Review: Bastards

Les Salauds, or Bastards in English, is a perplexing Gallic Noir from French filmmaker Claire Denis. Recreating a more macabre Raymond Chandler novel, Vincent Lindon stars as the weary Humphrey Bogart lead. He is Marco, a hardboiled sailor who abandons a prodigal, nautical life when his brother-in-law commits suicide. At the same time, his self-harming niece has been discovered wandering the Parisian streets naked, dazed and bloodied. So begins the revenge of Marco.

The pace is slow and contemplative, eschewing a one-thing-leading-to-another narrative in order to drip-feed details. Mood is conjured through atmosphere instead of events. Bastards certainly has buckets of atmosphere. There is good use of lighting, music and speed. In this regard, the film is in the mould of Drive. The effect that this has is to stimulate an emotional rather than rational response. Personally, it made me feel a little mentally ill. The secrets that our macho maritime champion uncovers are not pretty.

Marco is a laconic observer, moved to quick action when need be. He can handle a gun and he can handle himself. The sailor is often seen smoking pensively in his vast, empty French apartment in the early hours of the morning, lit atmospherically by street lights filtering through the blinds. Marco exudes the self-contained gravitas of a man who takes care of business – like any pulp protagonist. The villain of the piece is Edouard Laporte, a rich puppet-master of power and perversion. As sinister as he is, the character is lifted straight out of Polanski’s Chinatown. Much as Marco has replaced Jack Nicholson’s investigator, so has Laporte assumed John Huston’s role. But so utterly identical is the match that it’s a cliché. As will happen in cinema, Marco becomes involved with the neglected mother of Laporte’s child, isolated in ivory tower luxury. Raphaëlle is played by Chiara Mastroianni, daughter of Italian screen legend Marcello. She has her father’s look of detached thoughtfulness which is well-suited to the depressed and lonely Raphaëlle.

The main drawback of Bastards is its structure. Denis has clearly muddled a perfectly simple plot to heighten the suspense or mystery or whatever. But the lack of clarity doesn’t make it cleverer, it just annoys. Marco seems like he has a plan and the films appears to be going somewhere. But it doesn’t, it just fizzles out. Denis has taken Chinatown’s bitter finale and reduced it into a tasteless spoonful of nothing. The characters are so distant that we don’t really care.

France has its own impressive history of Noir cinema. Themes of revenge, murder and injustice have been played out through the chiaroscuro Parisian landscapes a thousand times before. It is these conventions which Bastards tries to subvert, but instead shoots itself in the foot. What could have been a dark, twisted masterpiece, examining the evil depths of humanity, is needlessly turned into a puzzling enigma. And not in a good way. Nonetheless, the style, acting and soundtrack must all be commended – a film for those who like this sort of thing.

Le Suspense

Review: Dallas Buyers Club

Dallas Buyers Club (annoyingly lacking in apostrophe) is a dramatisation of the life and work of AIDs patient Ron Woodroof, played by Matthew McConaughey as a foul-mouthed Texan hellraiser. Electrician by trade and cowboy by nature, Woodroof hangs out at the local rodeo with his good ol’ boy buddies and spends his winnings on prostitutes and Bud. Unluckily, he winds up contracting HIV with a life expectancy of 30 days. Keen to ‘die with my boots on’, Ron shuns the harmful pills of the hospital and sets about importing unapproved drugs. Ever the American, the lone rider builds a business selling these life-extending narcotics, using various tactics of subterfuge to stay one step ahead of the authorities and keep it all legal.

The power of Dallas Buyers Club lies mainly in the acting. Matthew McConaughey, who always sounds like he has a whistle trapped in his throat, has been the toast of Hollywood recently with a steady flow of respectable roles. Gone are the rom-coms of the past; in are outlandish acceptance speeches at award ceremonies. In addition, he garnered frenzied speculation when the paparazzi spied his dramatic weight loss demanded by the role. But for all the hype, he simply turns in a terrific performance. The Lone Star State native must feel comfortable in Texan backwaters, because there is a documentary realism as he swaggers around in boots and Stetsons, drawling and shooting across the screen. Similarly deserving of praise is Jared Leto as Rayong, a transvestite Marc Bolan fan who is also HIV positive. S/he becomes Woodroof’s business partner, but is perhaps more troubled by the whole situation. Leto manages to capture someone in what is a fairly unimaginable predicament, handling the emotional variation with a restrained intensity. Although less dramatic, Jennifer Garner is quietly beguiling as a doctor struggling with her conscience.

