Carol at 9pm

We did several posts of Todd Haynes' CAROL here in recent years, as per labels, nice to see it is on Channel4 here in the UK tonight. My friend Martin would say "I have the blu-ray so I can watch it anytime", but it means it will be seen by a bigger audience here than on its initial rather limited release in 2015.

It has been announced that Cate will play Margo Channing in a stage production of ALL ABOUT EVE here in London next year .... lets hope its from Mankiewicz's original and not a re-working of the horrendous '70s musical APPLAUSE ! 

Carol goes to Brooklyn

How nice to have another look at BROOKLYN last night - four months or so since I saw it in the cinema - and CAROL is lined up for a second view tonight. Now that Award Season is behind us for another year, one can appreciate them more fully. Both movies will endure and become more popular, now that they are not swamped by the big hitters anymore. Both have quite a bit in common: both from respected novels, and set in the early Fifties - and both featuring those department store girls: Eilis from Enniscorthy in Ireland, and Therese working in the toy department over Christmas, when Carol Aird walks in and they look at each other .... perfect moments and perfect endings too. And Emory Cohen is my discovery of last year, as Eilis's Italian-American boyfriend. Saoirse, Cate and Rooney are all spell-binding of course. 

Finally, Carol

Well, they kept us waiting long enough for it. I first posted this photo here (below) from the film last year in May 2014 (see Blanchett, Highsmith labels). CAROL did not appear for last year's Oscar race, and finally previewed at Cannes this year back in May, when Rooney Mara won best actress. Then it was decreed that we should wait six months more to see it as it would not open until this year's Award Season, as all the other Oscar-bait movies appear one by one juggling for our attention - BROOKLYN and THE LADY IN THE VAN beat CAROL into the cinemas - as per reviews below. Do movies usually take a year and half to surface .... ? Blanchett has been involved with several other projects since.

CAROL is finally here and certainly worth the wait - if one knows and admires the work of Highsmith and director Todd Haynes, here mining the same seam as he did for FAR FROM HEAVEN. Like BROOKLYN we are back in 1950s New York as Therese works in a department store before Christmas and becomes bedazzled (as who wouldn't) by the vision of Cate Blanchett as Carol Aird, a married woman facing a divorce, in that fur coat. The women are immediately attracted to each other, and Carol "forgets" her gloves - leading to a further meeting .... 

The story, from Highsmith's acclaimed novel "The Price of Salt" later called "Carol", follows their developing passion and society's attempts to thwart it - namely Carol's husband Herge (Kyle Chandler) who is seeking sole custody of their child and who hires that detective to follow Carol and Therese on their car trip west. Therese's boyfriend also disapproves of her "crush" on Carol .... This is all marvellously worked out to the very satisfying, heart-stoppingly emotional ending. Of course it all looks marvelous, as in BROOKLYN the 1950s New York scene is perfectly realised as we linger over the clothes, and every marvellous moment. In keeping with the period, they smoke a lot too. Its a road movie as well as they travel on stopping at motels and hotels, great automobiles too. One cannot but think of Grace Kelly and elfin Audrey Hepburn playing these roles back in that early 1950s timeframe .... Rooney is a startling hybrid of early 50s Jean Simmons and Audrey. 
Production design (think Edward Hopper) is marvellous as is the varied soundtrack and costumes by Sandy Powell, and script by Phyllis Nagy. The varied producers include Blanchett, the Weinsteins and Stephen Wooley and our Film4. 

Cate and the mesmersing Rooney (new to me) should both be Oscar-nominated - but both as Best Actress? Rooney is hardly Supporting as we see everything through her eyes, as in the novel - the two leads seem evenly matched to me, as we watch them at that first meeting at the store, and then at lunch and on their car trip and those intimate scenes. They will have stiff competition however as Saoirse Ronan and Dame Maggie Smith should also be nominated. (As the "Daily Telegraph" says: "Blanchett does career-best work in the generally wonderful Carol, but having won two years ago for Blue Jasmine (and in 2004 for The Aviator), a third so soon – putting her on a par with Meryl Streep and Ingrid Bergman – at the moment seems statistically improbable").

