Immoral Tales

Topless N’ Tales

Immoral Tales
France 1974
Directed by Walerian Borowczyk
Arrow FIlms
Blu Ray Zone B/DVD Region 2

So, not long after seeing a selection of Borowczyk’s Short FIlms and Animations (reviewed here), I decided to give the director’s infamous Immoral Tales a spin, seeing as Arrow have nicely put out an uncut version in a groovy dual Blu Ray/DVD edition. And, yes, you guessed it, Fopp are selling this at a value for money price too, at the moment... just in case my motivations needed any extra explanation.

Before I go any further, though, I should probably post a fair warning to people who buy these things and love the medium here. Unlike most labels which will let you know and, in some cases, insult the stupid copyright holders who are insisting on their films being released in a Region specific format (I love The Masters Of Cinema’s region warning screens), Arrow’s blu rays do not warn you that you are trying to watch their films in a different region... they will simply just not load up and refuse to play. It took me a couple of days to figure out that there wasn’t anything wrong with the disc and I’d left the Blu Ray setting on Zone A. Frankly, I find this practice unacceptable and I would say that if you are a company who is being forced to comply with this horrible practice of Region locking your product you, at the very least, should let people know on screen so they know to buy a multiregion machine. Also, as a label, you can stop pretending you’re in any way interested in promoting the art of film if you agree to restrict access to a potential audience like this.

Now, back to the movie.

When I did finally get this thing playing, I found that the disc doesn’t just contain an excellent transfer of the original release of Immoral Tales, a film consisting of four erotic sections. It also contains a copy of the early print of the film from when it had five segments in it. The extra segment in the original was called The True Story of the Beast of Gevaudan and it was basically taken out before release because the director wanted to expand it into what became, probably his most famous movie, The Beast. So there’s that. Arrow have done a good job here... although they let themselves down a bit on another extra but... I’ll get to that later.

1. The Tide
The film in its theatrical version starts off with an episode called The Tide. This is the story of a young man (Fabrice Luchini) and his even younger, adolescent cousin (Lise Danvers) who he takes to a beach so he can introduce her to sex or, in this case, so he can arrogantly bend her to his will and have her service him orally on a secluded beach with the tide coming in, while he distracts and prolongs his self control by reciting facts about the oncoming tidal situation. He aims to come in her mouth, he tells her, at a specific time into the proceedings and in accordance with the tidal timetable we saw him covertly  rip from a newspaper in an earlier part of the film. Actually, the whole gameplay element to the  piece and the way the male character wraps everything up in a statistical package very much reminded me of the early work of Peter Greenaway... although that’s probably the only real similarity between the two directors.

The Tide starts off with static shots showing two sides of a conversation but, after a short while, the camera starts moving around and it seems to me to be a pattern, at least I thought so and especially in regard to this film, that this director likes to observe things from afar, like a long shot series of master shots, before he starts to get closer to his subjects in whatever environment they find themselves. Like the static shots of a landscape shown in longshot while the moving elements of the shot are the 20 year old man and his 16 year old cousin, as they ride their bikes towards the camera... or, the inverse of that, cutting to another long shot where they diminish in distance and size as the sequence plays out.

Even before the rules of the game are explained to his cousin, the director is focussing on body parts whenever he does decide to get in close to his subjects... displaying a propensity to concentrate on a sexualised or erotically perceived view of his cast in what might at first seem an innocent scenario. So he might focus on a lady’s butt as she rides a bike or on her lips etc... which is in turn enhanced in this particular segment by a colour palette consisting of pastel blues, white and grey neutral tops worn by the two characters, landscape greys and washed out sand colours... all complementing the flesh tones of the actor and actress. There is an impressive and extended shot, for instance, where the teen in question is playing with her finger in her mouth and the whole thing plays in extreme close up of just her lips and finger as it weaves in and out of her mouth, covered with her own saliva. It’s a shot with a certain amount of presence and I guess a lot of people must have thought the same thing because it was used as the basis of many of the original advertising posters for the film in various countries back in 1974 and, indeed, on the Arrow Blu Ray/DVD release that it’s currently on sale with.

