'Les Fameux Gars'

Chicken in the classroom, a stolen hot-air balloon, a makeshift Stephen Hawkins, wieners in a gun belt and some VIP's, very important português: you better hold on tight, because here comes the cinematic ride of the year. 

Adolf El Assal's Les Fameux Gars follows the adventure of three friends who embark on a school-trip to Portugal. When their friend Guy Désirée is barred from the school-trip on account of never having handed in one single paper, Stephen and his friends attempt to stage a sort of protest, which includes Stephen going on Léa Linster's cooking-show to make crèpes, in order to get permission for Guy Désirée to come along. Naturally, all fails and their friend must stay at home. Guy Désirée, on the other hand, has an enormous crush on their young teacher Miss Meyer (played by the fabulous Caty Baccega) and hires a shady private investigator to keep an eye on her, all the while planning on driving to Portugal himself.

In Portugal, and it must be said that this country seems to resemble Luxembourg in an almost uncanny way, things go from weird to absolutely absurd, as Stephen seems to carry 26 million Euros in his luggage, a teacher is shot with a rubber arrow, a building explodes in the most random fashion, a cat-and-mouse game with the police ensues and the friends steal a hot-air balloon only to plunge into a dream-like voyage which contains a less than subtle nod towards Méliès.

The plot contains more holes than a Swiss cheese. Clearly devised in a pub after several pints, the sequential build-up is of the most random nature and you can just imagine the writers having fun and shouting: 'Yeah, and you know what? Then they should steal a balloon and go on a Portuguese game-show...in a chicken suit!' Here's the thing about Les Famuex Gars, though: It shouldn't work, yet, it inexplicably does! 

What firmly holds this tapestry of absurdities together is the joyful hilarity of its genuinely funny moments. The tongue-in-cheek attitude towards its plot, its characters, the notion of national identity and last, but not least the self-reflexive awareness of film-making itself, infuse the film with a rare kind of raw energy, the likes of which Luxembourg cinema has not yet seen. The voice-over has the characters comment on their own actions on screen and take the piss out of each other. The film never pretends to be anything else than what it is, an accumulation of hilarious moments which, even if they make no sense whatsoever in an overall plot-related definition, nevertheless illustrate some truthful notions of what it means to live and be 'educated' in Luxembourg, Delvaux beware!

Some of the funniest instances present the characters imitating the pigeon French of the Luxembourger, the Portuguese and the African, all bound together in this language which none can claim as their own, thus symbolising the very life and cultural differences in the multiculturalism of Luxembourg life which a lot of its natives might choose to ignore. Even if the film does not preach tolerance and in fact stays away from all political statement, one might hope that the sheer absurd hilarity of it all might bring people from different cultural backgrounds closer, if only bound together in the hilarity of the frères Speck and '2 boule Mocca'.

Apart from presenting a crazed comedy of the nonsensical, Les Gars Fameux simultaneously works on a different level. Through its ironic and reflexive nods towards cinematic conventions, the film is out to show the middle-finger to the general stiffness of the filmic canon in Luxembourg and Europe in general. Through the introduction of cameos, such as Andy Bausch trying to steal El Assal's comedians and the aforementioned cinematic nod to Méliès, it almost seems as if this young film-maker allows us to see that he knows what he is doing, as if to show that he is aware of cinematic conventions and deliberately chooses to ignore them. This ironic filmic self-reflexivity culminates in the last scene, it might not quite be Truffaud's glance of the main protagonist towards the camera and by definition the audience, but it certainly brings awareness to the artificiality of story-telling and the comments of the characters about the film itself bring refusal to integrate the audience in a diegetic film-universe in which the illusion of the story must be maintained by all means. 

After the screening, one can imagine more than one spectator being a bit at a loss as to what to make of the film. Les Fameux Gars should and, indeed, must not be judged by conventional critical tools as, in the end, it is a hilariously absurd tour de force in which humour stands above all meaning and in this regard the film succeeds without a doubt!

'Carnage'

Polanski's latest release Carnage returns to themes, one cannot help but imagine being predominant in Polanski's mind, namely the themes of social confinement and an underlying brutality to a self-congratulatory notion of civility self-imposed by a modern society which proves itself to be more Hobbesian in nature than it would care to admit.

What starts as a somewhat stiff, but nevertheless polite settlement of a dispute of a children's fight, soon turns into a veritable battle of all against all. From the beginning the artificiality of civilization as a discourse is exposed over the petty quibble of the word 'armed' and the negative connotations it might involve. Things turn from bad to worse as the self-proclaimed liberal writer Penelope and her salesman husband Michael face the somewhat ritzier well-to-doers Nancy and Allen. Deliciously slow and with obvious glee, Polanski strips away layer after layer of his characters' personalities, a bit like evil onions, exposing a raw brutality inherent in this bourgeois way of life. As such, in this post-modern societal drama, culture is displayed in the form of coffee-table books, originality takes the form of adding pears to an apple cobbler and the ethically charged Gretchen-question reverts into a hamster-question as the unfortunate rodent is left to its own devices in the neighborhood of Brooklyn.

