Apartment Zero (1988)

Two roommates in Buenos Aires getting to know each other over breakfast, the British owner of the apartment, Adrian DeLuc (Colin Firth) asks the new American tenant, Jack Carney (Hart Bochner), “Do you like cinema?” The film, Apartment Zero (1988), then cuts to an exterior shot of the cinema that Adrian runs, Adrian and Jack walking together into the entrance, and with the score by Elia Cmiral, there’s something quite magical about this moment. We then cut back to Adrian and Jack having breakfast again; was this moment a dream or real?

We are first introduced to Adrian in the projection booth, crying over the end to Touch Of Evil. He has framed photos of movie stars hanging in the apartment, and tries to get to know Jack by playing a trivia game: give me three actors and guess the movie. When we first meet Jack, he is composed in a camera shot, doubling a framed photo of James Dean on the wall next to him; there is a rugged American air to him, and Bochner – best known for playing the bearded yuppie Ellis in Die Hard – projects a serene himbo energy, which darkens when he locks eyes with someone and smiles seductively. In contrast, a pre-Pride and Prejudice Firth escalates his fussiness and yammering, obviously drawn in desire to his roommate, which also manifests into his latent paranoia growing. Firth’s character doesn’t like his eccentric neighbours and distances himself from them. His mother is in the hospital with mental health issues. And then suspicions arise over Jack – who is this man and what are his motives? And does it have anything to do with the history of Argentina and the previous government’s silencing of political dissidents? Ultimately, there is something of the Anthony Perkins about Firth’s mannered performance here. As he says to Jack at one point, “We’re all allowed one or two hundred idiosyncrasies” – a variation on Psycho’s “We all go a little mad sometimes.”

For some viewers, Apartment Zero would be a more effective thriller if it was shorter and tighter, 90 minutes instead of two hours, but I personally enjoyed its ambling quality, and living in the tension over who Jack Carney is, and what is ultimately the relationship between him, a louche drifter, and Adrian, a twitchy fusspot. Directed by Martin Donovan (not the actor) and co-written with David Koepp (his first produced screenplay) the decision to film in Argentina and incorporate its history into the suspicions and tensions is from Donovan’s background growing up there. In fact, Firth’s character presents himself as British but was born in Argentina, only raised in the UK for his education; it is a pretence he uses to distance himself from the country he lives and works in, and its issues. Much like the film knowledge and love that Firth’s character displays, even taking Jack to see Compulsion at one point, which they discuss, the style of Apartment Zero is indebted to psychological melodramas of previous decades, and even within its homoeroticism and violence, leaves a lot said through charged glances and the edits between scenes. That and a framed photo of Montgomery Clift. Everything is finally revealed, and delves into more sinister terrain, even taking one scene into what feels like something from a Tales From The Crypt episode. However, the great final shot is a much better conclusion, and allows the film to retain the idiosyncratic and inscrutable mood it has trafficked in for its duration.

While not everything works in Apartment Zero, and there’s a messy, campy air throughout, I really liked the film’s intriguing oddness as a psychological thriller, and its use of style and tension. Watched an uploaded copy on YouTube with Spanish subtitles; it’s a shame this isn’t more widely available. Recommended.

Transit (2018)

