Un lugar en el mundo (A Place in the World) (1992)

Ernesto (Gastón Batyi) secretly teaches Luciana (Lorena del Río) how to read.

This feels like a fairly timeless film, mainly because of its milieu: a remote settlement somewhere in Argentina, or “south of the Rio Grande” as one character puts it.

In many ways, it’s very much a modern-day Western but without the guns and killings. Indeed, the script rather pointedly refers to that genre via one of its characters, a “mercenary” (but not a bad one) called Hans (José Sacristán). And Mario (Frederico Luppi), the patriarch of a household we spend a lot of time with is at one point referred to as a ”frontiersman”. Come to think of it, it’s Hans who makes all of these Western analogies – and accordingly, the script deals with, among other things, corporate entities angling to exploit natural resources while providing landowners with insubstantial remuneration. And co-writer and director Adolfo Aristarain creates a believable setting in which parlous circumstances make hostages of those that have next to nothing.

Mario is an educated man who has set up a collective in the community; he’s a “lefty”, the type of person that businessmen typically wish didn’t exist, mainly because he speaks truth to power while putting ideas into people’s heads. Essentially, he’s one more obstacle for visiting industrialists to dispense with when it comes to getting the locals to acquiesce and give up land that is supposedly worth nothing. 

And as someone who has the benefit of an education, Mario takes it upon himself to teach the local kids to the best of his abilities, providing them with not just food for thought but literal food, lest they go hungry. 

The oldest of the children is Mario’s own son, Ernesto (Gastón Batyi), who is our POV character. He learns life lessons via the conversations of the various adults around him. Not only is he being educated by his own father, but he’s also picking up wisdom simply by witnessing the words, gestures and deeds of his elders. 

His parents don’t treat him like a kid; they’re well aware that all of this exposure to the ‘adult world’ will provide him with a good grounding for his adult life. And his real-world schooling includes the influence of Hans, a geologist who has a particular knack for imparting knowledge. He transfixes the kids with his take on his specialist subject, telling them that rocks can speak a language, which once translated can tell us so much about the history of the world. And when he informs them that whenever they put one foot in front of the other, they are walking on molten fire (the Earth’s core, of course), the kids are rapt, Ernesto’s mother and father are rapt. And I’m rapt. It’s a magical moment in the film.

The script leans into politics in a most interesting way, politics in the widest sense of the word. For instance, the magnetic sway exerted by major cities such as Madrid and Buenos Aries. And where it is that one feels one belongs in the world (hence the film’s title). And capitalism and its deleterious effect on the poor – the way it keeps people in their places, including Luciana (Lorena del Río), whom Ernesto is in love with. She’s never been given the opportunity to learn to read, and though Mario offers to teach her, Luciana’s father refuses because he’s prescribed her destiny: she’ll carry on working at the family homestead, in lieu of an actual matriarchal figure. But Ernesto knows the ability to read can help free Luciana, which is why elects to teach her covertly.

And then there’s the thorny subject of religion. This part of the world is predominantly catholic, of course, but Ernesto has been raised to make his own mind up and he’s an avowed agnostic, not that he pushes his beliefs on those with religious faith. However, his mother, Ana (Cecilia Roth) is of Jewish heritage. And Hans, who hails from the Spanish capital, is half-German and tells a fascinating story about how his mother and father met, which directly relates to the Jewish experience. And with certain scare tactics being resorted to within the community, the spectre of fascism rears its ugly head when a swastika is daubed on a wall. And by this point, we’ve already heard a tragic story about Ana’s brother back in Buenos Aries, about a time when people were routinely ‘disappeared’ by a tyrannous regime – and this sorry familial event has a poignant bearing on the name of Ana and Mario’s son. And for what it’s worth, we learn that Hans engaged in the fight against Franco back in Spain.

And Hans… he’s something of an anarchist, an appellation that local nun Nelda (Leonor Benedetto) applies to herself because she finds she’s unable to fully conform to the rules and regulations of the Catholic Church. In this way as in others, she’s similar to Hans, who works for people whose worldviews he doesn’t necessarily share. 

