Ice Nymphs, a Branded Brain, and a Keyhole.

I know to call a Guy Maddin movie strange is completely beyond the point, but his movies can be really strange. I've been lucky enough to catch (read: find the time) three of this Canadian auteur's films that were previously unseen by me at the "Nocturnal Transmissions" retrospective of the director's work here in Melbourne. Screening at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, I've been disappointed that many of the titles I really wanted to see were only screening on Saturdays and Sunday evenings that are generally no go zones for me due to work. Still, considering there are next to no other ways to see these films that don't involve importing them from overseas on DVD, I've felt lucky enough to have been able to see the small amount that I have. And on the big screen no less.

Twilight of the Ice Nymphs was hailed as Maddin's first "full-colour.... 35mm 'big budget' picture" and, well, I guess you could say that it is. I mean, it's in colour and while I'm unsure as to its budgetary figures it certainly looks feasible that it may have cost more than some of his other, earlier work. Unfortunately the version I saw was not screened off of a 35mm print, but beggars can't be choosers and I certainly appreciated the exceptionally rare opportunity to watch Twilight on a big screen.

I'm not entirely sure what on Earth the film was trying to say and, I have to admit, a lot of the film (which I only saw last week) has exited my brain without leaving much of an impression. Having said that, however, it's truly a fascinating viewing experience and part of its interest lies in the way that Maddin's almost trademarked confusing oddness was translated to the world of colour film. He had - and continues to to this day - madee films in black and white, and given how strange most of his films are, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that the upgrade (if you want to use that word) didn't blunt his significant voice. The action itself isn't all that interesting, but the method with which it is presented is a treat.

Visually, Maddin made Twilight of the Ice Nymphs into an experience that shares many similarities with Rainer Werner Fassbinder's 1982 candy-coloured queer classic(?), Querelle. The sky is a permanent kaleidoscope of red, orange, yellow, pink, and purples, colours that frequently reflect off of the bright, lush sets. Elements of arts and crafts as well as a very obvious artificiality fill the frame whilst the actors strut about and recite their ridiculous dialogue in a very Shakespearean manner. Nigel Whitmey and Alice Krige in particular could be mistaken for having thought they were performing on a stage in front of a crowd. Furthermore, the story has elements of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, whilst the score at moments evokes Prokofiev's "Romeo and Juliet - Dance of the Knights". I have no idea what any of this means, but Maddin's next film was Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary (which I recently wrote about for the Canadian "Possible Worlds" film festival) so maybe there was something here that Maddin needed to get out in order to get to a period of his filmmaking life that has come to be seen as, arguable, his most rewarding and mature phase.

A day later I went along to see one of those very films, the 2006 silent fantasy Brand Upon the Brain! While far from the excellence of Dracula or My Winnipeg, this was a very entertaining film. Alas, my body got the better of me and I dozed off for a bit at the start and then spent chapters 6-11 desperately needing to pee oh so desperately. So, really, not the best of viewing circumstances, but that only proves that it was good. In the grand scheme of things, Maddin is certainly one of the more accessible names in experimental/avant garde cinema and Brand Upon the Brain feels like a melding of his more esoteric work and his more commercial work.

"Commercial". Heh.

The third Maddin film that I've been lucky enough to see Keyhole, his latest work that is receiving its Australian premiere during the retrospective. Screening this Sunday the 22nd and then Tuesday the 24th and in 35mm, Keyhole is at times like a defiant rebuke to anybody who thought he'd gotten too arthouse mainstream with recent works. It's a maddening feature, one that appears to make little sense with its noir detective tale of ghosts and haunted houses (I think that's what it about, but I'm hardly going on the record). I don't think it's successful - and judging by this interview he gave with fellow Melbourne filmy type, Martyn Pedler, it wasn't quite what he had envisioned it to be, calling it "far more abstract". Make of that what you will - but as with all of Maddin's films, they are made for cinema viewing. It's easy to see one getting mindlessly distracted by a work like Keyhole if watching in the confines of your home. At least in the cinema there's no real escape and so even when Maddin is being an impenetrable scamp I was forced to admire the staccato editing and the rich, slippery performances of Isabella Rossellini and Jason Patric (Guy Maddin's version of an all-star cast).

I really wish I'd been able to find the time to see Archangel, Cowards Bend the Knee and Tales from the Gimli Hospital, but work and illness conspired against me.

