Seven Psychopaths doesn’t always work, threatens to turn tiresome in a saggy mid-section and literally winds up in the middle of nowhere. But every time it threatens to implode in a welter of meta-mockery and blood-soaked cynicism an outstanding super-charismatic cast save it from its own self-referentially. Frequently better performed than written, it is often very, very funny. It’s better than Things To Do In Denver When You’re Dead that’s for sure.

Aside from the admittedly tired conceit of having its central protagonist be a struggling Irish screenwriter called Martin trying to follow up his last big hit, the film offers some amusing riffs on heterosexual male friendship. Like In Bruges it’s grotesquely violent and foul-mouthed yet there is a strange, affecting sweetness at its rotten core. Farrell’s Martin wants to write an artistic B picture with no guns, just talk. All he has is the title: ‘Seven Psychopaths’. His best friend Billy (Sam Rockwell) is a petty crook who seems unhinged but genuinely wants to help his buddy out of his blocked alcoholic funk. One of Billy’s extracurricular activities is a dog-knapping ring which he runs with the mysterious Hans (Christopher Walken). When Hans kidnaps a shit-zu belonging to crazed mob boss Woody Harrelson, the trio find themselves in exactly the kind of lurid scenario that Martin doesn’t want to write about and which Billy sees as the perfect chance to get his friends mojo back.

Seven Psychopaths has, like In Bruges, a cartoonish quality which McDonagh amps up to the max here. Luckily his cast are on premium strength form. Both Farrell and his incredible eyebrows are particularly effective and Walken is a delight but it is Rockwell who runs away with the film – delivering a campfire monologue about his ‘ideal movie ending’ midway through that is so hilarious it practically destabilises the entire movie.

Seven Psychopaths seemed to rub quite a lot of people at the festival up the wrong way. While it’s uneven and flags a bit I think it’s mostly successful at what it sets out to do. McDonagh is a bracingly funny writer and, while things get a little stagey and clichéd at times, he’s usually one step ahead and capable of pulling a few surprises right up to the final showdown. In its blackly comic treatment of male buddy flick sensibilities it reminded me a little bit of Martin Brest’s classic Midnight Run, although it doesn’t have that film’s incredible warmth and soul. Still there’s enough here to suggest that McDonagh won’t be suffering his alter ego’s lack of inspiration anytime soon.

The post LFF 2012 Review: Seven Psychopaths appeared first on EatSleepLiveFilm.com.

Set in 1990s Montreal, this is a decade-long gender bending Almodovarian melodrama of identity confusion and doomed love. Laurence (Melvil Poupaud) and Fred (Suzanne Clément) are best friends, soul mates, lovers – only Laurence wants to become a woman, which naturally complicates things. But Fred can’t break away and it’s this decision to stay that eventually tests the boundaries of their love and the loyalty of their families and friends.

Dolan’s script doesn’t make it easy for Poupaud. Laurence can be callow, self-absorbed and – at times – an absolute arsehole.  Fortunately Poupaud (a fine actor who has worked with Francois Ozon) radiates charisma and vulnerability.  He also looks androgynously ace in a frock (like Robert Forster from The Go-Betweens when he used to wear dresses). Clément is even better. She has an animalistic ferocity and simply burns up the screen, most memorably in a café sequence where her simmering rage, confusion and depression finally explode. They are a brilliant, maddening couple and capture the crippling, obsessive nature of self-exploration and needy love. This is relationship as grand orchestration, amour fou at its most exhausting and exhilarating. Whether Dolan’s underworked narrative pulls off the delicate balancing act of exploring both Laurence’s sex-change odyssey and their relationship disintegration with its accompanying emotional and sexual complications is open to debate, but you have to admire the ambition.

Inevitably for a nearly three- hour movie there’s quite a bit that could go. I could definitely do without the screeching Felliniesque troupe of cabaret and burlesque queens Laurence befriends. Dolan also struggles to make the older characters, especially Laurence’s parents, anything more than paper caricatures. Understandably he’s a lot better at writing pathologically adolescent narcissists.

As you would expect from Dolan, Laurence Anyways is art directed up the wazoo. He  mixes up contemporary and retro music video tableau with youthful vigour and energy. The club scenes are a hot mess of shocking pinks and neon blues. And in a couple of explicit 80s homages, he really does give great euro-ponce.  It will be fantastically irritating if you aren’t attuned to the sensibility. If you are, various scenes will leave you swooning with delight. The stunning Fade to Grey sequence conveys perfectly the opulent misery that Fred finds herself in when she attempts a ‘normal’ life away from Laurence – much more fittingly than any of Dolan’s often overcooked dialogue.

Dolan doesn’t even try for specificity with the cuts, which are a jumble of 80s goth, synthpop and 90s French ballads. He isn’t just churning out jukebox imagery in place of narrative though. Well, maybe sometimes. At times Laurence and Fred live their lives like characters in a music video – scrawling poetry on each other’s bodies,  making up and breaking up within scenes – so in a way it makes perfect sense.

Clocking in at an absurdly (over)long 161 minutes, shot in academy ratio, wildly uneven and episodic and with at least three possible endings, Laurence Anyways is, like its hero(ine), a fabulous disaster. It’s alternately brilliant and dreadful, childish and mature, vapid and truthful. In the end it’s way too much but I loved it anyways.

The post LFF 2012 Review: Laurence Anyways appeared first on EatSleepLiveFilm.com.

Fortunate enough to attend this year and, having already seen many of the festivals glossier, high-profile US and other world cinema entries, I set about exploring the vast selection of features, documentaries and shorts from the Arab world. I also wanted to get a feel for the work of the Doha Film Institute and check the pulse of Middle Eastern cinema at what is – socially and politically – an absolutely critical time for the region.

