CANNES -- With the precision of a sharp, cold surgical knife, Martha Fiennes dissects her characters in Chromophobia. Save for one sentimental subplot, the writer-director clearly doesn't care for these people very much. Nor is there much reason for viewers to care, either. The strangely chilly melodrama-cum-satire made an odd choice for the closing night film at the Festival de Cannes. Its strong cast probably ensures North American distributor interest, but this misanthropic take on neurotics in the British professional class will certainly challenge marketers.
The married couple around whom subplots swirl is fast-rising attorney Marcus Aylesbury (Damian Lewis), the son of a distinguished judge (Ian Holm), and his anxious wife Iona (Kristen Scott Thomas). Having been made a partner in a powerful London law firm, Marcus finds himself drawn into an illegal scheme by his boss. Meanwhile, Iona, who suffers from low self-esteem and sexual frustration, deals with her dissatisfactions through a shrink and shopping sprees for clothes and modern art. Her new worry is that their hyperactive, small son might be spending too much time with his gay godfather, Stephen (Ralph Fiennes).
Marcus runs into an old mate from his youthful days in a rock band, Trent Masters (Ben Chaplin), who is now a tabloid journalist. When Marcus drunkenly confides in Trent about his firm's corrupt dealings, Trent can't help investigate a story that could make him a media star.
Meanwhile, in a maudlin and seemingly unrelated story that only connects -- and unconvincingly so -- to the main one later in the movie, ex-cop-turned-social worker Colin (Rhys Ifans) becomes emotionally involved the lives of his only seeming case, that of a seriously ill prostitute (Penelope Cruz) and her beloved small daughter.
Much of what you need to know about the characters -- or, to be precise, about how Fiennes feels about them -- can be gleaned from the production design. Fiennes and her designer Tony Burrough give the married bourgeois couple a sleek, severely modern and ultimately soulless house. At times, when the camera glides down sterile hallways or peers at characters through walls of glass, you can almost feel the director mock her characters.
The judge and his wife occupy a country manor stuffed with the furnishings of satisfied privilege, while Stephen's townhouse brims with lovingly collected art fastidiously displayed. Only the character who inhabits scruffy digs, meaning the prostitute, does the director's attitude soften. Soften, unfortunately, to the point of sentimental mush.
The acting is crisp, but no one's plight in this turgid soap opera gets through to you. Having dissed her characters for more than half the movie, Fiennes cannot turn things around and ask an audience suddenly to sympathize with their predicaments.
Tech credits are certainly pro but insulate the film's characters behind the well-upholstered trappings of wealth and privilege. And what on earth does it mean for the credits to insist that the film's cinematographer, George Tiffin, provided "additional screenplay material?"
CHROMOPHOBIA
Tarak Ben Ammar presents a Rotholz Pictures production
Credits:
Screenwriter-director: Martha Fiennes
Additional screenplay material: George Tiffin
Producer: Tarak Ben Ammar, Ron Rotholz
Executive producers: Robert Bevan, Steve Christian, Charlie Savill, Marc Samuelson, Peter Samuelson
Director of photography: George Tiffin
Production designer: Tony Burrough
Music: Magnus Fiennes
Costumes: Michele Clapton
Editor: Tracy Granger
Cast:
Trent: Ben Chaplin
Gloria: Penelope Cruz
Marcus: Damian Lewis
Iona: Kristin Scott Thomas
Colin: Rhys Ifans
Edward: Ian Holm
Penelope: Harriet Walter
No MPAA rating
Running time -- 135 minutes...
The married couple around whom subplots swirl is fast-rising attorney Marcus Aylesbury (Damian Lewis), the son of a distinguished judge (Ian Holm), and his anxious wife Iona (Kristen Scott Thomas). Having been made a partner in a powerful London law firm, Marcus finds himself drawn into an illegal scheme by his boss. Meanwhile, Iona, who suffers from low self-esteem and sexual frustration, deals with her dissatisfactions through a shrink and shopping sprees for clothes and modern art. Her new worry is that their hyperactive, small son might be spending too much time with his gay godfather, Stephen (Ralph Fiennes).
Marcus runs into an old mate from his youthful days in a rock band, Trent Masters (Ben Chaplin), who is now a tabloid journalist. When Marcus drunkenly confides in Trent about his firm's corrupt dealings, Trent can't help investigate a story that could make him a media star.
Meanwhile, in a maudlin and seemingly unrelated story that only connects -- and unconvincingly so -- to the main one later in the movie, ex-cop-turned-social worker Colin (Rhys Ifans) becomes emotionally involved the lives of his only seeming case, that of a seriously ill prostitute (Penelope Cruz) and her beloved small daughter.