There’s so much going on in this film, which on the surface, appears to be about very little, certainly in terms of pure plot. Un lugar en el mundo isn’t narratively driven as such; I suppose it’s what one might call a coming-of-age tale. And though I’ve talked at length about it already, there’s so much more to appreciate about a film that is perhaps, to quote one of its recurring motifs, as beautiful as the moon.

From Barcelona… to Tunbridge Wells (1999)

This fourth episode in a 12-part 1999 series covering Euro-horror and eroticism looks at the career of José Ramón Larraz. The title of this particular Eurotika! segment refers to Larraz’s place of birth – and place of residence at the time when he was interviewed for the piece.

As a primer for Larraz’ oeuvre, it gives a pretty good overview, even if it doesn’t go into enough detail to satisfy the most ardent fan. However, it features specially recorded interviews with the man himself, as well as friend and collaborator Brian Smedley-Aston and Marianne Morris (of Vampyres (1974) repute).

Marianne Morris as Fran in 1974’s Vampyres (with Murray Brown as Ted)

It’s these chats that form the bulk of the piece, supplemented by unobtrusive voice-over. And there are several clips, mostly from the aforementioned film and while it’s not exhaustive, From Barcelona… is a warm, informative look at a creator who describes himself (rather too modestly) as a “second-rate director”.

The series, by the way was made by Andy Starke and Pete Tombs who, among many other things, currently run the Mondo Macabro DVD/Blu-ray label.

I viewed this as one of the special features on the BFI’s excellent Blu-ray release of Symptoms (1974), probably his best-regarded film – but it’s also available (at the time of writing) here.

Kim Ji-young: Born 1982 (2019)

The titular character (played by Jung Yu-mi) is a wife, and mother to a two-year-old, who begins to exhibit strange traits. Specifically, she assumes the identity of another family member (either her mother or deceased grandmother) for a short while, before returning to normal, with no recollection of the incident.

Understandably, this is very hard for husband Dae-hyun (Gong Yoo) to wrap his head around. At first, he’s able to gloss over it when it happens in front of other family members, saying she’s tired, been working too hard, etc.

Although this behaviour/condition represents the film’s premise, it’s not really what the film is about – not exactly. No, Kim Ji-young: Born 1982 reflects upon slowly shifting attitudes in South Korea concerning the roles of women and men and the way the genders co-exist. Ji-young’s affliction allows her to more easily (if unconsciously) directly challenge a still-patriarchal society. As ‘herself’, she’d never do such a thing but by channelling, for instance, her grandmother, she is able to do so because she can talk to her elders and ‘betters’ on more of an equal footing.

Ji-young works hard, even though she no longer has a career (she was in marketing before the birth of her child) but she keeps the household running and more importantly, she is bringing up the couple’s daughter. She is just as educated and able to earn money as Gong Yoo but because she’s a woman, it’s still assumed and expected that she forgoes all of this to live as a housewife and mother.

These reinforced and perpetuating attitudes mean that women like Ji-young are ‘kept in their place’. Instead, it’s the male offspring that are groomed for success, while the females are simply there to tend to the males’ needs while raising the kids correctly.

It’s never stated what causes Ji-young’s mental travails but it’s likely a form of PTSD, the consequence of a gender war she has been caught up in her entire life. Through her intermittent ‘possession’ and via story flashbacks, we learn, for example, that her mother, Mi-sook (Kim Mi-kyung) wanted to be a teacher but instead had to accept menial jobs to help pay for her brothers’ education. It seems Ji-young passively absorbed all the family enmity concerning individual roles and it’s now beginning to manifest itself – at the point when she feels somewhat trapped by her life as a housewife and mother.

We learn that Ji-young has always been inspired by her mother, who was/is very strong-willed – very un-Korean in a sense, as far as women go, at least. Honestly, she’s a great character, a true role model, but all of the father-mother-grandparent conflicts clearly affected Ji-young growing up, the repercussions of which are born out in her ‘episodes’.