Hypocrisy rules the day and a breaking point is reached when Nancy has a very corporeal reaction to the Martha Stewart-like culinary efforts of Penelope. Throw in a bit of booze and some very phallic cigars and the bourgeois krakken is released. Between the four characters alliances are formed only to be broken and the viewer has the pleasure of seeing things degenerate from an 'we're all decent people' to a vehement 'Fuck you all'.

Carnage does at times feel fairly staged, being based on the play 'the god of carnage' by Yasmin Reza, however, the real time action and confinement to four walls only help to emphasize the claustrophobic set-up. The camera taking the point of view of a detached observer, almost like a perverse scientist dissecting the behavior of a species within its natural habitat. As such the camera becomes equivalent to the emotional tensions either isolating the characters in harsh close-ups smoothly binding them within the same frame. Even though masterfully done, one cannot help but feel that the smooth controlled cinematography stands in direct contrast to the depiction of carnage as a theme.

Being a character-study par excellence, Carnage's real asset lies in its performances as Foster plays Penelope with an up-tightness in which the strained veins on her forehead deserve at least as much acclaim as her acting skills, Reilly turns Michael from a loving parent into a raging Republican, Winslet plays Nancy with a beautiful shallowness which admittedly is literally turned inside out and Waltz delivers the best lines of the dialogue with a dry wit and honesty which are a delight to watch.

Ironically, Carnage has been acclaimed by exactly the middle-class bourgeois audience it exposes as fake. An audience which discusses the film in a civilized manner over a nice glass of Merlot and a bit of home-made hummus with fair-trade flat bread, all the while not realizing that it watched slightly distorted caricatures of itself for the last eighty minutes. All in all, while being hugely entertaining, the film ultimately presents half-developed truths while never bringing any theme to its conclusion. As such it presents nothing original, thus being a true product of the very thing it attacks, namely post-modern emptiness pervading all modern discourse. True Carnage this is not, an entertaining bicker for a pre-dinner audience more like it.

'The Ides of March'

George Clooney, as a director, clearly intends to follow in the footsteps of Robert Redford or Clint Eastwood, in terms of his politically engaged film-making, even though he neither possesses Redford's gritty commentary nor Eastwood's lavish aesthetics, yet, anyway.

Let's not put the cart in front of the horse, or the endorsement in front of the governor, or whatever the saying is. The Ides of March follows the young media genius Stephen Meyers as he works on the Pennsylvania governor's presidential campaign, the film is mainly set in Ohio whose polls could decide the potential outcome of the presidential preliminaries. He works under the experienced Paul Zara and contrary to the latter, Meyers has an almost naïve faith in the liberal democratic values of their charismatic candidate Mike Morris.

On the other side of this political ring-fight, we find Tom Duffy, a shrewd campaign manger who seems not only to see all the strings, but pull them as well. Duffy, naturally attempts to hire Meyers whom he sees great potential in and Meyers, somewhat foolishly, agrees to meet, even though he eventually turns Duffy down. Things get messy as Meyer's journalist friend senses a scoop and learns of the meet. Throw in a gorgeous young intern and the political débâcle is on its way.

Based on a theatre play 'Farragut North' by Beau William in 2004, it comes as no surprise that the plot in itself is a skeleton plot, following a trigger, consequential action to the situational circumstances and the results of those actions. This bareness in terms of plot structure, makes the overall feel of the film result in a certain notion of staginess as it isolates the characters in symbolic concepts of idealism, corruption and the weaknesses of pride and personal gain. The 'twists' (and the quotation marks here are very much deliberate) are straightforward to blunt, emphasising the good old truth that politics is a dirty business, as if we hadn't seen it all before. The intern business feels contrived at times as it relies too much on Clinton's little indiscretion with a certain Monica Lewinski, relevant at the time of the play's opening, but almost anachronistic in present day.

The film's concentration on the characters of its unfolding leave one very important element of the political power play out, namely the people, or the votes for that matter. Granted, this could be deliberate as it illustrates how, in the end, a campaign is nothing but the sum of actions of the opposite campaign teams at play, at the same time however, the film could have benefited from the introduction of the masses and their more or less blind belief in the promises of the candidates as it would have heightened the cynicism of political observation.

