Mully Blog

Under discussion:

My Summer of Love  (2004)

7/10

Dark Romance

In a small town in West-Yorkshire a young girl named Mona lives above a former pub. She never knew her father, her mother’s dead and she’s increasingly estranged from her brother Phil, who was recently released from prison where he found God and who now devotes his life to praise and conversion. One day she meets Tamsin, a beautiful upper-class girl who spends the summer there. Tamsin feels abandoned by her parents, as her mother is mostly away and her father is cheating with his secretary. Both girls find an escape from their miserable lives with each other and fall in love, but while Mona thinks their love will last forever, Tamsin knows all too well the summer will soon end, and the cruel mindgames she plays with Mona might just turn against her.

My Summer of Love, written and directed by Pawel Pawlikowski, is a beautiful and touching story of the love between two girls set against a bleak background. There is a permanent ominous mood (helped by a great score by Goldfrapp) which lingers throughout the film and promises things won’t end well. The romance is constantly broken up by intense (even creepy) scenes of Phil’s born-again christian group or Tamsin’s morbid fascination with her dead sister. When the girls promise each other they will kill the other if she ever leaves her, we wonder how seriously either of the girls take this.

Director Pawlikowski previously made a documentary about born-again christians in Yorkshire, and his documentary background shows in the film’s handheld shooting style and the cinema vérité-like scenes involving the born-again christian group. However, Pawlikowski is no social realist like Ken Loach and the social situations form mostly a backdrop to the girls’ relationship.

This is the second time I’ve seen My Summer of Love and I still like the movie as much as the first time. I particularly like its pacing and build-up, which is almost mysterious and spellbinding, and the performances from the three leads. Especially Natalie Press and Emily Blunt evoke great emotion as Mona and Tamsin. My Summer of Love is a moody, intriguing and sexy film that is definitely worth a watch.

Under discussion:

The Fountain  (2006)

8/10

A Timeless Odyssey

I absolutely adore Darren Aronofsky’s previous film Requiem for a Dream. I think it is an absolute masterpiece of filmmaking and ever since I saw it I have been anxiously awaiting Aronosky’s follow-up. In a way I’m afraid my expectations have gotten so high over the past 6 years that no movie on earth could ever reach them and I couldn’t help feeling slightly disappointed by The Fountain as I finally sat down and let the experience wash over me. Notice I used the word ‘experience’, which I think is the best way to describe this film, just as it is for Requiem for a Dream. When I saw Requiem I was flabbergasted at how a piece of celluloid was able to literally punch you in the stomach and make you want to turn your whole life around. The emotional attachment that movie built up between itself and the spectator is one of the strongest any movie has ever achieved I think. And it was exactly that emotional attachment that I felt mostly lacking in The Fountain, which is predominantly an intellectual and visual experience.

The Fountain is a very estranging film and Aronofsky goes to great lengths to make it as estranging as possible. Most of the movie is filmed in right angles : straight in front, behind, above or beside the characters. This is the same technique Wes Anderson employs for comedic effect. Aronofsky uses it to estrange us, to prevent us from being sucked into the diegesis of the story with this style that draws attention to itself. In the contemporary storyline, which is the emotional centre of the film, he luckily uses this right angle technique very little.

Hugh Jackman delivers a powerful performance as the lead in three different time periods. Watching him is almost worth the price of admission on its own. As are the special effects, which are truly unique (Aronofsky did not use CGI, but employed microphotography of chemical reactions to obtain many of the film’s imagery) and absolutely have to be witnessed on the big screen.

The Fountain is truly a marvel, but I can’t be entirely positive about it. The film lasts for 90 minutes and during its first hour I was intrigued, but not overwhelmed. 2001: A Space Odyssey is one of my all time favorite films, because even though it establishes no emotional connection to the viewer whatsoever, and offers a little interesting storyline, watching the film has the same affect some works of art can have : that of sublimity, of being taken over by danger, grandness, overwhelming beauty or overwhelming ugliness. The Fountain in its first hour has a relatively meagre plotline and just a few scenes that work on an emotional level, and I basically just went through the motions, enjoying the ride overall. There is only one word to describe the last half hour though and that is ‘sublime’. You may not always know what is going on, but you know that it’s overwhelmingly perfect and you wouldn’t want to be anywhere else but in that movie theater, and that’s so goddamn rare.

Under discussion:

Pan's Labyrinth  (2006)

Horribly beautiful fairy tale for grown-ups

9/10

With Pan’s Labyrinth, Mexican director Guillermo del Toro for the first time since 2001’s The Devil’s Backbone returns to his Spanish language roots. Just like that film, Pan’s Labyrinth takes place in both the harsh reality of the Franco dictatorship as in the magical world of imagination.

In 1944 the young girl Ofelia moves with her pregnant mother to a rural area of northern Spain to live with her new stepfather, the merciless fascist captain Vidal (a very impressive Sergi López, who excels at playing creepy characters as he did in 'Dirty Pretty Things' and 'Harry, un ami qui vous veut du bien'). Vidal however only cares for his unborn son and considers Ofelia and her mother to be no more than a necessary evil.

One night, Ofelia is awoken by a fairy that leads her to the faun Pan. He tells Ofelia that she probably is the princess whose return her kingdom has been awaiting for centuries and he subjects her to three tests in which she has to prove her true identity. Meanwhile captain Vidal has his hands full with the rebels that are hiding in the surrounding mountains and who appear to be aided by someone on the inside.

Guillermo del Toro, who also wrote the screenplay, makes a film with Pan’s Labyrinth that is both Schindler’s List and Alice in Wonderland at the same time. The Schindler’s List element can certainly not be underestimated, as what might at first glance appear to be a Tim Burtonesque visual fairy tale, contains on more than one occasion brutally horrific imagery, and the war story is so dominant the Alice in Wonderland storyline becomes almost circumstantial. If anyone was planning on taking the little ones to this film consider yourself warned for weeks of nightmares and wetting the bed. The R rating is definitely a deserved one. However, Pan’s Labyrinth is also an incredibly beautiful and moving film and much of the credit here has to go to the cinematography and the set, costume and make-up designers who created a unique, visually rich film world of magic and imagination. The real hero however remains Guillermo del Toro, who has repeatedly proven himself to be the most visionary horror director of his generation. Pan’s Labyrinth is without a doubt his masterpiece.
The mixture of the harsh and brutal reality of war and the total fantasy of the magical realm of imagination may sound strange, but when dealing with fascism it might be the only one that makes sense.