The
makers of The Taste of Mango, a very moving documentary, after which my sister was in floods of tears(thanks, Chloe Abrahams), gave us all a rather cute mango pin as a keepsake.
Started to think a souvenir from each film would be cool. Then I saw Hoard
and thought, perhaps not!
Luna Carmoon's first feature, Hoard has been nominated for, and won, several awards. It doesn't flinch from the unpalatable and that's partly why it succeeds. But it's not for the faint-hearted. There are moments that will make you cringe or want to look away. But I think it's this way because it comes from the director's heart. She doesn't want to sugarcoat it. The lives are the lives of those of us who exist on the margins, outside convention, making up our own rules, creating our own codes.
First
off, I’d like to say that, if any members of the audience/cast/crew, etc,
really were from South East London, let’s hope that LFF stumped up for cars home or they would have had to hotfoot it out of there once the questions
were over to climb the 78 steps to Waterloo East for the last train home. We got there and discovered the whole station was closed.
Two
of the films I saw at the Festival this year have had uncanny parallels to my real Grey Gardens* life.
It's been a bit mind-blowing.
My name is Chantal and I’m a hoarder.
Hostage
to a frugal upbringing and a vivid imagination, my sister and I (just to make
us even odder, we’re twins) were the original recyclers, finding a new purpose
for everything. More likely to collect from skips than add to them. I remember that
immortal line of my Dad's: 'Don’t let Lyn look in the skip!' But then who puts teddies in skips? Lots of people it turns out.
But, after seeing Hoard, I hereby vow never to save another bit of used tinfoil. You know when you're thinking of collecting shiny, translucent, coloured sweet wrappers from your Quality Street or Roses chocolates to use to make Christmas decorations, don't. It’s a slippery slope and I’m
already quite near the bottom. I will not pick up every lost toy in the street. [A
month on I’ve taken a two-bus journey to pick up a teddy-bear that had been
appearing on Freecycle for a month. A week on from that and sister has brought
home a teddy as tall as I am from another skip. And don't even mention the panda! And that's not even the one I ended up taking to a friend's wedding because he was the last toy left at a jumble sale.] I blame my
inclination to empathise with the inanimate as well as animate. It is incredibly difficult when you can see an alternative use
or place for something and even harder when you don’t because then it’s down to
you to adopt whatever mislaid, discarded item you come across. Of course, I
know why I identify with the lost and/or unwanted. But
knowing that doesn’t stop me.
The
chaotic home environment in Hoard, as well as looking frighteningly like
our house reminded me a little of the TV version of Jacqueline Wilson’s The Illustrated Mum, brilliantly brought to life by Michelle
Collins, Holliday Grainger and particularly, Alice Connor. This is a bit more
than that and possibly a bit too much.
Before I go further, I have to admit that I have come back to review this a long time after seeing the movie as life got in the way (a cancer curveball) so I don't remember every character and trying to find them on IMDb ain't easy. Why aren't there more pictures?
In Hoard, the mother, Cynthia (brilliantly played by Hayley Squires) and daughter, Maria (Lily-Beau Leach) are everything to each other but Cynthia is a hoarder who sometimes loses touch with reality, or rather her reality is different from everyone else's.
The world inside the home is in some ways, make-believe and magical but in
others, a minefield. And as the child, Maria, grows older, the glitter
starts to look tarnished and the home environment seems to be more a tawdry
collection of other people’s rubbish than an enchanted kingdom of found
treasure. It's also a lesson in how bit by bit, a situation worsens and you adapt to things like having to kick through piles of newspapers as you come in the door (at this point, I whisper to sis, ‘Better tidy up when we get home’). The disadvantages of this way of life start to outweigh the
advantages.
Hoarding is not the only issue here. Nor is it ever. It’s a
symptom. There’s love too but it’s a selfish, excluding kind of love. We were
too stupid as children to realise that ‘us against the world’ was
not a battle we could win. Maria starts to understand too, that her life is not like
other people’s and, just perhaps, it’s not as good. Sometimes children need stability and normality as well as excitement.
You sense that something’s gotta give. Social workers become
involved and Maria is removed from her mother's care and placed with a foster family, in which Samantha Spiro handles with aplomb the thankless task of being the responsible mother figure, Michelle.
Teenage Maria (Saura Lightfoot-Leon) has a wild friendship with kindred spirit, Laraib (Deba Hekmat). This madcap sorority of two seems to work although you sense that things could spiral out of control quite quickly.
Then, a former foster son turns up, Michael (Joseph Quinn) and sets the cat among the pigeons. His involvement with Maria seems to turn into a pissing contest (though luckily
only metaphorically as Michael would be an also-ran, you'll find out why when you see the movie) where they try to out-extreme
each other. What
was it they were spitting on and then licking up? Yuck.
Joseph
Quinn* I first noticed in Howard’s End. Usually I’m annoyed when the
BBC wastes my licence fee on an adaptation that has already been pretty
successfully realised as a film but I was totally won over by his portrayal of
Leonard Bast. The exquisite torture of his embarrassment, his
injured pride, over the lost umbrella. I'd also seen him in the brilliant, Wishlist, playing second fiddle to the incredible Erin Doherty. And then there was Dickensian,
in which he managed to invest his portrayal of Arthur Havisham with so many
layers, that, although we should have despised him, we still felt sympathy with
him.
