Saturday Film Club #4: I,Tonya

Director: Craig Gillespie

Country of origin and year of release: US, 2017

As the extra features on the DVD make clear, the origin for this film came from a documentary about ice skating that screenwriter Steve Rogers watched. The documentary mentioned the former US figure skater Tonya Harding and Rogers was suitably interested in her story to meet and interview her and her ex husband Jeff Gilhooly. Both Harding and Gilhooly gave completely contradictory accounts of pretty much everything, including the infamous incident that ended Harding's career in 1994. It is this pair of entirely contradictory interviews that inspired the multi person perspective 'mockumentary' style and structure of the film. Given the perceived unreliable nature of their testimony, it seemed best to lay everything down on screen and let the viewers draw their own conclusions about who was sinning, who was sinned against, and what really happened. 

Harding was banned for life from competing by the United States Figure Skating Association following an attack on her rival, Nancy Kerrigan, just ahead of them both competing in the 1994 Winter Olympics. 

I am old enough to remember the attack on Kerrigan, also how it was reported in the international media. This was a BIG STORY, coming as it did right before both women competed in the 1994 Winter Olympics. As well as the interviews with Kerrigan and Harding in the aftermath of the incident, I also remember watching footage of both women competing. Watching it all unfold on the TV news as a 15 year old, I can remember at once how surreal and weird the whole thing felt: Ice skating? Assault?!? But also how quickly scrutiny and suspicion seemed to fall on Kerrigan's team mate, Harding, whose rough diamond, working class image was both immediately apparent in interviews just as it was clearly being positioned as being directly at odds with the highly polished femininity of Kerrigan. Something was off about Harding, all of the coverage seemed to be suggesting: She had a hard manner and slightly aggressive sounding way of talking, which didn't do her any favours in this situation, and her heavy makeup contrasted sharply with the soft, princess-like image of Kerrigan and other skaters. As the international news coverage at the time, and I, Tonya itself shows, there were reasons why people wanted to see Harding fall. And it wasn't because she was heavy on the rouge.

The film itself helps to fill in some of the gaps when it comes to establishing the back story of Harding, including who she is, why she is, and why things unfolded as they did. There are a lot of strange characters in the film, but perhaps the most memorable and most defining character is Harding's mother LaVona Golden, as played by the excellent Allison Janney. Janney quite rightly won Best Supporting Actress award at the 2017 Academy Awards for a performance that is as absorbing as it is terrifying.

Throughout the film, viewers must decide for themselves what does and doesn't seem accurate, as well as who might not be telling the truth. This applies to Harding's entire biography, including her childhood, skating career, and marriage to Gilhooly, not just to what happened to Kerrigan. Was LaVona an abusive mother? Did Jeff beat Tonya? Did she fire a gun at him? It makes for gritty, unflinchingly violent at times viewing, but one thing the film doesn't do is let up in pace. 

Not everyone was happy to see a film being made about Tonya Harding, a woman who seems to divide opinion in the US as strongly now as she did back in 1994. One is reminded, weirdly, of Amy Fisher, whose own crime and punishment took place around the same time. Viewing both women, and their respective crimes and monstering by the US media, from both a different continent and a historical remove, it's hard not to feel that their stories were considerably less black and white than they were portrayed at the time. 

Margot Robbie's depiction of Harding is that of a rough diamond, but she is far from lovable. While the film, to some extent, falls into the strong woman trope, it is complicated by how unlikeable Harding is as a character at certain points. There are times when the audience has sympathy for her, including when she appears to be being penalised by successive judges in figure skating for not being middle class, feminine and submissive. At the same time, she is clearly a highly volatile character, given to violent rages and self sabotage. It is up to the audience to decide how much LaVona made Tonya who she is, and how much Tonya brought things upon herself. 

Overall, there is much to recommend I, Tonya, including the fact that it's a film that both challenges the audience and stays with you long after viewing. It is a hard watch at times, but its also an absorbing one.