It’s always a bit of a mission getting to grips with any festival, but the smooth organisational operation of the institute, the helpful nature of the organisers, my proximity to the venues (I was staying in Souk Waquif; the recently renovated central market area of Doha) and a well- stocked Blu-ray and DVD screening room (other fests take note) made things a lot easier. Festival press were given a nicer and sturdier than usual leather bag too (black and gold, with a definite 70s Gola vibe).

Here it is, next to some fool:

I was in town with another online journalist and writer – James Marsh, the Hong Kong editor for Twitch film – and we had lunch soon after our arrival with the institute’s new media producer/digital strategist Shamir Allibhai and Variety Arabia journalist and film critic Joseph Fahim. It was a nice way to get the lowdown on what was worth checking out as well as getting some of the cultural context for the festival. Shamir’s role is integral for a burgeoning fest, a crucial one given the rapidly changing world of film consumption and distribution. He gave us the skinny on some of the institute’s on-going projects and the filmmakers to watch in the ‘Made in Qatar’ strand. Joseph, an Egyptian writer with much festival experience, gave us lively and uncompromising views on the festival as well as pinpointing what he saw as the two key themes – immigration and fundamentalism. Turns out he was absolutely right, though I would add gender politics into the mix, understandable given the high (and hugely significant) quotient of films helmed by women.

The competition had its largest selection of films this year, with seven documentaries, seven narrative features and 13 shorts from 10 Arab countries, including first time films from Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Among the in-competition narrative films I saw, three in particular stood out; Die Welt, Goodbye Morocco and The Repentant.

Alex Pitsrta’s Die Welt (a Dutch-Tunisia-Qatari production) is a semi-autobiographical culture clash drama with timely themes of immigration, people trafficking and cultural identity. If that makes it sound heavy, it isn’t – for the most part it’s funny and engaging and shot with real brio and confidence; a clearly personal portrait of a young, disaffected Tunisian – Abdallah (Hamid Naouara) who dreams of escaping to Europe. When he meets a couple of holidaying Dutch women, a brief liaison with one of them leads him to undertake the only feasible route offered to get out of the country. Loosely based on Pitstra’s own life – his Dutch mother married his Tunisian father (who plays Abdallas’s dad in the film, a lovely performance from a non-professional) only for the relationship to dissipate when he was still a child – this is an absorbing picture, with a confident, energetic directorial style and a script that probes at some of the dichotomies inherent in the Arabic view of western culture but never soft peddles them. Although Die Welt ends on a despairing note, this is a debut that leaves the viewer optimistic for the bright future of its talented director. Naouara is a star in the making too.

Writer-director Nadir Moknèche’s Goodbye Morocco is perhaps the most obvious candidate for wider distribution in the competition. A sophisticated blend of contemporary film noir, human drama and socio-political thriller this, like Die Welt, has immigration at its heart. But the treatment is rather different, stylistically and narratively. Lensed in a cool, crisp style with subtle nods to Cluzout and Almodovar, Moknèche’s film touches upon class and ethnicity boasting an intricate and multi- layered story that unfolds with precision and style.

Set in Tangiers, it stars Lubna Azabal (Incendies) as Dounia, a driven and intense woman who, along with her lover, is overseeing the construction of villa in Casablanca. Discovering an ancient fresco in the ruins she decides not to tell the owner and instead makes contacts to cash in and smuggle it out of the country. The plan is to escape her current life (her estranged husband has custody of their child and she plans to take away with her) but things go badly awry when one of the African workers working on the site disappears. Dounia’s driver steps in to help out but he’s harbouring some dark secrets of his own.

A complex and rich thriller that skilfully avoids cliché for the most part, Goodbye Morocco is an absorbing slow-burner. Some histrionics in an overly schematic final third threaten to scupper the tension but overall this is classy stuff.

Directed by veteran Arabic filmmaker Merzak Allouache, The Repentant is an Algerian/French co-production that has already played at Cannes and London and should get picked up for international distribution if it hasn’t already. Set in the late 90s when the Algerian government offered an amnesty to jihadist rebels after nearly a decade of civil unrest and many casualties, it follows Rachid (Nabil Asli) as he returns from the mountains to his hometown. Adamant that he has killed no-one he is nevertheless pursued by enraged locals who are convinced he is responsible for family deaths in various terrorist atrocities. Attempting to lead a normal life, Rashid takes a job in café which briefly works out but he soon finds that his past is ultimately inescapable in a time of such violence and mistrust.

If The Repentant has a problem it may be that for the first hour so it is perhaps a little too oblique. What begins as an involving puzzle briefly slips into narrative confusion. Overall though this is a beautifully controlled, simmering piece of work with a devastating ending that offers no easy answers but poses many tough questions.

The region’s future talent was pinpointed in the Made in Qatar strand. Annoyingly I didn’t see Lyrics Revolt, a documentary about hip-hop artists in the Middle East and their part in the Arab Spring, but I heard only good things about it and its soundtrack. I did see Mohammed Alibrahim and Ahmed Al Baker’s Lockdown: Red Moon Escape, an ambitious Arab take on the zombie movie. It’s perhaps unfortunate that this genre is so desperately played out but when I tell you that the film is only just over an hour long you can probably guess the problems. The opening sequence suggests a Juan of the Dead style comedy as buddies Safi and Rashid uncover some gut-munchers while driving in the desert. But when the action shifts to a secret military base the film finds itself caught between two genres, with not enough time or ideas to build or sustain tension.

I don’t want to be too hard on Lockdown (the audience, many of whom were Made In Qatar students it must be said, went crazy for it) which does have an exuberance about it (the opening part anyway) but I do feel aping genres like this is not the way forward culturally,  artistically or financially. For Arabic filmmakers to break through with genre works it surely makes more sense for directors and writers to connect with their own incredibly rich and ancient traditions of folklore and storytelling? Just ask the Chinese,  Japanese, Koreans and the Spanish.

