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FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL ANNOUNCES 2011 PROGRAMME The Alliance Française French Film Festival returns to Brisbane in 2011 from Wednesday 16 March to Sunday 3 April. The festival, second only to Cannes as the largest festival of French cinema in the world, is an impressive collection of cinema across romantic comedy, farce, drama, documentary, and even a horror film, which is great considering the quality of genre films coming out of France at the moment. Highlights of the festival include the opening night film, François Ozon’s Potiche, a comedy set in the late-’70s starring Catherine Deneuve and Gérard Depardieu; An Ordinary Execution, documenting the last days of Stalin’s dictatorship; the (surprising) French box office hit Of Gods And Men, about a group of French Cistercian monks in Algeria who become the target of fundamentalist rebels; A View Of Love, a thriller starring OSS 117’s Jean Dujardin, Claudia Cardinale, and The Diving Bell And The Butterfly’s Marie-Josée Croze; Daniel Auteuil in Donnant donnant (Fair Is Fair); Isabelle Huppert in Sans queue ni tête (Special Treatment); Crime d’amour, with Kristen Scott-Thomas and Ludivine Sagnier as rival office executives; Jean Dujardin and Irréversible’s Albert Dupontel in the black comedy Le bruit des glaçons (The Clink Of Ice); the blockbuster Les petits mouchoirs (Little White Lies), a dramady about friendship starring Marion Cotillard (Public Enemies), François Cluzet (Tell No One), Gilles Lellouche (Mesrine), and Jean Dujardin; the stunninglooking animated film Une vie de chat (A Cat In Paris); The Arrivals, a documentary Garnier described as the real Welcome; and the horror film La meute (The Pack), the trailer of which boasts a deliciously twisted joke and some crossing of the fourth wall. Closing night film is yet to be disclosed.
A VIEW OF LOVE
A CAT IN PARIS
SPECIAL TREATMENT
LOVE CRIME
THEATRE REVIEW
SLOWDIVE Visy Theatre, Brisbane Powerhouse It’s not suffi cient to describe Brisbane choreographer Claire Marshall’s latest creation, Slowdive, as a piece of contemporary dance; it’s difficult, in fact, to find a neat descriptor for it at all. Combining elements of theatre, performance art, installation, and dance Slowdive is probably better described as experiential theatre.
OF GODS AND MEN
LITTLE WHITE LIES
Transforming the Powerhouse’s Visy Theatre into a 1990s club Slowdive takes its audience on a confronting journey through the Valley club scene of that era. With no seating the audience become sometimes unwitting participants in the decline of Marshall’s characters, herded from one scene of debauchery to another, watching dancers enact scenes that are - with some comedic reprieves - quite disturbing. The eerie thing about Slowdive is that despite the confronting material it’s feels undeniably familiar. In re-creating the atmosphere, aesthetics, and feeling of a club Marshall has been hugely successful; her talent for the theatrical is undeniable. Likewise in creating a piece of dance-based, immersive performance art that manages to break down the usual barriers in participatory art Marshall has succeeded.
POTICHE
But the most impressive aspect of Slowdive is not the dancing. What is truly impressive about Slowdive is how convincing and realistic a replication of the sometimes debauched night-time world it is. Until 11 December
THE PACK
HELEN STRINGER
FILM
WHISKEY AND WORDS
REVIEW
FRACTAL THEATRE’S JANE BARRY TALKS TO HELEN STRINGER ABOUT BRINGING DYLAN THOMAS’ UNDER MILK WOOD TO BRISBANE STAGES THIS CHRISTMAS.
