Stop-Motion Strangeness – The House (2022)

In the three weeks since its debut airing on Netflix, the stop-motion animated anthology The House (2022) has generated a huge amount of buzz and an outpouring of positive responses. The exact nature of those responses, however, has left me somewhat puzzled. “Screw conventional storytelling” one reviewer gleefully cries – and yet all of the storytelling techniques on display are well established in short fiction (both literary and cinematic). The vast majority of viewers take it for granted that all three stories take place in the same house – which, to be fair, is also what animation house Nexus Studios would have you believe – and yet the worlds of the three stories are completely incompatible. There’s even one of those annoying “the ending(s) explained” articles whose existence so frustrates me – have we really gotten to the point where we assume that most of the audience for any given movie, no matter how straightforward, are incapable of understanding what it’s about? Ahem. Anyway. Before I stray too far from the work itself, perhaps I’d better circle back and take a look through each of the three stories.

I – And heard within, a lie is spun

The first (and in my opinion the best) of the three stories is set in what appears to be the Victorian era and tells the origin story of the titular house. Mabel (Mia Goth) lives in a small country house with her father Raymond (Matthew Goode of Downton Abbey), mother Penelope (Cranford‘s Claudie Blakley) and baby sister Isobel. They’re not particularly well off, but they’re content. Or they would be if not for Raymond’s wealthy relatives, who periodically descend upon the family to chastise them for their lack of success and generally criticise every last little detail. After one such tyrannical visit, Raymond gets plastered and stumbles off into the woods. Whilst relieving himself against a tree, Raymond is interrupted by the appearance of a mysterious carriage which glows with an unearthly light. The gentlemanly occupant (Barnaby Pilling) beckons him closer and offers him a deal.

Such an encounter traditionally indicates a visitation from either Faerie or Hell – and, as is the way with such bargains, if an offer seems too good to be true, you should probably back away slowly and politely decline. The next morning sees Mr. Thomas (Mark Heap) arriving at the house to formally conclude the deal on behalf of his employer. The terms are simple. His master, the architect Van Schoonbeek, has come into possession of the land surrounding their house. He has offered to build them a new house just behind their own – a house which is he is prepared to give them for free. All they have to do is give up their old house and move into the new one.

At first all seems well. The house is magnificent and they don’t even have to prepare their own meals – everything is done for them by unseen servants. They’re a little disconcerted at having to leave all of their belongings in a disused basement… but the architect is very particular about his work and has fitted the house with all of the aesthetically appropriate fixtures, so it would seem churlish to complain. Events take a more worrying turn when Mabel wakes the next morning to discover that the stairs connecting the rest of the house to the entry hall have disappeared! Mr. Thomas tells her not to worry – the architect is simply a perfectionist and is continuing to refine his work – but as Mabel makes her way through the house, she keeps encountering sinister blank-faced workmen performing ill-defined tasks who immediately cease their work and stare at her until she’s moved on. As time wears on and their surroundings continue to change on a daily basis, Raymond and Penelope gradually lose their self-determination and become integrated into their surroundings, leaving Mabel and her sister ever more desperate to find a way to leave the house.

This opening instalment is the work of Belgian animators Emma de Swaef & Marc James Roels, whose love of puppetry led them to transition into the world of stop-motion animation. Their medium of preference is wool, which provides an interesting texture to their characters’ large pale faces. Their interior design choices and careful selection of camera angles work together to create an impression of an impossibly large structure whose labyrinthine interiors could not possibly fit within the exterior dimensions, and aspects of the décor begin to verge on the surreal as the architect’s adjustments continue to unfold.

Despite having been in the industry for less than 10 years, Mia Goth has already worked with a number of notable filmmakers – her first role was in Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac (2013) and she has since worked with internationally respected directors such as Luca Guadagnino (Suspiria, 2018) and Claire Denis (High Life, 2018). Her Mabel is convincingly childlike with appropriate levels of nuance and she is more than capable of carrying the narrative on her shoulders. My favourite among the supporting cast was Mark Heap. Although on one level he will always be the disturbed painter Brian from Spaced (1999-2001) to me, his Mr. Thomas takes an entertaining journey from pseudo-sinister to clearly-out-of-his-depth as he finds himself subsumed within his employer’s design.

II – Then lost is truth that can’t be won

The second story shifts to the present day and a world populated by anthropomorphic rats. This time around the focal character is an unnamed property developer played by Jarvis Cocker – a name instantly recognisable to fans of the 1990s Britpop scene as the founder and lead singer of Pulp (1978-2002, 2011-2013). Due to the vagaries of the economy, the Developer is attempting to refurbish the house by himself in readiness for an upcoming property viewing, interspersed with a series of over-confident telephone calls to some unidentified person about their pending holiday in the Maldives – although reading between the lines of their conversation creates the impression that whatever the relationship between the two, it’s nowhere near as healthy as he believes it to be.

It will likely come as no surprise that the renovations do not proceed smoothly. His attempts to fix the rotisserie oven unearth an infestation of “fur beetles” which quickly gets out of hand and begins to dominate his dreams. On the day of the viewing he receives the wrong order of home-delivered groceries and is forced to cater what is supposed to be a high class event of hand-picked guests with canapés composed of potato chips and cheap biscuits. Shattered by the unmitigated disaster of an evening, a dim ray of hope appears in the form of a strangely shaped Odd Couple (veteran Swedish actors Yvonne Lombard & Sven Wollter) who are “extremely interested” in the house. Although visiting hours are long over, the Developer gives them a guided tour, culminating with the master bedroom – at which point the couple bid him a good night and settle down to sleep. Although this behaviour does set off alarm bells in the Developer’s head, he’s too exhausted by the day’s events to kick up a fuss and goes to sleep on the living room floor, clinging to the lifeline offered by their “interest”.

As the days progress the Odd Couple become more and more firmly ensconced in the house while the Developer finds himself constantly busy dealing with a resurgence in the fur beetle infestation. Attempting to enlist the police (Tommy Hibbits & Ayesha Antoine) to eject his unwanted guests, he’s taken aback when the officers who arrive turn out to have been sent by the person he’s been telephoning. As his bad dreams escalate into outright hallucinations and the strangely bulging bodies of the Odd Couple begin more and more to resemble bugs, the Developer’s life spirals further out of control with an inevitable downward trajectory. Although Jarvis Cocker isn’t exactly known as an actor, he acquits himself here in fine form, effortlessly bringing the viewer with him on his descent from desperation to despair.

I instantly recognised the style of Swedish animator Niki Lindroth von Bahr from her previous short film Something to Remember [Något att minnas] (2019), which I reviewed previously as part of the 2020 MIFF animation showcase. Her animation work characteristically juxtaposes anthropomorphic animal puppets with mundane human environments infused with a subtle menace, which is right on target for what this middle chapter demands of her. Outside of the world of animation, von Bahr has a separate career as a costume designer, providing the ritualistic outfits seen in the music videos of Fever Ray’s If I Had a Heart (2008) and Stranger Than Kindness (2009) as well as designing the costumes for David Bowie’s magnificent swansong Blackstar (2015).

III – Listen again and seek the sun

The final chapter takes us to an indeterminate near future of anthropomorphic cats in which the sea levels have risen sufficiently to flood Great Britain, leaving only a few lone houses to poke their upper extremities above water. Rosa (Susan Wokoma) is the house’s landlord, persisting in a bloodyminded fashion with her attempts at renovating the house for future tenants despite the clear futility of her actions. Sharing the property with her are Elias (Will Sharpe) – a shy fisherman with a hidden artistic propensity – and hopeless hippie Jen (Helena Bonham Carter), who blithely wafts her way through life oblivious to Rosa’s attempts to drag her back to “reality”. Rosa persists in pestering her tenants for rent on a monthly basis, despite the clear evidence that there is no way for any of them to get their hands on money – money which must surely have lost any value in the world in which they live.

Rosa is less than impressed by the arrival of a new tenant, Jen’s “spirit partner” Cosmos (Paul Kaye) – a new age traveller with all the pseudo-authority of a habitual scrounger masquerading as a guru. Infuriated by the easy way in which her tenants take to him, she is about to kick him out when she learns that he’s a skilled craftsman who could help her to repair the house. Instructing him to begin with the upper-storey floorboards, her newfound bliss is shattered when her inspection of the day’s work reveals that rather than repair the floor, he has decided to repurpose the boards as part of the foundation of a boat he’s begun to build for Elias. Rosa becomes increasingly frustrated as Cosmos’ influence appears to hold sway over her companions and while threatening to take away her residence from beneath her – but the story diverges in tone from the previous two chapters, leading a more hopeful resolution than the earlier stories might have led the viewer to expect.

This concluding segment was directed by Paloma Baeza, an English actress who quit the profession after finally gaining admittance to the National Film and Television School’s animation program – a notoriously picky establishment which only accepts 8 students per year. After her graduation piece Poles Apart (2017) won the 2018 BAFTA award for Best Animated Short Film, she began work on a still-in-progress feature-length CGI/live-action film titled The Toymaker’s Secret, written by her husband Alex Garland. There’s a clear line of progression in her style between Poles Apart and The House. While was a cartoonish aspect to the ursine characters in her earlier project, the cats seen here are more fully realised in all aspects – the crafting of each figure, the individualised body language which plays such an important part in making each character a distinct individual with their own interior life, and overall a more polished range of movement and design.

I’m mainly familiar with Susan Wokoma from her role as an agoraphobic cosplay designer in the SF comedy series Truth Seekers (2020), a performance which showed glimmers of the general frustration with humanity she allows to dominate here. Will Sharpe is fine, but his (appropriately) subdued performance has no hope of competing with Helena Bonham Carter and Paul Kaye, who slide effortlessly into their scene-stealing flowerchild roles.

“The” House?

Although animation house Nexus Studios oversaw the commissioning of the various animators whose work makes up the visual component of The House, the writer behind all three scenarios is celebrated Irish playwright Enda Walsh. Working primarily for the stage, two of his plays have been adapted to film – Kirsty Sheridan’s Disco Pigs (2001) and Ring-director Nakata Hideo’s Chatroom (2010). Walsh also had the good fortune to work with David Bowie, writing the book for his stage musical Lazarus (2015), a new adaptation of the 1963 source material for Bowie’s most famous film role in The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976). Although I haven’t been able to determine whether it was Walsh or the animation studio who first conceived The House, it appears that they were united in the brief that all three of the stories were to be set in the same house. But is that really the case?

Taken purely on a thematic level, I can more or less see where Walsh is coming from. Each of the three stories explores the relationship between a core individual or group of people and the house in which they live – broadening out to consider issues such as the contrast between the concepts of “house” and “home” and the materialistic drives of society which make such a vital possession such a source of contention. To take an overly simplistic view of the three stories, the first could be said to explore the consequences of selling out your happiness and sense of identity for material gain, while the third can be seen as a directive to free yourself from hanging on to possessions which have lost their meaning. The middle chapter is more difficult to pick apart. Is it an exploration of what it means to “own” a house or piece of land? Is it a veiled examination of indigenous people reclaiming their land from the coloniser? Both are possible readings, but other elements of the story could easily be used to argue against these interpretations. Although this section of the film works well on a narrative level, I remain unconvinced that there is any one coherent reading that could satisfyingly be applied to it.

Returning to the actual narrative as presented onscreen, regardless of authorial intent, I believe the only sensible way approach the movie is as three completely separate stories – past, present and future – featuring a house as an important location. This has nothing to do with the switch from human protagonists to anthropomorphic rats to anthropomorphic cats – I’d be quite happy to accept this simply as a stylistic choice made by each of the animation teams. But if the writer intended to create three stories which fit together on a narrative level, then he’s completely failed. At a pinch, I’d be willing to consider that the house in parts 2 and 3 could be the same house – although the state in which the house is left at the end of part 2 left me dubious that it could endure long enough to appear in part 3, and that’s not even considering the failure of any of the surrounding houses to last. But the arcane nature of the house in part 1 – and the general weird fairy tale aura of horror in the story itself – is inconsistent with the house seen in part 2, and is completely incompatible tonally with the cautiously optimistic part 3.

But these complaints have more to do with how The House has been marketed rather than its contents. At the end of the day, what remains are three independent stories with a loose thematic link, each of which doubles as a showcase for their respective animators’ creativity and talent. Each story works well on its own terms and features a strong range of performers providing the voice-over talent. In my opinion the movie starts with the strongest story and ends with the weakest – but my reaction to the final story may have been negatively affected simply because its more hopeful tone felt out of place when compared with what had gone before. (And yes, I recognise the contradiction in going against my own rhetoric by allowing the first two stories to colour my opinion of the third.) I expect that the writer’s intent was to use the final story to revisit the thematic concerns of the first story by providing his protagonists with a means of escape – and while for me this felt forced and false, I suspect that others will be more positively inclined.