One of the hot tickets for the festival turned out to be something of disappointment. Michael Singh’s documentary Valentino’s Ghost promised to be a searing expose of Muslim portrayals in U.S popular culture and news media. While it is standard for such a documentary to offer a largely one-sided view (no surprise for guessing who Singh’s heavy-set, baseball cap wearing hero is) this is a sketchy, didactic and hopelessly one-sided polemic that feels about ten years out of date and seems unaware that Hollywood has caricatured almost every minority at some point during its history. Singh appears completely ignorant of how social media has changed the discourse and in fact the internet as a whole. The best bits are snippets of stand-up comedy from Muslim comics.

Two documentaries that received unanimous praise were Fidai; about an elderly liberation fighter revisiting the war crimes of his past and Hanan Abdalla’s powerful In The Shadow of a Man, in which a quartet of Egyptian women discuss their struggles with family, marriage, divorce and domestic violence in a restrictive culture that favours men and restricts women’s rights.

For me the standout short was without doubt Sanctity, directed by and starring Ahd, a Saudi born actress (she was recently in the outstanding Wadjda) and film-maker. Ahd plays Areej, a pregnant, young Saudi widow who is being exploited for money by her own brother- in- law following the death of her husband. She forms an unlikely alliance with a young dope peddler in order to make ends meet and provide a future for her unborn child. A deserved winner of the development award, Sanctity really does have the feel of a feature in miniature. There is so much texture and nuance in its 37 minute running time, a complex trio of characters and a compelling central plight that could easily be explored in more detail. Potent filmmaking with the palpable tang of real struggle and oppression this is an outstanding, gripping short. I didn’t want it to end.

The festivities surrounding this year’s awards were noticeably more modest with fewer stars and less razzmatazz. Although it robs the fest of news coverage the more low-key approach is arguably a more sensible and sustainable way forward. Last year saw the unveiling of Black Gold, Qatar’s first international co-production, starring Antonio Banderas, Frieda Pinto and Tahar Rahim. A decent sized hit in the region, it failed to generate any box-office heat worldwide. This year’s opener, The Reluctant Fundamentalist (a decent movie with a typically charismatic lead performance from the brilliant Riz Ahmed) is a more modest piece and may have a better shot at international success.

Like the city itself (half of which is made up of stunningly designed sky scrapers, the other littered with construction sites), the festival and the institute is an ambitious and presumably long-term project. As our lunchtime discussion came to a close, we talked about how quickly the DFI can reach its intended destination. It’s clear that the seeds are being sown for a new generation of filmmaking talent and I came away with guarded optimism, for this is a project that will take decades not years to bring to fruition. I really hope it succeeds. Film is just a small part of the big challenges the region faces but the commitment to culture is to be applauded. The stories are there (they always have been) and the challenge is get them made is tough, but the real test is getting them seen – at home as much as abroad. For the DFI to survive the region needs to be able to bring in a loyal audience for their films, as we know that internationally, non-Hollywood product from any country struggles to make enough money to be sustainable.

A fascinating experience, the Doha festival is a young and energetic event in the movie calendar. I hope it will be around and thriving for many years to come – and opening, at some point in the not-too-distant future, with a fully home-grown film.

The post Festival round-up: Doha Tribeca Film Festival 2012 appeared first on EatSleepLiveFilm.com.

Documentary now is not just about stating facts, showing us through the gaze of the camera the state of being, but is about constructing a narrative. I always consider the merging of narrative filmmaking found in fictional features, and non-fiction to be the skill of a documentarian. As a documentary filmmaker, what is your perspective on the relationship between the fictional narrative form and non-fiction influences on the modern documentary?

I make films in which the frontier between documentary and fiction is not very clear, because films are like plays, and I am trying to create the possibility of suspicion for the spectator. For some of my films however, I think it is very important to let the spectator know very clearly if they are watching something real or something false. When I worked in journalism for example, I made some documentaries about places, and because of the economic or political motives in these kinds of films, I was not trying to play these kinds of games. I think it is very important to clarify for the spectator if what they’re watching is something true. You can make this kind of place in the BBC news for example. I can make this kind of place when I am making a film that is about a faker, and is something that is in love with the subject. It is not something that is suitable for every kind of film. I have to think about what kind of film I am going to do, and I shoot the style depending on the subject.

Your career as a filmmaker, writer and lecturer suggests that you are not content with just making films, but you appreciate the opportunity to reflect on cinema, and creativity in general. Is this a driving force for you?

Yeah, for example there are some filmmakers not from my school; but they are nonetheless excellent filmmakers. Sometimes cinema education is necessary as an artist, and when I was a student, I had some excellent teachers who taught me some very important things. When I was in class, the product to me was as important as the lessons. I think that teaching can be truly creative work, and useful. Sometimes you discover inspiration from your students, so I try to share my time during the making of films, pitching, working around and living. Actually cinema is a segway to expand and persuade the direction of your life. For example, you can live in different countries, and to work with people, is the same as in school.

You also write about film, suggesting that you are interested in discussing and trying to develop how film is understood. You present ideas therefore, not just through images, but through words on a page.

It used to be like that, and I think it is something very natural. I like to work with different formats. It is something very contemporary, but it is also something very typical that has happened throughout the story of cinema. I’m just beginning to work with cinema, but I work with twenty different formats, and that is something natural because formats are changing every year. So we must be ready for that, and we must be ready to work with these. I like to explain this point through the example of the history of painting. One painter began to work with one technique, and he spent the whole of his life working with that technique, and he taught that technique to his son, teaching him the tradition. Cinema is just the opposite.

It is always changing.

Everybody has changed ten times during their career. I’m not literally talking about the change from the silent to the sound, or from black and white to colour, but every four years there is a very important change of techniques and characterisation. It changes everything. Sometimes you may feel like you are losing a world, but again we are in the middle of a transition, and we can work like the old masters, and we can work like an amateur with a cell phone; we have an excellent opportunity.

On a past Sight and Sound Greatest Films poll, three of your top five nominated films were pre-1940: Borzage’s 7th Heaven, Keaton’s The Cameraman, and Renoir’s Grande Illusion. It suggests a great affection for early or classic cinema. What is it that sets such films aside as personal favourites, to not include any film made later than 1985?