W
hen Dylan Thomas wrote Under Milk Wood - written as a radio play - he was suffering the final throes of alcoholism; a negligent, offensive, nigh-on unbearable drunk, Thomas nonetheless managed to imbue his final piece with the euphony, humour subversiveness that plunged the unlikely Welshman into the literary canon. It may be apocryphal, but the story goes that his final discernable words were “I’ve just drunk 18 straight whiskies; I think that’s the record.” Fractal Theatre might not be embracing method acting to the degree that its actors are prepared to attempt this record, but their preparation for Under Milk Wood has been thorough nonetheless. Actor Jane Barry explains that while the performers aren’t intending on emulating Thomas’ capacity to imbibe - at least not until the cast party - they have taken on the notoriously difficult Welsh accent and brought the radio play to the stage. “It’s quite a difficult accent to do,” says Barry. “It’s really lyrical but it takes a lot to get your head around. We’ve had a lot of coaching though… it’s taken about two or three months [of rehearsals and voice training].” It’s not only the mastering the Welsh of the play’s inhabitants that’s a
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challenge; Thomas wrote Under Milk Wood with the undeniable linguistic complexity of the poet he was. Vast swathes of the text are the internal musings of his characters as they go about their days: dreaming; reminiscing about past lovers; conversing with their dead loved and unloved - ones; contemplating their existences in an ostensibly simple Welsh fishing village called Llareggub. The name - if anyone was worried that Thomas might have lost his sense of humour in his final years - is ‘bugger all’ spelt backwards. “It has been challenging,” concedes Barry. “But because we’re using highly physical techniques, it melds [it] together really well. Starting off in that dream sequence; it’s essentially a day in the life of this small Welsh fishing village, but there’s certainly nothing small about any of the characters. They’re in a way so larger than life, but in a way so relatable, [with] all of their idiosyncrasies.” Barry explains that - true to the original version - each actor is taking on multiple roles, distinguishing each with an array of unexpected physical methods - from mime to Kabukiinfused movement. The production - which also features 13 young actors in the theatre’s
THE DAWN TREADER
THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER: 3D
first youth intern programme - has clearly been a labour of love for the rejuvenated Fractal Theatre and its cast members. Despite the workload Barry enthuses that the process has thus far been one of most enjoyable of her career. “It’s been wonderful,” she says. “It’s one of my favourite plays; it’s been really interesting taking that play for voices and transferring it onto the stage.” Barry is equally enthusiastic about the legendary playwright, waxing a tad bit lyrical herself on the Welshman’s abilities, particularly
in light of his now legendary - and indeed infamous - relationship with alcohol. “I imagine him up late at night with a bottle of something,” she laughs, “just churning these amazing words out; I’m sure I wouldn’t be able to come up with something as beautiful if I drank that much.” WHAT: Under Milk Wood WHERE & WHEN: Dancing Tiger Studio, Ipswich Saturday 11 December, Old Museum Building, Brisbane Tuesday 14 to Friday 23
The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader was always one of the most bewitching of the Narnia books. A frontrunner favourite to all who delved deeper than ‘Wardrobe, it brought to the series a real sense of Narnia’s immense scope, and not only of the wonderfully interconnected world that Lewis had created, but it reaffirmed of the series enduring worth as an important work of fantasy. So too, not forgetting, did it enchant simply with its Tolkien tale of a road-trip on the high seas. The Dawn Treader provided readers another glimpse into the meta-world concepts explored in The Magician’s Nephew - and revealed in The Last Battle - with the
introduction of the mysterious Aslan’s Country. We learned of the division of Narnia into mortal and spiritual worlds, and that life, whilst it has for everyone an expiry date, is not something that should be mourned, nor lived without valour. This was the book that explored Narnia as true alternate universe; a ‘what if’ land in which our moral myths actually lived. And sadly, though in the scant instances where Lewis’s smart theological parallels were retained there remains some of the book’s beauty, most other things have been lost. The pivotal scene in which Eustace Scrubb – a name that lives in odious-kid infamy alongside greats like Augustus Gloop – has his dragon’s skin removed by Aslan loses all its cool, Cronenberg-ian bodyhorror potential, and, in all, the magic is stuck back at the mothballed coats. WHERE & WHEN: Screening in cinemas now SAM HOBSON