The Diary of a Teenage Girl is an extremely impressive portrayal of teenage sexuality, especially that of a teenage girl. Emerging actor Bel Powley gives a wonderful performance as 15-year-old Minnie Goetze whose sexual coming-of-age includes having an affair with her mother’s boyfriend. She is neither a victim nor a Lolita-style nymphet, she is simply a curious and sexual young person who has found a convenient way to explore her desires with an older man who probably should know better, but is more passively opportunistic rather than being an exploitive predator. This was a fun and funny film exploring all the complications and difficult terrain that such a scenario creates, without overt judgement or moral panic.
After Broken I was keen to see what theatre and director Rufus Norris would do next, and yet I was still surprised by how much I liked London Road. It’s an adaptation of a theatre show where interviews with the residents of the UK town of Ipswich, during the aftermath of the Ipswich serial murders in 2006, were set to music. This is a bold and compelling way of presenting the pain of a community in a way that resonates emotionally. It uses heightened artificiality to highlight that it is a reconstruction of actual interviews and events, and somehow this gives it a powerful authenticity.
Sean Baker is another filmmaker whom I’ve been keen to see what he does next so I was very much looking forward to Tangerine. While not as focused as his excellent 2012 film Starlet, it similarly depicts a side of Los Angeles that is typically marginalised and can attract instant judgement. In the case of Tangerine it is about the subculture of transgender women who are sex workers. Made in collaboration with the transgender women who also star in the film, the result is a loud, hyperactive and frequently very funny ride through a series of misadventures on Christmas eve. Completely unapologetic in attitude and shot on iPhones to create a new style of guerrilla filmmaking for the digital era, this reminded me of some of Gregg Araki’s more audacious films from the early 1990s.
If nothing else, How to Change the World is astonishing for the wealth of archival material it brings to light for the very first time, depicting the beginnings and early years of Greenpeace. It is mostly a conventional documentary that chronologically depicts the known facts behind Greenpeace’s origins and its visionary ideals and strategies, managing to also incorporate different sides of the various arguments over the many disputed areas. However, it also delivers an engaging discussion about the nature of leadership, the ethics of documenting versus intervening, and the struggle between pragmatism and idealism. And it also highlights how its reluctant leader Bob Hunter was a remarkable person whom we all owe a large debt to for his part in making us give a damn about the planet we live on.
I also caught up with a number of films on home entertainment that I felt worth mentioning, including Michael Winterbottom’s The Face of an Angel about a filmmaker trying to make an ethical film about a real-life murder. I completely understand how its refusal to conform to generic expectations has been infuriating for so many, but I was engrossed by how well the form of the film reflected the values it was endorsing.
I also enjoyed the South Korean drama/thriller Haemoo, very loosely based on a true story from 2001 about a group of Korean-Chinese illegal immigrants travelling by boat. While far from being a perfect film, I was impressed by the measured build, the severity of the situation when the film takes an extreme turn into something darker than expected, and the moral conflicts that play during the tense second half.
And finally, I was really pleased to see Heaven Knows What, by brothers Ben Safdie and Joshua Safdie. A low fi film about a young woman addicted to heroin and her unrequited love for her boyfriend. It’s free from sensationalism and romanticism, and yet still contains moments of beauty among all its rawness. Most revelatory is the lead performance by newcomer Arielle Holmes whose own experiences inspired the film. After watching the film I was extremely pleased to discover she has continued to act and will appear in Andrea Arnold’s upcoming new film.
CINEMA AUTOPSY 