Saturday Film Club #3: Molly's Game

Director: Aaron Sorkin

Country of origin and year of release: US, 2017

Adapted from the book Molly's Game, the memoir of 'poker princess' Molly Bloom who successfully ran a gambling empire in Los Angeles and New York before being charged by the FBI for reasons not entirely to do with poker. This is a fast paced legal thriller in which we watch our heroine travel from professional skier and would-be Harvard Law School student to a grafter living on her wits, taking advantage of every opportunity offered to her in some of the most entitled and seedy corners of the University of Life.

Jessica Chastain plays Molly with wit, energy and just the right combination of toughness and vulnerability. Idris Elba plays her defence lawyer and intellectual sparring partner, Charles Jaffey, and Kevin Costner puts in an understated performance as her perfectionist, blunt, and frequently infuriating father. 

There are some key differences between book and film, the main one being that the book was published before the case against Molly got to court. This means that Elba's character was created for the film and does not appear in the book. In a related note, the book itself is frequently discussed within the film and is referenced with regard to one of the key plot revelations to do with Bloom's ethical decisions regarding her high profile gamblers. It's also worth pointing out that some of the messier parts of Bloom's life are excised from the film, all of the characters are anonymised (whereas some are named in the book) and some of the characters are tweaked slightly as well. In short, if you want to find out who the real Player X (played by Michael Cera) was, you can read the book.

The film begins with Molly's past before shooting forward a good few years to the moment when she is arrested by the FBI, meaning the film alternates afterwards between Bloom's always engaging voiceover combined with flashbacks, and scenes taking place in the present between Bloom and Jaffey. Bloom and Jaffey's client/lawyer relationship has a rocky start and the scenes between the two of them are marked by fast back and forth dialogue that verges on well mannered bickering. The chemistry between Elba and Chastain works extremely well in this regard: Jaffey is dismissive of Bloom at the start of their acquaintance, and he is reluctant to take her on as a client. Over time though, he begins to feel at turns exasperated and sympathetic towards her and, eventually, he is 100% on her side.

At the heart of the legal aspect of the drama is Bloom's decision not to name names. At first Jaffey thinks she is a hypocrite because she has already named some names in her book. Later, he discovers by chance that the names in her book were already in the public domain, thanks to an earlier legal deposition by one of her gamblers. Due to the nature of those who attended her gambling parties (Hollywood A Listers, Business tycoons, members of the Russian Mob...), she is put under increasing pressure to yield the names. As Jaffey puts it at one point "J Edgar didn't have this much shit on Bobby!" In exchange for the names she is promised immunity from prosecution and the return of her confiscated wealth, and she refuses: Despite being financially destitute and the threat of a criminal record hanging over her.

Her moral integrity is as refreshing as her beating by an Italian mobster is shocking. By far and away the most violent scene in the film, the arbitrary and matter of fact violence of the attack mirrors very closely how Bloom describes the incident in her book and underlines the seriousness of her situation in the end days of her gambling empire. 

The films ending is both unexpected and satisfying without being sentimental, which would be a good way to describe this film overall. Hollywood doesn't make films about characters like Molly Bloom, not really, and for that reason alone, this film is well worth seeing.

Saturday Film Club #2: Run Lola Run (Lola Rennt)

Director: Tom Tykwer

Country of origin and year of release: Germany, 1998

Much copied, but never bettered: The influence of Run Lola Run, a high octane film born out of the optimism of a recently re-unified Germany and the energy of a burgeoning Berlin techno scene, was everywhere in the years immediately following its release. I can think of at least two US TV shows that intentionally referenced it at the time (one of them was Buffy), and you can also see its influence in the film Go.

The freshness of the narrative structure (our titular heroine has three chances to re-play the days events, and hopefully end up with a resolution that doesn't result in boyfriend Manni's death) works so well because it plays on the audiences sense of 'What if?' 

What if Lola arrived at her fathers bank two minutes later? Giving his lover the time to tell him that the baby isn't his after all?

What if the ambulance doesn't just miss the workmen with that large piece of glass they're carrying across the road?

What if Manni does catch up with the tramp who walked off with the gangsters money?

