Rave la France: Beatrice Dalle in Clubbed To Death
Clubbed To Death
(18) 90 mins e "k it-
Nothing to do With Violent baton- wrelding, as the title might suggest, Clubbed To Death - from Moi Ivan, Tor Abraham director Yolande Zauberrnan »— is about the throbbing world of the techno dance club
Falling asleep on the last bus home, twenty-year-old Lola (Elodie Bouchez) finds herself stranded in an unknown part of PENIS. Persuaded into a nightclub by a stranger, she meets Emir, an enigmatic, sexually distant Arab guy. Totally intrigued by him, she returns to the club to seek him out and, despite discovering that he has a drug habit and a possessive dancer girlfriend (Beatrice Dalle), she persists in getting to know him.
Unsure of herself and unsure of him, Lola still succeeds in breaking through Emir's wall of solitude.
Using hand-held camera to capture the distinctive aura of the club envrronment, Zauberman captures the Isolation of her characters amid the constant movement of anonymous faces and bodies. The combination of Dalle as a provocatively clad siren and Bouchez as the young, innocent Lola with the contagious smile provrdes the visual stage around which a madly kinetic and largely speechless world swrrls. Driven by a techno soundtrack, and more of an atmospheric portrait than a narrative piece, Clubbed To Death is a stylish yet unassuming film, (Beth Williams)
fl Glasgow Film Theatre from Mon 6—Wed 8 Apr
Anastasia (U) 94 mins it x? e a:
With this stunning, wrdescreen action- adventure, animator Don Bluth offers a film that‘s very different in style to his goofy An American Tail and something to really rival Disney
Near the beginning of this romantic musical version of the Russian 'legend', a curse is brought on the Tsar’s family by evrl magician Rasputin, preCIpitating both the 1917 BolsheVik Revolution and his own doom Only the child princess Anastasia and her grand- mother (voices of Meg Ryan and Angela Lansbury) surVive, but they are separated while fleeing the uprismg and Anastasia grows up in an orphanage as ’Anya', unable to remember her past.
Little Orphan Anya: a scene from Anastasia
In St Petersburg, she falls in vvith y0ung entrepreneur Dimitri (John Cusack) and portly ex-aristocrat Vladimir (Kelsey Grammer) These likeable con-men are intent on travelling to Paris to pass her off to her pining grandmother as the real Anastasia, unaware that she is indeed the princess. But Rasputin’s €Vl| spirit lives on, determined to destroy her
Anastasia boasts some extraordinary action sequences, exqumte characterisations and beautiful songs. There’s also an amusmg role for Hank Azaria (from The Simpsons) who VOices Rasputin’s little albino hench-bat Bartok. Whether or not Christopher Lloyd’s ghoulish Rasputin corpse might be too gOry for some children remains to be seen. (John MacKenzie)
I General release from Fri 3 Apr
new releases FILM
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ALSO OPENING Most Wanted (15) 99 mins
The issue's top contender for the 'probably should have gone straight to Video’ prize is this action thriller from debut director Davrd Glenn Hogan.
When Gulf War hero Keenen Ivory Wayans is conVicted of killing a superior officer, he’s left to die in a military prison until Jon Vorgt, leader of an elite army assaSSination squad, offers him a get-out clause: kill an “ industrialist who’s selling deadly JonVoight'n MostWanted biotechnology on the black market.
But the hit doesn't go smoothly, the First Lady takes the bullet instead, and our hero goes on the run trying to prove he’s been set up.
Wayans also wrote the script, which Box Office Magazine reckoned was ’hardly complex, ricocheting as it does between iust-the-facts terseness and rather laboured one-liners'. The leading man also came under fire from The Washington Post, who noted he ’has the physrque for action heroics, but the soul of a comedian'. The San Francisco Chronicle was kinder, saying the film was 'idiotic entertainment done with skill . . . laced with clever jokes'.
A colourful supporting cast includes Paul Sorvino, Robert Culp and Eric Roberts. (Alan Morrison)
fl Selected release from Fri 3 Apr.
T50 OPENING“
Eskiya (15) 128 mins
Outside of festivals, it’s almost impossible for even the most dedicated film- goer to keep up With what's happening in world Cinema. In Scotland, we’re lucky enough to have French, Italian, Spanish, Latin American and Australian events bringing subtitled substance to the arthouse screen, but that leaves a lot of countries neglected.
With its richer ethnic mix, London can boast a wider range of festivals, including the annual Turkish Film Festival at the Rio in Hackney. The cinema itself is behind the limited release of Eskiya, which has won both critical and popular acclaim, becoming Turkey's all-time number one box office hit.
The story concerns an old bandit who is released from prison only to discover that his countrymen have forgotten his legendary exploits and his former stalking ground submerged beneath a reserv0ir. Even his best friend has betrayed him to Win the woman they both love.
Trrne Out described the film as 'warm, accessible and sooally engaged’ and the Sunday Telegraph reckoned it was 'full of ancrent Turkish myth-making’. While not one of the international releases of the year, it’s certainly a perfect example of its nation's populist style of filmmaking. (Alan Morrison)
fl Edinburgh Fr/rnhouse from Fri 3—Mon 6 Apr
TV PROGRAMME Scene By Scene: Martin Scorsese
’You talkin’ to me?' Martin Scorsese has given modern Cinema some of its most memorable lines. And so it's fitting that the BBC have chosen him as the latest subrect in their excellent Scene By Scene series.
Mark Cousms - filmmaker, Movredrorne maestro, and one-time direct0r of the Edinburgh International Film Festival — Will be chatting to Scorsese about his work from student movre The Big Shave to new film Kundun, a biopic of the Dalai Lama Safe to say, they'll be taking in classics like Raging Bull, Goodfellas and Mean Streets along the way.
'Scorsese is so daring,’ Cousms says with an enthusiast’s gabble. ’He dares, Within the Hollywood system, to be honest about life. He takes you into the s0ul of his characters and shows you how messy and fucked up they are.
'Spielberg and Lucas have remained boyish optimists, but Scorsese has a real mature Vision of what human beings are. That's very hard to do in American mowes where they always want to put infantile characters up on the screen. He’s really fought the system and said "This is how awful human beings are, and still I love them". That's great.’
Screened the same evening is a Scorsese double bill of Taxi Driver and After Hours. (Peter Ross)
I Scene 8y Scene, BBC2, Sat 4 Apr, 17.20pm.
Martin Scorsese on the set of Kundun
2—16 Apr 1998 THE LIST”