In Fabric

written & directed by

Peter Strickland, 2019, UK

My approving friend immediately called ‘In Fabric’ “Dario Argento’s ‘Are You Being Served?’.” And afterwards I saw and heard a couple of other reviewers (including the published kind) summarising it in the exact same way. I guess this is evidence that Strickland knew exactly what he was doing and hit his targets.

It’s the kind of thing that ought to be a mess – and another uncertain friend I saw it with thought it tonally all over the place – but its many disparate elements are threaded with the same rigid intent as Strickland’s previous films. It’s a horror-comedy for those amused right from the start by recognising the dummy hand falling into frame in the same manner as ‘Tombs of the Blind Dead’. It’s pastiche, parody, homage, capitalist satire, black comedy and absurdism and softcore porn with mannequins, all thrown into the washing machine and spun until it explodes.

Strickland’s previous films have been direct and serious affairs, not that they lacked black humour, but ‘In Fabric’ wears its deadpan more clearly. It’s signalled by Fatma Mohmed’s appearance as the saleswoman in Soper & Soper superstore, and even as Mohmed gives the most mannered of performances, precisely uttering sales-speak with hilarious pretensions to Shakespearean poignancy, Marianne Jean-Baptiste counters with a performance of down-to-earth naturalism that’s quintessentially English. It’s satirical affectation in one character and no-nonsense in the other. They shouldn’t work together in the same scene, but in this weird quasi-Seventies otherworld of killer dresses and sinister mannequins versus the humdrum of ordinary dull British lives, it does. In fact, the killer dress is presented as the least absurdist element, being genuinely sinister and dreamy by turns.

The domestic drama comes from a mother having to deal with her brazen son’s sex life, or the dullness of a washing machine repairman’s rote acceptance of marriage even as the killer dress perhaps unlocks unacknowledged kinks. There’s a particular English charmlessness evoked in the son’s dreary sex-obsession and hapless Clive’s (Leo Bill) monologues on washing machines, in Sheila’s (Jean-Baptiste) Tinder dates and Clive’s stag night. The horror and glamour come from the sinister and seemingly hypnotic hold the coven of otherworldly superstore staff have over their customers, seemingly harassing them with haunted dresses from time to time. The camp blends with the tawdry. On one hand, the film takes time with scenes of the odd bank manager couple in interviews where they take notes on dreams, and on the other there’s the Soper & Soper manager looming about like Nosferatu. Here is a film whose goriest moment comes from a rampaging washing machine. It’s this conflict of the humdrum and the bizarre that keeps it curious and unpredictable.

It is gelled together by a playfulness and surrealism that directs it right through an abrupt narrative left-turn that is jarring at first, but the tone is consistent making realignment quick. It then reminds a little of Hammer and Amicus anthologies: the continued homages are ripe and amusing but the film maintains its own agenda. One can only anticipate such a film where Ari Aster feels freed by genre instead of beholden to it. ‘In Fabric’ offers fetishism and kitsch horror in a decidedly amused English manner, going its own wilful way and never quite feeling the need to explain its mysteries. Strickland has always known the power of fetishizing the visual and of course that means his films are visual feasts – without underestimating the diligent attention to the audio palette. ‘In Fabric’s veneer is always beautiful, even in downbeat English homes. As Walter Chaw says,

"It understands that element of giallo that equates surface glamour, a certain luxurious hedonism, with various forms of infernal consumption."

Here, consumerism is malignant and ridiculous, resorting to hypnotism and pretentious, nonsensical slogans. And beneath it all, there seems to be a sweatshop…

Its themes of female power and identity flow fluidly from Strickland’s previous films. Here, men are mostly two-dimensional and subservient to female power (even a laddy dad is beholden to his bratty daughter): pathetic sitcom sad-sacks. ‘In Fabric’ is mostly interested in female identity: even Clive, the chief male protagonist, is notably uninteresting and lacks self-awareness. But as dominantly complex as they are, the women are still in pursuit of the right visual cue to appeal to men – but in this case, it’s a vampiric dress.

Of course, it won’t be for everyone, but Strickland has again produced a minor genre classic after ‘Berberian Sound System’. ‘In Fabric’ is different, but again Strickland has found less obvious corners of the genre to original, baffling and beguiling effect.

The Irishman

The Irishman

Martin Scorsese, 2019, USA

screenplay:Steve Zaillian

When I first saw the trailers for Scorsese’s ‘The Irishman’, proudly displaying its CGI de-aging/aging, I started referring to it as “Scorsese’s ‘Lion King’.” Or perhaps his SCU (Scorsese Criminal Universe… okay, I’ll stop now). The point is, on first impression I thought it horrible. Even now, I can't shake the feeling of the faces being unnaturally airbrushed, but that's me. I've heard some say they didn't notice and others saying it was awful, so it's surely subjective. MichaelKoresky says: 

 

“Throughout The Irishman, we’re encouraged to look for signs of aging, for signs of decline and deceleration, all as means to figure out where and when we are.” 

