Author: Louise McLeod Tabouis

POOR COW (1967) set in the 60s working class strife of London’s East End, is a portrait of Joy (Carol White)  beginning with a baby and marriage at 18 to the wrong man. The shrill opening song by Donovan, urging the listener to “Be not too hard, for life is short, and nothing is given to man”, sets the tone.

Tom (John Bindon), who in a dramatic arrest as Joy discretely watches on, is sent off to prison and is rapidly replaced by Dave (Terence Stamp). Seemingly kinder and attractive, Dave whisks her off on a camping trip to Wales, where as she later says, “he woke things up in me”. In a shaming court scene, Dave’s character is revealed by a judge showing that Joy has again ended up with more trouble. The fact that she chooses career thieves who are rapidly imprisoned doesn’t help with having the consistent relationship she desires, yet Jonny, her son, does provide it, and she takes that seriously.  Seriously enough to deduce at the end that “all you need is a man, a baby and a couple of nice rooms to live. That’s all it comes down to.” Tellingly, she does not include love or happiness. Joy is totally convincing in the frank assessment she makes of her life, and thereby endearing.

Based on Nell Dunn’s novel of the same name, POOR COW was Ken Loach’s first feature film. He had previously adapted another of Dunn’s novels, UP THE JUNCTION for television. Interestingly Nell Dunn’s life was a complete contrast to Joy’s, and the stories were inspired when she moved to Battersea in 1959 and began working in a sweet factory.

Dunn also wrote the film’s screenplay and the use of Joy as a narrator on the soundtrack reflects the first-person narration of Dunn’s original novel, including the presence of the ironic inter-titles. Joy, a young Bardot look-a-like, had appeared in Loach’s renowned 1966 television play, CATHY COMES HOME. In a 2000 industry poll, it was rated the second-best British television programme ever made after Fawlty Towers.

During 50 years of making feature films, Ken Loach has not lost his gift, which is obvious in this film, for getting to the truth of a story and creating a non-judgemental portrait of a person. Joy is a character who is both raw and heartening. I, DANIEL BLAKE for which he won the 2016 Palme d’Or at Cannes, is a similarly sympathetic portrait of a person in a hopeless situation getting on with life in their own way.

For some other great portraits of young people in the 1960s, have a look at these:

François Truffaut made LES 400 COUPS, translated literally as THE 400 BLOWS, instead of raising hell or something similar, with Antoine Doisnel (Jean-Pierre Léaud), a masculine equivalent of Joy. He followed up with three more episodes.

Jean-Luc Godard’s film DEUX OU TROIS CHOSES QUE JE SAIS D’ELLE (Two or Three Things I Know About Her) also made in 1967, follows Juliette around as she searches for relief from her drab suburban existence.

“What am I looking for, what am I looking for? Please tell me, talk to me”.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s fourth feature film after Hard Eight, Boogie Nights & Magnolia is either a drama or an unsentimental romantic comedy, depending on what you’re sensitive to.  Featuring Adam Sandler as the seemingly affable Barry, a smart, straight-talking vulnerable man, dealing in bathroom supplies.  He is endearingly honest with people who abuse his confidentiality, yet balances this with a multi-faceted personality – polite and drily funny with the ability to get extremely angry when provoked. Barry has seven omnipresent sisters; the type who think that family means being able to say whatever they want to their younger brother, consisting mainly of teasing and mockery.

Emily Watson as Lena Leonard, is the surprise in Barry’s life, as naturally good as she always is. Anderson, when talking about the casting said that both Watson and Sandler seemed like nice people, the kind he’d like to have round for dinner. This film is not the traditional vehicle for Sandler’s classic comic characters, which is a refreshing surprise. It is a stripped back version, featuring some dark desperation, and nobody can say shut up like the crooked mattress salesman Dean Trumbell (Philip Seymour Hoffman) as he tries to wreak havoc on Barry’s life. The late and great Hoffman, who appeared in five of Thomas Anderson’s films, makes the film worth seeing for his scenes alone.

Jon Brion has composed the soundtracks to all of Paul Thomas Anderson’s films and this one is as good as the rest. It is a beautifully constant presence, complimenting the script, unlike many soundtracks which distract and intentionally manipulate.

Despite not doing well at the box office when it was released 14 years ago, Anderson won his only Best Director award for it at Cannes in 2002. The film has since been recognised as one of his best. Punch Drunk Love is a brilliant film about human relationships as well as the beauty and anxiety of falling in love.

…and you can grab a pair of tickets for tomorrow’s London screening here.

Do you believe you can right your wrong doings? This is possibly the premise for the stylish debut feature film from Hungarian writer-director Balazs Juszt. THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY is set in the world of Roman Catholicism, from Massachusetts to Rome. Previously a director of music videos and commercials, Juszt was inspired by G.K.Chesterton’s novel of the same name, written in 1908, but set in a different context. He managed to cast the fittest priest and ex-nun possible… Ana Ularu and Francois Arnaud (Both from The Borgias).

