From The Sublime To The Ridiculous

Sometimes a film comes along, like a ray of sunshine on a cloudy day, that restores your faith in the often vacuous, money-grubbing film industry. Michel Gondry’s Science of Sleep did just that: intelligent, inventive, thought provoking, all the things a film should be. But sometimes a film comes along that is so unintelligent, so uninventive, so brain-atrophying it makes you want to suffocate yourself in your popcorn. No prizes for guessing which category the newly released Epic Movie falls into.

I wanted to like Epic Movie, I really did. I like the occasional bit of low-brow tripe along with my Napoleonic portraiture and high-concept installation art. I love a good old spoof. Hell, I’ve watched the Naked Gun trilogy and Blazing Saddles more times than I’d care to admit. So, believe me when I say that I really, really, really wanted to like Epic Movie. Really.

Epic Movie comes from the team who brought you Scary Movies 1,2,3, and 4, Not Another Teen Movie, and Date Movie. The first two Scary Movies and Teen Movie are amusing in their own puerile way, but by the time Scary Movies 3 and 4 and Date Movie rolled along the franchise was beginning to smack of desperation and yes, the aforementioned money-grubbing. Now we have Epic Movie a last (we can only hope) ditch attempt to cash in on the success of its older siblings. It is unrelentingly, unapologetically, unashamedly ghastly from start to finish. I haven’t seen actors so embarrassed to be part of a film since Ewan Macgregor cringed his way through Attack of The Clones. Jayma Mays does her best Anna Farris impression but whereas Farris treads the fine line between air-head bimbo and shrewd comedienne, Mays falls off the tight rope altogether. She pouts, and lisps, and minces, and trips, all the while failing to elicit so much as a giggle from the audience.

The publicity bumf credits Epic Movie as ‘a comedic satire of films that are large in scope, reputation and popularity.’ So that’d be: Da Vinci Code, Lord of The Rings, Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean etc. Depressingly, whenever the writers run out of Jack Sparrow, Willy Wonka, or Narnia jokes they resort to fart gags and getting-kicked-in-the-balls jokes, the last refuges of the comedically bankrupt. There was one prolonged ‘humorous’ urinating sequence that actually had me trying to slash my wrists with the edge of my Calippo.

So, what’s the verdict? As a film Epic Movie is irredeemably awful but as a lesson in 101 Ways to Kill Yourself Using Only Cinema Snack Products, it is truly a master class.

In Between Dreams

Other people’s dreams are, without exception, fantastically boring. One’s own dreams, of course, are endlessly fascinating in a solipsistic sort of way. Bearing this in mind, Michel Gondry’s new film Science of Sleep was going to have to pull out all the stops to impress. It falls into that same category as Being John Malkovich, I Heart Huckabees, Mullholand Drive or Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind (also Gondry) films which jettison narrative cohesion in favour of wilfully incomprehensible plots and garbled philosophy. But whereas I Heart Huckabees was as hollow and charmless as they come, and Eternal Sunshine suffered from unsympathetic leads, Science of Sleep is charming in an ingenuous, Gallic sort of way. It’s Amelie, but on acid. And with cellophane.

So here’s the plot: Stephane (Gael Garcia Bernal) has moved to Paris from Mexico where he attempts, in his own sweet, ineffectual way, to woo his neighbour, the prickly Stephanie (Charlotte Gainsborough.) Standing in the way of his seduction are his lecherous boss Guy and his surreal, Dali-esque dreams which increasingly encroach on his waking existence. After that, things become a little more nebulous. There are the dreams themselves; not the sort you get from over-indulging in camembert, but bad-trip, Lucy-In-The-Sky-With-Diamonds dreams. It’s never quite clear where these dream sequences end and real life begins, which puts us in the same position as bewildered and frustrated Stephane who finds himself acting out his subconscious fantasies and waking up to the aftermath.