The trouble with the Maria/Laraib, Maria/Michael relationships is that they're a little too similar. Saura Lightfoot-Leon is a find and she invests each step closer to looney with amazing, convincing gusto that makes what seems incredible, credible. She and Michael have a weird sort of magnetic attraction, that the actors make real for us. My caveat would be that sometimes it's hard to unravel the motivation for the action. But, you know, life's like that, families are like that. People do things and sometimes we never learn why. And sometimes we have to be ok with that.
Meanwhile, Cathy Tyson stole onto the screen to steal every scene as as Michelle's lascivious friend.
It's a wild-ish trip but one worth taking.
* Saw this a few years ago. A documentary on some eccentric relatives of Jackie Onassis. Sort of compelling.
* Has found fame or infamy in Stranger Things, which I haven't seen.
I realise that most of my secretsquirrelsays reviews are
negative with the exception of some books about Frank Sinatra and a couple of single episodes of TV series, such as Law & Order: Skate or Dieand Cold Case: Honor. For
some reason, I am easily provoked to ridicule and criticism by bad media
although admittedly some of the films do fall into the 'so-bad-they're-good' category, eg Ferocious Planet and Dark Storm.
So, now for something completely different. For some time
now, Sony Movies Classics has been showing The Way We Were (dir. Sydney
Pollack, 1973), the Barbra Streisand/Robert Redford masterpiece, with the
heart-rending theme (written by Marvin Hamlisch, sung so beautifully,
emotionally, by Ms Streisand) and I've been torn between a) really wanting to
watch it again but being frightened it might be too upsetting and b) avoiding
it in case I found it disappointing. I must have watched it on TV I don't know
how many years after it was made. Finally, I took the plunge and this review is
the result.
Incidentally, Hamlisch also wrote the music for
The Sting, another Redford vehicle and Pollack also directed Redford in Out of
Africa, which had its own hauntingly pretty theme by the unsurpassable John Barry.
What can I say? They simply don't make movies like this any
more. I realise that's American speak (and they would also
make ‘any more’ one word, which is simply wrong) and I should write 'They no longer make
movies like this' but it just doesn't have the same oomph. And they don't make
movie stars like this any more either. All of it is perfect. But let's start with the
song. From the first notes on the piano, Barbra humming, within seconds, my sister and I are in floods of tears. Transported to a different time. We nearly have
to give up watching, we're so distraught. Some people will know the Gladys
Knight version of the song but that's about as different as you can get. When
Barbra sings 'If we had the chance to do it all again/Would we?/Could we?', the
'Could we?' is a teasing, genuine proposal. Why not?
This is the power of music, the power of film, whose effects,
when combined adroitly, as they are here, and in Born Free (John Barry again)
and A Summer Story (Georges Delerue), increase exponentially. Even, I don't
know, ten/fifteen years since we last watched it, it's so laden with our
memories of watching the film, the first time, the last time, the incredible
love affair, knowing the progress of it and its denouement, what we know
happens in the film and everything that has or hasn't happened in our own lives
in the intervening years, all the way through to Carrie (Sarah-Jessica Parker)
and Mr Big (Chris Noth) in Sex and the City, when Carrie quotes Barbra as
Katie: 'Your girl is lovely, Hubbell.'
This is evidence of how pervasive, persuasive, this type of
storyline is, how it's repeated in other dramas, that most of Carrie's friends
immediately know what she's referencing although I think it does have to be
explained to one if I remember correctly. The characters and the situation have
entered a sort of universal lexicon of love stories. It is a love story, and
unashamedly so. A rom without the com.
Ok, Redford and Streisand as college students when she was
36 and he over 40, is a bit of a stretch.
BUT Barbra Streisand is simply outstanding as Katie, utterly on
point throughout. I don’t think anyone else could have played this part. She
has the mix just right and her face is so expressive. Rumour has it that she
had a crush on Redford at the time, which could only have helped.
And Redford is perfect for Hubbell, embodying the
all-American male, preppy, what we would now call WASP, a jock, a prom king
type (with his queen played by Lois Chiles), for whom 'everything comes easy', as
he tells it in a story he wrote that he is forced to read out in class. This type of character
has become part of Redford's persona. Jocular, witty, warm but also a little
too perfect to be approachable. His charm is effortless, his charisma magnetic.
Incidentally, also re-watched Redford in The Great Gatsby (a 1974 adaptation of the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel), in which he plays, on the surface, a similar type, and this I found incredibly tedious. The characters are unremittingly shallow.
My favourite part of the movie is the motif that recurs when
they re-encounter each other. A deja vu shot of a particular gesture. Katie
reaches to guide Hubbell's fringe out of his eyes with such tenderness and
love. The first time is before anything has begun between them, the second near
the end of the film. Their relationship has died but the affection they feel
for each other remains.
This film does what Evelyn Waugh's and TV's Brideshead
Revisited did so consummately, conjures up nostalgia for a certain relationship
and a certain time. The days of our collective youth, whenever they occurred.
Think E. M. Forster's Maurice (the book and the film) and this sentence from the last page.
"Out of some eternal Cambridge his friend began beckoning to
him, clothed in the sun, and shaking out the scents and sounds of the May Term."
It's what I call a 'what-could-have-been' moment. A dream, a fantasy. A road not taken.
* * * *
[Arthur Laurents adapted his own novel for the screenplay and the film is also about politics, the fear of Communism, manifesting itself in the blacklist; the HUAC and activism but a bit like Hubbell, you can tire of causes, however worthy. It's still a love story first and foremost.]
