X-Men
Just a wee
bit of accendotalage to start this review off, if you will pardon my liberty.
I saw X-Men in Mexico (it has an X in it), Mexico City to be precise. Have
to say, very impressed with the cinema I saw it in. Multiplexes are much
of a muchness the world over I guess but the quality of the print, projection
and sound was excellent. Even more impressively, the cinema got really
dark for the film. Not even an emergency exit sign glowing green to distract
me. No I guess from a Health and Safety point of view this might be bad,
but from a movie immersion point of view it helps. It did not help so much
that our guide-books suggested that, since the film is subtitled they probably
won’t have the sound up too loud. So we sat pretty much in the front row
and got blasted. But then X-Men is a blast.
Rarely get
to use blast in that context, but it is accurate. X-Men is an odd hybrid
of characterisation, seriousness and summer action blockbuster. It has
been released as, and is presented as a summer action movie and then shies
away from giving us any action. It’s a film with characters who are wholly
described by their names (Storm – she controls storms, Cyclops – he has
one eye, sort of) which nevertheless offers us a pretence of characterisation.
It’s a comic book movie which takes itself almost seriously. And it is
actually rather good.
I want to
damn X-Men with faint praise, because on paper there is no way this film
should work. There are too many characters, the plot is hokey and it’s
a comic book movie – and they never work. Somehow Bryan Singer and his
five hundred writers (there is one credit but this film went through the
bowels of many a writer) have managed to take the single idea which is
the essence of the X-Men comic, crystallise it and then rebuild the characters
back on top of it. This is helped by the fact that very few of the X-Men
characters are well known, or iconic. Instead they have taken the germane
idea – which is not a bad one about forms of protest – and built the film
around it. It certainly does not hurt popping a couple of good, strong
actors in its central roles to give the whole affair this gravitas. Patrick
Stewart and Ian McKellen convince where lesser actors might not.
Indeed convincing
is the name of the game with X-Men. The film is almost anti-designed, especially
for a big budget summer movie. Its loathe to do anything that interesting
with set design, or costume trying to root the affair in a kind of real
life. When they finally get to put their nice leather suits on, our main
viewpoint character (Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine) takes the piss. It is this
casting, and this attitude which finally seals the success of X-Men. It’s
a standard technique, to introduce a newcomer to so that the audience learn
along with them. Jackman is a fine lead though, and along with Anna Paquin’s
Rogue they discover the intricacies of the X-Men world, whilst not taking
it all as seriously as they do. The acting is all pretty fine in the movie
– Halle Berry and Tyler Mane notwithstanding (and he has an excuse, he’s
only a wrestler). Special honours should also go to Famke Janssen who is
subtly scene stealing and single handedly creates the love triangle she
is involved in with nothing more than a few suggestively troubled looks.
X-Men is
good summer entertainment, and – as has now been said to death – a fine
set up for its inevitable sequel. It is faithful enough to entertain the
fans of the comic, whilst being simple enough and just fun enough for the
layman. Rather than follow a summer movie formula, Bryan Singer has taken
a tricky property and he, and I think his editor deserves a lot of credit
too, has created a coherently exciting action movie where you care about
the characters. Perhaps the fight scenes are a touch lacklustre, perhaps
some characters are under utilised. In the end this is a short, sharp shock
to all those who saw Mission: Impossible 2 or The Patriot. Is what summer
is all about.(8)
IF THIS
FILM WERE A CAR CRASH: Let's say The Matrix dusting up with The Usual Suspects.
That's what it wants to be, let's say it is.
Xiu
Xiu: The Sent Down Girl
Stupid statement
number one: China is a big country. Whilst it has a huge population, much
of this is clustered in the cities - leave vast plains of rolling landscape
which is virtually uninhabited. The land near the Tibetan border is one
such area, barren, relatively infertile land snacked by ever changing courses
of water and battered by a wide range of generally inclement weather. If
there is one thing you take away from Joan Chen's debut film Xiu Xiu, it's
a real sense of place, a real sense of the power of the landscape.