I would like to see the film as a Best Film contender as well and a win for Haynes as director - I must go back to his VELVET GOLDMINE.. CAROL has got great reviews - like this one by Tim Robey from "The Daily Telegraph" -  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/film/carol/review/
        - and is already on several Year's Best lists: number 3 in "Sight and Sound" and number 4 in "Uncut" magazine. 

So, will CAROL appeal to the mainstream as opposed to gays, hipsters and fashionistas who will be in raptures over it? I suppose there's always a market for girl-on-girl stuff, but there is nothing salacious here. Is it a new BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN? - but with a happier ending. Like BBM, this film turns cliché on its head and is a swoonsome period/genre film that shows how falling in love can lead to finding joy in difficult circumstances. As such, it was deeply satisfying to this viewer. BRIEF ENCOUNTER is a reference point too, as the lovers' climactic meeting is interrupted by a casual friend ....

Shopgirls in 1950s New York ...

Rooney Mara in CAROL by Todd Haynes from Patricia Highsmith - and Saoirse Ronan in BROOKLYN from the Colm Toibin novel, finally opening here this week .... can't wait to see them. 

Coming soon: Carol

We have posted before about CAROL, the new Cate Blanchett, from the Patricia Highsmith novel "The Price of Salt" (its a great read), finally opening soon, after its Festival showings to whet our appetites. 
This new Todd Haynes film is it seems from the reviews totally dreamy and we will all love it. It was only shot last year (Cate has had 5 other projects since), but not long to go now - expect lots of chatshow and red carpet exposure for Cate and Rooney ..... then there is BROOKLYN, another must see from a super novel (by Colm Toibin). Then there is Ben Whatley's version of J.G Ballard's HIGH RISE, and the Alan Bennett THE LADY IN THE VAN, with of course another nomination for Dame Maggie Smith, should be an interesting Award Season! Below: Todd Haynes and Cate. 

Julie goes shopping, plus ...

I came across this a few weeks ago in a British paper I will not name, and I felt I should ignore it, but it ties in with some other stuff. Julie Christie, now 75, was snapped on her way going to the shops and the dry cleaners, near where she lives when in London, so of course the paper had to compare this with her DARLING and DR ZHIVAGO heyday, it was all rather snarky. But you know what, people, even screen icons, age and get older - deal with it. I think Julie looks mighty fine here and is ageing wonderfully, how do they expect a 75 year old to look?, when 80 is the new 70 it seems. 

Two of her contemporaries (following on from Terence Stamp and Vanessa Redgrave teaming up the other year) Tom Courtenay (78) and Charlotte Ramling (a mere 69) have been gathering widespread rave reviews for their new film 45 YEARS directed by Andrew Haigh of gay romance WEEKEND acclaim - one expects Bafta nominations at least. Great to see them back in quality stuff 

Now that we have slid into autumn here in the UK after a washout summer, at least that backlog of interesting new movies are on their way to screens, a lot of them are screened too in the upcoming London Film Festival (I expect the brochure today) with gala screenings for Todd Haynes's CAROL, finally unveiled here (It was shot last year), it was a sensation at Cannes back in May, from Patricia Highsmith's groundbreaking lesbian romantic novel of the early Fifties (so Cate Blanchett will have to have another stunning dress for the red carpet - she already has two Oscars but it looks like her next campaign is underway, that new Armani advertisement should be a plus too); also opening in November John Crowley's BROOKLYN from Colm Toibin's marvellous novel finally arrives too, and then there is Tom Hardy and Tom Hardy as the Kray Twins, in LEGEND, which should be at least fascinating for seeing how it is done, and we also finally get Maggie Smith in that role she initally played on stage, THE LADY IN THE VAN by Alan Bennett, and directed by Nicholas Hytner. Bring them on. Awards season should be hotting up this year.

Delon & Laforet, again

And to round off this session on 1960s French glamour, here once again are some terrific stills of Alain Delon and Marie Laforet in Rene Clement's PLEIN SOLEIL from Patricia Highsmith's THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY .... feel the heat of the mediterranean ...

A new Mr Ripley at 60, plus Carol too ...

Tom Ripley is 60 – he first appeared in 1955 in Patricia Highsmith’s novel THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY. I had a Pan paperback edition when I was a teenager, circa 1962, and a few editions since, but I just had to get this new 60^th anniversary hardback, from Virago, a handsome volume for the bookshelf, with new introduction, etc. Its a book I love re-reading. Highsmith's lucid prose draws one in from the first sentence. 

