Layer Cake (2004)

Matthew Vaughn & J.J. Connolly's Layer Cake is undoubtedly a British gangster film. However, it is not by default a good film. Hodges’s Get Carter (1971) starring Michael Caine is a close comparison in terms of genre, its final shot & a preoccupation with close-ups of it’s leading man pondering ambiguously at the camera. I must admit that no English-made gangster film has been able to rival their American forebears in Hollywood films starring James Cagney, Edward G. Robinson and Al Pacino. London-born Jonathan Glazer’s Sexy Beast (2000) does operate in this crime genre, but it’s salient cinematic quality rests in Ray Winstone’s likeable, sympathetic character and it’s generally character-driven story; it is also a much simpler plot with the “good” guys drawn contrastingly against the bad men. Layer Cake fails as a cohesive film because there’s an inconsistency between the tone of its exposition and the rest of the story. The narrative flows with an uneven rhythm, unintentionally.

For the moment, I am inclined to think that the British gangster film is certainly not to my taste & I wonder how much this owes to their heritage in this industry-driven art. I cannot help but think of Robert Hamer’s Kind Hearts & Coronets (1949) when I contemplated the anti-climatic ending to Layer Cake. The former is a heavily-narrated black comedy whose final twist is wickedly funny & quintessentially English in it’s dead pan tenor. However, the impassive tone in the final moments of Layer Cake is nothing more than an inglorious conclusion. As a reading & film viewing public sensitive to moral social messages ranging from billboards to toilet-stall readers, the protagonist’s sudden, traumatic downturn is jarring but redundant. If you must fetishize over images of Daniel Craig again after
Casino Royale (2006), be informed.

L'enfant (2005)

There is an anti-analytical, perhaps anti-intellectual, quality to Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne's cinematic slice of urban vagrancy in L'enfant. In avoidance of attaching the terms "realism" or "realistic" to this French film, which exhibits influences from early Godard & Truffaut, one could contend that it is devoid of any self-reflexivity or sociological agenda. So, what is the point of showing moviegoers glimpses of a day-in-the-life-of a vagabond who ponders the illegal sale of his newborn baby if not to make social commentary? Perhaps, the Dardennes are looking to update Truffaut’s “The 400 Blows” with an ever more mobile & close-quarter camera eye, particularly via handheld close-up shots that pan & linger.

The unspoken spiritual kinship between Bruno, the lead character, & Sonia, the mother of his child, depicted through their child-like frolickings and hermetic “two-shot” moments remain memorable scenes seldom witnessed in cinema. For a film driven not by its plot, but by sustained & adjoining tension from scene to scene, it draws the discerning & willing viewer into the street life of an under-achieving petty thief. Those viewers who require more structure & plot points are forewarned. However, for those who enjoy vetting the cinematic frontiers of reconstructed & scrutinized reality, view on.

The Proposition (2005)

It does not do this Australian film justice to praise it as a “must-see film,” or with some other superlative marketing remark; such comments are bound to skew audience expectation. Nonetheless, “The Proposition” is an unusual approach to the western genre as the lead characters are indeed outsiders who never fit in to a community and end up awash, riding into an open-ended terrain. Though I would consider Guy Pearce’s character the protagonist in the plot about liberating an innocent brother and Ray Winstone’s policeman as a major character, perhaps a counterpoint, the film stays at a Brechtian distance. This is not a character-driven western in a conventional sense; the characters' psychology is of little significance and the action remains always external. This also means that the entire film transcends the individual characters in favor of a metaphor for a place, a sweltering & viscerally brutal “fresh hell.” The real lead character here is a continent; the untamed impression of Australia.

The Inheritance (2003)

Lucid Danish Realism, number two.

Many visual & cinematic references to the literature of Shakespeare, particularly Romeo & Juliet & As You Like It (see dir commentary). Directed by Per Fly (per-flee), this Scandinavian film has shades of Coppola's "The Godfather" in the lead character played by the emotional bottle rocket Ulrich Thomsen.

The White Countess (2005)

Finally published... on Offscreen.com

To view my essay on the final Merchant-Ivory Film, click on the link below:
http://www.offscreen.com/biblio/phile/essays/white_countess/

The website offscreen.com is an online film journal (ISSN #1712-9559) based in Canada & has ties with horchamp.com and Concordia University in Montreal Canada.