This is a great film if you crave forceful female characters because as well as Mi-sook, there’s Ji-young’s one-time boss, Eun-sil (Park Sung-yeon). Referred to as ‘Chief Kim’, she’s initially depicted as a hard-nosed ball-buster – by male members of staff, it must be said. Her reputation very much precedes her. But when we meet her, we realise she’s simply doing her level best to compete on a very uneven playing field, one that is stacked in favour of male employees. She’s actually an extremely able career woman whose heart is very much in the right place. It’s just that she’s not prepared to take shit from people, not even her male superiors.

Honestly, there’s a lot more I could say about this film. Ji-young’s condition alone is fascinating, and could be characterised as a possession (but it’s unlikely that’s the case), or a dissociative disorder, or the consequence of post-partum depression. (Possibly, Cho Nam-Joo’s source novel provides us with more insight but as far as the film is concerned, we’re given no definitive answers.)

Ji-young does, ultimately, seek professional help. And the fact that the subject of mental illness is front-and-centre of the storyline is important in and of itself.

The Ice Storm (1997)

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“How are the parental units functioning these days?”

A very straightforward (in plot terms) 1973-set drama principally concerning two middle-class Connecticut families. Ben Hood (Kevin Kline) and Janey Carver (Sigourney Weaver) are having a fling. And since Janey’s husband Jim (Jamey Sheridan) spends a lot of time working away from home, the adulterers have plenty of opportunities to enjoy sexy time –  although, at this point in the affair, Janey appears less than thrilled with the arrangement. Ben’s wife, Elena (Joan Allen) gradually begins to suspect the truth, which doesn’t exactly help with her self-esteem issues.

Meanwhile, 14-year-old Wendy Hood (Christina Ricci) and similarly aged Mikey Carver (Elijah Wood) and his younger brother, Sandy (Adam Hann-Byrd) are doing what kids of their age tend to do: exploring nascent sexual desires.

The era in which the film is set is very appropriate. Concurrently, the Watergate scandal is unfolding, some of which we see on TV screens, providing the kind of background noise that reflects the cheating nature of Ben and Janey. And it’s the age of the ‘key party’, an example of which plays a significant part in the movie’s last act.

It’s an era of profound disillusionment: a likely crooked President, a still-raring war in Vietnam, the Manson murders still fresh in people’s minds and a spike in inflation (that is set to climb even higher). Understandably, the film’s adult characters are disenchanted – with their lives and with each other. And the kids feel similarly let down by their parents, who aren’t quite the unimpeachable gods they once appeared to be.

Of course, our parents are bound to let us down in one way or other. In Ben’s case, it’s with his hypocrisy (hello, Mr Nixon!). At one point, he catches Wendy and Mikey in an uncompromising position. Nothing too serious, just a bit of fumbling. Anyway, he instantly goes into ‘affronted dad mode’, castigating both kids. Bear in mind that this occurs at Jim and Janey’s home, where Ben has just been secretly meeting with the latter.

There are other generational ripples, including Elena stealing from a drug store and for no real reason other than she’s going through a late-30s’ funk. And this after we’ve already seen her daughter pick up an item without paying for it in the same shop. Although, she was fully aware of what she was doing.

The outlier in all of this is Wendy’s 16-year-old brother, Paul (Tobey Maguire), who is perfectly sanguine about family life and its anomalies, which he observes with wry detachment – and through the prism of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s <i>Fantastic Four<i> (a dysfunctional family in excelsis).

Ang Lee is the ideal kind of director to bring Rick Moody’s novel to the screen. This is an ensemble piece and equal weight is given to each of the main characters, and Lee never gets in the way of the performances, which are perfectly judged. And though this is a well-shot film, Lee’s fully aware that he’s not here to dazzle us with fancy-schmancy visuals. Rather, he endeavours to take an honest, un-hysterical look at messy familial relationships.

