September 2003

The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part 1: The Moab Story (UK/Netherlands, dir­ector Peter Greenaway): Here’s what the pro­gramme book has to say about this film, “The Tulse Luper Suitcases pro­ject will use five media: at least three feature-length films, tele­vi­sion, numerous DVDs, the Internet and books. The con­tent is a his­tory that covers six dec­ades, a period Greenaway refers to as the Uranium Years: from the dis­covery of uranium in Colorado in 1928 to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Ninety-two suit­cases (after the atomic number of uranium) will be opened, twenty-one of them in the first part of the pro­ject, The Moab Story.”

Of course, I don’t think most of the audi­ence read the pro­gramme book, nor had most of them ever seen a Peter Greenaway film. Both were required pre­requis­ites tonight. The Moab Story is a tech­nical tour-de-force, using all manner of innov­ative film tech­niques. And all of the Greenaway obses­sions are present: gen­erous amounts of nudity (both male and female), num­bers and counting, super­im­pos­i­tion of text, sump­tuous art dir­ec­tion, and a labyrinthine plot. I was baffled, frus­trated, fas­cin­ated, baffled again, etc. It would be hard to attempt a plot out­line, but the sub­jects covered include Mormonism, fas­cism, film­making (with winking ref­er­ences to sev­eral other Greenaway films), and the nature of con­fine­ment. A muddle, to be sure, but an ambi­tious one. Greenaway has given him­self a huge canvas on which to paint a huge story. Or rather, this is like a million-piece jigsaw puzzle. Head-scratching, yes, but I can’t wait to find the next piece.

(8/10)

P.S. The web­site will prob­ably not be of much interest if you haven’t seen the film, but there is a blog sec­tion where it’s pos­sible to leave com­ments. Some people are leaving com­ments “in char­acter” and addressing Tulse Luper as if he were a real person (and still alive, though he’d be 92).

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Wilbur Wants To Kill Himself (UK/Denmark, dir­ector Lone Scherfig): I found the emo­tional arc of the story a bit weird, but enjoyed the film non­ethe­less. You see, sui­cide itself is not funny. But Wilbur keeps trying to kill him­self in various ways which I think are sup­posed to be funny. Meanwhile, his long­suf­fering brother Harbour (hmmm…symbolism?) has just buried their father and now has no relief since he’s con­stantly wor­ried about Wilbur. Then some­thing won­derful hap­pens. Harbour meets and falls in love with Alice, and her nine-year-old daughter Mary. They marry, and all seems well, even des­pite Wilbur’s almost suc­cessful sui­cide attempts. Then a new crisis hits.

I don’t want to spoil the film, but let me just say that things get better for Wilbur once he learns that other people need him. I was com­plaining to my friends that British films like this one (well, it’s a British/Danish cop­ro­duc­tion) tend to hide their sac­charine with lots of swearing. There wasn’t an unusual amount of swearing, but Wilbur’s sur­li­ness is paper-thin, hiding the pro­ver­bial “heart of gold” under­neath. He’s the typ­ical “bad boy” that women find irres­ist­ible. Harbour is the typ­ical saint/martyr who is kind but just a bit dull (in fact, why didn’t they just call him “Safe” Harbour?). Alice, of course, loves both of them.

So although the film was tre­mend­ously acted, and had some great sec­ondary char­ac­ters (Julia Davis as sexy but flaky nurse Moira was hil­arious, as was the psy­cho­lo­gist played by Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen), I was just a little bit dis­ap­pointed with the main char­ac­ters. I thought a film like About A Boy took the sui­cide issue just a bit more ser­i­ously, while still finding abundant humour elsewhere.

(7.5/10)

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