Tout est parfait (Everything Is Fine) (Director: Yves Christian Fournier): I’d read some strong reviews of this film a few months back and was looking forward to checking it out. The premise is intriguing: Josh (Maxime Dumontier) is a typical teenager living in a suburb in Québec. He has a group of friends with whom he skateboards and parties. Then one day he finds the body of his friend Thomas, who’s hanged himself in his room. The recent suicide of his friend Sasha still fresh in his mind, he’s sent reeling when he realizes that Alex and Simon, the others in his group of pals, have also killed themselves. He’s been left out of their pact, and he’s suddenly very alone.
His only connections to the friends he’s lost are Henri, Thomas’s layabout father, and Mia, the ex-girlfriend of Sasha. In the already insular world of teenage boys, he cuts himself even further off from his terrified parents, and stonewalls the counselor he’s required to see at school. Only with Mia does he seem to forget the inexplicable tragedy, indulging in the crush he’d harboured for a long time, though not without guilt. With Henri, he tries to bond over golf, a sport he doesn’t really like, but one with which Henri had always tried to interest Thomas, without success. Other than that, we don’t really get to know Josh at all, and even less about his friends, even though there are some flashbacks as he revisits old haunts.
The pace of the film is incredibly slow, and there is very little dialogue to help flesh out the characters. We see glimpses of Josh with each of his friends, but there is very little sense of what made them such a tight-knit group. The mystery of why Josh is still here is therefore not of as much interest as it should be, and when it is “solved” at the end of the film, it comes both too suddenly and too late. Even so, the senselessness of the suicides is never disturbed by any kind of explanation. The reasons the boys took their lives are in the end as unknowable as the boys themselves, which, combined with the glacial pacing of the film, made it a bit of a frustrating experience for me. The ending redeems the film a little, along with some fine cinematography and a great soundtrack.
Note: This DVD from Alliance Atlantis is primarily a French release. It does have English subtitles, though every sound effect and action seems to be subtitled as well, which made for some snickering each time the counselor was reduced to <sighing>. Additionally, the special features, including a commentary from the director and writer, are available in French only.
(7/10)
Tagged as:
adolescence,
canada,
quebec,
suicide
A Necessary Death (2008, Director: Daniel Stamm): This was the last of the screeners I was sent for films showing at SXSW this year, and to be perfectly honest, I wasn’t looking forward to watching it. In fact, I’d been putting it off for weeks. Here’s why: the concept is that a graduating film student chooses as his thesis project to create a documentary following a suicidal person from their initial decision to the final act of taking their own life. I don’t think it will spoil the film for you if I tell you that this isn’t a real documentary.
Instead, director Daniel Stamm films in a documentary style as his brash student director Gilbert gathers his crew and starts sorting through responses to the audacious ad he’s placed in the newspaper: “Suicidal individual wanted for documentary. Project will follow individual from first preparations to final act.” I don’t want to say too much more about plot, but I was consistently impressed and surprised by how unscripted and natural the film felt. Even after I knew it wasn’t “real” I was still tense as “the end” approached. Great performances highlight a smart script that explores many of the ethical issues that surround documentary filmmaking. Does a filmmaker have the right to manipulate his subject? How about befriending him? Is the film more important than the relationships formed? Many documentarians struggle with these issues only after beginning what they think is a straightforward film, and Stamm perfectly captures that sense of losing control of the story.
Stamm can’t avoid having one of the film’s conceits break down early. He’s supposed to be a friend of documentarian Gilbert, but it doesn’t really make a lot of sense to film a documentary about the making of a documentary. Nevertheless, this conceit is essential to portray Gilbert’s character in the fullest way. I certainly didn’t feel cheated or fooled by the faux-doc approach. In fact, I was relieved that Gilbert’s audacious experiment wasn’t real. It didn’t lessen the impact of the film, and I’m sure I’ll take many of the ideas explored here into my coverage of the Hot Docs festival, which begins here in Toronto this week.
Official site for the film
Trailer
(8/10)
Tagged as:
documentary,
suicide
Joy Division (2007, Director: Grant Gee): I wanted to catch this back at TIFF in September, but saw Anton Corbijn’s Control (review) instead. The two films essentially complete each other, and seeing this after Corbijn’s dramatic film made me appreciate how closely that film hewed to the facts. And seeing footage of Ian Curtis performing made Sam Riley’s performance that much more eerily compelling in retrospect.
Gee fashions his film around the image of the changing city of Manchester. He points out explicitly how many of the landmarks in the life of the band no longer exist. Sadly, this also applies to the people themselves. Manager Rob Gretton and engineer Martin Hannett are no longer with us, nor is radio DJ and supporter John Peel. Most poignantly, Tony Wilson, who appears in the film, died in August 2007. The images of transformation describe the career of Joy Division especially well; after the suicide of Ian Curtis, the three remaining members decided to change their name to New Order and keep going. Just as Manchester rose from the rubble of its industrial past, New Order became one of the most successful British groups of the 80s and 90s. It started so much more inauspiciously.