Lynch, Maddin, Strickland, Phạm – Four Short Films

I had no idea what I was going to write about this week. None of the movies I watched struck enough of a chord to inspire me to share them with others. I’ve had much better luck with my choice of TV viewing – but for a blog with the word “eclectic” in the title, I feel like I’ve spent far too much of the last year simply defaulting to writing up yet another K-drama. So in an attempt to better meet my own brief, I spent this morning diving into a more or less random selection of short films and have picked the most interesting four to share with you. Featured here are three of my favourite directors – David Lynch (Eraserhead), Guy Maddin (The Heart of the World) and Peter Strickland (Berberian Sound Studio) – plus, for a bit of variety, a Vietnamese director I’ve never previously encountered.

Stump the Guesser (2020) is a typically delirious work from Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin, whose oddities derive from a divergent celluloid history in which the style and techniques of early 20^th century cinema never went away. Maddin lovingly conjures the more fantastical elements of Soviet cinema to tell the tale of The Guesser (Adam Brooks), a carnival worker with an uncanny knack for guessing the answer to any question he’s asked, such as the age of a man of ancient appearance (41) or the number of fish concealed upon the person of a fishmonger (Randy Unrau) who is temporarily triumphant until, much to his chagrin, the Guesser pulls a tiny flapping minnow from his trousers. All is well for the Guesser until one tragic day he is confronted by a man (Greg Blagoev) who asks no question but simply stretches forth a dangling pocket watch. Frantic at the discovery that someone has finished his last bottle of Guessing Milk, the Guesser’s performance swiftly unravels after the Pocketwatch Man spontaneously vanishes into a puff of smoke. Before long he has fallen in love with his own long-lost sister (Stephanie Berrington) and had his Guessing Licence revoked by the Guessing Inspector (Steven Black) – with an additional demerit for incest. A chance encounter with dodgy Soviet geneticist Trofim Lysenko (Brent Neale) leads the two to join forces, as the Guesser seeks to help him prove his theory that genetic heredity is a myth so that he can marry his own sister. Needless to say, things don’t work out quite as he would wish – or, indeed, as anybody not occupying Maddin’s headspace might expect.

Amongst the film’s many visual highlights, the sequences in which the Guesser applies his brain stand out for their inventive range of techniques. Operating at the height of his powers, the camera zooms in on the Guesser’s forehead to reveal a duplicate of his own head in miniature. When trying (less successfully) to guess the eye colour of his yet-to-be-identified sister, an iris-like halo radiating from their two heads shimmers with alternating sprays of colour as each prospective option temporarily disrupts the black & white image. The Guesser’s final mental exertions result in a sequence reminiscent of the hallucinatory climax of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) as astronaut David Bowman descends into the monolith.

By focusing solely on Maddin I’m being unfair to his collaborators Evan & Galen Johnson, who have shared writing and/or directing duties with Maddin on all of his works since 2014 – but while I’m sure that they were an integral part of the creative process, it’s difficult for me to say much more about their specific contributions as Stump the Guesser is very much of a piece with Maddin’s solo work. I’ve written more about a selection of Maddin’s work here, which includes Seances (2016), an experimental online work to which Evan Johnson contributed some story elements – although since Seances is a project which randomly generates a new story every time you watch it, it’s impossible for me to say whether I previously encountered any elements of his work there!

Many of Peter Strickland’s short films can be seen as companion pieces to his feature length works, experiments in form which have the purity of focus of a short story exploring themes which, in a longer work, are of necessity are merely part of a more complex whole. Strickland’s last feature, the previously-reviewed In Fabric (2018), was heavily influenced by the phenomenon of ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response) videos – an element on which Strickland elaborated for his short film Cold Meridian (2020). GUO4 (2019) is a precursor of sorts to his next feature, which he has said will explore homosexual male relationships in a similar way to his exploration of a female couple in The Duke of Burgundy (2014) (if “similar” is at all an applicable term to an artist whose works are quite distinct).

Paying homage to the homoerotic photography of Bob Mizer, GUO4 is constructed entirely from a montage of still images. Focusing initially on the harsh metal cabinets and flaking wood of a men’s changing room, the rattling discordance of the soundtrack by experimental noise duo GUO foreshadows the violent interchange to come. The appearance of the two naked male protagonists (Csaba Molnár & Gyula Muskovics) heralds the beginning of an ambiguous interaction which sees them first sizing each other up before beginning to shove each other back and forth – but whether this is the aggression of rivalry or simply a rough form of foreplay is obscured by the inability to hear their voices or to see anything other than disjointed montages of still images, suggesting movement while eliding the details that link each image to its neighbours. The choice to keep switching the focus to their swinging genitalia suggests there’s something more sexual going on here, but aggression dominates the imagery – and while the two men end up joined together horizontally on a bench, it remains impossible to tell whether either man is actually enjoying himself – their wide yet silent mouths conveying an impression more like yelling than moaning.

Although the ambiguous nature of GUO4 is clearly deliberate, I found it hard to latch onto what Strickland was aiming for beyond an experiment in filmic narrative technique. While there is clearly an escalation in the interactions between the two men, it felt to me like this particular Strickland short just stopped after 3 minutes without reaching a conclusion. It’s possible that the forthcoming release of Flux Gourmet (2022) will throw some light on what role this film plays in Strickland’s development, but for now I’ll have to go with the assessment: “reasonably effective but puzzling.”

The Unseen River [Giòng sông không nhìn thấy] (2020) from Vietnamese director Phạm Ngọc Lân is a gently-paced meditation on interrupted journeys, dwelling on the moments of indeterminacy in two human relationships. At one end of life we have lo-fi indie pop duo Naomi & WEAN playing an unnamed couple in their 20s, visiting a Buddhist monastery in search of a solution for WEAN’s insomnia. Although everyone they know insists that they belong together, including the young monk (Hoàng Hà) with whom they consult, they don’t yet know where their relationship is heading. At the opposite end, an older woman (Minh Châu) visiting a hydroelectric plant has a chance encounter with an old flame (Nguyên Hà Phong) from a relationship that never quite happened due to the vagaries of life taking them in different directions – although the ghost of a connection remains in the presence of the man’s dog (Gilmo), the offspring of a puppy given to him by the woman long ago.

Largely dialogue-free, much of the film’s running time consists of peaceful contemplation of the river and its surroundings, with the soundtrack dominated by gently rippling aquatic sounds. These sounds are complemented by the multi-mirrored columns of the Buddhist temple, breaking the imagery up into strips of light and colour in a visual echo of the ripples of light and sound generated by the river. The few dialogue-based scenes are formal in their writing and mannered in their delivery, with the older couple’s scenes in particular registering as two people moving around independently of each other while reciting speeches with which they have no emotional connection – and yet somehow they work, as if the serenity of their surroundings is allowing them to tap deeper into themselves to bring forth words they didn’t know they contained. Although the juxtaposition of the two pairings might suggest that the older couple provide a glimpse of the younger couple’s future, the film shies away from making any such connection and I suspect that this would be too simple a reading – the overall meditative tone sits more comfortably with a focus on an indeterminate now in the middle of life’s flow, an invitation to live in the present without undue concern for the outcome of things which can’t be guessed.

What Did Jack Do? (2017) is a film noir vignette which sees director David Lynch playing a homicide detective interrogating a suit-wearing capuchin monkey (“Jack Cruz”) at a train station. The surreally disjointed interrogation plays out as a mixture of cliched noir dialogue, a protracted series of bird metaphors which are more literal than usual in the genre, and some typically Lynchian non sequiturs which seem less deliberately obstructive and more like two sides of a conversation which don’t entirely occupy the same reality as each other. Out of the confusion forms a relatively straightforward noir tale of suspected infidelity leading to murder – although in this case the femme fatale is a chicken named Toototabon.

As is usual for his acting roles, Lynch plays a version of himself with little interest in making any effort at delivering naturalistic dialogue, utilising his lack of performative range to underline the strangeness of the encounter. Jack’s dialogue is delivered through a set of human lips smoothly superimposed over the capuchin’s own mouth – although no human performer is credited for his side of the exchange, my guess is that the voice is either that of Michael J. Anderson (Twin Peaks‘ Man From Another Place) or, more likely, Lynch himself speaking through a slightly slowed audio filter. Jack even gets the opportunity to burst into song towards the end, an original composition by Lynch in collaboration with sound mixer/editor Dean Hurley which crosses the lyrics of a Julee Cruise song that never was with the style of a faded crooner. Also making a brief appearance is Lynch’s wife Emily Stofle as a waitress delivering two steaming cups of coffee with a side serving of exposition, preceding a short but pivotal cameo from Toototabon herself (the least of the performers – I suspect nepotism).

Whether or not you’ll like What Did Jack Do? will depend entirely on what you think of David Lynch’s work in general. If you’re a fan like me, you’re already on board; if you don’t get what other people see in him or his work, this short film is unlikely to make you a convert. It’s pure Lynch in whimsical mode, doing his best to dump the experience of living in one of his dreams directly onto the screen for those on a similar wavelength.

Anna and the Apocalypse – A Zombie Christmas Musical

What better way to wrap up the year (and the Christmas season) than with a high school musical comedy depicting the crumbling of society under the influence of a viral zombie outbreak? OK, I’ll admit that my usage of the word “better” might be controversial, but Anna and the Apocalypse (2017) is a fun way to undercut the more saccharine seasonal offerings and wallow in a bit of darkness while still coming out with a smile on your face.

The origins of Anna and the Apocalypse go back to 2009, when Scottish arts student Ryan McHenry began to speculate about how much better High School Musical (2006) would be if a horde of zombies had slaughtered the cast. The resultant 18 minute short film Zombie Musical (2010) is a fairly crude but effective production, showing the signs of a promising creator who has yet to achieve a more professional polish. We follow Anna (Joanne McGuinness) on the morning after a zombie outbreak as she dances along to school with music blasting in her ears, oblivious to the signs of carnage around her – a sequence clearly owing a debt to Shaun of the Dead (2004). Reaching the school as her song concludes, she is immediately attacked by a zombie, only to be rescued by axe-wielding fellow student John (Stephen Arden) – who finds himself captivated by her eyes. Young love threatens to bloom, but they are attacked by a sleazy PE teacher (Calum McCormack) who leaves John tied up with a zombie while he sings a pervy song about how happy he is to have female companionship to accompany his reign over the school. John and Anna both escape and reunite just in time for John to be bitten and succumb to zombiehood, leaving Anna to go on a zombie-killing spree until she’s finally overwhelmed by the hordes.

McHenry leans heavily into the horror aspects of the scenario, which sometimes sit uncomfortably in juxtaposition to the musical numbers – risking tonal whiplash for some viewers. It’s not a complete success as a black comedy, but it is at least a good first draft. Zombie Musical won Best Producer (Short Form) at the British Academy Scotland New Talent Awards, generating enough of a buzz for production company Black Camel to commission McHenry to develop a feature-length version. Sadly, during the development process McHenry was diagnosed with an obscure form of bone cancer – and although he continued to work on the script with collaborator Alan McDonald, McHenry finally succumbed to his cancer in 2015, two months after the release of his second short film Toast (2015). With many of the behind-the-scenes crew having been part of Zombie Musical, the production of Anna and the Apocalypse became a labour of love – a concerted effort to ensure that their friend’s final creative efforts saw the light of day.

Where the constraints of time and budget required Zombie Musical to restrict itself to three core cast members and a plot occupying no more than a few hours of a single day, Anna and the Apocalypse takes full advantage of its additional length and budget – expanding the core cast to eight characters and spreading out the action across three days. The story opens on the second last day of school before Christmas, as everybody prepares for that evening’s musical production before dispersing to their respective homes or holiday destinations. Anna (Ella Hunt), our protagonist, is desperate to escape her small town world and has been saving up to take a gap year to travel the world – a revelation which makes her widowed father, school janitor Tony (Mark Benton), go ballistic, claiming that it will ruin her educational prospects (a screen for his concern over the prospect of losing his last remaining family member). Her best friend John (Malcolm Cumming) is doing his best to be supportive of Anna’s decision, but is hampered somewhat by his unrequited love for her. Steph (Sarah Swire) is an insecure Canadian who has been abandoned for Christmas – her girlfriend has other plans and her parents are enjoying themselves in Mexico. Her attempts to use the school newspaper to shine a light on the town’s homeless problem are ruthlessly squashed by the tyrannical Vice Principal Savage (Paul Kaye), flexing his power as he prepares to take over as Headmaster. Steph recruits budding filmmaker Chris (Christopher Leveaux) – who needs to beef up his demo reel for his final class assignment – to help her out by filming a video blog on the homeless to circumvent the school’s censorship. Chris is in an adorably soppy relationship with Lisa (Marli Siu), who is anxious that Chris’ additional filming may cause him to miss the saucy Santa torch song she’s been working on as the headlining number of that night’s musical. And finally there’s Nick (Ben Wiggins), the obnoxious jock bully who has an inexplicably mututal thing for Anna.