These lists in the end are something very silly. Today I’d make another list, every week, every day. There are many films that I love that were made last year or two years ago. 1985? I did not know I was so impatient. I agree with all these films, but there are filmmakers working today that I love. It’s like game; you just list ten titles.

Your next film is a comedy. Can you tell us anything about what we can expect?

Murieron por encima de sus posibilidades is about Spain and also Europe today. It’s a film about five men whose societies are broken because of the economic crisis, and who have gone crazy.  They kill somebody, meet in jail, and there they come up with a plan to save the global economy. The plan is to kidnap and torture the bankers. It is a sort of cathartic film to portray contemporary Spain. I would now like to make film which is a portrait of the Spain in which we live. It’s a black comedy, and I think watching British comedies, I love the Ealing films and the Ealing tradition such as Alexander Mackendrick’s The Ladykillers with Alec Guinness and Peter Sellers about five criminals.  ‘Murieron’ is a mixture of things, but there is something of that Ealing spirit I would like to have in it.

I’m eager to see this film.

Me too. I really want to finish it. We are already shooting, we’ve been shooting all summer, and we’re going to continue probably in November. I’d probably make millions if I was to show it tomorrow.

Is there any likelihood you’ll simultaneously start work on a second project whilst working on ‘Murieron’, as you did on ‘The Double Steps?’

It always happens to me; it’s very strange. There is a moment when I am beginning a film that I always think we can make four or five films at the same time. It’s like if I feel I need to look at the answer from a different point of view. It’s as if I would like to look around it, and in this case I thought I could make a little documentary, a little short film, which is in a certain way an exploration. It is an interview with one of my students who is a real estate agent, a mature filmmaker, who during the sixties and seventies was fighting for democracy. He was shooting the first democratic elections in Spain, and now forty years later, he’s very disappointed, and accepts that the solution is to torture the bankers. I made a short documentary with him, and he had this very good idea, and now we are making it official.

The post The 8th London Spanish Film Festival Retrospective: Isaki Lacuesta Interview appeared first on EatSleepLiveFilm.com.

You are renowned for your short films. How did the transition into the feature format occur, and why now?

I always think of short films and feature films equally.  I still want to make short films because they afford you the freedom to explore any subject in a way that can be very difficult to do in feature films. Verbo was a project that I lived with for a very long time, and after the success of my short films there was interest by producers. Verbo was an unclassifiable film, but I was very lucky to get backing to do that. It was a relief, a year ago I think.

Verbo is a distinct title, and so I’m inevitably curious as to how you came to choose this one word for the film’s title?

I have always had this thing for titles that describe the whole film in one word, and usually on a poetic level. Alumbramiento was one title for my first film, and Contracuerpo which is kind of a made up word for another.  But I like one word, so in this case the translation of Verbo is as noun, adjective. The film is very much about the power of language and the power of words, specifically the spoken word, and how the word creates your attitude in life, your way of being and your incarnation. So it does have a theological link. It’s not a religious film, but the protagonist does have a certain mystical journey for meaning, and a said experience. So that’s one of the many things I’ve made up there, and for me that was the right title.

A novelist once remarked to me that a novel can be made up of a series of short stories. Do you think feature films can be described in much the same way?

I mean you could.  A lot of feature films share the freedom to structure them as the filmmaker desires; but I do think it’s different.  Obviously inside a feature story or a long narrative there are many such stories, but one of the challenges of making short films compared to feature films you are able to have a dramatic structure, and the journey of the characters are longer.; the development is different to short films.  The challenge is to say a lot in a very short amount of time, and you have to work perhaps in a more poetic way.

Did your short films prepare you for your feature directorial debut, and how far did they help you secure financing for Verbo?

Short films are not necessarily a format to prepare you for feature films, but I do have a high esteem for the short film format. It does prepare you for the longer format, to be able to handle more complex challenges but also film making is an expensive and complex art form, and you have to be prepared to be able to deal with a whole challenge besides the film, finance power structures and industry and all these things.  So in both ways as a storyteller it does prepare you for the feature having made short films.  For me it has been key, and I wouldn’t have been able to make Verbo if I had not made short films.

How would you describe the emotional journey of making your first feature film?

Oh, it’s very hard, no matter how much you learn on your short films.  Shorts I like to compare to track and field in athletics; you have the straight one hundred meters, which is a more direct way. When you make a short film you feel much more clearly the pulse of the story because you are shooting in a shorter period of time, whereas a feature film takes perhaps two, three years. It’s a long period of time; it’s more like a marathon. So one of the difficult things is to keep the story clear in your head so that it doesn’t get stranded, because it can become very abstract if you are shooting a story that lasts for one hour and a half on the screen, but you are making it over several years. It’s a bigger deal, my poor initiation.

Can you tell us anything about your next project?

At the beginning of this year I was commissioned to make a documentary about Antonio Machado, who is one of the great Spanish poets.  This year is the one hundredth anniversary of one his major books: Campos de Castilla. So I was commissioned to do that, and I made a film that is a hybrid between documentary and fiction, and I really enjoyed it, it was quite a challenge to try to create visually the poetic world of Machado.  That’s being presented in the official competition of the second largest film festival in Spain after San Sebastián, so I’m quite busy in post-production to make it on time, and then afterward I’m finishing a new screenplay.  So I will have to start presenting the screenplay to producers to see what they think of it, and hopefully get it made.  So yeah, that is what is keeping me busy.

Do you think you’ll return to the short film format in the future, or will you work exclusively on feature films?

I hope it will be a blend of the two.  Hopefully I’ll be able to make short films whilst I’m making feature films.  That’s my idea, but we’ll see.

The post The 8th London Spanish Film Festival Retrospective: Eduardo Chapero-Jackson Interview appeared first on EatSleepLiveFilm.com.

