Parallel – using sci-fi for a powerful take on grief

Described generally as a ‘science fiction thriller’, this year’s Parallel – a remake of the 2019 Chinese film Parallel Forest, and re-written by brothers Aldis and Edwin Hodge, together with Jonathon Keasey – is a seriously good film that seems to have picked up less attention than it should have when it appeared in UK cinemas earlier this year.

I was looking for something to watch this evening after work and noticed that it is currently available on Sky. My memory was jogged to remembering a trailer seen on cinema visits earlier this year. That trailer doesn't do it justice.

 

Vanessa is mourning the loss of her and her husband Alex’s son, Obi, who died a year previously in a car crash that was not the fault of either of them, though she seems confused over who was driving at the time.

 

They live in a very nice home, with Martel, Alex’s brother, effectively surrounded by forest and with a nearby lake and increasingly strange things start to happen. The men’s father had apparently thought the area ‘strange’, yet the film opens with only Vanessa seeming to experience such.

 

Although the couple have had counselling, she is withdrawing further and further from life. And then she finds herself facing herself in the forest, in a parallel universe.

 

It’s subtle and low-key for cinema sci-fi these days. In some ways very simply told, with no (discernible) special effects – and kudos to director Kourosh Ahari for that. But while it’s ‘sci-fi’, its core themes are loss, grief, and trauma, and they are very well and sensitively dealt with.

 

Very good cinematography from Pip White, and an equally good soundtrack from Josh Atchley and Denise Santos.

 

It is a three-hander, and the Hodge brothers play both the male roles (very well). But much here relies on Vanessa, and Danielle Deadwyler is excellent in the role, really catching the complexity of the emotional experience of loss, grief and guilt.

And the ending packs a surprising punch.

As I said – it's on Sky now and very much worth watching.

The Red Turtle – a confusing piece of fine animation

I was made aware of The Red Turtle, Michaël Dudok de Wit’s 2016’s award-winning animation co-production with Studio Ghibli and others, when binge watching Mark Kermode and Steve Mayo’s YouTube film reviews last week.

The general tone was one of a rave – and I instantly put it on my ‘must see’ list.

A man is washed up on an uninhabited island. He makes three attempts to escape on hand-built rafts, but at every turn, is thwarted by a giant turtle.

After the third attempt, he seeks revenge on the turtle, with unexpected results.

Well. I’ve seen it now and I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, it’s beautifully animated, but it took me two thirds in to it to really have a ‘feel’ for this fairytale. And that is what it is – a fairytale.

There are many things that work: as said, the animation itself is beautiful; 2D and 3D complimenting each other perfectly. The score from Laurent Perez del Mar is very good. It is essentially a non-verbal film, so no voice talent required.

Is it an eco-film, for instance? Not entirely sure.

I may have to watch it again, because I’m really not quite sure what to make of it, and yet ...

Kensuke's Kingdom is pitch-perfect film-making

Initially premiered at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in June 2023, before being seen at last October’s BFI London Film Festival, this film based on Michael Morpurgo’s children’s book – originally published in 1999 – has now made its way to a more general release.

It tells the story of Michael, an 11-year-old boy, who sets off with his parents and older sister on a sailing trip around the world, after Mum and Dad both lose their jobs.

But Michael is less than happy – not least as his beloved sheepdog, Stella, has had to stay at home, or so we are initially led to believe.

One night, as a storm rages, Michael and Stella are washed overboard, only to wake on an apparently uninhabited desert island.

However, they find help – albeit reluctantly – from Kensuke, an elderly Japanese man who was washed up on the island decades before. Gradually their relationship evolves, as Michael learns to respect and value the environment he finds himself in, together with its wildlife, which Kensuke helps to protect. And as we discover, there are varied reasons it needs protection.

It's an excellent screenplay by Frank Cottrell-Boyce, who has changed aspects of the original novel, but which certainly make sense here. For instance, in the book, the two central protagonists learn to speak each other’s language. Here, they learn only each other’s name, with communication being based more on emotion and expression.

There is also a love of art that they share and helped them learn about each other.

And their art allows the animators to be incredibly creative, from Michael’s log-book drawings coming to life on an origami boat that moves around a map of the world, to an extraordinary sequence of Japanese-inspired ink works that give the audience an insight into Kensuke’s own past.

The animation is superb – hand-drawn and combining 2D and 3D styles, which hark back to early Disney: think the 1937 Snow White and Bambi, both with lush painted backgrounds and 2D characters. As touched on above, here, there is a melding of different approaches throughout and including some simply beautiful vistas.

Directed by Neil Boyle and Kirk Hendry and with a super score by Stuart Hancock, it comes in at a very pleasingly trim 85 minutes.

In terms of the voice cast, Sally Hawkins is Mum, Cillian Murphy is Dad, and Raffey Cassidy is Becky, Michael’s sister.

But the film rests firmly with Michael and Kensuke, and Aaron MacGregor and Ken Watanabe get it absolutely nailed on.

