The Family Fang

For F*** Magazine

THE FAMILY FANG

Director : Jason Bateman

Cast : Jason Bateman, Nicole Kidman, Christopher Walken, Maryann Plunkett, Marin Ireland, Harris Yulin, Linda Emond

Genre : Drama/Comedy

Run Time : 1 hr 45 mins

Opens : 12 May 2016

Rating : PG13 (Some Coarse Language)

The family that creates art together stays together. Well, maybe that’s not a hard and fast rule. Baxter Fang (Bateman) is a novelist struggling with writer’s block while his sister Annie (Kidman) is a Hollywood actress and frequent tabloid target. As children, Annie was ‘Child A’ and Baxter was ‘Child B’, accomplices in their parents’ elaborate performance art pieces. Caleb (Walken) and Camille (Plunkett) garnered attention throughout the art world, staging various stunts in public with the aid of their children. The now-grown Fang siblings are affected by their past in different ways, and have become estranged from their parents. When Caleb and Camille suddenly vanish, Baxter and Annie immediately assume it’s just another stunt, since their parents have often cried wolf in the name of art. As the mystery surrounding Caleb and Camille’s disappearance thickens, Baxter and Annie are forced to confront some painful, uncomfortable memories, making sense of their roles in their parents’ lives and art.

The Family Fang is based on the 2011 novel of the same name by Kevin Wilson, adapted for the screen by playwright David Lindsay-Abaire. Star Bateman also directs, marking his second outing behind the camera after Bad Words. It is extremely easy for films that are couched as being ‘quirky’ to come off as self-consciously pretentious. The Family Fang revolves around some pretty eccentric characters, but it has one foot firmly planted in a world that is grounded and relatable. In its commentary on modern art, The Family Fang expectedly tends towards the cynical, but Bateman tempers this with surprisingly heartfelt, sincere scenes.

Modern performance art has long been the subject of scoffing and scorn, and many hold the opinion that its practitioners get off on shocking the public and that there’s little value in their work otherwise. Figures like Chris Burden and Marina Abramović are some of the more obvious influences here, with the former being name-dropped in the film itself. While much of the film’s humour is derived from the outlandish nature of the pieces that Caleb and Camille create, Bateman seems careful not to mock them outright. This is a character study, with the central sibling team untangling the enigma of their parents; people who raised them but whom they’ve never quite understood.

Footage of the Fangs’ exploits is spliced in throughout the film, parcelling out the information so we see the evolution of how it all started out as something frivolous and fun, and see how the children began to feel like they were being used as pawns in service of their parents’ egos. Jack McCarthy and Kyle Donnery portray young Baxter at different ages, with Mackenzie Smith and Taylor Rose playing young Annie. Kathryn Hahn plays a younger Camille. Because Walken is so distinctive, Jason Butler Harner’s portrayal of a younger Caleb isn’t wholly convincing. These segments effectively convey two childhoods consumed by misguided passion and give us plenty of reasons why Baxter and Annie are unwilling to re-enter the world they’ve left behind.

Bateman is as reliable a straight man as they come, a master of the ‘uncertain sideways glance’. Baxter is a bit of a schlub, writing a fantasy novel about a brother and sister that draws on his own relationship with his sister. Bateman’s performance never calls attention to itself, which works great since Baxter is the one nominally normal character in a sea of peculiarity. Kidman has a reputation for being somewhat frigid, so it is wonderful to see her let her guard down and embrace the role of someone who’s flawed but full of life. The scene in which a sleazy director tries to convince Annie that she needs to go topless for a scene in his movie is a solid establishing character moment. Kidman’s natural Australian accent is more than a little distracting, but on the whole, she and Bateman sell their bond as siblings, very quickly getting the audience in their corner.

If you need someone to play eccentric, there’s no question that Walken is your guy. The actor is known for needing very little screen time to steal a movie, and he does make his presence felt in The Family Fang. Caleb is very clearly the ringleader, stringing Camille and their children along in his schemes. His wife goes along with the plans out of love and their kids have no say in it. There are some tough questions in there, chief of which being, “Can what Caleb and Camille did be strictly considered child abuse?” Caleb does not become an over-the-top caricature in Walken’s hands, and his fiery brashness is complemented by Plunkett’s maternal warmth.