Review: Private Romeo

Private Romeo

Dir. Alan Brown

Country: USA

Aus Rating: N/A

Running Time: 98mins

Sometimes gay cinema feels like little more than an excuse to watch absurdly good-looking people in various states of undress. Pornography without the sex, if you will. Private Romeo reads like it’s potentially aiming for something more, but ends up being significantly less. Don’t get me wrong, there are many very attractive men walking around in nothing more than a towel, but there are plenty of other avenues for such imagery that don’t require sitting through a mediocre 100-minute movie. Where Private Romeo really fails is by letting its pretty cast carry the weight of its concept, and never truly embracing it in a cinematic fashion. Audiences are, I suspect, going to be far more interested in the beauty than the brawn of Alan Brown’s Shakespeare-meets-Active Duty romantic drama.

Beginning in a class room where buff military cadets read William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet with a mocking tone as jokes are made the expense of those reading out the feminine roles. Very quickly the lines are blurred between reality and Shakespearean drama and Private Romeo quickly becomes just another modern day retelling of the bard’s most famous work. Such a concept could most definitely work as members of rival academies work to tear two young lovers apart, but simply rearranging the genders so as the entire cast are gay men doesn’t make a movie. Brown, who also wrote the screenplay, appears welcome to merely let Shakespeare’s words work on their own without any of his own input.

Such are the perils of casting such routinely good-looking actors that they eventually all begin to look like one another. It certainly doesn’t help that rarely seem to have any distinguishing features to help decipher who is a Capulet and who is a Montague. Furthermore, as if the entire film is just one big drama class role-playing exercise, all the actors are credited as “Josh” or “Sam”, rather than the “Romeo”, “Juliet” and “Nurse” that they recite to each other. Sadly, the military academy setting is nothing more than a fetish check list – military, uniforms, locker rooms, high school jocks, authoritative, etc – and isn’t used to its full potential. One would think that setting a gay romance within the walls of a place of education and warfare would be ripe for deconstructing more pertinent issues. Unfortunately, the film fails to navigate any true ideas about homosexuality within school systems, within domains of cocky brute masculinity, and within a private world that has been plagued by “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” for far too long. Private Romeo really is just a bunch of pretty men reciting Shakespeare on a school campus and it’s hard to see what’s so special about that.

Alan Brown has taken much of Shakespeare’s words verbatim and placed them within the mouths of these young men of lithe bodies and boyish looks. The performances are all fine, although it would have been nice to have seen them act without the restrictions of language placed upon them. Only Seth Numrich makes much of a lasting impression as the love struck Sam/Romeo. Perhaps it’s because in the right light he looks like a swoony Chris Evans that I responded to him, but maybe he’s just a fine actor. Mimicking the camera style of a more restrained Dogme film, and occasionally lit as if through a lens of honey, Private Romeo frequently appears as handsome as its cast, but it again comes back to Brown’s reluctance to use Shakespeare’s text as a jumping off point for something bigger. Teenage love is epic and dangerous, powerful and all encompassing, and yet everybody here just seems to be going about their business is their khaki sweats and perfect skin.

The scenes of romance between Numrich and Matt Doyle’s Glenn/Juliet frequently tip into tender, but their love fails to grow by the film’s end, which takes great liberties with the original text. Their initial make cute is actually just that, a rather sweet moment of cute flirting and the two are well matched. Perhaps the fact that both appeared on stage together in Broadway’s production of War Horse helped that, and the very stagey aesthetic of Brown’s film maybe aided even further.

While I have no doubt that some audiences will find the idea of Shakespeare done gay as a particularly novel twist – it’s certainly better than the last one I can recall, the atrocious Were the World Mine – but it lacks something that makes it inherently cinematic. The original text was used far more effectively by Baz Luhrmann in William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet, and it is given little reason to be revisited here for any reason other than to say a gay version of Romeo and Juliet with the original text exists. Fleeting and weird YouTube scenes of pop lip syncing fail to add any zest, and instead just confuse. As it stands Private Romeo is a disappointing, but frivolously gratuitous, high school drama production. It deserves better. C-

Check the MQFF website for screening details

Review: Coriolanus

Coriolanus

Dir. Ralph Fiennes

Country: UK

Aus Rating: MA15+

Running Time: 122mins

William Shakespeare adaptations will, I suspect, be with us until the last dying gasp of filmmaking. It’s not hard to see why, what with there being seemingly infinite ways to tweak his work so as to appear unique: modern setting with classic dialogue (Macbeth, 2006); modern setting with updated dialogue (Hamlet, 2000); period setting with classic dialogue (Much Ado About Nothing, 1993); international versions (Ran, 1985); plucky teen versions (10 Things I Hate About You, 1999), dramatic teen version (O, 2001); epics (Hamlet, 1996); arthouse (My Own Private Idaho, 1991); animated (The Lion King, 1994); gay (Were the World Mine, 2008); musical (West Side Story, 1955); weird anachronistic amalgamations of all (Titus, 1999)... the list goes on!

Read the rest at Trespass Magazine