This kind of focussing in on specific details is also matched at times in the sound design, such as when a close up of the girl’s ear when she is servicing her cousin is followed by a shot of flying insects and accompanied by bird song on the soundtrack... as if to highlight a point of view sympathetic to the body part the director has just chosen to edit into the sequence. We also have the sound of the constant lapping of the sea, of course, as a backdrop to the sexual shenanigans afoot and I have to say I admire the two performers' bravery in letting the sea come in and wash over them while they are writhing all over the place... hopefully it wasn’t too cold and gruelling for them. And always throughout, the director keeps cutting in views of the landscape in juxtaposition to what’s actually going on with the two figures... Borowczyk seems quite tuned in to constantly reminding you of the character’s place in their landscape. Like an obsession with establishing shots gone mad.

2. Therese Philosophe
After The Tide we have the second segment called Therese Philosophe and this concerns the character Therese, played by Charlotte Alexandra, and her relationship with religious iconography. That is to say, the episode starts off with her entering a church... She is alone and starts exploring the various elements in the room with her hands, obviously infused with lust at the sexual possibilities of assorted knobs, posts, organ pipes etc. When her mother catches up to her, she pulls her home and locks her in a room as punishment for what her mother perceives are her wrong doings.

Therese yells at her mother that she can’t be without her book of Stations of the Cross and after a short while her mother throws it into the makeshift prison for her, along with some food mostly comprising of uncut cucumbers... yeah, you can see where this one is going straight away, can’t you?

The girl then starts exploring all the artefacts in the room with the same fervour and sexual attitude as she did those in the church and it’s here that I was struck by the similarities between Borowczyk’s live action features and animated shorts. His films are as much about people exploring objects as they are about interacting with each other... it’s almost, at some points, like we are not watching live, flesh and blood performers but puppets or cut outs that Borowczyk can move around the screen however he wants. Now, of course, many people would approve of this notion, especially directors (I’m sure Hitchcock would have approved of this guy’s methods of film making, in some ways) and I’m certainly sympathetic to the idea that the actors are clay to be moved around by the director... it’s not the only way to work but it can be an effective way of creating, depending on what’s appropriate to a piece and your approach to it. However, the downside can be what you get in film like this which is... no matter how sympathetically some of the characters may be portrayed, there’s a feeling of disconnection being projected by the final product. No emotion or empathy coming through from the performers as they are rigidly straight jacketed by the directorial style.

Now I really don’t mind this... it’s not an issue for me and, depending on what else is on offer in a film, won’t necessarily detract from my viewing experience... but I do suspect some people may find Borowczyk’s films unnecessarily cold in places. I’m cool with it though.

Back to the specifics of the episode... when Therese finds a lewdly illustrated book, it further fans the flames of her desire so she gets her kit off and before you know it, she is laying face down on the bed, taking in all the religious paraphernalia and making full use of those cucumbers... and when I say full use, I’m sure my readers will understand that her mouth is not the orifice she is most using to reap the full benefit of this largely unsung vegetable. It’s interesting that Borowczyk takes a swipe at religion by sexualising it in this manner and he does so again, later in the movie... but I’ll get to that in a while.

There is one final thing of note on this segment, however. When the girl finally escapes the confines of her imprisonment, through a first story window, she moves away from the camera again in a static longshot which sees her blending into the distance. Again, it’s a similar style of fixing the characters in space that the director used in the first segment.

Now, in the original, unreleased version of the movie, The True Story of the Beast of Gevaudan came in as the third segment but, since it’s not in the theatrical cut to the movie, I’ll wait and review this segment last in the running order here, as an add on. So that means the next part of the movie, in its theatrical edition (and using that word loosely due to probable censorship issues over the years in various countries), is Erzebet Bathory.

3. Erzebet Bathory
Okay, we all know the story of this character by now. A large section of the British public probably know of her as Elizabeth Bathory and her story of cruelty and bathing in the blood of her tortured female victims to ensure her youth has been rendered in cinematic tales loads of times... with perhaps the most well known of a large batch being Ingrid Pitt’s go at her for Hammer in Countess Dracula (reviewed here).