Bateman’s sophomore directorial effort displays some sharp instincts for storytelling. While the central mystery is resolved a little too easily, the story is sufficiently intriguing to draw the viewer in. Any statements the film attempts to make about the art world do not overshadow the emotional journey of its sibling protagonists. It is ultimately quite a marvel that The Family Fang is bereft of the smart-alecky indulgence that tends to afflict films trading mostly on their quirk factor.

Summary: Witty yet far from obnoxious, this dark family comedy-drama is assured in tone and digs into the themes of family relationships while also voicing sound opinions on the world of performance art.

RATING: 4 out of 5 Stars


Jedd Jong

Before I Go To Sleep

For F*** Magazine

BEFORE I GO TO SLEEP 

Director : Rowan Joffé

Cast : Nicole Kidman, Colin Firth, Mark Strong, Anne-Marie Duff, Dean-Charles Chapman, Jing Lusi, Rosie MacPherson

Rating : PG13 (Violence and Some Coarse Language)

Run time: 92 mins

The thought of losing one’s reliance on memory is a frightening one. What would it be like not knowing the fundamentals of one’s personal history and not knowing who to trust? In this psychological thriller, Nicole Kidman plays Christine Lucas, a woman who suffers from anterograde amnesia following an accident years ago. Christine loses all the memories she has made in a given day when she wakes up the next morning, her mind “resetting” to how it was in her early 20s. She is cared for by her husband Ben (Firth), struggling with his wife’s predicament but choosing to remain strong for her. However, Christine begins to doubt if she can trust Ben and begins secretly seeing neuropsychologist Dr. Nasch (Strong) in the hopes that he can devise a cure for her condition. However, the more Christine uncovers, the more she loses track of as she awakes the next day.

            Before I Go to Sleep is adapted from the best-selling 2011 novel of the same name by S.J. Watson. Writer-director Rowan Joffé pulls the viewer in with an efficient set-up – the premise justifies the chunks of exposition delivered at the beginning of the film. It also allows Joffé to play with the structure a little. However, it’s not long before all the conventions used in the telling of this story become evident. We’ve seen anterograde amnesia used as a plot device in films from Memento to 50 First Dates and there’s a distinct reason why memory loss has become associated with predictable soap opera-esque melodrama. There is an effort on Joffé’s part to spin something new from this shop-worn trope and the film’s first act does establish an air of plausibility and tension. However, by the time the climax rolls around, Before I Go to Sleep has leapt down the generic thriller rabbit hole, leaving head-scratching dangling plot threads in its wake.

            One major thing Before I Go to Sleep has going for it is that it’s very smartly cast, playing on audience expectations associated with each of the three stars. Nicole Kidman’s performance as a character who’s vulnerable but is not about to take what’s happening to her lying down is sufficiently compelling and, for the first two acts of the film at least, helps the audience overlook the inconsistencies in the narrative. Ideally, a film of this type should make one go “what would I do in a situation like this?” and Kidman does accomplish that. The film reunites Kidman with Colin Firth, her on-screen husband from The Railway Man. There’s a different dynamic here and Firth is able to strike a balance between sympathetic and suspicious even though the material doesn’t give him quite enough to play with. Mark Strong is known for his ability to play “sinister”, but he can just as easily play “steadfast, reassuring and concerned”, which he does here. Anne-Marie Duff rounds out the cast as Claire, a friend from Christine’s past whose appearance in the story calls events into question. Given this, she is little more than a plot device.

            As far as whodunits go, Before I Go to Sleep is far more straightforward than one would expect, the potential for truly mind-bending psychological thrills left somewhat unmined. At its weakest moments, the film strays into “Lifetime Movie of the Week” territory. During the denouement, Edward Shearmur’s score goes into full-blown cliché thriller mode, heavy on the “Psycho strings”. All this said though, the film does manage to be absorbing and chilling in the moment and it’s only upon later reflection that it begins to crumble. As much as the logic of the twists and turns matter, it comes down just as much to how entertaining it is. While the big reveal isn’t quite as ludicrous as that in the Liam Neeson-starring amnesia thriller Unknown, Before I Go to Sleep falls short of the satisfyingly explosive thrills of that film.

Summary: It’s well-acted and initially engaging, but Before I Go to Sleep is ultimately unremarkable psychological thriller fare, complete with the plot hole or two that comes with middling entries in this genre.

