Film: Three Peaks (at the London Film Festival 2017)

Three Peaks

You know a film is good when you’re still talking about it several days later. So it was with Three Peaks, directed by Jan Zalbein which I saw at the London Film Festival. [Incidentally I noticed an ad for the 'Face to Face with German Film' campaign in the LFF programme but no further details were given. Is it coming to the UK?] However, I was still a little worried that the film might be a dud simply because it was a three-hander, featuring a child. Occasionally, and this is particularly true of British cinema, you get a child in a movie who cannot act at all, for instance, the kids in Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe et al.). We Brits seem to demand nothing of child actors (beyond speaking their lines in the right order) and consequently we get nothing (or less in the case of Harry Potter) while the US has a history of high expectations and correspondingly high achievers from the 1970s to the 2000s, from Tatum O'Neal in Paper Moon, Justin Henry in Kramer vs Kramer, the ubiquitous Jodie Foster, Henry Thomas in ET: The Extra-Terrestrial, through Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense and AI: Artificial Intelligence to Jacob Tremblay in Room, not to mention Dakota and Elle Fanning in almost everything else. I’m relieved to say this is not the case with Three Peaks. Arian Montgomery, who plays eight-year-old Tristan, is a revelation. Entirely believable in every scene; you immediately empathise with his stepfather Aaron’s desire to connect with him.

This film is about identity, love, parenthood, fractured families and the effect the last has on all involved. It depicts the predicament of the new man in a mother's life, illustrating how he performs the father role in all but name, depended upon, even taken for granted by the child, sharing in all the labour and reward of raising the boy and, from the opening scene, it seems, completely accepted. And we also see it from the boy’s point of view, in which Aaron is the interloper in his family, having usurped his father (whose presence is established by regular phone calls), all complicated by Tristan’s own guilt for occasionally preferring Aaron to his father.

Carrie and Jonas/Homeland

Alexander Fehling, who was very good in Homeland, in which, coincidentally, he also had to play father figure to someone else’s child, the daughter that Carrie (Claire Danes) has with Brodie (Damian Lewis) although his role is secondary to the main storyline (for more on Homeland, see secretsquirrelshorts), is the easy to identify with Aaron, who has to negotiate the tightrope of this awkward situation, in which he is asked to be a father but never be called a father, in which he plays second fiddle to the whims and wishes of a wilful and demanding but sometimes incredibly charming eight-year-old, and has to handle the pressure put upon him by Lea (played by Bérénice Bejo, who bears an uncanny resemblance to a young Natalie Wood) who wants to be fair to her child, his father and her new man. Aaron is frequently tripped up (dangerous on a tightrope), courted and betrayed by both.

Lea, Tristan, Aaron

The rather cosseted Tristan continually tests the boundaries, crossing the line between mischief and malice. He can be deliberately and casually affectionate and just as deliberately and casually cruel. Realising that he’s a king in his court, he wields his power accordingly, bestowing and withdrawing his trust randomly, so that poor Aaron is forever placating him in order to gain his favour, scavenging for crumbs at the table. But what the boy gives with one hand, he takes back with the other, pulling him towards him as he pushes him away. Loved and resented in equal measure, with Tristan revealing himself to be capable of minor violence, Aaron is in a quandary. Should he come down hard or brush it off? He opts to ignore it.

'Papa'

Aware that he holds all the cards, Tristan toys with Aaron, who’s begun to see him as his own son, and undoubtedly loves him, by calling him ‘Papa’ just to see how it feels and what the reaction will be – poor Aaron is beguiled and grateful, happily reporting it to the mother only for her to disapprove – he should have made it clear that he’s not Tristan’s father because Tristan already has a father and this might confuse him. The unfortunate Aaron is in a no-win situation here. If he had said ‘Don’t call me Papa’ I can well imagine the tantrums that might have resulted. From mother and son.

In danger

Repeatedly offered an ultimatum by Tristan, as their circumstances become more desperate, and the man's situation more precarious, Aaron, like the people who attended the film’s screening cannot conceive that a child would resort to something much more dangerous and violent in order to force a return to the status quo. It's shocking but suddenly, because of the way it's played, also totally credible.

(Stop reading now if you haven't yet seen the movie)

The ending is cleverly ambiguous. At one point, I was reminded of the scene in Before the Fall (Napola) when the character runs out of options and chooses to sacrifice himself. The director realised that such an outcome might prove unpalatable to some audiences (and such it proved at the LFF, where they chose to believe in the innocence and innate goodness of the child despite all evidence to the contrary). We were allowed to come to our own conclusions. We were allowed to hope.

At the time of viewing, Three Peaks had yet to acquire a UK distributor, which is a real shame. It definitely deserves to be seen.

Film: 12 Hours to Live (but believe me, it’ll seem longer …)

Ione Skye in Say Anything

When Ione Skye starred with John Cusack in Say Anything in 1989 (a film I missed first time around), I felt sure that she would either be discovered as an impostor and swiftly returned to whatever perfect mould she originated in, would learn how to act or would realise that acting wasn’t for her. A beautiful girl, she should perhaps have gone into modelling but no, many years later, I had the misfortune to witness her ‘talents’ once more.

