A House in Jerusalem

 

Enticing feature set in Jerusalem produced by Wellington Films

Directed by Muayad Alayan, this is a telling and delicate tale about how the past is always with us no matter how far we run from it

Young Rebecca, with her father, relocate to Jerusalem following the tragic death of her mother in a car crash that she survived. Their move into an old family home in the Valley of the Ghosts which becomes the setting for mysterious events and a friendship between Rebecca and Rasha, a young Palestinian only she can see. Following the template of young females becoming more of themselves by delving into mysterious gardens and households, this tale slowly becomes a ghost story being lived in now.

As the friendship grows, is Rasha a figment of Rebecca's imagination and the film makes a statement upon how grief is processed as the two young girls are binded by tragedy. Poignant and delicately handled in its production, A House in Jerusalem is a film for today but about yesterday and the days ahead.

Rebecca seeks solace in the ghostly apparition of Rasha, partly because they have a shared language or understanding, as she struggles to learn Hebrew in her new school. The friendship grows due to a fear of authority - for Rasha it is the police, for Rebecca the military - but never her father who is vulnerable and grieving himself throughout and traversing the single parent wasteland he finds himself in. 

Featuring performances by veteran stalwart Johnny Harris as the father, Michael, and featuring the up and coming Miley Locke as Rebecca, this is a talent to watch out for in future years. Showing maturity beyond her years in moments such as dishing up a plate for her departed mother at dinner time and listening to voicemail to hear her voice, Locke channels such as Ivana Baquero from Pan's Labyrinth (2006).

On limited release from May, this film is an enticing enterprise with a great premise that will help viewers understand the notions of racism and how it takes hold upon those who allow it to manifest in society - similar to The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas - a young protagonist interacts with someone from a different faith to better appreciate their background and become a better person themselves

A House in Jerusalem is produced by Wellington Films and released by Peccadillo Pictures from 31st May 

Cowtown 'Fear Of...' - Album Review

 

New album from Leeds based trio, out via Gringo Records 31st May

Made up of a born and raised three piece, Hilary Knott (keys/vocals), Jonathan Nash (guitars/vocals) and David Shields (drums); the band return with their first new record in eight years. They have always fallen back into each other, able to tour without much fanfare and yet be a great support band for those touring the northern settlements of England.

Nash is noted for being drummer of Hookworms which became Holodrum and Knott experimented with Basic Switches. And these bands DNA help ferment the DIY feel of Cowtown; the experimental fervour of Devo mixed with the punk-tastic tunes of White Denim.

Take for instant previous single, 'Can't Talk Now' which has the big chorus feel; or 'As Close To Town As I Like It' which takes Knott's measured vocals in unison with the melody. There are indie tunes here peppered with punchy works such as 'Total Engagement' or 'Thru Being Zuul' which provide that indie pop power that recalls Tokyo Police Club's apex.

 

There is a mixture of power and precision running throughout ending with the rousing 'Currently Unavailable' as the album's last track - yet this is a credit to a band that has worked the circuit for twenty years honing their craft, this is not a band but friends making music together winningly.

Lasting for that period of time in the underground scene, is reason enough to celebrate, yet to return with perhaps their best work and an album of positivity and jams to fill up any indie dancefloor is reason to be shouted from the rooftops.

Fear Of... is out from Gringo Records on 31st May 

My thanks to One Beat PR for the review opportunity.

In Camera - Film Review

Released on 13th September by Conic Films, highly intriguing British film by Naqqash Khalid starring Nabhaan Rizwan

In Camera follows the path of a young actor, Aden, portrayed by Nabhaan Rizwan caught in a cycle of nightmarish auditions and rejections across the industry. Directed by Naqqash Khalid, the film has won awards at Dinard and Thessaloniki film festivals and was nominated for two British Independent Film Awards.

Aden shares a flat with his long-time flatmate Bo, a junior doctor and a new roommate, Conrad (Amir El-Masry), who is a fashion influencer.

The film is attempting to make a statement on actors especially minority actors and the difficulties they have in breaking through to be taken seriously as actors in general and not on the periphery of situations and productions.

At times, Kafkaesque in the sense that our lead actor is lost in the vacuum of endless repeatable auditions and the notion that his ambition is being lost amidst the surreal nature of this all - this is a film full of ideas that is attempting to make semblance of it.