But you’re more likely to be thinking how distracting or not the uncanny valley is. In practice, sometimes it looks like the cut scenes from games. In context, the story is riveting and the film so well executed that even though you’re aware of the CGI – and make no mistake, it has a digital FX team any superhero film would envy – it doesn’t distract from the narrative.

Based upon Steve Brandt's book, 'I Heard Yout Paint Houses', it proves a nice endnote on the underworld films Scorsese is so well known for, bringing in the old crew and faces for what surely is the final time. Almost all the faces are recognisable from a wealth of gangster films, and there’s also Stephen Graham holding his own against Pacino. Here is better interaction for Pacino and De Niro than ‘Heat’, the former barely being restrained from chewing any scenery in sight and the latter evoking that chilly mix of indifference and stoicism that signifies very little behind the veneer. On the other hand, you could judge the actors as having fallen into parodies of their personas: shouty and gurning respectively. And De Niro never really looks so de-Aged. It’s Joe Pesci that truly stands out, playing against the type we’d expect, calm and calculating rather than the wild card.

It begins exactly as you would assume: long tracking shot over a nostalgic golden oldie pop hit. And it won't be the last time it employs this Scorsese standard. It's long and deliberate: it’s sprawling and epic and inevitably conflating the history of the underworld and politics with the Jimmy Hoffa story. This is the kind of ground that James Ellroy eats for breakfast.  It’s all tinged with a little grey, a little drained – no differing colour-schemes to designate different eras here – and indeed there is feeling of everything being dialed down. Here are these scumbags going about their daily business of crime, corruption, extortion, executions, executions by mistake, etc.  Every now and then, the film brings up text to tell us about the violent deaths of the based-on-real-life characters. And then characters get old, in prison together aging and seemingly never reflecting upon the nature of their lives. De Niro's character goes to confession because he thinks that’s what he’s meant to do, but he doesn’t really feel regret and contrition.

What he does regret is his failed relationship with one of his daughters. She sussed him out early on, when he violently attacked a man who had apparently shoved her. Over the years, she’s always looking at the news reports of mob violence and then at him and putting two-and-two together. The silence of this character – played by Anna Parquin in adulthood – is the point, rather than perhaps signalling a deficiency of female characterisation as with ‘Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood’. The silence is the condemnation that cannot be reconciled.

But there’s nothing here that we haven’t seen already. We know Scorsese can do this in his sleep, although there is none of the flash and fizz that captures the initial allure of gangsterdom as in ‘Goodfellas’. Rather, it becomes increasingly compelling as it gathers detail and story. This is a film of and for old men, reflecting over the crimes of a life. There’s always the tug of death, and eventually details and people will be forgotten. There’s no reckoning, more resignation. It certainly feels like a swansong for a genre Scorsese helped to define.

Monos

Monos

Alejandro Landes, 2019

Columbia-Argentina-Netherlands-Germany-Sweden-Uruguay-USA-Switzerland-Denmark

Screenlay: Alejandro Landes & Alexis Dos Santos

‘Monos’ is a firework of a film with visual and emotional resonance to spare. It’s the tale of a group of child soldiers on a mountain top, assigned to guarding a captive.

‘Johnny Mad Dog’ is another look at child soldiers, particularly after they’ve served their purpose and been thrown aside. When you’ve been primed for warfare, where do those pent-up feelings and that training go? The ‘Lord of the Flies’ allusions are a given – and look: there’s a pig head on a stick – but ‘Monos’ isn’t about a bunch of upper-class kids primed for the upper-ranks and falling apart, with the sense they should know better and so casting a pessimistic summary of the human race. ‘Monos’ is more complex and empathetic, less judgemental so that we can see that these kids are struggling to assert and discover themselves with precious little resource. We can only imagine how they came to be here – taken? Orphans? Misguided allegiance to a cause? – and we don’t have to know as it’s a film firmly in its real time as things inevitably implode. Its hints of something surreal – we begin with a blindfolded football match and guarding of a sacred cow – only serve to put the narrative one step ahead of the viewer so that there’s always something new.

You probably can’t go wrong with a cloud-topped mountain and jungle location for visuals, which are often breath-taking and filmed beautifully by Jasper Wolf; but Mica Levi’s score really creates the remarkable effect. When the kids have a fireside party and the score truly rears up – discordant, quite alien to the environment and near hysterical – the effect is hair-raising and creates a unique audio-visual sensation, one that the film repeats often. By the time we reach the alarming river chase, senses, ethics and narrative have all been put through the wringer. 

 

 That is: even as the aesthetics and the feeling ‘Monos’ generates is gloriously otherworldly, the drama and increasing threat creates a narrative hold that tightens its grip and refuses easy answers or consolation. Truly remarkable.