The Ice Storm works as well as it does because the drama is adroitly orchestrated and performed. And there are a number of simple yet beautiful vignettes, like Ben carrying Wendy in the snow to prevent her feet from getting cold. At this moment, she might as well be a toddler – to all intents and purposes, this father and daughter are transported back to a time when he was her hero and she was the most important thing in his life.

Later in the film, Ben carries another child – but in altogether different circumstances…

Never Let Me Go (2010)

“We didn’t have the gallery to look into your souls – we had the gallery to see if you had souls at all.”

In Never Let Me Go, life on Earth pivots on a medical/technological advancement that occurred in the early 1950s.

This (very important) point needs to be put to one side, however, because our attention must first be diverted to the children of Hailsham boarding school in 1978. Here, we meet the story’s main protagonist and occasional narrator, Kathy (Isobel Meikle-Small) and her friends Tommy (Charlie Rowe) and Ruth (Ella Purnell). These 11-year-olds are much like any kids of that age, and they’re embarking on one of life’s most perilous journeys: adolescence.

Never Let Me Go is a tale of friendship, jealousy and love. While there is something more sinister at play, director Mark Romanek and screenwriter Alex Garland elect to focus on the human side of this story’s equation. The more you watch it (or read the source material, Kazuo Ishiguro’s wonderful novel of the same name), the more the naivety of youth hits you so hard that it damn near breaks you in two. It’s especially true of the Hailsham children. They are treated as ‘lesser’ and with barely disguised disgust (or, more charitably, abject pity) by almost all of the adults they come into contact with. And yet, they know no other way, which means their sheer delight in the simplest of things (an old George Formby film, for instance) continues untrammelled.

It’s only Sally Hawkins’ empathetic teacher, Miss Lucy, who sees them for what they truly are: young people with love and hope in their hearts – and only a burgeoning sense of the issues that we all have to face at some time or another. About 25 minutes into the film, we witness Miss Lucy talk to her class like no one has talked to them before. To see the faces of these children and to know they are now aware of their fate… Subsequently, the teacher is replaced; there’s no room for a conscience in this institution, or perhaps this world in general.

The narrative scrolls forward to 1985; Kathy (Carey Mulligan), Tommy (Andrew Garfield) and Ruth (Keira Knightley) are now all but grown up, and free to discover the big bad world for themselves – up to a point. It’s now that they embark on a voyage of discovery; just like any young person, they want to find themselves – an ambition that, in Never Let Me Go, takes on an extra significance. It’s the lives they lead at Hailsham and later in the cottages that form part of a rural farmstead that will represent the best days of their time on this Earth.

Never Let Me Go essentially uses its dystopian premise to examine what it is that makes us human (“That’s the whole point about art it says what’s inside of you, it reveals your soul.”), and does so with such economy and compassion and without any affectation. 

The performances are exceptional, particularly those of Mulligan and Garfield, who, I feel, transcend their craft. In so doing, they grasp tightly the viewer’s heart and never, ever let it go. I must also praise casting director Kate Dowd for populating the film with exactly the right actors, including the young performers that portray Kathy, Tommy and Ruth – they own those characters just as much as Mulligan, Garfield and Knightley.

And though Rachel Portman’s quite beautiful score is very much to the fore, it’s never overbearing; it charts the emotional travails of the trio while depicting the world of the film as it reveals itself in all its wonder and darkness. 

“You poor creatures I wish I could help you.” (How is it that a piece of speculative fiction can be so impossibly moving?)

If you haven’t seen this film and it sounds like it might interest you, I would advise trying to stay spoiler-free (essentially: avoid discovering the movie’s premise). Even if you do know what it’s about and haven’t seen it, it will still make for a rewarding, albeit gut-wrenching, viewing experience. 

Or read the book. Honestly, the novel and film are as good as one other.

One thing the film does that the book cannot is establish its world through production design and sound. The cassette (Songs after Dark by an artist called Judy Bridgewater) that Tommy gives Kathy – as a consequence of a ‘bumper crop’ of cast-offs that has been donated to the school – is one such example. The design of the tape’s packaging and the main song itself (Never Let Me Go as sung by Jane Monheit) make it seem as though it must have existed. Or the soft-core porn magazines that Kathy retrieves from a dustbin and flicks through in an attempt to try and find herself. There are many other ways in which the film’s production design and art direction provide it with a tangible sense of alt-world reality.