Kensuke’s Kingdom is a beautiful film – both to look at and in terms of its humanity, compassion, exploration of what family/community means, and its advocacy for the natural world.

Very, very much worth seeing.

Despicable Me 4 – thoroughly entertaining and silly fun

Gru and the crew are back again for a fourth Despicable Me outing – the sixth, in the case of Gru himself and the Minions – and it is as enjoyably silly as ever.
 
Set nine months after the last film, with the family having been joined by Gru Jnr, danger sets in when Gru helps the Anti-Villain League (AVL) capture a rival from his school days at the Lycée Pas Bon (roughly translated from the French as ‘Not Good High School’), Maxime Le Mal (‘Maxime the Evil’).
 
But when Le Mal escapes, having crossed himself with a cockroach to gain super powers, he vows revenge, and the AVL sends Gru and family to a safe house.
 
As I said, blessedly silly fun and does the ‘peril’ at the end really well. Written by Mike White and Ken Daurio, and directed by Chris Renaud – who also gives voice to Principal Übelschlecht of the Lycée Pas Bon.
 
While it’s a film aimed squarely at children and families, there is also plenty for adults without kids to enjoy – not least in trying to keep track of all the Easter eggs: that’s references to other works, for any non-geeks reading this.
 
Here, we’ve got Incredibles, Men in Black, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Bram Stoker’s Dracula – the last one being a particularly geeky one I’m quite proud of spotting – among (I’m sure) many more.
 
As ever, the voice cast is great, the look of it is great and the humour descends delightfully into the realms of the juvenile. Though it’s interesting that the team are finding new way of doing this instead of just concentrating on laughing about farts.
 
It also manages a really funny and unexpected take on the Minions’ usual ‘banana!’ schtick.
 
I was going to say that there’s nothing subtle about this, but the Easter eggs are. Otherwise, just great fun and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. 

Hello, Dolly sees Imelda Staunton rocking it again

When Dolly Gallagher Levi finally puts her mourning black into a wardrobe and prepares to return to life, the matchmaker and all-round, self-declared meddler sets in motion the events that first appeared in various 19^th-century works and then in Thornton Wilder’s 1938 play The Merchant of Yonkers (later rechristened The Matchmaker for a revised production at the Edinburgh Festival in 1954) and then as a musical from composer and lyricist Jerry Herman, with a book by Michael Stewart.

As the show opens, Dolly is currently employed to look to find a new wife for Horace Vandergelder, a well-known “half-a-millionaire” who runs a horse feed business, but she intends to marry him herself, while also overcoming Vandergelder’s objections to his hysterical niece wedding an artist.

Add into the mix Cornelius Hackl and Barnaby Tucker, Vandergelder’s two woefully under-paid and over-worked clerks, who long for a day off and an adventure, together with New York milliner and widow Irene Molloy and her assistant, Minnie Fay,

This new production at the London Palladium has been long in the making, having been disrupted by COVID. Minor warning here – this review is going to involve more personal comment than I usually do – I hope it will be clear why.

I’m not even sure I’d seen the film at that stage, but in the mid 1980s, I was cast as Minnie Fay in what turned out to be a very expensive and ambitious – but very good – Morecambe Warblers’ production of the show. I loved it and apparently – thanks to a VERY good choreographer – I looked like I’d been dancing all my life!

I bought the cassette of the original, iconic Broadway production, with Carol Channing as Dolly. A few years ago, I shelled out for a very good vinyl copy of that soundtrack – which might convey something of how much this show means to me on a personal level.

When this production was originally touted, with Imelda Staunton in the lead, my reaction to the late Other Half was simply: ‘We’re going!’ Don’t get me wrong – there was no objection.

He’d seen and massively appreciated her in Gypsy and Follies.

But … the pandemic. When it was announced, late last year, that this would be going ahead, I had become, as Dolly and Irene, a widow. Like both of them, I am trying to work my way into creating a new life for myself.

I joined an email list just so that I could get priority booking (argh!). When booking opened, I spent a frankly daft sum of money on a ticket (I’m fortunate enough to be able to do that right now in my life).

Over the last week, on social media, I have even been doing the ‘x sleeps until’ – which I have never done before about anything. So I suspect that that is a big part of why, as the majority of the Palladium audience went wild this afternoon, I felt slightly underwhelmed. My expectations were far too high.

Director Dominic Cooke has made a point of emphasising the widowhood of both Dolly and Irene as serious and genuinely poignant – and that Herman did actually create shows about serious issues (any of us who are aware of Mack and Mabel know this). Since Hello, Dolly! is set at the turn of the 19/20th century, then we are also dealing with misogynistic attitudes and massive restrictions on women’s activities. Dolly and Irene work against those.

I think that my primary problem here is that Cooke’s decisions on giving it some genuine emotional heft are to be applauded, but it feels at odds with the level of slapstick farce so often evident. For me, it jarred. To be absolutely clear, the overwhelming majority of the audience was cheering and applauding throughout, at incredibly levels.