Luckily,
this is not all you will take from Xiu Xiu. Certainly its subject matter
is relatively untapped for a Western audience - dealing with the last days
of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. My history and politics are sketchy
to say the least, yet the film evokes this time in a simple fashion. There
are pre-film captions to explain what the process of being "sent-down"
is, but watching our heroine prepare to leave her family brings the concept
very much to the fore. The intellectual youth of China's cities were sent
to the countryside to work in the community, to help educate the rural
areas not as sophisticated as the cities. This equally worked to weaken
the bond of family on the teenager and to strengthen their resolve as far
as communism went. Of course this was no picnic, often the jobs they were
sent to do were hard, and by the nature of the communist government it
was impossible for them to return to the city without the correct documentation.
When the system crumbled in the mid seventies thousands of the sent down
intellectual youth were stranded away from their homes and families.
Lu Lu plays
Xiu Xiu, who is sent down to the Tibetan border. Initially working in a
factory she gets moved to assist Lao Jing - a horseman on the steppes.
Leading a Nomadic existence the pair live together until the time comes
for her to return. No-one comes to get her - and despite the bond which
has grown between Lao Jing and Xiu Xiu she is desperate to leave. What
follows is a tragic tale of her selling sexual favours in the belief this
will get her returned. What is so powerful about the story is the very
naturalistic development of Xiu Xiu's character - from wide-eyed innocent
to tragic heroine at the end.
This is
Joan Chen's directorial debut and it is very impressive. She manages to
both tell the quite small, intimate story of Xiu Xiu, whilst at the same
time using it both as a metaphor for the intellectual youth and China as
a whole. Whilst Joan Chen now lives in the USA the film is not anti-Chinese,
it is very matter of fact and even handed politically. This helps the tale
have a strangely timeless quality, that and the setting which is untouched
by man. Merely from a visual point of view the landscape is very important,
as is the sky. Chen frames her landscape a lot lower in the frame than
most directors would, offering up high swathes of sky, a representation
of both the freedom of the wilderness which paradoxically is Xiu Xiu's
prison. Equally the building of the relationship between Xiu Xiu and Lao
Jing is done very subtly. The temptation to make this a stereotypical culture
clash which then turns into a grudging respect and then love is resisted.
Instead it is a bond of looks and of mere presence, which makes the descent
into prostitution later hurt him as much as it demeans her.
The films
descent into tragedy leaves us with an ending which, when I first saw it,
I found hugely disappointing. I have since revised my opinion, finding
the final scene really rather difficult to get out of my head. There is
no escaping that I found the final scene wrong, it was not what I expected
and belonged very much in a different culture. However it is immensely
powerful, even if I felt it did not naturally follow. It highlights the
point that these characters really get under your skin. With the film being
primarily a two hander (three hander if you wish to include the landscape
as a character) perhaps it is easy to get you to invest sympathy in the
leads - that said the way Chen sucks you in is without any flash. Xiu Xiu
is a wide-eyed innocent, and no matter how her character develops there
is still a central core inside of her. Lao Jing is the kindly mentor figure
who finds the daughter he never had. It is simplistic, and almost an adult
fairy tale, but one which works.
Xiu Xiu:
The Sent Down Girl is an impressive and beautiful film. Whilst there are
a couple of flaws (the narration seems pointless, and the passage of time
is not as clear as one might hope) it is a very impressive debut. The only
real problem I have with it is a dislike of the ending which feels wrong
to me. I would admit though that anyway of reducing the tragedy at the
end would also weaken the film. In many ways Xiu Xiu is the flipside to
Claire Dolan - both films deal with prostitution in one way or another.
Whereas Claire Dolan was a singularly cold creation, we watch Xiu Xiu be
sapped of her life. It is also just as good a film as Claire Dolan. (9)
IF THIS
FILM WERE A CAR CRASH: Let's say Claire Dolan meets Red Sorghum. I might
not be right though.
