RIP La Liz

Photo I saw posted on Twitter...

Today, I was sad to hear that a true icon of Hollywood glamour has passed away: Elizabeth Taylor, surely one of the most beautiful women ever to be captured on celluloid.
 
 Though I loved watching her in films from National Velvet to Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and as a child ws fascinated by stories of her many husbands,  the biggest impression she made on me was through her support of AMFAR. As a small child in the 1980s, AIDS was a hige, scary headline. Like most people my age I was fed myths by ignorant adults, it was a subject discussed in hushed tones and on news reports sprinkled with words like 'plague' and 'stigma'.

When glamorous Elizabeth Taylor came out publicly in support of AIDS sufferers, that, too made the news. It also revlolutionised my views and made me aware of AIDS as a humanitarian issue, as a topic to be approached with compassion and dignified with funding and research.

Elizabeth Taylor was one of the first few major celebrities to back AIDS charities, raising over $50 million during a crucial period. That - as much as her movies, diamonds and scandalous love life - is what I would like to remember her for.

Film Review: Burlesque (2010)

Rating: 3/5

Burlesque is not the sort of movie I generally expect to enjoy. The whole point of shooting it seems to have been to provide Christina Aguilera with a movie vehicle, and her music is not generally to my taste.

And yet…I did enjoy it. The exuberance and spectacle of the musical numbers carries the audience along; the story is so light you can’t really be annoyed by it; the characters are so familiar they don’t interest anyone and the upside of that is they don’t annoy anyone, either.

Christina Aguilera may be the *star* but it’s Cher who gives the only thing resembling an acting performance as club spiky club owner Tess. In fact, it’s also Cher who has the most memorable song and dance number – the club opener, Welcome to Burlesque.

Aguilera is the weak link in the film: the woman cannot act, and neither can her love interest, Cam Gigandet. Their scenes together are especially painful: Gigandet grimaces through his lines and whenever Aguilera feels the scene requires more than simply delivering her lines, she alternates between pouting, pushing her sizeable bosom at the camera or swinging her backside. It’s excruciating…but somehow manages to be hilariously campy more than anything else. How the crew members kept straight faces is beyond me.

At Burlesque, the audience learns, every dancer needs a  gay friend she can rely on to pick up the pieces when things get rough. Cher has promiscuous Sean, played by Stanley Tucci, the club’s dresser who can’t remember the names of the men he goes home with, presumably because all his sensitivity and mental energy  is spent on providing Tess with unlimited support and sharp quips. Ali initially thinks Jack (Cam Gigandet) will perform the same role for her. But, lo! He turns out to be straight so instead of using him for free accommodation she starts paying rent and falls in love with him. I’m not sure I’m comfortable with this portrayal of gay men or male/female friendships. But this is not a movie to which one goes looking for truth or profundity.  

Other familiar faces making brief contributions are Peter Gallagher (suitable seedy as Tess’s loser ex, Vince) and Alan Cumming who has little more than a cameo as the club’s doorman. He also has a routine, a filthy homage to Cabaret’s Two Ladies. Kristen Bell is also fun as Ali’s ubiquitous bitchy rival.

As a musical fan, I enjoyed all the song and dance, especially towards the start of the film. Aguilera also acted in a music production role on the film and her influence is to the detriment of the movie’s second half – once Ali becomes the club’s star, fun, rousing numbers and dance routines give way to songs which bear far to much resemblance to hits like Dirrty and Candy Man. This seemed a bit foolish to me, since she presumably took on the movie role in an attempt to show some breadth of talent. Also, whoever thought it was a good idea to put the word ‘burlesque’ into the title of every single song needs a sound beating.

As for the script…while admittedly cheesy it has at least been written by someone with above average literacy. I rather liked the line ‘Liberated perhaps. Libated, definitely.’

In short, a guilty pleasure, to be enjoyed with popcorn, marshmallows and low expectations.  The sort of film you don’t buy on DVD, but watch whenever it comes on TV.

Film Review: Another Year

4/5

I finally got round to seeing the latest Mike Leigh film – after more than a month of dillying and dallying and people letting me down and the weather being too cold for me to consider leaving the house.

I thought it an unusually gentle film for Leigh – in tone, it falls somewhere between the (almost) light-hearted Happy-Go-Lucky and his other, heavier films. The film centres on a year in the lives of Tom and Gerri, a sixty-something couple who seem vaguely if not ostentatiously, well-off. Something in the mood of the film made me think of Dylan Thomas’s ‘Do not go gentle into that good night’ simply because Tom and Gerri seem to be doing the opposite, advancing gently and happily towards old age. At one point, sitting in bed, Tom observes to Gerri that ‘We’ll be part of History, soon,’ and it is not said sadly or regretfully, but rather contentedly, a statement of something that should be.

All of the cringeworthy observation and tragedy of this film is centres on Mary, Gerri’s colleague and co-worker for twenty years. Mary is divorced, now single, lives in rented accommodation, likes to drink a bit more than she should and wears her emotional need on her sleeve. She is desperate for change, for a man, for love and excitement, but the men she likes never look her way and the changes she makes quickly turn to disasters. Played brilliantly by Lesley Manville, who slurs and jerks and weeps her way through the film rather brilliantly, Mary is not simply grotesque, but makes uncomfortable watching throughout.

David Cox (Guardian, 9 November 2010) seems to think the portrayal of Mary is rather sexist – a ‘witch-hunt’ in fact, for ‘the mature single woman…deviant, desperate and pathetic.’ I disagree because Mary has a male counterpart in the film in the shape of Tom and Gerri’s long-time friend, Ken. Single, overweight, alcoholic, surpassed in his job by younger men, left out of office social events and living far away from his remaining (and partnered) friends, Ken is truly isolated and is portrayed as being as much of a disaster area as Mary.

The key difference between the two lies not in how the other characters react to them but in how they see themselves. Ken, bewildered by the way the world has changed around him, has no illusions about himself and makes advances to Mary because he recognises her as being in a similar situation. Mary, on the other hand, fails to see herself as she is and this leads to many of her problems. Failing to realise her alcohol problem, she buys a car and drives drunk all over London. Failing to realise that his good humour with her is polite friendliness, she tries to get closer to Tom and Gerri’s son, Joe, by suggesting they go for a drink. However, it’s worth pointing out that the ‘crime’ which leads to the damaging of her friendship with Gerri is not, as Cox suggests, her daring to desire a younger man, but her inability to face up to the reality of the situation: that he is not interested.

Cox’s argument unravels further when he refers to ‘leftover women…expected to provide tireless but unrecompensed support for people who matter more than them, as babysitters, carers or shoulders to cry on,’ because Mary, more so than her male counterpart, Ken, receives support from Tom and Gerri on a regular basis. She is invited to their home for meals regularly, sometimes stays over, and meets Gerri for after work drinks. I think it is naïve of Cox to suggest that Mary represents all single mature women – after all she’s someone you can ‘smell the crazy’ on from across the room – but if that were the case I’d say the character demonstrates that lonely women can count on a lot more support and nurturing from their friends than men in a similar situation.

A special mention must also go to the scenes set in Derby, which somehow captured it perfectly – even the oddly-shaped mirror in Ronnie’s house was exactly the kind my dad’s parents had in their house in Ripley and the curtains (probably dating from the 1960s) brought back memories of visiting them in the 1980s and wondering why everything had to be so brown. Superb!