Call Me By Your Name

Challengers

21/04/24

Cineworld, Edinburgh

Challengers

I’m a huge tennis fan, but I’d be hard pushed to think of a non-documentary film that has ever come close to capturing the verve and excitement of the game. Until now. Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers manages to capture the gladiatorial nature of the sport and at the same time interweaves it with a stylish, sexy drama, which centres on three players and their complicated relationships. Guadagnino is a gifted filmmaker with both Call Me By Your Name and Bones and All as brilliant examples of the art. (I’ve just about forgiven him for his pretentious remake of Dario Argento’s Suspiria.)

The film opens midway through an intense tennis final between Art Donaldson (Mike Faist)  and Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor), who are playing under the baleful gaze of Art’s coach – and wife – Tashi Duncan (Zendaya). Art has been a top player but his star is waning; he’s still got the sponsorship deals earning him big money but he’s lost his mojo so, in a desperate attempt to rekindle his ambition, Tasha – who’s only ever really been motivated by her own thwarted obsession with tennis – persuades him to enter an open tournament, feeling that playing a series of lower seeds will be good for his confidence. Patrick is doing rather less well financially, living hand to mouth and at one point reduced to sleeping in his car – but he is playing to win.

From this point, the film flashes effortlessly back to thirteen years earlier, when the two young men, best friends since their first day at boarding school, encounter Tashi, the player everyone’s talking about. Both of them fall head over heels in lust with her and, in a playful scene in the men’s shared hotel room, Tashi announces that she will sleep with whoever wins the match when the two of them play tennis tomorrow…

It would be a crime to reveal much more about the plot from this point, but suffice to say that it takes some pretty labyrinthine twists and turns as it moves forwards and backwards in time, taking in everything that happens along the way.

There are strong performances from the three leads – nobody else gets much of a look-in – and while the story has some strong sexual content, it’s never allowed to feel prurient. It’s clear from the outset that Tasha is the main motivator in this three-way entanglement and she’s not about to be manipulated by anybody. 

Justin Kuritzke’s script is cleverly nuanced and sometimes wickedly funny, while Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross have created an atypical electronic score, one so propulsive that I find my feet tapping along to the urgent rhythms. For the most part it works brilliantly, though I do feel it’s occasionally overused. A special mention must go to the inventive cinematography of Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, particularly in the climactic stages of the final tennis match, which at one point has the camera careering madly back and forth across the court as though its been glued to a tennis ball.

Challengers is a grown up, slick and inventive feature, which is the work of a director at (ahem) the top of his game, set and match. 

4.6 stars

Philip Caveney

The Empire Podcast

19/09/19

Cameo Cinema, Edinburgh

Can we review a podcast? Well, we reviewed No Such Thing As a Fish, didn’t we? And, nobody complained about that. Besides, me and Empire, we have some history…

The first issue of Empire came out in July 1989 and I purchased a copy. It wasn’t a particularly auspicious month to launch a movie magazine. The featured film was, if memory serves correctly, Great Balls of Fire starring Dennis Quaid and Winona Ryder. This isn’t a film that lingers long in the memory, nor one that’s likely to feature in The Criterion Collection, but nonetheless, I liked what I read in the magazine and, being the absolute obsessive that I am, I’ve purchased every single copy published since then. I’ve been reading it for more than thirty years, Indeed, anyone who possesses a copy of  issue 100 will find a picture of yours truly, grinning like an idiot, dressed in my grey Empire T-shirt (which I still own) and proudly showing off my collection of one hundred pristine magazines.

Somewhere back down the years (probably around the time when a copy started taking a bit less than three hours to download), I switched to a digital edition and I now read Empire from cover-to-cover on my iPad. The podcast, a relatively recent development, is something I listen to on my daily visits to the gym. Consequently, I know things about these people. I know, for instance, that Chris Hewitt’s greatest shame is giving a 5 star review to Attack of the Clones…

So imagine my delight when I hear that the regular team of Chris (resident clown-prince), Helen O’ Hara (resident sage), James Dyer (resident grumpy-git) and Terri White (resident snappy dresser and editor-in-chief) are coming to Edinburgh – and, moreover, that they will be hosting their podcast at our beloved Cameo Cinema, less than a ten minute stroll from Caveney-Singfield Towers. Are we going to buy tickets? Are bears Catholics? Does the pope shit in the woods?

And sure enough, here we are. The Cameo is completely sold out, Chris is performing his rendition of Call Me By Your Name (as requested by yours truly via Twitter) and Scottish actor Jack Lowden is explaining why his greatest ambition is to play a character a foot shorter than his actual height. I even get to ask the team a question (“Which film would you nominate as the biggest ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’ contender of recent years?”). Chris goes for Suspiria (agreed!), Terri chooses Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (agreed!), Helen opts for La La Land (Susan definitely agrees!) and James chooses… The Shape of Water (really don’t agree, but I did warn you he can be a curmudgeon).

Afterwards, there’s time to score a Bangily Bang! T-shirt and get a photograph with the team in the bar. And I reflect that podcasts really are weird things because, when you hear those familiar voices over and over, you start to feel that you are friends with these people, that you know them intimately – and, of course you don’t, and surely never will.