There's also a real sense of the arbitrary, of malign fate or Murphy's Law: In the first version of the days events, Lola is killed because one of the police officers is distracted by the the trajectory of the bag full of robbery takings, and his gun accidentally goes off. In the second version, Manni isn't killed by a police marksman or a gangster, but by a truck driver when he stops in the middle of the road. Similarly, the films final conclusion doesn't fit the action film genre at all: It's incidental, casual, almost comic. 

There are so many beautiful moments of cinematography here: 

The sly, slow motion homage to Bonnie and Clyde, which is soundtracked by Dinah Washington's 'What A Difference A Day Makes', as these two most unlikely supermarket robbers run away with the takings.

The surreal winning moment in the casino, with Lola's relieved, exuberant scream of victory literally shattering glass.

The moment when the ambulance, finally, hits the large sheet of glass being slowly carried across the road.

The parallel shots of Manni psyching himself up to rob the supermarket as Lola runs towards him.

Franka Potente as Lola and Moritz Bleibtreu as Manni deliver absorbing performances of intensity, vulnerability and uninhibited anger and frustration and, as Bleibtreu pointed out in an interview for this brilliant piece from The Guardian, the film is unusual in its use of an action heroine, not an action hero, working against time to save her man. As Bleitreu points out, the film is a feminist story; Potente's Lola didn't fit the stereotype of the toned action hero (or heroine). She wasn't a runner, she was "smoking two packs a day back then", and she was running through Berlin a pair of Doc Martens. 

Run Lola Run remains a refreshing take on the action genre, but it's charm lies in the fact that there's so much else going on in the film and that, every time you watch it, you get something new from it. 

Saturday Film Club #1: Take Care of My Cat (Goyangireul Butakhae)

Director: Jeong Jae-eun

Country and year of release: South Korea, 2001 

An unsentimental and absorbing exploration of the uncertainties and growing pains of late adolescence and early 20s, Take Care of My Cat begins with our five heroines graduating from high school. It's a short scene, but it's one that begins the process of establishing their very different characters: Pretty Hye-joo (Lee Yo-won) is walking arm in arm with her best friend Ji-young (Ok Ji-young), the twins Bi-ryu (Lee Eung-sil) and Ohn-jo (Lee Eung-ju) are quickly established as the boisterous practical jokers of the gang, with Tae-hee (Bae Doo-na) their willing accomplice. 

We then flash forward a year and see the hard reality of their lives now they are grown up. Incheon feels bleak, crime ridden and, at times, poverty stricken. Our five young women have had to find different ways to survive. 

The ambitious Hye-joo has used her contacts to snag a junior role at a brokerage in the nearest big city, Seoul, and is soon to leave her home town for life in the big city. The resigned but sunny twins are eking out a living hawking goods on the street, Tae-hee, who we quickly realise yearns for travel and adventure and a life away from her domineering father, is stuck working for free in his hot stone spa while working as a scribe on a volunteer basis for a writer with cerebral palsy. Quiet orphan Ji-young, meanwhile, is unable to find work (thanks, in part, to her lack of parents) and lives in increasing poverty with her grandparents in their dilapidated house while quietly dreaming of becoming a textile artist.

The cat of the title, a sort of symbolic sixth character, is introduced on the eve of Hye-joo's birthday.  Ji-young discovers the stray tabby kitten on her way home one day and brings it into the house, despite being warned by her grandmother that the animal is 'unlucky'. She painstakingly creates a beautifully patterned cardboard box for the cat and takes it along as a gift for her best friend, who carelessly tears open and discards the box at the start of her party in a local nightclub. The cat, which bears up well under the noise and hot lights of the nightclub, is passed around and fussed over by each of the girls, foreshadowing the ways in which it will be passed amongst them throughout the rest of the film.

The party is also the moment when the importance of pre-smartphone mobiles to the films narrative and aesthetic first becomes apparent. As well as the moment when they play 'Happy Birthday' to Hye-joo using their synchronised ringtones, there's also a beautiful shot of the girls different phones, adorned with distinctive phone charms, each with its own equally distinctive ring tone, neatly placed at the end of their booth in the club. 