Kevin Durand as Keamy in Lost

Poor Kevin Durand, an actor I had liked in the minor role of Martin Keamy in a couple of episodes of Lost. For more on Lost, see Opinion8: Must-see TV. He’s a big guy, 6’6” I believe, and is often sidelined or pigeon-holed into roles as over-sized aliens (eg in I Am Number Four, a film that also wastes Timothy Olyphant as a sidekick to an unappealing teenage hero) or mindless villains, because of his physique and never really given a chance to show what he can do. Now, finally, he gets a lead role. And what does he have to play against? A plank of wood. My sister reminds me when watching this, that someone on Freecycle (a UK website on which you can give away items you no longer need that others might find a use for or request something you need that someone else might no longer need) was asking for attractive pieces of wood and Ione Skye fits the bill. She’s so bad in this that it’s painful to watch, worse to listen to. Her voice throughout is completely affectless, evincing no emotion, no meaning. It’s all totally flat, as if she were reading the phone book. If she were a piece of music, she would be atonal. This seems to rub off on the rest of the cast. The sheriff says his lines as if he were rehearsing with someone, merely giving them their cues. Even Michael Moriarty (as Ione’s father), who I’m sure has been good in the past, can't really be bothered.

'Please, no more scenes with Ione!'

It’s not helped by a ridiculous script, which has Ione’s FBI agent (in pursuit of Kevin Durand's criminal fugitive, Lowman) at odds with her father although no reason is given while at other times we’re subjected to some horribly on the nose dialogue to explain some character’s motivation and, as if things weren’t bad enough, a series of flashbacks featuring Ione failing to render any readable emotion. What do the filmmakers have against us? It's like torture. At one point, Ione declares 'I know where he's going' but doesn't bother to tell anyone and goes after him alone. Or maybe the the other actors refused to accompany her in case it meant they would have another scene with her.

Why does Lowman (our Kevin) take the girl (Brittney Wilson does her best with this underwritten part) with him? – it's more trouble than it's worth. When asked for a reason, even he can't come up with one. There’s no plausible rationale for this so we have to assume this was done to inject (see what I’ve done here) drama and conflict in the story by sticking in (and here) a time-sensitive diabetic-needs-her-insulin thread. In fact, no explanation is given for his past misdeeds either.

12 Hours to Live

But, despite all this, Kevin Durand still manages to create a convincing character, bad but by no means all bad, sympathetic if not simpatico. Even his hostage starts to root for him a little. He acts the rest of them off the screen and does not allow himself to get distracted by the flaws in the script or the other players’ ineptitude or lack of commitment. He becomes Lowman in every mannerism, mood, movement, expression. He’s invested him with humanity. Kudos to Kevin. It’s just a shame that he gets to shine in such substandard material because his performance is so believable, so totally on point. I can only hope that any casting director can see past the entirety of this terrible film and recognise the deftness and skill of his portrayal, how he’s transformed the two-dimensional template he’s been given into a three-dimensional anti-hero.

For more on acting, see john malkovich as the 'unfathomable' gilbert osmond in 'the portrait of a lady', helmut berger as konrad in visconti's 'conversation piece' and peter quinn (rupert friend) in 'homeland' on channel 4.

Play: Wish List* by Katherine Soper at the Royal Court Upstairs

The Royal Court

* Not to be confused with either of the two Hollywood romcoms with similar titles. There's a pretty good chance that, if you liked them, you won't like this.

Joseph Quinn and Erin Doherty

I cannot commend this highly enough. Affecting, involving, authentic. The script (Katherine Soper's debut, it won the 2015 Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting), the playing, are so close to real life, that you don’t feel like you’re watching someone act at all, you feel like you’re watching someone be. The dialogue has all the cadences of natural speech. There’s no staginess, no showpiece monologues, no extra words, unlike The Pitchfork Disney, which I saw a couple of nights before, a play that touches on similar subjects (brother/sister dynamic, [co-]dependence, mental health problems) but is an actorly piece using shock tactics (and admittedly some humour and sexual innuendo), requiring the actors to deliver lengthy monologues to express their strange foibles and predilections. Wish List shocks profoundly, simply, without verbose explanations.

Dead ordinary and all the better for it

Tamsin is a whole character (a person not an ideal or a symbol). She’s painfully real, not given to any particular eloquence, which is not so say that there’s nothing eloquent in the play. The entirety of the play – the performances, writing, staging – add up to an everyday eloquence.  Her battle with the benefits system on behalf of a brother who's practically house-bound by severe OCD is familiar to any of us who've ever had to wrangle with the bureaucracy of any imperfect system, whether it's a hospital, a council or simply Southeastern's Delay/Repay form. We rail at the hoops we have to jump through. Tamsin is heart-breakingly disappointed by her brother’s failures to help himself (and so the both of them) but ultimately reacts with patience and tolerance (greeted by the exasperated sighs of the ladies near us in the audience) in the face of each setback.

Playwright Katherine Soper

Fresh, intimate, personal but also universal. In fact, there's a theory that the more personal something is the more universal it is. Tamsin’s dilemma is conveyed brilliantly. The Meatloaf sequence is exquisite, touching, amusing, embarrassing, ultimately uplifting, a beautifully underplayed tour de force from Erin Doherty. She holds this together, her frustration articulated in a confused pause, an excited rush of words, a defeated glance.

Kudos to the rest of the cast who are all superb: Shaquille Ali-Yebuah, Aleksandar Mikic and Joseph Quinn, the last of whom I've since seen in Dickensian (London Live) as Arthur Havisham. He is somehow able to make this essentially weak and wrong man sympathetic even as we decry his sly machinations.

And of course, Erin Doherty has gone onto TV success as Becky in Chloe.

I sometimes leave the theatre feeling a little cheated, feeling that the actors did their best with a substandard script. Not so with Wish List. It’s the real deal. Even better than Rachel De-lahay's The Westbridge. The writing is tremendous. If you only see one play this year, see this one.  If you only ever see one play, see this one. And go listen to 'I Would Do Anything for Love'. Right now.