And the cellophane? Where does that come into all of this? Stephane’s dreams are realised in true Here’s-One-I-Made-Earlier-style, all cardboard tubes, felt, papier mache, and yes, reams of cellophane. It is this ‘unmitigated whimsy,’ as Mark Kermode put it, that may irritate many cinema-goers. Some may see these forays into Blue Peter territory as poor compensation for an insubstantial plot; all style over substance. Nevertheless these Surrealist dream interludes with their Arts and Crafts trappings are arrestingly beautiful and earned the designers Pierre Pell and Stephane Rozenbaum the award for Best Production Design at the European Film Awards.

As existential comedies go, Science of Sleep is far superior to any of Mullholland/ Malkovich/ Huckabees, with its combination of off-beat humour, a magnetic lead turn from Bernal and intriguing visual effects. So, would I recommend it? Yes, if you like that sort of thing; existential comedies are something of an acquired taste. Just be prepared for strange dreams.

London, Paris, New York

For a girl who once considered venturing outside Zone 1 an intrepid adventure, I have been living a remarkably jet-set lifestyle in recent months: Marrakesh in October, New York in December, Paris in January. In the course of racking up these airmiles I couldn’t help but notice certain essential differences between the great cities of Paris, New York and my native London. But how best to communicate my sweeping, spurious and stereotypical observations?

I’ve always been rather taken with Craig Brown’s ‘We, You, They’ series:

‘We concentrate on the food
You enjoy the silence
Their marriage is on the rocks’

‘I can still fit into these old trunks
You are holding in your stomach
He should wear a shirt’

And so, in the spirit of doing nothing whatsoever to improve international relations I would like to share my reflections on these three capitals. With apologies to Craig Brown.

Londoners drive on the left
New Yorkers drive on the right
Parisians see how the mood takes them

Londoners feed the pigeons
New Yorkers call in the exterminators
Parisians have pigeon pie for breakfast

Londoners clean up after their dog
New Yorkers hire someone to clean up after their dog
Parisians are knee deep in merde

London is a hive of activity
New York is gridlocked
Paris is an accident waiting to happen

Parisians enjoy a croissant

New Yorkers grab a bagel
Londoners regurgitate last night’s doner-kebab

Paris’ tourists make the pilgrimage to Notre Dame
London’s tourists ride the Millennium Wheel
New York’s tourists visit the Apple Store

London cabbies know the roads
Parisian cabbies know the language
New York cabbies barely know how to drive

Parisians enjoy the finer things in life
New Yorkers invented the Cosmopolitan
Londoners have their stomachs pumped

Londoners admire Shakespeare at the Globe
Parisians applaud Giselle at the Palais Garnier
New Yorkers cheer on the players at Madison Square Gardens

Paris is the city of romance
New York gave us Sex and the City
London’s teen-pregnancy rate is through the roof

A Missed Trick With Miss Moss

After Monday’s uninspiring visit to Citizens and Kings, it was off to the National Portrait Gallery for a very different type of portrait exhibition. With Face of Fashion, the NPG are no doubt hoping to replicate the success they enjoyed with the blockbusting Testino retrospective in 2002. No mean feat considering the phenomenal ticket sales Testino garnered. Can Corinne Day, Steve Klein, Paolo Roversi, Mario Sorrenti, Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott draw in the big crowds? Do you even know who Day, Klein, Roversi et al are? Nope me neither. With the possible exception of Corinne Day, the Face of Fashion photographers will be unknown to all but the most die-hard fashionistas. Therein lies the problem. Without any ‘big names’ the exhibition is likely to flounder which would be a shame since it’s a well put together show. The re-vamped gallery space comes courtesy of David Adjaye who also designed the chapel housing Chris Offili’s Upper Room at Tate Britain; one of my very favourite spots in London. While not quite up to Upper Room standards, Adjaye has created a spacious, yet suitably intimate, series of free-flowing spaces. On the gently curving walls hang a fine selection of portraits, some barely more than Polaroid’s, others great friezes, from some of fashion photography’s leading lights. Yet still this will not be enough to pull in the punters.


