Reviews
Intimacy (2001)
French Style Existentialist Angst, set in South London
Sometimes, films are not meant to be lifted from their spiritual home and placed somewhere else. What would Blade Runner be like if it were placed in the present and set in Edinburgh? What would The Third Man be like if it were set in London and not Vienna (besides being historically inaccurate?). So, I feel about Intimacy, that -although based on stories by an Englishman-it strives so hard for 60's Existentialist angst that one almost expects Mark Rylance's haggard barman Jay to spend his time reading Camus whilst washing his collection of black polo necks.
This film is known primarily for it's sex, but that is unfair. The sex is definitely uncompromising, but Kerry Fox definitely sucks it to her critics with a rather daring and uncompromising performance, which reminds me ever so slightly of Kim Novak in Vertigo, complete with eyes that always seem to hold something of herself back. Indeed, Intimacy should really be called Obsession, or Vertigo in South London, as it is a film about projection, and of the lengths that we go to in order to project a certain image of ourselves or someone else onto a life-canvas. In that sense, it works. But in another sense it patently does not. What party worth it's salt would invite two wheezing late-middle aged soaks like Rylance and his friend Victor there, bopping to The Chemical Brothers like unwelcome relatives at a wedding? Why would a woman like Fox end up with an opinionated cretin like that played (albeit brilliantly) by Timothy Spall? The film is too wordy, too long, yet strangely enough, the characters still remain under-developed. The sex-though graphic (Mr. Rylance definitely appears to be in a heightened state of pleasure in more than one scene)-is sensitively presented and does not leave one feeling titillated. All in all, a noble, intelligent failure
Saint Joan (1957)
Stagey, but strangely effective
Perhaps it's just my weakness for short-haired brunettes that made me think that this film had far more in it's favour than it had detracting from it. The direction was admittedly slow, nay stationary, and some of the actors did not help this much.
What was not originally appreciated about this film is that the story of Joan of Arc is an exceptionally simple one, but yet cloaked in mystery. Where the film failed was perhaps in not making us empathise with Joan, because we are given nothing of her motivations or her life before or after the seige at Orleans. Compare this to the Besson film, that fails in my eyes for the exact opposite reason, it gives us too much! I liked the film, but I liked it because although I couldn't empathise with a saint, I could empathise with a young woman who knew what she was doing, but didn't know where she was going. What I shall always remember about this film is Seberg's transformation from trusting, coy and innocent to bewildered, bothered and (dare I say it) bewitched. A great performance, and she really ought to have gone on to greater things.