We're all obscene. Everyone's obscene.

A Bigger Splash

(2015)

(SPOILERS) This remake (of 1969 film La Piscine) didn’t quite work for me, mostly due to a third act narrative lurch that feels disproportionate and (relatively) unmotivated. Combined with a cryptic quality that tends to the annoying rather than intriguing, A Bigger Splash lends itself to a bigger let-down than I had expected.

Mainly because, prior to that point, it had me fully engaged, rather than frustrated. The tensions between the isolated quartet on the idyllic Italian island of Pantelleria simmer nicely, as Harry (Ralph Fiennes), ex- of recuperating rock royalty Marianne (Tilda Swinton), gate-crashes her and toy boy Paul’s (Matthias Schoenaerts) the love nest. In tow is petulant daughter Penelope (Dakota Johhson), whose relationship with her recently discovered daddy is fairly unconventional.

But then, everything about the relationships here is fairly unconventional. Harry is revealed to have introduced Paul to Marianne, encouraging their relationship, but he now wishes to rekindle their flame, dismissing her dalliance with Paul as boring and lacking that one true spark. Penelope flagrantly flaunts herself towards the disinterested, uptight Paul, and the jealousies nursed by Harry towards studly Paul suggest the unspoken undercurrent of something more.

The dynamic during the first 90 minutes is intriguing in both what it does and doesn’t say. That said, the use of flashbacks to illustrate the history between Harry, Paul and Marianne is all but redundant (there’s little one would regard as essential there, and some lousy back projection in the stadium scenes to boot), and mischief-maker Penelope is used in such a wilfully perverse manner that she seems like a cynically-imposed plot motor rather than any sort of character in her own right. But Swinton and Fiennes bring such life to their characters that it’s impossible not to become engrossed.

Swinton, despite suggesting the very luvvie-ish conceit of giving her character struggling post-throat surgery (oohhhh, the thematic resonance!) is as indelible as an aging (not that you’d really notice) diva as she is in everything she does, while Fiennes, in a wholly gregarious, obnoxious, exhausting, but entirely self-aware (so much so, he breaks the fourth wall at one point) performance as a provocative rock producer keen on abandon in every sense (including some hilariously woeful dancing), but also very sharp, seizes a gift of a role – not typical of the kind of thing he’s offered – and bear hugs it.

Less successful is Schoenaerts, who too frequently passes from brooding into stolid and unpersuasive. The film needed a performance suggesting something more combustible lurking within, particularly to set to the stage for the final act, and the result is that we never quite believe it when the confrontation with Harry occurs and the latter ends up at the bottom of the pool. Prior to this, Harry’s advances have been decisively spurned by Marianne, while Paul has succumbed to Penelope’s coquettish come-ons, leading to a superb dinner table scene, post-coital conundrums, in which Paul becomes the most animated he has in the movie, and the penny drops for all concerned.

But the picture hasn’t earned itself a murder plotline. It doesn’t have that kind of canvas. Indeed, it feels like a cheat on the good character drama previously unfurled. Added to which, some hugely clodding elements are imposed that fail to mesh; the police chief sweeping the investigation under the rug because he’s a big fan; the ungainly attempt to make this topical by referencing the refugee crisis as a plot resolver; and the “reveal” that Penelope speaks fluent Italian and was 17 all along (I thought I was missing something; the more interesting reveal, which I wouldn’t dismiss even now, although Harry’s comments seemed to suggest otherwise, is that there’s no connection between “father” and “daughter”, and she was merely brought along to help facilitate his stealing back Marianne).

What does the elimination of Harry add to the picture consequently and thematically? Perhaps La Piscine made this scenario succeed more effectively. We are left with pregnant presentations of the remaining characters, Penelope’s veneer slipping (Johnson can play older no problem, but no one is buying her as 17) and the relationship between Marianne and Paul appears affirmed, showing their relief at having got away with it, whatever it was, as there’s no sense the Harry-sized hole in their lives has any real consequence. Which may reflect the characters on one level, but it doesn’t reflect the first three-quarters of A Bigger Splash.

Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.

Comments

You’re never the same man twice.