The three days of the action break neatly into three acts. Day 1 introduces the central characters, establishes their motivations, and builds to the evening’s musical performance while a scattering of ominous announcements and occurrences hint at what is to come. As the second day dawns, everybody who attended the musical has barricaded themselves inside the school waiting for the army to come to their assistance. Heading obliviously to school in a larger-scale restaging of the opening from Zombie Musical, Anna and John eventually notice what’s going on and take refuge in the local bowling alley with Steph and Chris. The third day follows their journey from bowling alley to school as they attempt to reunite with their friends and family, accompanied by Nick and his posse. Those who make it as far as the school discover that Savage has gone off his rocker and let the zombies in, setting the stage for a final confrontation with Savage. Although opting for a less bleak ending than Zombie Musical, Anna and the Apocalypse doesn’t shirk on the bodycount and it should come as no surprise that not all of the core cast will escape from the movie alive.

There are three different versions of Anna and the Apocalypse in circulation – the theatrical cut; the extended cut; and the shorter US cut, which made the dubious decision to shorten some of the songs and sanitise some of the character interactions (amongst various other pointless trimmings). Both the theatrical and extended cuts are available on Second Sight’s blu ray release. While the extended cut is roughly 10 minutes longer and includes an additional song, the differences between the two versions go beyond simply inserting extra footage. The extended cut has been re-edited from the ground up, selecting different camera angles or alternative footage in the reconstruction of scenes from the theatrical cut – some of the songs even gain additional lyrics. One notable difference comes in the very first scene, which sees Anna switching off her dad’s car radio in the middle of a crucial news item. In the theatrical cut, the newsreader is about to reveal that a cold-like virus sweeping the nation is actually a lethal pathogen; but in the extended cut, this has been changed to a local new story about the local Santa Claus (appearing later in zombie form played by Calum McCormack from the original short) being in bed with the flu – similarly ominous, but less obviously so. The extended cut also makes more effort to establish what a sad and lonely individual Vince Principal Savage really is, before revealing information about his later actions which casts him in a darker light. The preponderance of minor differences makes it difficult to really say whether one version of the film is better than the other – but, if pressed, I’d probably suggest the longer cut for those who only plan to watch it once.

Toby Mottershead composed three songs for Zombie Musical, one for each cast member – but while serviceable, none of them are particularly memorable. The musical duties for Anna and the Apocalypse have been handed over to Roddy Hart & Tommy Reilly, who successfully encompass a range of styles in their 12-or-13-song soundtrack (14 if you count the deleted song only viewable as part of the special features – a forgettable country-tinged piece which would have been a significant drag on the pace of the first third of the film). “What a Time to Be Alive” starts the film off with a conventional Christmas-song sound, returning at the film’s conclusion in a Harry Connick Jr.-style arrangement. “Break Away” is a pop rock number showcasing Anna and Steph’s concerns, while “Hollywood Ending” is an annoyingly catchy musical anthem which establishes the rest of the character dynamics and would probably count as the break-out single (and has the virtue of rhyming “isnae” with “Disney”). Day 2 opens with “Turning My Life Around”, a piece of motivational pop which soundtracks Anna & John’s journey to school, and ends with synthpop isolation lament “Human Voice” – the song I’d be most likely to listen to outside the film. Nick and his mates get an “Eye of the Tiger”-inspired 80s rock anthem “Soldier at War” to show off their zombie-killing skills, while the mentally disintegrating Savage gets to lose his shit completely with the Rocky Horror-tinged “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Me Now”, leading up to Anna’s action finale “Give Them a Show”, a song which owes more than a little to the musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (2001). But apart from “Human Voice”, my favourite songs stem from the musical-within-a-musical – the ridiculous rap “Fish Song” and Lisa’s show-stopping sauce-fest “It’s That Time of Year”. The duo of Hart & Reilly have since gone on to writing songs for the 2020 revival of the Animaniacs cartoon (which I presume has considerably fewer zombies).

For me, the unquestioned star of the production is Sarah Swire. Her acting decisions invest her character with a social awkwardness and rich emotional life extending far beyond the dialogue she’s given and I found myself captivated by her whenever she was on screen. While this would have been sufficient for me to laud her talents, I was blown away to discover that she was also the choreographer. While I might quibble about some of the movie’s musical choices, I have no such qualms about the dancing – each of the musical numbers is impeccably choreographed, whether showcasing individual characters or focusing on the ensemble as a whole. “Hollywood Ending” is an especially good example of her work, a number which I find musically very annoying but which serves a vital role in establishing character dynamics. Swire’s contributions serve to complement the lyrics impeccably while allowing the ensemble the maximum opportunity to show off their dancing skills in a way which serves the story and makes effective use of the camera. Much of the rest of her CV consists of short films or one-off appearances on Canadian TV shows, but she recently completed a longer stint playing twin sisters in Murdoch Mysteries (2020-2021).

Ella Hunt brings a reserved charm to her lead performance as Anna, allowing her quiet competence and dry wit to draw the audience along on her journey. She’s also no slouch as a dancer – “Turning My Life Around” provides the clearest showcase for her terpsichorean talents, using her long limbs to create an illusion of gangly awkwardness which in reality is exceptionally smooth and controlled. Part of the ensemble in Les Misérables (2012), she was a series regular on Cold Feet (2016-2017) and went on to play Emily Dickinson’s sister-in-law in Dickinson (2019-2021). Malcolm Cumming brings a comic glee to his role as the hapless John, while Christopher Leveaux (Aaaaaaaah!, 2015) and Marli Siu (Alex Rider, 2020-2021) are simply adorable as the mutually besotted couple who come to a bittersweet end. Ben Wiggins left less of an impact on me, but may be familiar to viewers of Pennyworth (2019) as Spanish. Mark Harmon was decent as Anna’s father, but as he’s indelibly imprinted in my mind as the doomed dad from the first episode of the Doctor Who (2005) revival series, I have very little else to say about him – especially when compared to Paul Kaye’s relish in the role of Savage, gradually escalating from poisonous malice to scenery-chewing lunacy. In a lengthy and varied career, he’s probably best known for playing Thoros of Myr in Game of Thrones (2013-2017).

If you’re after a high school musical comedy Christmas horror movie with splashes of gore, you’ve come to the right place. It swept the awards at the Toronto After Dark Film Festival, winning Best Feature Film: Gold, Best Ensemble Cast, Best Comedy, Best Music and Best Title Sequence. I’m not going to claim Anna and the Apocalypse as a work of genius, but the love of the people who made it is palpable and there are far worse ways to spend your time. And Sarah Swire is a treasure.

AD/BC: A Rock Opera

I’m not a fan of Christmas movies – but I do like trawling through unloved genres in search of gems which deserve a wider audience. AD/BC: A Rock Opera (2004) is one such gem, a neglected comedy special from the early 2000s which purports to be a lost Christmas rock opera from the late 1970s in the style of Jesus Christ Superstar (1973), starring actors from such British comedy classics as The Mighty Boosh (2004-2007), Little Britain (2003-2007), Big Train (1998-2002), Brass Eye (1997-2001) and The IT Crowd (2006-2013).

Creators Matt Berry and Richard Ayoade first worked together on Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace (2004), a “revival” of a non-existent 1980s TV series created by a mass-market horror novelist with delusions of talent, interspersed with interview footage of the original cast “remembering” the show’s troubled production history. Co-creator Ayoade played Marenghi’s publisher Dean Lerner, the money behind the series, earning him the woodenly-acted role of the main character’s boss. Berry played Todd Rivers, an alcoholic womaniser past his prime who was cast as the series love interest but kept out of the spotlight by the jealous Marenghi.

Ayoade and Berry take a similarly meta approach to their co-creation AD/BC. Matt Berry (composer and co-writer) plays Tim Wynde, a would-be singer/songwriter with two dud albums behind him who (feigning ignorance of the spate of religious-themed rock operas in the early 1970s) has decided to make a musical about the birth of Christ focusing on the innkeeper in whose stable the child was born, casting himself (of course) in the central role of Innkeeper. Richard Ayoade (director and co-writer) plays expressionist dance enthusiast (and brother of the lyricist) C.T. Homerton, seen here only in his fictional persona as Joseph. Rounding out the central cast are Julian Barratt as Roger Kingsman, lead singer from The Purple Explosion, in the role of business rival Tony Iscariot (a tip of the hat to Deep Purple’s Ian Gillan, who played Jesus on the original 1970 Jesus Christ Superstar concept album); Julia Davis as Maria Preston-Bush, a folk singer forced to sing outside of her natural vocal register in the role of the Innkeeper’s wife Ruth; and Matt Lucas as Caplan Joyce, a figure from the world of professional wrestling who lends his bass tones to a cameo role as God.

The deliberately banal plot is pretty straightforward. Business hasn’t been great for the Innkeeper, who’s jealous of his more successful rival Tony. Hearing his laments, God tells him not to worry because somebody really important is coming to town and will stay at his inn. Jumping to the conclusion that this can only mean that megastar stand-up comedian King Herod (Dan Antopolski) is coming to town, the Innkeeper reject’s Tony’s generous offer to buy him out and unceremoniously ejects all of his current residents – including his wife’s aged mother – to make away for Herod and his entourage. This is the last straw for the long-suffering Ruth, who packs her bags and heads off to hook up with Tony (an old flame dying to get back into her pants). Railing against God for his own stupidity, the Innkeeper refuses to give Joseph a room but grudgingly allows him to “stay in the shed”. While Tony practices his seduction techniques in front of a mirror, the Three Wise Men (Lucy Montgomery, Lydia Fox & Sophie Winkleman) meet up with the Three Shepherds (Noel Fielding, Karl Theobald & Tom Hillenbrand). Everybody heads off to the stable to witness the birth of the saviour and all of the Innkeeper’s problems are solved – Ruth forgives him everything; Tony wipes the Innkeeper’s debt and tells him what a cool dude he is; and everybody sings about “makin’ love in the morning, makin’ love in the evening, last thing at night, shepherd’s delight” – you know, the true meaning of Christmas.

The production bears all the hallmarks of a vintage low-budget production which has been poorly maintained. Opening with an archival tape leader identifying the date of transmission as 1978, Wynde’s introductory section about the show’s creation is afflicted by glitches and variations in speed typical of a worn and stretched videotape. The style of the production (directed by Ayoade in the slipshod style of his character) is clearly ripped off from the film version of Jesus Christ Superstar, stealing shamelessly from its visual stylings (multiple zooms, freeze-frames, a pretentiously self-important montage of B&B signs) and applying them in a haphazardly amateurish way which reveals the creative vacuum at its heart. Other aspects of the production are similarly indebted to this primary source: the opening number “Spreadin’ Holy Light (Part 1)” rips off the choreography from “Simon Zealotes/Poor Jerusalem”; the guitar riff and main melodic line of “Tony’s Challenge” are strikingly similar to the movie’s opening number “Heaven on Their Minds”; Matt Lucas’ performance as God is heavily influenced by Bob Bingham’s Caiaphas; Julian Barratt’s Tony Iscariot is reminiscent of Barry Dennen’s Pontius Pilate; and Julia Davis’ Ruth appears to be modelled on Carl Anderson’s Judas Iscariot. But let it not be said that Matt Berry’s Tim Wynde isn’t an equal opportunity plagiarist – he also rips off Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Proud Mary” for “Joseph’s Song”, and “La Partie de Ruth” owes a lot to “Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord” from Godspell (1973).

Those lucky few with access to the DVD release have the privilege of being let in on some of the behind-the-scene dramas of the fictional rock opera. Composer/star Tim Wynde is featured in a 20-minute profile Wynde: Behind the Man, a special supposedly filmed shortly after the original production but aired only on Spanish TV in the 1980s (with Spanish subtitles throughout and some of the interview questions clearly overdubbed in Spanish). Contrasting with his view of events are the DVD liner notes by lyricist/director Solomon Homerton, whose brother Charles Thaddeus Homerton appeared in the production as Joseph. Each of the creators portrays the other as a talentless hack. Wynde provides a vague story about being contractually paired with Somerton but claims to have written all the lyrics himself – although a physical tick suggests he’s being economical with the truth and he later states that the only good thing about the production was the music. Somerton provides a more detailed account of answering an advertisement from a composer seeking a lyricist, observes that Wynde didn’t write any of the lyrics on his solo records either, and draws attention to the obvious unoriginality in Wynde’s musical compositions – although his claims that the lyrics are the production’s only saving grace demonstrate an equally deluded sense of the quality of his own achievements. Adding the icing on top of their rivalry cake is the love triangle formed with lead actress Maria Preston-Bush, who hooked up with Wynde shortly before the project began but left him for Somerton during its production. (In this instance, life imitated art in a different fashion – Julia Davis, who played Preston-Bush playing Ruth, is actually involved with Julian Barratt, who played the actor playing Ruth’s love interest!)