As such, Clooney focuses on a cinematography of close-ups, highlighting the conspirational closeness of the protagonists and an atmosphere of dirty secrets in which the latter are nothing but a means to get headway in this personal road of success. The framing translates a feel of absolute isolation, of a closed universe in which trust is a luxury, loyalty an impossibility and idealism just a sign of naivety. The colour scheme is one of expensive subdued, plain in its dark greens, browns and beige, not unlike the lounge/bar in high class hotel, in which whispered echoes provide a background noise which prohibits any genuine voice or sound and as such become utterly unreal.

The performances are, of course, excellent, how could they not be with Philip Seymour Hoffman and Paul Giamatti on board. Am I the only one who cannot help but feel guilty boredom in seeing those two high-class actors, which I know are never going to et a foot wrong in terms of performance? Hoffmann plays his character with the beaten desolation of a man who has been in the business for years, which seems to have drained the colour from his very figure and Giamatti who plays Duffy with the nihilistic perseverance of a pit-bull, who doesn't so much know why he has to bite as he just knows it's in his nature. The real reverence of the film, however, lies in Gosling, who, since Drive has really drawn attention to himself. He carries the film with an aggressive nonchalance which is as much put on as it is strangely enough innocent. There's nothing new to the role of the young idealist who becomes corrupted along the line, Gosling, however, manges to infuse the role with a genuine intensity of a man who is in over his head and needs to make a choice of whether to relinquish his principles and success or whether to lose with his integrity intact, but nothing much else left. Clooney cleverly puts on a sideshow performance in his portrayal of the charismatic governor, his role almost becomes a parody of the figure of Clooney the actor himself, charming, but with an underlying tone of sinister calculation. The audience witnesses Clooney the actor, acting, which conjures the uncanny comparison of the Hollywood machinery and the governmental power play, supposedly making the most important decisions of a whole nation. In the end, the film seems to suggest, the show must go on.

As such, even thought somewhat simplistic in its treatment of the preliminary presidential campaign and all the conspiracies this entails, the film does raise some elemental ethical questions, the most important of which is whether it is better to win and have a chance to instate half the principles to believe in or whether to retain your ethical integrity, but lose. Even if the film's overall cinematography feels at times too glossy for its supposedly grim and realistic conveyance, while the emphasis on soured idealism, the backstabbing of the loyal minion (Y tu, Brutus!) and the intern as back-story might feel too contrived and simplistic for its own good, it does not diminish the necessity of films which raise elemental political questions and raise an awareness in an audience which must soon again make their way to the voting booth.

'Wuthering Heights'

If you enjoy romantic period dramas with damsels falling for handsome, dashing gentlemen in well-cut suits and impeccable manners, who even though somewhat lacking in the realm of emotional expression, nevertheless make up for their shortcomings in deeds and heroines who overcome their prejudices after traditionally rejecting the first marriage proposals as to prove their personal worth and interest in the man, not the economic capital, if you enjoy, longing female protagonists in wind-swept skirts standing on a hill musing in taking in the highly romanticised landscape of more often than not the lake district, then, beware, do not go and see Andrea Arnold’s Wuthering Heights.

The newest version of Emily Bronte’s monumental text of the English literary canon comes from none other than the maker of the critically acclaimed Fish Tank. It seems an odd choice of text for Andrea Arnold at first, but quickly proves plausible in breaking the novel down to its bare essential themes rather than taking it as a mere classic. Like Fish Tank, Wuthering Heights deals with the figure of the adolescent outsider; it deals with the dispossessed and is infiltrated with a distinct social realist tone. 

In terms of plot, the film follows the first half of the novel, in that it depicts the arrival of the later named Heathcliff to the family home of the Earnshaws’ in the middle of nowhere, also known as Victorian Yorkshire. In a bout of Christian charity, the head of the family has taken this boy in from the streets of Liverpool and given him a home in exchange for labour.  Heathcliff quickly attracts the hatred of the family’s eldest son Hindley and is thus subjected to constant humiliation and even physical abuse by the latter. He finds a companion in Catherine, the younger daughter and soon the two prove inseparable and roam the bleak moors of Yorkshire all day long. Catherine and Heathcliff’s relation is of an almost animalistic nature, strong, wild, occasionally cruel, defiant, desperately loyal, and innocent while erotic at the same time.

Of course the text lives through this all-consuming relationship and Arnold cleverly equals the nature of their relation with the powerful imagery of the landscape which becomes a character in its own right.  This is no sanitized period drama version of the moors shot through a glossy Hollywood lens; this is a highly desensitized treatment of a landscape whose bleakness is more council estate than countryside and the characters mirror and become part of it, rather than battling against it. This is almost a primeval world in its essential bareness and the difference between man and beast is narrow to non-existent, as Heathcliff is sent to sleep with the animals on the farm and Catherine licks his wounds in imitation of an animal taking care of its own.

