A child's life...

The Unloved

*UPDATE - 6/06/10* Congrats to Samantha Morton and co. for winning the 2010 Bafta award for best Single Drama

I caught this quite by accident late on TV last night. My curiosity was peaked seeing as it’s the first film directed by the excellent actress Samantha Morton and is also semi-autobiographical of her own early life in foster care and various children’s homes.

The Unloved tells of eleven years old Lucy (the excellent Molly Windsor) who’s been abandoned by her estranged mother (Susan Lynch) and then has to bear the brunt of her father’s (Robert Carlyle) violent anger. As a result she is placed in a grim, clinical, chaotic children’s home. We see all of this through Lucy’s eyes and watch as she struggles to cope with the cold, unfeeling, bureaucratic system while finding some limited comfort in her Catholic faith and the belief that she is being watched over and protected by God.

The main point of The Unloved is about how some children become lost and ignored within society and within the systems we supposedly create to help them, systems where getting one's expenses for petrol comes before attending to a lonely child. Systems that become more about the systems themselves than about what the actual individual child needs. Love. That’s all Lucy is seeking all the way through, to make a connection with someone and to feel loved and wanted. But the cold clinical world around her only isolates her more, while no adult, no person of authority will properly answer that most simple of questions she keeps asking: "Why can't I live with my mummy?" Which can also be interpreted as: "Why doesn't anyone love me?" Towards the end of the film she finally manages to ask her mother directly: “Can I live with you?” To which her mother has no proper answer, being too caught up in her own issues. The film ends with Lucy being sent back to the children’s home by her mother. The last shot is of the little girl sat on the bus, alone, staring blankly around before looking deep in to the camera lens pulled up tight on her face. It is a long unbroken take lasting several minutes. It is directly challenging the audience to look at her, to face the reality of the life many children like Lucy are forced to lead. To do better for them.

Films like this are not fun, nor do they make for particularly pleasant viewing. They usualy don’t have a happy ending. But they are important. Not all films should be escapist entertainment with pat resolutions and happy ever afters. We have an almost endless supply of those. And thank God for them. But some films should raise social issues; should ask important questions; should reflect the real lives of others; should challenge us to do something to improve things for those less fortunate. The Unloved is one such film. And I was impressed with the job Samantha Morton did with it. Some people have compared her approach and style to that of Ken Loach or even Shane Meadows. But it really isn’t. It is far more reminiscent visually and artistically of Asian cinema (Japanese or Korean) while also being rather Kubrick-like too. Although the grim subject matter lends itself to the likes of social realists such as Loach and co. and the excellent acting is of that same naturalistic method, Morton has instead attempted to create something different. This is a film that tells its story and highlights its issues and themes and makes its emotional and social points in a mainly visual manner with limited dialogue. There are long, steady takes and long scenes where nothing is said, with only images and sounds and sometimes music. Lucy is constantly absconding from the chaotic children’s home she’s been placed in, journeying around the city, searching for what she needs. The often-handheld camera chaos of the home contrasts wonderfully with the imagery of the world outside. The wide, soulless, motionless cityscapes, the big empty grey skies, the huge monolithic buildings that dwarf the child, the dark abandoned tunnels she must travel through. The most beautifully shot scene in the film is the graveyard where Lucy goes and plays alone under the trees amongst their fallen blossom, a place where she seems happy and that is a link to her faith, something which is a constant theme. While in the graveyard she sees a deer casually grazing amongst the headstones. So she just sits down and watches it, perhaps feeling kindred with the animal, both of them getting something of what they need in the most unlikely of places. There is a strong fairytale vibe in all of this: a child figuratively or literally lost in the world; isolation and loneliness; adults as potentially dangerous or just plain unfeeling figures; the quest for love and for belonging. Pan’s Labyrinth did something similar in a fantasy form as did the amazing Let The Right One In. Even new Doctor Who is now riding the same train.

