UK Film Review Forum

(Regent Street Cinema, 307 Regent Street, London, W1B 2HW, ● Screening from 26th Mar) https://www.regentstreetcinema.com/whats-on/ammonite/ https://www.regentstreetcinema.com/staying-well/ (Release Info London schedule; March 28th, 2021, Curzon Home Cinema) https://www.curzonhomecinema.com/film/watch-ammonite-film-online "Ammonite" 1840s England, acclaimed but overlooked fossil hunter Mary Anning (Kate Winslet) and Charlotte (Soairse Ronan) sent to convalesce by the sea develop an intense relationship, altering both of their lives forever. In the 1840s, acclaimed self-taught palaeontologist Mary Anning works alone on.the wild and brutal 'Southern English' coastline of 'Lyme Regis'. The days of her famed discoveries behind her, she now hunts for common fossils to sell torich tourists to support herself and.her ailing widowed mother. When one such tourist, Roderick Murchison (James McArdle), arrives in Lyme on the first leg of a 'European' tour, he entrusts Mary with the care of his young wife Charlotte, who's recuperating from apersonal tragedy. Mary, whose life is a daily struggle on the poverty line, cannot afford to turn him down but, proud and relentlessly passionate about her work, she clashes with her unwanted guest. They're two women from utterly different worlds. Yet despite the chasm between their social spheresand personalities, Mary and Charlotte discover they can each offer what the other has been searching for: the realization that they are not alone. It's the beginning of a passionate and all-consuming love affair that will defy all social bounds and alter the course of both lives irrevocably. When "Ammonite" begins, we find Mary Anning slightly past her prime at this point, the days of her making huge discoveries as a leading scientist in the field of palaeontology are somewhat over, and she’s a little bit jaded with the profession. She’s been much maligned by her male counterparts. She’s looking after her ailing mother Molly (Gemma Jones) and selling fossils from the fossil shop where they live. A working class woman working on the unforgiving and dangerous sea shore in Dorset, with virtually no education, thrust into being the breadwinner for the family at the age of 11 following her father’s death, and rising to become one of the leading but totally unrecognised palaeontologists of her generation, totally self-taught in a deeply patriarchal and class ridden society. Mary is remarkably stoic. She was born into a life of poverty, lived in a class-ridden, patriarchal society, and was very much sidelined. Her achievements were taken from her by her male counterparts; they would credit themselves for the majority of Mary’s finds. But she's determined, she's very headstrong, so she didn’t change who she's as a person. She's uneducated, but she learned from her father, who died when she was ten years old; it's because of the things he taught her that she found her first ichthyosaur at eleven. She has an inquisitive mind and a vast, knowledgeable brain, this self-taught ability that she has, and that she continues to learn throughout her life, is something we truly admired in her. There’s not a huge amount of literature on her, and we don’t know very much about her personal life, but one thing that we do know is that she would give the little that she has to the poor. Among the fossils she also find items that smugglers were hiding on the beach, in the caves. In those days you were supposed to turn over anything you found of a smuggled nature to the authorities; but Mary re-hides the things that she finds and then tell the poor people where they're! There's absolutely no evidence Mary ever has a relationship with anyone, whether that be heterosexual or same sex. She has close friendships with women and in the society of the time, where women are the subjects of men and where Mary has been virtually written out of history because of her gender and social status, it didn’t feel right to give her a relationship with a man. It's difficult to be open and vulnerable enough to love and be loved, particularly if you’ve been badly scarred by a past relationship. The film explores what this relationship might mean to someone who has not only been socially and geographically isolated but who has had to close off to any emotional life, where you replace affection and intimacy with work and duty. Where you’ve been overlooked and ignored your whole life because of your gender and social class. Given this world, would Mary be able to access how she feels for Charlotte? Would she be able to let her guard down to allow the possibility of something new and wonderful to enter her life? The film is fascinated by how these female relationships could flourish in this world, a world where the medical profession still believed women had no sexual pleasure organs and still 50 years before science categorised sexual orientation and then only for men. Through lighting, the film depicts the change Charlotte brings with her into this world, how she alters the environment, bringing her own sense of light into his dark, unemotional world. Charlotte has been married to Roderick Murchison for a couple of years at this point. She lost a child, and just feels empty and a bit useless, really. At that point in history the only purpose that a woman had was to marry, keep the home and have a child; so she feels fundamentally like a failure. It’s six months on from the death of her child, and she’s still in mourning, and