The constant alteration between wide angle shots of the landscape and extremely confining close-ups of the characters make for a visual shock, which renders the overall feel of the film a visceral one. Arnold and her cinematographer Robert Ryan introduce images of as delicate as bleak beauty in focusing on the textural nature of the thing on screen, prioritising the tactile over the visually comprehensive. As such we are presented with images which seem almost of an alien nature as butterflies and bugs are magnified to the point of becoming unrecognisable, the rough creaks of the wide planes of Yorkshire remind of the close-up of Cathy’s hair and the focus on dead and trapped animals become almost unbearable to watch, not so much necessary components of country life as uncanny representatives of the abject. Let’s just say that any scholars of the haptic will have a field day with this film. The twin obsession with death and sex is omnipresent in the littering of animal corpses on the screen which are as much part of the filmic landscape as Cathy’s and Heathcliff’s erotic tensions. This linking of death and sex culminates in the last scene in which Heathcliff visits the corpse of Catherine. Here, however, one cannot help but feel that Arnold is pushing for extremes rather than really feeling the necessity to include this scene in the film in terms of character-understanding.

 The use or non-use of sound reinforces this notion of essentialism in terms not only of character emotions but also life in the 19^th century. The raindrops on the lens of the hand-held camera, the shaky cinematography and the sound of wind with an occasional cry of a lonely bird come to emphasise the harshness of a life lived in a cramped cottage which translates as an existence lived in poverty and a constant draft. The characters here are very much a product of their surrounding as they live a life in defiance of the elements and stifling social conventions which make of Catherine and Heathcliff not only outsiders in terms of gender and race, but also dependents on respectively marriage and charity. The sparse dialogue conveys the sense of impossibility of expression with occasional violent outbursts such as Heathcliff’s : ‘Fuck you all, you cunts’ which left the respectable middle-aged and distinctly middle-class audience gasping while at my screening one couple bowed their silver-haired heads and left in a self-righteous huff. The straining from the novel’s original dialogue, however, makes sense in that it brings the emotional core to a modern level. Heathcliff and Catherine are children left to run wild, they are dirty and uneducated, of no economic consequence and socially marginalised. This living on the fringes of society is here translated through the characters lingering in doorframes, peeping through keyholes or window frames, especially Heathcliff is always looking from the outside in.

At the same time, however, this negation of verbal expression proves the only digression from the novel which left me somewhat bewildered. In the novel, Heathcliff has a very distinct voice and refuses to be victimised in expressing defiance at all cost. Here, however, Heathcliff’s muteness makes him more of a victim as one gets the feeling that he has no means of defence. Also the film’s radical gutting of the novel’s gothic framework, leaving out not only the supernatural, a wise decision in terms of the tone of the film, but also some of the character traits, leave the protagonist as representatives of bare emotions such as anger, passion, pain and loss, rather than rich textual figures to be explored. One cannot help but feel that essential traits of what make these iconic characters have been left out, such as the cruelty Catherine and Heathcliff display as children, mostly to their immediate surroundings, but also to themselves. Also, the Hindley character seems to be portrayed as a mindless bully rather than a boy who sees himself confronted with the potential loss of his place as an heir and deprived of his father’s love and as such resumes to physical violence.

Why can’t you always be like this? Cathy’s father asks her when she snuggles up to him. This question leaves an audience unfamiliar with the book bemused as they have not seen proof of Cathy’s wickedness. Also the first scene shows Catherine spitting in Heathcliff’s face, an action which makes no sense in accordance to the next scene in which she invites him to visit the moors with her. The novel, naturally, has the time and pace to establish this sadomasochistic relationship between Cathy and Heathcliff, in which the two characters seems to hate as much as love each other , as one torments the other only to be fiercefully loyal to them once the outside world turns against them.

The lovers’ reunion after Heathcliff’s return also somewhat leaves to be wished for, as the adult actors seem to close in age to the child actors which makes the supposed time-frame appear artificial and unbelievable. Also the adult Cathy character looks utterly dissimilar to the young Catherine in looks and behaviour that one almost feels like watching a different character. Some of her behavioural changes must, of course, be attributed to her marriage to the socially refined Linton, but even in her interaction with Heathcliff she seems more teasing than passionately in love. All of the performances, from the young non-professional actors, to the more established older actors are superb, their performances, however, are completely desynchronised, a fact which greatly weakens the second part of the film.  

All in all, the film’s greatest asset lies in its effect on the audience, as it has the same shocking and startling impact as the novel had on its 19^th century readership. Even thought the film proves flawed in terms of character development, which would have been acceptable in a loose reimagining of the Bronte text, but becomes a shortcoming in an adaptation, the fact that Arnold managed transform a well-worn classic into something new and raw which brings back to life the original audience response in its shocking and unsentimental approach deserves nothing short of critical admiration.