However, there were – even for me – serious goose-bumpy, fabulous moments: not least the opening of the overture, When the Parade Passes By and, of course, the title number, which does not disappoint.

But there is a question that arises as to how one melds the overt campness of the history of this fabulous show, with a more contemporary approach. Lest you don’t know – Danny La Rue played the lead in one British revival!

Just to note – Staunton is simply sensational as Dolly. And in one way, that’s part of the problem – because her character just has so much more nuance than any other.

I'd also add that Andy Nyman is very good as the utterly ridiculous Vandergelder, as is Jenna Russell as Irene. And they add to the nuance of Cooke's approach. The problem is, many of the other cast have been (presumably) directed in a very different way – un-nuanced slapstick – that feels like a massive conflict in approaches.

Oh – and the band is superb.

Hello, Dolly! is at the London Palladium until 14 September 2024

 

Crossing – a class piece of queer cinema

Lia, a retired teacher in a small Georgian town near the border with Turkey, is starting a search for her estranged niece, Tekla, who is trans. She had promised her dying sister that she would find her and bring her home.

Teaming up with Achi, the layabout brother of a former pupil, who claims to know that Tekla has gone to Istanbul and to have her address there, they cross the border into Turkey and take a coach along the Black Sea to that historic city.

 

There, they face dead end after dead end, but then they meet Evrim, a trans woman with a law degree who volunteers for trans rights group Pembe Hayat (Pink Life, a real organisation, founded in 2006), who agrees to help them.

 

The film also shows us children trying to eke out a living on the streets – in particular, Izzet and Gülpembe (Bünyamin Değer and Sema Sultan Elekci), with Evrim having to use her legal training when the former is arrested for alleged pickpocketing. This is important, in going against an idea that trans (and LGBT+ generally) activists are only interested in a single issue.

 

Crossing is Georgian-Swedish writer and director Levan Akin’s fourth feature. It premiered at this year’s Berlinale in February, winning the Teddy jury prize for best queer film in Berlin, before going on to pick up further awards at further festivals.

 

It’s very much character driven and, although it’s comfortably under two hours, it still takes the time to do this without rushing.

 

The title might seem obviously related to being trans, but it’s also about other forms of transition – and very much of growth. Lia and Achi both grow in ways that are unexpected – and delicately developed. It’s also worth noting that Akin’s portrayal of the small trans-female community in Istanbul is empathic, dignified and far from simplistic.

 

The film is beautifully shot by cinematographer Lisabi Fridell, showing us an Istanbul that pulses with life – largely working-class – including cats.

 

But ultimately, the success of the film rests on the performances of the three main characters.

 

Lucas Kankava is excellent as Achi: on the one hand, street wise, while on the other, naïve, and desperately lacking affection in his life.

 

Deniz Dumanlı as Evrim is also excellent, giving the character real complexity: full of positivity and without any sense of victimhood.

 

But at the heart of this is Lia, and Mzia Arabuli gives a performance that manages to be both incredibly understated and yet an absolute powerhouse of emotion.

All in all, a really good film – and definitely one that goes straight into the lists of important LGBT+ movies.

Supernova – an incredibly beautiful and sensitive film about dementia

Tusker and Sam have been a couple for years and are taking a campervan trip to the Lake District to revisit some of their favourite places and reconnect with family and friends.

After that, Sam – a classical pianist – is to give a recital that he insists will be his last, as he is determined to care for his partner, who has been diagnosed with early onset dementia.

But Tusker – a writer himself – has other plans which, as they head north, he hasn’t shared.

Written and directed by Harry Macqueen, this is an incredibly sensitive exploration of a couple facing not simply mortality, but the incremental nature of the mortality that dementia inflicts on people.

It is never mawkishly sentimental, but is intensely moving – not least in being an unflinching look at a relationship of length, with the joking and bickering as well as the tenderness.

The cinematography from Dick Pope is beautiful. I was born just to the east of the Lake District: my family moved to Bolton when I was three, but we visited regularly for a substantial part of my childhood and youth, staying with family friends who ran a corner shop in Tebay or those who had a fell farm not far away.

The latter stays in particular were some of the happiest days of that part of my life. Though I haven’t been back for many years, it all felt instantly familiar, and the lingering shots of the nature of the area are simply gorgeous.

While there’s a section of the film where there is a – very good – supporting cast, this is essentially a two-hander. And Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci as Sam and Tusker respectively are both on absolutely superb form. Enormous subtlety and nuance from the pair.

The film originally premiered at the 68th San Sebastián International Film Festival in 2020, and then the following year in US and UK cinemas, Supernova is now streaming on Netflix.

It’s a difficult subject, but Macqueen and team have made a very, very fine film – and ultimately, an uplifting and grown-up one about love. Make sure you have tissues close by.