Oct 14

Adelaide Film Festival – The Selfish Giant

As frequently happens with movies that are ‘based on’ books or other stories, I failed to see how Clio Barnard’s The Selfish Giant bore any real resemblance to the gorgeous Oscar Wilde fairytale of the same name. Perhaps that is because I was too busy sobbing into my tissues through the whole film.

A bleak, despairing film set in a housing estate in the north of England, The Selfish Giant makes you want to go home and hug your children and be grateful for your comfortable life. ‘Problem child’ Arbor (played magnificently by the young Conner Chapman) is ‘excluded’ from his school after one too many incidents of insolence and hysteria. Uncontrollable by his desperate mother (Rebecca Manley), Arbor starts to hang around the scrapyard of brutal Kitten (Sean Gilder). Arbor’s impressionable, kind-hearted friend Swifty (a heartbreakingly good Shaun Thomas) joins in Arbor’s plots to make money for their mothers in any way possible.

The cinematography in this film is wonderful, albeit devastating. I admit that I could not stand the film – but that is only because it was so terrible to watch the misery, desperation and ultimately tragedy that befalls families who started off with very few options and slide into a world of even fewer. The film itself is well shot, well directed and well acted. If you can handle a heartbreaking couple of hours, get along and see it. Bring the tissues. And whatever you do – do NOT bring your children along. Despite the fairytale title, this is a nightmare of reality.

4K

*Repeat screening Sunday 20 October at 9.15pm

Oct 14

Adelaide Film Festival – Will you still love me tomorrow?

In this rom-com with a twist, boy meets boy. Boy falls in love with boy. Boy tries to figure out how to tell his wife (who wants another baby) that he is in fact gay – and has been gay since long before they married.

Add to this mix the adorable protagonist Weicheng’s (Richie Ren) dizzy sister Mandy (Kimi Hsia) who cannot decide whether to marry her hapless fiancée and you have Taiwan’s gorgeous newly released film Will you Still Love me Tomorrow. Dealing with a subject that could very easily be tragic, about lost opportunities, unfulfilling marriage, unrequited love and the confusion of life in a modern, this film manages to be uplifting and absolutely beautiful. In fact, many conventionally happy marriages could stand to benefit from the friendship between Weicheng and his beautiful, long-suffering wife Feng (Mavis Fan).

Beautifully filmed, utterly engaging and completely original, this is one of the must-see films of the 2013 Adelaide Film Festival.

Check out this film if you want a modern, refreshing romantic comedy with a twist.

4.5K

*Repeat screening Tuesday 15 October 2013 at 4.45pm

Oct 14

Adelaide Film Festival – Sharknado

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No – it’s a live, angry shark in a tornado. Or make that hundreds of hungry sharks. Yes, that really is the premise of surprise Hollywood schlockfest Sharknado.

Starring the indomitable Tara Reid (what has she done to her face), Ian Ziering (for those who remember, an alumnus of Beverley Hills 90210) and a remaining cast of relative unknowns, this film takes the ridiculous premise of a freak storm gearing up off the coast of Los Angeles  with sufficient power to flood even the high parts of town with swimming monster sharks and even, as the title suggests, a number of furious tornadoes containing schools of starving sharks which are more than happy to chow down on human prey.

If you love B-grade movies, this may well be the best film you have ever seen. Indeed, as an avid fan of the ‘genre’ myself I am pretty confident that this has made my top five ‘dodgy’ films, an illustrious list which includes such gems as Death Race 3000 and Snakes on a Plane. Random Australian character who uses Alf (from Home and Away)-style catchphrases? Tick. Complete absence of logic? Tick. Absolute lack of plot continuity and consistently sized monsters? Tick and tick. Scantily dressed women, lame jokes featuring the Hollywood sign and improbable love plot? Tick, tick, tick. If this is your genre, prepare yourself for the best night ever.

However if the idea of watching a movie that has absolutely no connection with plausibility, character development, or depth doesn’t sit well with you I strongly recommend that you not see Sharknado.

All I know is that I am already eagerly awaiting Sharknado 2: The Second One.

5K

*Repeat screening Friday 18 October at 5.15pm

Oct 13

Adelaide Film Festival 2013 – The Stranger by the Lake

This film, like the naïve protagonist Franck (Pierre Deladonchamps), is languorous, seductive, very nice to look at but a little bit confusing.