Director Richard Ayoade is probably better known for his deadpan comic persona in roles such as Moss in The IT Crowd and as the host of The Crystal Maze (2017-2020). He directed one other TV series after AD/BC – the self-starring Man to Man with Dean Lerner (2006) – before moving on to music video clips for Arctic Monkeys, Super Furry Animals, Vampire Weekend, The Last Shadow Puppets, Kasabian, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Radiohead and The Breeders. He made one more trip into the world of TV comedy with the “Critical Film Studies” episode of Community (2011) in between making two feature-length films – the award-winning teen relationship comedy-drama Submarine (2010) and the comedy-thriller Dostoyevsky adaptation The Double (2013). Matt Berry is best known for playing a series of deep-voiced self-obsessed assholes in various comedy projects, but is also a talented musician with multiple albums to his name (1995-2021). Julian Barratt is best known as the composer/co-writer/co-star of The Mighty Boosh, in which he is often undeservedly overshadowed by his co-star Noel Fielding (appearing here in a few small roles, along with fellow Boosh alumni Rich Fulcher, Lucy Montgomery and Dave Lambert). Julia Davis has built herself a career pushing the genre of black comedy into some very dark directions in series such as Jam (2000) and Nighty Night (2004-2005).

AD/BC: A Rock Opera (2004) is deliberately dodgy and derivative. It may be difficult to take for those who demand a more polished production style, but it’s a clever and witty reconstruction of incompetency which is far more entertaining than your standard shiny-but-empty Christmas fare. I recommend it unreservedly to any fans of the main performers – and if, like me, you’re also a fan of the movie Jesus Christ Superstar, you’ll find plenty of easter eggs here to delight you.

MIFF69 – Sisters With Transistors (2020)

Out of all the offerings at this year’s Melbourne International Film Festival, this is the one I’ve been anticipating for the longest time, ever since it was first announced as a work in progress roughly three years ago. My first viewing of Doctor Who (1963-89) as a very young child was a formative experience in many ways, but the most relevant one here is my personal musical sweet spot of 20^th century analogue electronic music. Sisters with Transistors: Electronic Music’s Unsung Heroines (2020) charts the development of this musical form via the words and works of its most significant female contributors, some of whom may be passingly familiar to a general audience, but most of whom have only begun to be more widely celebrated since the dawning of the 21^st century.

The documentary is narrated by the familiar tones of legendary avant-garde performer and composer Laurie Anderson, whose first single “O Superman” (1981) was championed by famous British DJ John Peel, reaching #2 in the UK charts. Although Anderson sets the scene, providing context for the journey the audience is about to begin, she’s not a major presence in the film. Director Laura Rovner has chosen instead to allow the women under consideration to speak for themselves where possible via a mixture of examples from their body of work, archival footage, recordings of old interviews and – for three of the four women still alive – newly filmed footage. Most of the contextual information about their work is provided by their colleagues or by modern female musicians discussing their personal influences, with Anderson’s narration making brief reappearances only when necessary to provide connective tissue.

The first woman to be featured is Clara Rockmore (1911-98), a concert violinist who became fascinated by Léon Theremin’s newly invented instrument the theremin, helping to refine its development and achieving fame as its preeminent performer. The BBC Radiophonic Workshop is next, represented by both Delia Derbyshire (1937-2001) – most famous for her realisation of the Doctor Who theme music and seen here demonstrating composition from painstakingly pieced together fragments of tape – and the less well known, but crucial, figure of Daphne Oram (1925-2003), co-founder of the Workshop. Although she is modest about the extent of her contribution, quoted only as saying that she “helped” to start it, their mutual colleague Brian Hodgson is more emphatic in his statement that it would never have come into being without her. Oram was also a pioneer in the graphic representation of sound, developing her own technique known as Oramics, allowing the composer to draw shapes directly onto film stock which would be fed into a machine and translated into sound. On the other side of the English Channel, Eliane Radigue (b. 1932) developed her talents in the musique concrète tradition, training with key figures Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry. Both Radigue and Derbyshire talk about the influence of World War II in forming the way they thought about music – Derbyshire’s love for abstract sound had its birth in the sound of the air raid sirens over London, while Radigue enjoyed listening to the sounds of planes travelling overhead, picking apart their different sounds and rearranging them inside her head to form her first compositions.

Over in America, Bebe Barron (1925-2008) and her husband Louis collaborated on soundtracks for avant-garde films, with Louis creating the raw sonic materials and Bebe turning them into coherent musical pieces – Louis talks about her astonishing ability to mentally retain the contents of hours of abstract recordings, using only her memory to identify the exact points on multiple tape reels containing the elements she wished to use. The two are best known in the mainstream for creating the astonishing soundtrack to Forbidden Planet (1956), although the musicians union kicked up a fuss and refused to allow them to be credited as composers – they were credited instead for “electronic tonalities” and it took another 20 years before their soundtrack achieved the respect it deserved. Pauline Oliveros (1932-2016) was a founding member of the San Francisco Tape Music Center under the leadership of the higher profile Morton Subotnick and was primarily focused on live performance. Maryanne Amacher (1938-2009), the one featured musician here whose name was unfamiliar to me, started off working with field recordings before developing compositions around the creation of psychoacoustic illusions and the exploration of scientific ideas. Transgender composer Wendy Carlos (b. 1939) became famous for her electronic arrangements of classical music, contributing to the scores of Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971) and The Shining (1980). Suzanne Ciani (b. 1946) found her musical outlet in the world of advertising, where she found that her clients’ desire to be seen as “cutting edge” allowed her complete creative freedom to experiment with her equipment. The final musician to be featured is Laurie Spiegel (b. 1945), one of the first people to use computers as a compositional tool, drawing at first on her background in Appalachian folk music before creating the Music Mouse program for the Macintosh, which she has continued to update all the way through OS9. Rovner makes clever use of her editing team to link the visual aspect of this program back to Daphne Oram’s Oramics, reinforcing the connections between her various subjects before devoting the final 10 minutes to revisiting Spiegel, Ciani and Rodigue in 2018.

Although little is made of gender at first, it becomes more prominent the further forward we journey in time. Léon Theremin’s infatuation with Rockmore is mentioned in passing and can be clearly seen in contemporary footage, but from her perspective their relationship doesn’t appear to stretch beyond friendship and collegiality. Derbyshire talks about how lucky she was to be a woman from a working class background allowed to study Mathematics at university (although Hodgson is more forthright in his comments about her mathematical abilities). Radigue introduces the difficulty of being taken seriously in macho French society, with one of her co-workers under Schaeffer saying that it was good to have her there simply because she “smells good” (although for what it’s worth she does appear to have had Schaeffer’s respect). Oliveros is the first explicitly feminist performer, writing a piece for the New York Times on institutional misogyny and providing the wonderful quote: “How do you exorcise the canon of classical music of misogyny? With one oscillator, a turntable and tape delay.” The inclusion of Carlos may be controversial for TERFs, but it’s good to see her featured here – even if, for some odd reason, she’s the one featured artist not to be mentioned on the film’s promotional website. Ciani talks about how she couldn’t get a record deal because the labels weren’t interested in female performers who couldn’t sing, and points out that although she eventually became the first woman to provide a score for a Hollywood feature film – Lily Tomlin’s The Incredible Shrinking Woman (1981) – it took another 14 years before the next solo female composer was hired. Spiegel ties the topic in a bow by addressing the reason it’s important for films like this to exist – when she was growing up, she had no idea it was possible for a woman to be a composer and her teachers actively discouraged her from becoming a musician. It wasn’t until she’d completed a degree in Social Sciences that she decided to return to her initial love and forged the career she hadn’t had the tools to imagine. Spiegel, Ciani and Radigue make it clear that women are still under-represented in the world of music composition today and clearly value the opportunity to act as role models for those yet to come.

Speaking of the visibility of women and their work, the IMDB entry for director Lisa Rovner is embarrassingly incomplete, listing only one other short film and one job as an assistant camera operator. I didn’t have to go past the first page of a Google search to find at least two other short films she’s directed, and her website makes it clear that she’s more prolific than that, although this film is indeed her sole feature-length work as director. Rovner has assembled a fine selection of interviewees, both male and female, variously credited as composers, musicologists, sound artists and musicians. I won’t provide an exhaustive list here, but among those not already mentioned above are Mandy Wigby, one of the four female synth players making up the band Sisters of Transistors (assembled by 808 State’s Graham Massey); Kim Gordon, bassist, guitarist, songwriter and vocalist for Sonic Youth; Holly Herndon, a significant electronic musician and sound artist who came to prominence in the last decade; Ramona Gonzalez, a singer-songwriter who performs as Nite Jewel; and Andy Votel of Finders Keepers Records, whose compilation Lixiviation (2011) showcasing Suzanne Ciani’s early work had a pivotal role in reviving her reputation as a key figure in the history of electronic music. It’s also important to note the contributions of Rovner’s editing team (Michael Aaglund, Mariko Pontpetit & Kara Blake) and sound designer (Martha Salogni) – more information on their careers can be found here.

Sisters with Transistors is essential viewing for anybody with an interest in the history of 20^th century electronic music, but is also accessible to those with a more general interest in unsung female contributions to the arts.

It Couldn’t Happen Here (1987)

What happens when you cross an avant-garde documentary film director, a 1970s action hero, an actress from the Carry On films, Biggles, random jokes about Magritte, Victorian-era peepshows and a 1980s synth-pop act at the height of their commercial success?

There’s not much point in attempting to explain the plot of It Couldn’t Happen Here (1987), because it doesn’t really have one. Initially intended as a straightforward video album to accompany the Pet Shop Boys’ second album Actually (1987), in the hands of director Jack Bond it was re-conceptualised as “a saucy seaside postcard come to life and gone mad.” Opening on a storm-wracked pre-dawn beach in Clacton-on-Sea, the camera pans from the posing of a muscular bodybuilder across a troupe of female dancers warming up in their aerobics gear towards the turbulent sea. A series of disconnected vignettes epitomising the nightmarish banality of dismal British seaside holidays ensue, interspersed with reminiscences of the more oppressive aspects of the pop duo’s childhoods. Shifting away from the coast into a road movie of sorts, the echoes of World War Two-era Britain become more prevalent, as scenes from contemporary England meld with 1940s fashions and assemblies of British soldiers – an aspect of the film which calls back to Sinclair Lewis’ It Can’t Happen Here (1935), a warning about the rise of fascist demagogues campaigning on the basis of a return to “traditional values”. Although It Couldn’t Happen Here can’t really sustain such an overtly political reading, the juxtaposition of a falsely idealised past with the societal values of Thatcher’s Britain goes some way towards explaining Bond’s recent joking reference to it as “the first post-Brexit film”.

Vocalist and ex-Smash Hits music journalist Neil Tennant is effectively the film’s lead, a melancholy disillusioned tuxedo-clad Bright Young Thing strolling through various scenes and incidents but incapable of connecting with them. Meanwhile the publicity-shunning Chris Lowe, who’d much rather vanish into the composition and performance of their music than be recognised, is very much playing himself – hanging around (mostly) silently in jeans, leather jacket and woollen cap, making his presence felt only reluctantly – although he takes centre stage in a couple of set-pieces, such as the scene in which he fills an implausibly capacious trunk with the eclectic contents of his rented room at a bed & breakfast. Their music is an integral part of the film, stretching back beyond Actually (eight of whose ten songs are used here) to incorporate the entire first side of 1986’s Please (i.e. the side with all the singles). The script by Jack Bond & James Dillon draws extensively from this material, elaborating on some of the imagery and taking whole stretches of dialogue directly from the lyric sheets, albeit recontextualised to accompany different songs, which helps to create a sense of interconnectivity that the movie might otherwise lack.

But it’s the other featured performers, some of whom appear in multiple roles, who really make this movie sing. Most notable to me is the great Joss Ackland, a distinguished actor better known to some of my friends as the villain in Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991), whose bizarre appearance in the music video for the Elvis Presley cover “Always on My Mind” (which almost acts a trailer for the film) propelled me on a months-long quest to locate a video library which stocked It Couldn’t Happen Here back in the late 1980s. Ackland’s eccentricity-packed performance here really has to be seen to be believed. He first appears in the film as a blind Catholic priest given the slip by two boys representing the young Tennant & Lowe, pursuing them across the boardwalk past vintage peep show machines to a burlesque performance of “It’s a Sin” performed by naughty nuns and leather boys. He then turns up as a mad killer picked up by the side of the road. Riding along in the back of the Pet Shop Boys’ newly acquired vehicle, he delivers a macabrely surreal standup comedy routine before bopping and then singing along to “Always on My Mind” on the car radio, sharpening his copious collection of knives before demanding to be let out because they are “no longer here”. As they drive off, he recites lines from the song “What Have I Done to Deserve This?” as if they were of the same elevated origin as the lines of poetry his priest declaimed earlier on the pier. Although pieces of this performance can be seen in the “Always on My Mind” video, it can’t convey the full glory of the complete sequence as shown in the movie, which (for me) is sufficient excuse in its own right for the film’s existence.

