cultures.

BFI screenonline: detailed synopsis and analysis

The Execution of Gary Glitter, C4

Here's a review what I wrote for Orange of last night's slightly odd drama The Execution of Gary Glitter.

Paedophilia and the death sentence are two subjects that people generally have pretty strong views about. So how did this oddly conceived dramatised imagining of the fictional execution of Paul Francis Gadd (aka Gary Glitter) turn out so utterly unengaging?

For a start, the format of the programme was a bit of a mish-mash. Emphatic title cards told us that “THIS IS A WORK OF FICTION” and “WE ARE IN AN IMAGINARY BRITAIN” where the death penalty was re-introduced after the Soham murders of 2003. However, it then became a mix of conventional drama and documentary-style interviews with the characters involved in the case.

It got even weirder when politician Ann Widdecombe, journalist Miranda Sawyer and media rent-a-gob Garry Bushell turned up to add their tuppenceworth. It only became clear later that they were playing fictional versions of themselves, commenting on the action depicted in the drama.

Hilton McRae gave a suitably creepy performance as the devious and manipulative sex offender, but there was very little suspense as the film trudged through the legal proceedings leading to his execution for child abuse in Vietnam. In fact, the first bit of tension came 10 minutes from the end of the 90-minute film, when it seemed like the Home Secretary might offer him a reprieve.

Presumably the programme was designed to spark Heated Debate over the rights and wrongs of the death penalty. However, the “members of the public” who popped up to offer both sides of the argument were totally unconvincing; one was even given the immortal line, “If you don't like it, go and live somewhere else”.

The drama culminated in a bizarre sequence on the day of Gadd's execution, when the condemned popster freaked out after hearing a remix of 'Leader of the Gang' that included samples from his court room evidence. After he smashed the radio, he was taken to the gallows and hanged. Everyone went home again. The end.

There's obviously compelling drama to be drawn from the debate over the death penalty, how we should deal with paedophiles and the effect celebrity can have on society. However, The Execution of Gary Glitter seemed to miss the target completely and turn such emotive subjects into something surprisingly bland.

The Bad and the Beautiful (1952)

(We've come to a decision here at Oompah Central. I enjoy the critical exercise of blogging, but my working routines are changing, so I'm going to have to squeeze the amount of time I spend on it. So, from here on, I'm going to try and keep my posts to a 300-word limit.)

We saw The Bad and The Beautiful the other night, as part of the 'Passport to Cinema' series, run by the BFI and NFTS. Written by Charles Schnee (who won the Oscar for Best Screenplay) and directed by Vincente Minelli, it's a portrait of Jonathan Shields, a monstrous but charming Hollywood producer, played by Kirk Douglas.

It's got an interesting flashback structure, with Shields never appearing in 'real time'. A director (Barry Sullivan), film star (Lana Turner) and screenwriter (Dick Powell) are summoned to the office of Shields' assistant and offered the opportunity to work with him again. Then, each of them recalls their experiences at his hands that made them swear never to go near him again.

However, Shields is a complex character. Despite his selfish deeds, it's clear that he's a man of considerable ability and charm - not quite the typically monstrous blowhard you might expect.

Ironically, his ruthlessness made their various collaborations successful and paved the way for all three to enjoy future prosperity. As the film ends, it's clear that he retains sufficient charisma for the trio to find themselves being drawn in to his proposed project.

I'd never heard of the film before seeing it in the BFI brochure, but it's an entertaining look at the dark side of Hollywood, with quite a bit of edge. And any film with a screenwriter as one of the main characters has got to be worth a look.

So how'd I do... 241 words! Welcome to the Golden Age of Brevity!

Links
Analysis and detailed synopsis (FilmSite)
Trailer (Spike - after a Family Guy ad)

Attention screenwriters - help needed on feasibility issue!

So, here’s the problem:

In the script I’m working on, I’m trying to misdirect the audience regarding the gender of an as-yet-unseen character.

Do you reckon it’s feasible to show a hand-written note from the character without the writing giving away that they're male and not – as I’m trying to lead the audience to believe – female?