We like Ripley – and his Alain Delon incarnation a lot, here at the Projector – as per the labels. Rene Clement’s 1960 film PLEIN SOLEIL, shot in 1959, captures that high end Mediterranean glamour perfectly, and entranced me when I was 14. I did not relate to the 1999 film much at all, as Anthony Minghella expanded and changed the characters and the ‘50s fashions were too fussy and overdone – back in the 1959 film they – Delon, Marie Laforet, Maurice Ronet – looks very smart casual wearing clothes that still work now.  The book, too, is surprisingly frank for one written in the mid-'50s about Tom and the gay milieu he lived in New York (it starts with Tom sharing a grotty room with an obviously gay window dresser who is putting Tom up for a while, before Mr Greenleaf sends him to Italy ...), before more erotic frissons in Italy. Back in the Fifties, before mass air travel, a trip to Europe on an ocean liner was a treat indeed - by page 50 Tom has left seedy New York behind and arrives in that Italian village ...

Reading the book again one realises how easy it must have been to impersonate someone else back in that pre-internet world without computers, the risk of being photographed on cellphones or on constant CCTV ... 

Its shaping up to a Highsmith year, with Todd Haynes’ film of CAROL finally coming out of the traps, after very positive reviews at Cannes recently. If its half as good as his FAR FROM HEAVEN ….

I have just read her novel CAROL, here is the blurb:

Therese is just an ordinary sales assistant working in a New York department store just before Christmas when a beautiful, alluring woman in her thirties walks up to her counter. Standing there, Therese is wholly unprepared for the first shock of love. Therese is an awkward 19 year old with a job she hates and a boyfriend she doesn’t love; Carol is a sophisticated, bored suburban housewife in the throes of a divorce and a custody battle for her only daughter. As Therese becomes irresistibly drawn into Carol’s world, she soon realizes how much they both stand to lose …

First published pseudonymously in 1952 as THE PRICE OF SALT, CAROL is a hauntingly atmospheric love story set against the backdrop of Fifties New York. 

It was a bit hit at the time, the first lesbian love story with a happy ending …. As Highsmith says in the Afterword at the end. The thriller element comes into force too as the women realise they are being followed on their extended car trip and decide to confront the detective, and Carol has a gun ...

THE TALENTER MR RIPLEY also begins in Fifties New York with jittery Tom trying to evade that man who is following him through the bars of that gay milieu he inhabits – he thinks it is one of his shady deals coming apart but he turns out to be the father of Dickie Greenleaf, setting that plot in motion ….

Cate Blanchett, whom one imagines is the perfect Carol as one reads the book, was also of course in Mingella’s 1999 film of MR RIPLEY – one of her first eye-catching roles. Now she is finally leading CAROL (it was filmed last year, but does not open until this November) into the next award season … no doubt, a cunning Weinstein strategy. 

Cannes 2015

An email from the BFI on the Cannes Prize winners. 

French director Jacques Audiard has won this year’s Palme d’Or for his drama Dheepan, the story of a Tamil refugee trying to make a new life in France. A Cannes veteran, Audiard previously competed for the top prize with his 2012 film Rust and Bone and won the Grand Prix for A Prophet in 2010.

This year’s Grand Prix was awarded to the Holocaust drama Son of Saul, the acclaimed debut film by Hungarian director László Nemes, while the festival’s Jury Prize went to The Lobster, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos and backed by the BFI Film Fund (above: John C. Reilly, Ben Whishaw and a nicely maturing Colin Farrell in THE LOBSTER).  

Taiwanese filmmaker Hou Hsiao-hsien took best director for his venture into the martial arts genre with The Assassin, with best screenplay going to Mexican writer-director Michel Franco for the emotional Chronic, starring Tim Roth.

Many people’s favourite for the best actor prize, Roth lost out to Vincent Lindon for The Measure of a Man (La Loi du marche). The best actress award was shared between Rooney Mara for Todd Haynes’s much-heralded Patricia Highsmith adaptation, Carol, and Emmanuelle Bercot for Maïwenn’s Mon roi.

