The Armstrong Lie Movie Review

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Featuring: Lance Armstrong, Reed Albergotti, Betsy Andreu, Frankie Andreu, Michele Ferrari
Director: Alex Gibney
Writer/narrator: Alex Gibney
Movie website: sonyclassics.com/thearmstronglie/

2013-14 Lotterywest Perth Film Festival season dates:
Joondalup Pines: 11–16 March, 7.30pm

Reviewer: rolanstein
Verdict: Cycling fans and aficionados will relish this expansive treatment of the Armstrong scandal and its background, but casual viewers might struggle with the detail and somewhat chaotic presentation.

Review:
When Lance Armstrong announced a comeback to the Tour de France in 1989, four years after retirement, documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney covered the bid. Armstrong’s purpose was to convince the world that he raced clean and affirm his legendary status. Submitting to stringent drug testing throughout the race, he appeared to have achieved his objective, finishing a laudable third. However, with Armstrong’s former team-mates confessing to doping and providing compelling details about his involvement during the seven consecutive years he had won the event, the documentary was shelved. Following Armstrong’s eventual public admission of guilt on Oprah in 2013, Gibney revived the project, and The Armstrong Lie is the result.

It’s a strange creature, inevitably damning of Armstrong, not only for his cheating and lies but also his brutal exercise of power within and without the cycling world, yet retaining unsettling echoes from the early incarnation of the film, which appears to have been shaping as a pro-Armstrong puff-piece. For example, Gibney, who narrates throughout, sounds stirred with admiration when extolling Armstrong’s grit and determination in tackling a notoriously gruelling ascent during the 1989 Tour. It’s a curious inclusion, given Armstrong’s subsequent filmed admissions that he was not racing clean in 1989, or during the previous Tours.

Armstrong rationalises his doping on the basis that all pro cyclists during his Tour years were doing it, and that it was not possible to be competitive at elite levels if racing clean. He then extends the argument to claim that he could not be said to be cheating if the term is defined as gaining an unfair advantage over competitors. Gibney does not take a position as narrator on these contentions, which is a bit of an eyebrow-raiser.

Granted, some of the content of the documentary makes a nonsense of Armstrong’s line of argument. His wealth and power gave him exclusive access to the notorious Dr Michele Ferrari, for example, the world’s foremost expert in enhancing cycling performance through legal and illegal means and in avoiding detection of banned substances. In thus fencing off Ferrari for his sole benefit, and travelling by private jet to minimise post-racing drug testing opportunities, he gained a formidable advantage over his less financial, less powerfully connected rivals. Hardly a level playing field, then.

Cycling fans and aficionados will relish the detailed treatment of the Armstrong scandal and its background, as well as some terrific Tour footage. The film covers a lot of biographical territory, including Armstrong’s battle with testicular cancer, his cancer-funding charity work, excerpts from the Oprah confession, and interviews with ex-cycling team-mates and spouses, the disgraced but seemingly unrepentant Dr Ferrari, and other notables from the pro cycling world.

Casual viewers might struggle to stay with it all from go to whoa. The presentation of material is a little chaotic, partly because of the expansive biographical territory covered, the chronological flitting back and forth, and the number of players in this sorry rise-and-fall drama, but perhaps also this is another artifact of Gibney’s forced change in tack following Armstrong’s doping confession.

That in itself is one of the most interesting aspects of the film; here we have myth-maker turning myth-breaker and not without some discomfort it seems, as a composite picture emerges of a larger than life figure whose qualities as a cycling champion enabled him to beat impossible odds (with a little help from his “friends”), while rendering him a Machiavellian sociopath out of the sporting arena, driven to crush anyone who crossed him.

The takeaway impression, though, is that Armstrong’s greatest crime is not his doping, compulsive lying, abuse of power or lack of remorse, but his betrayal of those who believed in his myth, the filmmaker included. Which begs the fascinating question as to how to apportion the blame between Armstrong the man and the culture that spawned the myth.

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Violette Movie Review

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Featuring: Emmanuelle Devos, Sandrine Kiberlain, Catherine Hiegel, Olivier Gourmet, Olivier Py, Jacques Bonnaffé
Director: Martin Provost
Writer: Martin Provost

2013-14 Lotterywest Perth Film Festival season dates:
Somerville: 3–9 March, 7.30pm

Reviewer: rolanstein
Verdict: The intensity and length could be demanding for some, but the superb crafting and performances are more than ample reward.

Story:
Traces the personal and creative development of provocative French feminist writer Violette Leduc (Emmanuelle Devos), whose influences included Simone de Beauvoir (Sandrine Kiberlain) and Jean Genet (Jacques Bonnaffé).