Central to the success of my other favourite section of the film is Gareth Hunt, previously the action hero heartthrob of The New Avengers (1976-1977) opposite Joanna Lumley and Patrick MacNee, but displaying here a strength as a character actor which I hadn’t previously suspected. His first of three roles in It Couldn’t Happen Here is a seedy purveyor of dirty postcards who complains to Tennant about “hooligans, bikers and politicians” bringing down the tone of the area, all the while sneaking sidelong glances at female passers-by who possibly exist only in his fevered imagination, clothes either whipped away by the wind or non-existent. He next appears as an intensely annoying novelty joke man in a bad checked suit and comedy ears whose every second sentence seems to be: “It’s only a laugh, no harm done!” But it’s his third role I want to talk about, a triumphal blend of closely observed comedy and deep character work. Tennant and Lowe have just ordered an incongruously upmarket meal of oysters accompanied by a bottle of 1942 Château Latour from a generic low-class diner when Hunt enters, moving with carefully calculated theatrical precision to take a seat at an adjacent table. His every mannerism speaks of a history as an over-the-hill theatrical performer who may once have achieved a modicum of fame but is eking out his twilight years as a ventriloquist performing in small English holiday towns. His overly made-up face and suspiciously dark and well-groomed hairpiece are the trappings of a man who refuses to acknowledge that his glory days, and his youth, are far behind him. Holding firm to his dignity in the face of Lowe’s barely controlled laughter, he orders the most basic British diner food you can imagine in the over-enunciated plummy tones of a performer delivering the most important information you will ever hear. It’s a tour de force which conveys far more information about the character than is present in the dialogue.

Adding to the success of this scene are two other actors worth noting. Carmen du Sautoy, the bellydancer from The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), is perfect as the archetypal diner waitress, sashaying slowly between the tables with a combination of disdain and professional pseudo-courtesy, missing only the fag end dangling from her mouth to complete the picture. Meanwhile, sitting at the table on the opposite side from Hunt’s ventriloquist is… Biggles?! And not just any Biggles – this is Neil Dickson, reprising his role from the recent flop Biggles (1986), which attempted to revive the character’s fortunes by grafting on an ill-advised time-travel plot (which nevertheless appealed to my 13-year-old self). Constantly muttering to himself about dividing by zero, he listens in gob-smacked wonder as the ventriloquist dummy seated opposite Hunt begins to expound on the teacup as a cultural artefact and the nature of time. He reappears later in a period setting, reading from a book which puts forth those same arguments while a tannoy voice repeats fragments of the meals ordered earlier (almost as if the two scenes co-exist simultaneously) before coming to the realisation that: “The dummy’s a blasted existentialist!” He continues to get more and more worked up as he moves to the hangar, declaiming: “Right! Let’s restore some bloody logic!” immediately before taking off in a biplane. After some aerial acrobatics, he disappears from the film before returning to destroy the Pet Shop Boys’ car with his front-mounted machine gun (having previously sold them that same car in his earlier guise as a second-hand car salesman whose suit is bedecked with light bulbs). Dickson returns one more time later in the film as a bewigged and velvet-clad courtier who chauffeurs them to their final location while reciting an extract from Milton’s “Paradise Lost” (1667-1674).

It would be wrong of me to move on from the acting talent without mentioning Barbara Windsor, a British icon whose work has mainly passed me by. Beginning with Carry On Spying (1964), she appeared in nine entries of the famous series of English sex comedies before co-presenting the “clip movie” That’s Carry On! (1977). Although the series made her name, it also hampered her career, typecasting her in roles which she eventually aged out of. After a significant gap she made a comeback as fan favourite pub owner Peggy Mitchell in EastEnders (1994-2016), continuing to play the role until Alzheimer’s forced her to retire. Like Hunt and Dickson, she’s given the rare opportunity to stretch herself here in three roles: the snobbish landlady of a bed & breakfast; the naughty maid in a vintage peepshow reel who chases Lowe with a riding crop; and a neglected mother miming Dusty Springfield’s part from “What Have I Done to Deserve This?” in a telephone conversation with Tennant (which reportedly delighted the then-ailing Springfield).

Director Jack Bond was an unusual choice to helm a project like this. Beginning his career making documentaries for the BBC, his work on 1966’s Dalí in New York introduced him to long-term lover Jane Arden, a feminist actress/singer/poet/playwright with whom he collaborated on over a decade of experimental film and theatrical projects, before returning to documentaries after her suicide in 1982. It was one of these documentaries – Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum (1986), which saw Roald Dahl interacting with his own characters – which drew him to the attention of the Pet Shop Boys. After some additional dubbing sessions following the 1987 London Film Festival debut of It Couldn’t Happen Here, Bond worked with the band one final time on the video clip for “Heart” (1988), one of the two songs from Actually which didn’t make it into the film. This time around he cast Ian McKellen as Nosferatu, charming away the newlywed Bride (Croatian actress Daniela Colic-Prizmic) from Tennant’s Groom. Disappointingly, this video was not included alongside the film on the British Film Institute’s 2020 Blu Ray/DVD restoration. (Two earlier singles from the album – “It’s a Sin” and “Rent” – were translated to music video by renowned queer director Derek Jarman; trying to imagine what his version of a Pet Shop Boys movie might have been like is an interesting thought experiment.)

Co-Screenwriter and Art Director James Dillon doesn’t have any other writing credits on his CV, but has a fascinating career as a Production Designer: from early work on Metal Mickey (1980) and the final season of The Goodies (1982), to the Richard O’Brien-hosted game show The Crystal Maze (1990-2017), the television adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere (1992), and – perhaps most relevant to the movie under consideration – the complete run of The Mighty Boosh (2004-2007), as well as the first season of its spiritual offspring Noel Fielding’s Luxury Comedy (2012).

Also worthy of mention is choreographer Arlene Phillips, or – as she is now formally known – Dame Arlene Phillips, DBE. Her first professional credit was for an ice cream advert directed by Ridley Scott. In 1974 she formed the dance troupe Hot Gossip, who memorably collaborated with Sarah Brightman on the 1978 single “I Lost My Heart to a Starship Trooper”. They were also a regular feature on The Kenny Everett Video Show (1978-1981) and its follow-up The Kenny Everett Television Show (1983-1988). Her choreography credits for film include Village People biopic Can’t Stop the Music (1980), John Huston’s Annie (1982), Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life (1983), Rolling Stone Bill Wyman’s Digital Dreams (1983), Ridley Scott’s Legend (1985) and Ken Russell’s Oscar Wilde adaptation Salome’s Last Dance (1988). Her music video work of the 1980s had a significant influence on the development of the form and she met her life-long partner Angus Ion on the set of a Freddie Mercury video. She was one of the original judges on Strictly Come Dancing (2004-2008) and choreographed the UK’s 2009 Eurovision entry (although having just watched the video for that performance, it’s not one of her more interesting efforts). The most impressive aspect of her dance troupe’s contributions to It Couldn’t Happen Here is their insistence on continuing to film their routine for “Rent” during the great storm of 1987 rather than evacuating the premises.

But is it a good film? Well… that’s a complicated question. Its lack of plot is both a help and a hindrance. On the plus side, it frees up the creative personnel to come up with a range of vignettes – mostly successful – which don’t need to connect with anything that has gone before or is still to come. Those sections which are linked – whether thematically, lyrically or through actors recurring in multiple roles – generally benefit from those connections. On the minus side, the lack of a beginning, an ending or a coherent through-line runs the risk of alienating an audience and can result in the impression of a random jumble of elements. On the whole, I think its disjointed nature is a virtue – it’s difficult to conceive of an overarching conventional plot which would make the individual elements more engaging and it’s far more likely that any attempt to do so would result in a less interesting experience overall. I don’t think it’s completely successful at… whatever it is it’s trying to do, but I appreciate its overall creativity. The whole is less than the sum of its parts – but I enjoy some of those parts so much that I’d argue they’re greater than the whole.

Siouxsie in Wonderland – The Banshees’ TV Special

In 1983, nine bands in the UK were given carte blanche by Channel 4 to create their own 50 minute TV special under the banner Play at Home. Most took the conventional documentary route, talking about the creation of their music or taking the camera with them on the road. New Order chose to play with the format by covering the history of Factory Records (later to be revisited in Michael Winterbottom’s 24 Hour Party People [2002]), including an interview conducted by keyboardist Gillian Gilbert with label owner Tony Wilson while he was taking a bath. But Siouxsie and the Banshees topped the lot, delivering an acid-drenched Mad Hatter’s tea party dumped directly from their collective subconscious which I recently discovered buried among the extras of their Nocturne DVD.

It was a weird time for the Banshees. After a string of three successful albums with ex-Magazine guitarist John McGeoch (1980-1982), the pressures of touring and other personal issues led to his departure from the band. Meanwhile the Cure was undergoing a similar upheaval – bass player Simon Gallup, fresh off a creatively fruitful string of three albums across the same period, had been booted from the band after his antics on tour, leaving guitarist/vocalist Robert Smith (who wouldn’t speak to Gallup again for 18 months) dubious about the band’s future. Smith had filled in as emergency guitarist for the Banshees back in 1979, after their original guitarist and drummer quit just a few days into a concert tour (and only a few hours before they were due to perform). And so in November 1982 – the same month which saw the release of the Banshees’ album A Kiss in the Dreamhouse and the Cure’s post-Gallup side-swerve single “Let’s Go to Bed” – Robert Smith formally joined Siouxsie and the Banshees as their new guitarist, touring with them until the end of the year.

No sooner had 1983 begun than the fledgling line-up fractured into separate projects. Vocalist Siouxsie Sioux (Susan Ballion) and ex-Slits drummer Budgie (Peter Clarke) – who became the band’s third core member during the aforementioned 1979 crisis – flew off to Hawaii in January to record Feast, their first full album as The Creatures. Drawing inspiration from this change of environment led them to develop the infusion of tropical exotica which came to distinguish the Creatures’ sound from that of the Banshees (although some of that influence can be detected in the Banshees song “Take Me Back” on their follow-up album Hyaena).

Choosing to take a journey of the mind rather than the body, bass player/co-lyricist Steve Severin and Robert Smith spent the Spring of 1983 immersing themselves in a drug-fuelled haze of weird VHS tapes interspersed with occasional recording sessions, christening their new band as The Glove in homage to the Dreadful Flying Glove which served as the right hand man (er, glove) to the Chief Blue Meanie in the Beatles’ lysergic animated film Yellow Submarine (1968). Joining them on their psychedelic voyage were Budgie’s ex-girlfriend Jeanette Landray (a Top of the Pops dancer and untrained singer who provided most of the vocals due to Smith’s contractual complications) and drummer Andy Anderson, who made his name in the prog rock scene working with Nik Turner (Hawkwind), Steve Hillage (future collaborator with The Orb) and Mother Gong. The resulting album was named after Blue Sunshine (1977), a horror movie about a bad batch of LSD which turns people into homicidal psychotics. Also hanging around during these sessions were Marc and the Mambas, a side project of Soft Cell’s Marc Almond with Matt Johnson (The The) and Annie Hogan, who repurposed one of Smith’s demos (with new lyrics) for their album Torment and Toreros.

A brief interlude followed, during which Smith popped off to record “The Walk” with the Cure’s one remaining member while the Creatures reconvened to cover Mel Tormé’s interpretation of jazz flautist Herbie Mann’s “Right Now” (an original arrangement which would in turn be covered by the Pussycat Dolls in 2005). The four Banshees then re-converged to begin work on the Hyaena album, sessions which also spawned the psychedelic Beatles cover “Dear Prudence” and its B-side “(There’s A) Planet in My Kitchen”, one of the most bizarre songs they ever recorded, later described by Siouxsie as: “The sound of the band collectively losing their grip on reality, headed by their demented leader [producer/engineer Mike Hedges].” The next few months saw Smith bouncing back and forth between bands, continuing to work on Hyaena while dragging Anderson off to record “The Love Cats” and follow-up album The Top with The Cure, in the midst of which Siouxsie and the Banshees performed a two concert set at the Royal Albert Hall which was filmed and released as Nocturne. And squeezed in somewhere amongst this frenzy of activity, the Banshees filmed their TV special.