Left: Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard in Justin Kurzel's pared down MACBETH - marvellojus reports on this, we cannot wait to see it, seems its up there with the Polanski and Welles versions. HAMLET may be my most-seen Shakespeare (6 films and 6 stage productions to write about..) but I have always loved the wild poetry and imagery of 'The Scottish Play; ...(I also have the Nicol Williamson and Ian McKellen filmed theatre versions to report on). 

French new wave veteran Agnès Varda, director of classics such as Cleo from 5 to 7 (1962), was honoured with a special lifetime achievement Palme.

It is the first time the coveted award goes to a woman and has only been given out three times before -- to Woody Allen, Clint Eastwood and Bernardo Bertolucci. It recognises "renowned directors whose works have achieved a global impact but who have nevertheless never won the Palme d’Or".
We have liked Varda, now 86  - right, ever since her CLEO 5 TO 7 and LE BONHEUR and her film about her husband Jacques Demy JACQUOT DE NANTES, and her later BEACHES OF AGNES. She has also been honoured this year at Brighton where she has had an exhibition. 

Cannes remains a byword for fashion and glamour, its been amusing seeing people with no movie to promote still posing on the red carpet as though they are important ... 

Cannes as usual as highlighted some fascinating films coming our way, even if, as in the case of CAROL (see Highsmith label) we will have to wait till end of the year to see them, during the next Award Season buildup .... Then there is THE LOBSTER and that new Deneuve STANDING TALL, and again, MACBETH ...

Cate's CAROL wows Cannes, Maggie is in the van

... but we have to wait until winter to see them.

Todd Haynes's CAROL finally gets unveiled at Cannes. This is one we are eagerly awaiting, another FAR FROM HEAVEN maybe as Haynes gives his version of Patricia Highsmith's 1952 novel "The Price of Salt" featuring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara and those early '50s fashions. 
First comments are sensational - maybe this has been held back (it was filmed last year) to get over the success of Cate's BLUE JASMINE ?  Cate of course does marvellous red carpet, what a dress she is wearing here ! and she can certainly work that '50s fashion plate look (as she did in THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY).

It looks like (here in UK) we will have to wait till November - 6 months time! - to see CAROL when it goes on release here, presumably held back for next awards season. Just like how AMOUR was held up few years ago ...

Here is the rave review by Tim Robey from our "Daily Telegraph":

 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/film/carol/review/

French director Agnes Varda, now 86,  gets a well-deserved special award on Sunday. 
Catherine Denueve always looks sensational at red carpet events - this year at Cannes was no different:

And we also wait until December for the film of Alan Bennett's play THE LADY IN THE VAN with Maggie Smith reprising her stage role. James Corden gets into this too .... (but of course he was one of Alan's HISTORY BOYS). Some winter goodies to look forward to then. 

Francois, Francoise, Charlotte, Catherine, David, Tom

A relaxing Sunday with warmer weather, the newspapers and some interesting stories on favourites of ours, before cooking dinner and later unwinding with a drink at hand, for that 1940s wartime saga HOME FIRES ....

An interesting interview with Francois Ozon (right) in "The Irish Times" where the gay French director talks about his new film THE NEW GIRLFRIEND (about to open here) and has some interesting comments, particularly on those films of his featuring women like Deneuve or Rampling. As the paper's feature (by Tara Brady) says: "8 WOMEN brought together France’s grandest dames for a 1950s-set musical murder mystery; 5x2 plays five key scenes from a divorced couple’s relationship backwards; SWIMMING POOL exuded Hitchcockian menace as Charlotte Rampling became a young woman’s reluctant caregiver and voyeur; POTICHE saw Catherine Deneuve as a rejected trophy wife, lead her husband’s employees to rebel.

Many of Ozon’s films are smaller, more tightly focused; TIME TO LEAVE sees a young man push everyone away as he enters the final stages of terminal cancer".

"Charlotte Rampling is one of many actors who have returned again and again to the troupe of Ozon players. Others include Ludivine Sagnier and Catherine Deneuve.

“There is a lot of pleasure in working with women,” says Ozon. “Very often actresses are more pleasurable and easier to work with than men. There are some actors I work with and once is enough. But there are others, like Charlotte, who have a depth and maturity.”

