The Guardian - 30.08.2019

• The Guardian
  12 Friday 30 August 2019

Aniara

★★★★☆

Dir Pella Kågerman, Hugo Lilja

Starring Emelie Jonsson,

Bianca Cruzeiro, Anneli Martini

Dur 108mins Cert 18

With Aniara, the Swedish writing-

directing team Pella Kågerman and

Hugo Lilja deliver a cold, cruel,

piercingly humane sci -fi parable

that’s bang on the zeitgeist yet also

unnervingly original.

In a near-ish future, Earth is

eff ectively uninhabitable and

everyone is moving to Mars.

A massive spacecraft, as plushly

appointed as any modern-day cruise

ship with its buff et bars and play

areas, sets off on the three-week

voyage. MR (Emelie Jonsson), a

low-ranking shipmate, tries to

entice passengers to experience the

wonders of Mima, an artifi cially

intelligent gizmo that taps into

people’s memories in order to

create an immersive, virtual-reality

experience unique to each person.

No one’s very interested at fi rst,

but then a collision with some

space junk causes the ship to veer

off course and the crew eject the

ship’s propulsion system in order

to avoid a nuclear meltdown. Sadly

this also means they will all be adrift

for at least a few years , so suddenly

everyone wants to use Mima.

That’s only the start of what

evolves into a quirky, corrugated

story that drifts, like the ship , into all

kinds of eerie realms as the hitherto

prim, eminently Scandinavian social

order aboard breaks down. F or

those who felt that the orgy scene

in Sweden-set Midsommar was a bit

coy, there’s an even more explicit

shagfest here.

As time passes, cults emerge and

the society aboard the ship turns

into a quasi- fascist state run by the

patriarchal captain. MR and later

her lover Isagel (Bianca Cruzeiro)

must struggle to survive the new off -

world order and resist the vacuum

of despair. The narrative air gets

thinner in the last third of the fi lm,

but there’s a neat little stab in the

ending and the whole design and

camerawork package is hugely

eff ective given what must have been

a comparatively limited budget.

Jonsson (below), with her plain-Jane

features that can go from dowdy to

luminous in a snap, is mesmeri sing

to watch. Leslie Felperin

Mrs Lowry and Son

★★★☆☆

Dir Adrian Noble

Starring Vanessa Redgrave,
Timothy Spall, Wendy Morgan

Dur 91mins Cert PG

Vanessa Redgrave gives a shrewd
and amusingly bleak performance
here as Elizabeth Lowry, the
cantankerous and bedridden mother
of the artist LS Lowry – played by
Timothy Spall. It’s a small-scale
theatrical chamber piece, directed
by Adrian Noble and written for the
screen by Martyn Hesford, depicting
Lowry’s life in the Lancashire town
of Pendlebury in the 1930s, when
he lived at home, caring for his
widowed mother, devoted, lonely.
He is exasperated by her
imperious mood swings, her refusal
to take his art seriously and then by
her capricious decision to like some
of his work – a sudden spasm of
approval that is no less disconcerting
than her contempt. Through it all is
Elizabeth’s deadpan gloom: Lowry
patiently asks her to be cheerful
and she replies acidly: “I haven’t
been cheerful since 1898.” Lowry
himself is shown living a musingly
melancholy and apparently asexual
existence that comes alive with this
verbal sparring with his grumpy old
mum, and with hints that the exotic
London art world might just be
starting to appreciate him.
It’s a movie that reminded me
of Samuel Beckett – Happy Days or
Endgame, perhaps – or maybe Alan
Bennett, though if Bennett had been
writing this, I suspect he would have
given greater weight to Lowry’s
wryly fatalistic sense of humour.
Hesford makes him a serious, stoic
fi gure (certainly more subdued
than Spall’s other great artist, JMW
Turner in Mike Leigh’s Mr Turner ).
But it’s a sympathetic portrayal,
and not without funny moments.
Lowry threatens one night to pile
up all his paintings in the back
garden and burn them; the next
morning, Mrs Lowry asks him if he
has done so and her son sheepishly
replies: “No, I didn’t want to ruin
Mrs Stanhope’s washing.” (It calls
to mind the moment when David
Hockney brought his mother to visit
California and she is said to have
commented : “All this lovely weather
and no one’s got any washing out!”)
An entertaining showcase for two
fi rst-class performers. PB

Bait

★★★★☆

Dir Mark Jenkin

Starring Ed Rowe, Mary Woodvine,

Giles King

Dur 89mins Cert 15

Cornish fi lm-maker Mark Jenkin

has created an arrestingly strange

adventure in zero-budget analogue

cinema. It’s black-and-white, shot

on 16mm fi lm developed in such

a way as to create ghostly glitches

on the print. A bizarre expressionist

melodrama, it has the huge closeups

and crashingly emphatic grammar

of early cinema and, like home

movies, it has non-diegetic sound,

with dialogue overdubs and ambient

noise. But it’s very eff ective, and

the monochrome cinematography

desentimentalises the Cornish

landscape, turning it into an

anti- postcard.