We open in the offices of Wonderland, the Banshees’ newly established record label, as their manager Dave Woods is explaining to a caller that no more concert tickets are available. The Banshees shamble into his office crying: “No room! No room!” “I’m late!” declaims their manager, hanging up the phone. Suddenly they’re all sitting at a lengthy table laid out for tea, silhouetted against the CSO fringing of an ever-mutating filmed backdrop. Woods has transformed into the White Rabbit, sitting next to drum technician Jos Grain as the Mad Hatter, while the four Banshees are dressed identically as Alice. The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party provides the framing sequence for what is to follow, a series of spoken and musical vignettes which keep cutting back to the party as more people arrive and everybody gets increasingly off their face on whatever is in that teapot. Joining them in their madness are Tim Collins (March Hare), who is credited for “Panic” on the Nocturne album and would take over as their manager from 1987-1995; Mike Hedges (a ginger-bearded Queen of Hearts), producer & engineer on most of the Banshees’ and Creatures’ albums (as well as The Cure’s Seventeen Seconds and Faith); Annie Hogan (Dormouse), keyboardist & vocalist for Marc and the Mambas; Billy Houlston (Tweedle Dee), who ran the Banshees’ fan club; and Don Ash (Tweedle Dum), whose existence outside of this role remains a mystery to me.

Each of the four Banshees gets their time in the spotlight to tell a story indelibly stamped with their own quirks. First up is Robert Smith, being interrogated by three mysterious figures in plastic clown masks which keep changing in between shots. Smith’s story consists of context-free answers to his interrogators’ questions, which take the form of incomprehensible spurts of electronic noise. He keeps cycling back to a repeated refrain of “Nothing’s so clean! Nothing’s so perfect!” before the sequence ends, leaving the audience disoriented and confused. Budgie’s story is much more straightforward – a whimsical poem about a little boy whose abuse of a peccary pig while visiting the zoo leads to him being eaten, narrated with a barely suppressed grin as Budgie wanders through a park and the London Zoo. Siouxsie’s story takes a turn for the sinister, her face alternately obscured or highlighted by a shifting array of shadows in carefully composed shots as she tells of a woman’s paranoid flight through urban and natural environments back to her family home, which proves not to be the reassuring haven she expected. Steve Severin’s giallo-tinged closing story is an abstract free verse poem about the assassinations of JFK and Lee Harvey Oswald, delivered in halting speech as each word appears on an old electric typewriter. Severin is clad in leather coat and sunglasses, while the camera lingers lovingly on fetishistic close-ups of the pieces of a sniper rifle slotting together.

The musical interludes span the range of the Banshees’ various projects. The Creatures take pole position with the tropical percussion of recent B-side “Weathercade”, dragged back from the warmth to a damp and cold England by wailing harmonica. Siouxsie is dressed like The Avengers‘ Mrs Peel dragged up as John Steed in bowler hat and umbrella, with a stripy orange/black T-shirt visible beneath her formal jacket. Next up is The Glove with the melancholy instrumental “A Blues in Drag”, staged straightforwardly with Smith on piano and Severin on strings against a three-panel backdrop of blue/yellow spirals. Finally, the nagging 3 second tape loop which played constantly in the background of the tea party sequences breaks forth into Siouxsie and the Banshees performing “Circle” from A Kiss in the Dreamhouse. Siouxsie struts around in a mustard officer’s jacket, leather trousers, stiletto heels and a cap while wielding a riding crop. Severin and Budgie mime playing their instruments like professionals, while Smith (who didn’t actually play on the original recording) jabs listlessly at the keyboards, barely interested in pretending that this is anything to do with him. The backdrop shifts between a tube train on the circle line and a spinning Catherine wheel before reverting to the tea party, continuing to play out behind them until the song ends and the band wakes up on a park bench, completely covered in fallen Autumn leaves, as if rousing themselves from the aftermath of a shared acid trip.

Apparently the band had run out of material at this point, because the final 16 minutes are pinched directly from the Nocturne concert film, a harsh triple onslaught of “Eve Black/Eve White” (a 1980 B-side inspired by the multiple personalities of Christine Sizemore as documented in the 1957 book The Three Faces of Eve); “Voodoo Dolly” (from 1981’s Juju); and “Helter Skelter”, a discordant reinterpretation of the Beatles classic dating back to their punk days which sonically encapsulates Charles Manson’s distorted appropriation of the original for darker purpose. Although the appearance of these selections may have been a case of simply making up the running time, in the context of the TV special they evoke the feel of the rough edges of reality reasserting themselves in the morning-after comedown of an acid trip, yanking the viewer unceremoniously back out of Wonderland with a protracted primal scream.

By the time the Siouxsie and the Banshees TV special was aired in September 1984, the era it documented was well and truly over. April saw the release of The Top and the beginning of Robert Smith’s reconciliation with Simon Gallup, who rejoined the band with 1985’s The Head on the Door and has been a mainstay ever since. Hyaena came out in June, not long after the recruitment of new Banshees guitarist John Valentine Carruthers (formerly of Clock DVA), followed in quick succession by a trial recording session in August to work on the development of their sound. The end result of this session, The Thorn EP, was released one month after the TV special aired, marking the beginning of a new era for the Banshees which would last until 1987’s Through the Looking Glass, their tribute to David Bowie’s Pin Ups album. 1988 would see not just the beginning of the next chapter in their career, but also the seduction of my teenage self into Siouxsie’s world with the gloriously off-kilter “Peek-a-Boo” – but that would be a whole other story.

Invasion Narratives – Rey (2017) / Walker (1987)

This week’s impromptu double feature demonstrates two different approaches to addressing the legacy of colonialism, using differing techniques to question the narratives surrounding two distinct historical attempts by white men to dominate the inhabitants of Latin America.

A bearded white man sits in meditation at the edge of a rocky outcrop overlooking a secluded natural pool, streams of water rising from below and flowing into his hands. A tribe of horse-headed men escort him up the forested slopes to a clearing where he is greeted by corn spirits, who surround him before reverently placing a woven crown upon his head and kneeling in willing subjugation.

Chilean director Niles Atallah doesn’t want his audience to be under any illusion that Rey (2017) is a conventional biopic. This scene is how he has chosen to introduce Orélie-Antoine de Tounens (as played by Rodrigo Lisboa), a French lawyer whose reading of the 16^th century Spanish epic poem La Araucana about the conquest of Chile prompted his own personal dreams of empire. Travelling to Chile in 1858, he spent two years studying Spanish and exploring the area before announcing himself to be the King of Araucanía and Patagonia, as anointed by a small group of Mapuche tribal leaders in the Araucanía region. Although ignored by the Chilean government, his declaration prompted the Chilean Occupation of Araucanía the following year. At the beginning of 1862 he was betrayed to the authorities by his servant Juan Bautista Rosales (Claudio Riveros), eventually being declared insane by the court and expelled from the country. The rest of his life was frittered away on futile attempts to solicit aid in “regaining” his “kingdom”, but his claims were never formally endorsed by any nation and he died in poverty in 1878.

Recognising the impossibility of documenting the truth behind these events in any objective fashion, Atallah has chosen instead to emphasise their subjectivity through the application of a range of techniques. The body of the film is bracketed by grainy footage of a narrated historical textbook, within which the events have been broken up into five chapters (The Captivity; The Trial; The Betrayal; The Fever; The Exile) and an epilogue (The Apocalypse). Much of the movie is centred around the imprisonment and trial of de Tounens, where his testimony is contrasted with that of his accuser Rosales. During these scenes there is not a single recognisable human face to be seen. All of the representatives of Chilean authority – prison guards, lawyers, etc – sport identical crudely-assembled papier-mâché masks presenting a bland uniformity of expressionless anonymity. The only faces distinguishable from the crowd are those of de Tounens and Rosales, who have been granted the distinction of wearing masks which bear some resemblance to their actual faces.

Those scenes which take place outside the courtroom tend to be filmed more naturalistically. The first stages of de Tounens and Rosales’ journey through the wilderness are depicted in a straightforward realistic style, a far cry from the messianic vision of deification which opened the film. As their accounts begin to diverge, the footage of their journey begins to degrade, breaking up into increasingly spiky jump cuts as scratches distort both image and sound, as if the footage illustrating their differing versions of events represented two different attempts at the restoration of the same fatally compromised film stock.

Making the strongest visual impact are the visionary scenes representing de Tounens’ delusions of divine superiority, which could be interpreted either as a metaphorical expression of an internalised white saviour self-narrative, or as the fevered hallucinations of an unwell man during one of his later attempts to return to his “kingdom”. These sequences are largely absent from the body of the film but return for the epilogue, as de Tounens’ return to Araucanía in 1869 prompts a similar visionary experience to that seen in the opening, an experience which this time continues to escalate as the screen fills with multiple iterations of de Tounens-faced godheads which merge into kaleidoscopic mandalas of divine contemplation. Regardless of how seriously one takes these sequences as depictions of de Tounens’ mental state, they illustrate the absurdity of the mindset underlying the foreign exploitation of indigenous people, a subject to which the rather more dry narration of the textbook explicitly returns at the film’s close.

Atallah’s first feature as a director was Lucía (2010), which tells the story of a seamstress and her father under the Pinochet regime – not the sort of subject matter which would normally make it a personal must-watch, but given the creator I’m now itching to see it. It took seven years for Atallah to create his follow-up, during which time he took on additional work as a cinematographer while creating video installations, short animations and music videos. Atallah has continued to work busily in these fields since the completion of Rey, and I can only hope that we won’t have to wait another few years for his next feature.

English director Alex Cox’s Walker (1987) is a prime example of the maxim that historical dramas often have more to tell us about the age in which they were written or made than the age in which they are set. Inspired by a 1984 visit to Nicaragua, where he discovered that the situation on the ground bore very little resemblance to what was reported in the US media, Cox set out to tell the tale of the first North American invasion of Nicaragua in 1855, when Colonel William Walker answered the call to provide military aid to Nicaragua’s Democratic Party under the pretext that his troops were colonists. Two months after his newly stable regime had been recognised by US President Franklin Pierce, Walker seized personal control of the country in a fraudulent election and made a series of increasingly poor decisions which ultimately led to his surrender to the US navy on 1 May 1857 after less than 10 months in power. Three years later, he was invited to Honduras by British colonists who wanted to establish a new government, but was quickly arrested and executed.

Cox introduces us to Colonel Walker (Ed Harris) at the conclusion of his abortive 1853 attempt to invade Mexico after his petition to set up a fortified border colony was turned down by their government. On his return home to California he is put on trial for conducting an illegal war in violation of the Neutrality Act of 1794, but is quickly acquitted by a fixed jury to the cheers of the redneck onlookers. Planning to settle down and start a newspaper with his deaf fiancée (and fiery moral compass) Ellen Martin (Marlee Matlin), her sudden death from cholera leads him to accept a proposition from megalomaniac businessman Cornelius Vanderbilt (Peter Boyle) to “stabilise” Nicaragua as a means of protecting his shipping interests. Accompanied by his friend and adviser Byron Cole (Xander Berkeley), Walker sets off on a haphazardly shambolic military expedition with his second-in-command Major Siegfried Henningson (René Auberjonois), the stalwart Captain Hornsby (Sy Richardson) – a lone black face among his troops – and loyal soldier Timothy Crocker (Keith Szarabajka).

Although Walker is suggested to be an unreliable narrator in his very first scene, in which the speech given by the “gray-eyed man of destiny” comes across as a bit out of touch with reality, this aspect of his character comes to the fore as soon as they reach Nicaragua – his calm narration talks of their solemn landing, while the screen shows a burning ship sinking off the coastline as his sodden men frantically drag what cargo survives onto the shore. His strategy for “liberating” his first town is to march his men down the street, leaving them open to ambush from the roofs and the unnecessary loss of many of his men, who fight and die while he continues to stroll obliviously in calm conversation, untouched by any of the surrounding chaos. He remains so blissfully unaware of what’s going on around him that it takes the arrival of reinforcements with news for him to learn that he’s won, and with victory his detachment only increases, leading to his delusional appointment of himself as leader and the stubborn belief (all evidence to the contrary) that he’s beloved by the people, even after introducing legislation allowing the people to be sold as slaves. Among the minor characters, the English expat painter Faucet (Joe Strummer) is one of the key figures making pointed observations about Walker’s expedition. On first encountering the soldiers, he immediately jumps to the conclusion that the foreigners trampling about as if they own the place must be American (an attitude clearly owing more to the 20^th century than to the 19^th). Later on, he questions Walker about whether it bothers him that he has abandoned every principle for which he stood. Walker’s reply that the ends justify the means raises the obvious follow-up question of what these ends are – to which Walker replies (with no apparent sign of regret) that he has forgotten. (Strummer, of course, as a founding member of punk band The Clash, is no stranger to revolutionary politics – their fourth album Sandinista! (1980) was named after the socialist political party which had just taken power in Nicaragua, and even the album’s catalogue number – FSLN1 – was a reference to the party’s initials.)