Transit (2018) is the third film I’ve watched of German director Christian Petzold and at this point, I have to say that I’m a fan. There is something very direct about Petzold’s filmmaking style, it is not too showy or over-the-top; there’s a degree of elegance, though for some it might also be close to being prosaic. What Petzold and his collaborators have pulled off in Transit seems straight forward but is actually something of a magic trick, particularly the ways in which it could have failed or been overstated. Adapting Anna Seghers 1934 novel about refugees in hiding during German occupation of France in World War II, the specifics of people trying to escape Marseilles as the German army invades has been reasserted into a contemporary context. There is no unnecessary detail or parallel universe details here. The costuming and hairstyling at certain points may refer back to the 1940s context of the novel, but the events in the world of the film transpire in today’s world; the signifying threat being metro Police in modern day tactical gear. One inspiration I’ve read Petzold cite was Chantal Akerman’s Portrait Of A Young Girl, and telling a 1969 story within the clearly visible 1990s location shooting. Here, the plight of war and the refugee experience blurs the past and the present. All of this takes place in the background while the story is centred around its characters. Our major entry point is Georg (Franz Rogowoski) who is in hiding and relies on a support network who all live in fear with the encroaching “spring cleaning”. When Georg is tasked to deliver letters to a famous writer, Franz Wiedel, in a hotel, he discovers that the writer has killed themselves. Smuggling himself to Marseilles in the hope of obtaining a “transit” to Mexico, Georg takes the writer’s belongings and inevitably takes over his identity when an opportunity of passage due to the writer’s status presents itself. While in Marseilles, Georg’s loneliness finds himself drawn to a make-shift family unit – the wife and child of a dead comrade – who he becomes friends with, and the wandering figure of the writer’s wife, Marie (Paula Beer), unaware that the husband who she left is dead and that Georg is now using his identity. There are thematic parallels to a previous Petzold movie I’ve watched, Phoenix, and this film also takes in people’s movements and their presence against space, often in daylight. I became quite absorbed by Transit, particularly due to Rogowoski’s soulful performance in the lead, and the connection he has with Beer (they also starred as lovers in Petzold’s next film, Undine). I also responded to the use of narration by an outside observer (Matthias Brandt) and the plaintive score is provided by Stefan Will. Available to stream on Mubi and iTunes. Recommended.

Written On The Wind (1956)

Quite a contrast to grow up with Robert Stack as an older guy in a trenchcoat walking out of the night to host Unsolved Mysteries on TV and to see him young as the alcoholic, suicidal son of a Texas oil baron in Written On The Wind (1956) with the most intense eyes ever. Directed by Douglas Sirk, the opening sequence sets the tone with Stack as Kyle Hadley tearing through the night in a yellow sports car while necking a bottle of booze as the Four Aces sing the movie’s theme. Then we get introduced to the quartet of main characters, actor’s names listed on each meaningful close-up of the stars, all in a lofty mansion on this fateful night and as the blowing leaves trail through the opened door, Sirk’s style is in full tilt; this is Melodrama with a capital M. Rock Hudson plays Mitch Wayne, best friend to Kyle, also working for Kyle’s father, Jasper Hadley (Robert Keith) but from a lower class upbringing, and thus also more capable, a rugged saint. While keeping Kyle company in New York City, Mitch introduces him to a secretary Lucy (Lauren Bacall). There’s an intensity to Stack’s performance as he courts Bacall’s character and seems like an immediate red flag, taking her in his plane to Miami while Hudson hangs back as a third wheel, already in love with Bacall and jealous of this developing, impossible relationship. Meanwhile, Kyle’s sister, Marylee (Dorothy Malone) is a blonde nymphet who makes reckless moves all over town even though she is besotted with Hudson who views her more as a sister. This is prime 1950s soap opera in gorgeous technicolor. The film even prefigures Red Desert with the colour contrast between Marylee’s pink convertible in the foreground with the grey oil drills and powerlines in the background. A model oil tower also becomes a prop in certain scenes and ends on some clear symbolism with the way a character handles it. There’s a split between the pure souls who care about others (Hudson, Bacall) and the spoiled brats who take others down with them in their self-destructive passions (Stack, Malone); all the actors are great, but Stack and Malone make the most impact with their showy, scenery-chewing performances. Complete archetypes with memorable lines of dialogue and dramatic actions. Much like All That Heaven Allows, with the fact that it’s set in the 1950s and the era’s interests in masculinity and virility, and how they are portrayed and amplified, it feels like a projection from another universe; another place, another time. I really enjoyed its overheated quality and the continual strife inflicted down this chain of family relations and secret loves. Available to stream on Binge in Australia. Recommended.