RATING: 2.5 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong

Grace of Monaco

For F*** Magazine

GRACE OF MONACO

Director : Olivier Dahan

Cast : Nicole Kidman, Tim Roth, Milo Ventimiglia, Parker Posey, Paz Vega, Frank Langella, Roger Ashton-Griffiths, Derek Jacobi

Genre : Biography, Drama

Opens : 22 May 2014

Rating : PG

In his song “Grace Kelly”, Mika proclaimed “I’ve gone identity mad!” Grace of Monaco attempts to portray the crisis of identity the real Grace Kelly (Kidman) underwent. In marrying Prince Rainier III of Monaco (Roth), Kelly left her life as a Hollywood actress behind, but she was constantly reminded that the people of Monaco would not recognise the daughter of a Philadelphia bricklayer as one of their own. As France threatens to tax and possibly annex Monaco, resulting in a heated dispute between Rainier and France’s Charles de Gaulle (André Penvern), Kelly, now a wife, mother and princess, is tempted to return to acting.  Director Alfred Hitchcock (Ashton-Griffiths) comes calling with the script for his new film Marnie and with the whole world watching (and judging), the princess must decide what role she will play in the future of the principality.

            Many biopics have been criticised for taking a “cradle to the grave” approach, attempting to condense the entire lives of their subjects into two and half hours or so. Grace of Monaco instead focuses on a short, specific period in Grace Kelly’s life, which the actual royal family of Monaco claims has been highly fictionalised and is filled with factual inaccuracies. The film’s post-production process has also been turbulent, with director Olivier Dahan and distributor Harvey Weinstein feuding over the final cut and the release date being shuffled multiple times. The film ends up being overripe and uneven, hokey and melodramatic, if still watchable and somewhat palatable.

            Grace of Monaco is a pretty film to look at, cinematographer Eric Gautier dousing the movie in soft fill light. There are elegant costumes and sets galore, but one can’t help but feel a sense of artifice – at its worst, the movie evokes a movie-of-the-week affair, a pity given the marvellous La Vie En Rose, which Dahan also directed. The central conflict with its almost-intrigue and kinda-stakes just doesn’t feel as weighty as it needs to be, the film instead generating moments of overwrought emotion that despite Nicole Kidman’s best efforts, fail to ring altogether true. There’s even a montage that feels straight out of something like The Princess Diaries in which Grace Kelly takes elocution and history lessons in order to become a better princess.

            Nicole Kidman reportedly beat out the likes of Charlize Theron, Jessica Chastain, Amy Adams, Gwyneth Paltrow and January Jones amongst others for the coveted title role. She’s certainly not a terrible Grace Kelly, mustering up all of her glamour and, well, grace to play the part but there isn’t a lot of depth to the portrayal beyond “being a princess isn’t the fantasy it’s cracked up to be.” One would think that given the narrower scope of the film compared to a conventional biopic, we’d get more room for meaningful characterisation and Kidman tries, but ultimately doesn’t deliver a well-rounded depiction of Grace Kelly. We hear many frustrated exclamations, including “why must everything be so complicated?” and “Ah! So difficult!” At no point does “Nicole Kidman the actor” disappear for “Grace Kelly the person” to take her place. She does have her moments though, that climactic speech she delivers at the end is sufficiently moving. She’s also a good deal taller than her onscreen husband; something Kidman is probably used to.

Tim Roth is careful not to turn Prince Rainier into a stiff, stern caricature and while he doesn’t have much chemistry with Kidman, he is believable as the Prince pushed into a tight spot. Frank Langella is the requisite kindly father figure as Father Francis Tucker, one of Rainier III’s closest friends and most trusted advisors, warm and wise even when saddled with platitudes such as “at some point, every fairy tale must end”. Roger Ashton-Griffiths is a decent, convincing Alfred Hitchcock, playing the legendary director as a gruff but well-meaning uncle.

            Grace of Monaco is far from subtle – we get an ominous car/driving motif (of course) and some clumsy, on the nose cues in the score. It’s difficult to take the film entirely seriously, but perhaps there’s a charm in the kitsch and the silliness – it’s unlikely that it was what director Olivier Dahan intended, but for what it’s worth, Grace of Monaco is far from detestable or brazenly divisive. Sensationalised? Sure. More than a little awards-baity? You bet. But is it trash? Nah.