A French film which caused a significant stir at Cannes in 2013 (largely due to significant amount of non-simulated sex), The Stranger by the Lake focusses on the ‘cruising’ scene for gay men during a summer near a beautiful and secluded lake. Franck’s life appears to be one long, endless party of going to the spot by the lake, meeting men (often strangers) and having carefree, careless sex with them – until he meets the devastatingly handsome Michel (Christophe Paou) and becomes instantly obsessed by him. Although Michel is ‘taken’, Franck observes him one night at the lake drowning his handsome young lover. Whilst deeply conflicted about the morality of the object of his affections, Franck quickly develops an emotional and physical connection with the mysterious Michel. But will Franck’s fate be the same as Michel’s dead former lover?

Mostly a very successful psychological thriller, this film unravels significantly in the last thirty minutes, with what can only be described as an unprompted descent into Hollywood hyperbole. Moreover, the frequency and explicitness of the sex portrayed in the film (whilst obviously necessary for the storyline) is overall excessive, giving the film an air of a serious-thriller-cum-porn movie. Not one for the faint-hearted.

*Second screening Thursday 17 October at 9.30pm

3.5K

Oct 13

Adelaide Film Festival 2013 – Behind the Veil

There are few things more topical in 2013 than the treatment of women in Islamic countries around the world. A composition of short films focussing on issues concerning Muslim-women throughout the world, Behind the Veil focusses a lens on subjects which are often taboo or misunderstood.

This compilation includes an exploration of the way modern Australian society projects its own views in Jason Di Rosso’s The Woman on the Top Floor, a haunting, risky protest over women’s rights to education in Afghanistan in The Death Row, a Moroccan girl’s debasement and entrapment – all because she dared to dream of a better life with her lover – in The Curse,  the bold defiance of custom, law and patriarchy by a desperate but kind young Saudi Arabian widow in Sanctity, and finally an unorthodox perspective on the hatred of neofascist racists for a young Jewish boy and his beautiful (secret) Muslim girlfriend in No Love Lost.

Although there is some discrepancy between the quality of the films (with standouts being the utterly suspenseful No Love Lost and the beautifully directed Sanctity), this concept works well to highlight the harsh reality facing women of all cultural backgrounds in the Islamic world today.

4K.

Oct 13

OZASIA – Not According To Plan – Leigh Warren Dancers – 4K

413x264_OzAsia2013By Peter Maddern

There is a great richness to the balance Leigh Warren has struck between the diverse elements of this production. For while, Not According To Plan, is part of the OzAsia Festival, this work very much seems to be about ‘AdAsia’, a showcase of those who have been influenced by or who have come to influence this town.

In three parts, NATP opens with a barren landscape where Xiao Xiong himself contemplates his beginning and completes with his Taiwanese student, Yuan-Li Wang, one of the highlights of the hour where it seems the older is remembering his youth and wishing to lead it on an improved path.

Tearing back that vista for the second movement reveals four pieces of furniture designed by Khai Liew, three as stools and one as an elliptical low table.  Two of Warren’s favourite dancers, Rebecca Jones and Aidan Munn then come together and work between the pieces.

The grey and then dark mauve costumes designed by Alistair Trung are then emotively lit up by Geoff Cobham’s handiwork, providing at times a stunning perspective to the forms of all the dancers.

That great richness referred to previously is the way in which all these highly talented artists come to together, none dominating the other, none subservient but rather enhancing the themes of triumph over adversity, the journey of an extraordinary man and the assured direction of Warren.

It can only be hoped Not According To Plan gets a better opportunity than these three shows gave it. For this is one of the finer pieces of work by LWD and it various statements about life and its struggles and the ability of this town to punch above its weight thanks to the accepting culture that exists will resonate, even were it to be without Xiong’s actual presence, in other places at other times – hopefully not too far hence.

Kryztoff’s Rating   4K

See our interview with Leigh Warren as he discusses this project by CLICKING HERE

Oct 13

Adelaide Film Festival – ‘Like father, like son’

Imagine living out a wildly improbable scenario which was extremely unlikely to occur, but if and when it did has the power to invoke enormous consequences and change to every facet of your life. This is what Ryota Nonomiya, successful businessman, uptight disciplinarian and ambitious father is faced with in this Japanese drama when he and his wife are told that their six year old son was swapped at birth and that they are raising the biological son of a relaxed shopkeeper and his wife. Encouraged by the negligent hospital, all four parents must decide whether to keep the children they have raised – or do the unthinkable and ‘swap’ them to their biological families.