Hey, what can I say? I’m a total sucker for this stuff. It’s my thematic nirvana.

The Unloved may not be perfect, but, overall, it is a very well made, heartfelt and affecting little film that largely achieves what it sets out to achieve. So I say well done to Samantha Morton. 4/5

Trailer:



The Unloved on 4onDemand

Case 39: Ferland –1. Zellweger – 0.

How many times do we get to see the same damn movie repackaged slightly with new actors and new titles but which are all essentially the very same film? A lot is the answer - especially in Hollywood’s own formulaic take on the ‘creepy child’ horror sub-genre.

Now, I don’t mind the occasional good horror flick with a creepy/evil child at the centre. The Japanese and Koreans nailed it pretty darn good as did Richard Donner back in the 70’s with young Damien in The Omen (less said about the shite remake the better) And so did us Brits with the great Village of the Damned. And then, of course, there’s the ultimate creepy/evil movie child: Regan Macneil. This is a sub-genre of horror that seems to be (understandably) popular and to hit a nerve with the film going public. To see what is supposed to be the most innocent and pure twisted in to evil is incredibly disturbing. And when it’s done well it certainly works. Unfortunately that is a pretty rare occurrence nowadays. Which brings me to Case 39.

Case 39 has sat on the shelf since 2007. The film company didn’t know what to do with it. Early word was pretty bad. And, let’s face it, star Renee Zellweger isn’t the draw she once was. Um…actually…was she ever really, truly a draw? I really liked her as Dorothy in Jerry Maguire (one of my fave films) but after that I just found her kind of annoying. In Case 39 Renee is overworked social worker Emily Jenkins who comes to the aid of apparently abused ten year old Lillith Sullivan (Jodelle Ferland). Along with a cop friend (Ian McShane???) Emily manages to rescue Lillith in the nick of time before her pale and zoned out parents can gas the child in an oven. Feeling a connection with the little girl, Emily arranges for Lillith to stay with her until an appropriate foster home can be found. She also gets the child some much needed counselling in the form of bearded love interest Bradley Cooper. But all too soon nasty things start to happen around Emily now that Lillith is in her life including deaths of people she knows and cares about. And all the clues lead back to Lillith. So far, so bog standard by the numbers storytelling. And it doesn’t get any better. The format is followed precisely complete with the occasional and obvious jump scare (sudden dog barking, alarm clock going off etc.) and the inevitable investigation by Emily in to the truth about Lillith and then no one believing her once she knows what’s actually going on. Yawn! This all leads to a highly anticlimactic ending even if it does tie in psychologically to Emily’s own past and her feelings about her own mother. Worth noting about the end sequence is that it’s obviously shot day for night but looks really unconvincing in a 1970’s Hammer film kinda way.

Case 39 was yet another workmanlike and utterly uninspired effort from Hollywood. The director creates no atmosphere or tension whatsoever and the script is just plain lazy. Zellweger is ok but looks creepier than the film’s creepy kid with her terminal squint and puffy face. Cooper is just death fodder as is McShane and as such they both just phone it in. So, as in most of these lazy efforts, it is left to the child star at the centre to carry the film. And Jodelle Ferland does a very good job as the calculating and creepy Lillith. Ferland can do cute and vulnerable with so much ease; her big, dark, innocent eyes alone can pluck at the heartstrings. But she can also switch on the cool, calm, calculating, threating attitude. And then she can combine both in to a weird yet cute and sweet malevolence. There is a pretty good scene where she turns the tables on counsellor Bradley Cooper and ends up giving him a major case of the wiggins. Ferland’s a good little actress who has impressed before in the likes of Silent Hill. I’m glad to see that her latest role is in Joss Whedon’s up coming horror flick The Cabin in the Woods. Unfortunately she has to get past a role in Twilight: Eclipse first. Poor kid.

