Movies in Brief
Three
dir. Stewart Raffi ll; starring Billy Zane, Kelly Brook, Juan Pablo di Pace
An island, two men and an oftennaked Kelly Brook. This is clearly a film for men, but frankly, men are better off watching porn. The plot is unoriginal: a muscular Spaniard, a narrow-minded American businessman and his hot wife (Brook with an American accent) are all shipwrecked on a desert island. It darkens however: the Spaniard’s evil ex-girlfriend is into some sort of voodoo witchcraft thing (with tacky lighting and lots of dry-ice) and seems to have planned the situation from the start.
Three tries to take advantage of its setting to bring us to the bottom of the human psyche. It achieves only stereotypes: women are self-centred bitches who can’t survive alone and men are jealous brutes. The film is unconvincing: Zane manages to be permanently smoking cigarettes despite the shipwreck. The cast’s embarrassingly bad acting doesn’t help.
The film is packed with cheesy music (electric guitar during beach sex scene) but nevertheless viewers can gaze at clear blue skies, sandy beaches and Kelly Brook.
Russian Dolls
dir. Cédric Klapisch; starring Romain Duris, Kelly Reilly, Audrey Tautou
The Spanish Apartment has become the cult movie for many nineteen year olds today in France. Russian Dolls, its sequel portraing the same people five years later, can nevertheless be a film in its own right: Xavier (Romain Duris, recently in Arsène Lupin and De Battre mon Coeur s’est Arrêté) meets up with Martine (Audrey Tautou) in Paris but then goes to London and falls in love with the British girl (Kelly Reilly) whose little brother is marrying a Russian ballet dancer.
The group of about ten from the first film all go to Moscow for the brother’s marriage. Though the film is a little slow (the five minute shot of a girl’s behind moving down a symmetric muscovite street was a bit much), it’s a fun-loving, heartwarming, feel-good movie dotted with funny scenes �" including lovers running naked through Paris at night or the scene where a determined lesbian (the excellent Cécile de France) makes an evidently half-hearted effort to pretend to be straight.
The Devil and Daniel Johnston
dir. Jeff Feuerzeig
A critic from an important paper was saying at the screening, “they make films about everyone these days. Have you ever heard of this guy?” For those as enlightened as him, Daniel Johnston is a Texan singer/songwriter/ artist with a lisp and a tendency for manic depression. He was born in 1961 into a Christian family but started seeing Satan everywhere after he took acid in the mid-eighties.
He’s perhaps not the genius the documentary makes him out to be, but he’s certainly very creative (check out www. hihowareyou.com). The documentary is moving, thought-provoking and eye-opening. Johnston has the dream life �" his one priority all his life is to be a creative artist �" he has goofed about since the age of ten, concretising the dreams he had as a befuddled teenager. He has the courage �" or the stupidity �" to do so.
The soundtrack is naturally excellent and the documentary is sincere, containing extracts of his voice and film recordings. Go see it if you can, but definitely listen to his music.
4th May 2006