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Exhibition on Screen:
Klimt & the Kiss

Gustav Klimt

Director – Ali Ray – 2023 – UK – Cert. 12a – 90m

*****

A look at one of the world’s favourite paintings, housed in Vienna’s Belvedere Museum, and the wider body of work of the artist who created it – out in UK cinemas on Monday, October 30th for one day only

All lovers of art have their blind spots. That’s partly why we go to exhibitions, to fill in the gaps in our knowledge. Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss is one of those images everyone knows, since it’s been widely reproduced as prints, while movie buffs know it from the opening museum sequence of Bad Timing (Nicolas Roeg, 1980) and as a major influence on the visuals of The Thief And The Cobbler (Richard Williams, 1993). Beyond that, however, my knowledge of both Klimt and the painting itself are sparse. This latest entry in producer Phil Grabsky’s excellent Exhibition On Screen series about art is therefore most welcome since it proves highly informative about both.

Accompanied by a perfectly judged piano score of sequences of notes rising and falling, it opens on out of focus images of gold surfaces before showing us a detail of the two heads in the painting viewed not, as you might expect, straight on, but from a side angle.… Read the rest

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National Security
(Namyeong-dong 1985,
남영동 1985)

Director – Chung Ji-Young – 2012 – South Korea – LEAFF Cert. 15 – 106m

*****

An activist is arrested and tortured into making a confession, although it’s unclear whether his torturers have any interest in getting him to spout truth rather than lies – plays as part of a strand showcasing director Chung Ji-Young at the 2023 London East Asia Film Festival (LEAFF) which runs from Wednesday, October 18th to Sunday, October 29th

In 1985, South Korea was a right-wing military dictatorship (in contrast to North Korea, which was then and remains today a left-wing military dictatorship). Determined to build a prosperous economy, the authorities would stop at nothing to quell any form of dissent, and this repression included torture. Activists fighting for a more liberal society were considered to be in league with North Korea, and thus any means of suppressing them could be used.

The film is based on the experiences of later Minister of Health and Welfare Kim Geum-tae (here played by Park Won-sang), who as a pro-democracy activist in 1985 complied with a request to visit the local police station only to find himself bundled into a car and driven to a torture facility (later revealed to be the eponymous Namyeong-dong) where he would spend the best part of a month.… Read the rest

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Typist Artist Pirate King

Director – Carol Morley – 2022 – UK – Cert. 12a – 106m

****1/2

Road movie in which her psychiatric nurse drives an artist with mental health issues from London to an open entry exhibition in the North – in cinemas from Friday, October 27th following premieres in the 2023 Raindance Film Festival (UK premiere) and 2022 Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (world premiere)

In these days of US-style promotion, branding and media, it’s easy to think of artists as high profile, rich and successful. While some are, that’s not what an artist is: an artist is, quite simply, someone who makes art. (If they’re a good artist, they make good art. Whatever that is.) The subject of Morley’s new road movie is the artist Audrey Amiss (1933-2013) who, although she exhibited her work a number of times during her lifetime, received scarcely any recognition in that period. She suffered from mental health issues and was in and out of mental hospitals throughout her life.

Audrey (Monica Dolan) is regularly visited in her London flat by psychiatric nurse Sandra (Kelly Macdonald). One day, she asks Sandra to drive her to an exhibition which has an open call for artists, as she’s never exhibited and feels the time has come.… Read the rest

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One Of Our Aircraft
Is Missing

Producers-Writers-Directors – The Archers (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger) – 1942 – UK – Cert. PG – 103m

*****

Forced to bail out following an otherwise successful mission in which one engine is disabled, a British bomber crew must find their way across occupied Holland to return to the safety of Britain – part of major season Cinema Unbound: The Creative Worlds Of Powell + Pressburger from Monday, October 16th at BFI Southbank, also on BFI Blu-ray; other films in the season can be found on BFI Player

Made at the height of World War II, the first Powell and Pressburger / The Archers movie to deploy that verbal credit as such – but without their later trademark opening shot of an arrow striking its target – is in essence a propaganda exercise in the guise of a narrative feature film made to bolster wartime morale at home. However, the pair pull the whole thing off with such verve and inventiveness that it feels less an exercise in propaganda and more a rattling good yarn (without compromising either way).

It opens like a bizarre ghost story (as bizarre as the curse upon the Lairds of Kiloran in the castle ruins of “i know where I’m going!”… Read the rest

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Beyond Utopia

Director – Madeleine Gavin – 2023 – US – Cert. 15 – 115m

*****

North Koreans flee their repressive country over the Chinese border and through several communist countries, where repatriation would mean imprisonment, torture and possibly death – heartstopping documentary is out in UK cinemas on Friday, October 27th

Whether you’re coming to the subject of North Korea cold or whether you already know a little about the subject from the documentary Camp 14: Total Control Zone (Marc Weise, 2012), the animated feature True North (Eiji Han Shimizu, 2020) or Korean War movies like Operation Chromite (John H. Lee, 2016) or Nambugan: North Korean Partisan In South Korea (Chung Ji-Young, 1990), this contemporary take on the North Korean refugee experience throws much fresh light on the subject.

