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By ameliaforsbrook.

Taboo has always made for good swearing material. With dirty English tongues, we talk about intercourse, illegitimacy and naughty bits. Generally rather liberal in their attitudes to sex yet troubled by disease, the Dutch have made ‘Kanker’ their profanity of choice.

This sense of taboo and offensiveness is played on throughout Love Life as cancer shatters the pretty world fashioned by Stijn and Carmen, successful newlyweds who both work in advertising. The young couple have got where they are by appreciating and perpetuating the aesthetic. It is beauty that draws Stijn to Carmen. It is beauty that gives her the confidence to stay with him, despite his infidelity. Acting in opposition to this, is Carmen’s ‘ugly’ breast cancer. The confidence that binds them is revealed to be only a preserve of the beautiful and the promise to remain true for better or for worse is tested again and again.

We knew cancer was scary, but in this piece it is rendered truly horrific, in the filmic sense of the word. We see lingering shots of needles penetrating skin and hear doctors repeatedly stressing how deep Carmen’s veins are. Like a victim in a psychological thriller, Carmen fights against letting the cancer define and consume her. She hides her lost hair under her papers in the boardroom and buys an assortment of wigs so she can maintain control over her image.

But this is a story of not just Carmen’s fears, but also of Stijn’s. This is where the film’s strengths lie. Commendable in that it works to present a chain of suffering, Love Life delves into discussions of sexual anxiety once a lover becomes diagnosed with cancer. The way in which the film balances Stijn’s penchant for extramarital sex with Carmen’s undesirable sickly qualities may be uncomfortable, yet it shows the complications of relationships and they ways in which taboos map themselves out in culture. Love Life plays on the boundary between sexuality and horror with a surprising degree of sensitivity, expressing a husband’s anxiety without cheapening the work.

It’s difficult to know where to start with Leos Carax’s bizarre French Art Odyssey, a film which is as lively and inventive as it is wilfully obtuse.

The premise, if you can call it that, is essentially a ‘day in the life of’ story, following the mysterious Mssr. Oscar (Denis Lavant) as he his chauffeured through Paris in a Limo-cum-Dressing Room. Throughout his day, he has ‘appointments’ – sequences that see him don make-up, prosthetics and wigs to play different characters – an elderly beggar, a motion capture artist, a thugish hitman and, in what is probably the oddest scene, a mad Supermodel-kidnapping French Leprechaun… thing.

What you get out of Holy Motors will probably depend on your feelings on Art-house cinema. If you know your Jean Luc Goddard from your Jean Luc Picard then you may get a lot out of it, but it feels at times that the film’s ‘art’ qualities are manufactured – with almost deliberate pretension. That’s not to say it’s not worth seeing –  some sequences are astonishing, notably the motion capture scene which develops into a pseudo-CGI sex scene the likes of which you just don’t see in Hollywood cinema.

One thing that everyone should agree on is the incredible central performance from Lavant. He inhabits each character absolutely, transforming both physically and characteristically with each change. Even if you find Holy Motor’s journey through Paris arduous, he is impossible to ignore.

First off let me deal with the question that will be on both of your lips. No. This film does not actually contain any ducks. Believe me I’m crushed too. From the title alone I was expecting some sort of cutsey manga involving bigoted mallards who overcome their differences in order to defeat a wicked Swan who has somehow trapped a God in slot machine. No such luck here.

Instead The Foreign Duck, the Native Duck and God in a Coin Locker (from here-on-out referred to as Ducks) is a off-beat drama with real folk in it.  A freshman named Shiina (Gaku Hamada) moves into a new apartment. Small, quiet and nervous Shiina is alarmed and awed when he meets neighbour Kawasaki (Eita). Handsome and confident Kawasaki is everything Shiina isn’t . They bond over Shiina’s love of Bob Dylan, particularly the song ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ (which is sung a LOT throughout the film). As the two quickly become close the film spirals into a strange plot that involves stealing a Kojien dictionary for another nieghbour who turns out to be an old love rival of Kawasaki. The object of his affections having worked at a pet shop which in turn draws Shiina to visit and strike up his own relationship. Told through a bevy of increasingly dark flashbacks the film climaxes with a suitably odd situation.

Joking aside about lack of ducks aside (although one would have been nice), Ducks is an odd film to pin-point. It would fit quite comfortable in the raft of American independent films that came out mid-2000’s like Thumbsucker and Running With Scissors. The film is given to a few moments of “odd for odd’s sake”, Shiina almost constant singing of Bob Dylan seems less a character trait than an irritating quirk. The film’s main plot point – maybe macguffin? – is the robbery of a dictionary. An idea in itself which seems forced, as if the writer thought “how odd would that be?”. The whole film is filled with a knowingly off balanced humour which betrays a compelling story of anger and regret.

Kawasaki explains the reasons for all his decisions to us through flashbacks of a simpler time. Showing the story of his love triangle, it’s not a hugely original story but I found these sequences more dramatically satisfying. Perhaps the present day portions are intentionally off kilter to match Kawasaki’s own psyche or maybe that’s over analysis. Director Yoshihiro Nakamura has clearly enjoyed the cinema of Jim Jarmusch. The entire film has a distance and coldness to it. Accused too of odd for odd’s sake Jarmusch tends to favour atmosphere and characters over plot,  five minutes scenes can play out in silence but within that silence some sort of character change has become apparent. Ducks though makes the mistake of focusing on it’s crack-pot plot rather than characters. People flutter in and out of flashbacks and present day sequences to the point of not caring. Shiina should make a charming protagonist to follow but he’s really quite dull, as the film picks up speed toward the end revelations abound but none of them seem surprising or particularly interesting. In fact a reveal that the mystery neighbour lives in Room 101 led me to groan as opposed to a “oh, very good”.

If this review has seemed a little scatter shot I would like to apologies but the truth is I found it quite a hard film to dissect. Not through any indecipherable 2001: A Space Odyssey style story but on the grounds that I was so unaffected by it that it was just a dull watch. Not bad enough to get angry at and not good enough to gush over.
is the true essence of instantly forgettable.