Film

Rip It Up, Issue 108, 1 July 1986, Page 4

Film

The crazed logic of Martin Scorsese’s After Hours may provide the highlight of the . current film festival line-up, and if your eyes can’t face an endless parade of subtitled films, you’ll doubtlessly rejoice - in the splendid collection of English-language films this year (Brother from Another Planet, Repo Man, Choose Me ’ and the extraordinary Can She : Bake a Cherry Pie). There’s a Laurie Anderson star-turn in Home of the Brave and the ghoulies have never been ghoulier in The Re-Animator. A strong contingent of gay films includes My Beautiful Laundrette and Desert Hearts as well as the bizarre The

Fourth Man, The moving documentary Before Stonewall gives you, amongst other things, the chance to hear Kate Smith singing ‘I Got a Girl (in Kalamazoo)'. The Adventures of Algie offers a glimpse of early NZ film-making, although contemporary NZ short films may take some tracking down on the programmes. Whether Hail Mary will live up to the controversy that surrounds it is a moot point, but one hopes it doesn't obscure the very real virtues of two other excellent French films, Vagabonds and Full Moon in Paris. Certainly the best festival selection for years. WD

Absolute Machines ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS Director: Julian Temple Colin Maclnnes’s novel is a shrewdly-penned celebration of the high craziness of London in the late 50s, without ignoring the darker side of life that lurked beneath the pop veneer of skiffle and Shapiro. “My lord, one thing is certain,” comments the young hero of Maclnnes’s novel, “they’ll make a musical one day about the glamour-studded 505," and now, with Absolute Beginners — The Musical (for so it is titled), Colin’s prediction has come true. > Julian Temple, the man who gave us The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle a few years back, paints the late 50s in broad strokes, the brash, gaudy colours being the perfect complement and setting for the restless energy on screen. The opening five, minutes are as brilliant as that of any musical, choreographed to the last twitch or grimace, the camera diving in and out of fantasy Soho, not too far in spirit to Coppola’s Las Vegas. Needless to say, Absolute Beginners is a very stylised film; so much so that when feet return firmly to the ground and hero and heroine have “serious moments”, it goes distinctly flat. A lot of the subtlety of Maclnnes’s writing is sacrificed. The social deterioration building up to the final riots is carefully gradated in the novel whereas on celluloid we’re treated

to a good deal of heavy-handed, melodramatic plotting. The film’s presentation of violence is rather confused, moving from choreographed to naturalistic treatment with what seems like little logic — real social issues are blunted by manipulating our perceptions. Social issues in a musical? Absolute Beginners sets itself out as a musical and one is tempted to ask just how successful it is within the genre. First off, the songs are hardly vintage material, written by a host of luminaries from Bowie and Paul Weller to Nick Lowe and Bertice Reading (the black singer who created that sinister matron Mrs Yaj in Sandy Wilson’s musical Valmouth). There are a number of unexpected and colourful matriarchs in Absolute Beginners — Mandy Rice Davies, the Profumo girl who was refused admission to this country 20 years ago by our high-principled government, plays

a lodger-crazed Mum in curlers, and Sandie Shaw is the doting stage mum of a particularly obnoxious sub-teen rock star.

The musical sequences are varyingly successful, showing the influence of Temple’s work in the world of rock video. Sometimes, as in Bowie’s feeble ‘lt’s Motivation’, it isn’t sufficiently developed to sustain interest on the large screen and, let’s face it, dancing on giant typewriter keyboards was handled far more amusingly by James Ivory in Bombay Talkie. The best number is Ray Davies’ ‘Quiet Life’ in which the Kinks’ leader plays a laconic, put-upon Dad wending his way around a household consisting of randy Mum, evil son and two over-sexed lodgers in various combinations of hanky panky. Brilliantly staged on a cutaway two-level house (shades of Jerry Lewis’ The Ladies’ Man), this is neatly put together, admirably succinct and has a real dramatic punch.

David Bowie’s name might be the box office draw, but-the impression he leaves is not a strong \ one. You leave the cinema remembering Eve Ferret’s busty and boisterous Big Jill or Tenpole Tudor’s manic Ed the Ted ... but then often it is the smaller roles that linger most vividly in the memory. William Dart

Absolute Beginners by Colin Maclnnes Let’s whizz through a bit of the background to inform those of you who have been on Raoul Island for the past six months. The Film: 1985 was British Film Year, in name anyway. What actually happened was that the amount of publicity increased totally out of proportion to the amount of product. Absolute Beginners is a victim of that process. The Author: Colin Maclnnes, journalist, homosexual, six feet six inches high, anarchist sympathiser, a difficult man who alienated and made friends in equal measure, bom into a talented and broken family that grew up in Australia. He discovered trends in London as they were happening — “teenagers” was one. The Book: London is in summer and the dead-weight of the postwar British way of life is being manfully avoided by our young (19) hero. He is in love with the promiscuous Crepe Suzette. Through his eyes we see a “teenager’s” (glamourised) world. Pre-Beatles, was there life? This novel says yes. Halfway through the book, it is hi-jacked by the race riots (which actually happened when Maclnnes was writing the book). “Teds” and white combined to beat up on “cats” and blacks. Trusty Vespa running hot, our hero gets in the thick of it. And at last gets to make love to Suze. Ah, young love! In truth, the book is a journalist’s view of a phenomenon, and not the best of his novels. Indeed, his best work was done in articles for the quality weeklies. But this book ... a book about London, England in the 50s, teenagers, Napoli (his name for the slum area he lives in; Notting Hill, Shepherd’s Bush), and having a ball. Good enough for the Next Big Thing.

Michael Howley