Much of what you need to know about the characters -- or, to be precise, about how Fiennes feels about them -- can be gleaned from the production design. Fiennes and her designer Tony Burrough give the married bourgeois couple a sleek, severely modern and ultimately soulless house. At times, when the camera glides down sterile hallways or peers at characters through walls of glass, you can almost feel the director mock her characters.
The judge and his wife occupy a country manor stuffed with the furnishings of satisfied privilege, while Stephen's townhouse brims with lovingly collected art fastidiously displayed. Only the character who inhabits scruffy digs, meaning the prostitute, does the director's attitude soften. Soften, unfortunately, to the point of sentimental mush.
The acting is crisp, but no one's plight in this turgid soap opera gets through to you. Having dissed her characters for more than half the movie, Fiennes cannot turn things around and ask an audience suddenly to sympathize with their predicaments.
Tech credits are certainly pro but insulate the film's characters behind the well-upholstered trappings of wealth and privilege. And what on earth does it mean for the credits to insist that the film's cinematographer, George Tiffin, provided "additional screenplay material?"
CHROMOPHOBIA
Tarak Ben Ammar presents a Rotholz Pictures production
Credits:
Screenwriter-director: Martha Fiennes
Additional screenplay material: George Tiffin
Producer: Tarak Ben Ammar, Ron Rotholz
Executive producers: Robert Bevan, Steve Christian, Charlie Savill, Marc Samuelson, Peter Samuelson
Director of photography: George Tiffin
Production designer: Tony Burrough
Music: Magnus Fiennes
Costumes: Michele Clapton
Editor: Tracy Granger
Cast:
Trent: Ben Chaplin
Gloria: Penelope Cruz
Marcus: Damian Lewis
Iona: Kristin Scott Thomas
Colin: Rhys Ifans
Edward: Ian Holm
Penelope: Harriet Walter
No MPAA rating
Running time -- 135 minutes...
TORONTO -- First Look Media has struck a deal to acquire overseas rights to James Toback's Neve Campbell starrer When Will I Be Loved. The film is screening here today as a special presentation. The film, in which Campbell plays a beautiful, capricious young woman exploring the limits of her seductive power and intellect, also stars Fred Weller (The Shape of Things) and Dominic Chianese (HBO's The Sopranos). Loved is being released domestically by IFC Films on Friday. Ron Rotholz produced the feature, with Robert Bevan, Keith Hayley and Charlie Savill executive producing.
Berlin International Film Festival
BERLIN -- "Pure"'s lively and colorful cinematic style turns a "downer" story about grim lives and desperation into a powerful love story. Returning to the subject of troubled relationships between a mother and her children, which he explored in his 1998 film "Hideous Kinky", Scottish director Gillies MacKinnon zeroes in on a 10-year-old boy who goes to extreme lengths to rescue his mom from heroin addiction. Resourceful and determined, the lad's persistent wooing of his mom lifts the story out of the realm of social realism to give audiences a new perspective on addicts and addiction. This one has the look and feel of an art house hit.
Young Henry Eden carries the film as Paul, a cheerful lad who has learned how to prepare the "medicine" that gets his mother, Mel (Molly Parker), going each morning since the tragic death of his father. He and his younger brother, Lee (Vinni Hunter), live with their mom in East London's Upton Park, across the street from West Ham United's football stadium, the scene of happier times as a family. Only when a close friend of his mom's (Marsha Thomason) dies of an overdose does Paul realize the danger of his mom's medicine.
When he angrily confronts her with her addiction, she agrees to go cold turkey. But she can't get through the self-imposed imprisonment in her own bedroom. To Paul's horror, his dad's best friend, Lenny (David Wenham), a local pimp and drug dealer, misguidedly supplies Mel with drugs to keep her going.
Outside pressures build. The children's grandmother (Geraldine McEwan) wants custody of Paul and Lee. Social Services is only to happy to agree. And a police detective (Gary Lewis) wants Paul to help him nail Lenny. Paul's only escape comes in his budding friendship with a pregnant waitress, Louise (Keira Knightley), but she too is developing a drug problem. Wanting to understand how his mother feels, Paul coaxes Louise into letting him smoke heroin. Seeing her son stoned brings Mel to her senses.