The NPG has missed a trick here. They have failed to anchor their exhibition in contemporary events. Since the Size Zero debate erupted last year after the death of anorexic model Luisel Ramos, the newspapers, broadsheets and tabloids alike, have been awash with demands for the fashion industry to put a stop to its obsession with emaciated bodies and underage girls. The NPG have at their disposal a stockpile of photos by the woman who started the craze for stick-thin models: Corinne Day, the photographer who brought Heroin Chic to the masses. But rather than putting Day’s photographs into some sort of context, rather than stressing their topicality and their culpability in this sorry state of affairs on the catwalk, the gallery blurb talks of ‘transitory poses’ and ‘unnerving honesty,’ standard commentary you would find in any GCSE photography project.

The ‘Cocaine Kate’ scandal is still fresh in the minds of the general public, not a week goes by without new concerns about Moss’ relationship with unreformed drug addict Pete Doherty being raised by the gossip rags and red tops. Those Corinne Day photographs capture Moss as a fledgling model at the very outset of her career; an innocent unsullied by the ravages of the industry. Yet, the exhibition leaflet has nothing to say about the commodification of Kate Moss or about fashion’s corrupting effect; about how these infamous photos depict a young girl on the edge of the abyss. No, just more drivel about the ‘special relationship’ between photographer and sitter. This perfectly adequate exhibition could have been elevated to so much more if the curators had had the courage and gall to deliver something more profound than the usual platitudes and clichés.

Jenga!

If the pomp and circumstance of Citizens and Kings isn't your thing, then you may find alternative inspiration in the Royal Academy’s latest courtyard installation. Following in the wake of Damien Hirst’s Virgin Mother and Rodin’s Gates of Hell comes Anselm Kiefer’s Jericho. The installation consists of two towers of corrugated concrete reinforced with iron bars standing slap bang in the middle of the academy quad. They are magnificently ugly. Purists have thrown up their hands in despair and the courtyard echoes with that familiar refrain ‘But it isn’t ART!’ The traditionalists moan that the towers are a cancer on the refined Neo-Classical lines of the Academy buildings.

Far from besmirching the academy’s quadrangle, I think that Jericho only enhances the elegance and grace of its surroundings. Jericho squats like a fat toad in the centre of a beautiful architectiral lily pad. On second thoughts, squatting is hardly the word for it, since these towers, well tower. The tallest of the two is 16.5metres (55ft) high, the smaller 14 metres, and both teeter like demented towers of Pisa as if about to fall and demolish a large chunk of the academy’s East wing. Critics and visitors alike have raised the inevitable comparison with New York’s Twin Towers. But Kiefer has emphatically (and repeatedly) denied that Jericho is in anyway related to the events of September 11th. The idea, Kiefer tells us in his publicity notes, had begun to take shape long before the twin towers fell. There is nevertheless something post-apocalyptic about the towers, they recall the bombed out buildings of Darfur or Basra seen on the news every night, or a set from Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men. But perhaps Kiefer is exploring less aggressively industrial themes?

The roofs of his towers are each perforated by a rough hewn oculus so that a visitor standing inside at the base can look up through the gutted storeys to a distant patch of sky. I have been to the towers three times now on three very different days. On the first, the sun shone with the blinding milky white of a January frost, the second was overcast, grey, and mild. On the third visit, the heavens opened and rain collected in great puddles around the towers’ foundations. Standing at the base of the towers, looking up through the skylight is like looking through a telescope, with the oculus forming the lens. The sky seemed somehow clearer, more vivid, far closer than it ever had before. These towers, masquerading as hulking, industrial monstrosities conceal a covert beauty. They are not temples to the industrial age but rather viewfinders to the ever-changing facets of the sky.