What is it, I wonder, about French cinema’s love affair with a certain kind of British woman, such as Rampling, Jane Birkin and Kristin Scott Thomas.

“In France we have a fascination with foreign actresses,” Ozon says. “One of the most popular French actresses of the 1970s was Romy Schneider who was German. And then there are the English actresses who fell in love with French men and come to France. They often tell me the French offer very good parts as a woman gets older. In England or America they get to play the mother or the grandmother.”

Ozon has had Hollywood offers since Swimming Pool became a global sensation, in 2003. But the director is not for turning.

“In America, film is not about art or culture. It’s a business. So they make movies for teenagers, because it’s easier. And they have a different way of working. The producer does not direct the film, but they do make all of the decisions. The director is a technician more than an artist. I don’t want to work that way. I don’t feel the necessity of losing my soul.” 

Charlotte Rampling herself is interviewed too in "The Daily Telegraph" - 'Le Legende' at 69 now feels she has "the face she has earned". Like Catherine Deneuve her career spans 50 years and she still works now, turning down scripts she does not like - "it has to be something that makes me want to leave the house, where I can stay very happily with my books and my cats". Presumably, like playing a barrister in that second series of BROADCHURCH for British television recently (we loved the first series, the second less so... ). She has come a long way from the 'partying Sixties It-girl' with The Look, as exemplified by her breakthrough film GEORGY GIRL in 1966. Interesting to see that this year she is starring with Tom Courtenay (another Sixties actor in it for the long haul) in 45 YEARS, by Andrew Haigh (LOOKING tv series, WEEKEND) which is an unsettling portrait of a marriage. . She credits Ozon and working with him on UNDER THE SAND as revitalising her and re-realising her potential as a cinema actor. She is as busy now as she has ever been: "I'm working because good work is coming"

Catherine Denueve, another Ozon regular, could probably say the same. Her STANDING TALL was the opening film at this year's Cannes Film Festival, and as the Times put it: "Deneuve adds punch to delinquent drama", where she is the steely judge in this gritty downbeat drama. The critics were not sneering, as at last year's opener GRACE OF MONACO. Let's hope London sees this new Deneuve drama before too long .... I found Catherine hilarious in Ozon's POTICHE with her portly housewife out jogging and communicating with nature, before taking over the family factory to avert a strike and then going into politics, and her dancing with the even portlier Depardieu a delicious treat, with that Seventies background, and the increasingly gay son (Jeremie Rennier). See Ozon label for reviews on all these, his serious TIME TO LEAVE is devastating too. 

BBC4 ran a fascinating documentary as well on French popular song - chanson - where a very spry Petula Clark, now 82, took us through the golden years of French popular song from Edith Piaf and Charles Trenet, including Petula's own French career, to that great early Sixties era, with Francoise Hardy and the others. Francoise was the Face of the early sixties, her Vogue 4-track EPs were the first records I bought, even before The Beatles. Utter bliss then. Francoise too is still going and still singing though the hair is short and silver grey now. 

Tom joins the Hockney set

David Hockney is back in the news too with a new exhibition at the Annely Juda Gallery in London, with some fascinating new paintings. The artist, now 77, is selling that house in Bridlington  in East Yorkshire, where his assistant Dominic Elliott died in 2013. His new work includes 'The Potted Palm' - below - which include Olympic diver Tom Daley and his partner scriptwriter Dustin Lance Black, who are now part of the Hockney circle, David said he likes Tom and praised his coming out last year, of course Tom does lots of diving into those blue pools, but not making "a bigger splash"! Hockney - subject of many posts here, see label - recently bemoaned the demise of what he calls Bohemia, the lifestyle once led by gays, who now want to get married, settle down and have children - he finds them boring and conservative, wanting to lead ordinary lives ... He now goes to bed at nine, and don't go to parties or films as he has got increasingly deaf. He continues to work though, as he says "When I'm painting, I feel 30. Of course I have no plans to retire, artists don't retire. So I'll go on until I fall over, dying ideally at the easel". One somehow feels that other blonde painter who smoked endlessly - Joni Mitchell, maybe still in a coma and also in her Seventies, would somehow agree. Hockney also said in another recent interview that "maybe" the love of his life was Gregory Evans, his 62 year old manager, they were lovers for over a decade but have worked together for 40 years - not Peter Schlesinger of A BIGGER SPLASH then ... The new paintings are certainly fascinating and sees Hockney going in a new direction. 

