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Film round-up: July 15 2018

MARIA DUARTE and ALAN FRANK review Vertigo, Summer 1993, Pin Cushion, Racer and the Jailbird

Vertigo (PG)
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
★★★★

 

ON ITS release 60 years ago, Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller received less than ecstatic reviews generally and Hitchcock removed it, along with several of his other less successful films, from circulation in 1973.

 

But, seeing it again, Hitchcock’s unique dreamlike maze of mistaken identity and homicide still grips and fascinates. At times the pace is rather too slow yet Hitchcock’s tropes keep you watching even if Vertigo is not his finest work.

 

In it, Private Eye Scottie Ferguson (James Stewart) has quit the San Francisco police after an accident leaves him with a crippling fear of heights and, obsessed with the troubled Madeleine (Kim Novak) who he’s been hired to follow, sees his life spinning dangerously out of control.

 

There’s a somewhat incongruous 25-year age gap between Novak – more of a “star” than an actor — and Stewart, 49 when the film was made. That might not have been the case if Vera Miles, a superb actress originally cast to play Madeleine, had not got pregnant and been replaced by Novak.

 

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, Vertigo recently replaced Citizen Kane in auteur-obsessed Sight and Sound magazine’s greatest films of all time. Whatever its merits, this jury’s out on that one.

 

Alan Frank

 

Summer 1993 (12A)
Directed by Carla Simon
★★★★

THIS sublime bitter-sweet autobiographical drama about a six-year-old girl rocked by her mother's death was Spain's entry for this year's best foreign film Oscar.

 

Catalan writer-director Carla Simon’s debut feature, highly naturalistic and stunningly shot, is a slow-moving tale. Reminiscent of Boyhood, it’s punctuated by stellar performances from a young cast who steal the film.

 

Newcomer Laia Artigas shows a maturity beyond her 10 years as Frida, who’s forced to leave her grandparents’ home in Barcelona to stay with the family of her uncle (David Verdaguer) in the countryside following her mother’s demise from Aids.

 

She develops a fractious relationship with her four-year-old cousin Anna, played superbly by Paula Robles, who’s desperate to be friends with a Frida still coming to terms with having lost both her parents. She sticks to her like glue.

 

Despite her idyllic surroundings and loving family, Frida’s internalised grief and isolation manifests itself in disturbingly bad behaviour in what’s a captivating and heartbreaking film.

 

It’s an impressive directorial debut by Simon who does wonders with her young stars, despite WC Fields's warning that you should “never work with animals or children.”

MD

 

Pin Cushion (15)
Directed by Deborah Haywood
★★★

PIN CUSHION sees writer-director Deborah Haywood making a fascinating feature-film debut with this seriously strange story of the increasing angst suffered by overly close mother Lyn (Joanna Scanlan) and her teenage daughter Iona (Lily Newmark) when they move to a new town.

 

Both mother and daughter, who has already suffered emotional traumas, have a a dysfunctional relationship that has them sharing a bed and dancing together.

 

But everything changes after Iona finds a boyfriend and is then corrupted by the front-runners of her new school’s all-too-liberated girl pupils, leading to a night out of booze and destruction.

 

It’s a dark, disturbing and often overwrought story which, thanks to searing performances by Scanlan and Newmark in a memorable film debut, make Pin Cushion seem rather sharper than it actually is.

 

AF

 

Skyscraper (12A)
Directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber
★★★★

GIVE writer-director Rawson Marshall Thurber his due. His blazing action thriller – think Die Hard meets Towering Inferno with double the impact – is less credible than Long John Silver tap- dancing.

 

No matter. Forget the logic of a narrative in which former member of the FBI hostage team Will Sawyer, played to the action hilt by Dwayne Johnson, has also lost a leg and is now a high-level security consultant at the word’s highest building, the Hong Kong skyscraper The Pearl.

 

All hell breaks loose when villains seize it and set it ablaze and, worse still, Will’s wife and two children are trapped in it. Will Will save the day? No need to hold the breath.

 

Johnson – who makes most superheroes, to say nothing of legendary rope-swinger Tarzan, seem a tad coy — and Thurber deliver enough non-stop one-damn-thing--after-another thrills along with superbly fiery special effects and chilling scares to satisfy the greediest film addict after a suspense and action fix.

 

AF

 

Racer and the Jailbird (15)
Directed by Michael R Roskam
★★★

FREQUENTLY melodramatic, Racer and the Jailbird has upcoming racing car driver Bibi (Adele Exarchopoulos) meeting up with smooth car-parts dealer Gigi (Matthias Schoenaerts) and it’s lust-driven love at first sight, even after he tells her he’s also a bank robber.

 

Despite promising Bibi that he’ll quit crime after one last heist, Gigi ends up in jail. Unfortunately, what follows is increasingly operatic storytelling, with Bibi finding that she is pregnant after Gigi’s been with her on prison leave — and there is worse to come.

 

Director Michael R Roskam works hard to make the narrative gel. But, despite the potent performances, vividly staged racing sequences and notable gangster action, I was more often fascinated rather than convinced.

 

AF

 

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