Month: February 2023

Blue Jean

14/02/23

Cineworld, Edinburgh

It’s hard to remember sometimes, from our current vantage point, just how deeply ingrained homophobia was in 1980s Britain. Writer/director Georgia Oakley’s debut film takes us back to 1988, and the implementation of Margaret Thatcher’s controversial Clause 28, which explicitly banned schools and local authorities from ‘promoting’ homosexuality. I was in sixth form then, and I mostly remember finding it ridiculous – as if, without the clause, there would be advertisements everywhere. “Come on, kids! Be gay! It’s great!” But I only had the luxury of dismissing it as stupid because I was straight. I don’t know how it made the gay kids feel. I didn’t know anyone who said they were gay back then (although, of course, many have come out since). I don’t blame them for keeping schtum. I don’t remember the schoolyard as a place that celebrated difference.

Jean (Rosy McEwen) is a PE teacher. She’s also a lesbian, recently divorced from her husband, and enjoying a new relationship with Viv (Kerrie Hayes). But while Viv is at ease with herself – out and proud and politically engaged – Jean is less confident about her sexual identity. She’s still keen to fit in with the heteronormative world; she doesn’t want to draw attention to herself, either at school or with her family. It’s a matter of survival: however shocking it may seem, she’s right to fear her that job is on the line. She manages by drawing a clear distinction between work and home: she lives in a different town from the one she teaches in, and refuses drinks invitations from her colleagues. Her social life revolves around a gay club and a lesbian commune, and here she’s free to be herself.

Until fifteen-year-old Lois (Lucy Halliday) shows up in the club. She’s belligerent and bold – and she’s also Jean’s student. Suddenly, Jean’s worlds collide. Her carefully segregated life is under threat, and she’s torn between fight or flight.

Oakley’s script gives us a clear insight into the era, and into the overt discrimination that permeated popular culture. McEwen shows us a young woman forced into a choice she doesn’t want to make: she has to be a hero or a failure; she can’t just be; the government’s weird preoccupation with consenting adults’ sex lives has a profound impact on real people. Hayes is heartbreaking as Viv, whose clear-eyed view never dulls her pain, and newcomer Halliday is mesmerising on the screen.

Clause 28 was finally repealed in 2003, and things have certainly improved – although, of course, there’s still a way to go. Blue Jean serves as an important reminder of why we can’t ever relax our vigilance, and why we mustn’t let things slide. People’s lives and happiness depend on it.

4 stars

Susan Singfield

EO

14/02/23

The Cameo, Edinburgh

Veteran director Jerzy Skolimowski has certainly been around the block. I first became aware of him as co-writer of Roman Polanski’s debut feature Knife in the Water in 1962. (It was later remade by Hollywood as Dead Calm.) I also remember seeing his early directorial feature Deep End in 1970 – and being quietly blown away by it. 

Over the years, the man occasionally resurfaces with something entirely unexpected. Most recently, he’s been glimpsed as an actor in – of all things –  Avengers Assemble. But few could have foreseen that a man in his mid-80s would come up with something as radically different and downright captivating as EO. This powerful, episodic – and ultimately tragic – tale centres on the adventures of… a donkey. That title also serves as the name of its lead character, a reference to the braying sounds he occasionally makes, sometimes with calamitous results. Co-written by Skolimowski and his partner, Ewa Piaskowska, this is an extraordinarily accomplished film, the work of a director at the height of his powers.

When we first meet Eo, he’s working in a small travelling circus somewhere in Poland, where he performs alongside Kasandra (Sandra Drzymalska), who clearly adores the very sawdust on which he treads. But when the circus is besieged by angry animal rights supporters, Eo, along with his fellow circus animals, is led into a truck and driven away. He soon finds himself sequestered in a fancy stable, alongside a collection of thoroughbred horses, but – while they are spoiled and pampered by their human keepers – he is required to pull a cart and perform menial tasks. And his dreams are haunted by images of Kasandra and those nightly circus performances.

After an unfortunate accident involving a trophy cabinet, Eo is sent away to a petting farm where he is required to interact with groups of children and it’s here that he seems to have the best opportunity to thrive. But, after a brief visit from a drunken Kasandra, Eo escapes from his enclosure and wanders away in search of her. The resulting quest takes him through a whole series of misadventures. Michal Dymek’s stunning cinematography captures some truly astonishing sequences, while Pawel Mykietyn’s eerie score provides a ravishing accompaniment. 

On his journey Eo encounters humanity in all its forms and he’s not always treated gently – a scene where he is brutally attacked by drunken football supporters will linger long after the credits have rolled. 

