Under The Skin

Scarlett Johansson is feeling a bit alien in Glasgow, which is understandable. We all do. Glasgow, although a place I like, is a bit like that. The thing is in this film by Jonathan Glazer from a novel by Michel Faber she really is an alien.

Johansson (as Laura the alien) roams the streets of the strange, unfamiliar world that is Glasgow in a white van. Occasionally she stops and asks men who are walking home alone (oh the irony) for directions, before offering to give them a lift. Once in the van she engages them in conversation and flirts with them before luring them back to her run down abode where, entranced by Johansson, they strip off their clothes while following her disrobing figure.

Yet they never reach their goal, her, as they disappear beneath her bedroom floor, where they remain trapped until they get their innards sucked out. Which are then presumably sent back to her home planet. Our alien is completely remorseless about her task and shows no empathy for her victims, who think it is their lucky day and they're going to get to shag Scarlett Johansson.

Later, out on the Scottish coast whilst in the process of seducing a surfer, she observes a dog adrift in the sea, a woman getting in trouble trying to rescue it, her husband getting in trouble trying to rescue her and the surfer getting in trouble trying to save anyone he can.

She attempts to save her target, the surfer, yet leaves the others and also ignores their abandoned young child who is left screaming on the beach, left to swallowed by the incoming tide. Our alien has no understanding of the situation.

In time though, she does seem to develop a morality about her actions. After seducing a disfigured man, she lets him escape and then attempts to escape herself. Running from the purpose she was sent here for and from the men on motorbikes who watch over her.

Whilst on the run in the countryside, she is befriended by a stranger. He still wants to get physical with her, of course, as does a worker in the forest, although in a more forceful manner. Suddenly the hunter has become the hunted.

It’s a bit off the wall at times and maybe having read the novel would have helped but I haven't. Yet I was just happy to go with it and embrace the fact that this alien girl (aren't they all) sinks her naked male suitors into the alien equivalent of a shagpile carpet.

Johansson is superb and brave to take on this type of role. She manages to exude a total lack of emotion throughout in such a way that, unbelievably, you kind of sympathise with her.

The Grand Budapest Hotel

The Grand Budapest Hotel opens with a young girl standing at a monument to a writer and reading a memoir penned by the ‘Author’. Presumably the same chap. This author (Tom Wilkinson) recounts the story of when his younger self (Jude Law) visit the Grand Budapest Hotel, which had fallen on hard times, and met its then owner Zero Moustafa (F. Murray Abraham). Zero then tells his own story of how he came to own it and why he is unwilling to close it down. I hope you’re following? This film has flashbacks with knobs on them.

It’s a film with an unusual approach to its story and it plays out a bit like a Dangermouse cartoon, heading off at tangent after tangent whilst within itself, somewhere, is the actual story.

Back in the 1930's a younger Zero (Tony Revolori), a mere immigrant boy, worked as a lobby boy under the hotel's flamboyant concierge, M. Gustave (Ralph Fiennes). This is in the fictional Republic of Zubrowka, a place that is teetering on the brink of war under the weight of some Nazi lookalike thugs.

Not that Gustave seems to notice. He is too busy as he wines, dines and beds a succession of rich, much older women who all love the hotel because of the exceptional personal service he gives. Sadly his latest conquest Madame D (Tilda Swinton) suddenly drops down dead. Yet in her will she leaves Gustav a priceless painting called ‘Boy with Apple’. Madame D's son Dmitri (Adrien Brody) doesn't take this well and Gustav finds himself framed for her murder.

So he steals the painting and legs it. He makes a deal with Zero, naming him as his heir if he helps him. Then when Gustave is arrested and imprisoned, Zero and his girlie (Saorsie Ronan) combine to free him and things just get steadily more madcap from there onwards. 

We get Gustave and Zero being pursued by a hit man (Willem Defoe) on skis down the full Winter Olympic experience including downhill run, bobsleigh track and ski jump.

Everything moves forward at breakneck speed in this film and if you’re not concentrating you’re going to miss something. Things are not even easy to follow if you do but even if you lose the plot, the film’s still full of weird and wonderful characters to enjoy. All of which are played by famous faces.

It’s all quite ridiculous and you feel at times that writer/director/producer Wes Anderson may just be simply having at laugh at our expense but I enjoyed it thoroughly nonetheless.

Her

Spike Jonze’s new film Her takes place sometime in the future and we find Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) living in a world where technology has finally taken precedent over human interaction. A whole where people spend more time talking to their computers than they do to each other. Of course this has already happened for some.

Indeed Theodore’s job is to write personal letters for people because presumably they are no longer capable of doing so themselves. Theodore is a bit of a sad case who is going through a divorce because somehow he has managed to let the gorgeous Catherine (Rooney Mara) slip through his fingers. He does manage to get himself a hot date but then turns down the girl’s sexual advances. Now he fills his time playing computer games (pretty cool ones) and not much else.

Eventually he finds solace in someone who understands him, cares about him, flatters him and is much more considerate than real people are. It’s also got a sexy voice and names itself Samantha. This is his new OS. Now we all know that computers can take over your life but this is probably especially true if they sound like Scarlett Johansson.

Anyhow Theodore and sultry Samantha ‘fall in love’ in a world where a guy having virtual sex with his OS is absolutely normal. In fact, even when they double date with another real couple no one bats an eyelid.

This I guess is the film’s take on modern society but the problem is rather than being a ‘yeah this is the one’ sort of relationship it turned out to be like any other typical bland romance that any sane person would want no part of. Their conversations together really are banal.

