Matching Curtains

Black Snake Moan

Craig Brewer’s Black Snake Moan was released a few years accompanied by scant fanfare and a minor outcry regarding what many critics saw as the movie’s sexist content. I’d been intrigued, but for whatever reason (I’m guessing a limited theatrical release) had to wait until last weekend (over three years on!) to catch it on DVD. The movie is as sweaty and dirty as you would expect: set in small town southern America, Christina Richie’s Rae is a slutty girl with a past who can’t keep her pants on, who is saved by Samuel L Jackson’s Lazarus after he finds her beaten and left for dead on a roadside.  Lazarus is not without his own issues: his wife has left him and he has only the blues for company. His method of healing his nympho charge is unorthodox  - he chains her to his radiator in the hope this will give her the gift of self-respect(!) – but then this entire movie is profoundly unconventional. Its exploitation stylings shouldn’t be taken at face value, because at the core of the story is a genuine theme of redemption (as Lazarus’ name may imply).

The movie cleverly shoves stereotypes (black culture, female sexuality, male aggression) in the viewers’ faces only to simultaneously uphold and subvert them, and there’s much in the critically condemned sexualised violence to make audiences feel grubby. However, there’s raw soul to be found amidst all this moral ambiguity: it is genuinely Samuel L Jackson on blues guitar in an unusually subtle and emotive performance, and Ricci is tremendous as the abused Rae. Critics are right to commend her as having made the transition from child star to adult performer seamlessly: she’s a force to be reckoned with and as Rae, she puts in a brave performance which is as controversial as it is credible. I can’t think of many other actresses of her ilk who could have pulled the role off - with the possible exception of Chloe Sevigny, who to be fair, received a mauling after her attention seeking/grabbing turn in Vincent Gallo’s The Brown Bunny. As a side note though, what is it with Ricci and Stockholm syndrome (Buffalo 66, another Gallo project, being a case in point)?!

Where was I? Ah, yes. Rae and Lazarus help each other face their demons, and their relationship is shorn of the traditional associations one comes to expect from the older man/young woman dynamic: Lazarus spurns Rae’s come on, but is hardly a paternalistic figure either. The movie could easily work as a play, as it’s really a two hander between two actors at the top of their game. Other performances barely register: Justin Timberlake (I will leave snake puns alone) plays Ronnie, Rae’s conflicted boyfriend discharged from the army owing to anxiety, and though he has proved his worth in the likes of Alpha Dog and The Social Network, he fails to convince here – though he remains one of the best on screen criers I have ever seen …

The story is oddly touching yet deeply disturbing, littered with small comic touches and moments of innocence which serve to make the movie much more sophisticated than it first appears. The violence against Rae is very upsetting, but in answer to those who disapprove, I would argue that movies have long since ceased depicting idealised lives. Besides, it seems important to show the journey Rae embarks upon with her captor, even if it does feel hard to take. Brewer has done good work here, and as with his previous effort Hustle and Flow, had me caring about characters who should by rights deeply unsettle. The direction evokes the filthy heat of its setting to great effect and its self conscious B-movie style never overwhelms character development. Lazarus is a great character who lingers long in the memory, and with her saucer-like eyes and bulging bosom, Rae symbolises the paradox at the heart of women in cinema in an honest and grubby way; heroines are required to be sexy and demure - our reaction to her is telling. We might not like what we see, but the urgency fuelling Rae’s ‘dog in heat’ behaviour speaks of the ugly secret of familial abuse and it is perhaps too easy for audiences to poo poo what they see as the peddling of more sexism in film.

Give this movie a go. It’s far from an easy watch, but no less worthwhile. I guarantee that it will defy and test your expectations, which is reason alone to spend some time on it.

One Day

I devoured David Nicholls’ bestselling novel One Day pretty much instantly, finding much to love in his story about two friends, Emma (Anne Hathaway) and Dexter (Jim Sturgess), who take nearly twenty years to get together – and much to weep about come the book’s finale. It’s a typical love story in many ways – thwarted lovers or bantering would-be lovers have been with us long before Shakespeare got in on the act. But the novel’s conceit – to follow the pair’s lives on the same day (St Swithin’s Day) each year – is distinctive, ensuring the story is a real page turner (yes another cliché, but in this case, fair). I really identified with the Northern, working class Emma’s experiences as she struggles to balance her youthful political ideals with her adult reality, and found Nicholls’ treatment of the spoiled Dexter an interesting exploration of manhood. The narrative takes us from the pairs’ graduation from Edinburgh University in the late ‘80s up to noughties London, creating many opportunities for readers to connect with them as we map our own experiences of recent history onto those of the protagonists. I must also confess that it was fun to speculate upon whom Dexter was based when he becomes a TV personality (Chris Evans? Johnny Vaughan?). I really missed the characters when I finished the book, so the lure of reacquainting myself with them in Lone Scherfig’s movie adaptation was too strong to resist.

Sadly, caveats abound in my reaction to this movie, which is impossible to think about without comparing to the book – Scherfig has sacrificed much of the novel’s depth of character and story by trying to squeeze so much into an hour and a half. It might have been better to adapt the book for TV, so that proper justice could be done to the source material over the course of a miniseries. Nicholls’ wrote scripts for Cold Feet, so it’s a shame this wasn’t considered. As it stands, the movie is much slushier and a great deal slighter than its source, glossing over Dexter’s drug use to the extent that I found myself wondering whether it would even be picked up by viewers who hadn’t read the novel. This was true of much of the compacted adaptation – where I could fill in gaps and forgive the movie’s frailties, it’s easy to argue that as a standalone feature One Day seems jumbled and unfinished.

The novel’s subtle themes of politics, class and manhood are also largely missing, which was a shame – I found Nicholls’ presentation of Dexter almost an admission of and apology for male frailty, whereas he’s reduced to just a likeable lad in the movie (this could, of course, be attributable to the gorgeous Jim Sturgess taking on the role …). What started as an intelligent dissection of relationships and lost promise (heavily influenced by Great Expectations and Thomas Hardy from the look of it) has been reduced to another romance movie. To her credit, Scherfig does retain the novel’s year by year structure, and the split storyline which contrasts Emma and Dexter’s experiences in teaching and showbiz respectively. This works well, though is perhaps less impactful and more contrived than in the book.

But what of the cast? I still can’t quite understand why a young British actress such as Carey Mulligan (star of Scherfig’s last movie, An Education) wasn’t asked to play Emma, but I guess I should thank my lucky stars that the role didn’t go to Kiera ‘smug’ Knightley.  Anne Hathaway’s northern accent has been heavily criticised, but wasn’t all that risible, despite veering off into plummier territory at times. Less believable was the notion that by placing wire-rimmed glasses on the American beauty and mussing up her hair, one could make her appear plain! Likewise, her American pearly whites looked out of sync in an English drama – us Brits might not share dental DNA with Austin Powers anymore, but an American starlets teeth remain a giveaway and Hathaway was still more Hollywood than Harrogate! Regardless, Hathaway has Julia Roberts’ capacity to emote well and win audiences over, and was entirely competent and likeable. As her co-star, Sturgess was also strong as the bed-hopping Dexter, though attempts at aging him were bizarrely less convincing than they were for Hathaway herself. For me, the true stars of the movie were those relegated to supporting roles: Rafe Spall as Emma’s would-be comedian boyfriend Ian and Romola Garai (Atonement) as Dexter’s short-lived wife were spot-on. Spall has definitely inherited his father’s ability to evoke pity and derision from an audience and is note perfect as the bumbling and geeky everyman. Garai, playing a buttoned up English rose who won’t laugh because ‘she doesn’t like what it does to her face’, is also hilarious and wasted in a peripheral role. A small turn from Jodie Whitaker (Attack The Block) is also notable, though sadly she isn’t given enough screen time.

Disappointing but lovely to look at, One Day could have been a contender in a different format. I did enjoy it as an easy mid-week watch, but lament Scherfig’s decision to abandon the novel’s tender comedy and poignancy, which has let down all those readers who adore the story and characters so much.