Made in Dagenham
Opening Friday Directed by Nigel Cole Written by Billy Ivory Starring Sally Hawkins
We see the women on their rattling bikes, a mass of cheerful workers, some with big hair, many dressed in the period's multi-coloured, day-glo synthetics, on their way to another day of sewing seat covers for cars they and their families can't afford. The soundtrack gets poppin' with Desmond Dekker's "The Israelites," a big hit in '68, its lyrics—"Get up in the morning/ slaving for bread, sir / So that every mouth can be fed"—and amiable, lightly propulsive, kinky rhythm immediately announcing the film's theme, tone and kitsch-nostalgia all at once. The use of this song, already a staple on EastEnders, is just one among a smorgasbord of clichés on the menu for Made in Dagenham, another entry into the British proletariat go-for-it comedy subgenre, helmed by Nigel Cole, whose earlier Calendar Girls feels like its natural predecessor. Scripted by Billy Ivory, Made in Dagenham dramatizes the 1968 sewing machinists strike at the Ford Dagenham assembly plant, an action which brought attention to institutionalized sexual discrimination and proved instrumental in the development of the Equal Pay Act of 1970. The film is perfectly likable and only slightly tedious in its paint-by-numbers trajectory, entertaining if not exciting, pleasant if not actually funny, an interesting and important story told in an uninteresting, unimportant way. But I'll give you one good reason to check it out even if you'd just as soon read about the strike on Wikipedia as pay money to see the movie version: Sally Hawkins. Most of us know her as the compulsively chipper heroine in Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky, a role that may come to haunt Hawkins every time she exhibits that unforgettable smile. She didn't smile much in
26 // FILM
Soon to be thinking out loud
The Tourist Directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck Written by Donnersmarck, Christopher McQuarrie, Julian Fellowes Starring Johnny Depp, Angelina Jolie
Sally Hawkins as Rita O'Grady
Never Let Me Go—nor did anyone else—but she didn't get to hang around long either. In Made in Dagenham, in which she plays Rita O'Grady, the worker who unexpectedly finds herself the leader and spokesperson for her workmates and eventually every underpaid woman in Britain, Hawkins gets to stretch out. The material has none of the sophistication of Leigh's text, but it does have high stakes. Several scenes find Rita in way over her head, fending against a patriarchal, condescending establishment, and I'll be damned if Hawkins doesn't nail every one of them. Her voice cracks, her eyes search for a safe place to focus, her whole body commits to taking a stand against an injustice so appallingly obvious that everyone else just ignores it. These scenes momentarily give Made in Dagenham a pulse. And they assure us that Hawkins is capable of great things, if only she can be provided with the right vehicle. Josef Braun
// josef@vueweekly.com
The movie opens with all these guys following Angelina Jolie around with cameras, scrutinizing her every move, so you could be forgiven for wondering if you're watching a documentary. But no, this is Paris, Jolie speaks with an English accent, she receives an envelope with cryptic instructions, and we get about 40 different camera angles just to cover a half-minute of action—and if those clues don't assure you that we're in the realm of pure hokum, the deliriously fussy, overbearing, almost instantly annoying James Newton Howard score will. The director is Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, who helmed The Lives of Others. Like that earlier film, this one is heavy on surveillance. Consequence, not so much. You could shave off the first 15 minutes of The Tourist and just start the thing with Jolie's expensively tailored mystery vixen approaching Johnny Depp on a train, since he is, I think, our protagonist, or at least steals every scene from Jolie. She's given precious little to do aside from look gorgeously worried; Depp, beard-
VUEWEEKLY // DEC 16 – DEC 22, 2010
ed and slightly husky-looking, at least gets to be funny and bumblingly charming. He's terrific in their early exchanges. If only he and everyone else didn't have to speak so many of their thoughts aloud. Redundancies accumulate, the bloat becoming near-palpable by the movie's mid-point. I haven't seen Anthony Zimmer, the French film The Tourist is based on, but if nothing else the original was at least shorter. So Jolie uses Depp, a Wisconsin schoolteacher meandering through Europe on holiday, to mislead British fuzz and some nasty thugs led by a billionaire Steven Berkoff. The heavies all want to track down Jolie's exlover to collect some six-figure debts—could Depp be that rascal in disguise? The Tourist is a Wrong Man movie, playing like Polanski Lite or neo-Hitchcock, with its doubles, snarling villains and chase scenes through the lovelier canals of Venice. If I sound grumpy it's only because the movie had every reason to be fun, if forgettable. Unfortunately it's far too dumb to generate suspense, and the deeply predictable "unpredictable" ending is wildly nonsensical. The movie also fails to offer us a single truly compelling character, one we can believe in, even on the story's own flimsy terms. Jolie's character wears this medallion on a bracelet that features the two heads of Janus. She says her mom gave it to her to remind her that everyone has two distinct faces. But after watching The Tourist, two sounds luxurious. Me, I would have settled for one. Josef Braun
// josef@vueweekly.com