The morning after the party, Hye-joo returns the cat to Ji-young, saying she can't take care of it. The young tabby, who Ji-young names Tee-tee, becomes her companion as she works on her textile designs in her cramped bedroom.

The group are frequently on the verge of becoming estranged from each other, with the at times reckless, always adventurous, Tae-hee increasingly finding herself tasked with the responsibility of arranging meet-ups and keeping them in touch with each other. This is often shown through the visual motif of text messages, scrolling across the screen as they are being typed by the characters. 

There are a number of friendship challenging, and eventually destroying, moments along the way and these are often instigated, always unwittingly, by Hye-joo who is increasingly living a very different life to the other four characters. This is not to say that she is happy; of all the various narrative strands, hers is often the strongest. Not because she is the most likeable character, but because what happens to her in Seoul is so relatable: Having snagged her entry level job at the brokerage, she finds herself unable to do the things she needs to do in order to progress in the company, meaning she remains where she is and finds both her youth and novelty quickly replaced by a new intake of staff into the company who quickly progress as she is left making the coffees and delivering the post. We aren't so much told this as come to understand her fate subtly, slight by slight, dismissive comment by dismissive comment, over the course of the film. When she bunks off work to go to an arcade in her business suit to play Pump It Up Dance Floor, her normally tidy hair flies loose as she furiously dances her rage away, and the audience knows her sense of furious impotence and rage like their own. 

By the end of the film, perhaps only the twins (who are the final pair of characters to inherit the cat) are unchanged, and we leave the friendship group as they become increasingly resigned to their situations or prepare to leave for pastures new. 

This is a well observed, often sad, occasionally funny take on the growing pains of late adolescence and early twenties womanhood that is timeless in its concerns and emotional heart. 

Introducing Saturday Film Club

Ever since Christmas I've been looking for a project to occupy me. I like to keep busy and I've been looking for something to write about that would stretch me a bit.

In recent weeks a vague idea to do a bit of writing about film has come together to become... Saturday Film Club.

This is how it's going to work:

There will be 20 film blog posts

They will be posted on a 1 per week basis

They will be posted on a Saturday morning 

The idea being that anyone who receives alerts whenever I publish a post should have the opportunity to source the film in question, and watch it, either on the Saturday evening or before the next post gets published.

The rules for film selection are as follows:

All 20 films are things I own on DVD.

All 20 films fall into the following, very loose, categories.

1) Really excellent films that I feel haven't been written about enough

2) Well known and well written about films where I either disagree with the consensus or where I agree with the consensus but feel there's more to be said.

3) Flawed films that, nevertheless, have succeeded in drawing me in again and again.

Of those I plan to write about, two were made for UK TV but the rest all received cinema releases. Many aren't English language films and three are Studio Ghibli anime's. There are German, Japanese, Korean, US, UK and Indian films. All of which I intend to do justice to the best of my ability, while also acknowledging that I'm viewing them through a western, UK lens. 

The posts won't be film reviews, but they also won't be film writing. What you'll read will be something between the two; longform film blogging perhaps.

I have written film reviews before, (a selection of which you can view here, should you so wish) and I probably will again, but I'm not A Film Writer (I have trouble convincing myself most of the time that I would qualify as A Music Writer) so it seems only fair to warn you that what you'll be reading won't be an elegant semi academic film theory essay, but that it will also be something more than a straightforward review.

The inspiration for the project came from the fact that I've been devouring every episode of Best Pick podcast since 2019 (I also went back and listened to the older episodes I'd missed). I became especially attached to the podcast during lockdown's one and three in the UK. Devouring all of those episodes has given me a deeper appreciation of film and of film criticism, as well as enhancing my DVD collection. My Best Pick era has also, of late, coincided with my day job as a Teaching Assistant in that I am this year supporting a first year A Level student in his Film Studies class.

My hope is that you will discover films you might not have heard of, and that I will be able to convince you to try them. Similarly, I'm also hoping to convince you to look again at some films you might have dismissed or not seen for a while.