By Angelique Halliburton.

Dina – An unlikely lesson in love

An unconventional romantic tale, this documentary follows 48 year-old widow, Dina Buno, as she plans her low-key wedding to her younger boyfriend Scott Bevin. As if that wasn’t enough to be getting on with, Dina also has the relationship goal of moving Scott into her tiny apartment. In Scott’s defence, he still lives with his parents so the challenging transition adds to Dina’s mounting frustration, brought on by his apparent lack of interest in sex.

It comes as no surprise that the film, directed by Antonio Santini and Dan Sickles, has been awarded the Sundance Grand Jury Documentary Prize. The documentary celebrates all that is weird and wonderful about the seemingly odd Dina and Scott and their equally eccentric family and friends. In reality, Dina has Aspergers, anxiety and OCD and Scott is autistic. As Dina’s Mum put it, “she’s a smorgasbord!”

There’s not much to see by way of cinematography, there are no breathtaking horizons, landscapes and striking colours. The documentary’s singular focus is on the characters. The film is shot in cinéma vérité style – although there are no shaky cameras in this polished piece – which serves to enhance its realness to an unnerving degree. A very pleasant surprise is the cool 80s soundtrack, with tunes by the likes Michael Jackson (Day and Night), Marcia Griffiths (Electric Slide) and Bryan Adams (I Will Be Right Here Waiting For You).

I couldn’t help but make comparisons with the UK’s Channel 4 documentary series ‘The Undateables’ which follows people who struggle to find love due to living with a disability or learning difficulties. Dina was an uncomfortable watch for me, I felt like a reluctant fly-on-the-wall, bearing witness to the awkwardness between two socially inept individuals trying to navigate their way around their relationship. Perhaps my experience was exactly what the filmmakers were aiming for and that can only be a good thing right? Love is not a one size fits all phenomenon. Dina taught me that there is someone out there for everyone and love, even in its purest form, is complicated!

Dina makes its UK cinema debut on 20 October 2017.

By Orla Smith.

Jenny Lu’s The Receptionist lets us know we’re in London through a series of establishing shots: recognisable landmarks amongst a sea of towering buildings, shot through cinematographer Gareth Munden’s hazy lens. It’s a place we all recognise, but this time it’s home to a story we don’t.

Lu’s characters are Asian women who are often made to feel small and invisible in these busy streets, especially when it comes to on-screen depiction. Here, they are not side-lined ― they are centred.

Tina (Teresa Daley) is a Taiwanese graduate tied to London by her British boyfriend. She wanders the streets searching for a job and finds one: a receptionist post in an illegal massage parlour in which a group of Asian women work as prostitutes. She takes the job reluctantly and only because she has no other option. It is clear that Tina at first looks down on the women she works with, internalising society’s disdain for sex workers. She acts stand-offish around them and hides the truth of her job from her boyfriend. However, the film takes the well worn narrative course of throwing a protagonist into an unfamiliar world and, as an audience surrogate, allowing them to warm to their new environment. The film’s low-contrast cinematography is interrupted only when Tina enters the bedrooms in the brothel, and the red wallpaper is blindingly garish ― interrupting her calm and ordered life, and challenging the values that she holds.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=BflSM_jxi4Q

Earlier this year Jane Campion released a second season of her acclaimed detective series Top of the Lake. Despite its thematic and technical brilliance, I had one issue with the show: it too chose a brothel of Asian women as its subject matter, but mishandled that subject.

Campion attempted to expose exploitation, but her gaze on these women was definitively that of a white women ― othering and patronising. The Receptionist is a perfect antidote, and an example of what a welcome relief it can be to have an Asian woman in the director’s chair. Lu’s perspective is a necessary one, all too underrepresented in cinema. Her characters are varied and portrayed with sympathy and respect.

Despite the film being about sex work, the women are never seen fully nude. In fact, sex is hardly every shown, and when it is the women’s bodies are never lingered on.