Review:
Biopics about writers can be problematic as cinema. Shots of an author hunched over a typewriter while a well-known excerpt from a novel is read in voiceover, for instance, are clunky and worn, and do not make for exciting viewing. Such clichés are kept to a minimum in Voilette. Chapters are used as a narrative structural divider, each allotted to a figure significant in stages of Leduc’s literary and personal life, but other typically literary devices are avoided. The focus here is Leduc as character, and appropriately so, since she writes in blood, sweat and tears. That is, her work, while in novelistic form, was strongly autobiographical; her life fed her art and probably vice versa.

Indeed, writing is not so much an imaginative venture as a form of therapy for Leduc. In the beginning of the movie, her faux ‘husband’, homosexual writer Maurice Sachs (Olivier Py), urges her to write in the hope that she might find solace in self-expression, rather than burdening him with her many woes. The end of the relationship leaves her with writing as her only safety valve and marks the genesis of her literary career.

With her first manuscript completed, she stalks Simone de Beauvoir and eventually plucks up the courage to ask her to appraise her work. De Beauvoir is impressed with the raw honesty, courage and daring of Leduc’s work, and takes on a vital role as supporter and mentor. Aside from self-esteem and other gnawing personal issues, Leduc is struggling to make ends meet, her income as a black marketeer in food having dried up as the post-war economy recovered.

As their relationship develops it becomes ever more complex, clouded by Leduc’s sexual attraction to de Beauvoir and envy of her success. De Beauvoir, for her part, admires if not envies Voilette’s fearlessness in artistically mining extremities of personal experience no other female writer has dared incorporate in their work. There is a sense that Voilette is her literary alter ego. De Beauvoir’s primary motivation in maintaining the relationship is not so much friendship, it seems, as to push Voilette to risk exposing the very core of her being in realising her literary potential. De Beauvoir, perhaps, has too much to lose in terms of career status and reputation to court the sort of self-confessional controversy she encourages in Voilette’s work. Fascinating stuff, regardless of historical accuracy.

As are the portrayals of Voilette and de Beauvoir. Voilette is one of those unfortunates who yearns so desperately for love that she is unlovable (at one stage de Beauvoir remarks that it is not possible to be a friend of Voilette’s). Her grasping dependency and predisposition for self-pity and histrionics are unappealing qualities, but Emmanuelle Devos infuses in her tormented, damaged, self-sabotaging character a promise of something better in store that is intriguing. It’s an uncomfortable, sometimes irritating and often disturbing ride, but one we stay on out of a compelling curiosity as to where it will end up.

Sandrine Kiberlain is a convincing de Beauvoir, severe, tough-minded and unemotional, yet with an underlying humanity that surprises without compromising the credibility of the character. De Beauvoir’s mourning of her mother’s death is a case in point, a pivotal moment that prompts Violette to reappraise her troubled relationship with her own mother (wonderfully played by Catherine Hiegel).

Subversive gay writer and poet Jean Genet is depicted as a kindred spirit of Leduc’s, declaring her his “sister”. He’s predictably but enjoyably dissolute and eccentric.

The film is long and intense, meaty but lean – there is little fat that could have been trimmed. It is essential viewing for those interested in feminist French literature of this period. Others might find it a bit demanding, but it is beautifully filmed, written and performed, yielding more than ample reward for effort.

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Lygon Street: Si Parla Italiano Movie Review

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Director: Shannon Swan, Angelo Pricolo
Writer: Shannon Swan
Website: lygonstreetfilm.com.au/
Australian release date: Thursday, 6 March

Reviewer: rolanstein
Verdict: An enormously entertaining and eye-opening documentary that contrasts an Australia of not so long ago with today’s very different country.

Review:
This enthralling documentary traces the remarkable history of Lygon Street, Carlton, Melbourne’s famous – and infamous – Italian food and café strip, taking in its beginnings accommodating post-WW2 Italian migrants in cheap boarding houses, its emergence as a food and coffee epicentre that profoundly influenced the local and national cuisine, its changing demographic and eventual gentrification, and an array of other tasty titbits en route.

The filmmakers have settled on a straightforward, conventional structure, showcasing the fascinating content without risk of distraction. With Anthony LaPaglia as narrator, the history unfolds in chronological sequence, combining photographs, archival and current-day footage, and interviews with Lygon Street regulars and notables including storekeepers, café-owners and restaurateurs (in some cases on the original sites of their still thriving businesses).