Over time as Aden struggles to gain work in the creative industry, he takes on a freelance role portraying the son of a grieving set of parents, taking on the guise of a white son for a middle-class family. Following this incident, when he feels more real and human, Aden slowly becomes jealous of Conrad's ability to gain what he wants by manipulating people and moments to his advantage and by being perhaps a more acceptable brown face - clean shaven, smartly dressed, clear English diction.

Taking inspiration from Conrad's Instagram feed, Aden morphs into the roommate, almost fooling Bo that he is him, adopting his mannerisms and image to play a new role in a single white female homage per se. Aden gains greater work by becoming less a deliberate actor and more an accidental person in the acting world. 

There is an interesting sub-plot involving Aiden's room-mate Bo, portrayed by Rory Fleck-Byrne, a junior doctor who is constantly hounded/harassed by a vending machine and the grind of his work load is taking over him. One set piece shows him being dunked by the blood on him by lives lost supposedly, he cannot stop the blood flowing and feels useless. He admits to drowning in the blood and this statement on the pressures junior doctors feel relevant and real. His story is a political statement, whereas the minority actor looking for recognition is the plot A strand. Roles are reversed seemingly for these protagonists. 

A revealing portrait of the male psyche struggling to adapt to the social media landscape, the pressures males find themselves under in this society - to look good, and be better than they are - in contrast to others who have it easy in comparison. Image is everything but what to do when your face just does not fit. 

For this reviewer though, In Camera is a film with a lot of ideas  and succeeds in wanting to say everything on its mind. It also cements the promise of Nabhaan Rizwan; a chameleon type actor who himself is doing away with pigeon-holing and type casting in his own career having recently starred as Dionydus in the recent Netflix series, Kaos opposite Jeff Goldblum and Janet McTeer. Rizwan is a highly talented actor who will grow into greater and bigger things.

Released by Conic Films.

The Small Back Room

Celebrating the 75th Anniversary of its first release, the Powell and Pressburger WW2 set film about political intrigue and psychological drama. The 4K restoration will be available on Blu-Ray, DVD and Digital from 3rd June and will have a premiere at BFI Southbank on 28th May

Starring David Farrar and Kathleen Byron - two actors who worked with P&P on Black Narcissus in 1940. Farrar portrays Sammy Rice, the finest bomb disposal expert in the army who was injured during the war. He begins an affair with Byron's Susan, a secretary in the war office. However, Sammy is haunted by his failings as a man owing to the injuries he has sustained, and his ability to be a lover to Susan due to his inferiority complex. He drowns his sorrows in whiskey nightly to the detriment of his ability to perform a great service to the continuing war effort.

Nazi Germany is still dropping booby-bombs on Britain, a bomb has exploded causing catastrophic results and another has been found which has not yet exploded. This opportunity provides Sammy with a chance of retribution and to face down his demons.

Based upon the 1943 novel of the same name by Nigel Balchin, the film was received as another win for The Archers, and when released in 1949 it was marked as a slow down for the team after the triumph and masterwork that was The Red Shoes in 1948.

Think of the Coens' A Serious Man or Scorese's Bringing Out The Dead; films that are not as highly thought of in the director's oeuvre yet they are deeply personal and intuitive to the sense of their overall body of work. In The Small Back Room, P&P look at an individual and the psychological complexity that the war will have upon individuals and how it seeped into everyday life and following on from Billy Wilder's The Lost Weekend in 1945, this is a serious depiction of alcoholic dependency.

Yet there are archetypes of P&P motifs here - location shooting, issues of class and status, off the wall moments such as Sammy's final descent and lush production design. A film that that serves as a reminder that even a flawed film by masters can still maintain attention and suspense.

Released by Studiocanal in a new restoration led by Martin Scorsese and Thelma Schoonmaker (Powell's widow) from the Film Foundation. The digital release features documentaries on restoring The Small Back Room, Kevin MacDonald on the Small Back Room, Ian Christie 'Defusing the Archers', an audio commentary by film scholar Charles Barr and an interview with the film's cinematographer Christopher Challis.

Out from June 3rd from Studiocanal

Slow - Film Review

This Lithuanian-Swedish joint production tells of a blossoming relationship between a man and a woman, who attempt to find a level of acceptable intimacy when the man reveals himself to be asexual - not attracted to anybody/anyone sexually. The film won World Cinema Directing Award at Sundance 2023.