More interesting for me was the interaction between Theodore and his neighbour/friend-without-benefits Amy (Amy Adams) who is married to another. Will Theodore cheat on his OS behind her back? Sadly Theodore isn’t that exciting.

Of course, we all also know that sometimes computers can let you down. One day Theodore learns just how well his OS can multitask when he finds out that Samantha can have virtual sex with hundreds of smart phone users simultaneously. Then she dumps him! In fact she dumps everyone.

I’m not sure if we’re supposed to be sad when this happens but I just thought, right then, it’s Amy time and that’s how the film ends. Sort of. We don’t really know. Do they jump off that building together or do they jump each other. Hopefully the latter, even in this futurist world surely the Billy Crystal rule that men and women can’t be friends still applies.

The film has some nice ideas but the overall premise is a bit thin and gets stretched thinner throughout the two hours, meaning there are quite a lot of dead patches in the film.

Generally though I liked it and the technology shown was all well founded, which is a rarity in a film. Everything that the portrayed is worryingly possible...

The Book Thief

As this is a film that is narrated by Death himself (Roger Allam) you’d expect this to be a depressing sort of affair, particularly as it looks at the Second World War, genocide and all, from the German peoples own angle and specifically one young girl but oddly it isn’t. If that was its target, it missed it by a mile.

That young girl is Liesel Meminger (Sophie Nélisse) who is abandoned by her communist mother and subsequently adopted by the Hubermanns, Hans (Geoffrey Rush) and Rosa (Emily Watson). Her brother was supposed to join her but died before he got the chance.

Liesel cannot read and Hans starts to teach her, using the basement walls as a blackboard. Hans has refused to join the Nazi Party and his business suffers because of his stance, so he has plenty of time on his hands. From this Liesel develops a love of books, which is sort of difficult with the Nazis burning so many of them.

The only book she has, The Grave Digger's Handbook, came from her brother's funeral. She steals another from a Nazi book-burning ceremony and a woman who Rosa does the laundry for, Ilsa Hermann (Barbara Auer), invites her to see the vast library she has at home where she nicks another. This lasts until her visits are terminated by Ilsa's husband .

As well as exploring her relationship with books and her new parents, the film delves into her friendship with a schoolmate Rudy Steiner (Nico Liersch). Rudy thinks he's in love with her, almost as much as he is in love with the black US athlete Jesse Owens, a devotion for which he is roundly mocked at school.

Then there is Max (Ben Schnetzer), a Jewish friend of the family who is allowed to hide out in their basement, to whom Liesel reads to while he lies ill.

The story is all over the place, totally unfocused and deftly sidesteps around any topic that might have proved harrowing or exciting even. As a consequence the film lacks any real sense of tension or danger. People even die as nicely as possible and without a mark on their bodies, even if their house has collapsed on top of them.

Then there's the way the whole cast speaks in English but with pseudo German accents, throwing in the odd actual German word to hilarious effect. Make your mind up, either do it fully in English or in German with subtitles.

It is a good film ja? Nein. Sadly average.

Stranger By The Lake

You used to have to go to dodgy little back street cinemas to see films like tonight’s offering. Nowadays it seems even good old respectable Broadway has such fodder on offer. ‘Stranger by the Lake’ (L'inconnu du lac) is basically a full-on dose of gay pornography and perhaps the perfect antidote to last night’s Lego extravaganza or maybe not. It’s so explicit that I doubt even Nymphomaniac can compete, not that we’ve been there yet.

The film takes us on location, to one location, a gay cruising spot by a pretty lake somewhere in France. Everything in the film happens by this lake. Everyday everyone arrives at the beach, park their cars in the same place, lay their towels out in the same place and then tan their equipment in the same place. Before later retiring to the woods for the main course.

By the end of the film I was so familiar with the layout of the area that I could have drawn a map of it. This repetition succeeds in building the tension because you know there’s going to be more to the film than this (surely).

The main character is Franck (Pierre Deladonchamps), a man on a mission, for a shag. Well he’s come to right spot you would think but he’s initially frustrated. The object of his desire, Michel (Christophe Paou), isn’t available. That is until Franck sees Michel drown his current boyfriend. Now Franck doesn’t think oh shit I ought to report this to the authorities, he only thinks that goody, Michel is now available.

To be fair to Franck he’s not the only one who does nothing, nobody else does anything either. Even when the dead man’s car remains on the car park and his towel lies on the beach in the same place for days on end no one bats an eyelid.

Instead Franck hooks up with Michel and covers for him when the police come investigating. Franck is so blindly in love that he even goes swimming with him. FFS. Yet, despite his puppy dog devotion Michel refuses point blank to have any sort of relationship with Franck beyond the boundaries of the beach. Which is good for the director I suppose, taking the film to another location would clearly have blown his mind, and probably ours too.

What we have here is a gay twist on the old chestnut about the young girl in love with the bad lad from the wrong sides of the tracks; the one that’ll be no good for her but her love is so blinkered that she can’t see past the rippling muscles of his chest. Only with a lot more sex. If you already suspect that this isn’t going to have a happy ending, then you’d be right.

It’s educational I suppose, I learnt a lot about how cruising in the homosexual world operates (if this is typical).

 

It’s not a bad film but the endless naked flesh is a bit off putting. I’m also not really sure who the stranger on the beach was supposed to be. Michel? Franck himself? or the self-pitying non-gay Henri (Patrick d'Assumçao), who turns up on the beach everyday for no other reason that he’s on holiday and has nothing better to do.

Henri to his credit is the only clothed man in the film, apart from the police inspector (Jérôme Chappatte), and there’s not a woman in sight.

Personally I’m still waiting for the first body to wash up on the beach.