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Rory Kiberd Michael McDermott David Turpin Emer T
yrrell ILLUSTRATION Sarah Walsh Past Lives Director: Celine Song Talent: Greta Lee, Teo Yoo, John Magaro Release Date: September 8 Cliches are big hurdles for the screenwriter. Reality often conforms to them. So Celine Song’s piercingly moving debut is something of a coup: it sidesteps cliche by sticking steadfastly to the truth, forgoing melodrama, and being the more emotionally resonant for it. It starts with a cold opening: a Korean man (Yoo) and a Korean woman (Lee) are engrossed in each other while a third person, an American man, looks on despondently. An unseen couple speculates on what the nature of this trio could be. We then rewind to the origins of these Koreans, Hae Sung and Na Young, as competitive classmates who walk home together every day. Their dialogue betrays no precocious insights, as it would in a Hollywood film – they’re just kids with a simple bond. However, Na Young’s family is about to emigrate to America. During their sad parting, they are mute, too young to articulate their feelings. Twelve years later, on a whim, Na Young (now Nora), an aspiring playwright, finds Hae Sung on Facebook, leading to a rekindling. They unconsciously ease into a de facto long-distance relationship via Skype, with relatable freezing and lagging. But this returning magnetism is inopportune for Nora; Skype makes Hae Sung too close yet too far. She puts their calls on hiatus; she wants to give New York her all. There’s nothing more dramatic than that – no plot contrivances to ratchet up the tension, just life’s vicissitudes. Nora then meets Arthur on a writer’s retreat - a lifetime of romantic movie tropes primes us to dislike him. But glorious misdirection is at play. That Arthur ends up being supremely likeable, his perspective in this predicament fully explored, is the film’s greatest asset. We eventually circle back to the cold open, with the pair talking in the presence of a third party, like at the end of Brief Encounter. A less navel-gazing version of Linklater’s Before trilogy, this decades-spanning narrative pinpoints the wrenching allure of the road not taken. However, it doesn’t platitudinously see that road as destiny forsaken. RK Passages Director: Ira Sachs Talent: Ben Whishaw, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Franz Rogowski Release Date: September 1 With cinematography that casts blinking as sin, Passages seems to offer a case for love as selfexploration and self-soothing, as much as symbiotic fulfilment. Tomas (Franz Rogowski), a fiery, restless film director leaves a deft puncture in his marriage to Martin (Ben Whishaw), by embarking on an affair with Agathe (Adèle Exarchopoulos), who he meets at the wrap of his latest film. Fuelled at first, perhaps, by a lustful curiosity, their relationship deepens, sprouting characteristic complications, in parallel to a new love interest for Martin. Neither affair plays out in a vacuum however, thanks in chief to the restless hands of Tomas, our rarely satiated protagonist. This intertwining of relationships (and indeed, throughout, art forms) that shy away from definition, paints a sexually explorative Paris brimming with modern possibility. The interpersonal bedrock of this film feels composed of a bared humanity and a deep lust for love, dressed up as a yearning for beauty. What evades each character in turn is the all-encompassing, honest kind of love which places priority on commitment over curiosity and faith before pride. Director Ira Sachs (who also directed Love Is Strange, 2014) leaves us with a final image of the stylish, though foolish, Tomas cycling through Paris with a doomed urgency that serves well as summation; it’s in the very act of chasing that the thing he so desires escapes him – and yet, he races on. Passages presents an unwinding spool of tender vignettes which wrench at some heartstrings, while mending others. Direct and often sparse dialogue compliments a carousel of crystallised moments capturing the erotic beauty of this subjective ‘everyday’. As Summer nights turn to Autumn evenings, this emotional palette cleanser is a must-see for the soul. ET Bolan’s Shoes Director: Ian Puleston-Davies Talent: Timothy Spall, Leanne Best, Mathew Horne Release Date: September 15 Coronation Street veteran Ian Puleston-Davies makes his directorial debut with this goodhearted and handsomely shot dramedy. It’s the kind of film that rarely sees a cinema release anymore – its human-scale concerns, committed acting and appeal to the recollections of the baby boomer generation likely to find a readier audience on television. The film opens in Liverpool, in an economically but effectively evoked 1970s. A busload of young people from a children’s home are en route to see a concert by T. Rex when tragedy strikes. Now, in the present day, one of the children from said bus is a dishevelled eccentric played by Timothy Spall, lovingly tending to a shrine to T. Rex’s frontman, the late Marc Bolan. There, he is approached by Penny (ITV Sunday-night drama mainstay Leanne Best), the daughter of the vicar who once worked at the children’s home. It doesn’t take a genius to see that this is headed for painful revelations and ultimate uplift. For all its conventionality, the film is aiming at a tricky balance. There is a disjuncture between the tinselly nostalgia of T. Rex and the realities of what the lead characters experienced in their childhood. Whether this unbalances the film or not is probably dependent on how much these experiences (of fandom and/or of childhood trauma) resonate with the viewer. At any rate, the performances keep it honest. Spall has the showier role, but Best anchors the film. Always somehow both slipperier and more lightweight than, say, chief contemporary David Bowie, T. Rex are a curious proposition to hang a film around. For one thing, their music is delightful principally because it never really seems to be about anything. Bolan’s Shoes tries to be about lots of things – to perhaps varying degrees of success – but it gets by on sincerity. DT The Future Tense Directors: Desperate Optimists: Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor Release Date: August 18 Having lived in England for over 30 years, Dublin-born filmmakers Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor aka Desperate Optimists are disturbed by the “unappealing sound of populism and nationalism” there. They consider returning home with their London-born daughter Molly. This journey sparks considerations about what they left behind, what they are returning to and what surprises may be in store. Like all their output including the wonderful Rose Plays Julie, this is an experimental undertaking, one in which they position themselves at the centre of this exploration splicing their own thoughts with interviews, photographs, personal and political history and much more besides. It’s a wry undertaking which twists through multiple strands, pleating their points as they go whilst leaving some loose strands too. The Future Tense takes its title from Walter Abish’s story collection In the Future Perfect, whose opening story The English Garden perplexes Lawlor because there appears to be no English garden in it. Are they revisiting the colouring books of their youth to find the same pre-ordained notion of what they are made colour in? They also revisit a planned project of theirs around Rose Dugdale, a former debutante who rebelled against her wealthy upbringing, becoming a volunteer in the Provisional Irish Republican Army and going on the run. There’s an exploration of the lives of Joe’s mother Helen and brother Derry - one present, one past. A humorous encounter is imagined between Gráinne Mhaol, the Pirate Queen, and Queen Elizabeth I. There’s room for Thomas Moore and Padraig Pearse, Antonioni’s Blow-Up and Aidan Gillen. While this may sound unwieldy, the Desperate Optimists never fail to transfix. Simply entrust their piloting skills for this flight of imagination and questioning too. 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