Dovydas (Kestutis Cicenas) is a sign language interpreter - in his world - his language is sacroscant, his interpretation cannot be challenged as that is the universally accepted language for those fluent in it. He is restricted by these dogmatic ways, it is his way and he cannot be swayed by it.

Elena (Greta Grineviciute) is a dancer, a world where everything is open to interpretation and is objective from one person to the next. Dovydas s is a world of subjectivity it is what it is.

A two-hander for the majority of the film, the director has expressed she entrusted the two leads fully to find the truth within the the two protagonists and their stories.

Shot like many a small film, medium close-ups like a Ken Loach film for example, this film is an intimate film - one where the pace is deliberate and rewards the audience to stick with the narrative, and this is helped by the warm lead performances.

There is an intimate intensity to the scenes that is handled delicately and maturely with a subject that is alien to many an audience, yet in this age of people being more pronounced with their sexual behaviour and types of identity, this is a film that asks questions from Elena's position while respecting Dovydas' at the same time.

Film history is littered with famous love stories - Jack and Rose, Rick and Ilsa - yet they all had the clinch at the film's conclusion to state that finality, however, the two partnerships mentioned are apart at the end. Sometimes in film, love means not being with the one you want to be with most and in life, finding that common ground through exploration and togetherness.

The balance between soft and strong coupled with a very good soundtrack by Irya Gmeyer and Martin Hederos give credence to the film's plot and narrative.

Released by Conic Films, who are in a rich vein of form at the moment with their niche independent releases, Slow is another winning film that will garner attention due to the off-beat subject matter but will win acclaim due to its realistic portrayal of such matter.  A film that does not have an agenda about identity politics and instead is more about love and how to find it and keep hold of it.

Shared Remains - Rachel Lynch

 

New thriller in DI Kelly Porter series out now from Canelo

Following on from last year's bestseller Silent Bones, Lynch returns to her ongoing series of DI Kelly Porter who surveys and polices the Cumbrian landscape with her team while balancing a new relationship when not on duty.

This story revolves around the discovery of a body in a quarry one morning and from there a can of worms very much gets opened involving a nearby elderly home. At the home, mysterious deaths are mounting up, and then the paper trail leads to the discovery that the funeral directors are the main beneficiaries of the recently deceased. The only snag is that the quarry body is the funeral director, Vince, and there-in lies a problem.

Falsifying death certificates, grave digging and fraud all come to head for Porter and her team. This macabre set of narrative junctions lead to a less than breezy feel to the reading of the story that stops and starts on occasion with some emphasis put upon the domestic situation for Kelly at home which at times is a bit distracting.

As ever with Canelo Crime reads, the final quarter of the book - when the evidence comes to the fore and exhumations begin - is when the book kicks into gear with a gratifying conclusion for this reader.

The atmosphere of the book with the greys and dismal weather of late summer becoming that unimpeachable autumn is evoked effectively by Lynch, with the old adage grim up north ringing true.

And yet through the gloom, there is a ray of sunshine coming to the surface for Kelly with the hopes of a new relationship ready to bloom as snow falls on the ground

SHARED REMAINS is out now from Canelo

My thanks to them for the pre-approval on NetGalley for my review 

Nezouh

 

Double winner at 2023 Venice Film Festival released 

Written and directed by Soudade Kaadan, it tells the story of a family wanting to stay put in their house in war torn Damascus, rather than flee as refugees. While devastation and danger surround them, love and idealism keep them grounded and safe, even as a bomb hits them directly and their roof comes crumbling down. As they are held captive by their situation, they somehow find personal freedom.

Shot by celebrated cinematographer Hélène Louvart (La Chimera, Happy as Lazzaro, The Lost Daughter), the film contains a magical realism in its look and feel, that suspends reality while also never shying away from the atrocities that surround them. Co-cinematographer Burak Kanbir contributes to the authentic sense of time, place and space.

The film is in Arabic and stars Syrian actors Samer Al Masri and Kinda Alloush, alongside newcomers Hala Zein and Nizar Alani.