As I walk into the room Marisa Paredes greets me with a warm smile. With less than thirty minutes to go before she is due on stage, I’m sitting down face to face with Paredes, intimidated by this force of Spanish cinema, my hands shaking ever so slightly. The pressure is on to finish the interview with time to spare so that Paredes can prepare for her onstage talk.

I start the interview with a question related to the reason why she is at this year’s festival, to talk about the man who is so famously known in the film world by his surname alone.

All About My Mother has been described as an example of the theatrical rather than the melodramatic register of The Flower of My Secret or the nourish dramas of Broken Embraces. How did Almodóvar’s promotion of the ‘acting register’ shape your experience on AAMM, and how has it differed from your other acting roles?

“It’s different from one character to another. The character of Huma Rojo is an actress, and one would think that playing an actress when you are an actress would be easy; but it’s not the case. The example Almodóvar gave us of what to aim for was…”

The name as momentarily escaped her, and whilst she searches for the name that is on the tip of her tongue the translator reiterates to me that Almodóvar had given her a particular example. I hear Lawrence Olivier’s name mentioned but Marisa frustratingly remarks, “No, no, no.”

I hear a name amongst the undecipherable Spanish words, pulled out of the unreliability of memory, and so the flow of dialogue continues. “Gena Rowlands, the wife of John Cassavettes” the translator tells me. “So that was the example that Almodovar gave her.”

In 2001 you starred in the classic Spanish ghost story: The Devil’s Backbone. In two years you worked with the two faces of international Spanish cinema: Almodóvar and Guillermo del Toro. How would you contrast the experience of working with these two directors?

Paredes speaks with a controlled passion, what you might call subdued, though even before the translator as translated her words, the Spanish language an unbreakable code to me, the affection for Guillermo breaks down the language barrier. She talks with her hands, a smile continuously breaking out, as she conveys her impressions of these two heavyweight directors of Spanish cinema.

“The cinema, the form, the language of each is as different as it could be from the other; completely different.” Then as if caught in mid-thought she abruptly remarks, “The story for Guillermo.” But she is soon back in full flow, offering to me her own understanding of a director and his world I have admired from a far, separated from Del Toro by physical time and space, from his cinematic worlds by the silver screen. Marissa on the other hand as had a more intimate experience with Del Toro ‘the creator of worlds.’  “It’s a very closed world, closed in and of itself, but cinematographically he was very young when he started to be successful. His characters have a lot to do with gore; that gorish side. So that world, he’s almost diametrically opposed to Pedro. The Terror, the horror! Pedro goes for another kind of horror.”

It was twelve years between AAMM and The Skin I Live In. How did that break from working with Almodóvar impact your experience second time around, if at all?

“It’s so much more frightening, because when you are working over a continued period of time, the path is easier, the way is easier. When you have moved away from that path it takes longer because you’re in a different place; it takes longer to get there. You’ve got to go back to his world, a world that you remember, but it’s gone on developing and expanding. It’s possibly the most difficult of all of his films. There’s less to get hold of.” These are the words of an actress who appreciates the cinematic art form as a tool to create worlds, an ever-evolving world, and as I listened to her words, I couldn’t help but imagine her interaction with someone such as Truffaut, the way he discussed the auteur theory combined with Paredes’ colourful description of a filmmakers work would have made for an interesting conversation.

Paredes revealed how both she and Almodóvar were wary of imitation on The Skin I Live In, cautious not to create a comparison between her character and a famous Hitchcockian character from the black and white days. “We had to be very, very careful so it just didn’t become like Rebecca’s housekeeper.”

Paredes described in detail Almodovar’s meticulous nature, describing how he took, “Very special. He took a lot of care over the costumes, and hair. He would really search for a particular hairstyle for them and that’s very important to him. Costumes are really important; how a character dresses, very, very important to Pedro. Make-up, everything; all of that. His characters are in his head, and from that is how he begins to construct, how he watches you, looks at you. For rehearsal he uses a small camera, in a very small space, which is very similar to the space where he is going to film. The plan is that we’ll rehearse on set, but often the sets are not quite ready, sometimes it is, but often not… It was difficult to get back into the swing, get into that world.”

I read an interview recently with the young Spanish actress Manuela Vellés who spoke about acting affording her the opportunity to change her identity. Is this something that as motivated you throughout your career, one that has been filled with any number of distinct roles?

“It’s an important part of the fascination one as for this job. It’s not just about living many lives; it’s about being in different eras, different moments, not just as an actress, but many tales, you are implied of those stories, and the different moments in history. I remember a long time ago when I started, I was very young and I started during the Franco dictatorship. I looked at the theatre before I began working in the theatre. Many more beautiful things were happening on the stage. Everything was very dark at that point, very bleak, and it seemed just wondrous for me to enter into that world at that time.”

What struck me as I listened to Marisa’s words was that here was an actress who through her acting career had worn and discarded a multitude of identities, to the point that when I looked upon her, I saw not an individual but a ‘Chameleon’, an actress who has been moving between reality and cinematic reality, at times as a means to escape the horrors of reality, seeking out the safety the stage and silver screen have provided, a kind of second home.

How much of you yourself in a performance?

“One makes a drawing of the character with the director, but you interpret it for yourself. Even though you may interpret feelings that you haven’t experienced, you know that human beings are capable of all feelings, allow, put them into a situation. You could go through a door you didn’t plan to open, but it all comes from me. I don’t know another way of working. It’s probably not the easiest, but its maybe the closest. What motivates me about a character it seems, I communicate those emotions, whether bad or good. That’s the beauty of it.”

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Silly, sometimes sappy and with a (seemingly) cavalier attitude towards its central themes of bipolarity and depression (Bradley Cooper’s damaged lead appears to have all but forgotten he actually has an illness in the film’s frothy finale), Silver Linings Playbook is nevertheless easily one of my favourite films of the year. David O’ Russell, channelling Hal Ashby vibes, has delivered another of his unlikely romcoms in the vein of Flirting with Disaster (though its evidently the work of the man who made The Fighter too); a flaky contemporary screwball comedy powered by a career-best performance from a likeable lead and an explosive turn from a newly-minted star.

