Month: September 2016

We Are Monsters

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★★
“Swedish grindhouse: Some assembly apparently required.”

wearemonstersThe rape-revenge genre is a problematic one. Done properly, it can be awesome, and pack a real wallop. See Ms. 45, or Thriller: A Cruel Picture for examples where the makers got it right. But there are an awful lot of mis-steps possible on the way. Unfortunately, this proves the point, mostly by being remarkably… Well, “bland” is probably appropriate, and is also damning criticism. For these kind of movies should be offensive, because rape is. If its depiction isn’t hard for the viewer to watch, you’re not doing it right. On that basis, the makers here definitely get it wrong.

Emma (Oldenburg) is on a business trip, in her role as a PR advisor, when she gets in the wrong taxi. She regains consciousness, tied up in a remote cabin. There, she’s at utterly at the mercy of savvy psychopath Jim (Ralph Beck), and his simpleton sidekick, Pete (Andersson). It soon becomes clear she is not their first victim. And also, that they have no compunction about disposing of their left-overs. That’s just the start of Emma’s descent into hell, which is a necessary component of the genre. To be followed by her turning the tables and subjecting her attackers to equal brutality, to the cheers of the audience. In theory, anyway.

The first off-putting element is, it’s supposedly set in America, yet clearly isn’t, with accents roughly as convincing as Inspector Clouseau [Emma, bizarrely, is supposedly Australian – one presumes that was the only accent Oldenburg could do!]. There’s no reason beyond crass commercialism, why its location couldn’t be the real one, of Sweden. Then we get to the downswing, and there’s no emotional impact at all. We’re given no reason to care about Emma, except that she’s the victim, nor any reason to hate Jim and Pete, save they’re the perpetrators. Now, we don’t need any more reason, but it’s appallingly lazy film-making to rely on such a simply dynamic. The series of attacks are shot in such a superficial way they’re frankly boring, when they should leave the viewer shaken and stirred.

There’s also a thread where Pete spends a lot of time watching slasher films. If there’s an intended moral there, it’s a remarkably hypocritical one, given the genre in which this firmly operates. Eventually, after an aborted escape attempt or two, the inevitable happens. The makers do at least get that right, with Emma inflicting some truly brutal revenge, including one scene I defy any man to watch without squirming. Yet, the ineffective nature of what has gone before robs the revenge of any significant impact, and it instead falls into the category of “too little, too late.” Having shallowly enjoyed the directors’ previous effort, the “spam in a cabin” film Wither, their attempt here to recapture the spirit of the grindhouse era was severely disappointing.

Dir: Sonny Laguna, Tommy Wiklund
Star: Hanna Oldenburg, Torbjörn Andersson, Ralf Beck, Niki Nordenskjöld

Into the Forest

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★★½
“After the apocalypse, life will be… kinda dull, actually.”

intotheforestNell (Page) and Eva (Wood) are sisters, living in a house deep in the woods with their father (Rennie). Nell is studying for her SATs, Evan is working towards a dance audition, until all plans are interrupted by a catastrophic power outage which leaves the entire country without electricity. Fortunately, they are almost self-sufficient, capable of living off the land as far as food and heat is concerned, even if the lack of power and very limited fuel forces some significant changes in lifestyle: Eva is reduced to practicing her dance routine to the relentless tick of a metronome, for instance. But when the women are thrown entirely onto their own resources, life becomes tougher, and various hard questions have to be answered, about whether to stay in their remote, apparently fairly safe location, or follow the reports suggesting that the Eastern seaboard may slowly be getting back to normal.

It’s nowhere as exciting as your typically post-apocalyptic scenario, though this perhaps has a greater ring of plausibility to it than the usual Mad Max-iness. When the world falls apart, it’s more likely to be with a whimper than a scream. That said: I don’t know who built their home, since it falls into complete dilapidation in less than a year, with a roof that starts leaking like a sieve in just a couple of months. What is it made of? Papier-mache? [I’m perhaps biased here, since the house I grew up in is over 200 years old, and somehow, still stands] This is likely a narrative conceit, necessary to force the heroines out of their survival-based inertia, which occupies the majority of the film. That angle is one of the disappointing areas: they’re reactive, rather than pro-active. If left entirely to their own devices, this might have ended up as little more than 100 minutes of the sisters gathering berries.

It does manage to go beyond that, mostly thanks to the performances of Page and Wood, who have a natural chemistry that feels authentic. They bicker like sisters, and fight like sisters, yet also show that when the chips are down, blood is thicker than water. This is demonstrated with the unexpected appearance of Nell’s boyfriend (Minghella), though he serves little other purpose before walking out of the film’s scope again. Page is also far too old these days to be a convincing high-school student: Juno was the best part of a decade ago now, and she wasn’t in her teens even when that came out. There is something to be said for a more character-driven apocalypse, one which consists of more than a steady stream of threats to be violently countered. However, this likely tilts the balance too far the other direction, and ends up with something too introverted and navel-gazing to be interesting.

Dir: Patricia Rozema
Star: Ellen Page, Evan Rachel Wood, Max Minghella, Callum Keith Rennie

Hunterwali

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★★½
“Oh, God. Where to start….”

hunterwaliIt’s through this film that I backed into my discovery of early Bollywood star, Fearless Nadia. For doing some post-view Googling, I realized this 1988 Pakistani film is actually inspired by an Indian one of the same name, from more than 50 years earlier. That’s an entirely different rabbit-hole however: let’s consider this on its own, highly psychotronic merits.