Throughout everything, Eo’s placid composure somehow sets him apart from the humans with whom he’s obliged to interact. Lingering closeups of his gentle eyes are particularly affecting and the unlikely central role (performed, it turns out, by six different donkeys) is brilliantly realised. The true strength of the story is that it’s nearly all observed from Eo’s point of view – indeed, the two scenes where it diverges from that conceit feel strangely intrusive and are the only reason why this film doesn’t attain a perfect five stars. 

As EO trots trustingly towards a truly heartrending conclusion, I’m increasingly compelled to consider humanity’s inherent cruelty towards the other creatures who share the planet, and who surely deserve a better fate than the one that’s meted out here. EO is a little masterpiece, and if you can manage to track it down on a big screen, so much the better.

4.8 stars

Philip Caveney

Love Beyond (Act of Remembrance)

11/02/23

Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh

Love Beyond (Act of Remembrance) is billed as ‘a love story – but not a typical one’. And yet this play, by Ramesh Meyyappan is, like all tales of love and loss, at once unique and ubiquitous, quirky and commonplace.

We meet Harry (Meyyappan) as he moves into a care home. He has dementia, and he’s also deaf. His new carer, May (Elicia Daly), is sweet and attentive, but she doesn’t know sign language, although she is ‘going on a course’. Naturally, Harry’s disorientation is heightened by the pair’s inability to communicate. Matthew Lenton’s skilful direction ensures the audience is drawn in, as those of us who can’t sign miss much of what Harry says, while some of those who are deaf presumably miss May’s words. It’s nicely done: we’re all given enough information to understand what’s going on, while also experiencing a little of Harry’s alienation from his new home, and May’s frustration at not being able to do her job.

The set (by Becky Minto) comprises three moveable screens. At first these are mirrors, magnifying Harry’s discomfort: the reflection of the audience staring at him adds to the sense that he no longer has a private life, or much autonomy at all. Cleverly, the screens are also transparent: lit from behind, they reveal Harry’s jumble of memories. We get to know the young Harry (Rinkoo Barpaga) and his true love, Elise (Amy Kennedy): we see them meet and fall in love; we see their joy and their sorrow, their prime and their decline. There’s something spellbinding about the way these images appear and disappear, and Harry’s yearning for Elise is palpable and heartbreaking.

The strength of this piece lies in the movement, which is precise, slow and beguiling – a realisation of the phrase ‘poetry in motion’. There is a gentle earnestness here that defies cynicism, so that a simple swimming mime becomes a thing of beauty; the act of putting on slippers becomes profound.

Composer David Paul Jones’s soundtrack is integral to the piece. The music is by turns melodic and jarring, light and intense, reflecting Harry’s inner turmoil just as clearly as the mirrors.

This year’s Manipulate Festival has thrown up some absolute gems – and this is one of them.

4.4 stars

Susan Singfield

The Whale

11/02/23

Cineworld, Edinburgh

Charlie (Brendan Fraser) is rapidly approaching the end of his life. Since the death of his partner, Adam, he has allowed his health to decline. Inanimate, a binge eater and a housebound recluse, he now weighs in at over 600 pounds and, as his friend, Liz (Hong Chau), repeatedly tells him, if he doesn’t get himself to a hospital he will, inevitably, suffer a massive heart attack. But Charlie has no health insurance and insists on working at every opportunity, teaching English Literature online – though he pretends that the camera on his computer is broken so his students cannot see him.

But Charlie still has one burning ambition, – to reconnect with his estranged daughter, Ellie (Sadie Sink), whom he abandoned when she was eight years old. It’s not going to be easy, because she is hostile to his approaches, blaming him for the fact that her mother, Mary (Samantha Morton), is a heavy drinker and still very much a loner. Into this scenario wanders Thomas (Ty Simpkins), a young missionary, seeking to give Charlie some spiritual help – but mostly looking for his own salvation.

Directed by Darren Aronofsky with a screenplay by Samuel D Hunter (based on his stage play), The Whale was filmed during lockdown, and (very fittingly) feels trapped by its stage origins, confining itself almost completely to Charlie’s dark and claustrophobic apartment. It’s been accused by some as an exercise in fat-shaming, though this seems unfair: Charlie is an engaging and complex character, dealing with grief and addiction. Fraser wears convincing prosthetics, created by a whole team of artists, which serve to illuminate the almost cartoonish grotesquery of his size, while still making us empathise with his plight.

There’s no doubting the power of Fraser’s Oscar-nominated performance in the central role, fuelled to some degree, I think, by his own punishing experiences in the movie industry. In fact, all of the performances here are skilled, particularly Sink’s incandescent turn as an anger-fuelled teenager, determined to exact her revenge on just about everyone she encounters. The scene where Charlie has to offer to pay her to visit him is particularly tragic.