This review, if indeed it is a review, has reached completion.

House of Hummingbird (2018)

The story takes place during an eventful 1994 summer. South Korea is competing in the FIFA World Cup in the United States, North Korea’s first Supreme Leader Kim Il-sung dies and Seoul’s Seongsu Bridge collapses, resulting in 17 injuries and 32 fatalities. 

One of these events plays directly into the life of Eun-hee (Park Ji-hoo), a 14-year-old girl trying to make sense of the world. She belongs to a dysfunctional household; Dad is cheating on his wife, who works so hard in their family business that she’s left in acute pain at the end of each day, and with barely enough energy to do anything else. Even so, Dad remonstrates with her for not keeping their daughters under control, chiefly the quietly rebellious, slightly older sister, who comes and goes as she pleases. Meanwhile, the eldest sibling is studying hard in order to get into university. And he routinely beats Eun-hee.

House of Hummingbird could be seen as the kind of film in which the men are bastards and the women are victims, and that’s true to a certain extent but Kim Bora (the film’s writer-director) takes care to flesh out both sides of the gender divide. So we get an understanding of the enormous pressure males in South Korea are/were under to be men, to succeed, to be breadwinners. Whereas, more often than not, females are/were relegated to secondary roles.

And Eun-hee is experiencing the first blooming of romance, with a young lad who seems to be right for her. And she has a good, close female friend. But as anyone who’s experienced teenage life knows, things don’t always pan out the way you expect.

There is a beacon of light, however, in the form of a university student, Yong-ji (Kim Sae-byuk), who teaches Chinese to Eun-hee and her friend at an after-school cramming class. Yong-ji sees something worth nurturing in Eun-hee, who is an aspiring Manga artist. And with a few carefully chosen words, she manages to inspire the girl, providing her with the impetus to keep going, to believe in herself.

This is a film concerned with life’s non-sequiturs and ellipses, with things that are said and left unsaid and of things that can’t always be resolved. It’s a film about a young person at a notable time in history. And while it offers a welcome reprieve for one character it delivers a sucker punch that leaves Eun-hee – and by extension, the audience – reeling.

Haunt (2019)

Haunt’s premise is simple: a group of friends, looking for some fun on Halloween night inadvertently stumble across a haunted house attraction that delivers more scares than they could ever have anticipated.

The film is nicely put together, particularly in terms of direction, cinematography and production design. The house itself (which is really a warehouse) seems authentic and its attractions suitably low-rent.

The friends are quite well-drawn and even likeable for the most part. Certainly, Katie Stevens is effective as main girl Harper and we’re not hammered over the head with her personal baggage – in this case: a troubled family background – take note, makers of Crawl. Actually, this aspect of the film is reasonably seamlessly integrated into her characterisation and the overall narrative. And it makes sense that she wouldn’t be as gung-ho as her pals – and it’s easy to understand why she hangs onto a boyfriend that doesn’t treat her well, sadly. As for the film’s antagonists: they’re suitably unsettling and different enough from one another to be interesting in their own right.

I found myself getting into the story pretty quickly, and though I kept expecting it to fall apart, it never did. That said, I’m not sure I quite understood how the ending was arrived at but I did enjoy it – it makes for a satisfying conclusion in terms of both storyline and Harper’s personal arc.

The Last Days of Disco (1998)

“There’s something really sexy about Scrooge McDuck.”

Set “sometime in the very early 80s”, The Last Days of Disco heralds the end of an era and hints at an oncoming catastrophe. While there’s some talk in the film (and actual experience) of sexually transmitted diseases such as gonorrhoea and herpes, there’s something far worse looming on the horizon. Advertising bod Jimmy (Mackenzie Astin) says to Des (Chris Eigeman), the manager of the movie’s ultra-select nightspot at one point, “I have a very bad feeling about the club, Des – it’s like a meteorite is headed straight for it, it’s going to destroy everything.”