Bradley Cooper stars as Pat Solitano, a former teacher on release from an institution (having dished out a near-fatal beating to his estranged wife’s lover) and back living under the care of his exasperated parents. Pat now has a restraining order and must stay away from his ex, which rather complicates his big plan to reconnect with her and get his old life back.

So Pat gets fit and starts reading all the books she teaches as part of her English class with the aim to winning her heart again. It’s a desperately misguided idea given what we know and no one – including his family and therapist – thinks it will work. When Pat is introduced to his friend’s wife’s sister, recently widowed Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence) who has her own history of problems and medication use, he asks her to get a letter to his ex who is a mutual friend. She agrees, but only if he becomes her dance partner for a local contest they have no chance of winning.

Silver Linings Playbook is not going to convince everybody. I’m very surprised it’s considered an Oscar front-runner – not because it isn’t good but it is way too ragged and misshapen for that – and I suspect many will find it calculating and even cynical. But Russell’s light touch and note-perfect casting prove disarming and at times unexpectedly moving. Robert De Niro, who has mostly spent the last two decades delivering turns of near-unwatchable grotesquery, really connects here as Pat’s dad, who has his own issues. The ensemble cast, including the amazing Jackie Weaver as Pat’s mum and Chris Tucker actually being good as Pat’s institute buddy, deliver nuanced and often funny performances.

This is a very American film in so many ways – the medication obsessions, the self-improvement mantras, the sporting analogies (the title refers to a betting ledger that Pat’s dad is using to win on football games) and that grisly staple of US drama; father/son issues. But what can I say, it worked for me. Mental illness in the movies (now there’s a snappy potential book title) is an absolute minefield but what I like about O’Russell’s script (from a best-selling novel) is that it feels real and non-judgemental. Pat is not a bad guy but his situation means he’s not always sympathetic. He’s not mister hilarious crazy guy either. He’s frequently bullish, rude and inappropriate and as we know prone to violence. His goal is misguided. Yet you can’t help rooting for him. It’s the role of a lifetime for Cooper and he’s terrific.

This is not a film about a great emotional ‘journey’ as may have been suggested by the trailer. It looks very much like a standard romcom at times but there is a freewheeling sensibility at its heart along with a lot of warmth and charm. The chemistry between Cooper and the white-hot Lawrence is tangible which means you invest in this ridiculous couple and their silly (but admittedly fun) dance.  Always generous and humane towards human eccentricity and neurotic behaviour, Russell has a lovely flair for directing dysfunction in a way that retains the characters’ humanity and humility, even when those same people act in ways that make those around them uncomfortable or cause them pain. He wants a silver lining for these guys, no matter how unlikely that might be. Hopefully you will too.

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TERRY GILLIAM has always been a director with a grand vision. His films rarely have the look of a small production, with big performances and, when required, bigger set pieces.

When he decided to adapt his film from Rudolf Erich’s The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen it was clear we were going to be in for something strange and wonderful.

Since its release in 1988, stories of why it flopped at the box office have been as bizarre as they are confusing, with the blame being thrown at everyone from Gilliam to Columbia.

Reportedly costing more than $46m, this is the story of 18th century aristocrat – the Baron of the title – who embarks on all manner of wild and remarkable adventures with his henchmen and a little girl (Sarah Polley).

Taking a trip to the moon, being swallowed by a sea monster and escaping the clutches of the Grim Reaper are just a few examples of the escapades they get involved in.

Upon its release in the US, TAoBM raked in an impressive amount at the box office, with Gilliam proclaiming: “If you look back, we got the best reviews and we were doing the best business in the opening weeks of any film they (Columbia) had released since Last Emperor. We actually opened well in the big cities – we opened really well.”

However, any hopes of boosting the takings were hampered by the fact the film was only released with 117 prints. That fact alone irked the director during an interview with IGN in 2000 when he said: “When the film was released, there were only 117 prints made for America – so it was never really released. 117 prints! …an art film gets 400.

“We were ultimately the victim of Columbia Tri-Star being sold to Sony, because at that time all they were doing was trying to get the books looking as good as possible. We weren’t the only film that suffered, but we were the most visible one. And what happened – to complete the story in a neat and tidy way – was that they were not spending any money on advertising to promote any of the movies started by the previous regime.

“They were burying films left right and center by spending no money on them.”

Despite a better release in Europe, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen ended up making just over $8m at the box office.

However, to this day Gilliam (and producer Thomas Schuly) have issues with the numbers being bandied around, claiming in an interview on the 25th anniversary DVD of Time Bandits that while the film did run over budget, it was nowhere near the $46m some outlets reported.

The most baffling aspect of the entire production after release is that the critical reception has been positive. In fact, on Rotten Tomatoes Baron Munchausen has a 100% success rate among professional critics while it’s sitting at 89% fresh overall.

It’s a bold film with some wacky – but outstanding – ideas that are perfectly suited to the big screen. It has Gilliam’s stamp all over it and John Neville, in the title role, is the biggest and best character among a highly-impressive cast.

The Washing Post review called the film a “wondrous feat of imagination”, though “except for Williams, the actors are never more than a detail in Gilliam’s compositions.”

Such was the overall feeling for Gilliam’s work that Munchausen received FOUR Oscar nominations for Best Set Decoration (but lost to Tim Burton’s Batman), Best Costume Design (lost to Henry V), Best Visual Effects (lost to The Abyss) and Best Make-up (lost to Driving Miss Daisy).

It’s safe to say The Adventures of Baron Munchausen will rarely be classed as a bad movie. There may have been issues during production. And there are certainly conflicting tales about what affected its performance at the box office, but those involved in the film are fond – if somewhat affected – by the experience.

