sneersnipe film review

Andrea Arnold seems up for a fight. Certainly her lead characters are. At the start of Fish Tank teenage hothead Mia sears across her housing estate to find a friend who’s failed to return her calls. After discovering the friend dancing with a bunch of girls she doesn’t like she ends up headbutting one of them before pounding off in anger.

Similar scenes take place in most of Arnold’s films, particularly with characters glowering as they detonate towards or implode from a confrontation. Natalie Press striding across dessicated grass with a naked child under her arm in the short film Wasp; Kate Dickie taking the lift down from a tower-block flat, her motives finally uncovered in Red Road; James Howson smacking his head against the wood in Wuthering Heights. This sense of real people with lightning-rod temperaments sparking with grounded emotions as they prowl through their communities powers her work.

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Small Deaths won Lynne Ramsey the Prix du Jury at the Cannes Film Festival in 1996. Watch it and you see why.

In this graduation short film three events play out in the life of a Scottish girl. First in Ma & Da we bear witness to her realisation that her parent’s relationship may be dysfunctional. Then in Holy Cow, the girl and a friend rush out into this Super-8-style primal-coloured countryside full of rivers, long grass and snails. It’s beautiful as they brush through corn and roll over, to a kind of jump-cut sense of time and turned-up pastoral sounds. Loud boys interrupt this idyll with their raucous behaviour which fascinates the older girl. Later they come across a blooded cow which may be due to the boys. Finally in Joke we reach the teenage years full of social housing corridors, group acceptance and the braying of a baby off-screen for what possibly awaits this character. Her life is doomed yet it’s heartbreakingly beautiful. Vitally, we immerse ourselves in her world whilst her thoughts on the situation remain guarded. Continue reading →

Melancholia seeps into Black Pond as much as laughter. There’s a wistful moment in this debut British feature where a father talks to a family friend about love down the pub. The father imparts painful wisdom to his companion over a drink, acknowledging that love is the greatest until it simply fades away. Regret seeps from his voice with every phrase. The kicker being that the father is played by Chris Langham, an actor with more than his share of personal regrets. Continue reading →

Given the About page and the Twitter profile this was inevitable.
An interview with Mike Leigh on the press trail for Happy-Go-Lucky in 2008.

Navigating a conversation with Mike Leigh is a tricky proposition. Short of stature and with a beard, his eyes droop within a rounded head. Words like avuncular may have been created specially to describe him. But when exchanging words you soon realise that a probing attention is at work. This is no uncle, he’s a quizzical headmaster! No, in fact he’s a film director, famed for bringing out outstanding performances from actors. And that requires an eye for detail in people. An eye pointed at me. Continue reading →