The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970)
(SPOILERS) Roger Moore playing dual roles? It sounds like an unintentionally amusing prospect for audiences accustomed to the actor’s “Raise an eyebrow” method of acting. Consequently, this post-Saint pre-Bond role (in which he does offer some notable eyebrow acting) is more of a curiosity for the quality of Sir Rog’s performance than the out-there premise that can’t quite sustain the picture’s running time. It is telling that the same story was adapted for an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents 15 years earlier, since the uncanny idea at its core feels like a much better fit for a trim 50 minute anthology series.

Basil Dearden directs, and co-adapted the screenplay from Anthony Armstrong’s novel The Strange Case of Mr Pelham. Dearden started out with Ealing, helming several Will Hay pictures and a segment of Dead of Night (one might imagine a shortened version of this tale ending up there, or in any of the portmanteau horrors that arrived in the year…

She writes Twilight fan fiction.

Vampire Academy (2014)
My willingness to give writer Daniel Waters some slack on the grounds of early glories sometimes pays off (Sex and Death 101) and sometimes, as with this messy and indistinct Young Adult adaptation, it doesn’t. If Vampire Academy plods along as a less than innovative smart-mouthed Buffy rip-off that might be because, if you added vampires to Heathers, you would probably get something not so far from the world of Joss Whedon. Unfortunately inspiration is a low ebb throughout, not helped any by tepid direction from Daniel’s sometimes-reliable brother Mark and a couple of hopelessly plankish leads who do their best to dampen down any wit that occasionally attempts to surface.

I can only presume there’s a never-ending pile of Young Adult fiction poised for big screen failure, all of it comprising multi-novel storylines just begging for a moment in the Sun. Every time an adaptation crashes and burns (and the odds are that they will) another one rises, hydra-like, hoping…

And you people, you’re all astronauts... on some kind of star trek.

Star Trek: First Contact (1996)
(SPOILERS) Star Trek: First Contact (also known as plain First Contact, back when “Star Trek” in the title wasn’t necessarily a selling point to the great unwashed. Or should that be great washed?) is probably about as good as a ST:TNG movie could be, in as much as it actively rejects much of what made the TV series what it is: starchy, placid, smug, platitudinous exchanges about how evolved humanity has become in the 25th century. Yeah, there’s a fair bit of that here too, but it mainly recognises that what made the series good, when it was good, was dense, time travel plotting and Borg. Mostly Borg. Until Borg became, like any golden egg, overcooked. Oh, and there’s that other hallowed element of the seven seasons, the goddam holodeck, but the less said about that the better. Well, maybe a paragraph. First Contact is a solid movie, though, overcoming its inherent limitations to make it, by some distance, the best of the four big screen outings with Pic…

I fear I’ve snapped his Gregory.

Twin Peaks 3.14: We are like the Dreamer.
(SPOILERS) In an episode as consistently dazzling as this, piling incident upon incident and joining the dots to the extent it does, you almost begin to wonder if Lynch is making too much sense. There’s a notable upping of the pace in We are like the Dreamer, such that Chad’s apprehension is almost incidental, and if the convergence at Jack Rabbit’s Tower didn’t bring the FBI in with it, their alignment with Dougie Coop can be only just around the corner.

So you made contact with the French operative?

Atomic Blonde (2017)
(SPOILERS) Well, I can certainly see why Focus Features opted to change the title from The Coldest City (the name of the graphic novel from which this is adapted). The Coldest City evokes a nourish, dour, subdued tone, a movie of slow-burn intrigue in the vein of John Le Carré. Atomic Blonde, to paraphrase its introductory text, is not that movie. As such, there’s something of a mismatch here, of the kind of Cold War tale it has its roots in and the furious, pop-soaked action spectacle director David Leitch is intent on turning it into. In the main, his choices succeed, but the result isn’t quite the clean getaway of his earlier (co-directed) John Wick.

You've already met Judy.

