GOING OUT
FILM
DARK SHADOWS
Cert 12A | By Steve Dinneen
**
The Tim Burton/Johnny Depp/Helena Bonham-Carter professional ménage à trois has been rumbling on for some time now. Since 2005, they have collaborated on five movies. Depp and Burton have worked together eight times since Edward Scissorhands in 1990, while Helena Bonham Carter has appeared in seven Burton films. After that long, even the most solid of relationships start to get a bit old; lose some of their spark. Dark Shadows isn’t the first sign of trouble in this gothic marriage – but it is the strongest yet.
In true Burton style, Dark Shadows is a fairytale for grown ups; a visual treat packed with special effects as stunning as Burton’s lovingly crafted gothic sets. Loosely based on the late-1960s soap opera of the same name, Burton weaves an absurd melodrama into this tale of vampires and ghouls.
Unfortunately, he’s let down by an uninspiring, rather misogynistic plot. Eva Green plays the ultimate psycho ex-girlfriend who can’t stand being rejected and decides to destroy her former lover’s life (or, in this case, un-life). Green, all quivering bosoms and impossibly pouty lips, is convincingly crazy but somewhat limited by a script that essentially paints her as Cruella de Vil with a boob job.
Of course, it isn’t really about Green; it’s all about Johnny Depp, who plays Barnabas Collins, a reluctant vampire who has spent the last 200 years buried alive (well, alive-ish). Some of the best moments come from Collins’ fish-out-of-water attempts to come to terms with the 20th century (the film being set in 1972, the year after the original series wrapped up). Barnabas prodding his claws at a game of Operation or smoking a joint with a group of hippies could easily have felt cheap, but Depp’s studied kookiness remains captivating, even if you get the impression he’s cruising a bit.
The central problem, though, is that Dark Shadows feels like it’s been made by a man given carte blanche to do whatever he feels like. “I want Alice Cooper singing in a straight jacket”, “I want Michelle Pfeiffer with a shotgun”, “I want more blood and vomit and slime and ghosts and fire. More, more, more!” If he’s not careful, Burton will become to kooky what Michael Bay is to explosions.
With all of this going on, he also strives to keep alive the basic premise of the original series, which results in some jarringly underdeveloped threads, including a major revelation about a central character, thrown into the mix during the climactic finale.
The ending hints strongly at a sequel: it will have to do better than this.
FILM
CAFE DE FLORE
Cert 15 | By Amy Higgins
****
This mesmerizing drama, written and directed by French-Canadian Jean-Marc Vallée, will resonate with anyone who has ever suffered the pain and anguish of a broken heart.
It interweaves two love stories, separated by time and place: Vanessa Paradis shines as Jacqueline, a single mother in grimy 1960s Paris, single-mindedly devoted to improving the chances of her handicapped son Laurent (Marin Gerrier); Antoine (Kevin Parent) is a jet-setting DJ in a glossy modern-day Montreal, experiencing the ecstasies of love with his beautiful girlfriend Rose (Evelyne Brochu) while simultaneously grappling with the hurt he has caused his ex-wife and childhood sweetheart (Hélène Florent) and their two children.
Ultimately connected by way of an ambitious and, it must be said, not entirely convincing, metaphysical twist, the two narratives never quite coalesce. Yet this seems a petty thing to complain about, such is the powerful and intoxicating effect of the stories as they run in parallel. With a uniformly sterling cast, hypnotic soundtrack and impressionistic cinematography, Vallée vividly depicts the emotional turbulence that loving another entails. Like the pulsating house music Antoine plays to clubbers as he tries to escape his suffering, this film will reverberate in your mind long after you leave the cinema.
THEATRE
THREE KINGDOMS
Lyric Hammersmith| By Zoe Strimpel
****
A BLOOD-spattered wall. A plain, shabby room with a shelled-out window. Two plain clothes policemen speaking rapidly and angrily at a young man about something neither he – nor we – can make head nor tale of. Frankly, this opening scene struck me as rather GCSE drama, all non-specific menace and rapid-fire dialogue.