Production designer Dante Ferretti – who has worked with the legendary Fellini – said: “Terry is very similar to Fellini in spirit. Fellini is a wilder liar, but that’s the only difference! Terry isn’t a director so much as a film author.

“He is open to every single idea and opportunity to make the end result work. Often the best ideas have come out of something not working properly and coming up with a new concept as a result. He is very elastic and that’s one quality in a director that I admire the most.”

Polley, meanwhile, admitted she found it traumatic. She said: “It definitely left me with a few scars… It was just so dangerous. There were so many explosions going off so close to me, which is traumatic for a kid whether it’s dangerous or not.

“Being in freezing cold water for long periods of time and working endless hours. It was physically grueling and unsafe.”

Whatever your thoughts are on Gilliam, his ability to create worlds full of wonderment and scope cannot be denied. And in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, he succeeded in creating a universe we could get lost in.

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With a wealth of roles spanning nearly twenty years, you also belong to a band and are credited as a producer. Why acting would be my first question. Was there that singular moment when you said, “I’m going to be an actor?”

There was a teacher in High School who was very into theatre, and I got the acting bug through her. She directed a performance in the last year I was at school when I was thirteen years old, and I felt at that point that maybe it was for me.

I might describe you as an undefinable presence. I say this because you have played a diverse range of roles. As this always been a conscious effort to avoid becoming typecast, or as it been more of a pleasant coincidence?

It is an immeasurable thing in a way. When you are looking for roles, you are looking for roles that are not too similar to each other so that you are not typecast. But at the same time I have been lucky enough to receive roles that are not exactly the same so then that variety that I find is a combination of looking for it, and having it find you.

I’m curious to know how you’d contrast the way in which you prepare for a violent role in Take My Eyes and the sinister character of Sleep Tight to your more sympathetic roles?

The basic thing in this case is just to be faithful to the character, whether the character is bad or good, whether it is more or less complex. So the idea is just to work with him, trying to understand the character and then convey that to the viewers. The problem comes when you start judging the character, then you bring it closer to you and you become and very similar to one another.

You have worked with some notable directors in your career thus far, to include international directors such as Jim Jarmusch and Michael Mann. Your friend Javier Bardem has stated that he always hoped to work with Joel and Ethan Coen. Do you have a list of directors you hope to work with, or are there any directors you especially look forward to working with again?

Clint Eastwood.

Recently you have starred in and produced a selection of feature films. Is project development and the role of producer likely to become something to rival the persona of the actor and musician? What challenges has producing provided?

It depends on what people usually think of me of course. When I produce a film there’s a lot of things involved in it, there’s a great deal of risk, there’s a lot of hard work as well, and there’s a lot of sacrifices that you have to make. People these days in Spain, they are putting a lot into it in terms of their personal lives, sometimes they’re putting a lot of things into even their houses, like properties and everything. So that’s what I’d like people to know about.

Which out of all your performances would you say are the two or three that are closest to your heart?

The last one Operación E, which was a political film, and La Flaqueza del Bolchevique (The Weakness of the Bolshevik).

Your famous international role is possibly Michael Mann’s Miami Vice. Actors talk both negatively and positively about the sheer scale of such Hollywood productions. I wonder how you would contrast your experience on Miami Vice with your other acting experiences?

It was very interesting to be able to play a very, a more astute, stereotypical character than what I usually play in Spain, because that’s the kind of character that you find there but don’t find those in Spain that often, so it was fun.

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Lean was brought up by very strict Quaker parents and wasn’t even allowed to watch movies until he was an adult. Once he was of age though, he made up for lost time and fully immersed himself into cinema. He managed to get a job as a teaboy at Gaumont Studios before working his way up to clapperboy and ultimately on to third-assistant director. He eventually became an editor at the studios and would go on to edit Powell and Pressburger’s 1941 classic 49^th Parallel. It has long been said that it was this grounding in editing which contributed to Lean’s seemingly mechanical like understanding of how a film should look and piece together.

Despite his directorial career spanning some forty years, from In Which We Serve (1942), to A Passage To India (1984), Lean only ever made sixteen films. Yet from his early romantic melodramas and Dickens adaptations, right through to the lavish and sweeping epics of his later years, Lean’s pictures became a byword for quality. His unflinching attention to detail and masterful eye for a shot, has led him to create some truly historic cinematic moments.  Lean knew how to evoke a mood and crate an atmosphere through his film, from the tearful final goodbye in Brief Encounter, to the sight of Omar Shariff arriving out of the shimmering sunset in Lawrence of Arabia. Every shot was immaculately and very purposefully constructed. Lean was a director who stamped his own personal idea on every film he made, unflinching from his vision of how a film should look.

Lean is held in great reverence by fellow filmmakers, including the new-wave of Hollywood movie brats such as Spielberg and Scorsese, perhaps far more so than he is by critics. Not that he isn’t admired by some critics as well; it’s just that his love of the art of filmmaking and his dedication to the process itself has seen him become an undoubted filmmaker’s filmmaker.  He remains one of Britain finest cinematic exports and a he has an impressive seven films in the BFI Top 100 British Films list, with four of these appearing in the top eleven.   Add to this a CBE and the fact that he is only one of three non-Americans to receive an AFI lifetime achievement award, and you get a sense of how deeply respected he was.

Let’s take a look now and some of the choice cuts from his relatively small but enviable filmography.

Brief Encounter (1945): 

Adapted from Noel Coward’s one-act play ‘Still-life’, Brief Encounter tells the story of two married people, Laura and Alec, who share a series of emotionally charged meetings before realising their relationship can never truly be anything more. This was at a time when moral values were such that the thought of a woman engaging in an extra-marital affair would be nigh-on unthinkable. The sanctity of marriage was rigorously clung to and even divorce was extremely rare. Laura and Alec both love each other deeply, but cannot bear to tear their own families apart.