Maybe I’m worrying too much, but I just reckon you can normally tell someone’s gender by their handwriting. Any thoughts gratefully received.

Thanks in advance!

Speaking in Tongues, Duke of York Theatre

In between this week's LFF screenings, we've also managed to see Speaking in Tongues, the award-winning play by Andrew Bovell that he later adapted and directed as the acclaimed film Lantana.

The play is a complex but beautifully engineered piece that pushes poor oul' Aristotle and his dramatic unities out of the window. Instead, it creates a non-linear and overlapping mosaic of scenes involving a group of people who are diversely linked to the disappearance of a female psychoanalyst after her car broke down in a remote area.

Its complexity becomes immediately apparent in the opening scene, where two couples, planning infidelity, occupy the set simultaneously. Separate but sharing the same location, their dialogue matches and overlaps as their encounters come to contrary conclusions.

The formal experimentation becomes more pronounced in the second part of the play. There are four characters on stage, each in a different time and place and each delivering a monologue that reflects and interlocks with what the others are saying.

Despite this complexity (heightened by each of the cast playing more than one character), Bovell and director Toby Frow never lose control of the narrative. And the audience is rewarded for its concentration as it pieces together the web of connections between the characters.

However, it's not all about the fractured narrative. The excellent cast (John Simm, Lucy Cohu, Ian Hart and Kerry Fox) create a series of characters and relationships characterised by secrecy, misunderstanding, betrayal and suspicion.

The play's due to run until 12 December, but if you can't make it to London, I'd recommend anyone with an interest in non-conventional dramatic structure to try and get hold of the play text.

Interview with Andrew Bovell

The programme included an interesting interview with the playwright by Elaine Peake. Here are a few of the most relevant bits:

You've said that the play came from a single image of a woman's car breaking down late at night. How did the themes, structure and characters develop from that?

The play had a number of starting points: the glimpse of a woman's shoe discarded at the side of the road, a man writing a letter to an ex-lover, a series of messages left on an answering machine, a middle-aged man breaking down and weeping, a pair of brown brogues left at the edge of the water and so on.

From each image or moment witnessed, a story began to unfold, and slowly connections between them began to emerge. Each of these stories seemed to be about love and loss, with the possibility of something untoward having taken place.

In the play, a series of mysteries emerge, each of which acts as a catalyst for the witness to reflect back on their own life. As these stories are told and retold, the play becomes like a series of concentric circles reverberating out from the centre... the classic stone dropped into a still pond.

The structure of the play is quite complex. Did this mean it was difficult to write?

Yes. But is it easy to write any play? The chronology of this play is complex and the management of time between the three parts was a mental minefield. But the things that made it difficult were also the things that made it so interesting to write. I remember feeling a sense of revelation and satisfaction when disparate and unconnected moments fell into place and reflected each other in interesting ways. It's strange... I don't like doing puzzles, but I seem to like creating them.

There's also a very filmic quality to the play. What genre do you consider Speaking in Tongues to be in?

People say it's filmic, but I've never seen a film like Speaking in Tongues. I think it's very theatrical and does what the theatre does really well, the manipulation of time, repetition, juxtaposition, lateral and backward movement of narrative. In terms of genre... well, it's a drama but it is drawing on some noir elements and elements of mystery... the motel rooms, the bars, infidelity, a missing woman, a detective trying to find the answers, but it's also about some pretty poignant and ordinary moments.

You've said, "Writing for me is an organic process where I respond to the impetus of the moment rather than any grand design".

I'm actually a hell of a control freak and I plan on a minute level. Maybe I meant I don't begin with a grand theme or idea. I discover that along the way.

You adapted the play into a film, Lantana. How did you conceive this and how did you translate the language of a play to the film. Did you find this changed your perception of your original play?

That's a huge question. The process of adaptation was complex and extensive. Given that it was my own work, I felt quite free to change things. In fact I needed to change certain elements to make it interesting for myself. And of course the film allowed me to work on a broader canvas. In the end it's more a retelling than an adaptation. And the play exists in its own right... as a separate piece of work.

Three Days With the Family/Tres Dies Amb La Familia (London Film Festival)

If you’d expect a Spanish (or, more accurately, Catalan) family drama to be full of overwrought passion, you might be pleasantly surprised by Three Days With the Family. Mar Coll’s confident debut film as director and co-writer (with her friend Valentina Viso) shows that middle-class repression and the fear of intimacy are not restricted to stiff-upper-lip Brits.

The film follows directionless student Lea (Nausicaa Bonnin) as she returns to Catalonia for the funeral of her grandfather. She’s approaching a turning point in her life; having failed her exams, she is half-heartedly planning to abandon her ambition of becoming an aeronautical engineer to help her selfish boyfriend open an ambitious bar and cultural centre.

As she gathers with her parents, uncles, aunt and cousins, there are other issues waiting to be addressed. It soon becomes apparent that her bourgeois patriarchal family runs on hypocrisy and the need to keep up appearances rather than warmth or intimacy.

For instance, Lea’s parents have been separated for two years, but her father Josep Maria (Eduard Fernandez) has been unable to let the rest of the family know. Meanwhile, her aunt Virginia (Amalia Sancho) has been virtually banished from the family after writing a successful autobiographical novel that painted an unflattering picture of her lawyer father.

The sparse script vividly depicts the empty gestures that replace genuine emotion among the family; whenever awkward subjects threaten to surface, the need to maintain a respectable front takes over. There are no overblown dramatic moments, but the small psychological transitions and shifts depicted prove very powerful within the low-key naturalistic setting.

Indeed, one of the film’s main strengths is its strongly naturalistic – almost documentary – style. It’s shot in what looks like natural light throughout, and the only music used is the opera that Josep Maria constantly uses to fill the awkward silences. One of the film’s key moments comes when Lea turns off the CD and insists on talking to her father about how she feels.

The naturalistic tone continues to the closing sequence, in which the credits appear silently as the gathered family watch a cemetery worker cement the patriarch into his tomb. We've seen hope for the future among the youngest generation of the family, and the closing image beautifully symbolises the shift taking place.

The film has already won a number of awards at Spanish festivals, but I don’t know how much of a release it’ll get over here; this was its first screening outside Spain. However, it’s a beautifully measured and subtle piece of work that smacks of absolute truth and honesty in its depiction of family relationships. It’s well worth keeping an eye out for.

Bunny and the Bull (London Film Festival)

Another LFF film we just managed to get tickets for was Bunny and the Bull. This is also a debut feature, written and directed by Paul King, who directed The Mighty Boosh on TV.

While Paul was keen to stress that this isn't a Mighty Boosh film, it's no surprise that Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding have parts in the film, and they were both out to support it at the screening.

As you'd expect, it offers a fairly skewiff look at the world. Obsessive agoraphobic Stephen (Edward Hogg) hasn't left his flat for a year, and looks back at the events during a disastrous European tour with his wayward friend Bunny (Simon Farnaby) that left him unable to face the world.

Although it raises a few chuckles, the script is a bit slight; King admitted that a fair bit was improvised and was keen to highlight the input of script editor Richard Ayoade (who also appears briefly). However, the film is a riot of visual invention. As Stephen recalls earlier events, they become re-enacted in his flat, incorporating the various bits and pieces we've seen lying around.

The film owes a significant debt to Michel Gondry's mesmerising The Science of Sleep, but the lo-fi blend of animation, imaginative design and live action is totally charming and beautifully executed. And although it's not that easy to get emotionally involved with the characters, the conclusion of the film is surprisingly poignant.

Bunny and the Bull has been nominated for this year's Sutherland Trophy (awarded to the most original and imaginative first feature) and goes on general release on 27 November. It's well worth supporting, even if you're not a big fan of the Boosh.

Bunny and the Bull (Warp X)
LFF Videoblogisode (ahem): Bunny and the Bull Special Edition