Borowczyk’s version takes out the scenes of brutal torture, only glancing sideways and leaving these aspects of the story left to your imagination, somewhat, instead concentrating on the spectacle of the sexuality. And he’s got a pretty famous lady playing Bathory herself for his vignette about the legendary character... Paloma Picasso. Yeah, that’s right... Pablo Picasso’s daughter, no less. This film also concentrates on the fear that the reputation the lady in question bings, as she stops at a local village to pick up supplies... and when I say supplies I mean supplies of young, virginal women to have sexy times with. Supplies! Supplies! The unexpected hits them between the eyes. You can bet it does when a whole bunch of them goes back to Bathory’s castle for what amounts to a naked inspection, a long group shower and an orgiastic.. um... orgy of some sorts.

Again, some familiar signature items seem to be appearing and painting a picture of the director’s stylistic leanings here. Once again he focuses on various anatomical features... such as peoples eyes looking on in fear. Picasso’s eyes are even framed as a kind of strip of a section of her face, Sergio Leone style, at one point. There are countless shots of various sexualised body parts too, of course, and at one point Bathory spies on the many showering girls as they lather up their enthusiasm... various moments pitched against shots of her eyes to demonstrate the voyeuristic aspect of the scene. Of all the segments in this movie, this really is a celebration of women’s body parts and the amount of nudity in here is astonishing.

The narrative gets a bit jumpy at some point here. Bathory gives the many young ladies a swig of a special drink she’s concocted and throws herself to them. They all go about ripping her dress off and doing unspecified sexual stuff with her in some kind of mass, frenzied jumble of highly photogenic flesh, from what I could make out. For an actress who is the daughter of the man who popularised cubism, she’s less of a square than you might imagine. Then, after she leaves her ladies of choice, they all seem to start getting more wild and violent and streaks of blood begin to show where they start clawing at each other... I think. It’s not really dwelled on in any kind of detailed way but the implication is it must be bad because the next time we see Bathory, she is bathing in a big bath of blood... presumably culled from the many girls. And then, after one more scene of implied sexuality, there’s one last little but significant part to the ending of the tale... but I really don’t want to spoil that here... partially because I don’t want to give spoilers and partially because, frankly, in a film of this nature, it’s pretty much the only thing that could conceivably be considered a spoiler. These vignettes really don’t have much in the way of plots, to be sure.

4. Lucrezia Borgia
So the last segment is a scenario where Lucrezia Borgia, played by a truly stunning looking lady called Florence Bellamy, goes and visits the pope and his aide, where she disposes of her lover and has all kinds of sex with the two heads of the church, simultaneously. Like Borowczyk’s early animations, he shows a fascination for the scrutiny of objects and illustrations, making his characters interact with their environment as much as they interact with each other. The Pope shows Lucrezia various pictures of horses genitalia and the study of this phenomenon gets her juices up and kick starts the sex that follows. Like the second chapter in this collection, the director seems intent on ridiculing and tearing apart religious iconography... and you can’t get to be too much more of a religious icon, in this day and age, than the Pope, I guess.

Now, as I said earlier, Arrow's fantastic Blu Ray and DVD restoration transfer of this film comes with a nice little collection of extras and includes another version of the movie, this time with the basis for his next feature, The Beast, which he released as an expansion of this unreleased segment a year later.

2B. The True Story of the Beast of Gevaudan
Okay, it’s been a few years since I watched my 3 disc US restoration of The Beast but I’m pretty sure that most, possibly all, of the footage in this segment was retained and used in the later version of the movie. It’s basically the key scene or punchline scene (or possibly money shot scene if you want to push the metaphor to its logical conclusion) of that later film and, frankly, I think I possibly prefer it in this shorter, to the point, variant than the final feature version... although that version is not also without its charm.

The segment starts of with a slow zoom-in on a highly picturesque building and then pans down to the windows to show a woman inside playing her harpsichord. A young sheep tethered outside the house escapes and wanders off into the forest and she runs out and gives chase. An interesting thing to note is that the harpsichord music continues so, it’s an example of one of those fairly uncommon occurrences in cinematic history where a piece of diegetic music (music from an on screen source) on the soundtrack suddenly turns in to a piece of non-diegetic music (a composition composed to accompany, comment or support the scene) without calling attention to itself. This is good stuff.

