Spencer

Talented Chilean director Pablo Larraín takes on a sacred cow of British royalty following on from his movie on Jackie Kennedy a few years back.  I remember liking some things about that movie but by no means all of it and the same sensation comes with this latest effort. The screenplay is written by Steven Knight and is an irreverent take on Diana’s relationship with the royal family.  Based on real events but very much a fable of poetic licence, it features a three-day visit to Sandringham, the royal palace where the family celebrates Christmas.  Supposedly this is 1991.  

What we get are broad-brush strokes amplifying the obvious points of friction at that time.  Diana is clearly going off the edge and is seeing ghosts (Anne Boleyn), ignoring the protocol, trying to have a sane relationship with her boys, frostily distanced from Charles and vomiting up all her food at regular intervals.  

The Queen has little time for her and the staff are mixed.  

Major Gregory (Timothy Spall) is all eyes and ears trying to keep her in line and being rather threatening in the process while the head chef and Maggie, one of her dressers are trying to keep Diana on the rails.

Most of the other members of the royal family are either eating or shooting and the film shows up the lavish banquets they were served and the pointless pheasant shooting raids that William does not want to be part of.  Many critics have called this a fairly one-note film and I tend to agree.  There is no real dramatic tension, simply a depiction of a woman going out of her mind in a context that would drive most people mad (the strictures of living inside the Royal Court).

We do see Diana in more human and saner moments when with her sons or with Maggie but the rest of the time she is stalking the corridors like a wild beast cornered and pursued. 

Kristen Stewart has been nominated for an Oscar for this and her performance is clearly the high point of the movie and how she manages to tread a fine line between respecting the original Diana and giving us this side of her.  

We never get to see the Diana of public service here.  Sally Hawkins steals every scene she is in as Maggie and displays why she is such a talent.

The music by Jonny Greenwood which blends classical and jazz music in quite disturbing tones adds to the mood.

At the end of the day, I can’t say the film moved me very much.  It is a clever angle on the well-known story but it did not move me emotionally or excite me cinematographically.

3 stars

Ema

One of the more beguiling films this year and somewhat hard to decide where I stand on it.

First up the director is Pablo Larrain and he returns to Chile to film this story of revenge and liberty set in Valparaiso.  The city itself is one of the stars of the film, old-fashioned with higgledy-piggledy streets running up and down the hills, cable cars and trolley buses that have seen better days and the canyon like streets lined with granite buildings, all seemingly oblivious to the port and ocean close at hand with its lines of container cranes. 

Ema is a dancer, a teacher of movement and dance in a primary school and lately mother of an adopted 6 year-old boy, Polo.  

She and her husband Gaston (Gael Garcia Bernal), a choreographer are on the point of breaking up after they return the boy to Social Services because of his grossly unacceptable behaviour.  This act triggers not only the matrimonial crisis – her husband is 12 years older than her but also a chain of reactions from Ema.  She becomes even more devoted to dance but to reggaetón, largely with a group of women friends. Gaston is horrified as his dance is more classical, more avant-garde.  But Ema claims that reggaetón is about revering the body and therefore life.  

She also takes up torching!  Yes, going round town burning traffic lights, portakabins, old cars with a tank of some gas strapped to her back and wielding a flaming torch.  Polo himself had torched Ema’s sister’s face so there are connections there.  

Ema also embarks on a series of seemingly concurrent affairs with her girlfriends, the female divorce lawyer and a firefighter and at one point thrusts one of her friends into Gaston’s bed only to kick her out again.  The rationale behind all of this emerges in the final act, otherwise Ema would just come across as crazy or selfish and perhaps there is a sort of incredulity here  with her quite open and often destructive behaviour as she uses her charm and her body to get what she wants.

That it more or less works is partly due to a superb performance by Mariana di Girolamo in the lead role.  With platinum coloured hair and a range of totally unfashionable track suits, she somehow commands the screen and creates an unforgettable character. She completely overwhelms Bernal, Santiago Cabrera, Paula Giannini, Amparo Noguera and others who act perfectly well.

Other features of the film which stand out are the editing, the photography by Sergio Armstrong and the ambient music of Nicolas Jaar.

But most of all, the film seems to give us a character that represents a new generation – one that refuses to follow traditional steps to doing things and instead focuses on what feels right in the moment.  This character, who may be representative of her peers seems far more accepting of contradictions and volte-faces. Whatever is meant for a particular moment is fine.  Duties and responsibilities are seen through different filters, not necessarily negating them but approaching them differently.  And as Ema says at one point, the power is in the body and in listening to what the body wants rather than the mind.

Lots of food for thought here.  I’m not sure that it totally works but there is plenty to remember and admire in this film.

4 stars plus

Neruda

Despite many rave reviews, this film by Pablo Larrain, featuring an episode in the life of Pablo Neruda did not send me!  The real part is a biopic about his exile from Chile when a right wing government in the late 40’s accuses him of supporting the communists.  At first he was hid in Valparaiso and then in the south of the country and later he fled across the Andes to Buenos Aires where his second wife Delia (Mercedes Moran, very good but too young, she needed to be well in her sixties) was from.  So, we get snatches of the political and social reality of that event and that time, but in something of a jumbled order.  On top of that Larrain has attached a sort of fantasy in which a rather slow policeman is detailed to track Neruda and ends up fantasising about the poet and about the chase.  This role is given to Gael Garcia Bernal, who is a bit too smart an actor for that character really.  The film is shot much like a film noir, there is some moving music from Federico Jusid and Luis Gnecco convinces in the lead role.  But for me the playing around with fantasy and reality doesn’t work, especially as the film drags for much the time.

★★+

Jackie

For quite a while in this biopic on Jackie Kennedy focusing on the week after JFK’s assassination I wondered what we were watching.  Flashbacks that seemed unnecessary, some key scenes like her wandering around the White House in the bloody pink Chanel number she was wearing in Dallas, etc, etc.

By the end, Chilean director Pablo Larrain fashions what is a psychological portrait of a woman in a very stressful moment of her life, widow of a young loved President forced to make decisions that no one would like to take, with two young children to protect and the world’s eyes on her.  Natalie Portman may irritate with her breathy accent but apparently it is authentic and much of what we see comes from memoirs and other material not available at thirty or forty years ago. So, there is an interest in that and I think in the scenes where Jackie has a sort of confessional with an Irish priest (ably played by the late John Hurt).  This gives us an idea of how Jackie changed in that week and how she found resources inside her to handle the immense pressure.  Portman’s portrayal may not be to everyone’s tastes but it is deep and moving.  Peter Sarsgaard gives us a stressed and grieving Bobby which is interesting and Greta Gerwig is very low key as Jackie’s aide, Nancy.  Mica Levi gives us some strong music for the soundtrack but it works too.

All in all, a biopic with quite a big difference. Psychological and full of Larrain’s favourite washed out colours.

★★★★

Post Mortem

Pablo Larrain is, I have decided, the one charged with drawing out the shadow side of Chilean society in local film.  His films operate on various levels and this is no exception.  It is a portrait of a period and Larrain does this era of the dictatorship very well with much detail as to cars, décor and props.  It is a psychological thriller with his pet actor Alfredo Castro providing another creepy performance as the morgue assistant who ends up acting with ulterior motives.  It is an indictment of the military period and in this film the scenes of corpses piling up in the morgue as demonstrators are bumped off by security forces is chilling.  Not to mention the grim resolve of many to carry on regardless even if some have a break down. Finally it is a commentary on Chilean society and the Chilean psyche as well.  What are they repressing?  How do they handle these moments? How much of the violence comes out and how much stays in?

As a reconstruction of history the film has lots to tell us and offers much to reflect on.  As a film to see in the cinema it is bleak and oppressive, not easy despite the merits it has.

★★★

No

Pablo Larraín is a Chilean director of great promise who takes the story of the plebiscite in 1989 which saw the end of Pinochet’s rule and brings it to the screen.  Famous playwright Antonio Skármeta made it into a play first.  As a film it comes across as a type of docudrama blending old footage with new in the style of a grainy old newsreel.  The story is in itself novel – how by means of advertising strategies the anti-Pinochetistas managed to win with the “No” vote – a tremendous ask given the situation.  It is seen through the eyes of creative adman Rene (Gael García Bernal) whose insistence on a happy campaign wins the day. It helps to have some knowledge of the context as at times the film seems to drag.  But as an example of how selling is now at the heart of politics it is a master class.  García Bernal is a very watchable actor and does a good transmitting the undercurrents at play.  I learnt quite a bit from this movie but felt that it was probably a bit simplistic.

★★★