Oh yeah, before I forget: Heathcliff is black.

'I'm sorry LOVE'

What does it mean to be in a certain space at a specific moment, and how does this tie in with not only your, but life in general? Is there such a thing as common existence or a concept of life which is not only universal, but can it be expressed at all and if so, how? These conceptual inquiries are as old as mankind, nevertheless, film-makers generally tend to shy away from them in our post-modern age, which more often than not prefers to feign disillusionment at life's mysteries. After all, if God is dead and any attempt at political action seems futile from the start, what point is there in making sense of the world and our existence in it?

Fortunately, Julien Pearly's I'm sorry LOVE bravely aspires to come to terms with this universal concept of subjectivity within the space of existence.

First of all, to fully appreciate the merits of this short film, one has to be aware of the fact that each space, in this case the city of Edinburgh, has its own sensuality rendering it distinct from any other space in the world. Every city has its own essence made up of associative images, smells and colours. Berlin has its evocative grandeur, its high buildings always emerged in half shadow, or half light, its self-ironic treatment of old and new in which the sausage with sauerkraut is treated with the same kind of gleeful integration into the day to day as the latest electronic gypsy swing musical concussion which is blasted from the rooftops in Kreutzberg. London is a celebration of the grey and brown tones of its buildings with its numerous makeshift cafés in which the light baby blue paint is fashionably cracked, while the paper lampshades appear to be the latest instalment of the local artist/writer/musician/waiter. At the same time, the smell of different foods dominate the Brick Lanes of London with an underlying hint of the old, the musty, in short, the river.

What then is Edinburgh? Edinburgh, for me, is sitting in a kitchen in which every item, from the cupboards to the toaster seems to stem from the seventies, where a discarded Elvis figurine with only one arm sits comfortably on the spice rack next to half empty jars of middle eastern spices. Where people do not offer you a nice piece of cake with a cup of tea, but a shot glass of Polish cherry vodka with some oatcakes and hummus. Edinburgh is orange and brown, the Gothic of its streets coincides perfectly with the warm tones of the trees on Greyfriar's cemetery. Edinburgh is the eternal autumnal city.

Pearly perfectly captures this sense of Edinburgh as a city, as his protagonists lounge on a couch which seems to have been adopted from the Bethany shop, they sit on a radiator in front of those quintessential windows which let in the draft and whose slightly tilted angle within the glass makes the world outside seem like a mysterious place or they cycle through the hustle and bustle of the Haymarket area or the greens of the meadows. Pearly understands that space is not in itself self-contained, but made up of an infinite amount of components, ever-changing, ever-shifting, refusing to validate time and space as being fixed. The stop-motion graphics of the film perfectly encapsulate this sense of time as a subjective construct, in disrupting the continuity of a fixed time illusion. The overlapping of sound and image and the discrepancy between the two comes to mirror the notion of subjective time or moments being real, but not necessarily in sync with what we would like to think of as the general truth of the world. To put it differently: you're in your room, hanging up laundry (must be Sunday night), when maybe without even be conscious of it, you hear the sound of a coffee grinder coming from the kitchen in the flat upstairs, this sound is as much part of your reality as it is of your upstairs neighbours', even though you come to think of it as disparate from you as it originates in a different 'scene' from the one happening in your life.

As such, the sound of someone making tea will overlap images of the characters sitting on the bed with a guitar or looking out of the window. At the same time, the dialogue runs over a series of disparate images, as such mirroring the subjective thought process and the latter's omni-presence in all subjective existence. There is a sense of eeriness to the images and sound which stems from the subtle dismantlement of a fixed time-space continuity.

The concept of Imagination as treated in the film comes to bear resemblance to the romantic concept of Imagination as an imprint of reality in the 'mind's eye', most tellingly revealed over the image of the characters in the park as the Romantics themselves explained Imagination with the image of a tree. They wondered if the tree is reality or whether the image of the tree as presented in the onlookers mind came to represent reality. The male protagonist struggles with the concept of separate realities, whereas the female protagonist seems to accept an imaginary world as her own subjective world. Imagination comes to stand as the process of 'going into that imaginary world and knowing that its yours'. The male protagonist, seems to conflict with his own subjective existence in trying to 'eradicate the illusion of choice'. Theses modern characters are very aware of the main pitfalls of Romanticism, as whereas the latter receded to Nature and almost shied away from society, this couple realises the impossibility of living outside the societal norm and as such comes to feel disconnected from their own truth.