Among a diverse selection of other interviewees is Graeme Blundell, who was one of the movers in the influential Carlton La Mama theatre movement in the 60s and 70s that attracted a bohemian and university crowd to the area, Joe Dolce (“Shaddup Your Face”), and a token “colourful personality” in the person of Snr Mick Gatto.

Most gripping, funny and illuminating, though, are the recollections and anecdotes of a group of now elderly men who were part of the earliest Italian community in Lygon Street, sipping wine as they reminisce and josh around a table. There’s a sense of spontaneity about their discussion; they appear oblivious to the presence of the cameras. It’s as if we’re privy to a private conversation.

The film is at its most riveting in its first half, which covers the post-war period when Australia “flung its doors open to anyone willing to come” (anyone ‘white’, more accurately). The welcome wasn’t warm, however. There is a funny/sad tale of grim conditions at an Italian migrant holding camp, the worst aspect being the food – spaghetti sprinkled with sugar! – which prompted mass rebellion. Once the authorities agreed to replace the Polish and Russian cooks with Italians, calm returned.

The accounts of rampant bigotry in the greater population towards the ‘New Australians’ are sobering. In an excruciating excerpt from a movie newsreel of the 50s, the camera focuses on bemused Italians alighting from a packed ship, while a voiceover warns of the folly of allowing in too many non-Anglo types. It’s hard to imagine that the media only as far back as the 50s and 60s was proffering attitudes like this. Or is it? We’ve come a long way without getting anywhere in some respects.

The Australian-Greek community and the Perth Re family may have something to say about claims that the Italians of Lygon Street alone changed the monocultural-cuisine of Australia, introducing now intrinsic elements such as espresso machines and ‘real’ coffee, olive oil, genuine Italian pasta and pizzas. Perth had its own southern European food importer pioneers that pre-dated by decades the Lygon Street Italians. The Re and Kakulas families began importing coffee beans, olive oil, olives and continental foodstuffs back in the 30s.

But what’s an extravagant and under-researched claim here and there? There’s no doubting that Lygon Street transformed Melburnian palates, and had more than a ripple effect on the rest of the country. Or that Italian-style cuisine is now one of the most dominant in Australia.

This is a charming, enormously entertaining and eye-opening documentary that focuses on one migrant group and its influence on the national cuisine. However, food is but a measure in the larger agenda of contrasting an Australia of not so long ago with the very different place we live in today. There is enduring value in that.

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Oh Boy Movie Review

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Featuring: Tom Schilling, Katharina Schüttler, Marc Hosemann, Justus von Dohnányi
Director: Jan Ole Gerster
Writer: Jan Ole Gerster

2013-14 Lotterywest Perth Film Festival season dates:
Somerville: 17–23 Feb, 8pm
Joondalup Pines: 24 Feb–2 March, 8pm

Reviewer: rolanstein
Verdict: Promises more than it delivers, but engaging nevertheless.

Story:
Berlin-based law school dropout Nico’s (Tom Schilling) day has started badly, with his girlfriend dumping him, necessitating him leasing a new apartment. Any hope of his new residence providing a comfortable haven is dashed when a troubled tenant knocks on the door with a welcome-to-the-neighbourhood offering of home-made meatballs that turn out to be inedible, then proceeds to break down in a blubbering mess. Retreating to the streets and cafes, Nico fails even to find a decent coffee, which he can barely afford anyway after an ATM swallows his credit card and his father stops his allowance. A chance encounter with a girl he has not seem since school promises a change of fortune, but the day goes from bad to worse, culminating in a jolting event that renders the earlier frustrations trivial.

Review:
Filmed in black and white in Berlin and set against a jazzy soundscape, this directorial debut from Jan Ole Gerster is big on mood, but like lead character Nico, unfocused and meandering, and somewhat unsure of its raison d’être.

It is engaging nevertheless, due mostly to the performance of Tom Schilling, who invests Nico with an ennui and rudderlessness with which disaffected and marginalised youth (past and present) will readily identify. Nico is not an angry young man, or a rebel with or without a cause; he just doesn’t feel a sense of belonging or purpose, and refuses – or perhaps is unable – to play the fitting-in game.

Hence, he seems vaguely at odds with his surroundings and less vaguely with the wacko people he encounters during the 24 hours the film covers. An officious psychologist, for example, plays a nasty game of cat and mouse when interviewing him about his suspended driving license, before deciding not to renew it. Then when he moves into his new apartment after being thrown out by his girlfriend, he is visited by a troubled neighbour who welcomes him with some ghastly home-made meatballs, before breaking down in a blubbering mess and unburdening himself of his very personal woes. A chance meeting with an old classmate (Katharina Schüttler) leads to a romantic dalliance that falls in a miserable heap when she pays out on him for making fun of her as an overweight schoolgirl. Nico responds to these and other oddballs by taking on their weirdness as his own, and with each such encounter his sense of alienation is reiterated.