A moving examination of what the true meaning of ‘love’ and ‘family’ is, this film causes the viewer to develop empathy with each of the characters and their different ways of dealing with the unexpected tragedy – even the uptight, snobbish Nonomiya, who struggles to understand what it is to love.

Beautifully shot and incredibly moving throughout, this must surely be one of the standout films of the 2013 Festival.

4.5K

*Repeat screening at Palace Nova on Wednesday 16 October 2013 at 2pm

Oct 13

GMT Theatre – Spitfire Solo – The Forge – Marryatville HS – 4K

By Peter Maddern

Guy Masterson’s international theatre productions return to Adelaide this month with five hour long one man shows at the Marryatville High School’s Forge Theatre. They were last here for the 2012 Fringe and they are always worth the effort. Spitfire Solo tells the tale of a pilot (Nicholas Collett) during the Battle for Britain in 1941 and his life since, including the painful separation from his daughter 20 years after the war ended.

Collett dashes about the sparsely decked out stage playing both the virile pilot as well as his latter self sixty years on. It is the tale of an ordinary man, faced with extraordinary call to duty who was part of a team that prevailed and, in his case, lived on to tell the tale. However, neither his heroics nor that ordinariness protected him from being just another guy trying out of his depth when raising his daughter, in another generation, alone after his wife dies of cancer.

As with much of GMT’s theatre, the greatest enjoyment of the work comes after you have left the auditorium, reflecting on those contradictions; where surviving being in the cross hairs of a Messerschmidt does not immune one from the intense pain of a broken family, of a daughter who rejects you absolutely and leaves to live 12,000 miles away.

Collett comprehensively delivers on the stoic, proud but broken soul of his pilot and the hope that emerges when the chance of fulfilment comes from an unlikely source. His stage artefacts are used to both great and surprising effect – a walking cane as a machine gun trigger, pieces of white bread as bombs on London and so on. Perhaps confining the stage area and thus the audience seating may have helped add additional intimacy and gravitas to the production but this fine theatre does not stand or fall on that observation.  

More shows this coming Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday and see our other reviews from the current GMT season.

Kryztoff Rating                  4K

Oct 11

AFF – Child’s Pose – 3.5K

58511_home_heroBy Peter Maddern

This Romanian film focuses intensely on a mother with just one child, a uni student son who resents the attention and attitudes of his parents. When he runs down a 14 year old boy on the freeway, the relationship between them gets yet more strained as she devotes her energies to saving him from gaol and he wishes he was not placed in this predicament.

After a routine start, the movie progresses into some long, dramatic yet engrossing scenes. The use of queasy cam is at times unhelpful though it comes into its own in the final moments. The attention to routine activities, usually skipped over in Hollywood productions, give this a grit and sense of unease that is captivating.

Second screening – Sunday 20th at 2.15pm – Palace

Kryztoff Rating   3.5K

Oct 10

THEATRE – Crusoe: No Man is an Island – GMT Productions International – The Forge, Marryatville – 4.5K

Crusoe: No Man is an Island, is a charming and interesting meld of mime and monologue, telling the stories of a series of males, each battling with the thing that distances them from the rest of the world. A mysterious man stands in a doorway, watching as others run from the rain. An elderly gent visits the grave of someone beloved. One middle-aged guy sits, somewhat befuddled, in a corner while another makes awkward moves on the dance floor. Each is alone and yet somehow connected and searching for something.

Gavin Robertson gives another magnificent performance in this one-man show. The sections of pure movement, all performed to an enveloping soundscape and some well-chosen popular songs, blur the line between mime and dance. These segments link the characters and the action together, foreshadow the storyline to come, and throw Robinson Crusoe, trapped on his famous island, into the mix as well.

As he moves around the stage we witness Robertson don the personality of the characters; each distinct and interesting. He is flamboyant yet touching as John, who has been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s and must live on, as his memories and words leave him. Humour is plentiful in his presentation of Phil, who has been dumped by the girlfriend he met online and finds himself entering the foreign world of nightclubs and face-to-face romantic hook-ups. His transition into the old man is most physically impressive, as he moves about the stage with seeming difficulty and spouts life-lessons, the legacy of his experiences, while delivering flowers to his deceased love.

This is a moving and interesting production; much beauty can be found in the exquisite movement sequences, while the dialogue based portions are intelligent and thought provoking.

Kryztoff Rating: 4.5K