Name Gerald McMorrow
Born 1970, London Background After a first taste of sci-fi working as a floor runner of Richard Stanley's Hardware in 1990. Gerald McMorrow wrote and directed his short Thespian X in 2002. His vision of a nightmare future burdened with officialdom immediately evoked comparisons with Terry Gilliam. and led to a large-scale debut with Franklyn, a sci-fi fantasy starring Ryan Phillippe as Preest. a masked outlaw searching through a dystopian metropolis ruled by organised religion. Meanwhile City.
How did Morrow get to create his vision of Meanwhile City for his debut feature?
‘I was on holiday in Mexico City. and looking at a mall where every shop seemed to be selling religious goods of some kind or another. and Meanwhile City came directly from that. taking the religious architecture of Rome or Florence and blowing it three miles up into the sky. It helped me enormously that Jeremy Thomas was producing; he's produced films for Bertolucci and Cronenberg. and he really stood by the ambition of my project.’ How did McMorrow arrive at the casting for Franklyn? ‘We changed just before production, we were actually going to go with Ewan McGregor and John Hurt in the lead roles. but Ewan broke his leg in a motorcycle accident and John ended up doing Indiana Jones 4 for 19 weeks. But we got lucky in that Ryan Phillippe's American accent really added something different as Preest. and although Sam Riley auditioned for the role of Preest. he looked great alongside Eva Green. so it all worked out in the end.’ Interesting fact McMorrow credits the critically despised Michael Winner as an influence on his work. ‘One of the inspirations for Franklyn was Winner's 1976 film The Sentinel. where the girl's apartment is quite literally on the edge of hell. I wanted to create that kind of feel for Eva's apartment in my film'
(Eddie Harrison)
I Franklyn is on selected release fi’om Fri 27 Feb. See Also Released, page 44.
42 THE LIST 19 Feb—5 Mar 2009
DRAMA/THRILLER THREE MONKEYS (UC MAYMAN) (15) 109min eeee
Following on from Uzak (Distant), his melancholic portrait of troubled masculinity, and his intimate study of a relationship meltdown in 2006’s Climates, Turkish auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylan ambitiously branches out into film noir territory with this contemplative, elliptical yarn, which takes its title from the proverb about monkeys who ‘see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil.’
The Istanbul milieu of Three Monkeys is more working-class than the settings from Ceylan’s previous two films. Here the driver father Eyup (Yavuz Bingol), his wife Hacer (Hatice Asian), and their teenage son Ismael (Ahmet Rifat Sungar) become embroiled in a web of deceit, guilt, and ultimately murder. The catalyst is Eyup agreeing to go to jail on behalf of his corrupt politician boss Servet (Ercan Kesal), who’s committed a hit-and-run driving offence. And it's while Eyup is in prison and looking forward to his financial reward that l-Iacer begins an affair with Servet, which is discovered by an incensed Ismael.
The bulk of Three Monkeys unfolds over a sweltering, energy-sapping summer, and the key space is the claustrophobic family fiat, which adjoins railway tracks
ROMANCE COMED‘i NEW IN TOWN (12A) 96min e
lmagine Local Hero shorn of wit. poem and atriiesphere and you have New /'i Tenn, a cheesehall rom cent from Danish TV director Jonas Elmer Renee Zellweder plaxs LiiCy Hill, a corporate high-flier from stinm Miami who comes to the Minnesota hai‘kwater of New Ulm (population 13.365) to restructure a manufacturing plant (Tlii‘hed fish out-of—water Situations pile up as LUCV struggles to assert herself over the snowy weather. the strangeh at‘itented town gossips. and doe-eyed lottal hunk Ted Mll(‘h(‘“ iHarn Conniek Jr, sporting a Viiflt‘h of plaid shirts and eatalikitie knitwear). While the Canadian |()(‘iil|()llf% fail to (70ll\.’lll(‘t‘_ Zellweger and Conniek Jr's i)rotessionalism can't paper over a mean spirited attitude to small-town life which Elmer‘s feehle attempts at Capra esriiie social (:oni‘ein can't overcome. With personahle supporting players like .JK Simmons and Franeis Conroy wasted in thankless lllll)()l roles. the laDOLired whimsy of New /n Town tiirns tip dead on arrival. (Eddie Harrison)
I General re/ease from Fri .Z’r' r’ieh.
and overlooks the sea: these symbols of escape are visually contrasted with the entrapment of the characters. Many of the important events in this darkly ironic story occur off-screen, however: we never see the original car crash, for example. instead we hear it and see its aftermath, and we never learn who assaulted Ismael. Ceylan also plays around with our expectations of who is the protagonist as the narrative focus shifts between family members, reinforcing the theme of humans passing on guilt. There's even the spectral presence of a dead sibling haunting proceedings.
One of Ceylan’s great strengths is his ability to deploy different facets of mise-en-scene to illustrate the inner worlds of his troubled characters, and here his fine cast, who communicate their emotions more through their expressions and silences than through dialogue, assists him. Above all this a superbly crafted film: the impressively composed widescreen HD images of cinematographer Gokhan Tiryaki are almost entirely drained of bright colours, while the meticulous sound design is also integral to the film’s ominous atmosphere. (Tom Dawson)
I Fi/mhouse, Edinburgh, Fri 27 Feb— Thu 5 Mar; GFI', Glasgow, Sun 8— Tue 70 Mar.