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Oh my baby, baby, I love you more than I can tell

Only You (Harry Wootliff, 2018)

For a good half an hour, this film feels too good to be true. I knew it was an unlikely love story, but I immediately assumed that the bear shown in the first few shots was the lover. In fact, settled status Spaniard and arts administrator Elena (Laia Costa) is pipped to a taxi in the early hours of New Year’s Day by DJ and PhD marine biologist Jake (Josh O’Connor) and after arguments over who saw the cab first and her deciding to walk home and he offering to walk her home, they end up going back to her flat to listen to Elvis Costello. The attraction is immediate, even though she’s 35 (but won’t admit it at first) and he is 26.

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Munch’s Oslo

I’m scrambling down a granite and grass hillside, increasingly realising that whilst this is path, it isn’t the path. I’m wary of checking the phone, because I’m at 70% of battery life and the cable is dying. Frankly the phone is dying. Somewhere to my right is a music festival, and I see cars and people passing by on the road I’m aiming for.

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Immaterial Girl

In Fabric (Peter Strickland, 2018)

Remember when the 1970s was the decade that taste forgot? Thirty years of Tarantino pastiche have summoned the visuals back, and it has been embraced by a generation of British horror directors, including Peter Strickland, whose Duke of Burgundy left me indifferent. There’s a mix here of Dennis Wheatley and Spearhead from Space and Don’t Look Now and Hammer and God help us Are You Being Served?. And Dario Argento, although this film is more rosso than giallo. It can’t be present day, because blind dating is committed via newspapers rather than apps, and money is sent through airtubes in department stores, but not all the of the phones are rotary dial. And there isn’t any racism, despite the position of the Black British heroine.

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Exhibitions for Expotitions — July Update

I used to maintain a list of exhibitions, because I kept missing stuff. I’ve recreated  this, as it went out of date, and obviously this takes time. I’m based in the south-east UK so, with the exception of Dublin, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Tate St Ives, it’s stuff I can do in a day trip (unless I want to make an exception). I can’t pretend to completist (especially now I’m rebuilding) but let me know of stuff I’ve missed and I may add.

Information is presented in good faith — check opening days/hours before travelling and whether stuff is free.

I recommend the National Art Pass for discount — this and Tate/Royal Academy membership pay for themselves if London is getatable.

[Still to add: BALTIC 39, Courtauld Gallery,  Museum of London, Museum of London Docklands, National Museum of Wales, New Art Gallery, Norwich Castle Museum, Strawberry Hill House, The New Art Gallery, Towner, among others]

A longer list is here — andrewmbutler.blog/exhibitions-for-expotitions-updated-11-june-2019/ — and I will add an alphabetical listing. If I could teach myself mail merge, this would be easier (it Americanises dates).

 

Closes July 2019

 

 

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All Pile On

Woman at War (Kona fer í stríð, Benedikt Erlingsson, 2018)

I get the feeling that the writer-director is here channelling the work of Aki Kaurismäki: we have Halla (Halldóra Geirharðsdóttir), is single, middle-aged choir leader who wants to adopt a Ukrainian child and incidentally is running a campaign of ecological terrorism against the aluminium plant owned by Rio Tinto.

Her movement around whatever Icelandic city it is and the astounding landscape is interrupted by two balanced trios — three male musicians and three female Ukrainians who shift from extra- to intra-diegetic. It is sometimes whimsical, it is sometimes threatening, it may even be Brechtian (with a dash of Mel Brooks). It gives the film a whiff of the fairy tale and one presumes that pulling down a pylon wouldn’t have the effect that is shown. There is a further shift into folktale territory as Halla is finally arrested and as the action shifts to Ukraine.

Whilst friends and foes are beautifully drawn — her sister, her alleged cousin Sveinbjörn (Jóhann Sigurðarson) and his dog (apparently called Woman) and a co-conspirator Baldvin (Jörundur Ragnarsson) — but I think a foot is put wrong with the comedy foreign tourist Juan Camillo (Juan Camillo Roman Estrada), whose role is to be cycling near the scene of each crime and be arrested. It feels a little too studiedly quirky — although I see that the same actor (and the person playing Halla’s sister with the same character name) is in the same director’s Of Horses and Men ([Hross í os], 2013) so I wonder if I’m missing something.

This was an unexpected pleasure — and I see that Jodie Foster wants to direct a remake, presumably with herself in the lead. See this before it gets buried.

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Exhibitions for Expotitions — 19 June 2019

I used to maintain a list of exhibitions, because I kept missing stuff. I’m recreating this, as it went out of date. I’m based in the south-east UK so, with the exception of Dublin, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Tate St Ives, it’s stuff I can do in a day trip (unless I want to make an exception). I can’t pretend to completist (especially now I’m rebuilding) but let me know of stuff I’ve missed and I may add.

Information is presented in good faith — check opening days/hours before travelling and whether stuff is free.

I recommend the National Art Pass for discount — this and Tate/Royal Academy membership pay for themselves if London is getatable.

[Still to add: BALTIC 39, Courtauld Gallery,  Henry Moore Institute, Hepworth, Herbert,  Leeds Art Gallery, Manchester Art Gallery, Museum of London, Museum of London Docklands, National Media Museum, National Museum of Wales, National Portrait Gallery, New Art Gallery, Norwich Castle Museum, Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham Lakeside Arts,  Photographers’ Gallery, Royal Pavilion, Science Museum,  Somerset House, Strawberry Hill House, The New Art Gallery, Towner, Turner Contemporary, Victoria and Albert, White Cube Bermondsey, White Cube Mason’s Yard, Whitechapel Gallery, Whitworth Art Gallery, Yorkshire Sculpture Park.]

Closes June 2019:

 

Closes July 2019:

[continues]

 

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Well Met by Moonlight, Pride

William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Director: Nicholas Hytner, Br/dge Theatre

Inevitably this is haunted. At one extreme, there is the Max Rheinhart film, with bunny rabbits and nature, at the other is Peter Brook’s circus and trapeze acts, of which little footage survives. Hytner is drawing on the latter, with his ringmaster Puck and Oberon’s attendant fairies dangling from and swinging around sheets. For that matter, Titania has her fair share of hanging around. Continue reading →