Lu’s filmmaking actively avoids sensationalism, instead focusing on her characters’ boredom as they wait around for their next job. As they become acquainted with each other, Lu allows the camera to drift around the space without cutting. In one scene, Tina cooks breakfast and is accompanied by Sasa (Shiang-chyi Chen) and Mei (Amanda Fan) who wander around the kitchen, talking and tasting the food. Lu allows the women to exist in a space together, their low-key, natural interactions speaking volumes about their characters and their various clashing dynamics.

There is tragedy in the film, and its impact is heart-wrenching. Yet, Lu recognises that the violence these women undergo is not the most interesting thing about them. She refrains from showing much of it, instead focusing on their recuperation and resilience in its aftermath ― and the way in which they help each other.

The Receptionist exposes the western world’s fetishisation of Asian women, but it is most interested in the internal lives of the women that this corrosive racism and sexism impacts. Their bodies are desired, but otherwise they are ignored. To counter this, Lu’s ensemble drama centres them completely, spending very little time on any other characters. She shows how, despite how the outside world treats them, they find empowerment in the small community they have created with each other.

By Marti Dols Roca.

Ghostroads: a Japanese rock’n roll ghost story.

With a title as explicit as it gets, Ghostroads (2017, Mike Rogers, Enrico Ciccu, Les Decidious Jr., and Ken Nishikawa) proposes a classical rock’n roll tale (main character having to decide between fame and friends-band-girlfriend-integrity) and it delivers exactly what it promises on the title; including a storyline similar-paying homage to- the extremely entertaining and an example of a type of movies that aren’t done nowadays due to lack of courage and funds Crossroads (1986, Walter Hill).

Tony is the leader of The Screamin’ Telstars, a weekend rock band with no particular success. Tired of seeing how his archrival, represented by his ex girlfriend and all time sweetheart, becomes a rock legend, Tony burns up and so does his amp. That leads him to the acquisition of a magic amp that carries the ghost of an old bluesman inside. Through him, Tony will compose the best hooks, play the best riffs and amaze with unbelievable guitar solos. The only condition Peanut Butter, the blues ghost of Christmas past, demands is for Tony to get rid of the rest of his band; for good. And so the drama is served.

The film is narrated by a mysterious storyteller that announces what’s to come in each chapter and offers small pills of day-to-day philosophy, and in general it relies more on aesthetic and style than in story (as you’ve probably guessed by now): long music scenes, a non-stopping soundtrack and visual effects that are more effective than visually appealing. My personal view is that is a funny and enjoyable-to-watch movie providing you’re tolerant to low budget productions or homemade filmmaking techniques. As part of the “western audience” of the film, it instantly reminded me (somehow) to the way Tarantino develops some of his stories; the truth though is that Tarantino reminds to Japanese visual story telling because that’s where he gets lots of his trademarks.

Returning to the Crossroads reference, I felt kind of disappointed when the expected guitar duel between Tony and Peanut Butter is resolved in a very rushed and not detailed at all sequence. Having previously established that the actors of the film can play (it is shown in many of the music scenes in the movie), why not make the climactic beat as memorable as possible?

Being as it may, if you’re the kind of person that reads: Ghostroads, a Japanese Rock’n Roll Ghost Story, and gets immediately hooked, you’ll probably enjoy this little movie. If you are taken aback by its title, think no more and pick something else or you may get irritated or extremely confused.

By Orla Smith.

Blood Simple is an apt title for the Coen brothers’ debut feature.

The phrase originated in Dashiell Hammett’s 1929 novel Red Harvest, in which ‘blood simple’ describes the addled mindset of a person in the midst of violence. Those two words are also fitting when separated. This is a film about bloodshed ― and it’s the simplest, purest distillation of the themes that the Coens have spent the rest of their careers expanding on. We’re all glad they continued making movies, but they almost didn’t need to. It’s all right here: the tragicomic reality of life and crime exposed in the guise of a straightforward neo-noir.