The tone is light for the most part, but this is not laugh-aloud comedy unless youth in mild existential crisis does it for you. Probably the funniest scene of the film, albeit wryly and excruciatingly so, is an avant-garde theatrical performance sent up with obvious relish, along with the pretentious and ludicrously defensive director.

Remarkably for a German film, there is one scene in which an actor (ie: an actor playing an actor) light-heartedly references the Reich, observing that the Nazi uniform his role requires him to wear would be stylish without the swastika. The Nazi thread is picked up towards the end of the movie, this time in a far more serious mode that carries through to a conclusion which confronts Nico with some grim realities of his city’s past, and jolts him out of his existential malaise.

Ultimately, Oh Boy promises more than it delivers, but is worth a look if, like me, you find some undeniable doomy romantic appeal in a black-and-white excursion through Berlin’s cafe, bar and fringe theatre scenes in the company of a lost young Berliner stuck in nowhere land. Oh, and towards the end there’s an arresting aerial shot of early morning Berlin in which the lighting is perfect, reminiscent for a moment of those wonderful old classics in which the potential of the black and white medium was so beautifully realised.

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Nebraska Movie Review

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Featuring: Bruce Dern, June Squibb, Will Forte, Bob Odenkirk, Stacy Keach, Devin Ratray, Tim Driscoll
Director: Alexander Payne
Writer: Bob Nelson
Movie website: www.paramount.com/movies/nebraska
Australian release date: Thursday, 20 Feb

Reviewers’ verdicts:
rolanstein: A beautifully written and performed dramedy, wryly funny in its bleak assessment of America’s small-town mid-west.
Karen: Beautifully rendered shmaltz.

Story:
Old-timer of few words Woody (Bruce Dern) receives a marketing letter with a million dollar prize enticement, which he misinterprets as notification that he has won. His family cannot convince him otherwise or dissuade him from the folly of travelling from their home in Montana to the marketing company’s office in Lincoln, Nebraska to pick up his prize. Son Dave (Will Forte) finally offers to drive him, which opens the opportunity for a family reunion en route in the small town in which Woody and his wife (June Squibb) grew up. Word soon gets around among the long-term locals that Woody has returned a millionaire, which has a catalytic effect in exposing the duplicity and greed lurking beneath the sleepy and seemingly benign facade of the town. In coming up against his past, Woody’s sons discover surprising sides to their taciturn father.

Review 1: (rolanstein)
Like the octogenarian lead character, Woody, and the decaying small town he hails from, this deceptively modest and frequently chuckleworthy little film has a lot more going on beneath its surface than meets the eye.

The always wonderful Bruce Dern thrives in his role as Woody, playing off the sparest of dialogue. When he speaks at all, it’s in gruff monosyllables wherever possible, giving nothing away. He’s a flawed character – an inveterate boozer and not much of a father or provider going by the constantly withering (and for the viewer, funny) assessments of his sharp-tongued and apparently long-suffering wife.

In refusing to budge from his stubborn and obviously mistaken belief that he has won a million bucks, he exasperates his family, two members of which advocate putting him to pasture in a nursing home. Only the protests of kindly son Dave save him.

While Woody doesn’t seem to have much going for him as a character, it’s a plus that he is not materialistically driven. When asked by his family what he would buy with a million dollars, the best he can come up with is a new pickup truck and a compressor to replace one he lent decades ago that was never returned. And against the odds, Dern makes him fascinating, vulnerable, endearing. For all his shortfalls, near-dementia and paucity of expression, he comes across as a tough but ailing old bird without a malevolent bone in his body, whose still waters run deeper than, well, a pothole in a country road.

Hidden aspects to his character are gradually revealed through the interactions of his wife and sons with home town locals from his past, the occasional illuminating grunt from Woody, and a superbly managed scene of great pathos in which barely articulated memories of some painfully harsh parenting are triggered during a visit to his now-derelict childhood home. These are unusual modes of characterisation, brilliantly executed.

Parallel with the unlayering of Woody’s character, but to starkly contrasting effect, the benignly hokey – some might say ‘quaint’ – façade of his sleepy, fading mid-west home town and its inhabitants is stripped away by degrees to reveal a dark side. As with any community, there are vipers nesting in its midst. Never the angel without the devil.