If I’m honest, I think there are better, more nuanced films in this year’s Oscar contenders, but I won’t be at all surprised if Fraser gets the nod for best actor. His performance here is exemplary, and The Whale is a powerful and affecting drama.

4.4 stars

Philip Caveney

The Fantastic Life of Minnie Rubinski

09/02/23

The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh

Vision Mechanic’s production of The Fantastic Life of Minnie Rubinski was conceived during the pandemic and is inspired by creative director Kim Bergsagel’s mother (real name Sondra Rubin). Part movie, part installation and part puppet-show, it’s an affecting look into the memories and changing fortunes of one woman’s life.

Entering the performance space, we find ourselves in a darkened room dominated by a central ‘brain,’ a little shelter where we are invited to sit awhile and listen to the recorded sounds of a jumble of voices and musical cues. From there, we can follow one of a number of illuminated ‘synapses’ to a whole series of screens showing vignettes of key incidents from Minnie’s life. The characters are puppets, moving around custom-built sets, which are presented in intricate detail – check out the sequence in a 1950s supermarket and take a close look at the hundreds of items ranged on the shelves. The attention to detail is astonishing!

The scenes we are offered range from charming glimpses of Minnie’s childhood, to the years of her unfulfilling marriage, her time spent running a swish art gallery and latterly, her final days in a care home as she increasingly descends into dementia. It’s in these latter stretches that some of her adventures become particularly bizarre and the lines between memories and hallucinations are allowed to blur. We can choose to watch the sequences chronologically or simply go to whichever screen is vacant at any given time and piece everything together from what’s onscreen. (I really recommend this approach. It’s oddly like playing detective and the storyline is so skilfully handled, it never becomes confusing.)

Of course, a production like this isn’t the work of one person, but of a whole team of creative artists – puppet makers, set dressers, musicians, you name it – and their splendid endeavours are up there on the screens for all to see, as they pool their diverse talents to create a charming and fascinating narrative. I can honestly say I’ve never seen anything quite like this before.

Interested parties should make a beeline for the Fruitmarket Gallery, because this delightful production, showing as part of the Manipulate Festival, is only available to view until Sunday 12th February. Go and spend forty-five minutes in Minnie’s extraordinary world. It’ll be time well spent.

4.4 stars

Philip Caveney

Macbeth (An Undoing)

08/02/23

Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh

Unlike the monarchs he wrote about, Shakespeare has reigned supreme for more than four hundred years: his plays, rich with examples of human fallibility, are endlessly relevant. But you’d think, wouldn’t you, that we’d run out of different ways to retell the same stories? I mean, the first time I ever saw Macbeth, way-back-when on a sixth-form theatre trip, it was set in a concentration camp (courtesy of Braham Murray at Manchester’s Royal Exchange). Next, I fell in love with Penny Woolcock’s 1997 film, Macbeth on the Estate, which transported the action to a maze of contemporary council flats, and I even enjoyed TV’s ShakespeaRe-Told, where chefs James McEvoy and Keeley Hawes killed off their rivals to take over a restaurant empire. More recently, Flabbergast Theatre’s wonderfully physical, visceral adaptation had me hooked, and there’s been a slew of others along the way. What I’m saying is: I know Macbeth. We all know Macbeth. It’s been done, right? What else is there to say?

And then along comes Zinnie Harris with An Undoing – and the whole thing is turned on its head.

Macbeth (An Undoing) starts from a simple premise: what happens if Macbeth and Lady Macbeth follow their natural trajectories? Because, let’s face it, although Lady M is arguably the best of Shakespeare’s female characters, she’s also the most frustrating, initially a force to be reckoned with – an interesting, complex woman – before disappearing for an age and then returning broken, for a brief goodbye, with very little to tell us why. What if, asks Harris, it’s Macbeth who crumbles? What if it’s Macbeth – whose conscience troubles him from the start – who unravels, while his wife continues unabashed, for a while at least, determined to make their plan succeed? It makes perfect sense, given their starting points.