But I enjoyed their visit to Edinburgh and I’m already looking forward to getting on the old crosstrainer and listening back to that recording…

4.5 stars

Philip Caveney

 

Beautiful Boy

21/01/19

The people emerging from the afternoon screening of Beautiful Boy, still mopping at their eyes, pay testament to the fact that this film is what used to be termed a ‘four handkerchief weepie.’ My tears are undoubtedly flowing as abundantly as many others in the audience, because this is a heartrending story about a father’s desperate attempts to deal with his beloved son’s drug addiction. Be warned, it does not exactly make for a side-splitting trip to the cinema.

Freelance journalist David Sheff (Steve Carell, who seems to be in so many films lately it’s a wonder he didn’t land the title role in Mary Queen of Scots) has always had a close relationship with his son, Nic (Timothée Chalamet), a handsome and talented young lad who appears to have the brightest possible future ahead of him – until crystal meth addiction gets in the way and turns him into a deceitful, self-destructive shadow of what he once was. David can only watch in abject misery as all his hopes for his son’s future go headfirst down the nearest toilet – and we share his pain. It’s like watching helplessly as an out of control vehicle hurtles headlong to destruction, knowing that we are powerless to change anything.

Based on two books – one by the father and the other by the son – Beautiful Boy attempts to give us both sides of the story, though it must be said that I am occasionally left wanting more detail – and there is the conviction that some of the less salubrious elements of the tale have been lightly glossed over, perhaps because they may not show the protagonists in the best light. For instance, at one point David says that he has made mistakes in parenting Nic, but we don’t see any – indeed, he emerges as an almost saintly figure, working tirelessly to offer help and financial support.

The film belongs to the two leads and Chalomet, building on the superb work he did in Call Me By Your Name, manages to make us care about Nic, even as he does the most heinous things to the people who love him, even stealing money from the younger brother who clearly idolises him. Maura Tierney as David’s second wife, Karen, doesn’t have an awful lot to do here and, for that matter, neither does Amy Ryan as his first wife, Vicki. The story skips nimbly back and forth in time, using earlier scenes to emphasise the implicit trust that father and son once enjoyed and there are some clever uses of music to help tie things together – any film that features Neil Young’s Heart of Gold gets brownie points from me, even if its appearance precedes one of the story’s most distressing scenes.

The film ends with a plea for addicts everywhere to seek help and reminds us that, in America, drug addiction is the primary cause of death for young men under the age of fifty, which is sobering news, and underlines how the massive profits enjoyed by both drug suppliers and treatment centres are shameful and obscene.

Beautiful Boy is a heartfelt film with an important message and it deserves to be seen, but be prepared, take a hanky. You’ll probably need it.

4 stars

Philip Caveney

Call Me By Your Name

Call Me By Your Name Armie Hammer and Timothée Chalamet Credit: Sayombhu Mukdeeprom/Sony Pictures Classics

08/11/17

This slow, languorous, coming-of-age film by Luca Guadagnino has been stirring up some Oscar buzz recently, but it’s been a hard film to view with only one showing a day at the multiplexes – and even that in the morning! It’s easy enough to appreciate why it isn’t considered a ‘bums on seats’ vehicle – weighing in at two hours and twelve minutes, it certainly takes its own sweet time to play out and with not an awful lot in the way of storyline, it was never going to drag in the superhero crowd – but it recounts a tale of a young boy coming to terms with his own burgeoning sexuality, eloquently and without sensationalism. And that’s surely something worth supporting.

Set in Northern Italy in 1983, this is the story of seventeen year old Elio Perlman (Timothy Chalamet), a talented young musician who leads a very privileged existence in the country house belonging to his parents, a Professor of Classical Antiquity (Michael Stuhlbarg) and his wife, Annella (Amira Casar). With a cook and a gardener to cater for their every whim, there isn’t much to do to pass the time but lounge indolently around in the sunshine, eating, drinking, reading books and occasionally splashing about in a whole host of watery locations. Things change dramatically, however, when young and impossibly handsome American research assistant, Oliver (Armie Hammer) arrives at the house for a six week stay. At first, Elio finds the newcomer brash and arrogant, (and so do I, come to think of it) but as the barriers gradually start to come down, the two young men bond over their shared Jewish heritage and their love of music – and it isn’t very long before Elio realises he is falling hopelessly and wretchedly in love with Oliver…

That’s pretty much it as far as story goes, but there’s plenty here to enjoy, not least the ravishing cinematography that will have you pining for a long summer holiday in Italy. Chalamet is clearly something of a find, managing to convincingly demonstrate all of Elio’s doubts and fears, while Armie Hammer has clearly come a very long way since The Lone Ranger. A concluding speech by Stuhlbarg’s character felt a little overcooked, but I was nonetheless glad it was there, because here was a parent being completely non-judgemental about the sexuality of his son, which is a pretty rare, but very welcome thing to witness in a film.

There probably isn’t a great deal more to say about this, except perhaps, that in these short-attention-span times, films like this don’t often see the light of day – and if cinema chains won’t offer people enough opportunities to see them, they certainly aren’t going to survive for very much longer. If this comes to a screen near you, do take the opportunity to see it. It’s really rather charming.

And as for that Oscar buzz? Well, we’ll see in the fullness of time. It’ll be rather ironic if it wins something – a film that hardly anyone got the chance to see.

4.4 stars

Philip Caveney