Contrary to tradition in the Western genre, Ron cannot simply ride out of town. He is stuck bang in the middle of the crisis, and any departure from the action would be due to departure from the mortal shore. Some critics have called it conservative and rampantly capitalistic. This ignores the progression of Ron Woodroof. Initially, he is a very traditional, predictable rebel. When he really sticks two fingers up at the world is when he starts running with the ‘tinkerbells’ he loathes and sells his Cadillac to spread the meds. Sure it’s a bit of a cliché – bigot forced to revalue his prejudices – but this convention is barely noticeable. Any film based on real events will send the history nerds scurrying off to Wikipedia, and there are inevitably some departures from the truth. Woodroof was a real guy, but elements of several other figures were inserted, and by all accounts he was less of a bull riding redneck. Again, this is minor criticism.

It is fitting that a topic like this should be difficult to watch in places. Much of it is indeed harrowing: AIDs victims cough blood and trundle drips around; patients lie like sacks of wasting bones; doctors discuss the disease in sterile, morbid wards. There would have been a danger of not doing the issue justice, but this has been entirely avoided. Dallas Buyers Club also does a good job of critiquing the pharmaceutical business without being too earnest. It takes issue with selling medical aid to make money, yet it is never distracted from the personal plot by its own worthiness. With the brazen enthusiasm of its roguish protagonist, and some of the subtlety he lacks, Dallas Buyers Club brings an important issue to the screens with acumen.

Interview: Roger Michell

We often hear how filmmakers looked up at the cinema screen as kids and dreamed of a life of movies – were you the same?

Not really, I was in theatre long before film. I started doing little plays when I was 8, and in school I got into acting but wasn’t very good at it or quite as interested as in directing. After school I went to Cambridge to do English, which is a very well-trodden path for theatre directors. Later I became an assistant director at the Royal Court, working with wonderful people like Samuel Beckett, and then slowly carved out a career. And years after that I did a BBC course, now defunct, for people wanting to get into film.

When you were at university did you have your career carefully mapped out in front of you?

Oh no, it never felt like anything was mapped out at all. It felt like a struggle. Still does!

Did you try to balance youthful vitality and vision with learning from more experienced adults?

Well I was very impressed by the people I was working with but you have to cut your own furrow. You really learn from making your own mistakes.

There must have been a few setbacks.

All the time!  Always I try to learn from the mistakes. Every time you turn to a new project, it’s like learning to make something from scratch. You’re much less aware of skills accrued than what you don’t know.

How do you begin a project?

Well film projects start off in many ways. It can be a script that flops through the letterbox but more likely to be a project that’s been developing for many years. Le Week-End, my latest film, was in development for six or seven years before filming. On nearly all my films I like to get the script to a good stage, get it budgeted, attach  cast, and only then try and finance. If you take a half-baked script to a financier, with no cast, they’ll obviously ask for Brad Pitt or Judy Dench to be attached. Or both.

Your films span several genres and styles. What elements do you think are consistent?

I realised recently that my films are all love stories of one sort or another.

Many are about common human problems. Are they autobiographical?

All art is autobiographical, I can’t think of any art which I admire which noticeably avoids an element of autobiography. Although I often don’t realise that a film is autobiographical until much later, sometimes years later.

In our uncertain economic waters, do you think that the Government has a responsibility to help national cinema?

As in any society I think we have a responsibility to support culture. It is after all what glues us together and allows us to understand ourselves a little better. In the UK we’ve almost ceased being a manufacturing country, but we make films supremely well, and I think governments have started to understand the importance of the industry. Pragmatically, a  healthy film industry is also a huge cash cow.

With digital, 3-D, the internet etc., is the industry at a crossroads?

Yes, everything is up in the air. The music industry has shown us that a tsunami is around the corner, and we should learn from this. Netflix commissioned House of Cards, for example. Last year I shot a film on a smartphone, which was thrilling and liberating.

Is that a change like when sound was introduced, or does it signal the end of filmmaking?

It won’t be the end, but it’s offering new ways of making films. It’s easier than when I was young, and there is much more choice. But people want to come back to see a story being told, whatever the technology – it’s about actors and a story.

If you could work with any actor from history, who would it be?

I’m actually planning a film about two nineteenth-century Shakespearean actors, Edwin Forrest and William Charles Macready, one an American swashbuckler and the other a static, Romantic European. I wouldn’t mind working with them.

What is the best aspect of working in the world of film?

The opportunity for limitless and intense cultural and emotional tourism – you get to live in different worlds.

So do you see cinema as simply another means of self-expression, or is it a unique art?

It stands out because it’s collaborative. It’s not like a painting or a novel.

Finally, could you offer any advice for students aspiring to enter the world of film?

Make films. Get out your phone, shoot some stuff and try and cut it together … and then you start learning that it’s more difficult than it looks.