The bittersweet romance is gloriously rendered in crisp monochrome, with the closing scenes at the railway station, as the steam swirls and the ill-fated couple realise they will never be together, a particular highlight. It does appear very dated now, the clipped accents and of its time dialogue especially, but Lean captures the heartbreaking nature of the situation perfectly. The scene towards the film’s end when their emotional goodbye is interrupted by a chatterbox friend of Laura’s, is filled with unspoken longing and minute gestures indicating the inner pain of the central couple.

Great Expectations (1946):

Lean’s first foray into the works of Charles Dickens remains perhaps the finest film adaptation of the great author’s works to date. Lean’s own Oliver Twist (1948) was also highly regarded, but its Great Expectations which has stood the test of time even better. For anybody who is unaware of the source material, Great Expectations charts the rise from rags to riches of young Pip, a boy from a poor family who comes into considerable wealth at the behest of a mysterious benefactor. The story follows his coming of age and ascent into manhood and alo charts his obsession with the beautiful but cold Estella.

From the film’s opening on the desolate Kent marshes, Lean appears to have captured Dickens’ tone and his sentiments perfectly. In the unsettling scene where Pip first meets the escaped convict Magwitch, Lean captures the sense of danger and foreboding exactly as one might imagine after reading it in the book. Another such moment occurs later on when Pip first visits the unhinged old spinster Miss Havisham.  The eerie haunted house vibe which Lean creates thanks to his mastery of lighting and camera angles is exceptional.  The black and white photography is superb throughout and Lean seamlessly blends the story’s romantic moments with its sinister dark undertones.

The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957):

A truly classic war movie which won Lean his first ever Oscar. The Bridge on the River Kwai also saw Lean reunite once again with Alec Guinness, one of the director’s most regular collaborators. Set in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp in Burma in 1943, the film revolves round the battle of wills between Camp Commander Colonel Saito (Sessue Hayakawa) and Colonel Nicholson (Guinness). Saito wants Guinness to force his men to build a railway bridge which would then be used to transport Japanese weaponry. At first Nicholson refuses but he finally relents and sees it as a morale-boosting project for his beleaguered men. As the building goes on, Nicholson grows obsessed with completing it to perfection and begins to lose sight of its ultimate purpose.

Full of eye-catching cinematography, as one might expect from a Lean epic, there’s also a deep psychological aspect to the film too with various cultural and class divides rife throughout the picture. At the centre of the story though is Guinness’s bravura performance as the incredibly heroic and yet seemingly increasingly demented Colonel.  Throughout the movie,  Lean paints a vivid picture of wartime struggle, of military duty and of British stiff-upper-lips.

Lean pulled off a feat he would repeat again with his other ‘epic’ movies by meshing together both a sweeping and grand story with very personal character developments. In this instance, the end result was a tense and thrilling adventure that has quite rightly become a landmark war movie. Interestingly, such was the cultural impact of the film, its theme tune , ‘Colonel Bogey’, famously whistled in the movie by the defiant captured soldiers, was actually played at Lean’s memorial service at St. Paul’s Cathedral.

Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

Arguably Lean’s greatest masterpiece of all, Lawrence of Arabia is truly a special piece of cinema. The term ‘epic’ gets used far too readily in some cases, but if ever there was a film that warranted the tag, it was this one. Lawrence of Arabia is a film not only ambitious in terms of its length, running to around 216 minutes, but also in terms of its concept and execution.  The extensive story combines visceral action and sun-kissed adventure, set against some truly stunning scenery and focused upon a charismatic but deeply flawed hero.

Peter O’Toole was perhaps never better than his performance here, and partial credit must go to Lean for coaxing such a performance out of him. Lawrence was a conflicted and contradictory character, torn between his compassion and his sadomasochistic streak that saw him so attracted to war.  Lean also brought out the very best from a magnificent supporting cast including Omar Sharif, Claude Raines, Alec Guinness and Anthony Quinn. Along with O’Toole’s extraordinary performance, the manner in which Lean and his cinematographer Freddie Young captured the unforgiving vastness and yet the stunning beauty of the Arabian desert, was a crucial part of making Lawrence of Arabia the masterpiece that it is. Scenes such as the aforementioned moment where Sharif’s Sherif Ali emerges from the horizon and slowly makes his way out of the heat gaze towards an awestruck Lawrence, is majestic in its beauty and a triumph of patience and attention to detail. Likewise, when watching the exhilarating scene where Lawrence and his army ambush a train in the desert, one can only admire the sheer scope of what Lean was able to achieve.

Lean’s film was far being just a series of glorious looking set pieces however. It also focused on capturing a certain mood and a genuine sense of place. Part of what makes it so brilliant is how effectively it is able to immerse the viewer in these obscure and distant events in the sweltering Arabian Desert. Lean delivered a visually stunning and utterly captivating piece of cinema.

Dr. Zhivago (1965) 

Another visually striking epic from Lean, Dr Zhivago is a sprawling romantic drama set against the backdrop of the First World War and then the Russian Revolution. Painstakingly designed and containing typically luscious scenery, it also possessed a career-defining central role for Omar Sharif.

To try and summarise the  complete plot of Zhivago here would be far too difficult, so in very brief terms, the film follows Yury Zhivago, a physician  who is torn between two women as the tumultuous course of Russian history sweeps ever onwards.  As one might imagine in a film developed from a weighty Russian novel, there are various plot strands and characters intertwining throughout the film but Lean keeps a keen eye on them all and manages to keep you engaged in each one.

It is another especially long movie, clocking in at nearly 200 minutes depending on what version you are watching, but as became Lean’s trademark, the film never feels anything less than fluid throughout. It perhaps struggles slightly under the weight of being Lean’s follow up to Lawrence of Arabia, and while it doesn’t quite possess the same spirit of adventure, and neither Julie Christie or Omar Sharif possess the charismatic brilliance of Peter O’Toole, it is nonetheless still an engaging and visually absorbing film.

Also worth seeking out:

Oliver Twist (1948)

Hobson’s Choice (1954)

Ryan’s Daughter (1970)

A Passage to India (1984)

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