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.

A true example of a hidden gem, the based-on-a-true-story crime film Kill the Irishman, directed by Jonathan Hensleigh and released in 2011, earned just over one million dollars at the box office, making it a motion picture that has sadly been missed by way too many people. Set in Cleveland, we are first introduced to our lead, Danny Greene (Ray Stevenson – Rome; Thor) in 1975, a criminal who always seems to be in the line of fire – at this point, he dodges death by leaping from his moving car after realizing it has been wired to blow. Hensleigh then transports us back to the beginning of the tale through narrator and cop Joe Manditski (Val Kilmer), as he provides us with a look at the complex gangland of Cleveland and the childhood of our main player (as he grew up on the same streets as Greene), eventually leading us to the point where Danny’s story skyrockets, in 1960, with him working as a longshoreman on the docks. It is an opening that in many ways pays tribute to Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas.

Filmed in the heart of the Adirondacks in New York State, Tribeca Film Festival Audience Award Winner Here Alone utilizes its locale to great effect. Capturing its rich vivid landscapes, be it rolling hills and mountains or lush forests surrounding a still lake, screenwriter David Ebeltoft and director Rod Blackhurst juxtapose the idyllic setting with a sense of loneliness, loss and secluded dread. Though at first glance, Here Alone may resemble your typical zombie flick, it is, at its heart, a searing character drama, while the infected flit around the periphery. Our main character is Ann (Lucy Walters), a young woman living by herself in the middle of a leafy forest which surrounds a chilly lake. The first portion of the motion picture plays like a taut, tense silent film, as we witness her struggles to survive. Lacking food, fighting the elements and struggling with her own pained past, she is utterly alone. By way of flashbacks, we are introduced to her baby girl and her survivalist husband Jason (Shane West), the one who brought her way out into the woodsy setting to survive. We slowly learn their fates over time.

A trenchant piece of social commentary, I, Daniel Blake could have been a one dimensional film filled with gloomy despair, but in the capable hands of director Ken Loach and first time actor and long time comedian Dave Johns, it is laced with deft, dry, sarcastic humour throughout – making it a relevant, multi-faceted dramedy. Written by Paul Laverty (a regular collaborator with Loach), the modern day tale, which is set in Newcastle, England, follows a fifty-nine year old carpenter named Daniel Blake (Johns), who, as the film begins, is frustratingly dealing with a government employee over the phone. They have denied his claim for ‘employment and support allowance’ – despite the fact that he has had a debilitating heart attack and his doctors vehemently state that he is in no shape to return to work. A wonderful piece of sardonic humour, this opening scene finds the man having to put up with a plethora of unrelated questions that have nothing to do with his particular condition. Highlighting the lack of common sense or logic found in the modern day governmental system, it is somewhat akin to a man continuously banging his head around the rim of a toilet seat (it hurts, is irritating and, in the end, gets you absolutely nowhere).