Now, he’s actually referring to financial misdemeanours but there is subtext, I feel. I mean, doorman Van (Burr Steers) informs some of the club’s habitués, “People just don’t go out like they used to. They’re tired; some are sick, strung-out.”

Regardless of what actually caused the death of disco, a palpable threat rears its head throughout the film. For instance, we witness rock music fans prowling the streets wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the legend Disco Sucks. We see footage of ‘Disco Demolition Night’, held during a baseball fixture at Chicago’s Comiskey Park, during which a box of disco records is blown up. Cue an unanticipated riot. (This event actually took place in July of 1979 but this is a film, not a documentary – the discotheque is a sort-of Studio 54 that is located in a nearly New York.)

The Last Days of Disco has resonance today, not least because the root cause of the unrest could be seen as growing anti-‘other’ sentiment. Discos were considered by more conservative folk to be a breeding ground for ‘deviancy’ – homosexuality, for example. And the music genre in question actively – but by no means exclusively – involved the participation of people from Black American and Latin cultures. As for disco music itself, many deemed it as unnatural, machine-like – the antithesis of ‘proper’ music.

All of this notwithstanding, this 1998 drama, the third from Whit Stillman (before he embarked on an extended movie-making hiatus), isn’t some kind of anti-racism/homophobia treatise – the above-mentioned circumstances are rather obliquely inserted into the narrative.

Not unsurprisingly, Stillman makes films about what he knows; i.e. the lives of preppy Americans. Nevertheless, it comes across that he’s a big fan of disco. Born in 1952, he’d have been the perfect age to fully embrace that particular music and nightlife scene. And there’s no doubt he’s speaking through assistant district attorney Josh (Matt Keeslar), when he makes the following rallying call…

“Disco will never be over. It will always live in our minds and hearts. Something like this that was this big, and this important, and this great, will never die. Oh, for a few years, maybe many years, it will be considered passé and ridiculous. It will be misrepresented, caricatured and sneered at, or worse, completely ignored. People will laugh about John Travolta, Olivia Newton-John, white polyester suits and platform shoes and going like this *strikes Travolta-as-Tony Manero pose*. But we had nothing to do with those things and still loved disco. Those who didn’t understand will never understand. Disco was much more and much better than all that. Disco was too great and too much fun to be gone forever. It has got to come back someday. I just hope it will be in our own lifetimes.”

It’s deeply ironic, then, that Josh plays such a significant part in the club’s closure, something that equates to the apex of what is so important to him on a personal level.

Disco plays a big part in the film even if it’s not usually the subject. If we’re not watching scenes set in the unnamed but highly exclusive nightclub, the characters are looking forward to their next visit and feeling anxiety about the possibility of not getting in. And the music itself… the film’s songs are impeccably chosen, with a particular emphasis on Nile Rodgers-Bernard Edwards-produced material, which is just as it should be. (And I love it when Chic’s Good Times is used properly, as it is here – it can signify halcyon days, of course, but it’s also a great song to point up life’s bittersweet moments.) And there’s something about disco music that lends itself well to both drama and comedy – its heightened aesthetic, the marriage of discomposure and positivity that is governed by a mathematical sense of timing.

In the film, disco tunes provide the backdrop to the lives of a bunch of Ivy League/Hampshire College graduates that are, mostly, trying to scale the professional ladder with varying degrees of success. The storyline mainly focuses on Alice (Chloë Sevigny) and Charlotte (Kate Beckinsale) but there are a bunch of characters that pass in and out of the narrative. The Last Days of Disco is as much concerned with the fluidity of relationships as it is about upwardly pointed 20-somethings frequenting an elite nightclub.

It’s also about how our lead characters try to fit in, which means that sexual liaisons and the search for solid relationships are not necessarily mutually exclusive and are, in fact, often messily entwined. (Oh, and the film touches on money laundering, drug dealing, living with mental illness, socialising-as-career advancement, among other things.)

