Déjà vu Dalliance

Sex and drugs and rock `n roll. . . (and marriage?) play a big part in the 2015 dramatic thriller A Bigger Splash. A quasi-remake of the 1969 film La Piscine (which has another sort-of remake in François Ozon’s 2003 picture The Swimming Pool), which itself comes from a novel of the same name (written by Jean-Emmanuel Conil under the pseudonym Alain Page), this very European feature is set on the lovely Italian island of Pantelleria. We first meet music icon Marianne Lane (Tilda Swinton – a perfect turn as an androgynous David Bowie-like rock `n roller), who is recovering from throat surgery, and her documentary filmmaker husband Paul De Smedt (Matthias Schoenaerts) as they enjoy the reclusive island, finding love and recuperation in its serene, picturesque setting. As they are frolicking in the waters of a secluded lake, they receive a call from Paul’s kind-of best friend and Marianne’s former lover/record producer, Harry Hawkes (Ralph Fiennes), who has tracked them down and invited himself for a visit. Director Luca Guadagnino both symbolically and literally interprets the rather rude interruption by having Harry’s incoming plane cast a long shadow and make a raucous noise just over their heads as they take the unexpected and unwanted call.

In the Realm of the Senses has been called eroticism, a sharp political statement, an arthouse film, pornography, as well as a searing drama, and, it is likely that it has been defined as being so many other things as well. Like most boundary pushing pieces of art, it transcends the ability to label it as just one of these descriptive terms, combining all of them to create a unique and ever controversial piece of cinema. Released in 1976, it was only able to be made in the first place thanks to it being a Japanese/French co-production (listed as a French enterprise) – the unfinished film had to be shipped out of Japan and into France to avoid issues with strict Japanese censorship laws (it was processed and edited in Europe because of it). Banned in most countries upon first release (with many only lifting it completely in the 1990s and 2000s) – though it showed at numerous film festivals (the Cannes Film Festival had to orchestrate thirteen screenings due to demand), In the Realm of the Senses is still censored in Japan to this day.

Disaster movies live and die by their clichés. What brings people into the seats are the doom-laden spectacles, though it is precisely these over-the-top depictions that often overshadow the human element that is oh-so-important in every one of these genre pictures. It is a tightrope to walk, with features from the past decade or so like The Day After Tomorrow, 2012 and Pompeii wholly missing the point. A more realistic film that still delivers an intense natural disaster, but is rooted in the family that it portrays, is the 2015 Norwegian movie The Wave. Instead of ‘go big or go home’, writers John Kåre Raake and Harald Rosenløw-Eeg, along with director Roar Uthaug (who has been given the reigns of the Tomb Raider reboot starring Alicia Vikander) decide to take a more focussed, local, ‘home’ driven perspective, setting their story in a picturesque, almost otherworldly little fjord nestled in the heart of Norway. A small, tightknit community lives in the impressive locale; it takes in nearly as many tourists as the amount of villagers living there.

Some of you may recall famous clothing designer Tom Ford deciding to enter into the world of film making back in 2009. Though some were sceptical, his first foray into the movie business was a huge critical success, as A Single Man became one of the most lauded pictures of the year. Now seven years on, the choosy, multi-talented man has finally found another project that has piqued his interest. Based upon Austin Wright’s 1993 novel "Tony and Susan", Ford adapted it, changing the title to Nocturnal Animals. A complicated, three pronged tale, the story, at least in the real world, follows a wealthy art gallery owner named Susan Morrow (Amy Adams), a cold, calculating woman, who, despite seemingly having everything (a handsome husband named Hutton – Armie Hammer, a beautiful Hollywood hills house, good looks, and money), is empty and dead inside.