Inspired by the punk of the Sex Pistols, Joy Division (originally called Warsaw) formed in 1977 and quickly gelled around the magnetic figure of Ian Curtis. The film brings together lots of old performance footage in addition to interviews with the surviving band members. Especially welcome is the contribution of Annik Honoré, Curtis’ Belgian girlfriend, who still seems deeply affected by his death. She is still incredibly beautiful and embodies the sophistication that made some of the other band members a bit nervous.
Gee also spices up some audio-only interviews with motion graphics and otherwise mixes up his methods to keep the audience interested. It was understandable but still disappointing that Deborah Curtis’ (Ian’s widow) wasn’t featured, though there were a few written quotations featured on-screen (from her biography Touching From A Distance, I assume).
It’s particularly fitting for me to be reviewing a film about a great band in the middle of a music festival where more than 1,500 bands are playing in the space of a week. Among so many hard-working and talented musicians, this film makes the achievement of four working-class lads from Manchester that much more impressive. Gee’s film has given me a better appreciation of the band, and of Corbijn’s film in particular. They should be sold as a set, I think.
Official site for the film
(8/10)
Tagged as:
music,
suicide
Control (Director: Anton Corbijn, UK/USA, 2007): My fears about this one were mostly justified. Anton Corbijn began his career as a rock photographer and is perhaps best known for shooting the covers of U2’s albums. From there he moved into directing music videos before taking on this film as his feature debut. Corbijn has crafted a pretty conventional biopic about the life of Joy Division’s singer Ian Curtis, who committed suicide by hanging himself on the eve of the group’s first US tour in 1980. All of the formative moments are checked off: Ian as glam-loving teenager singing in front of a mirror, Ian meeting and marrying his wife Debbie, upon whose memoir (
Touching From a Distance) the film is based, Ian’s first epileptic seizure, Ian’s affair with Belgian groupie Annik Honoré (played by an impossibly gorgeous Alexandra Maria Lara). As with most biopics, time is compressed to a ridiculous extent, making it difficult to feel any depth in particular scenes before we’re rushed off to the next major event. As well, Corbijn films in black and white, and instead of making late 70s Macclesfield look like the grim industrial suburb it was, he almost makes it look pretty. In the same way, he photographs Curtis (played ably by young Sam Riley) like the rock photographer he can’t leave behind. Samantha Morton does a fine job of portraying the forgotten wife, but given that she was hardly acknowledged by the members of the band, it’s hard to trust much of the script, which must by nature deal in speculation.
However, the actors portraying the band members played all their own music, and did a wonderful job. And the film drove me back immediately to listen to my Joy Division records, which must mean something worked. I thought the scenes leading up to Curtis’ death were handled sensitively as well. But perhaps my favourite moment was one of the lightest. The presence of John Cooper Clarke (playing John Cooper Clarke!) performing his inimitable spoken word piece “Evidently Chickentown” made me long for the days when someone like Clarke could open for a band as “dark” as Joy Division.
Curtis’ story reminded me vividly of another reluctant rock star. Someone hungry for fame but then disdainful when it arrived. Someone who married and had a child only to doubt his abilities as a husband and father. Someone who struggled with health issues to the point of despair. Yes, I think if there is an afterlife, Ian Curtis and Kurt Cobain are sharing a cigarette somewhere.
Trailer
Official Site
(8/10)
NOTE: I saw this film before the film festival started at a special press screening. I’ve actually revised my numerical rating upward in the days since I first saw the film.
UPDATE: The film opens in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver on October 23rd.
Tagged as:
music,
suicide,
TIFF
Sometimes things catch me by surprise. For instance, I had no idea that Toronto’s North by Northeast music festival (patterned after Austin’s South by Southwest) also has a film festival component. The whole thing takes place this weekend, but tomorrow has two very promising screenings that I’m going to try to get to.
A.J. Schnack’s film Kurt Cobain: About A Son has been getting rave reviews all over the place, and this might be the only opportunity to see this film on a big screen for a while. The film features audio interviews with Cobain recorded by writer Michael Azerrad for his biography Come As You Are, and Schnack has combined the audio with footage of Cobain’s three hometowns in Washington state (Aberdeen, Olympia, and Seattle). It’s said to be powerful stuff. Watch an excerpt from the film here. You can catch it at 7:00 pm tomorrow at the Royal Cinema (608 College Street).
Wasted Orient will be a different but no less memorable experience, if the trailer is anything to go by. Filmmaker Kevin Fritz follows Chinese punk band Joyside around the country as they drink, vomit, play some music, and generally despair over the Chinese music scene and life in general. It’s showing at 3:00pm tomorrow at the National Film Board Theatre (150 John Street).
Tagged as:
china,
Documentaries,
music,
nxne,
suicide