As she runs through the woods, hot on the trail of her fleecy friend, she is spotted by some kind of man-beast creature who lusts after her with his massive, horse-like organ... chasing after her in order to have his wicked way with her. It has to be said that, for its time and almost even by today’s standards, the “man in suit” nature of the beast is very well done and it’s really not hard to suspend your disbelief. As our heroine continues running through the forest, various branches and conveniently placed twigs conspire to pull the girls clothing from her as she runs... look, I never said this wasn’t implausible and, seriously, beyond corny... but it’s a curious mix of a film. Mostly because this episode is all about bestiality and a whole load of body fluid spillage on the part of the beast. His enthusiasm throbs and dribbles beast-juice throughout the majority of the segment.

Now this film was banned in a lot of countries for years, from what I can recall, so I find it bizarre that it’s suddenly okay in the UK... where bestiality is a big ‘no no’ with the censors... or more probably with the obscene publications act... for this film to be suddenly accepted again. If you can get over the fact that this is about a big beast who rapes a woman before the woman starts getting into it and becomes a complicit lover, killing the beast with the consequences of his spent lust, then it actually becomes quite a ridiculously comical and entertaining piece. For instance, while she flees and throws her old timey wig at him, the beast (after much rubbing and dripping of his enormous beasthood) starts having sex with her wig. When she tries to escape by climbing from a tree and is caught hanging from a branch trying to get away, the pummeling of her fleeing feet on his huge pole of lustiness fans his hairy fervour even more and results in a lot more body fluid spillage.

Once the lady has sampled our hairy, beary antagonist’s unfiltered lust, she sheds more clothes and starts getting into it (oh right, it’s written and directed by a male, I get it), giving the titular character a hand/blow job and ushering in its doom... burying it in autumnal leaves after the “one sex act too far” is finished. Like I said, I prefer this cut without all the preamble of the feature length version of this film... at least until I get around to watching that one again, anyway.

And that’s about it as far as this movie goes. I can’t say I didn’t enjoy this spectacle of sexuality and, although some of the acting is quite terrible, it’s well put together, nicely composed, well lit and has a keen eye for detail imbued in it by the director. It’s a well put together film and the Arrow release is almost perfect. Almost because, there’s just one thing I didn’t understand... especially in light of the inclusion of The True Story of the Beast of Gevaudan on here. Bestiality is very much a big problem over here (and probably is in most countries, I would think) but there is an extra short film on here by Borowczyk called A Private Collection. It’s a documentary style narrative of a man, possibly the director, showing off his various sexual illustrations, curios and gadgets which he’s collected over the years and it certainly continues to highlight Borowczyk’s obsession with the pursuit of objects on screen. However, the distributors have also seen fit to include the rarer, slightly longer by a few minutes, alternate uncut version of A Private Collection on here too. The Oberhausen Cut, as it’s known, includes archival silent film footage of a woman having sex with a dog. However, because of the censorship issues, the scenes in question have been blacked out. Is it just me or does anyone else find it weird that they would bother to release an uncut version of the film and then censor all the bits that were cut from it in the first place? This seems complete madness.

All in all, though, apart from that bizarre ‘about turn’ on one of the extras, the UK Arrow release of Borowczyk’s Immoral Tales is a film I might possibly hesitate to recommend to most people but is also a film that I mostly enjoyed and will probably watch a few more times in my lifetime... if I can find that time. It’s filled with stunning women and there are very few characters you don’t see in a state of undress, if that’s what floats your boat. A problematic film in terms of moral judgements but, hey, the clue is in the title, I reckon. I think each potential, individual viewer can probably make up their own mind about whether they want to see this or not... and not leave that decision in the hands of the hateful, art destroying censors. Give it a go... or not... but certainly a disc I don’t regret buying at all.

Clowning Around

Happy Ever BAFTA

82 Directed by Calum McDiarmid
Clowning Around Directed by Damien Cullen
The Tide Directed by Luke Rodgers
Out Of Order Directed by Mike Hill & Louis Fonseca

Playing at a special “invitation only” 
screening at BAFTA.

Okay... you’re probably going to ask what the heck someone like me is doing hob-knobbing with the hob-knobs at The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA). Well, truth be told... I’m not quite sure why. Maybe to make up the numbers or something I expect? Anyway, I’m glad I went and now have the opportunity to write about the films on show.