Anyway, Case 39 was average as average can be. I didn’t hate it like I did the recently viewed and thoroughly unlikable Sorority Row, but nor did I particularly like it. It’s a rung below the superior averageness of the similar Orphan, which at least had a half-decent twist and was shot in a more stylish manner. But like Orphan, Case 39 is saved from falling in to complete obscurity by having a strong central performance from its requisite creepy child.

A Little Princess is a little gem

You might think this is an odd film for a bloke in his late thirties who's a horror and sci fi geek to love. But it isn’t. At heart I’m a big softy who also loves films and stories in general that can make an emotional connection – as long as the themes and ideas strike a chord. And they most certainly do in this film.

I hadn’t watched A Little Princess for a long time. But today I was looking through my DVD’s and for some reason it just leapt out at me. I’m glad it did. I remembered it as being a very good film but had forgotten just how beautiful it is both thematically and artistically. It was originally recommended to me not long after it first came out in cinemas back in 1996, but back them I didn’t bother, dismissing it as just another boring kids film. It took me a while to finally see it, catching up with it on TV one Christmas. And I was instantly captivated. In the hands of Oscar nominated Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón who made Y Tu Mamá También, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and Children of Men, A Little Princess is a shining gem.

The story goes like this: It is 1914 and young Sara Crewe (Liesel Matthews), an imaginative and kind-hearted girl, is brought from India to New York by Captain Crewe (Liam Cunningham), her British Army officer father. She is enrolled in the same private boarding school her mother attended as a child. Her father then departs for Europe to rejoin the British Army to fight in the trenches of the First World War. Sara quickly becomes popular with her schoolmates, capturing their imaginations with colourful, magical tales of India and of its gods and goddesses. But tragedy eventually intervenes, which leaves Sara destitute and at the mercy of the schools nasty headmistress, Miss Minchen (a truly hissable Eleanor Bron.) To cope with her grief and her new station in life, Sara becomes a close friend of the schools child servant Becky. Along with Becky, Sara escapes her horrible new life by going further in to her world of stories and fantasy.

A Little Princess is adapted from the classic 1904 novel of the same name written by Frances Hodgson Burnett who also wrote The Secret Garden. This film version from 1995 changes several elements of the original novel including moving the school from England to America, moving the time period forward to the outbreak of the First World War and reinventing the entire resolution of Sara’s story. I haven’t read the book but the story as told here works perfectly. Thematically this film also works perfectly, at least for me. The exploration of childhood and what it means to be constrained as a child by often stupid seeming rules that quash an exhuberant and vivid imagination, a gift to be treasured and one that most of us will eventually lose once we've grown up. To allow imagination to soar is a wonderful thing as is encouraging freedom of expression and creativity for its own sake. The ability to imagine, to dream, to wonder…it is fundamental to who we are. And sometimes, for some of us, it can be our only means of escape, a way to freedom.

And then there is the look and the design of this film. It is simply gorgeous with detailed and lavish sets that were built almost entirely on a studio back lot in Burbank, California. The cinematography by Cuarón’s regular DP Emmanuel Lubezki is sumptuous and elegant. For the Indian/fantasy scenes it is dreamily colourful while being suitably crisp and grim for the reality of the dirty streets and alleys of New York.

The cast is excellent with young Liesel Matthews imbuing Sara with an inner strength, warm hearted kindness and an open honesty that never lets you think of her as being remotely spoiled or silly. Eleanor Bron is wonderfully cold and cruel as Miss Minchen. You can sense in her a real sadness and bitterness that comes out as a kind of jealousy towards poor Sara. All the young actresses playing the girls in the school are great especially the little one who plays Lottie, the ‘possessed’ girl with the screaming fits. She made me laugh.

A Little Princess is a carefully crafted, beautifully rendered piece of work coming from a top-notch filmmaker. Like the best films of Pixar it is too good to just label as a children's film, it trancends that. It is a film that deserves a place on the shelf of every family and of every genuine film lover.

Trailer:

A Little Princess 1995 (Trailer) - MyVideo