The weirdness of Bait can’t be

overestimated ; it’s like an episode of

EastEnders directed by FW Murnau.

Martin Ward (Edward Rowe) is a

gloweringly aggressive fi sherman

who resents the incomers who have

taken over his village. Where once

his industry used bait to catch fi sh,

now the whole community and the

beautiful surroundings are used as

bait to catch tourists. Only it feels as

if the tourists are the ones who have

the locals in their net.

Martin and his brother Steven

(Giles King) have been forced to

sell their late father’s harbour-

front cottage to Londoners who

stay there in the summer and rent

out the loft to other tourists. With

colossal insensitivity, they have

gutted the place and redecorated

it in a twee “fi sherfolk” style, with

nets and maritime memorabilia on

the walls. As Martin growls to his

brother: “Ropes and chains – like

a sex dungeon.” A hundred other

little slights compound his rage.

Jenkin adds to the disorientation by

introducing little fl ashes of events

still to come. What an intriguing and

unexpectedly watchable fi lm. PB

The latest game from

Tokyo RPG Factory,

creator of ethereal

adventures I Am Setsuna

and Lost Sphear, begins

decently enough.

Taciturn protagonist

Kagachi is a Veil Watcher,

able to travel between the

worlds of the living and

the dead. Watchers assist

lost spirits in their move

towards reincarnation

by helping them deal

with their earthly

attachments – or by

putting them down when

they otherwise turn into

shadowy monsters.

Plenty of fascinating

topics arise including

death cults, assisted

suicide, serial killers

and the societal role of

your own little band

of psychopomps. But

the possibilities of an

emotionally resonant tale

about life, death, regret

and acceptance dissolve

the further through the

game you progress.

Before long, the

wandering souls of

the dead become little

more than quest-givers,

monstrous enemies or

walking plot points.

The game’s lengthy,

somewhat unengaging

story is not helped by

the lack of connection

fostered with the

characters. And all that

could be excused if the

game’s combat were

consistently fulfi lling,

but there’s a frustrating

lethargy and weightiness

to your actions.

Oninaki has almost

everything needed for

a top-tier role-playing

game – an interesting

premise, hauntingly

evocative aesthetics,

a deep and complex

approach to combat –

only to be betrayed by

fundamental issues that

keep it tied to this earthly

realm. Perhaps on the

next go-around, if it is

reborn into this world

(or gets a sequel), it’ll

retain some memory of

its errors.

Patrick Lum

Oninaki

Nintendo Switch;

PC; PS4

★★☆☆☆

Asterix: The Secret of

the Magic Potion

★★☆☆☆

Dir Alexandre Astier, Louis Clichy.

Starring Ken Kramer, C Ernst Harth

Dur 87mins Cert PG

The movies have treated Asterix

almost as poorly as they have Tintin.

The brand fell into disrepair with

those live-action super-productions

that cast Gérard Depardieu as

Obelix ; it rallied, briefl y, with 2016’s

The Mansions of the Gods , a spirited

digimation lent extra pep by the

ragbag British comedians drafted in

for the UK theatrical version.

Alas, the English-language dub

of this follow-up has been pitched

with mercenary precision at the US

market: hand-drawn inserts explain

who the key players are, and our

Gauls sound like actors manning the

background of a Hallmark Channel

melodrama. The deft cultural

and linguistic gags Goscinny and

Uderzo traded in are lost in the

homogenisation.

The visuals provide some

consolation , with conglomerations

of pixels that bear closer

resemblance to the original

illustrations than did Depardieu in

a fat suit, and a pleasing contrast

between the rough-edged pencil

backstories and the slickly processed

main business that feels like the

animators tipping their collective

chapeaux to their inspiration.

Business it is, though : what’s

striking is how grounded the plot is

in boardroom thinking as Getafi x’s

succession pushes Asterix and

Obelix to the sidelines; the quest to

improve the formula of their elixir is

a near-complete non-event. Under-

10s who don’t have an MBA will

want far less digimated R&D and way

more Roman-thumping.

We fi nally get there – with a last-

reel dust-up set to Dead or Alive’s

You Spin Me Round – but it’s all

too clearly the kind of family fi lm

that has to creep out towards the

end of the holidays, once Pixar has

loosened its grip on the multiplex

and parents are casting around for

anything. Like the last comic on the

shelf at the campsite supermarket ,

it may provide some distraction, but

don’t expect much. Mike McCahill

Games

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