The producer of a new short film, Leilani Holmes, who is also a great writer/director in her own right (see my reviews of a couple of her shorts here and here) asked me along to this “by invitation only” screening at BAFTA of four new short films which included one I’d been following the progress of avidly in my Twittter feed, the one produced by Leilani, called Clowning Around. The invite was a little short notice but, thankfully, I managed to move people out of the way and take an afternoon off work to ensure I was properly fed, bathed and “smartied up a bit” for the screenings.

BAFTA wasn’t what I was expecting, to be honest. Even though I was armed with both the address and a handy google map of the location in Piccadilly, I managed to walk past it about 6 times before I was able to find the place... since no passers by seemed to know it was there, even with the aid of street numbers, either. So unassuming was the headquarters for this legendary bastion of the arts. Luckily, I did find a massive Waterstones bookshop to explore while on my explorations, so wasn’t too worried about things at the time.

And then there was the lift.

I followed a girl with brilliant hair into the lift to go up to where I thought the screening was, according to the label at the bottom of the stairs, which was the Princess Anne Theatre on the 3rd floor. The young lady I shared this modern marvel of vertical conveyance with worried me when she swiped the lift with a card to go up. She left me at floor two (which was where I would eventually end up anyway) and assured me I wouldn’t get stuck in the lift without said card. Which was kinda false, actually, but when I got out on floor three it seemed to be what resembled the lobby of a caretakers office... perhaps a projection room unrelated to where I was supposed to be. So I got back in the lift and the doors shut and... it wouldn’t do anything when I wanted to go back down to floor two. Listening out for any feint Jerry Goldsmith cues in the unlikely instance I was actually trapped in one of The Omen movies, I eventually got it to respond by going all the way back to the ground floor without the aid of pressing the alarm button... which, of course, is exactly where I’d started out from.

So okay... this time I took the stairs and as I was looking for the next flight on the first floor, another young lady at a reception desk asked me if I was there for the shorts and told me I was already on the right floor and to make my way to the bar. So there I was, two floors down fro where I thought I was heading, and in a bar with a sea of strangers who were all talking to their friends... apart from one geezah who turned up a minute later and looked just as ill at ease as I felt and who was also alone. I also recognised him as one of the actors from the original, pre-movie, Clowning Around photoshoot and, sure enough, when the film aired later, he was playing the pub landlord in the film. Seeing that he looked just as “fish out of water” as I felt made me feel much better... so that was alright then.

After 10 minutes or so we were sent up a floor to the screening room (still not the third floor, so I don’t know what was going on with my sign and map reading skills that evening) and I sat and waited for the four films to start. After a little while I spotted Leilani Holmes, who seemed to be taking pictures of the audience and I also had a chance to look at the backs of the chairs in the little cinema. Each one was, and I quote from the little inscriptions, “endowed” by either a famous personage of stage, screen and music or, in one case that I saw, a money grabbing company who wanted to be seen doing the same. I was seated behind two chairs which were endowed by Blake Edwards and Mick Jagger and, I have to admit, that being in the vicinity of all this endowing going on around me made me cross my legs in a self-conscious gesture of possible lack of contributory endowment... I was, after all, sitting behind the huge endowment of one of The Rolling Stones.

After a short while, Damien Cullen (pictured above), the director of Clowning Around, which will be the main focus of this review, introduced the films and the people in the audience who were responsible for kick starting their existence. Then the lights dimmed and we were off...



82 
Directed by Calum McDiarmid
One of the things I’ve come to realise about short films is that they can really only capture ideas and moments in their brief running times, but in doing so, the encapsulation of the basic story idea can actually become the story itself. An audience doesn’t need to see the whole thing to know the full tale and 82, like all of the films on show that night, demonstrated this more than aptly.

82 is about a not very nice, downright criminal in fact, postman who takes you on a mental journey, via the magic of voice over to substantiate his thoughts for the audience, down a street on his postal route... but he has a very specific agenda to his upcoming arrival at Number 82, and you won’t necessarily see it coming. Made with obvious skill and a certain sense of unobtrusive mise-en-scene, the film may at first make you give a little chuckle at the postman’s antics but, after a while, you get to realise the postman’s true colours and, when he gets to his final destination, the little twist which you may well not expect is something which a lot of people will applaud to a certain extent, is my guess. Without giving too much away, the final shot through a letter slot where the impact of a quite brutal and violent act is implied and rendered far worse in the imagination due to the swinging shut of the slot cover on the door, is a great way to end a movie.