This impossibility of living outside the societal construct furthermore manifests itself in the emotional reality of the characters and the discrepancies in subjective perception of the same relationship, ultimately resulting in alienation. The male character suggests that being in love must be lived from one moment to the next, without the, what he sees as, socially imposed concept of finding that 'one' person. The female character counters that this concept is not so much socially constructed as emotionally perceived as, for her, the feeling of jealousy has nothing to do with society, but comes from within. She realizes that he is shying away from a notion of collective responsibility. In our times of extreme individualism, subjective thinking comes to suggest an entitlement to 'have it all' as he puts it. At the same time, she argues that all action has a consequence, a fact which can, and indeed should not be negated. As our reality is as subjective as it is social, individual responsibility must include the subjects which make up your reality as they are in your immediate vicinity.

A sense of melancholia pervades the film as the characters come to realise the impossibility to fully connect to an Other. Modern existence is in essence alienated and even though a certain closeness can be achieved, all in all the discrepancies in subjective perception render a coming together of individuals impossible. While I'm sorry LOVE affirms the truthful nature of all subjective imagining, it equally depicts the consequence of these disparate realities which cannot but result in a gap, a separation of subjective beings.

The film's overall construct is tightly assembled and the cinematography is of a haunting beauty as the camera lingers lovingly on the characters through rain drops on the window. The blurred lens used to depict some images comes to reinforce this almost fairy-tale, but definitely mysterious quality of the world we live in, all the while hinting at that unknown place from which all creation, expression or, indeed, thoughts stem. The characters often linger on the edge of the frame, while the camera emphasises a seemingly unimportant element in the setting, as such granting an equal importance to our surroundings. In this it comes to embrace life in all its complexity without presumptuously trying to render it 'understandable' or 'knowable'.

All in all, I'm sorry LOVE represents an impressive piece of film-making which captures this sense of what it means to live in the world, in a space made up of disparate subjective perceptions perfectly. The melancholic beauty of the images introduce this special kind of sadness which is as comforting as disquieting, as the film quietly whispers: 'I'm sorry LOVE'!

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'POM Wonderful presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold'

The genre of documentaries is generally associated with dusty classrooms, the mating rituals of the South African bumblebee or the relief of a tedious day being interrupted by an hour's worth of merciful darkness. Never very exciting, but always, you know, 'kinda interesting', the documentary was bound to suffer a slow and painful death at the hands of all those Miss Schroeders (my fourth grade teacher) and Mr Forsters (maths teacher first and second grade) who seemed to be just as glad to get a break from the pretend enthusiasm about the microcosm of life as illustrated by a beehive as we were.

Along came Morgan Spurlock, or was it Michael More?, here's to that the chicken or egg question, and introduced us to a new genre of documentaries which celebrated the documenter as much as it denounced the ethically suspect interviewees. It wasn't exactly witch-hunt material, but surely was more exciting than boring observation, coupled with a healthy sense of objectivity.

Spurlocks' latest pop-doc looks into the world of product placement or 'co-promotion' as it is referred to nowadays. This is a film within a film, as Spurlock is depicted trying to get brands to fund his film all the while placing products and adverts within it. In the meantime he is making a film about these companies and how modern marketing is taking over creative production. Get it? Remember that scene from The Lady from Shanghai, with the mirrors? Well, this is similar on a conceptual basis.

The audience then follows Spurlock through what seems like endless board meetings and pitching of ideas, up to the point he finally manages to get his first sponsor on board, which eventually leads him to land the juice manufacturer POM wonderful for one million dollars. In exchange, Spurlock not only has to appear in an advert for POM within the space of his feature, he also agrees to include the sponsor's name in the title.

All of this is done with a tongue-in-cheek attitude, which one cannot help but feel is a certain reassurance on Spurlock's part to the audience that even though he might be 'selling out', he is doing so ironically for the sake of exposure, in an attempt to affirm his own sense of integrity. Spurlock claims that his film is all about transparency, and this might be considered valid in his attempt not to influence the audience. At the same time, however, this 'transparency' is never challenged and introduces a notion of shallowness, as the film fails to convincingly engage in the most obvious of questions raised by 'co-promotion', namely the corruption of artistic integrity. Granted, Spurlock conducts a series of interviews with the likes of Quentin Tarantiono, J.J Abrams and Brett Ratner, getting a neat, tightly edited point of view from each one of them, conveniently covering all bases of the argument, from the director who embraces product placement as part of popular culture (guess which one of these...), to the one that takes it as necessary evil, to one who sees it as the death of artistic integrity. Tick the box!

Spurlock's film is not bad as such, rather, it remains aimless and ambivalent throughout, never really committing to any one stance. The structure of the documentary is poor in its slightly odd juxtaposition of themes and its mixing of tones. First it relies heavily on Spurlock himself as a brand, selling him as a commodity, not only to the companies, but, moreover, to the audience itself. Sperlock possesses the charm of a used-car salesman, rendering the overall tone one of gimmicky entertainment, rather than serious investigation.

All of a sudden, however, as if realizing that he wants to be taken seriously as a documentary film-maker, Spulock attempts to induce some intellectual weight into the equation, including what can only be called snippets of discussion with, for example, Noam Chomsky and Ralph Nader. In a painfully obvious, if slightly charming in its boyish enthusiasm, pun on modern marketing and subjective branding, Spurlock, with blatant glee, meets Donald Trump, who comes to represent a symbol rather than interviewee, important in his presence rather than his vague answers. All throughout the interviews, Spurlock can be seen drinking POM juice and even entangling Chomsky in a lively discussion about the merits of the brand of the shoes funding the very scene Chomsky is in. Self-referential nods like this, provide the film with genuinely funny moments in which the audience chuckles at Spurlock's obvious enjoyment in this admittedly quite simplistic form of irony.

There are glimpses of what seems to be almost the film Spurlock attempted to make within this accumulation of semi-witty comments on the nature of the marketing machinery. These moments sit odd within the structure and tone of the documentary. Spurlock visits a school affected by governmental cuts and reacts by taking matters into its own hands by selling space for advertisement purposes. One of the most critical and shocking scenes reveals the introduction of free TVs in classrooms, in exchange for twelve minutes of corporate broadcasts, in which the adolescent students are targeted with specific adverts of, for example, skin products and blockbuster trailers marketed to their specific age group. It is here, that the audience truly glimpses the ugly nature of marketing as it clearly reveals how an individual is brainwashed without personal choice. For a brief moment, corporate marketing raises its ugly head, as the film treats it, not with tongue-in-cheek mockery, but illustrates how in our age of so-called individualism, we are in the end, nothing but specific targets in a machinery which classifies members of society by their buying power in terms of age, gender or lifestyle.

By the same token, Spurlock shows us an alternative reality in visiting Sao Paulo, a city which has bravely put a ban on all public advertisement. In seeing the pure, almost naked, space of this city, the audience comes to truly realize the degree of its desensitisation in regard to the appropriation of space by marketing. Sao Paulo's people re-appropriate their living space, commenting on the fact that they are finally able to focus on the space they inhabit, without being targeted at all times. At the same time they literally inscribe their city in the form of artworks on the walls of their buildings. All of a sudden, the audience is confronted with an awareness which is as simple as it is shocking, namely the fact that a city or any space for that matter should be a construct of its people, rather than a corporate reality in which its inhabitants are walking marks of their individual economic capital.

Even though these moments sit quite awkwardly within the general construct of the film, they are, nevertheless, the only 'real' moments of reflection and come to present the film most of us would have liked to see. The rest of the film comes to appear as a mere means of appeasement for the sponsors. Interesting as the procedure of getting funding for a film might be, in itself the depiction of this process reveals nothing original and leaves the film somewhat without depth and a curiously hollow framework.

As such, Spurlock's work presents an entertaining account of the marriage of modern marketing and cinema, it does, however ultimately fail to resolve the real issues at stake, such as the corruption of a sense of artistic integrity, the marketability of the modern notion of individualism and the all-pervading presence of advertisement in modern life. The film awkwardly lingers on the surface and even while providing some moments of genuine entertainment, the rare moments of authenticated interest fail to merge homogeneously within the text. Spurlock becomes the master of the obvious, meanwhile, however, this might be a reflection on the desensitization of its audience's viewing habits as a result of the constant surrounding of adverts or product placements, invisible by its visual omni-presence.

This reviewer is going to leave you with two warnings: first of all, you are going to want a POM juice by the time you leave the cinema: do not give in, if you want to look in the mirror while brushing your teeth by the time you get home! Secondly, you are going to notice all product placement for weeks to come, which on the one side, might spoil your favourite programmes, on the other, what is the primal purpose of a documentary if not the raising of awareness and who knows, maybe you'll reinvent your life and can be found in Brazil in a year's time, drinking Mojitos in a street café, blissfully aware of the naked purity of the space surrounding you.

'Drive'

Make way for the Vikings, because here comes the latest installment from the mythic North, with Nicholas Winding Refn's ultra-sleek Drive, easily the most anticipated release this autumn.

This time Refn finds himself in unfamiliar territory, namely in Southern California where the heavily clouded LA skies convey a sense of despondent foreboding. Drive deals with an protagonist who seems to be only marginally more skilled in verbal expression than Refn's last protagonist 'One-Eye' and again, remains a character with no name.