Kaadan says of the film and of her own experience: “It is only after the bombing started in our neighbourhood in Damascus that I left the house with my sister. Damascene society was conservative, even in liberal families. With the new wave of displacement, it became normal (for the first time) to see young Damascene women living alone and separating from their families. Myself, and many of my friends, started to make decisions we would never make before. Now, sadly, there is no more society, something new has occurred.” 

Kaadan’s filmography includes feature documentary Obscure (CPH:Dox 2017), narrative feature The Day I Lost My Shadow (Lion of the Future award for Best Debut at Venice Film Festival 2018) and short film Aziza (Sundance Grand Jury prize 2019).

She adds: “The word ‘nezouh’ means in Arabic the displacement of souls, water and people; it is the displacement of light and darkness. NEZOUH tries to talk about this inevitable invasion of light and hope in the midst of this chaos.”

Filmed in a style reminiscent of documentary and hand-held cinema, the film is a celebration of life and valuing that which you hold dear within that life; in this instance the father (Samir Al Masri) will not vacate his home despite the bombing, he is too proud of the legacy he has created in his home as Zeina says, 'my father is ready for anything, except leaving'

The film tellingly, in the magical realism mentioned previously, acts as it is upon a different spectral form, the clever device of the bombing essentially breaks down the wall for the characters - by expanding their space more story is available and the world is now open to them.

Incorporating styles such as Kiarostami who consistently balances that line between fact and fiction and the eccentric work of Roy Andersson, the Swedish absurdist, there is always life in dull moments of existence; this is a film that tells so much about the human condition.

Screenings can be found here

NEZOUH is out from Modern Films on limited release from 3rd May around the country

That They May Face The Rising Sun

New Irish award-winning film based upon the novel of the same name by Irish author, John McGahern's final novel

Patrick Collins, an audio-visual poet who has created works of quiet solitude set against the picturesque setting of the lush Irish landscape has found the means to create a faithful adaptation to McGahern's work and a love letter to that beautiful countryside reflecting upon a simpler time without mobile phones and other modern day distractions.

Joe (Barry Ward) and Kate (Anna Bederke) have returned to their homeland to live the good life - to borrow from a late 70s cultural artefact - and what we would describe nowadays as off the grid. Joe is a writer (a conduit for McGahern himself), experiencing the place he lives in and soaking that into his daily writing. Kate owns and runs an art gallery in London, a reason for her to still return to the capital on occasion to visit friends. Yet they are living at a pace of their own making, with no children on the horizon seemingly, they are content to live in this happiness - the building of a shed or timber outhouse painstakingly over the year with little or no progression indicative of a life being lived slowly.

The couple, who would be described as bohemians I suppose, have an open door policy welcoming visitors, neighbours and family whenever ready for a cup of tea and sympathetic ear. These interactions with the community works as a sort of social currency, in exchange for information and conversing, the couple are thought of highly in that community.

This is Collins' third feature film and he is a vaunted documentarian, his keen eye of observation and minute detail works in perfect harmony with that of the relationship of the couple who fit perfectly within a suburban setting yet are finding solace with their lot in life, a path that they have made for themselves. The film is finding that balance between the rituals of life and work along with the passing seasons; we bare witness to one year in the life of this couple but it could be any year over a ten year period with the added fork in the road moments of someone's passing - world events do not occur in this world of County Galway, where principal photography taking place near the Mayo border.

Credit for the film's feel and look goes to Richard Kendrick, who has shot both of Collins' first two films Silence (2011) and Song of Granite (2017), there are moments when Joe and Kate are embracing and the film looks like an Austen adaptation per excellence and that is the general feel of the film as something approaching a comfort watch like All Creatures Great and Small or Doc Martin; a lovely teatime viewing that is nostalgic without feeling cheesy with a tone of maturity that is not patronising.

Collins in conjunction with Kendrick and the score by Irene and Linda Buckley which is soft and ambient yet very much in keeping with Irish heritage has crafted a film that is intelligent, adult and beguiling.

The film has just won Best Irish Film at the Irish Film and Television Awards this month, and is about to have a limited release at select repertory cinemas across the country. This is recommended viewing for those who miss those slow paced films that teach us a lot about the world we used to know, love and mostly miss; a film that rewards its audience for its patience. A virtue lacking in today's age. 

That They May Face The Rising Sun is out from Conic Films on 26th April