Then came the short film I as waiting for...



Clowning Around 
Directed by Damien Cullen
Damien Cullen’s film tells the story of a down-on-his-luck clown, Bozo (played by David Schaal), who has been forced out of his business by a rival children’s party entertainer, Mr Fernelli (played by Matthew Jure) and who has hit the booze hard (and, yes, I do appreciate that the main protagonist’s name is a phonetic anagram of the main cause of his addictive malady). It’s not a plot or subject matter that instantly grabs me, to be honest, but I’d have to say that the movie was actually really great.

Using slightly dulled down colours, I suspect, to mute the obvious opulence of Bozo’s very colourful attire, and thus enhance the clown’s fall from grace, the film takes a little while to show you, in broad gestures, the state of affairs that Bozo has gotten himself into and it does this while simultaneously challenging itself by having Bozo as an entirely mute part. This, of course, practically forces the filmmaker (and the audience) into the realm of slapstick and “silent movie” style narrative in terms of the way Bozo gets himself through life... and the thin line this film walks between that kind of subtlety and the garish contrast of the lead character’s profession is deftly tackled like a tightrope walker at a circus... this film doesn’t stumble or fall.

Not enough praise can be heaped on David Schaal who really does give a great and, I hesitate to use the word subtle given the character he’s playing but that’s what it is, a subtle performance that really gifts the film. Also a big hooray to the supporting actors. There’s a sequence set in a supermarket, for example, when Bozo is trying to rustle up some change, which turns into a variation of the old “bottomless pockets of unusual stuff” routine, made famous to various generations of movie and television watchers by the likes of Harpo Marx, Tom Baker and Kevin Smith, over the decades. It’s just a joy to watch and the young lady (the talented Meddy Ford) playing the McJob cashier at the supermarket till while Bozo goes through this routine, is just so mind numbingly deadpan (in the face of “frantic comedy distraction”) that you really do have to applaud her performance here too. The editing involving the eventual “pop up” of a Jack-In-The-Box is also perfectly timed and her reaction, or lack of one, absolutely sells the ludicrous nature of the situation (Oh bugger me. What, am I analysing jokes now? Gotta stop that!).

The other, some would say “hidden”, contribution to this particular short is the really great score by Alexis Bennett, who uses a leitmotif approach to the scoring by composing friendly and chirpy, Nina Rotaesque “circus music” whenever the temptation of booze is at the forefront of Bozo’s mind. This is particularly well handled in a scene near the end of the movie when this “theme” is developed into something a little more sinister with a creeping, atonal layer which has been mixed in with the familiar circus orchestrations, giving them a little more edge and sense of doom.

One sequence I particularly liked was the “Clown Off” sequence where Bozo and Fernelli fight a duel, armed with custard pies. The movie takes a serious turn into a series of movie tributes, if I was picking up on the writer/director’s references correctly. First up, we have the set up to this sequence, the calm before the storm, so to speak, which is shot like a spaghetti western... and when I say spaghetti western I really mean, in this case, the broad stroke homage to the early Sergio Leone classics, which is the quickest way to do this I guess (not much time to get this stuff done in a short) and since the majority of these specific westerns were all copying Leone to a certain extent anyway, that really is a fairly all encompassing take on the original material I feel (and, if truth be told, if the director had gone for Sergio Corbucci or Sergio Sollima or some such, half the people in the audience wouldn’t pick up on the reference). Alexis Bennett’s score, again, perfectly matches this lead in, which impressed me by the use of percussion which dead-on nailed the “walking down a street into danger” kind of feel of a young Ennio Morricone scoring something like A Fistful Of Dollars. I guess the temptation here might have been to go all out and score something like The Ecstasy Of Gold, which might also have been right but may have changed the timing and impact of the scene too much, and so I was dead impressed with the scoring choices made here.

The “Clown Off” then goes into what modern audiences would call “bullet time” under the mistaken impression that The Matrix was the first movie to do this kind of scene (it wasn’t) but, which in Clowning Around, of course, becomes “pie time”. And I can’t tell you in words how brilliant the shot of a slow motion custard pie aimed directly at Bozo’s face works so well... but it does the job brilliantly. I won’t spoil the pay off in terms of physical prowess displayed by the main protagonist in this scene but I will say that this is followed by something which is almost (and probably is, I reckon) an homage to the cinematic legacy of Sam Peckinpah... so it’s all good as far as I’m concerned.

