Change Your Image
danielleh-1
Reviews
Soho Square (2000)
moody B movie
I was going to give this a seven, but after re-watching it with the director's commentary I give it an eight. Its VERY hard to believe that it was made for £5000... it certainly doesn't look, feel or sound like so cheap a project. It doesn't have the 'floating fuzziness' of other DV features I've seen (this may be, as the commentary suggests, because some of it is film?) Whilst the performances are occasionally creaky and the exposition filled with ellipses, it manages to make a merit of its weaknesses as it moves further and further into willing abstraction. Its ultimately a film all about Mood and, in a way that belies its budget, it makes its tight-framed abstract photography, eerie score/sound design and thoroughly non-linear approach to its narrative its strength. The result is similar to the style of Don't Look Now, both use the flimsiest of thriller conventions (and this one is pretty weak) to launch off into fairly abstract film making territory. A masterpiece it is certainly not, but as a no-budget B-film, I found it remarkable. Confident enough in itself to relish its slow dark mood in the face of narrative necessity, film students take hope here.
Hiroshima mon amour (1959)
against a backdrop of Hiroshima, a couple meet and remember
Although already a fan of Last Year At Marienbad, nothing prepared me for Hiroshima. The film seems to glide along (and is obsessed by this movement) at a pace all of its own, drawing us into a labyrinth of memories, history and desire. Part anti-war documentary, part philosophical treatise, part psychological study, partly its own love affair with its medium. While the performances are slightly dated, you soon accept them and are beguiled by Sacha Vierny's stark cinematography and its hypnotic score. Its place in modern cinema is striking. Without it no Wang Kar Wai, no Peter Greenaway (who 'stole' away its cinematographer) I am not sure what it ultimately 'said' about the bomb, the war or our fictional memories and desires... as it seems to seduce through absence rather than auteurist presence (at the other end of the spectrum to Goddard perhaps) but was content to puzzle its enigma. Beautiful.