Alice comes across as a genuine sort of person and as such, she isn’t naturally inured to opportunists that want to bed her and rivals that want to undermine her. And while she’s not as forthright as Charlotte (and certainly not as conniving) she’s no wallflower – she’s more of a listener, an observer. She’s our point-of-view character and is trying to figure people out and understand how life works. And so Josh is a much better match for her than likeable yet shifty Des, whom Jimmy describes as, “a person of some integrity” except in his “relations with women.”

So The Last Days of Disco is a relationship drama, a film that charts a transitionary phase, during which college days have only just been left behind and when dreams and aspirations are still very much alive and personal freedoms are being further explored.

And as with Metropolitan and Barcelona, Disco is a very talky movie. For one thing, there’s a quite lengthy discussion about the real meaning behind Lady and the Tramp. Actually, there are a lot of references to comic-book/animation properties, such as Spider-Man, Green Hornet and Bambi – and yet another Disney mainstay, which is quoted at the top of this review. And while Disco is a drama, it’s also comedy and the repeated gag about Jimmy being kicked out of the club because owner Bernie (David Thornton) hates advertising people is pretty funny. (“That’s like something out of the Nazis!” says a dumbfounded Jimmy in one scene.)

Really, there’s a lot going on in the screenplay, which means that the film might seem to lack focus. Essentially, Stillman pours into it his young-adult life experiences and his pop-culture influences. And the narrative strands, when tied together, provide more than enough combustible material to blow a loosely based social collective wide apart. Everyone comes out of it relatively unscathed (well, anyone that really matters) with ambitions recalibrated and newly asserted.

I like that Stillman has Alice and Josh, the film’s most unadulterated characters, come together at the very end – and they don’t have to say a word. They walk the walk while others talk the talk. Actually, they do more than just walk – they dance. Dancing’s good, it’s positive, it’s life-affirming and it’s contagious. And so the very last sequence, which runs into the closing credits, sends a chill down my spine and puts a smile on my face just thinking about it.

The Virgin Suicides (1999)

Tragedy + time = comedy, or so the saying goes. I think this equation has quite a bit of relevance to The Virgin Suicides but maybe this formula needs to be reconfigured. I’ll come back to it.

Socially straitjacketed by a strictly religious mother (played by Kathleen Turner), the teenaged Lisbon sisters have little to do but attend school and spend time at home, playing records, writing and drawing – and gazing out of windows at the rapidly dwindling tree population. The year is 1975 and Dutch elm disease is in full swing, necessitating the destruction of numerous deciduous trees in an attempt to prevent a wider arboreal calamity.

Sick tree syndrome – a symptom of a wider malaise?

It’s unsurprising that the film’s secluded sisters, in particular, should become fixated with the consequences of this epidemic. A young person, more than anyone else, is likely to form strong attachments to things that others may not give even cursory consideration. And, not unlike these damaged, fungus-riddled trees, the Lisbon girls are so stymied that the only way to escape might be to succumb to quietus.

Mrs Lisbon is so afeared of the ungodly world that lies beyond the confines of the family home that she can’t see that all and any action she takes to protect (as she sees it) her daughters is doomed to failure. Even the removal of railings – upon which youngest daughter Cecilia (Hanna R Hall) impales herself – isn’t going to prevent the siblings from quitting existence before it suffocates them entirely. Mrs L might continue to fight fires but she’ll never extinguish the flames. In any case, the more she strives to protect/imprison her daughters, the closer to death she pushes them.

The fearful and the first to go – Mrs Lisbon (Kathleen Turner) and youngest daughter Cecilia (Hanna R Hall)

And what about the neighbourhood boys that are so obsessed with the Lisbon sisters? The opportunities they get to spend time with the girls are so limited that they settle for experiencing their lives vicariously through journals and travel brochures, among other things. It’s still not enough, though, because they are unable to penetrate the Lisbon girls’ mystique. In fact, as one of the lads remarks, “They knew everything about us but we couldn’t fathom them at all.”