M. Emmet Walsh plays one of the Coen’s greatest weirdoes. Private Detective Loren Visser’s every expression is an unpredictable element: murderous intent is indistinguishable from amusement. Visser isn’t the protagonist ― it’s several scenes until we even see his face ― but his voiceover introduces us to the film, and to Texas as the Coens see it. Their idiosyncratic view of the state, while purposefully styled to their tastes, is closer to reality than the Texas of Hollywood movies. ‘Down here… you’re on your own’; Visser’s mumbled dialogue plays over images of flat landscapes and stray debris lying limply on the roadside. His words are earnestly pessimistic, and perhaps would be a little obvious for the Coen brothers’ current tastes. However, it is rather perfect that Visser’s monologue is the first piece of dialogue in any Coens feature. It lets you know what you’re in for during the next 100 minutes, as well as the next 32 years.

In Blood Simple, the most recognisable face is Frances McDormand’s. The film ― which is returning to UK cinemas in the form of a shorter director’s cut, restored in 4K resolution ― was her 1984 acting debut. Despondent and neglected wife Abby is world’s away from her Oscar winning turn as Marge Gunderson in Fargo. McDormand shows her range in both of these Coens crime-comedies: Marge is centred, assured and more than a little offbeat, whereas Abby is less distinguishable. She’s low-key ― as nice and normal as you can get in a Coen brothers film. The same is true for the man she’s having an affair with: Ray (John Getz), works as a bartender for Abby’s hot-tempered husband Julian (Dan Hedaya). It’s difficult to imagine how Abby and Julian got together in the first place. They’re incompatible in every way, and so Abby’s cheating feels more like a mercy killing than a betrayal  ― but as the film’s tagline states, ‘breaking up is hard to do’. Julian is determined to make it as hard as humanly possible.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFzPVLdGtAg

Julian hires Detective Visser to find proof of the affair, and when he gets it he orders Abby and Ray’s murder. We don’t discover Julian’s plan until we’ve seen the targeted couple together: at the beginning of the film, they have sex in a dingy train-side motel after driving into the night. Their encounter is tinged with the sinister feeling of being watched, but their chemistry is quietly sweet: the two talk softly to each other, at ease in one another’s presence. In contrast to Julian’s erratic behaviour, it’s easy to empathise with Abby’s desire to be with a man who allows her to let her guard down. In a film full of loud characters who want each other dead, these two are content with just getting by in each others’ company. Would that it were so simple.

This restored version of Blood Simple offers a rare and exciting opportunity to see the classic in the cinema ― with newfound clarity.

The restoration is gorgeous, displaying Barry Sonnenfeld’s rich and layered cinematography in startling detail. The images created in Blood Simple are some of the Coens’ best, sequenced in a way that demonstrates an unbelievable level of craft for first time feature filmmakers. It is one of cinema’s most impressive debuts.

Two sequences grant Blood Simple its classic status.

The central 13 minute set piece is next level; one man under pressure versus another man who can’t quite stay dead ― but certainly won’t be alive for much longer. The film is unique in the way that it takes generic characters and story and stirs in one cinematically unusual piece of logic: what if this happened to real people? There are no cool, calm and collected criminals in Blood Simple. They all sweat profusely, and nobody is sure of anything ― even the things they think they’re sure about. When they die, they don’t die with dignity. They die in a state of fear and panic, desperately clinging to life by the tips of their soil-stained fingernails. Ray’s infamous attempted body disposal is so hair-tearingly excruciating that it becomes unbearably hilarious. Blood Simple is a comedy so black that you’ll leave the cinema covered in soot and blinking in the sunlight.

The final 15 minutes are equally as ingenious. Blood Simple constantly shifts perspectives; every half hour or so you’re handed off to a new protagonist. After leaving her to simmer in the background for most of the film, the Coens finally bring Abby to the fore in the final scene. It’s McDormand’s moment to shine, and she does so in a tension filled sequence that rivals anything the Coen brothers have ever done. Abby is the right character to finish off with, and her chess moves ― while cheer-inducing ― never step over into the unrealistic. She’s no mega-genius, but she outwits her counterparts through sheer resourcefulness.

Still, even the best of us are fallible. We root for Abby as we root for any final girl, and her triumphs are rousing, but we should know better than to think the Coens would let any of their characters win outright. Trust them to use the film’s dying breath to laugh in our face.

The 4K restoration of Blood Simple: Director’s Cut will be released in UK cinemas on October 6th.

A preview screening at the BFI Southbank will be held on September 29th.