hasn’t come out of that depression yet. So she’s brought to Lyme Regis, and she’s left there,,and she can think of nothing worse. Roderick leaves, and she and Mary don’t get on initially. But the safety of being with somebody who doesn’t want anything from her, isn’t asking anything of her, and allows her to break down and grieve and then start to come out of that a healthier stronger person. They really help to build one another up; and so get to a place where Charlotte still has this sadness, but she can live with it, and survive it. Her relationship with Roderick is really fraught at the beginning of the film; their marriage has become quite strained; they don’t have sex anymore, and even when they did, it's probably a very functional thing. What makes Charlotte quite unique, is that she’s somebody who's quite willing to take a back seat in terms of attention or being the one to shine. Her talent comes through in putting somebody else up on a pedestal and allowing everyone to see their greatness. She’s got a great sense of humility, and she’s a very giving person. She’s someone who has been very hurt and broken, but who still has a great capacity for love anddoesn’t shy away from that at all. From Charlotte’s point of view, she just wants to be held, and to have someone close to her physically who can at least try and understand what she’s going through. He’s probably going through the same thing, but they don’t know how to articulate it. There’s so much expected of them at that time, to just keep going and pretending everything’s fine, it puts a lot of strain on them. Then they've this time apart, and Charlotte comes out a different person in a way, a stronger person. And he’s gone off and had this adventure, where he’s been able to find his passion. The relationship between Mary and Molly, it’s quite tense. Mary’s mother has a hold over her. Mary does respect her, and doesn’t want to let her down, but at the same time she's held by this life, by the darkness of this world, and that’s largely to do with her mother being stuck in her ways and scared of change. Mary’s determination to carve out her own personality whist living with another powerful woman was quite difficult, but it’s also quite funny. There are funny moments, where you see Mary roll her eyes behind Molly’s back. At the beginning of the story Mary is tired, tired of living a hard impoverished life; increasingly impatient with her mother; disheartened with her profession and with trudging out on the cold beaches. Emotionally she’s really shut down, and she doesn’t expect life to deal her any nice cards at all. So the attachment she forms to Charlotte is really interesting. She doesn’t expect to fall in love with Charlotte at all, she initially finds her a bit silly and irritating, and doesn’t want to have to look after this tiny little sparrow of an upper class woman who wears the wrong shoes and puts on lace gloves to go fossiling. But her opinion of Charlotte really does change, in spite of herself. Even though they’re from completely different worlds, what you realise is that they’re equals in many ways. They’re both looking for affection; they’re both trapped in their own worlds, for a variety of reasons. Mary doesn’t have the finances to explore the world; but Charlotte is trapped by her finances, as the quiet little wife who’s very much kept. Mary brings out a feistier side in Charlotte, and Charlotte learns things about herself she never would have known were it not for Mary. She has lost a child, so she’s grieving; through friendship with Mary, she’s able to start thinking about other things, thinking beyond the grief. Her spirits lift, she gets healthier - and that’s all because of Mary. Charlotte is inspired by Mary; she’s never seen a woman like this, a strong woman who lives alone, who doesn’t have a husband to provide for her. For Mary, Charlotte is beautiful and delicate in a way that she herself isn’t. She’s got gnarled hands, she doesn’t look in the mirror, she barely takes a brush to her hair; so there are many things about Charlotte that she finds utterly fascinating. The way she smell of perfume and nice fabrics, it’s not Mary’s world at all. There’s an intoxicating aroma that follows Charlotte, and for Mary it’s something very new, something that she’s never imagined she’d stand that close to. Charlotte in turn feels like she’s almost got to live up to Mary. What Charlotte does that really helps Mary to come out of herself, and get rid of some of that coolness that she’s carried with her for so long, is that Charlotte won’t give up. She goes in with open arms, isn’t afraid to be vulnerable with Mary, and isn’t afraid to show what her feelings for her are. That catches Mary off-guard, but she’s forced into a place where she has to do the same. The physical environment is also very important, not just the exteriors but also the interiors. This world is defined by space Mary is working class and has little money, her living environment is small, with few windows, almost claustrophobic, dark and uncomfortable. In contrast, Charlotte’s interior world is flooded with light, space to escape, in other words there's choice within Charlotte’s world. It's fascinating to see each character inhabit each other’s interior and exterior live. "Ammonite" is a really good example of how the industry is changing. It’s a symbiotic change. For Mary, she ends up letting love in; and with Charlotte, there’s a sense of pride in work, an understanding