Surrounded in his rectory by statues of the Virgin Mary, Father Smith (François Arnaud), between pushups, the parish, confession and omelettes, is full of self-doubt and erotic dreams. Clad in a combination of priest and rebel, Smith is an ex tough-kid and prison priest. He seems to be ready for anything but what he is currently doing and his world is suddenly enlivened by gangsters, desire (in the form of Ana Ularu) and arson. Despite appearing to want to get out of the catholic confines, Smith instead ends up in spiritual rehabilitation. (You’d think that if priests were being disciplined then it might be time to cut them loose!)

He makes it to the salubrious world of Vatican City – a state with its own rules. Charles (Jordi Mollà), the only person who knows how far Smith has come, exploits this knowledge, and leads him into some underground detective work, promising an audience with the pope and a personal pardon.

For this to seem a critical choice, we have to believe that Smith has done some pretty extreme things… So begins his search for Sunday, the pseudonym for the leader of the over-educated Latin-tagging anarchists.

This film is a rollercoaster ride full of twists that are for the most part unbelievable, as is the nature of this supernatural thriller. I feel forced to give you a cliché alert. Between the S&M, the crosses and the whores, it’s not hard to be three steps ahead of the story. Switching between dream and reality as well as skipping from 1942 wartime to the present, the film is a confusing tale, yet kudos must be given to the editors (Gyula Istvan Mozes & Danny Rafic) for bringing it all together.

Italian-born UK-based director Laura Spini’s debut film You Are Whole has just been released online after screening at a wide range of film festivals from Edinburgh to Palm Springs. It is a 16 minute well-formed, visually interesting and beautifully filmed story with a great cast.

American actor Fred Melamed, (Sy Ableman in the Coen Brother’s A Serious Man) is Norman Pugg.  Spini apparently wrote the script with Melamed in mind. Using his dulcet tones and convincingly polite manner, Pugg has a list of prospective clients to visit – elderly women intriguingly named Mrs Droogkloot, Mrs Stoneshell and Mrs Catberg – all living in the same small English seaside town.  He is an astral-evangelist trying to gently flog his book: Children of the Mountain of the Star, “a Swiss-army knife of the soul”. Pugg, with his large oscilloscope, gently ambles around, seemingly undetected in the quiet village, and unaware of a murderer he appears to be following, finally ending up as the naïve suspect. With an aesthetic similar to that captured in Martin Parr’s photographs of England (www.martinparr.com), Spini has created an intriguing dark comedy.

A recent graduate of the London Film School, Spini is a writer-director-producer and editor. For more information, have a look at her site: www.lauraspini.com

Looking for other films about travelling evangelists? Check out these two:

Elmer Gantry (1960) is director Richard Brooks’ contribution, nominated for an Oscar in 1961 and featuring Burt Lancaster in the role of Gantry, a possibly saved salesman. Mixing bible verses with hard-sell, the dubious but brilliant pitch is ‘Christ in Commerce’.

The fourth feature from French director Michel Leclerc is La vie très privée de Monsieur Sim (2015) (The very private life of Mr Sim) about a lonely hobby-less man, whose wife has just left, taking their daughter with her. Sim finds a job as a travelling tooth brush salesman, moving from his empty suburban house to his company car. As he tries to revolutionise French dental health, he makes the most of the long drives to visit people and places from his past, revolutionising his own life as he goes.

Do you ever feel ridiculous as you look around the bus to see all your fellow traveller’s heads bent down with eyes fixed on their small screens. I do. Or do you ever miss real communication with people instead of the endless texts? Yep.

Written, directed and produced by Michael Henry, MUTE, is what happens when this behaviour is taken to an extreme; when only the privileged are allowed to speak.  As the title suggests, the totalitarian town, a form of autocracy in which the state has total control over its citizens, is very quiet, except for the tapping of fingers on screens as people have virtual conversations. Forced into silence by the threat of punishment or death from the dominating Spectrum Business Group, people live in constant fear. Despite this, some of them are going underground to avoid this repression, remembering a time when it was possible to talk and rediscovering their voices.

A mixture of tragedy, sadness and humour, which at times had me thinking of David Brent at The Office, MUTE  provides an interesting perspective on the current problem of the monitoring of private electronic devices and who has the right to access them. I learnt today that unless we turn a specific switch to off, Google is listening to our conversations in order to ascertain the type of advertising they’ll send our way…

Michael Henry has managed to present these real issues in a poignant way.

Have a look at www.quandaryproductions.com for your copy of MUTE.

Based in Lincoln, and founded in 2009, Quandary Productions was founded by Michael Henry, with the goal to make short and feature films, as well as encouraging aspiring filmmakers/actors/musicians/comedians and artists to push forward with their own work.