But boy did it stop being GCSE. Director Sebastian Nubling has turned Simon Stephens’s detective story – a World Stages collaboration with Estonian and German companies – into a raging, fascinating, hallucinatory montage. It is shocking and sometimes frustratingly tangential, but this is exciting theatre. Women spring from suitcases straight into lusty embraces, detectives slither across floors in unison, furious sex traffickers climb walls.
Despite initial impressions, there is a plot, albeit one from which the performance swings wildly; swooping, looping and whooping all the way. The boy we see questioned at the beginning has been captured on CCTV dumping a bag in the Thames near Chiswick. Unknown to him, the bag contains the body of an Eastern European porn actress, horribly butchered and decapitated. Investigators Ignatius (Nicholas Tennant) and Charlie (Ferdy Roberts), of Scotland Yard, are shocked – Ignatius in particular is haunted by the fact that the murdered woman is the same age as his gamine wife.
We’ve seen nudity already. But it all becomes edgier and more surreal as the two pursue the investigation to Germany and then to Estonia, getting deeper into an indecipherable sub-world of sex trade mafia and porn kings. What really impressed was the unending ingenuity. Actors flew and leapt about the stage, literally like animals. The theatre shook with male aggression – a quartet of Estonian gangsters perform a whole scene with boxing gloves on, punching in unison. One of the most eye-popping performances comes from a sort of waiflike MC who does a brilliant turn as a transgender, sex-obsessed streetwalker. Ignatius, the only recognisably human character, saves the play from feeling purely effects-driven and cold-hearted. See it, but whatever you do, don’t bring a parent or grandparent. It’s gritty stuff and all the more riveting for it.
THEATRE
BABEL
Caledonian Park | By Steve Dinneen
***
Babel promises to be the “theatrical event of 2012” and an “immersive theatrical experience of truly epic proportions”. That’s a lot to live up to.
Boasting a cast of some 500 people, the event in Caledonian Park certainly doesn’t lack ambition. It combines elements of theatre, dance, live music and performance art, all loosely strung together by a somewhat tenuous plot, involving the struggle of the audience against an authoritarian state. Most of the actors are volunteers and it’s certainly played with no lack of ernest enthusiasm. So much so, it can be overwhelming and at times an injection of humour wouldn’t go amiss. That said, you’d have to be particularly hard-hearted not to be moved by the rousing finale.
The park is set up a bit like a mini festival, with stages and food stalls dotted around – and, just like a festival, it is smothered in a thick layer of mud. Thankfully the weather held last night but if you catch this on a bad day it could be a truly miserable experience.
Babel is a mixed bag, neither life-changing nor completely awful – but if you plan on seeing it, make sure you check your cynical hat at the door.
ART
BAUHAUS: ART AS LIFE
Barbican | By Steve Dinneen
****
Bauhaus is usually associated with its enduring legacy of angular modernist buildings and distinctive graphic design. Bauhaus: Art as Life at the Barbican, though, charts the development of the movement from its formative years as a craft-focused group to the holistic powerhouse that continues to influence architects and designers today.
The resulting exhibition is a graphical history lesson showing the turbulent path the Bauhaus School trod until it was disbanded in 1933 at the behest of the Nazis.
The decision to weave the movement’s most celebrated stars – including Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky, both of whom have works on display – into the wider narrative, rather than highlighting them individually, is astute.
The exhibition, laid out in roughly chronological order, matures as the Bauhaus School became more tightly focused, with the more interesting – and easily recognizable – pieces congregating towards the end (although an early series of creepy puppets made by Paul Klee for his young son Felix are a highlight). The architectural designs and interior furnishings, in particular, show just how influential Bauhaus has been.
The problem is that Bauhaus was a live art, created to be used and built and touched. Viewing it in a gallery is a little like gawping at a pinned butterfly; an interesting, often beautiful, collection rendered somewhat sterile by its environment. That said, the utilitarian surroundings of the Barbican gallery is as apt a showroom for a Bauhaus exhibition as London has to offer. Anyone with a passion for design would be mad to miss this.