of who she's, and how not to be defined by the norms of the day. "Ammonite" is shot in a linear, chronological way. Allowing each scene to impact on the next emotionally, like building blocks within the story. This is particularly challenging but it has paid off, given the strong emotional arc that's depicted at the heart of the film. The camera movement reflects not just the landscape but also the emotional state of the characters. An investigation into how to navigate a relationship from deeply lonely, disconnected beginnings. How we learn how to love again after being hurt. How we can be open enough to love and be loved. How we can accept and forgive and learn through the power of a true, intimate connection. But the world was a very different place: people’s emotions were much more hidden, things were just much more behind closed doors; religion played a much bigger part in everyday life. Throughout the history of cinema, there’s been a real enjoyment in finding romantic relationships through real people in history, from ‘Shakespeare In Love’ to ‘The King And I’. It marks our time that we can be free and open to the idea that there could have been a same sex relationship in Mary’s life, as there might have been a heterosexual relationship. It doesn’t matter where you come from, what life you're born into possibilities are out there, possibilities are endless. Being authentically true to yourself and using your voice to be who you want to be is more important than anything else in this world. Now more than ever we’re living in a time when women are absolutely obsessed with other women and when, more than what we look like or how we feel when we walk down the street, it’s about what women have to say. Women are greater together: the more strong female voices we've, the more togetherness we show, more examples we've of great women history, the more inspired we will feel as a community to support one another, to encourage one another and to inspire one another. For years we’ve been judged; still now we’re judged. We’re questioned all the time, we’re asked to justify our choices, why we wear what we wear, why we do our hair the way we do, why we work or don’t work. We’re seeing a new chapter in the history of women. We’re seeing much more equality in the workplace. We’re at a point now in society, and politics, and art, and film, where we’re definitely being given a platform to share stories we weren’t able to before. It shows a progression, and a real acceptance about the way we're now. People throughout history have been able to find a sense of self that’s not necessarily celebrated by the patriarchy of the time; people still live their lives.

(Release Info London schedule; March 26th, 2021, Curzon Home Cinema) https://www.curzonhomecinema.com/film/watch-stray-film-online "Stray" In "Stray", a trio of canine outcasts roam the streets of 'Istanbul'. Through their eyes and ears, we're shown an intimate portrait of the life of a city and it's people. In 'Istanbul', stray dogs are an everyday part of the fabric of the community, belonging to no one and everyone at the same time. Among them are the expressive, independent Zeytin; the friendly Nazar; and the shy puppy, Kartal. But 'The Turkish' city is home to human strays as well, as Zeytin and her friends bond with a trio of young 'Syrian' refugees. Through the eyes of three stray dogs wandering the streets of Istanbul, "Stray" explores what it means to live as a being without status or security. As they search for food and shelter, Zeytin, Nazar and Kartal embark on inconspicuous journeys through 'Turkish' society that allow us an  unvarnished portrait of human life, and their own canine culture. Zeytin, fiercely independent, embarks on solitary adventures through the city at night; Nazar, nurturing and protective, easily befriends the humans around her; while Kartal, a shy puppy living on the outskirts of a construction site, finds refuge with the security guards who care for her. The disparate lives of  Zeytin, Nazar and Kartal intersect when they each form intimate bonds with Jamil, Halil and Ali, a group of young 'Syrians', who share the streets with them. Whether they lead us into bustling streets or decrepit ruins, the gaze of these strays act as windows into the overlooked corners of society; women in loveless marriages,​ protesters without arms, ​refugees without sanctuary. Zeytin is the canine protagonist. She's an inconspicuous stray dog. The film follows Zeytin as she traverses across class, ethnic and gender lines in a way only stray dogs can. She's a character who fully envelopes us within her own nonhuman will, a quality that's vital to a story about dogs who, unlike pets,  are not only defined by their relationship to humans. She's quickly joined by  Nazar, another street dog. As it turned out, they're on the heels of a group of young men from Syria, Jamil, Halil and Ali, who are living on the streets as refugees in Turkey. The film follows them over months as they find shelter in construction sites and quiet sidewalks together. Despite the harshness of their circumstances, the dogs and boys have formed a makeshift family unit. The warmth and love emanating from their interdependent bond is deeply moving. ​Without the companionship of the dogs, 'The Syrian' boys feel adrift in a city not their own, and perhaps it's the same for Zeytin and Nazar. ​ The documentary is based on John Berger’s landmark essay 'Why Look At Animals' (1977). The essay speaks