Just caught up with a couple of recent FilmFour offerings I'd stuck on the TiVo.
Deep End (1970)
Starring Jane Asher (in her even-I-would years) as a bath house attendant who tempts and torments an underage co-worker, this apparently recently remastered piece has been described as "emo before emo", and I can see the reasoning. Equal parts surreal fantasy and thoroughly grounded portrayal of post-Woodstock-era London in all its grubbiness and squalour, it's full of melodramatic overacting aplenty, not least from the boy in question (John Moulder-Brown), but once you get used to it (and/or see it as part of the fantastical nature of the piece), he actually portrays the teenage male condition perfectly - sometimes a bundle of restless, coltish energy, sometimes standoffish, moody and seemingly passive towards his impending fate, always gangly and awkward. What struck me most was the colours - the lurid green of the tiles, the grey of the late-60s/early-70s England outside the bath house bubble, the garish Soho lights - but the story itself is shaded just as vividly, right down to the vaguely unsatisfying but perhaps inevitable conclusion. Surreal, stagey, but an intriguing period piece all the same.
Le Quattro Volte (2010)
Criticwank of the highest order (Kermode et al), so I approached with caution, aided by a TV guide description that read "An aging Italian shepherd drinks church dust to stave off death". Fascinating, no? Well, bells and coughing aside, that's pretty accurate as far as the first act goes, the only real excitement being the gradual realisation that we're looking at drama rather than documentary, since it's not immediately clear. Oh, and the sheep are actually goats (and they're undeniably the stars of the show). After said first act it's... well, even more goats, and long and lingering shots of locals and traditional customs and everyday life progressing at a glacial pace. The landscapes look almost prehistoric at times, or at the very least like something out of Jackson's Middle Earth; the sun never seems to shine, though the grass begs for it. And of course nothing actually happens (except, of course, for everything). While that everything/nothing paradox plays out on screen, thoughts inevitably meander - I didn't know what I made of "Deep End" when "Le Quattro Volte" began; by the end, I did - but maybe it's good to stimulate different parts of the brain at the same time, because the space created by simply being "forced" to watch rural life happen at its own speed for 90 minutes turns out to be a thoroughly refreshing place to be.
Wankathon over. I think I'll record "Paul Blart: Mall Cop" next, to redress the balance.
