3 minute read
SHOPPING with Michael Hootman
LYNN + LUCY (BFI Blu-ray).
Fyzal Boulifa’s debut feature focuses on a couple of white workingclass women (Roxanne Scrimshaw and Nichola Burley). Their friendship is tested when one of them is involved in a tragedy that could be a crime – whatever it is (and the film is ambiguous) the local community certainly acts as judge and jury. Boulifa directs with tight angles (it’s filmed in the ‘postage stamp’ academy ratio) and stylistically it’s closer to the hyper social realism of Andrea Arnold or Richard Billingham (Ray & Liz). These films are all somehow more persuasive than the default ‘gritty’ realism of, for example, Ken Loach. The leads give truly heartfelt performances in an impressive chamber piece. Boulifa is certainly a talent to look out for.
MOTHRA (Eureka blu-ray).
This strays far off the path of standard Japanese monster movies with a plot that seems to have been based on a dare. An evil showman mounts an expedition to a radioactive island with a stowaway comic reporter. There they find a couple of one-foot tall women who the entrepreneur tries to steal but is prevented from doing this by the natives – played by actors in blackface, but let’s not dwell on that – however, he gets the girls on a second attempt. He exhibits them to gawping crowds but the girls have some kind of psychic link with the eponymous flying monster which wreaks predictable havoc on a series of model ships, dams and buildings. So completely ludicrous, the film achieves a kind of perfection. I also have to admire the chutzpah of Eureka releasing it through its Masters of Cinema label. It might not have the poetic intensity of The Passion of Joan of Arc, the sophisticated cynicism of Ace in the Hole, or the cool metaphysics of La Notte, but by god it’s got a giant moth.
PLAY FOR TODAY VOLUME ONE (BFI Blu-ray).
The programme, which is usually cited as central to what we think of as the whole project of the BBC, makes it on to Blu-ray with mixed results. The Lie, written by Ingmar Bergman, has a couple (Frank Finlay and Gemma Jones) facing up to each other’s infidelity. Full of interesting writing – intriguingly a scene in which Collins is confronted by a co-worker is like a homage to Pinter – but in truth it’s a minor work. Shakespeare or Bust has three sitcom miners go on a pilgrimage to Stratford by barge to see Antony and Cleopatra. It seems to be free of any comedy though its very faint echo of A Canterbury Tale gives it a certain charm. Back of Beyond is quietly moving with a great performance from Rachel Roberts as a lonely woman living in a remote farmhouse who is befriended by a young girl. Passage to England is like the world’s slowest crime drama in which Colin Welland is persuaded to smuggle an Asian man and his sick father over to England for a bar of gold: it takes 80 minutes to get to its underwhelming twist. Welland is the writer of Your Man from Six Counties in which a boy, orphaned by an IRA bomb, goes to live in Eire. I think my lack of knowledge of the Troubles prevented me from getting the most out of it. Bernard Hill and Alison Steadman are having their first child in Our Flesh and Blood but I think my inability to watch more than 30 minutes before exasperated boredom kicked in is probably a fault of the writing. A Photograph is the joker in the pack: a weirdly compelling horror which, perhaps uniquely for Play for Today, seems to have been influenced by the work of Brit exploitation director Pete Walker. Apart from Back of Beyond, which looks great, the photography ranges from adequate to dingy – and two of the plays were shot on 1970s video – so a Blu-ray transfer seems rather pointless.
Rainbow Vase, £24.99 (England at Home, 22b Ship Street, Brighton)
23 carat gold-plated stapler, £135 (Hold, 14 Bond Street, Brighton)
Warhol Jigsaw, £12.99 (Pussy, 3a Kensington Gardens, Brighton)
