Vivarium

Gemma (Imogen Poots) and Tom (Jesse Eisenberg) are a young couple desperate to get on the housing ladder. They wander into an estate agency staffed by Martin (Jonathan Aris), who looks like he’s just come straight off the set of Book Of Mormon.

Even though it isn’t at all what they are looking for, he persuades them to visit a new housing development called Yonder. Yonder is Suburbia on speed with its rows of identical houses with their identical white picket fences and identical manicured lawns.

They are shown around No 9 which is like a show house with everything ready for a couple to move in and complete with a spare bedroom ready for child number one.

When Martin simply disappears, Gemma and Tom can’t wait to make a run for it but they discover that escape is not possible. Every road leads back to No 9 and after driving around until it gets dark, they run out of petrol right outside No 9.

The next day, Tom climbs on to the roof where he sees nothing but more identical houses, so they decide to follow the sun to find a way out. They walk across identical garden after identical garden, always climbing over the identical fences using identical white plastic chairs. When they finally find a house with some lights on, it’s No 9. 

They discover that a box is left outside the house every day containing food and other provisions. The same food and provisions, day after day. Then one day the box has a baby inside it with a note saying, 'Raise the child and be released'.

If you assume that by merely having entertained the ‘dream’ of suburban living ‘sold’ by the estate agent and subsequently found themselves trapped in it then the last thing they should now do is to agree to raise the child. After all, why would you move to suburbia in the first place if the next step wasn’t to have a child to occupy that spare bedroom?

Out of compassion (I guess) they accept the child, thereby trapping themselves more deeply because having the child piles further demands on them. The way Tom and Gemma deal with those demands is by reverting to stereotypical gender roles.

Gemma cares for the ‘Omen’ child or at least tries to reason with it, as it grows at the rate of a dog and screams at the top of his lungs until it gets what it wants. While Tom digs because it makes him feel like he's doing something, and that is what men do.

As the child grows up into a Martin clone it all ends rather brutally as, with their roles affectively fulfilled, they are 'released' but not before we get an insight into other couples doing exactly the same thing in exactly the same trapped environment.

I thought it was a fascinating film, in the vein of the Twilight Zone or Black Mirror. A film about the treadmill of life, that life itself is a trap.

Where many films these days are remakes or sequels any film that dares to be different should be applauded. Vivarium gets a standing ovation from me.

Green Room

Green Room is the tale of an amateur punk band called the 'Ain’t Rights' on tour in Oregon without enough money for fuel to get back home. A problem they generally solve by syphoning it from the tanks of other vehicles. After one gig is cancelled, a journalist gets them a show at what turns out to be a neo-Nazi skinhead club in the middle of nowhere.

They make the best of it and show their bravado by opening with a cover of the Dead Kennedy's 'Nazi Punks Fuck Off' which does a pretty good job of winding up the locals. Despite that, the show goes well enough and they're just about to get the hell out of there when their bassist Pat (Anton Yelchin) accidentally stumbles upon the body of a girl has just been murdered in the club's green room.

This results in Pat and his bandmates Sam (Alia Shawkat), Tiger (Callum Turner) and Reece (Joe Coe) being locked inside them green room by the management, in the form of Darcy (Patrick Stewart), the rather aloof owner, and his lead henchman Gabe (Macon Blair). They are affectively held hostage in the green room along with a girl called Amber (Imogen Poots) who was a friend of the deceased.

Darcy’s solution to the problem is to leave no witnesses to the murder and to frame the band for everything. So from being locked in, the band now barricaded themselves in but it soon becomes clear that that is not a good long term plan and escaping, preferably alive, is the only way out. What follows is a deadly cat and mouse game between the band members and the skinheads who now have the club has now been surrounded, one which rapidly spirals out of control.

The film does then become an almost relentless bloodbath but quite a cultured one as it does at least manage to get us quite well acquainted with the main characters, which means you feel for them more, before they are slaughtered. It also makes a good job of conveying the claustrophobic sense of hopeless inescapability that they face.

In a cast that is mainly young and largely absent of big names, you can’t really second guess who will survive, which adds a rare touch of suspense. Overall, quite a tense experience.

The Look Of Love

The Look Of Love is a biopic by Michael Winterbottom about Geoffrey Quinn aka Paul Raymond. Raymond was of course a famous entrepreneur... ok, so perhaps he was a porn baron, the self proclaimed King of Soho.

The film opens with Raymond (Steve Coogan) mourning the loss of his beloved daughter, watching old video recordings and reflecting back on his life, as in flashback we get the Paul Raymond story.

Raymond went from humble beginnings in Liverpool to being a success in London where he put on a show featuring nude models as statues, the law prevented nudes moving around on stage at that time. Then he moved on to greater success with his Gentlemen’s Clubs, the sex comedy Pyjama Tops and Men Only magazine. With each new project he pushed further against the boundaries of public decency.

He was though a shrewd businessman, who ignored the countless bad reviews and criticisms. He simply got on with making money, lots of it, and was smart enough to reinvest it in property; most notably in Soho and he became Britain's richest man.

Initially helping him run his business was his wife Jean (Anna Friel) but he wasn't a man who was good at relationships. Whether that was with his own children or with the women in his life and there were plenty of them. 

At first Jean tolerated his countless affairs with the women who worked for him. That is until he meets Amber (Tamsin Egerton), who later becomes Fiona Richmond and the editor of Men Only, his relationship with her results in the largest divorce settlement in British history.

Amber’s advantage over Jean was that she had no problem with three in the bed romps, as long as she was part of them. Well at first she didn’t, eventually she leaves him too.

Meanwhile he is mostly ambivalent to the existence of his children, save for his Daughter Debbie (Imogen Poots) and it is his relationship with her that is central to most of the story. He dotes on her but even there he condones the drug habit that ultimately kills her.

Although Raymond was fascinating figure, he wasn't a terribly likeable one and despite the money, the women on tap and the power, he never seemed genuinely happy. Except that is when he was with his daughter and he gives her a leg up to her death. After which he became a virtual recluse until his own death.

The film is an interesting watch but a bit lifeless. Surprisingly it lacks drama and even plot, possibly the process of condensing his colourful life down to first be book sized and then further to be film sized didn’t leave much, other than a long list of bullet points. The film ended up being more informative than entertaining.