Binge on boxsets ...

Having a binge with boxsets seems to be the new way to watch television - not just an episode a week any more. and now that Netflix can put whole series on-line, one can certainly binge on them - I am rationing my GRACE & FRANKIE episodes (as per recent post), and got their HOUSE OF CARDS reboot on dvd. Has television ever been better? Despite all the crap stuff, there are some terrific series out there, our Sky Atlantic being particularly good (like HBO with THE NORMAL HEART and other dramas). PENNY DREADFUL is particularly stunning - amazing sets and gothic horror mixing in Frankenstein's monster, Dorian Gray, bloody vampires, werewolves and other assorted Victorian nightmares - Eva Green, Rory Kinnear (a touching monster, left), Timothy Dalton, Billie Piper, Helen McCrory and upcoming Douglas Hodge and Patti Lupone will keep one watching .... not for the faint-hearted! I have not even got around to GAME OF THRONES or BREAKING BAD or ...

THE AFFAIR looks like another must see, after recent stunning series like HAPPY VALLEY and the delicious Sky sitcom by Ruth Jones: STELLA  - now on Series 4 with those inhabitants of Pontyberry in deepest Wales. More please ! Hard to believe Ruth's Stella was also GAVIN & STACEY's Nessa and LITTLE BRITAIN's Myfanwy (with Daffydd, the only gay in the village) and played Hattie Jacques too. Actress and writer Ruth, right, with Patrick Baladi. 

Incidentally, I will have to catch the new MAD MAX: FURY ROAD this week, I need a big screen experience with an action movie everyone seems to love .... I will probably be seeing it in 3D!

The Ripleys again: Matt or Alain?

We had to have another look at THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY on television once again, the other day, despite rushing to it when released in 1999 and seen it several times since. It is Anthony Minghella's glossy adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's classic novel and is an engaging, if hollow, thriller in bright Italian sunshine. Minghella though, as per his published screenplay, greatly expands on the novel fleshing out characters, played by Cate Blanchett and Jack Davenport, who are barely mentioned by Highsmith. Cate is rich girl Meredith, while Jack is Ripley's new love - whom he has to get rid of in order to continue his duplicitous new life. 

We note also how Dickie is made more of a heel - getting that local girl pregnant and his indifference when she drowns herself - so presumably we the audience do not feel too bad when he is bumped off - but of course Jude Law is so charismatic here the film drifts once he is not there to tease and taunt Matt Damon's nerdy needy Tom. So its an overlong, drawn out affair as our glamorous people act out Highsmith's chilling tale. Philip Seymour Hoffman scores too in that key small role

What sinks it for me is the trowelled-on Fifties period detail - all those fussy '50s fashions they wear, with hats and gloves. Whereas in Rene Clement's PLEIN SOLEIL, the 1959 original, they were smart casual clothes that would still be fashionable now, they look strikingly modern in fact - and 24 year old Alain Delon, stunnng Marie Laforet and Maurice Ronet as Dickie are all perfectly right. Its a shorter tale, and even with that changed ending, it works better. Delon in that ice blue suit strolling around the market, and Marie Laforet as Marge strumming that guitar surrounded by her Fra Angelico prints, and the tensions of the three of them on the boat, and of course Dickie suddenly realising he is in danger after pushing Tom too far ... all set on the real mediterranean of 1959 as captured by Henri Decae's glowing colours. 

I have written a lot about PLEIN SOLEIL here, see the labels below, It is of course the tale of how New York wannabe Tom Ripley's life changes after he is sent to Italy to haul back errant playboy Dickie Greenleaf. In the 1999 version Matt Damon makes Ripley suitably sinister and needy and Jude Law is at his charismatic best as the wastrel rich boy whom Ripley wants for himself or failing that to be him, taking over his life ...just as Delon and Ronet played it in 1959.
I first saw that version when 14 in 1960, when it opened my eyes to European glamour and beauty. Its a seminal movie for me. as much as 2001, BLOW-UP, or LA NOTTE BRAVA, SANDRA, MODESTY BLAISE, WHATS NEW PUSSYCAT? etc. but THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY is fascinating too.