If you get the chance, go and see for yourself. Walk around them, stand in their shade, step inside and look at the sky. Laugh at them, ponder them, and having done all that by all means throw your hands up in despair and join the rousing chorus of ‘But it isn’t ART!’ Come up with your own interpretation. Maybe the unsound structures represent the fragility of modern society? Maybe they are nothing more than the sum of their parts: just some concrete, iron bars, and plastic sheeting? Maybe Jericho is Jenga played by the Gods? I like that one.

Just don't call it the twin towers.

Liberte, Egalite, Royal Academy

What do you know about the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars? That Marie Antoinette said ‘Let them eat cake’ and lost her head to Madame Guillotine? That diminutive Napoleon wore lifts in his boots? That Wellington beat the Frogs at Waterloo? If you are seeking Enlightenment about this turbulent epoch then don’t hope to find it at The Royal Academy’s newest exhibition Citizens and Kings. The exhibition intends to ilustrate the transformation of portraiture during the fall of the Ancien Regime, the age of Napoleon and the subsequent rise of the bourgeoisie. The result however falls short. The exhibition is exhaustive, but by no means illuminating. To paraphrase that stalwart line of music journalists everywhere: it’s all filler, too little killer. What killer there is fails to redeem a lacklustre show.

The exhibition opens on a high, with Ingre’s Napoleon on the Imperial Throne, reigning supreme on the North wall of the rotunda. He is visible through the glass doors even before the humble gallery-goer reaches the exhibition proper. This hanging is something of a coup de theatre on the part of the Royal Academy; you ascend the marble staircase, cross the great hall, are ushered though the glass doors while all the while being held by Napoleon’s steely, imperious gaze. By the time you are stood before him you are all set to genuflect at his feet.

If ever your jaw is going to drop in front a painting let it be this one. Nearly 9ft high this portrait dominates the gallery as Napoleon dominated Europe. The iconography associates Napoleon with Imperial Rome and Charlemagne, while the frontal, iconic pose draws parallels with Flemish depictions of Christ. This portrait is the ultimate assertion of power; portraits of George III, Louis XVI and Catherine the Great on the facing walls, though equally colossal in size, seem to cower in the presence of Ingres’ mighty Napoleon.

After such a breathtaking opening statement its downhill from then on. Too many sub-categories of portrait, one for every one of the Academy’s first floor rooms, hinted at barrel-scraping especially when it came to ‘Family Portraits’ and ‘The Landscape and The Figure.’ Nevertheless, there are some fine offerings from David, Gainsborough, Goya, Reynolds and Ingres. One can only wish they had the space they deserve, unencumbered by the work of so many lesser artists.

David’s Death of Marat, that great emblem of the Reign of Terror, got my pulse racing but it was only on returning home that I discovered courtesy of the Sunday Telegraph that the Marat on display was a copy. The Louvre consider the original too precious to lend, a stance for which I have full sympathy. If Mohammed won’t come to the mountain…then tickets on the Eurostar will be booked.

The exhibition closes on a high note with another Ingres’, this time of Newspaper magnate Louis-Francois Bertin who is generally held up as the emblem of France’s newly powerful bourgeoisie. He is the epitome of the nouveau riche; an arriviste, a parvenu, and boy, is he proud of it. Here is a man who is the antithesis of spoilt, little rich kid Louis XVI last seen preening in ermine in the opening room. This is a man who came from comparatively humble beginnings, but whose intelligence, guile and drive earned him a position of power and wealth. He leans forward, arms on his knees, as if to weigh us up. His shrewd look is poised between approval and scepticism and we hover in front of him wondering which it is.

Ingres’ Napoleon and Bertin are the first and last portraits on display and these two images chart the transformation in portraiture that the vague and confused gallery notes fail to make clear. This painter who had once painted Napoloen as Emperor, Tyrant, and Messiah, now paints a business man; no title, no armies at his heel, no delusions of grandeur, just frank, honest and uncompromising.