While Dern makes the movie his own, he is well supported. June Squibb has a lot of fun playing Woody’s wife. She’s a bit of a stock character of comedy: the shockingly irreverent and perpetually negative elderly matron who says the unsayable (even – actually, especially – about her deceased relatives as she walks among their headstones). With Squibb’s treatment, she’s a hoot.

As are Woody’s unemployed fat slob 30-something nephews (played by Devin Ratray and Tim Driscoll, who you’d swear were brothers, if not twins). These oafs lounge around in dull silence watching TV until the subject of cars and time taken to drive from place A to place B comes up, whereupon they perk up, managing a hoonish boast or two before falling back into their somnolent state.

Sad-eyed Will Forte is terrific as Dave, who has inherited his father’s best (albeit deeply submerged) qualities of kindness and generosity – a case of generational evolution, if ever there was one. It is fittingly feel-good that Woody is the beneficiary of Dave’s compassionate nature.

The movie is filmed in black and white, which lends mood and enhances the anachronistic feel of the small mid-west town in which most of the action takes place. However, while the quality of the cinematography is never in doubt (notably, some strikingly elegant scene composition), it is debatable whether the black and white medium, which is best suited to interior settings, is fully exploited. I say not. The exterior shots of the Nebraskan countryside, in particular – and there are quite a few of them – seem a little the poorer for the absence of colour.

This is small bickies though. Otherwise, there is not much to fault about this hugely enjoyable flick. It’s a delight with bite. Highly recommended.

Review 2: (Karen)
Oh dear. Here’s another film that I really wanted to love, and couldn’t. What I thought was going to be a beautiful, character-driven, muted hero’s journey turned out to be a beautiful, somewhat snide, character-driven hero’s journey that reinforced outdated materialist values and ideas of manliness.

Let me unpack that. Nebraska is beautiful, there’s no doubt. The landscape of middle America is rendered in washy silvers and greys that perfectly evoke the frozen-in-time quality of the community our hero finds himself transported to. The exteriors, interiors and characters are exemplars of the American gothic: austere, simple, and kind of creepy.

“Transported to” is not quite right. David Grant (Will Forte) makes a conscious decision to drive his father Woody (Bruce Dern) from their home in Montana to Nebraska to claim a spurious million-dollar sweepstakes prize. He, his awful mother Kate (June Squibb) and his brother Ross (Bob Odenkirk) all know that the marketing letter Woody has received from a generic publishing company is not going to deliver the promised million, but David is in a particular dead end: his girlfriend has departed, citing his indecision about their relationship, and his career in home-theatre audio sales is in the doldrums. Have you heard of “resting bitch-face”? Will Forte has resting sad-sack – or he’s a damn good actor. He looks defeated by life, but he’s both ready to make a change, and willing to put in an effort with his dad, who is doggedly striking out on foot daily – having relinquished his driver’s licence long ago because of his Alzheimer’s disease – to claim the money.

For David, the journey is a chance to honour his father’s autonomy, and maybe connect with him for the first time while chasing the dream. At this stage I was still quite hopeful about the film. It was clear that the brothers’ relationship with Woody had been far from ideal, and I imagined that the journey would enable a reconciliation of sorts. And it does, sort of. But the reconciliation and denouement are so sentimental and so mired in traditional materialistic values that I was sort of revolted!

Of course, along the way David acquires new knowledge, specifically about his father, which forces him to reevaluate what it means to be a man. The plot devices around this are quite amusing, but the folks encountered who deliver the knowledge are little more than cartoon characters held up for derision. It’s certainly easy to laugh at the piggish cousins whose only conversation is how long David took to drive from his place to theirs, and there’s lots of nonsense about manliness here around what kind of car a man might drive as well as how fast he drives it. It’s less easy to laugh about Kate, whose crudeness seems to surprise even her son, and which is in the service of humour only. Surely she could have been loquacious – in the service of exposition – without being so oddly repulsive. (Although there are a couple of scenes where Kate shines, with, variously, tenderness, shrewdness and loyalty.) And I was massively disappointed when at a pivotal moment, David appears to have discovered his mature manhood, but second-guesses himself with an action that can only perpetuate stupid ideas about how a man ought to behave. I wish I could be more explicit here.

Beautiful performances and beautiful cinematography are enhanced by a music score that adds a melancholy, elegiac tone that is completely at odds with a representation of the less admirable aspects of American life.

Those beautiful performances are worth watching: Bruce Dern as the damaged, dogged Korean War vet; Will Forte as the puzzled Everyman doing his best to be a good person; and the ensemble supporters, none of whom strikes a bum note.

But at the core, this is just more of the same old American manure.

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