Summary: At one point, Princess Grace tells her husband “Rai, it’s just a movie”. Go into Grace of Monaco with that mindset and perhaps you might enjoy yourself. As a dramatic, insightful exploration of the life of the screen legend though, it mostly misses the mark.

RATING: 2.5 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong 

The Railway Man

For F*** Magazine

THE RAILWAY MAN

Director: Jonathan Teplitzky
Cast:         Colin Firth, Nicole Kidman, Jeremy Irvine, Hiroyuki Sanada, Tanroh Ishida, Stellan Skarsgård
Genre: Drama, Biography
Run Time: 116 mins
Opens: 13 March 2014
Rating: NC16 (Some Violence)

Eric Lomax, a British Army officer during the Second World War, was one of many thousands forced to work on the infamous Thailand-Burma Death Railway as a Prisoner of War. He lived to tell his tale in the autobiography The Railway Man, which serves as the basis for this film. Colin Firth plays Lomax who, in 1980, meets and falls in love with Patti (Kidman). Lomax’s post-traumatic stress disorder manifests itself and drives a wedge in his and Patti’s relationship, so a concerned Patti goes to Lomax’s best friend and fellow WWII survivor Finlay (Skarsgård) to learn about what really happened. Flashbacks featuring a young Lomax (Irvine) and Finlay (Sam Reid) depict this. In the present, Lomax tracks down Takashi Nagase (Sanada), the Japanese officer who imprisoned and tortured him, to settle an old score.



As students, most Singaporeans would have studied the Japanese conquest of South-East Asia, but watching this first-hand account is something different altogether. With its intimate focus, The Railway Man personalises the historical tragedy in a way that is eminently relatable. The film starts out under the guise of a romantic drama, with a meet-cute on a train and the depiction of a middle-aged couple’s whirlwind courtship, but as old wounds are re-opened, the audience is thrust into the harshness of the Death Railway and the extent of the suffering borne by Lomax and many who were not as lucky as him is laid bare. A clever, haunting visual device has Lomax walk out of the hotel in which he and Patti are having their honeymoon and straight into Burma of the past, where he confronts the demons which have been gnawing away at him.

Many movies have featured shell-shocked veterans whose lives are irreparably shattered following the trauma of war, but The Railway Man examines the long-term effects of such trauma as well as how it can weigh on a significant other. There’s also that “the past is a foreign country” theme, Finlay scoffing at tourists taking “Bridge On The Bloody River Kwai holidays,” a reminder to never forget the atrocities of war even if they seem like they may not directly impact us. However, a major change that this movie makes from the true story is how Lomax’s reunion with his tormentor is couched as an almost-Oldboy-esque quest of vengeance rather than one of reconciliation. Ostensibly, this is to up the tension and the scenes are indeed nail-biters, but the conflict comes off as feeling forced and this embellishment ultimately seems disingenuous.

The ever-dependable Firth is on expectedly excellent form, conveying the bottled-up torment of having lived through the war, while also displaying quick flashes of child-like innocence in Lomax’s love of trains. Irvine, who was a revelation in War Horse, is good as the young, pre-trauma Lomax, his performance lining up with Firth’s nicely. Sanada more than holds his own opposite the Oscar-winning Firth and he deserves his growing status as Hollywood’s go-to Japanese actor. Kidman is in a more passive role, having the story told to her for much of the movie, but she and Firth are relatively believable as a couple. While an excellent actor, Skarsgård’s Swedish accent is still audible and perhaps a British actor would have been better suited to playing Finlay. Seeing him and Firth together also conjures up images of a solemn semi-Mamma Mia! reunion.

Cinematographer Gary Phillips and composer David Hirschfelder both provide the film with plenty of atmosphere and, while the end result has its moments of stirring emotion, it can’t help but feel engineered and inauthentic at times. Even though the story’s focus makes it more involving, there’s also the danger of losing sight of the bigger picture and The Railway Man doesn’t quite balance this as well as the best war movies have. That said, Eric Lomax’s story is one that should be told onscreen and Firth’s performance possesses enough power to make up for the film’s shortcomings.

SUMMARY: The artistic license that The Railway Man takes feels forced, but Colin Firth’s turn as Eric Lomax is undoubtedly moving.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong