Section:GDN 12 PaGe:10 Edition Date:190906 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 5/9/2019 16:33 cYanmaGentaYellowbla
- The Guardian
10 Friday 6 September 2019
Reviews Film
A Minuscule Adventure
★★★☆☆
Dirs Hélène Giraud, Thomas SzaboLength 92 mins Cert UThere is perhaps a rule in the critics’
handbook that bans watching kids’
fi lms in the company of actual
children. But, like other parents
doing childcare-free summer, needs
must. So I sat the toddler down in
front of this French animated tale
about two ladybirds cast away on a
Caribbean island.
It has no dialogue and is animated
by inserting quite basic CG bugs
into a backdrop of live photography.
An absence of smart-alec seagulls
and jetpack-propelled poodles
led me to fear mutiny after a few
minutes. But the fi lm’s gentle magic
worked a treat.
The story follows a daring young
ladybird who becomes trapped
inside a cardboard box at a factory
while escaping an army of red ants.
When the box is loaded on to a plane
for Guadeloupe, the ladybird’s father
stows on board.
The bug animation – simple
bodies and black-dot eyes – ismiraculously expressive, a little
fl utter of wings communicating the
ladybird dad’s anxiety. And directors
Hélène Giraud and Thomas Szabo
play with scale beautifully – in
the factory, a roll of masking tape
wheels along the fl oor like a deadly
boulder to squish an ant, Indiana
Jones-style.
The fi lm is a sequel to
Minuscule: Valley of the Lost Ants
(2013), itself based on a popular
French TV show. Giraud and Szabo
have nailed the formula with lovely
buzzy bug vocals and a wonderfully
inventive soundscape. What
would a spider web sound like to a
ladybird caught on one of its sticky
spokes – like the twang of metal
wire, of course.
It feels a little overstretched:
the toddler drifted off eventually,
but kept with it for 50 minutes – a
personal best. Cath ClarkeThe Shiny Shrimps
★★☆☆☆
Dirs Maxime Govare, Cédric le GalloStarring Nicolas Gob, Alban Lenoir,
Michaël AbiteboulLength 103 mins Cert 15Are feelgood swimming comedies
about men in pools wearing
silly Speedos becoming a thing?
Last year from France we had
Le Grand Bain, or Sink or Swim,
about a depressed middle-aged
man joining a male synchronised
swimming team and in Britain we
had Swimming With Men on the
same theme. (Both were evidently
inspired by the same quirky 2010
documentary about a real-life men’s
team in Sweden.)
Now French fi lm-maker Cédric
le Gallo has co-created a movie
inspired by his experiences with a
gay men’s water polo team called
Les Crevettes Pailletées (The Shiny
Shrimps) and turned this into a
boisterously stereotypical and
puppyishly overeager-to-please
fi lm about a homophobic swim
champion called Matthias (Nicolas
Gob) who causes media outcrywith a bigoted remark and then
must redeem himself by coaching
the fi ctionalised Shiny Shrimps as
they battle for a place at the Gay
Olympics in Croatia. There are no
prizes for guessing if his grumpy
prejudices are fi nally dissolved by
the Shiny Shrimps’ irresistibly life-
affi rming exuberance.
It’s a well-meaning fi lm, but the
humour doesn’t travel particularly
well and even given that it’s intended
to be not much more than a comedy, I
have to say that all the Shiny Shrimps
really are fantastically infantile
except for one morose oldster, a
veteran of the Act Up movement of
yore, who objects to a trans woman
being allowed to join the team.
One of the players is married with
two little kids, named Gaspard and
Noé – a gag for the arthouse fans,
there. This moderate fi lm treads
water without getting anywhere. PBThe Big Meeting
★★★★☆
Dir Daniel DraperLength 91 mins Cert 12ADaniel Draper is the fi lm-maker
who in 2017 made The Nature of the
Beast, his aff ectionate tribute toLabour MP Dennis Skinner. Now
he has directed this rich, heartfelt
and intimate tribute to the Durham
Miners’ gala, the trade-union
festival of brass band music,
speeches and outdoor conviviality
that has been taking place almost
annually since 1871. It is a proud
expression of working-class
solidarity, which has now been
restored to the centre of Labour
party culture with the rise of JeremyCorbyn, who is a keen gala attender.
Draper’s fi lm persuasively
shows that even after the pits have
closed, a defi ant and exuberant
spirit lives on in the gala. The
merry-making and the music
may once have been purely the
icing on the cake of trade union
business, but now increasingly
it is the cake, it is the business.
The cultural superstructure has
become the essential expression ofdetermination to stand fi rm in the
perennial threat of exploitation.
Now that the pure arrogance and
recklessness of the Conservatives
have been revealed, a vigorous
alternative culture of the left –
symbolised by the gala – is needed
more than ever.
The point of the gala is to
celebrate extra-parliamentary
traditions of social justice, though,
as it happens, right now the pointfor the progressive left is surely
to defend parliament against the
riverboat gamblers and sociopath
wreckers of the Brexiter right.
My favourite part of this
documentary is the eloquent
contribution from art historian
Robert McManners who gave a
fascinating account of miners’ art
that emerged from the north-east,
collected in his book Shafts of Light.
I’ve ordered my copy. PBRELEASED BY "What's News" vk.com/wsnws TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws