Family Romance, LLC (2019)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Family Romance, LLC (2019) – W. Herzog

When a student from his “Rogue Film School” told Herzog about his idea for a film based on the real Japanese company “Family Romance” which loans out trained actors to play the part of family members at various occasions, the famed director promptly decided to make the film himself. Moreover, he also served as his own director of photography, using a handheld 4K digital camera and shooting on location (and sometimes guerrilla style).  He claims that this got him back in the spirit of his early innovative films (such as Aguirre, the Wrath of God).  Perhaps, however, the real link to his oeuvre (which always blended fiction with reality) was the decision to cast the real owner of Family Romance (Yuichi Ishii) as his lead actor (playing himself) and to write the screenplay, based in part on Ishii’s business anecdotes and in part on his own fascination with Japan and more generally with the way that humans play roles in all aspects of their lives, blending “truth” or authenticity with lies (often white lies) and play-acting, for the benefit of relationships and others’ feelings. The central story is about Ishii being paid to play the role of a missing father to a young 12-year-old girl (Mahiro).  He tells her he has been away since the divorce but now wants to be a part of her life.  The mother gives Ishii enough background in order to play the role convincingly.  However, tension arises for Ishii as the girl opens up to him and starts to form a real bond.  He starts to imagine various ways that the relationship will have to end when the contract is up.  We also see various other assignments for Ishii and his company that allow Herzog to indulge his various interests (in a robot hotel or the making of a viral video celebrity). Indeed, one of the flaws of the film is that Herzog tends to impose himself on the project (albeit without his distinctive voiceover) rather than let the players speak for themselves. Perhaps we would have learned more from Ishii himself than from the words put in his mouth by Werner. The script itself doesn’t quite congeal as much as I would have hoped either. Nevertheless, the film did manage to tantalise this viewer by raising questions about fiction vs. reality, the accountant’s truth vs. ecstatic truth (see Herzog on Herzog), a Goffmanian dramaturgical perspective on self-presentation (“all the world’s a stage”), socialisation and relationships (how we learn to act from “role” models), etc. At the end, perhaps we may also wonder, alongside Ishii, whether anyone is really authentic, including our real family members!   

 

The Vast of Night (2019)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

The Vast of Night (2019) – A. Patterson

We are in the midst of an Amazon Prime (Australia) free trial and I have been searching for anything that looks decent (that I haven’t already seen).  This sci-fi flick set in the 1950s came recommended by various websites.  I suppose it does find ways to refresh a tired old premise (the sighting of UFOs in New Mexico) by more closely following the activities of the two lead characters: Fay (Sierra McCormick), the telephone switchboard operator in the small town, and Everett (Jake Horowitz), the local radio station’s evening DJ.  After hearing reports of strange electronic sounds and various sightings in the night sky, they ask listeners to call in to the radio show if they know anything.  A former military officer tells a strange tale (although not too strange to anyone who has heard of Area 51) and an shut-in old lady invites them to her house to reveal even more weirdness (possible abductions).  The whole film is packaged as a pseudo-Twilight Zone episode, which ends with the unexpected (or not) twist.  All said and done, this is diverting enough (mostly because we get to see life in the ‘50s in more detail than usual) but based on too many cliches of the genre to make it truly interesting (unless perhaps you are new to said genre).

  

Hollow Triumph (1948)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Hollow Triumph (1948) – S. Sekely/P. Henreid

A.K.A. The Scar.  Paul Henreid is a gangster just out of jail who decides to rob a notorious gambling den but things go awry.  He goes into hiding to avoid the hitmen after him and happens to run into his exact double, a psychoanalyst with a thriving practice.  Having studied psychology himself, Henreid plots to kill the doctor and take his place (approaching his secretary Joan Bennett in order to glean personal info about his double, he winds up falling in love). The only difference between Henreid and the psychologist (also played by Henreid) is that the latter has a pronounced facial scar on his left cheek.  Unfortunately, when Henreid cuts himself to reproduce the scar, he accidentally chooses the wrong cheek – but no one notices (or do they?).  The suspense is built and, in Hitchcock-like fashion, we find ourselves barracking for the bad guy. But this being film noir, it can’t possibly work out and the ending is deliciously ironic.  Although Paul Henreid apparently took over direction of the film himself, the real highlight here is John Alton’s shadowy cinematography – characters are shown starkly surrounded by pitch black darkness more often than not. Above average noir, not least because of its weird plot. Worth seeking out (I found it on youtube).

 

Imagine the Sound (1981)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Imagine the Sound (1981) – R. Mann

If you like free jazz, then this one is for you.  It isn’t your typical talking head doco but instead full of complete performances interspersed with brief Q&A sessions with the players (who offer some deep and intriguing bits of wisdom).  Of course, the quality of any investigation such as this depends on the players.  Here, director Ron Mann was able to obtain participation by pianist Cecil Taylor, saxophonist Archie Shepp, pianist Paul Bley, and trumpeter Bill Dixon (sadly they do not play together). They are no slouches for sure but of course we feel the pain of the absence of several major figures of the movement: Coltrane (dead), Ayler (dead), Dolphy (dead), Coleman (alive at the time), Don Cherry (alive at the time), Alice Coltrane (alive at the time) and Sun Ra (alive at the time). The list could go on.  The four featured players skew the film in a certain direction (more abstract and intellectual, less spiritual and emotional perhaps).  Ornette Coleman featured in his own documentary by Shirley Clarke a few years later.  In the end, Taylor offers the most intriguing performances and Shepp and Bley have the sharpest insights.

 

The Shout (1978)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

The Shout (1978) – J. Skolimowski

Cryptic, in the way that most films that seek to portray the more mystical aspects of Aboriginal culture seem to be.  Jerzy Skolimowski’s third British feature (after Deep End, 1970, and a failed Nabokov attempt) starts with a framing device – a cricket match at a mental hospital where Alan Bates recounts a fanciful tale to Tim Curry while they are keeping score.  As it turns out, Bates is a trickster figure in his own story where John Hurt and Susannah York play the protagonists, a couple living in a rural oceanside village who seem to be enjoying an idyllic lifestyle (aside from the fact that Hurt may be cheating).  Bates shows up after a church service (Hurt, an avant-garde composer, is the organist) and engages the unwilling Hurt in meta-physical discussion, subsequently following him home.  It turns out that Bates spent 18 years in an Indigenous community in the Outback (Australia) and has learned some spiritual magic, including how to release a shout that will kill all living things in a several km radius.  He carries a number of bones with him (and may use them to inflict punishment on his enemies) and he possesses the power to usurp another man’s wife (in this case, York).  As with Peter Weir’s films that engage with this culture (Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Last Wave), viewers may feel that there are ellipses in the story – something is elusive, a key to the mystery that occurs outside of what we see on the screen.  Here, Hurt does manage to vanquish Bates by smashing a rock – but the return to the framing story leaves things open-ended (Was Bates determined to be mentally ill and is he really? Is the story true? Has Aboriginal magic been used against him in the end? What the hell has happened in the end?). 

  

Mona Lisa (1986)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Mona Lisa (1986) – N. Jordan

Bob Hoskins plays George, just released from prison (and quite a few steps lower on the gang ladder than his Harold Shand from The Long Good Friday, 1980), and in need of work.  His old boss, Michael Caine, arranges for him to drive a high-class call girl, Simone (Cathy Tyson), on her dates in fancy hotels.  He’s too rough and Cockney but she buys him clothes to make him more respectable (basically an impossible goal). Although his wife has basically shut the door in his face, George manages to reconnect with his teenage daughter who he is sad to discover is the same age as some of the streetwalkers he sees on his nightly rounds with Simone. As a result, he wants to help them because he’s a good egg, after all.  But it’s so Eighties, right down to the Genesis/Phil Collins-soundtracked montage (“In Too Deep”) in the middle.  Eventually Simone trusts him enough to ask him to find her missing friend, Cathy, another young prostitute who has been beaten and subjugated by Simone’s old pimp, Anderson.  By this time, George is in love – and the film noir themes come to the forefront and carry us to the film’s violent conclusion.  Director Neil Jordan went on to greater fame with The Crying Game (1992) and Interview with the Vampire (1994).   

 

My Favorite Wife (1940)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

My Favorite Wife (1940) – G. Kanin

Reunion of the leads from Leo McCarey’s wonderful The Awful Truth (1937) although this time directed by Garson Kanin.  In the previous screwball comedy, Cary Grant and Irene Dunne agreed to divorce but gradually realised they still loved each other (after they have other partners in tow, of course). Here, playing different characters, Grant remarries after Dunne is apparently lost at sea – when she returns, on the afternoon of the wedding (to Gail Patrick), Grant finds himself wanting to (having to?) get out of his new marriage. That is, until he discovers that Dunne wasn’t shipwrecked alone for seven years but instead had hunky Randolph Scott for company (in his pre-Western days). Of course, Dunne and Grant are really in love and Scott and Patrick are doomed to lose out.  Thus, it’s a similar funny premise and dynamic – but somehow things don’t catch fire as they did in the first film.  Instead, Grant seems to be underplaying a bit too much in contrast to Dunne’s warmer glow; the pace also feels too slow for screwball (although perhaps the laughs are supposed to creep up on you).  At any rate, it’s a notch below the best of the genre.  If you haven’t seen The Awful Truth, by all means watch that first!