To augment its twin central narratives – two entirely separate stories of North Koreans attempting to escape their country – director Gavin helpfully breaks them up with an intermittent primer on North Korea. Much of this comes from Hyeonseo Lee, who fled the country over 20 years ago and has subsequently talked about it in TED and other public speaking forums. Lee was the producer’s original intended subject for the film, which changed considerably as director Gavin began researching the subject.… Read the rest

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20,000 Species
Of Bees
(20.000 Especies
De Abejas)

Director – Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren – 2023 – Spain – Cert. 12a –128m

**

An eight-year-old assigned male at birth struggles with their gender identity while mum struggles with her artistic identity as a sculptress – plays the 2023 London Film Festival which runs from Wednesday, October 4th until Sunday, October 15th, and will be out in UK cinemas on Friday, October 27th

This is one of those films that’s picked up lots of prizes at various international film festivals, which means that lots of people rated some aspect of the film highly or possibly that it was the best of a bad lot (although if a film wins awards over a number of festivals, that latter scenario is less likely).

I didn’t know any of that going in, and I didn’t like the film very much coming out – I found it difficult to follow who was who, a problem scarcely helped by the fact that one of the main characters is initially called by one name, then by a nickname they don’t like very much, then finally by the name by which they wish to be known. The film credits the eight-year-old character played by Sofia Otero as Lucía, but at the start of the film, they are called by their given name Aitor, although the character uses the nickname Cocó.… Read the rest

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Rock Hudson:
All That
Heaven Allowed

Rock on vacation in Puerto Vallarta (Photo courtesy of Lee Garlington).

Director – Stephen Kijak – 2023 – US – Cert. 15 – 104m

***1/2

Matinée idol Rock Hudson epitomised the Hollywood dream until he died of AIDS in 1985 – documentary portrait available on digital platforms from Monday, 23 October

It was only when Rock Hudson tragically died of AIDS in 1985 that the fact that he was gay entered into the consciousness of the American, movie-going public.

He originally came to Hollywood to pursue an acting career after a stint in the US Navy in the final years of World War Two, signing up with agent Henry Willson. Willson had a knack for renaming actors, and it was he who gave the young Roy Fitzgerald the name Rock Hudson with which he was to achieve stardom. Even so, the twentysomething spent the best part of a decade playing roles in Westerns and adventures before director Douglas Sirk cast him in the romantic melodrama Magnificent Obsession (1954) opposite Jane Wyman. Sirk clearly saw a quality in the actor that no-one else had identified, and a screen legend was born.

Rock Hudson, 1954

Hudson was to prove the perfect fit for the onscreen romantic lead and would play similar roles for much of his career which included not only further roles for Sirk in All That Heaven Allows (1955), again with Wyman, and Written On The Wind (1956), opposite Lauren Bacall, but also starring with James Dean in what was to be the latter’s final film Giant (George Stevens, 1956).… Read the rest

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Nambugun:
North Korean Partisan
In South Korea
(Nambugun,
南部軍 / 남부군)

Director – Chung Ji-Young – 1990 – South Korea – LEAFF Cert. 15 – 157m

*****

Gritty account of the Korean War based on the memoirs of a North Korean soldier – plays as part of a strand showcasing director Chung Ji-Young at the 2023 London East Asia Film Festival (LEAFF) which runs from Wednesday, October 18th to Sunday, October 29th

Based on the Korean War memoirs of Lee Tae (Ahn Sung-ki), a former North Korean news agency correspondent who fought for the North Korean partisans, this is a long and gruelling account of the Korean War, a South Korean production exploring a North Korean perspective. We rarely see inside the ranks of the South Korean forces. The partisans are all ‘comrades’ and women as well as men number among their ranks.

Inevitably, romantic attachments occur, although these are frowned upon and quickly quashed by superior officers. Which leaves separated parties desperate for news of their transferred objects of affection.

One particularly arresting sequence has Northern partisans shooting at Southern soldiers across an area of farmland until a child, seemingly oblivious to the very concept of warfare, wanders into the crossfire area. Both sides halt their shooting and come to a recognition of the humanity of the other.… Read the rest

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“i know
where i’m going!”
(IKWIG)

Producers-Writers-Directors – The Archers (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger) – 1945 – UK – Cert. PG – 92m

*****

A London banker’s daughter’s determined to marry her wealthy fiancé on an Hebridean island has reckoned without the weather and other local factors preventing her from doing so – engaging romantic drama is out in UK cinemas on Friday, October 20th while major season Cinema Unbound: The Creative Worlds Of Powell + Pressburger opens Monday, October 16th at BFI Southbank and on BFI Player

You wouldn’t expect a film which is essentially a romantic comedy to open with its leading lady at age one, but that’s exactly what The Archers do here. Joan crawls, going (as the male voice over would have it) neither right nor left but straight on. By age five the male voice has her asking Santa for silk stockings (real, not artificial, a request that will have chimed with austerity-pressed, British audiences in 1945 after six years of war), by 12 she’s the one schoolgirl getting a lift home in the milk van. She’s accustomed to getting her own way and by her mid-twenties Joan (Wendy Hiller) is surprising her banker father, who she has wrapped around her little finger, with the news that she is going to marry the lucrative Consolidated Chemical Industries, specifically their ageing owner Sir Robert Bellinger.… Read the rest

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Moebius
(Moebiuseu,
뫼비우스)

Director – Kim Ki-duk – 2013 – South Korea – Cert. 18 – 99m

*****

An extreme film even by Korean enfant terrible Kim Ki-duk’s own standards, Moebius is an oedipal cocktail of sex and violence shot without dialogue. Traversing (among other things) castration and gang rape, it’s a character study involving a family: an adulterous father, a jealous mother and (from early in the first reel) a castrated son with the father and son becoming involved with the former’s otherwise unattached lover. An essay employing psychological archetype to great effect, it holds the viewer in its vice-like grip from start to finish. A key work from a master, highly recommended, although definitely not for the faint-hearted.

Capsule review for Film Review Annual.

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