At first, when the curtains open on a blank stage, and we’re treated to servant/witch Carlin (Liz Kettle)’s fourth-wall-breaking opening gambit, I think perhaps this will be a relatively straightforward version of the play, with just a little mischievous tinkering here and there. After all, “This story will be told, the way it has always been told. What use is it otherwise? The hags on the heath. The woman who went mad. The man who became a tyrant,” she tells us. And, for the first half, that’s sort of what we get: Macbeth at a gallop, mostly in the Bard’s own words, step-by-step through the plot. There are a few changes: we’re in the 1920s, or the early 1930s perhaps; Ladies Macbeth and Macduff (Nicole Cooper and Jade Ogugua respectively) are reimagined as sisters, and share some revelatory new scenes (An Undoing easily passes the Bechdel test); Lady Macbeth and her husband (Adam Best) don’t just want power for power’s sake – they have a meticulously-planned vision for a utopian Scotland. But, in the main, it’s as it’s always been, so that, in the interval, I find myself musing aloud, “How can there still be an hour and a bit to go? There’s not much story left…”

But then we get to the undoing…

Harris’s adaptation is bold, daring and witty. I love the idea of the witches as servants: it makes perfect sense. They’re the eyes and ears of the house, privy to the paperwork the Macbeths have drawn up, witness to intimate moments and careless asides. Invisible. Ignored. These witches are also a family – in fact, Kettle and Star Penders, along with impressive young actor Farrah Anderson Fryer, form the most functional family we see on tonight’s stage, with clear bonds uniting them. I also like the depiction of Malcolm (Penders again) as a petulant youth, patently ill-equipped for leadership and ripe for exploitation by the ruthless Macduff (Paul Tinto).

But this is, without doubt, Lady Macbeth’s play. It’s the part of a lifetime, and Cooper makes the most of it, imbuing her with strength and vitality – and just a hint of vulnerability. She’s ambitious and single-minded, but never merely cruel or heartless. We believe in her love for her husband and sister, and we believe in her idealism too. She’s angry when the lairds misgender her, referring to her as the King because they can’t conceive of a woman behaving as she does (even though, to be fair, she does ask to be ‘unsexed’). In a well-aimed swipe at other interpretations of the role, she’s also angry at being reduced to her infertility.

The set (by Tom Piper) is simple but extraordinarily effective, with warped mirrors concealing as much as they reveal, offering us multiple perspectives, and highlighting the Macbeths’ interdependence and duality. We’re there too, shimmering in the background, complicit and agog, just as Carlin accuses at the start.

The Lyceum is busy tonight – some of the boxes have even been pressed into use – and deserves to be so for the next month. You’ve probably seen Macbeth, but I doubt you’ve seen anything quite like An Undoing before.

4.7 stars

Susan Singfield

Saint Omer

06/02/23

Cameo Cinema, Edinburgh

To describe Saint Omer as a courtroom drama would be doing it an immense disservice. Yes, the action does take place in a courtroom in the titular French town – and yes, the story is inspired by real-life events, namely the trial of Fabienne Kabou, accused of the infanticide of her young daughter in 2016. But Alice Diop’s slow-burn feature is about so much more than what meets the eye.

In this version of the tale, the accused is Senegalese Laurence Coly (Guslagie Malanda), whose only defence for leaving her daughter on a beach to die is that witchcraft impelled her to do it.’ The court’s Président (Valérie Petit) is understandably mystified and exasperated by the woman’s apparent conviction that, having admitted to the murder, she is perfectly justified in submitting a plea of not guilty.

Successful author, Rama (Kayije Kagame), also Senegalese, feels impelled to attend the trial. She’s pregnant herself and is in the process of writing a new book based around the myth of Medea, and believes that elements of the story are echoed in Coly’s situation. Rama also meets up with Coly’s manipulative mother, Odile (Salimata Kamate), who exerts a quiet sense of control, while utterly refusing to discuss her daughter’s claims of sorcery. As the trial progresses, Rama feels herself increasingly drawn to Coly’s plight.

Slow-paced and deeply compelling, Saint Omer feels like a meditation on the unfair demands of womanhood – that, purely because of their biology, women are forever cast as unremittingly evil whenever they are unable to fulfil the demands that motherhood places upon them. Everything builds to an impassioned address from defence lawyer, Maître Vaudenay (Ayrélia Petit), her remarks addressed direct to camera, so there can be no doubt of their intention.

It’s interesting to note how little cinematic artifice is on display here – hardly any of the cuts, dissolves and pans we associate with a movie are utilised, while characters remain curiously inert throughout proceedings. Coly is even dressed in clothes that virtually blend with the wood panelled background of the courtroom. She is, it seems, already virtually invisible. An extract from Pier Paolo Passolini’s film Medea (1969) seems to have been included merely to accentuate the gulf between Rama’s original notion and the stark reality of Coly’s situation.

And, unlike any other courtroom drama I’ve seen, there’s no interest in recording the outcome of the trial, and this seems entirely appropriate. Saint Omer is much more interested in what is left unsaid. It’s an undeniably powerful and illuminating film, expertly told.

4.4 stars

Philip Caveney