Last week, the news of the death of Marjane Satrapi, the author of Persepolis, hit me more than I would have expected.
I can’t really say why: I watched the animated movie when it was released almost twenty years ago, and I was aware of her subsequent career as a film director, but I have only watched The Voices, and I very much did not enjoy it.
Maybe it was the mention, in the same articles, of her own sadness for the death of her partner a little more than a year ago.
Maybe it’s the fact that her country of origin is once again at war.
Nevertheless, I have the impression that this sadness will stay with me. In the same way my eyes still well up when I think about the death of Philip Seymour Hoffman, twelve years ago.
I haven’t honoured Satrapi’s work this week by rewatching Persepolis or watching Radioactive.
But, while checking the background of the director of one of the films I enjoyed this week, I found another early death.
Once again, this made me wonder about the links between creativity and mental suffering. I have no conclusions to draw, as it probably depends on each specific person.
I think that, in some cases, being creative can save you from falling too deep into negative thoughts. But clearly, sometimes, it is not enough.
Saw V, directed by David Hackl, written by Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan, US, 2008 - ⭐⭐
This film jumps around so much between timelines, that even talking about it can only be done in short and disconnected sentences.
The opening trap is a nod to Edgar Allan Poe’s The Pit and the Pendulum, and at some point there’s another one involving ten pints of blood, which reminded me of The Merchant of Venice: I guess the new Jigsaw must be a bit more passionate about literature than he appears.
The flashback track shows Detective Hoffman’s backstory, and is mostly focussed on showing the behind the scenes of the previous films. Too bad Shawnee Smith clearly wasn’t asked, or didn’t care, to join in for this chapter: Amanda Young’s face is never shown.
The trap plot is about the importance of teamwork; this is ’the one with Julie Benz’: funnily, I recognised the former Darla from Buffy and former Rita from Dexter by her voice, because her face is mostly buried under a horrible wig.
The forward story is, again, the investigation of Jigsaw’s murder, and an excuse to revisit past locations and have cool flashbacks-by-camera-panning. Not as showy or fun as Bousman’s transitions in previous films, but a little nice touch by the new director, here at his debut after working as production designer and second unit director in the last couple of films.
The screenwriters from Saw IV continue keeping doors open for the future, although they definitely close the story for one character - in a way that annoyed me quite a lot the first time I watched this.
Prevenge, written and directed by Alice Lowe, United Kingdom, 2016 - ⭐⭐⭐
It took me ten years to manage to watch Lowe’s directorial debut - previously I was only able to find it dubbed in French on local streaming sites.
Lowe has been in many British productions, but I mostly knew her as the co-writer and co-star of Ben Wheatley’s Sightseers, of which this film keeps approximately the same tone - horror with some humour injected. She also plays the main character, pregnant woman Ruth, whom we follow in her mission to exact revenge from a series of men. The reasons are not immediately clear, so we are free for a long time to imagine a wide range of horrible scenarios, while the truth is revealed slowly and skilfully, through micro-flashbacks.
Lowe goes a long way to depict her character not as a Beatrix-Kiddo-type heroine, rather portraying her as a woman troubled by worries about her pregnancy.
The result is a low-key, low-budget revenge film, which may feel a bit diluted, but is a promising start for the director’s future career.
The cast is filled with familiar faces, such as Jo Hartley from Ricky Gervais’ After Life, Gemma Whelan and Katie Dickie from Game of Thrones and, by a weird coincidence, Mike Wozniak, whom I only ‘met’ last week as a contestant in series 11 of Taskmaster, and whose demeanour I decided to make my inspirational model for the near future.
Lux Æterna, written and directed by Gaspar Noé, France, 2019 - ⭐⭐½
When Gaspar Noé opens a film with a quote about the virtues of an epileptic seizure, and then less than forty minutes in he starts shooting stroboscopic lights at you, you know he won’t show mercy until the end.
Luckily, the film only lasts 52 minutes.
Before that sensorial assault, we have images straight from (or inspired by, I’m not sure) Häxan, Béatrice Dalle telling Charlotte Gainsbourg about her unpleasant experiences with film producers and crew on the set of (what I guess is) La visione del sabba, and twenty-ish fictional minutes where Dalle directs her own movie about witchcraft, while the producers (again) of that fictional film try to find a pretext to fire her, and lead actress Gainsbourg tries to solve a domestic issue by phone. All shot, mostly, in split screen, before ’technical issues’ unleash hell on your eyes.
So yes, it’s all Noé’s way of supporting (women) creatives/witches’ empowerment against patriarchy/producers, ‘cause witches they were persecuted Wicca good and love the earth and women power and I’ll be over here.
Lights Out, directed by David F. Sandberg, written by Eric Heisserer, US, 2016 - ⭐⭐
A half hour into Lights Out I thought: ‘ok, this must be one of those movies that started as a short film, and then were artificially expanded to reach feature-length’.
And then I checked and it was exactly the case.
You know, when a good idea could sustain five to fifteen minutes, but there is really nothing else to add and it all feels like padding.
The very creepy and effective idea of seeing the shadow of a creature hiding in the dark, which then vanishes once the light is switched on, is turned into a not very subtle metaphor for depression, and how it affects the family of those who are suffering from it.
Maybe this film hit differently in 2016, when elevated horror was still quite a recent phenomenon.
There is really not much to reproach first-time director (and author of the original short film) Sandberg or his cast (almost) and crew for: it’s the story that is unsatisfying, not to mention some weird internal logic inconsistencies.
But screenwriter Heisserer (also responsible for Final Destination 5 and the remakes of Nightmare on Elm Street and The Thing), in the same year, also had an Oscar nomination for Denis Villeneuve’s majestic Arrival, so something doesn’t fully add up here.
Emily Alyn Lynd of Doctor Sleep and The Babysitter fame appears in a single scene.
Life After Beth, written and directed by Jeff Baena, US, 2014 - ⭐⭐⭐½
It’s nice, for once, to see Dane DeHaan playing a non-creepy guy. Well, as I wrote this sentence, I realised that maybe that is not true. The thing is, this horror-comedy plays a lot of the same notes as Obsession, as DeHaan’s Zach is more than happy to go along with his girlfriend Beth’s (excellent as always Aubrey Plaza) undead life status, until she becomes a bit too keen on him and her humanity fades away.
Sure, one thing is to actively wish to change someone’s feelings for you, and another is to - naturally - wish that a loved one who passed away was still with you.
Molly Shannon, as Beth’s mother, does a lot of the comedic work, and it’s always nice to see John C. Reilly, as the young woman’s father.
The fact that directors Garry Marshall and Paul Weitz have cameos in this film led me to look for more information about Jeff Baena: I learnt that he was Plaza’s partner at the time (and, later, her husband) and this was his directorial debut, having previously co-written David O. Russell’s I Heart Huckabees (which I actively despised in 2004 and maybe should revisit). Baena then went on to direct, among other films, Alison Brie’s Horse Girl, before tragically passing away last year.
You can find the index for all weekly visions here.