The ending, which plays out during the end credits, may be somewhat bitter-sweet to audiences but there’s nothing ordinary about this short film anyway... so this one gets a full-on recommendation from me... as does the next movie in the four films that were screened...



The Tide 
Directed by Luke Rodgers
If Damien Cullen’s Clowning Around was the wittiest and shiniest of the four shorts on show (and, for me, it was), then The Tide, directed by Luke Rodgers, was definitely the most moving. Focussing on an old man whose life consists of combing a beach with his metal detector, day in and day out, the film begins with a series of shots that focus on the beauty of nature, as the shoreline this man spends his time on is slowly captured by the camera, making me think of the films of Andrei Tarkovsky just a little. Don’t know if the director was influenced by him or not though.

The story which develops when the man is asked by someone he perceives as “a thug” for the loan of his precious metal detector, is deeply emotional and the two actors playing the main leads make you believe in this series of bonding moments so well that you can’t help but be swept along by them. The score is also very haunting and helps lend the film the poignant tinge it has going for it. Although it sounds nothing like his music, I’m willing to bet the composer for this one holds Bernard Herrmann close to the heart as one of his/her heroes, as this score also tends to use sweeping, repetitive, although a little more subtle, gestures that parralell Herrmann’s work.

Was very impressed with this film also. This was then followed by the last film of the screening...



Out Of Order 
Directed by Mike Hill & Louis Fonseca
This last film was less to my taste, if I’m quite honest with you, but that probably says more about me than it does anyone else because it got some great audience reaction. This one is an out and out comedy based on the unfortunate phenomenon of not being able to find a working loo. The main protagonist spends the entire film getting into trouble in the pursuit of her much needed relief, and it would be fair to say, I think, that this movie is one long demonstration of eccentrically British toilet humour (although I have no idea as to the nationality of the writers and directors).

But it’s not made without skill and, to quote the invitation to BAFTA (pictured above), it is very much a “high quality” short film. The absurdity of the young lady’s antics keeps getting less and less subtle and more into Hollywood “action comedy” territory as the running time progresses... even the scoring seems to take a distinctly "Johnny Williams does 1960s comedies" approach as part of it’s genetic make-up. There’s nothing exactly subtle about what is captured on screen on this one, but the skill and visual dexterity demonstrated by the film-makers in the accomplishment of their aims can only be applauded... which it was, loudly, by the watching audience.



And there you have it. A rare treat to see four films in pretty much the most ideal conditions I would ever have to watch them in... which is good because, if the sound hadn’t had been so good or if I was watching this over the internet, I might not have picked up on the more subtle elements of the scoring on Clowning Around methinks.

After this I tried to sneak off very swiftly (I’m the least sociable creature you are ever likely to meet) but this tricky manoeuvre was scuppered somewhat by finally meeting the whirlwind of bubbly energy that is the lovely “goddess/writer/director/producer” hybrid creature known as Leilani Holmes but who is, perhaps, whisperingly referred to respectfully in polite circles as “That Holmes Woman”. She seemed as nice as she was on Twitter and, frankly, I’ll not easily forget the sight of a woman dragging a cameraman through an extremely crowded bar space in the blink of an eye to head me off before I could get out of there and get a quick picture with me. This was really nice of her and I look forward to seeing the photo some day.

After that, when eyes were off me again, I managed to use my dextrous ninja-sneaking skills to secure my exit into the waiting night and begin my long trek home, back to the “slightly less right” side of the tracks. I do thank Leilani Holmes, Damien Cullen and Summit From Nuthin Productions for doing me the great honour of inviting me to this event. Please don’t cross me off any future guest lists if I said anything too cheeky in this review of the evening.

And that’s about it. I really enjoyed the screening, especially since I’ve never been to BAFTA before now, and I would say to any readers still with me at this point that any and all of the shorts on display here are well worth taking the short amount of time out of your day to see, if you ever get the opportunity. A really good evening out for me, too, it has to be said.

More info: 
Damien Cullen http://damiencullen.co.uk/
Leilani Holmes http://www.leilaniholmes.co.uk/