As the film progresses and Walker spirals further out of control, artefacts of modern day America begin to appear: a modern car overtakes a horse-drawn carriage; Walker shows off his appearance on the cover of Time magazine; at the film’s climax, a helicopter appears to extract any US citizens, accompanied by a military escort with a casual attitude to shooting anybody who isn’t obviously a white North American. Contemporary US attitudes make their way into the mouths of various characters, including a chilling speech in which Walker tells the Nicaraguan people that they will never be free of America. While many filmmakers are more than willing to take liberty with the historical details for the sake of a more streamlined story (as is also the case here), by blatantly bringing modern anachronisms onto the screen Cox underlines the way in which the events he has chosen to dramatise are simply a precursor to contemporary American foreign policy and military adventurism.

Ed Harris (The Right Stuff, Apollo 13) is perfectly cast as William Walker, moving through the film with the fixed gaze of a man of vision who sees beyond his surroundings to a higher purpose – a gaze which becomes evident as the delusional obsession of a man who is unable to perceive reality through the obscuring haze of his moral certainty of what should be. Marlee Matlin (The West Wing), in only her second film role, brings a clear-eyed and passionate idealism to her role as a strong independent woman who sees through coded discussions of Manifest Destiny to the ugly pro-slavery attitudes beneath. Her character has a pragmatic counterpart in Nicaraguan aristocrat Doña Yrena, who is initially able to control Walker to an extent but eventually tries to kill him – Blanca Guerra (Santa Sangre, Clear and Present Danger) is exceptional in this part and makes me wish I were more familiar with Mexican cinema. Nowhere in their league, but worth mentioning in passing, is Gerrit Graham (Phantom of the Paradise) as one of Walker’s brothers – while his performance here can’t really be compared to his glam rock diva Beef, I generally find his appearances enjoyable and was happy to see him here.

Alex Cox (Repo Man, Sid & Nancy) is no stranger to controversy, and it comes as no surprise to learn that Walker was poorly received in America. Universal Studios were unhappy with the end result, deeming it too political and too violent, and chose not to promote it (the dodgy trailer included below sells it as a po-faced drama rather the cheeky satire it actually is). It was released to largely poor reviews, including a zero-star rating from both Siskel & Ebert, and poisoned his reputation with the big studios – but after sneaking out on budget video and DVD labels, Cox’s achievement finally received formal recognition as worthy of release on the boutique Criterion label in 2008 and I hold out some hope for a Blu Ray reissue in the future.

Maritime Mishaps – Haemoo / Disappearance at Sea

On the 7^th of October 2001, 25 Korean-Chinese immigrants being smuggled into South Korea suffocated to death in the storage tank of the fishing vessel transporting them. Their bodies were dumped into the ocean by the crew in an unsuccessful bid to cover up their smuggling activities. This incident served as the inspiration for a 2007 stage play titled Haemoo (which translates into English as “Sea Fog”) before being adapted into a feature film by Bong Joon-so and Shim Sung-bo, who had previously collaborated on the script for the critically acclaimed true crime film Memories of Murder [Sarinui chueok] (2003) (previously reviewed here). This time around Bong stuck to the production side, giving Shim the opportunity to make Haemoo (2014) his feature directorial debut.

Shim devotes the first 20-30 minutes of the film to establishing both the boat’s crew and the social and financial pressures affecting them. In the wake of the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the restructuring imposed by the International Monetary Fund had caused household incomes to drop and unemployment to increase. Captain Kang Cheol-joo (Kim Yook-seok) commands the Jeonjinho, a fishing vessel well past its best days which he refuses to abandon, even though government incentives would allow him to replace it with something much better. Returning early one day when troubles with the boat force him to abandon the day’s fishing, he discovers that his wife (Yeom He-ran) is cheating on him. When he tries to secure a loan to repair his boat, he learns that she has already mortgaged their restaurant without informing him. Stubbornly insistent on repairing the boat, he resorts to visiting underworld figure Yeo (Jo Duk-je) to obtain more lucrative work “croaker fishing”, i.e. smuggling illegal immigrants from China to Korea. The first his crew learns about their new job is when he briefs them onboard (and distributes their cut) immediately before casting off, allowing them no opportunity to have second thoughts and speak to the authorities.

Second in command is Boatswain Ho-young (Kim Sang-ho), a pragmatic and competent middle-aged man who spends much of his time managing the behaviour of the younger Kyung-koo (Yoo Seung-mok) – a big spender who likes to sneak prostitutes onto the boat when it’s docked – and Chang-wook (Lee Hee-joon) – an immature and entitled man who envies Kyung-koo’s sexual exploits and attempts to spy on them. Chief engineer Wan-ho (Moon Sung-keun) is a good-humoured older man who lives concealed on board in order to hide from his creditors. Youngest crew member Dong-sik (Park Yoo-chun) is a dim but well-intentioned young man still learning the trade who lives with his grandmother (Ye Soo-jung) and was inadvertently responsible for the boat’s premature return from its most recent fishing trip.

Setting out into impending bad weather, the crew’s rendezvous with the freighter carrying the immigrants is a fraught affair, as turbulent seas force them to make precarious leaps across the gap between vessels in order to board. Dong-sik, naively credulous of Chang-wook’s idea that this is a great way to meet eligible women, attempts to help Hong-mae (Han Ye-ri) aboard but she eludes his grasp and falls into the water, prompting him to dive in and rescue her (sending the crew into a panic as they struggle to find him again). Although she is nervous about his solicitous attentions after their rescue, they soon establish that despite his interest he’s not the sort to take advantage of her (although she does have to shut down his well-meaning but patronising attempts to explain Korean society). In contrast to Hong-mae, the more worldly Yool-Nyeo (Jo Kyung-sook) is more than willing to trade sexual favours for a warm spot in the engine room, but the boatswain quickly puts paid to Kyung-koo’s willingness to take advantage. Meanwhile Wan-ho bonds with a teacher (Jung Dae-yong) travelling to Korea in search of a better paying job so that he can afford to support his family back in China.

The first signs of trouble come with one refugee’s (Kim Han-joon) attempts to assert some control. Although he initially proves to be better informed than the ship’s crew about the realities of people-smuggling – advising the others not to eat the salty food they’ve been given and to save the containers for use as impromptu toilets – after a short time in the fishing hold with the other transportees it’s clear that he was unprepared for the reality as he is unable to cope with the smell and attempts to rally the others to his side. This earns him a savage beating from the Captain, much to the shock of the rest of the crew, and it’s only Dong-sik’s willingness to put himself in the middle that saves him from being beaten to death. Despite this intervention, Captain Kang has the man thrown overboard as a warning to the others, eventually relenting and having him hauled back in with a life preserver.

During all of this confusion, Dong-sik spies an opportunity to hide Hong-mae in the engine room, securing the willing support of Wan-ho to allow her presence and keep it a secret. This timely intervention saves Hong-mae from the tragic fate of her fellow travellers when a freezer malfunction causes freon to escape into the fishing hold, resulting in the occupants’ deaths. Desperate to destroy the evidence, the Captain forces his crew to help him chop up the bodies and throw them into the sea – leaving Hong-mae’s unsuspected presence as a ticking time bomb with the potential to divide the crew and push them into darker acts.

Shim & Bong have done a fine job expanding the contained environments of the stage play to suit the broader expanse of the big screen. Shim clearly establishes the layout of the boat early on, allowing the audience to understand the flow of the action onboard even in the midst of raging storms, tossing waves and clinging fog. Particularly good use is made of the engine room, which offers a range of nooks and crannies for hiding and provides a versatile space which could not have been realised in the same way on stage. The simple fact of seeing actual vessels on the water, and the ability to vividly depict the more hostile aspects of their natural environment, also offers a level of reality which emphasises the hardships experienced by immigrants reduced to pursuing illegal travel options, undermining any suggestion by hostile politicians that anybody would go these lengths without a compelling motivation. This aspect of the story is largely set aside for the final part of the film, which draws more from the crime genre in its depiction of the violent disintegration of a small and formerly closely-knit team, although Shim & Bong have added an epilogue set six years later which returns the audience’s attention to the unspoken motivations of immigrants, subtly depicting a non-verbal chance encounter which suggests a different possible interpretation of earlier dialogue but allows the viewer to draw their own conclusions.

Kim Yun-seok provides the most compelling performance as the driven Captain whose dedication to his crew ultimately takes a back seat to his concern for the continued operation of his vessel. K-pop star Park Yoo-chun, previously a member of boy bands TVXQ and JYJ, makes the transition to lead audience identification figure effectively in a role which saw him win eight awards and two nominations for Best New Actor, plus the Korea Film Actor’s Association Popular Star Award. Most worthy of note among the smaller roles is Jo Kyung-sook, who had played the victim’s mother in Bong Joon-ho’s Mother [Madeo] (2009) – her world-weary portrayal of a woman resigned to offering sex in exchange for comfort suggests an entire backstory which remains unspoken throughout her few scenes.

Haemoo earned Shim Sung-bo one award and two nominations for Best New Director, although in the seven years since the film’s release he has yet to consolidate on his success with a follow-up. Although it was well regarded enough to be selected as South Korea’s entry for Best Foreign Language Film at that year’s Academy Awards, it didn’t make it to the final list of nominees. The film’s hybrid nature leaves it open to criticisms that it doesn’t fully commit to whichever aspect of the film the critic would most like to have seen featured, but I’d argue that its shifts make it a more rounded, accessible film and that any such attempts to narrow its focus would run the risk of fatally unbalancing the material.

Keeping to the maritime theme, I seized my last opportunity to watch Tacita Dean’s Disappearance at Sea (1996), a 13 minute avant-garde exploration of light and refraction on 16mm film which is normally only available for gallery installations but which was briefly made available via MUBI during the recent UK COVID-19 lockdowns. Shot in and around a lighthouse, it consists of seven sequences of a locked-off camera observing the lamp room and its view, accompanied by field recordings of the surrounding natural ambience. It opens on a close-up of the rotating unlit double bulbs within the lamp housing during daytime, as they pass and are distorted by the concentric circles in the glass which focus and project the light. The seemingly static bulbs rotate through a series of distortions, while the light of the sun begins to impinge at certain angles to provide unexpected bursts of colour.

The second sequence switches to an external view of the landscape and sea from the top of the lighthouse, with the lamp filling the left side of the screen. From this perspective, the distorted patterns of light created by the rotating lamp appear like ripples of water, creating the illusion that the lamp room is submerged. Next we see the rocky seashore of encroaching evening as the light pans slowly across the craggy protuberances from left to right. A thin ribbon of red separates the deepening purple of the sky and sea, while a ship moves slowly into sight from behind the promontory. The perspective flips back to the lamp room, camera pushed right up against the dark V-shaped slats standing out boldly against the rotating light source, creating a mysterious illuminated space in which the concentric circle lenses appear almost like owl-like eyes interrogating the darkness. That darkness overwhelms the screen for the final sequence, alleviated only by the pale, almost inadequate spotlight sweeping periodically across the night but revealing only hints of rippling waves.

If you’re looking for a narrative or some cohesively expressed artistic thesis, you’ve come to the wrong place, but if you’re looking for a meditative experience of shifting light and seaside ambience (which is more or less what I’d hoped for) you should come away satisfied. I’m not certain that the work sustains the interpretation that Tacita had in mind when she made it – the solitary psychological disintegration of amateur sailor Donald Crowhurst who died while attempting to circumnavigate the world – but it’s certainly possible to get something out of it without understanding her intentions.

Weird Love Stories – Max, Mon Amour / Matador

Today’s selection of two trangressive love stories (both released in 1986) comes courtesy of Kat Ellinger’s Cineslut Film Club, selected to fit February’s chosen theme of Tainted Love. But while “tainted” may well be an appropriate descriptive term for the twisted affections presented in Pedro Almodóvar’s Matador (1986), it fails to convey the sweetness of approach Japanese new wave director Ōshima Nagisa takes to the unconventional relationship depicted in Max, Mon Amour [Makkusu, Mon Amūru] (1986).

Peter Jones (Anthony Higgins) is the British ambassador to France, making preparations for an upcoming visit by Queen Elizabeth II. He shares a lavishly appointed apartment with his wife Margaret (Charlotte Rampling), their son Nelson (Christopher Hovik) and their live-in maid Maria (Victoria Abril). Peter’s suspicions are aroused when Margaret’s friend Hélène (Nicole Calfan) calls looking for her, shortly before Margaret returns home claiming to have spent the last few hours with Hélène. Peter hires a detective (Pierre Étaix), who informs him that Margaret has taken a second apartment where she spends two hours every day – although he was unable to identify her suspected lover, since at no point in the past 10 days has anybody other than Margaret entered or left the apartment. Peter, who has himself been carrying on an affair with his secretary Camille (Diana Quick), turns up to the apartment to force a confrontation and a civilised discussion about the conduct of their mutual relationships – but the meeting turns out rather differently than expected when Margaret pulls back the sheets to reveal Max (Ailsa Berk) to be a chimpanzee!

