Review: STAN AND OLLIE

Biopics are handicapped. Everyone knows their subjects and will pat them on the head indulgently as they recall the great moments without having to do much as movies. The exceptions use the lives they depict to get us thinking about our own. Amadeus doesn't match up to the timeline but it's really a story about genius getting attacked by mediocrity. Love and Mercy takes that further by adding an aggressive external influence to exploit low self esteem and further still by jolting its audience between a past that looks like the past and a present that feels ugly and confronting. Stan and Ollie begins with a shot that takes our minds off our expectation that the actors will or should exactly resemble their historical characters: we see the famous comedy duo from behind, chatting in makeup chairs. We're not even invited into the conversation but we do get a good idea of how the pair relate to each other.

And then we're into it, a present day (meaning the 1950s) story of the two reconciled after ears of estrangement with saliently placed scenes from the cause of the rift. In the '50s, Laurel and Hardy are touring Britain with a live show towards the promise of a new movie. The venues are small and underfilled and the sense that they are treading on territory forbidden them by the passing years is strong. The idea of the movie spurs them as they develop Stan's routines. Meanwhile, we follow the timeline of Hardy's betrayal of Laurel for the sake of job security which brought the partnership to an end. A begrudging agreement to start publicity stunts wins them new audiences and their fortunes reverse. Their wives join them on tour and the success balloons. But old resentments and the charge of ageing are going to want their own hour upon the stage.

See, already that's more than a series of great moments in history. This is largely due to the story starting after the years of inspiration and rise. No one snaps their fingers and says, "that's it," with a shock cut to the fully realised bit. These artists work on their routines as they would have, here a tweak there a tweak with the writer Laurel receiving light but knowing reward from Hardy's laughter. For the benefit of the uninitiated (like me) their interaction quotes a trove of gags and the writers remember to make sure they are funny. On that generational divide in one scene Stan tries breaking the indifference of a receptionist with some great bits which only puzzle her.

But this is less the story of Laurel and Hardy than of two longtime colleagues who harbour gripes and still need to cope with them while their livelihood and friendship are at stake. So much of this is polished through performance and the onscreen chemistry of Steve Coogan as Laurel and John C. Reilly. Coogan runs against type by acting a character rather than fitting one to his public persona and his Stan Laurel keeps a strained control over his growing anger. John C. Reilly is a dependable character actor and fills Hardy out with a quiet pathos that can vanish beneath a roar of worldly laughter. The pair's spouses have also been well written and steal their scenes. Shirley Henderson lets show the strength that gets her through a loving but difficult marriage as Lucille Hardy and Nina Arianda allows her sincerity to peep through a hilarious brashness.

The sole complaint I have about the film is something that serves as a hobby horse for me and probably won't be noticed by most who see this film: the score. Given that the writing, tight direction and masterclass performances keep the frequently threatening sentimentality well at bay the orchestral score which has a an old TV movie heavy handedness too often breaks through and tinkles and noodles around like a fan who doesn't quite know what to do on finding their hero, so makes a lot of goofy appreciative sounds and hangs around too long. Less would have definitely have been more. It really cheapens things.

That one thing aside, this is a film of entertainers and shows up ready to entertain. It's also a film about ageing and feeling out of step with time, about friendship, marriage and their inconvenient demands so it puts those things in the way they appear in life, sharp, burning, hard and, now and then, sometimes, in moments of relaxation or abandon, purely joyous. The best thing I can say about this biopic is that it doesn't have to be a biopic.

Review: BORDER

Tina has the jutting forehead and forward mouth of an early humanoid. We see this in the film's second shot. It's not a spoiler to reveal that she later attributes this to chromosomes. She works as a border inspector, using her heightened sense of smell to pick out the kind of border crossers who are walking in fear or nervous states. Her accuracy is impeccable. One such she catches leads to her involvement in a police investigation.

One day a man with her peculiar looks passes through. He has no perceptible smell. The two regard each other with powerful and confusing emotion. His unsettling confidence returning, he tells her where to look for him and passes on. Tina tries to resume normal life sharing house in an uneasily platonic life with a young dog breeder called Roland but is too haunted and seeks the man, Vore, finding him at a local hostel. After an encounter which draws her into his normality she relaxes into relief and invites him to stay in the small bungalow at her place.