The performances are superb, especially the key one between Parker and Eden as two people who desperately need each other. Pivotally, MacKinnon and writer Alison Hume concentrate on character, so the movie becomes one about people's lives rather than their addictions. They put us on an emotional roller coaster as Paul's every attempt at happiness is short-lived. All the tough love in the world won't do the trick unless his mom is willing to end the self-destructive behavior.
Cinematographer John de Borman's composition is arresting as the camera seeks out adventurous vantage points. Composer Nitin Sawhney, who also plays Lenny's henchman, lets Indian motifs filter through a lively Western score. But the film's greatest asset is the small, dark, pleading face of the single-minded Eden.
PURE
A Little Wing Films/Kudos production
Credits:
Director: Gillies MacKinnon
Screenwriter: Alison Hume
Producer: Howard Burch
Executive producers: Robert Bevan, Keith Hayley, Charlie Savill, Amanda Coombes, Amit Barooah, Stephen Garrett, Jane Featherstone
Director of photography: John de Borman
Production designer: Jon Henson
Music: Nitin Sawhney
Costume designer: Kate Carin
Editor: Pia Di Ciaula
Cast:
Mel: Molly Parker
Paul: Harry Eden
Lenny: David Wenham
Louise: Keira Knightley
Nanna: Geraldine McEwan
Vicki: Marsha Thomason
Lee: Vinni Hunter
Inspector French: Gary Lewis
Running time -- 96 minutes
No MPAA rating...
BERLIN -- "Pure"'s lively and colorful cinematic style turns a "downer" story about grim lives and desperation into a powerful love story. Returning to the subject of troubled relationships between a mother and her children, which he explored in his 1998 film "Hideous Kinky", Scottish director Gillies MacKinnon zeroes in on a 10-year-old boy who goes to extreme lengths to rescue his mom from heroin addiction. Resourceful and determined, the lad's persistent wooing of his mom lifts the story out of the realm of social realism to give audiences a new perspective on addicts and addiction. This one has the look and feel of an art house hit.
Young Henry Eden carries the film as Paul, a cheerful lad who has learned how to prepare the "medicine" that gets his mother, Mel (Molly Parker), going each morning since the tragic death of his father. He and his younger brother, Lee (Vinni Hunter), live with their mom in East London's Upton Park, across the street from West Ham United's football stadium, the scene of happier times as a family. Only when a close friend of his mom's (Marsha Thomason) dies of an overdose does Paul realize the danger of his mom's medicine.
When he angrily confronts her with her addiction, she agrees to go cold turkey. But she can't get through the self-imposed imprisonment in her own bedroom. To Paul's horror, his dad's best friend, Lenny (David Wenham), a local pimp and drug dealer, misguidedly supplies Mel with drugs to keep her going.
Outside pressures build. The children's grandmother (Geraldine McEwan) wants custody of Paul and Lee. Social Services is only to happy to agree. And a police detective (Gary Lewis) wants Paul to help him nail Lenny. Paul's only escape comes in his budding friendship with a pregnant waitress, Louise (Keira Knightley), but she too is developing a drug problem. Wanting to understand how his mother feels, Paul coaxes Louise into letting him smoke heroin. Seeing her son stoned brings Mel to her senses.
The performances are superb, especially the key one between Parker and Eden as two people who desperately need each other. Pivotally, MacKinnon and writer Alison Hume concentrate on character, so the movie becomes one about people's lives rather than their addictions. They put us on an emotional roller coaster as Paul's every attempt at happiness is short-lived. All the tough love in the world won't do the trick unless his mom is willing to end the self-destructive behavior.
Cinematographer John de Borman's composition is arresting as the camera seeks out adventurous vantage points. Composer Nitin Sawhney, who also plays Lenny's henchman, lets Indian motifs filter through a lively Western score. But the film's greatest asset is the small, dark, pleading face of the single-minded Eden.
PURE
A Little Wing Films/Kudos production
Credits:
Director: Gillies MacKinnon
Screenwriter: Alison Hume
Producer: Howard Burch
Executive producers: Robert Bevan, Keith Hayley, Charlie Savill, Amanda Coombes, Amit Barooah, Stephen Garrett, Jane Featherstone
Director of photography: John de Borman
Production designer: Jon Henson
Music: Nitin Sawhney
Costume designer: Kate Carin
Editor: Pia Di Ciaula
Cast:
Mel: Molly Parker
Paul: Harry Eden
Lenny: David Wenham
Louise: Keira Knightley
Nanna: Geraldine McEwan
Vicki: Marsha Thomason
Lee: Vinni Hunter
Inspector French: Gary Lewis
Running time -- 96 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 2/11/2003
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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