Twin Peaks 3.15: There’s some fear in letting go.
Just two episodes ago, Big Ed was nursing a solitary late night cup-a-soup and looking as if nothing could ever come right. And even here, it seems as if, having finally been finally let off the leash by Nadine, he’ll be reduced to a coffee and cyanide. So the reparatory hand on his shoulder, signalling Norma is ready to be there with him for evermore, seems too good to be true. I’m wary that Lynch and Frost won’t just pull the rug from under them, and how long Nadine, who thanks to Dr Amp shows no fear in letting go, will remain in her golden, shovelled-up state.

I particularly enjoyed Wendy Robie’s delivery of “But I’ve been a SELFISH BITCH to you all these years”, and several of the characters here – Nadine, Big Ed, Hawk – are proving much more effective in this second wind of the series than they ever did first time round. Michael Horse has a great face for stoic rumination now. But not a horse face.

Hawk’s phone conversations – I …

Don’t get tipsy. We can’t have you hiccoughing in the coffin.

The Avengers 4.2: The Murder Market
Tony Williamson’s first teleplay for the series picks up where Brian Clemens left off and then some, with murderous goings-on around marriage-making outfit Togetherness Inc (“Where there is always a happy ending”). Peter Graham Scott, in his first of four directing credits, sets out a winning stall where cartoonishness and stylisation are the order of the day. As is the essential absurdity of the English gentleman, with Steed’s impeccable credentials called on to illustrious effect not seen since The Charmers.

Cool. FaceTime without a phone.

Sense8 Season One
(SPOILERS) The Wachowskis do like their big ideas, but all too often their boldness and penchant for hyper-realism drowns out all subtlety. Their aspirations may rarely exceed their technical acumen, but regularly eclipse their narrative skills. And with J Michael Straczynski on board, whose Babylon 5 was marked out by ahead-of-its-time arc plotting but frequently abysmal dialogue, it’s no wonder Sense8 is as frequently clumsy in the telling as it is arresting in terms of spectacle.

I frequently had the feeling that Sense8 was playing into their less self-aware critical faculties, the ones that produced The Matrix Reloaded rave rather than the beautifully modulated Cloud Atlas. Sense8 looks more like the latter on paper: interconnecting lives and storylines meshing to imbue a greater meaning. The truth is, however, their series possesses the slenderest of central plotlines. It’s there for the siblings to hang a collection of cool ideas, set pieces, themes and fascina…

How dare you shush a shushing!

Home (2015)
(SPOILERS) Every so often, DreamWorks Animation offer a surprise, or they at least attempt to buck their usual formulaic approach. Mr. Peabody & Sherman surprised with how sharp and witty it was, fuelled by a plot that didn’t yield to dumbing down, and Rise of the Guardians, for all that its failings, at least tried something different. When such impulses lead to commercial disappointment, it only encourages the studio to play things ever safer, be that with more Madagascars or Croods. Somewhere in Home is the germ of a decent Douglas Adams knock-off, but it would rather settle on cheap morals, trite messages about friendship and acceptance and a succession of fluffy dance anthems: an exercise in thoroughly varnished vacuity.

Those dance anthems come (mostly) courtesy of songstress Rhianna, who also voices teenager Tip, and I’m sure Jeffrey Katzenberg fully appreciated what a box office boon it would be to have her on board. The effect is cumulatively nauseating though, l…

This is hell, and I’m going to give you the guided tour.

Lock Up (1989)
Sylvester Stallone’s career was entering its first period of significant decline when Lock Up was flushed out at the tail end of his most celebrated decade. His resumé since Rocky includes a fair selection of flops, but he was never far from a return to the ring. Added to that, his star power had been considerably buoyed by a second major franchise in the form of John Rambo. For a significant chunk of the ‘80s he was unbeatable, and it’s this cachet (and foreign receipts) that has enable him to maintained his wattage through subsequent periods of severe drought. Lock Up came the same year as another Stallone prison flick, Tango & Cash, in which the actor discovered both his funny guy chops (resulting in an ill-advised but mercifully brief lurch in to full-blown comedy) and made a late stage bid to get in on the buddy cop movie formula (perhaps ego prevented him trying it before?) The difference between the two is vast. One is a funny, over-the-top, self-consciously bo…

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

Search This Blog