It’s worth noting at this point that while Ōshima is not one to automatically shy away from explicit depictions of sex – as seen most notably in the acclaimed In the Realm of the Senses [Ai no korīda] (1976) – Max, Mon Amour is not that type of movie. Although Margaret calmly confirms that their relationship is a sexual one, she refuses to discuss the details and nothing of the sort is ever seen on screen – much to the frustration of her husband, the others who learn of her relationship with Max, and apparently of many reviewers. What she is willing to reveal is the story of how they got together, a classic example of eyes meeting across a crowded room – with the room in this case being a zoo. After several follow-up visits, during which they formed a clearly visible personal connection, one of the zookeepers offered her the opportunity to buy Max, who came to the zoo after an indeterminate time with a circus but has been unable or unwilling to forge any connections with the other primates. This financial transaction aside, at no point is there any hint that Margaret sees Max as her property or that Max is being exploited – all of their interactions are presented as mutual and loving.

After recovering from the shock of his discovery, Peter suggests that it’s ridiculous to pay for a second apartment when Max could simply move in with them. Although the couple are clearly used to maintaining civil relations with each other’s lovers, Margaret is dubious of the wisdom of this decision but willing to accept his assurances that nothing will change. Peter, of course, is far more conflicted than he is willing to admit to himself and cannot help continuing to poke metaphorical sticks at the subject of what exactly they get up to. At Margaret’s birthday dinner he tells their friends they have a new resident and prods her into bringing Max out to meet their guests – a situation which goes reasonably well until the late arrival of Margaret’s ex-lover Archibald (Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu) prompts displays of jealous possessiveness from Max, leading their dinner guests to form their own awkward suspicions. Archibald later returns to visit Margaret bearing flowers with a psychoneurologist in tow, egotistically assured that her relationship with Max could only stem from sexual frustration over his absence, and is comically uncomprehending of her frosty response.

Peter’s obsession with Margaret and Max begins to spill over into his relationship with Camille. A would-be casual question about sex with monkeys during a trip to the zoo causes her to believe that he’s exploring a previously unsuspected fetish, leading to the adorably supportive decision to invite a zoologist (Bernard Haller) to be present at their next liaison so that Peter can ask for all the factual information he wants. Although this encounter strengthens his relationship with Camille, it fails to resolve his obsession. After politely turning down a proposition from sex worker Françoise (Sabine Haudepin), it occurs to him that if his wife won’t let him watch her with Max, maybe he could watch Françoise have sex with Max instead – but although she proves surprisingly game (doubling her price with a shrug after asking whether he’s dangerous), Max remains faithful. Peter’s ongoing obsession begins to affect his work and takes him to some dark places, but after bottoming out he begins to think of Max more as a person than an animal, ultimately putting his own job on the line to save Max’s life.

Ōshima makes use of this surprisingly sweet and joyful love story to explore the theme of voyeurism, opening the film with a giant keyhole through which can be seen a purple-tinted eye. After the title of the movie appears, the “A” in “MAX” transforms into a keyhole which is unlocked, through which we glimpse each cast member’s face as their name appears on the screen. Scenes of Paris follow, culminating with a final zoom through the keyhole towards the phallic protuberance of Cleopatra’s Needle before the key is turned again and we meet Peter cleaning his rifle (no it’s not a euphemism). Ōshima proceeds to spend much of the rest of the film teasing both the characters and the audience with Margaret’s (and his own) resolute refusal to indulge their prurient curiosity about her sex life with Max – his sole concession to these urges being a half-naked Françoise’s attempt to excite Max’s interest in a scene which refuses to see sex as anything shameful. The keyhole motif returns once more at the conclusion of the end credits as a red key (the colour of the title in the opening credits) locks a blue keyhole, informing the audience that their glimpse into these people’s lives has come to a definitive close. Considered in the light of this theme, the howls of complaint from critics who fixated on the lack of chimpanzee sex are hilarious, completely oblivious that they’ve identified themselves with the role Peter occupies at the beginning of the film and, by failing to follow him on his personal internal journey, have missed the point entirely.

Following on the heels of the prisoner-of-war movie Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence [Senjō no Merī Kurisumasu] (1983), which is probably best remembered these days for featuring David Bowie as its lead, Max, Mon Amour was followed by a thirteen year gap before Ōshima completed his final feature film Taboo [Gohatto] (1999) which explored the topic of homosexuality among 19^th century samurai. Ōshima’s co-writer Jean-Claude Carrière has an extensive and distinguished career as a screenwriter, working on such diverse films as Luis Buñuel’s Belle de Jour (1967), Volker Schlöndorff’s The Tin Drum [Die Blechtrommel] (1979), Philip Kaufman’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988), Peter Brook’s The Mahabharata (1989) and Jean-Paul Rappeneau’s Cyrano de Bergerac (1990).

Leading a strong cast is Charlotte Rampling (The Night Porter), no stranger to portraying taboo-ridden relationships, whose serene insistence on the normality of the central ménage à trois conveys real feeling while selling a central concept which is bound to create audience resistance. Anthony Higgins, who portrayed the arrogant artist in Peter Greenaway’s class conflict puzzle box The Draughtsman’s Contract (1982), effectively navigates the potentially contradictory and alienating aspects of his character to come across as a likeable person who has some issues to work through. Victoria Abril (Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! [¡Átame!]), not long before her international breakthrough as the star of three Almodóvar films, is haplessly sympathetic as the put-upon maid who is allergic to chimpanzees. Among the smaller roles, French comedian and filmmaker Pierre Étaix (Le Grand Amour) is charming as the detective, while Sabine Haudepin (The Last Metro [Le Dernier Métro]) brings a joie de vivre to her role as Françoise. But it’s impossible to conclude this role call without drawing attention to the uncredited performance of Ailsa Berk as Max the chimpanzee, a vital component in making the central relationship believable. Berk, a dancer and puppeteer, had prior form as a primate, having played Tarzan’s adoptive mother Kala in Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1984). She would go on to play Aslan the lion for the BBC’s The Chronicles of Narnia (1988-1990) before becoming the go-to choreographer for creature movement in 35 episodes of the relaunched Doctor Who (2005-2017).

Moving from the sweet to the decidedly perverse, Almodóvar’s Matador opens on former bullfighter Diego Montes (Nacho Martínez) masturbating furiously to a personal VHS mixtape of women being killed in various slasher movies (most notably Mario Bava’s seminal Blood and Black Lace [6 donne per l’assassino]) while the opening credits play over his contorted face. This is immediately succeeded by a scene in which Diego lectures to his students on bullfighting techniques, cross-cut with lawyer María (Assumpta Serna) picking up one of his students. As the lecture progresses, her seduction parallels his instructions, climaxing as Diego explains the correct technique for despatching a bull while María demonstrates on her unwitting lover and rides him to completion.

At this point Almodóvar switches his attention to Diego’s student Ángel (Antonio Banderas), a young man subjected to an oppressive religious upbringing who idolises his mentor and seeks his advice on approaching women. His response to the singularly unhelpful advice to “treat her like a bull” is to spy on his neighbour Eva (Eva Cobo) – Diego’s girlfriend – while she gets changed, follow her into the street, drag her into an alleyway and attempt to rape her, before fainting at the sight of blood. Bullied by his mother (Julieta Serrano) into attending church the following day, he passes up attending confession to go to the police station and turn himself in. Eva and her mother (Chus Lampreave) view the whole situation as a nuisance and decline to press charges, leaving Ángel bereft, until he spots the photographs of two of his fellow male students on the desk in front of the bemused police superintendent (Eusebio Poncela) and confesses to killing them, as well as two female students who have gone missing.

Fascinated that somebody should confess to killing her two victims, María volunteers her services as Ángel’s lawyer, revelling in the negative press attention this earns her from female journalists who assume her client is guilty. Catching a glimpse of María while dropping off Eva after their last date (which saw him asking her to pretend to be a corpse), Diego follows María to a cinema showing King Vidor’s western Duel in the Sun (1946), where they stand rapt and unaware of each other in opposite doorways at the back of the cinema as the film’s central lovers die in each other’s arms after the climactic shootout. After an abortive encounter between the two fails to result in either sex or death, Diego pulls out his old video tapes to watch himself being gored by a bull, the incident which ended his career as a matador. The chance recognition of María among the spectators cements his obsession with her and he barges into her office, refusing to leave when threatened with a gun but finally relenting when she turns it on herself. His parting gift of the matador cape she had admired earlier seals their recognition of each other as driven by the same urges. Diego becomes increasingly unconcerned with the ongoing police investigation, which points more and more clearly towards him after the two missing women are discovered buried on his property, and the two serial murderers find themselves drawn inescapably towards each other in a spiralling collision of eros and thanatos.

Almodóvar uses this typically lurid subject matter to interrogate the contradictory urges underlying Spanish society, exploring the ways in which the national institutions of bullfighting and Catholicism can become sublimated vessels for suppressed sexual urges. His exploration of individuals who are internally divided is referenced on a societal level by the fashion show in which Eva is modelling, which has been built on the theme of “Divided Spain” – her arrival with a cut on her face is greeted with delight by the director, who instructs the makeup artist to emphasise it and work it into her look. (In addition to modelling her dress, Eva’s role is to shoot the male model playing her boyfriend before being murdered in turn by a mob – even in the fashion world, it seems, there’s no escaping the link between sex and death.)

Ángel’s mother Berta is an obsessive flagellant constantly bombarding him with the message that both he and his deceased father are weak, evil creatures who deserve to be punished. She has no problem with believing Ángel to be a murderer (if anything, she seems resigned to it as a preordained inevitability) even when all evidence points to the contrary – in particular his propensity to faint at the first sign of blood (which she views as a moral failing). She consistently demonises sex, yet seems to take a perverse joy in putting her leg up on the table in front of her son while strapping a cilice chain around her upper thigh. Growing up in such a confusing and maternally oppressive environment has left Ángel incapable of understanding how to process his own urges. Seeking direction from his substitute father figure, his sexual incomprehension inevitably leads him to misinterpret Diego’s already-dodgy advice, explaining (but not excusing) his clumsy oedipally-motivated assault upon Eva.

Bullfighting is shown to be an overt mixture of violence and sexuality – an exhibition of athletic masculinity combined with the calculated slaughter of a powerful animal. Matadors – whether professionals, students, or retired – are seen to have instant status as sex symbols, a point Almodóvar emphasises with lingering shots on the tightly-clad groins and buttocks of the matadors-in-training. As a retired bullfighter, Diego retains his sexual appeal but clearly feels a loss of power. His inability to let go of his traumatic wounding and symbolic loss of potency, constantly replayed on a worn-out VHS recording, transmutes into an eroticised fascination with death which finds an outlet in killing. For María, as an avid appreciator of matadors, Diego’s goring became a similarly charged primal event, prompting her own form of ritualised sex murders. Linked by a shared trauma which has deformed their lives, their eventual unification and mutual self-immolation becomes their twisted erotic destiny.

There are plenty of familiar faces here from Almodóvar’s body of work, so I’ll just note the general high quality of their performances rather than go into them in detail – but as I haven’t mentioned her yet, I should note that his frequent collaborator Carmen Maura has a small role as Ángel’s psychiatrist. Antonio Banderas is of course the most recognisable name to an international audience, but this was still very early in his career and for such a central role, he doesn’t really have very much to do – fans of his work would be better served by checking out Almodóvar’s next film, Law of Desire [La ley del deseo] (1987), which sees him in a larger role playing another repressed individual who becomes obsessed with the director of the film which gave him his homosexual awakening. The only featured actor here who doesn’t appear in any other Almodóvar films is Eva Cobo – who I was surprised to discover also starred in Jackie Chan’s Armour of God II: Operation Condor [Fei ying gai wak] (1991)!

Matador was the first Almodóvar film I ever saw, back in my early university days. Although (unsurprisingly) it made a strong impression on me, I wasn’t really sure how to process it or what I thought of it – I got stuck at the surface level sensationalism and couldn’t work out whether I liked it or, indeed, whether it was any good. Coming back to it roughly 30 years later, I found it to be threaded through with elements which resonated with each other to create a much richer experience than I expected. A few days on from watching it, it’s still ticking away in the back of my mind, and I have no doubt that some of the thoughts I’ve attempted to articulate here will continue to shift and refine themselves for a little while yet. I won’t attempt to sell it as a masterpiece – Almodóvar considers it to be one of his weakest films, and there are certainly some story elements which could do with a polish – but it’s far more nuanced and rewarding of attention than the details of plot might lead you to believe.