David (Lee Kagan), Parkie (Noah Shebib), Tim (Jonathan Tucker) and Chase (Anthony Desimone) attempt to decode the Lisbon sisters

Moral of the story, as Philip Larkin once put it: “They fuck you up, your mum and dad.” It’s difficult for parents, I know, but there comes a point in a child’s life when he or she must be allowed to strike out on his or her own.

In The Virgin Suicides, the weirdest people are the normal ones – the sort of folk who attend social events dressed up to the nines, while wearing a gas mask in some ghastly homage to the one Lisbon girl that perished after placing her head in a gas oven.

Some ‘normal’ Michigan people…

Ancillary moral of the story: beware these Stepford wives, husbands and their offspring; they are dead on the inside.

It’s the third time I’ve seen this film and I was still hoodwinked by the daydream fake out that depicts the sisters escape in their parents’ station wagon, accompanied by their dedicated coterie of male admirers. Of course, the film can’t, doesn’t end this way. The only people we see disappearing in that vehicle is Mr and Mrs Lisbon, as they leave the dusty remnants of family life behind.

Fantasy vs reality

Air’s warm, fuzzy, nostalgic, melancholic score is the perfect accompaniment to director Sofia Coppola’s incredibly assured directorial debut, and the songs from that era are very well-chosen indeed.

So, about that formula… I’ll put it this way: The Virgin Suicides might just be the saddest comedy I’ve ever watched.

Séance on a Wet Afternoon (1964)

Despite the title, Séance on a Wet Afternoon isn’t a supernatural film. It’s really a drama about extreme, damaging grief and mental illness – and the lengths a person will go to try to make things right by acquiescing to a loved one’s delusions.

I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t know anything about Kim Stanley, who stars alongside Richard Attenborough. She is phenomenal in her role as a supposed medium (possibly, the séances assuage her utter despair) who engineers the ‘borrowing’ of a young girl so that she can then appear to paranormally predict her whereabouts. She believes that ‘finding’ the girl will fill a vacuum in her life and provide it with some kind of legitimacy. Her husband, Billy (Attenborough), does all the donkey work; the actual kidnapping, procuring the ransom, and so on.

Billy and Myra (Richard Attenborough and Kim Stanley)

We learn early on that the couple had a child – Arthur – who clearly has died. We don’t find out until much later that he was, in fact, stillborn – something that Myra simply hasn’t been able to come to terms with.

Séance on a Wet Afternoon is a gripping drama with thriller elements. The acting is first class; Stanley is a revelation (to me, at least) and Attenborough is magnificently understated. Honestly, they are both heartbreaking in quite different ways. Writer-director Bryan Forbes’ direction is never less than interesting but never in such a way as to take away from the performance – and the ambience (helped no end by Gerry Turpin’s striking black-and-white cinematography) is melancholic and unsettling. Forbes manages to achieve some remarkably candid-looking location filming in the heart of London, too. Oh, and John Barry’s score is a subtle, unobtrusive delight. In tandem with Derek York’s rapid editing, the composer makes the girl’s abduction by car incredibly suspenseful.

Billy (Attenborough) reluctantly kidnaps Amanda (Judith Donner). The theme tune to the film appeared on this 1966 John Barry compilation

One thing I enjoy about watching old films is looking out for contemporary (for the times) pop-culture detail. There’s quite a bit to see in Séance on a Wet Afternoon, including a poster for Fellini’s 8½ in a tube station, a cinema showing Tom Courtenay in Billy Liar in Leicester Square (Courtenay was Forbes’ original choice – along with Alec Guinness – for a homosexual iteration of the film).

Alec Guinness and Tom Courtenay (highlighted) on the set of Dr Zhivago (1965) the parallel world stars of Séance on a Wet Afternoon?

I also spotted a theatre showing Oh! What a Lovely War, which Attenborough went on to direct for the screen in 1969.

Attenborough on the set of Oh! What a Lovely War in 1968. The film featured Nanette Newman, who also appeared in Séance on a Wet Afternoon as Judith’s mother. Newman and Forbes were married from 1955 till his death in 2013