The Driver, then, is an extremely skilled mechanic who not only drives for movies, but also the getaway car in heists. He has only one rule: He will only wait for five minutes before leaving the criminals to their fate, why, is not quite clear. His personal failure of a boss Shannon plans on building a stock-car business with a little financial help from two crooked mafiosi. When the beautiful Irene moves in next door, the driver falls quietly in love with her and finds a sort of surrogate family in her and her son Benicio. Unfortunately, her husband is released from prison and owes the wrong people some money. They want him to do one last job and the driver agrees to help on the condition that they leave Irene and her son alone. Of course, things go horribly wrong and chaos and violence ensue.

So much in terms of plot, and there really is nothing more to it. It is a skeleton plot, simplistically classic in its treatment: Decent guy falls in love with innocent girl who glances longingly at the hero and needs saving. The one last job that goes wrong and a protagonist who gets entangled in a very noir serious of events which can only end in betrayal and death. Throw in some mafiosi and a lot of violence which makes Joe Pesci seem like a choir boy and you have a Hollywood classic. At least, this is what Brian de Palma would think. Refn, however, goes about things differently...

The driver clearly taps into the long ancestry of brooding, silent types, from Clint Eastwood (most notable reference being The Man with No Name and the toothpick) to McQueen in Bullit and last but not least Gary Cooper. He is the Western hero, the lonesome wolf, unbeatable at what he does and with a set of moral principles which are old-fashioned in their allusion to the Southern gentleman. Gosling seems to be attracted to exactly this type of role and, to be fair, it suits him. He communicates with the outside in half smirks and quiet glances. Only that sometimes, his muteness appears to be not so much enigmatic as socially reclusive and slightly dumb. The man does know, however, how to carry a pair of wranglers.

Gosling delivers a solid performance, foremost emphasized by the cinematography which clearly focuses on his physicality, in, for example, introducing a shot of his back when he carries Benicio down the hall and clearly accentuates his broad physical frame. In fact, throughout the film, Refn seems to be reversing the cinematic tradition of sexualising the woman, in this case played beautifully understated by Carey Mulligan, instead the camera lingers on Gosling almost lovingly, finding new angles to show the masculine lines of his jaw or the triangular shape of his body. The scorpion on the back of the silver jacket is not only a reference to the Welles' movie Confidential Report, it also introduces a phallic symbolism to the character which cannot be coincidental.

What makes Drive a different film from what it should be, is its beautiful cinematography and contemplative pace. Newton Thomas Sigel, mostly known for his work The Usual Suspects, knows how to transform each image into a still life. The camera grants space to the compositions, never rushing which allows for the opening of introspective space. Images, like the driver in a mask gazing through the deli-window which is composed of white and red squares, are treated with a notion of aesthetic respect, giving Refn's text a cinematic quality which goes beyond mere story-telling.

Drive's cinematography is not so much original as referential. Refn displays the typical enthusiasm of the European director who is given the toys of American cinematic tradition. As such, it plays on the chiaroscuro visuals of the noir era, with its stretched shadows, its rainy street and, evidently, its blinking neon signs of an LA which is anything but the city of angels, as the glitzy surface only partly veils the underlying tone of corruption and betrayal. At the same time, Refn and Sigel tap into the New Hollywood movement of the seventies, as they take evident pleasure in framing the driver from a low angle in his car, while the raindrops on the windows turn the street lights into a glooming halo. These aesthetics are a clear tribute to Scorcese's Taxi Driver, while the mean streets of LA appear to be influenced as much by Scorcese as by Chandler's fiction.

The musical score, often criticized for its electronic sleaziness and over-bearing presence, becomes reminiscent of a Michael Mann film, as the brazen superficiality of the eighties come to tie in perfectly with the frivolity of a city which by definition proves artificial. The credits in pink come to represent another homage to eighties/nineties texts such as Heat or Miami Vice.

Drive as such comes to stand for the art of superficiality, as it clearly favors aesthetics over plot and paints a portrait of LA as being a series of appearances which prove ever-shifting, as it negates any foundation in truth or reality for that matter. As such the driver with no name remains the perfect protagonist as he proves a presence rather than a character, he is obsessed, but without purpose. He is the drive behind the action, even though never deliberately. Here, again, the noir protagonist comes to mind as the driver he is double-crossed and lured into a series of traps. This is a universe of existential loneliness, where trust is a luxury only granted to the female protagonist.

Even though Refn's Drive might come across as too self-consciously retrospective in its aesthetics,at the same time, it proves truly post-modern in its treatment of the concept of artificiality. Its main asset lies in its visual pleasure rather than in its merit as a textured drama, as the glossy cinematography conveys an intensity which draws no distinction between its treatment of beauty and violence. This is no gritty, realist drama, it is a highly-aesthesized piece which proves enthralling in its appreciation of American cinematic culture, its intense cinematography and its sordid depiction of a city which, here, proves as beautiful as dangerous and unnatural.