There is far too much to spoil if I described more of the plot. Vore and Tina's increasing intimacy changes everything she was confident of in her world. Having learned to keep her place at the level of a sniffer dog, enduring the audible insults of the normals who pass by her intimidating gaze at the border she learns extraordinary things about herself from Vore.

Up to this point the film deftly challenges us to feel more than we wanted to for Tina. A few scenes later we are asking ourselves questions about our own acceptance of difference to degrees we would be too automatically guarded if the story involved the more recognisable spectre of intra-human racism. It's not just Tina who's getting a few life lessons. The expertly handled blend of magical realism and Nordic grit help us here. Tina and Vore look like Neanderthals but they are considered ugly rather than impossible. It's clever but it's also unfailingly warm. So, it works.

And then it gets dark. And then it gets darker. Unrelieved by sentimentality but rather leavened by the commitment of anyone who makes it to the third act, Border is a triumph of sustained credulity, a kind of prolonged dare to call it impossible and it is issued without a moment's collapse into cuteness or the dilution of comic relief. My cinematic year has begun.

NEXT OF KIN: Going Home Again

I bought my first copy of Cinema Papers because it had this image on the cover. Wow, an Australian horror movie that looks like a European one! That's for me. Also for me was the opportunity to read an industry magazine that made this film undergrad look and feel important. The story was thorough though a thinly veiled promo for the upcoming release. Except it wasn't a release. I waited months, looking for the title among the lists at both mainstream chains and arthouses around Brisbane to no avail. The cinematographer was touted as one of the nation's finest and costar John Jarrat was if not a household name more recognisable than most. This was in the early '80s, the era of The Thing and Alien, genre was news. But nothing. I went back up to the parental seat in Townsville where I found it on VHS. Straight to video was soon to be the judgement phrase to mean genre crud for pizza and beer nights. So, I rented it and watched. It was ok.

So, what's it about? Ok. Young Linda returns to her mother's country mansion as part of her inheritance. It's also an old people's home. She gets along with the staff and guests alike and even picks up a young and hot John Jarrat as a boyfriend. An ongoing narration of her mother's diary seems to reveal a kind of evil presence in the house. Some of the guests die. Eventually it ends with a big finish. I returned it the same day and moved on.

Recently, the film has resurfaced on Blu-Ray and I thought I might as well try it again. Maybe it fared badly in 4X3. Maybe the mono mix of Klaus Schulze's electronic score would bloom in multi-channel. Maybe I expected a more generic horror movie and forgot to see the subtleties of an energetic young team who wanted to form their own atmospheric genre.

Well, it's not bad but you have to ignore any of the hints you get in the first ten minutes that you are about to see a horror film. Jacki Kerrin is not a scream queen nor a Ripley, she's relaxed to the point of sedation. Often it feels like she's acting intentionally under the key of the writing to avoid cliche. There's no lack of intelligence in her demeanour just a lack of fear. John Jarratt perks her up a tad as his own presence is dependable. The cast of old eccentrics do their work and the third act does the heavy lifting on a movie that contains almost none of the horror it starts with. There is almost no tension in this film. But that might be the game.

A scene that in today's money would warrant a double jump scare is played out without alarm but plenty of aesthetic detail (e.g. a sudden uplit face). The figure of the girl with the bouncing ball only appears to guide the living to discoveries but none of them are remarkable. The deaths could easily be due to old age. Are the creepy doctor and administrator in cahoots? Find out. The sex scene happens with the lights out (really, all the lights are out; you see a back, kind of). And so on.

So it plays against genre, then. We'll it's so listless that it's hard to tell. If you take it as anti-gothic what does it offer in place of payoffs? Playing more like documentary style but in a creepy house would have to wait until the noughties and the post-Blair Witch trend. And there are those few moments in the closing scenes which are straight out of contemporary horror cinema (no spoilers here, though the reveals are so irrelevant it's hard to spoil them). Is that a satire? It doesn't feel like it.

In the end Next of Kin works best as a curio, a horror movie without scares or suspense but big colourful style in the era of low-key realism in Australian cinema. You could put it on to enter a new world where the bizarre rates little mention but looks like a million bucks. For me it was a little like going back to Townsville in summer by train and finding my parents not only alive but the age they were when I was young (but I would be the age I am now). So, maybe Thomas Wolfe was right about going home again. You can do it but you can't but if you do there are films like this to tell you why.