to the need of recognizing the destructive nature of our anthropocentrism. When our dog dies we feel a quiet need to suppress our grief at his passing. We're shocked that something as personal as how our heart responds to the death of a loved one could be shaped by an external politics that defined him or it as valueless. We also see how our moral conceptions of who or how much one matters can be in constant flux. This transformative moment is what propels "Stray’s" exploration into value, hierarchy, and sentience. "Stray" tracks the canines through the city’s streets, capturing their experiences and generating deep empathy without resorting to simple anthropomorphism. The point of view of the dogs allows a visually overwhelming critical observation, distant and finally moving, of a society, but easily extrapolated to any other, full of contrasts and inequalities, of moments of darkness and epiphany. Human beings live artificially and hypocritically and would do well to study the dog. Dogs keep watch over human beings, not to ensure that they do not lose their property, but rather that they do not get robbed of their integrity. We've to nuzzle the kind, bark at the greedy, and bite scoundrels. To become a true individual and proper human being, one must turn aside from conventional society and reject all it's values, to live in accordance with nature, and nature at a very basic level. The film is a critical  observation of human civilization through the unfamiliar gaze of dogs and a sensory voyage into new ways of seeing.   'Turkey' is a country whose history and relationship with strays is unique in the world. 'Turkish' authorities have tried to annihilate stray dogs since 1909, leading to mass killings of Istanbul’s street dogs for the last century. But widespread protests against these killings transformed 'Turkey' into one of the only countries where it's now illegal to euthanize or hold captive any stray dog. Every free-roaming dog today is an emblem of resistance, living  manifestations of compassion in the face of intolerance. It leads us into the cracks of human society, where community is formed in the crucibles of war and neglect, and where ​beings persist and survive even as they're relegated to the peripheries of society. It's a strenuous but literal way to challenge conventional modes of seeing and being in the world. "Stray" is an attempt to visually and aurally recenter the world around a nonhuman gaze. ​A.world in which human dialogue becomes radically secondary to heightened  frequencies, and where a classical score is set against the gritty, lived  experiences of those whom society has left behind. The film traverses a socio-cultural terrain in which for a moment, one nation becomes refuge for many others. When xenophobia, species destruction and nationalist sentiment are rising all around the world, "Stray" springs from these cracks in our anthropocentric modernity. It asks us to re-evaluate what it means that our streets are continuously emptied of everyone except those whom we’ve deemed to be it's legitimate citizens. "Stray" pushes the boundaries of the cinematic medium in order to explore and challenge unequal states of personhood, to expand viewer's circles of  moral and perceptual consideration beyond their own class, culture, and species. 

(Release Info London schedule; March 7th, 2021, Curzon Home Cinema) https://www.curzonhomecinema.com/film/watch-spring-blossom-film-online (Previews 7 March - 9 March as part of the Glasgow Film Festival 2021) https://glasgowfilm.org/glasgow-film-festival/shows/spring-blossom-n-c-12 "Spring Blossom" Suzanne (Suzanne Lindon) is 16. She's bored with people of her age. Every day on her way to high school, she passes a theater. There, she meets Raphaël Frei (Arnaud Valois), an older man, and becomes obsessed with him. Despite their age difference, they find in each other an answer to their ennui and fall in love. But Suzanne is afraid she’s missing out on life; that life of a 16-year-old, which she had struggled so much to enjoy in the same way as her peers. At the beginning of the movie Suzanne certainly does not know her desires or what she wants. She's naive because she's young but she's never afraid of saying what she wants, or to be who she's with him. She's not a seductress, she's seductive without knowing it. She achieves her ends because he starts to become a sort of obsession for her. She fantasizes about him and she's so intrigued by him that meeting him and knowing him becomes a need. Suzanne seems out of step with her friends and people of her age. She gets bored with people her age, and finds something in Raphaël that she can’t find elsewhere. She's burning with envy and desire but she's still a child and not yet ready to live such an adult life. Raphaël’s life is very repetitive; the same props, the same troupe, the same play, the same place. The arrival of Suzanne and their love story is a kind of new breath given to this place. It's the most common place in the world for him, and the most intriguing in the world for her. So the theater is to a symbol of excitement and desire but at the same time a symbol of weariness. Through the character of Raphael, the film approaches difficulties linked to the acting career; the weariness of rehearsals, the loss of meaning in the face of a meticulous director. At 16, it's the daily life of our age that bores us, that's to say high school. Adults, this is different, it's our job. But a profession, and