All That Heaven Allows (1955)

Seeing the doco series, A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese through American Movies, on ABC when I was a teenager was the kind of uber-text that sets you up with a list of references, of movies to one day track down and understand why they meant so much to Marty and his enthusiastic testifying. In this series, Scorsese showed clips from the Douglas Sirk melodrama, All That Heaven Allows (1955) and in particular one scene was stuck in my memory, which I always thought was the final scene of the movie, where a television is given as a Christmas present. Scorsese saw this moment as an example of cinema responding to the growing competition of television in the 1950s and how the framing of the TV set, reflecting sadly a lonely character in its blank screen, was an indictment about its place in the family home, a substitute for human connection. All That Heaven Allows is an uber-text itself and I’ve seen more movies referencing it (such as Todd Haynes’ Far From Heaven) and the Sirkian style – where emotion and meaning are played out in the total frame and overall style from colourful set design and costuming. Finally seeing this movie for the first time, between its vibrant technicolor film stock and its evocation of 1950s small town suburbia, it felt like a transmission from another planet, another time and place. The vibrations are different here, to quote Sun Ra. Yet the emotions are clear and relatable as a lonely widow, Cary (Jane Wyman) steps outside of her social circle in a romance with a younger, more iconoclastic gardener, Ron (Rock Hudson). This becomes, unfortunately, the talk of the town for venomous country club gossips like Mona (Jacqueline Dewitt) and Cary’s ungrateful young adult children, Kay (Gloria Talbott) and Ned (William Reynolds). From this distance, the story feels like a period drama (based on a novel by Edna L and Harry Lee; adapted by Peg Fenwick) and the heightened aesthetic ensures the soap opera confrontations and narrative turns has an artistic impact. Everything appears lush and picturesque, even as its fabrications hold darker sentiments. I was quite taken by it, particularly Wyman and Hudson’s performances. Available to stream on Binge. Having only seen Imitation Of Life at uni, I’m keen for the other key Sirk texts like Magnificent Obsession and Written On The Wind. Recommended.

Another Year (2010)

Revisiting Mike Leigh’s film, Another Year (2010), there are images of the middle-aged couple Tom (Jim Broadbent), a geologist, and Gerri (Ruth Sheen), a counsellor, that are so appealing and heart-warming to me. Gerri cuddling Tom while he prepares dinner or both of them sitting underneath a tarp with a cup of tea while it rains in the community garden they tend to. It’s so idyllic and moving – yes, I want to be them! I want that type of companionship in the autumn years! Then there’s another reaction as well, particularly as the film, which follows a year in their lives, brings in the other friends and relatives in Tom and Gerri’s orbit. I also have the snarky thought, why do they get to be happy? What makes them so special? Particularly when the film is interested in the contrast between their happiness and security – along with their adult son Joe (Olivier Maltman) – with others who are struggling, such as Gerri’s work friend, Mary (Lesley Manville), or Tom’s friend from his teenage years, Ken (Peter Wright); these are depressed, lost and lonely people who inevitably find themselves at Tom and Gerri’s home for company and emotional support. It’s a film about growing old, and as one reviewer Fran Hoepfner said, ‘the comfortable stay comfortable and the uncomfortable stay uncomfortable’. Are Tom and Gerri so at ease because of economics and the fact that they live in a better area than Tom’s brother Ronnie (David Bradley)? Is it also just a part of a culture that brushes any serious problems away with the rejoinder, “How about a cup of tea then?” I don’t think the film sees things as so easily resolved, not when the movie becomes more about Mary, brilliantly performed by Lesley Manville, as someone who can be quite grating and is a chaotic, needy, overstepping presence. Yet through the simmering tension and conflict that develops comes across as a real and recognisable presence, and one that the film sees as deserving of empathy. I couldn’t really reconcile what Manville creates here and when I saw her later as the commanding, regal sister in Phantom Thread – how could this be the same performer? Absolute chameleon. What Manville does in Another Year is just an absolutely moving turn deserving of all the awards back then. All the performances are great, once again a testament to the preparation and work that goes into these characters with Leigh’s unique method of working (drawing on months of pre-production actor improvisation and rehearsal to fashion the eventual shape and story of the movie). The film itself is still funny and warm but also sad and difficult, an underrated and unassuming drama that’s quite masterful, particularly the final scene that I’ve never forgotten since I first saw it. Available to stream on ABC iView. Recommended.