INTERVIEW . ~ .. H...

.’.

BEYOND BOBBY DARIN KEVIN SPACEY talks about his new film BEYOND THE SEA, a musical biopic of legendary singer Bobby Darin.

‘I finally got the rights for Beyond the Sea in 2000 after a five-year wait. The year before that I started working on the music with Roger Kellaway, who was one of Bobby’s musical conductors and arrangers. It was a process of figuring out how to tell the story, to get a script and to raise the money. It was tough. In America the movie studios have a slight prejudice against films they perceive as being biographical or driven by music. They don’t quite know what to do with them. So we made it a UK-German co-production. While it looks like a beautiful sunny day in Italy, it’s actually December in Berlin.

‘Bobby chose personal freedom, and it cost him something in terms of his career. And I think he chose right. It’s a shame for us all that he died so young, because when he died he was at the cusp of a whole new plateau in his career.

‘When I think about what Bobby did, he sang, he danced, he wrote his own songs. He played the vibes, the guitar, the harmonica, the drums and the piano. He did impressions. What’s been interesting to watch over the last six or seven years is all these artists who make it on the Pop Idol shows, or even artists like Robbie Williams, want to tackle this kind of music. I think the more people who do that the better. It’s great music, and it opens it up to a generation for whom this music would otherwise be lost.’ (Interview by Paul Dale) I Beyond the Sea is on general release from Fri 26 Nov. See review.

54 THE LIST 18 Nov—2 Dec 2004

FESTIVAL MAIS OUI

Tony McKibbin sorts the wheat from the chaff at this year’s FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL.

Now into its 13th year, the French Film Festival is best

seen not as a showcase for cutting edge film, but as an

arena for mainstream arthouse fare. Once you accept that as the basic festival premise, then the films won’t really disappoint.

We can see this, for example, in retrospective subject Alain Delon (pictured), and the films chosen. Jacques Deray’s The Swimming Pool (.00 GFT: Glasgow, 6.15, Tue 23 Nov; 3pm, Wed 24 Nov; Filmhouse: Edinburgh, 6pm, Thu 25 Nov, and 1.30pm Fri 26 Nov) is a sumptuous chamber piece with Delon caught in a complex love tangle with Romy Schneider, and with Jane Birkin and Maurice Ronet providing support. Then there is Bertrand Blier’s Our Story (000 GFT: 5.45pm, Fri 26 Nov; 3pm, Sat 27 Nov and Filmhouse: 6.30pm, Sun 28 Nov and 2.30pm, Mon 29 Nov), a doleful study of a middle-aged garage owner caught in a world where fact and fiction blur. More challenging

perhaps is Joseph Losey’s Mr Klein (.000 GFT: 6.30pm,

Wed 24 Nov; 3pm, Thu 25 Nov; Filmhouse: 6.30pm, Wed 1 Dec and 2.30pm, Thu 2 Dec), where Delon’s titular character loses his identity through being mistaken for a Jew in Paris during the German occupation.

The mainstream aspect is also on show in the contemporary films. Sometimes the sobriety and relative lack of technical ambition can really work in a film’s favour,

4 who takes her work seriously. As such. she's not simply courting controversy. but rather challenging Cinemagoers' expectations. here by taking explicit images out of the home (pickaxe notWithstanding) and putting them onto the big screen. Whether or not that concept alone makes for good Cinema is another matter.

iMiles Fielder)

I Se/ected release from Fri 26 Nov.

PERIOD DRAMA BEING JULIA (i 2A) 103min CO

Bugger playwrights: they can't write for women. or for men.‘ This disingenuous line comes from playwright Ronald Harwood's script for Being Ju/ia. and by the end of this musty vehicle for Annette Bening. you

may well be tempted to agree With him. Julia (Beningi, an ageing London actress of the 1930s. is locked in a loveless relationship With impresario

' r

evidenced in William Karel’s excellent The World According to Bush (0000 GFT: 3.45pm, Mon 22 Nov; 3pm, Tue 23 Nov; Filmhouse: 2.30pm, Sat 20 Nov and 3.45pm, Sun 21 Nov), with the film lacking the hysterical subjectivity of Michael Moore’s recent outing, and working much more from inquiring interviews with anybody from Norman Mailer to Richard Perle. Back to fiction, and less intriguing as an expose of corporate capitalism, Work Hard, Play Hard (0. GFT: 6.30pm, Thu 25 Nov; Filmhouse: 9pm, Sun 28 Nov) wants to work microcosmically as an exploration of one man selling out to the demands of big business, but it’s too much an issue movie flitting from subject to subject. Not much better, the Quebecois film 20h17 rue Darling (O. GFT: 8.30pm, Thu 25 Nov and 6.15pm, Sat 27 Nov; Filmhouse: 2.30pm, Tue 23 Nov and 6pm, Wed 24 Nov) is a banal compendium of mid—life crisis cliches that could have done with a bit of acidic humour. This study of a recovering alcoholic, hard bitten journalist finding his soul really lacks freshness.

Much better is A Common Thread (00. GFT: 8.30pm, Mon 29 Nov; Filmhouse: 8.30pm, Tue 30 Nov), a nice film about reconciliation, as a teenage girl comes to terms with her pregnancy, and a mother learns to live without her now dead son. Nicely linked around the recuperative possibilities of needlework, the tone is delicate throughout.

I French Film Festiva/ UK. GFT. G/asgow. Fi/nihuuiir: luiirhurqh from Mon 75 Nov to Sun 5 Dec. www.frenchfi/nMesh/(ii.arr).ul/ See Rough Cuts. page 55. for more FFF news.

Michael (Jeremy Ironsi. She eventually finds love Willi i'iit;t;—liut«diin young thing Toni (Shaun Evans) but ill: turns out to have a whole different agenda, By this pomt you may alrearl/ l)’: fast asleep. not caring whether Julia and Michael ‘.‘./lH take a C’Jlllllr/ house for summer, or play inaniong after dinner. The theatrical milieu. With Harrrood dravnng on The Dresser. and director lstvan Szabo On f/lephisto. IS Io/ingl/ captured. but any political context of pre-WWII Britain is ignored in favour of hoary lines like You see more of Roger than you do of me.‘ Bening's IT’Lilll- layered performance is the sa ring grace of this W Somerset Maugham adaptation. a period drama that's too Close to menopausal for its own good. (Eddie Harrison,

I Genera/ re/ease from Fri 79 Nov.