especially that of an actor, is something that we choose. The film likes the difficulty the character has in continuing to do what he has chosen to do, and what he's supposed to be passionate about. So it's also a way of emphasizing the feeling of boredom and emptiness in Raphaël’s life. This is her meeting with Raphaël that makes her grow up and realize that she's burning with envy and desire. On the other hand, she knows what she does not want, what does not correspond to her; this adolescent life to which she feels a complete stranger. The characters are drawn together around the 'Theatre of L’Atelier', both a place of weariness for Raphael and a place for expression of desire and the emerging intimacy between the couple. There's a gentleness and courtesy between Suzanne and Raphael as they become more familiar, for example the kisses on the neck rather than the lips. The modesty in their relationship is obvious because we've always think that modesty is a sign of respect, and Suzanne and Raphael are respecting each other a lot. Talk about the universal topic of adolescence and the romantic encounter, it's necessary that everyone, from all eras combined, be able to identify with this story. This is why there's no era marker in the film. No phones, no computers. In the movie, this is their language, they kiss on the neck or on the hand, they dance. They've their own sensuality, their own way of living their love story. The film likes the idea that they don’t rush each other, that they pay attention to each other. The most beautiful and sincere human relationships are those that are unfamiliar. We know that when we're moved by someone, we don’t dare reveal everything, and at the same time we feel more ourself than with anyone else. This is exactly the same with Suzanne and Raphaël, the two characters of the movie. They're moved by each other and they treat their relationship really preciously, as if it's fragile because it's rare. Furthermore it's important to show a certain form of courtesy and modesty in the movie because we live in a time where everyone allows themselves to be familiar with everybody. The character of Suzanne’s father (Frédéric Pierrot) Is really important, because it's the only male figure she has, so he's her way to learn a little more about what a man would like or want. He's the only point of comparison she has, and we've to understand that she asks him questions because they've a relationship of trust even if they've trouble showing that they understand each other. Between them, there's a lot of modesty, tenderness. More than being a mentor to her, he's just a reassuring figure who looks at her with a lot of respect because he never wants to know too much about his daughter. He just takes what she gives to him, without even understanding sometimes. What's interested with Suzanne and Raphaël’s relationship is that they don’t want or desire anything before they desire each other. The question of living an adult life is important in the movie. The thing she's not yet ready to do is to completely abandon the teenage life that she thought she's having such a hard time enduring. This daily adolescent life that she feels foreign, she now feels ready to face it and to live it fully thanks to the meeting she has with him, because it helped her to discover her envy, her desire, what she wants and who she really is. Suzanne, despite her naivety and lack of experience, seems very determined and achieves her ends; she seduces Raphael, and it's she who later puts an end to their story. The fact that she's the one who puts an end to their story is very important, because it's a way to show how this love story allows her to move forward, and it gives her hope, energy and the desire to face her real life and not to be bored by it anymore. She does not ride a scooter when she does not want to, she never forces herself to do something she does not feel, and she has the strength to leave a man she loves if she feels that it will make her move forward with her life. How does it feel to fall in love? What does it mean to meet someone, to be yourself with someone else? It's the summer before starting high school; about this certain age, where you're not totally a child anymore, but not really an adult yet. Adolescence is a difficult period because you discover new things before really discovering who you're and what you really want. It does not mean that we've to fight or rebel ourselves against our parents or family in general. Relationships at that age are more complex than just rebelling against people with no reasons. It's about two people, a young girl and an older man who are not the same age but who are living exactly the same routine. In a way they're at the same point of their lives. At 16, we sometimes fall in love with an idea more than a person. And we really want to talk about that, about the fact that they find each other, and they fall in love because they're no longer bored when together. The sixteen year-old girl we talking about in the movie is a misfit, she does not really know how to live or behave with people her own age. Being sixteen is also the moment when love stories start to become more important. This is always about legitimacy, which is kind of a vicious circle. Especially today, in the times we live in, the film shows a balanced and respectful relationship between these two. Today with the telephone and social networks, we've the feeling we know people before even meeting them.