The plot concerns two sisters, Bano and Bali (Anjuman), the latter also known as Hunterwali. Bano is demure and quiet, Bali… is not. In fact, she’s a totally wild child by local standards. Mind you, local standards apparently also involve killing girls who have the temerity to want to marry someone of their own choice. Still, there are three suitors for Bali’s hand. #1 is Umri, a warrior type, who tames her horse. However, after taking vengeance on the man who kills Umri’s entire clan, he is forced to become an outlaw. Potential husband #2 is the son of a family friend, who is her father’s choice. He is entirely useless and can be ignored, since he is present largely for comic-relief.

Finally, there’s Shahreyar, he helps rescue Hunterwali from attack by a gang. However, turns out that’s a ruse to gain her confidence. When she elopes with him, he takes her to a seedy cave – we know it’s seedy, because it has posters of Madonna and Brooke Shields on the wall! – and assaults her, along with the rest of the gang. The disgrace this brings to the family, causes Hunterwali’s dad to kill himself. In the fracas, Bano is also killed, but Bali takes the identity of her sister, who is married to the local police commander. This allows her to go out on vigilante missions, masked and with her whip, to hunt down the perps. She’s not messing around either: she shoots their eyes out and hangs them from the cave roof. While she eventually works her way up the chain to Shahreyar, he has an entire new gang. Fortunately, she has the help of Umri. And her horse. And her dog.

This has not dated well. Indeed, I suspect this wasn’t very good, even for the time – 1988 was the year Hollywood gave us Die Hard. The thing about the Fearless Nadia films is they’re not incomparable to what Hollywood was making at the time. You can’t say the same about this, which has all the technical quality of a bad 50’s B-movie. The director’s sole cinematic trick is the snap zoom, which is used so often it becomes a surreal joke, as does the single horse noise apparently available to the foley team. Yet there’s a loopy energy, and Anjuman has screen presence, which means the two and a half hours certainly do not drag. If you’re looking for a bizarre combination of Zorro with a musical version of I Spit on Your Grave,  also including a dog riding to the rescue of its owner on the back of a horse, the entire thing is on YouTube. Just don’t say, I didn’t warn you…

Dir: Iqbal Kashmiri
Star: Anjuman, Sultan Rahi, Mustafa Qureshi, Jameel Babar

Miss Frontier Mail

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★★★
“Unquestionably dated, yet still a pioneer,”

frontiermailIt has now been more than eighty years since this was released. It’s important to bear this in mind, because what you have here, is very much a product of its time and place – 1936 and Bollywood, respectively. That said, it possesses a far feistier heroine than anything coming out of Hollywood at that point. Indeed, you’d probably have to wait over 35 years, until Pam Grier showed up in the seventies, to find someone comparable to the characters portrayed by an Australian actress, known in India as “Fearless Nadia”. There’s more info on Fearless Nadia elsewhere, and you might want to start there, since background is likely near-essential to appreciating her movies.

This entry has her playing Savita, the daughter of a station master who is accused of murdering his deputy, a crime actually carried out by a gang of railway robbers that have been terrorizing the area, under their anonymous master, “Signal X”. Savita seeks to clear her father’s name, initially with the help of an informant inside the gang, who had been helped by the station master. But even after Signal X kills the informant, she continues to investigate them, seeking to expose his identity. Turns out the plan is to destroy the railway network’s reputation on behalf of an airline company. This involves a terrorist campaign, including blowing up bridges and deliberately causing train crashes, and Savita is the only person who can stop him.

Let’s be clear. The fights here are awful. My daughter and her friend used to make little films in our garage when they were early teenagers. They had better brawls. It appears the sole guidance offered by the director was, “Okay, look like you’re fighting. Action!” The results resemble a drunken shoving match at a wedding more than anything. Still… For there’s one sequence where Nadia and the rest of the cast are doing it on top of a moving train, and you know it’s not doubles, green-screen or CGI. There, I don’t care what you’re doing, because I would be desperately clinging onto any relatively-fixed point. There might also be whimpering involved. This cheerful and complete disregard for personal safety, along with some of the slapstick elements, feels inspired by the silent works of Harold Lloyd, etc.

This is a real hodge-podge with no consistent tone. Action rubs shoulders with romance, and drama with juvenile comedy. There’s a reason one supporting character is listed in the credits as “champion banana eater”, and I didn’t even mention the entirely gratuitous sequence of Savita weightlifting. At 143 minutes, it’s likely a good half-hour too long; interesting to see, both in that and the shoehorning in of musical numbers, elements that remain common to many contemporary Bollywood films. Yet, once your modern eyes adapt a bit to the approach, it remains entertaining, and remarkably forward-thinking. Virtually the only competent member of Signal X’s gang, Gulab (Gulshan), is also a woman, and while Savita does have a romantic interest, it’s handled well; she’s clearly more than his equal.

You could well argue that portrayals of women in Indian cinema have significantly regressed since this. Although the action elements do leave something to be desired for 21st-century viewers, and it all looks rather naive nowadays, that doesn’t detract from being decades ahead of its time.

Dir: Homi Wadia
Star: “Fearless Nadia”, Sayani Atish, Sardar Mansur, Gulshan

Fearless Nadia: The first action heroine film superstar?

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“If India is to be free, women must be given their freedom. If you try and stop them, you’ll face the consequences.” — Diamond Queen

nadia1For more than four decades, the Indian cinema industry, popularly known as “Bollywood”, has been the most prolific in the world, producing close to a thousand features per year. It has also been active for longer than you’d think; the inaugural Indian feature came out in 1913, just two years after Nestor Studios became the first to open its doors in Hollywood. Perhaps most surprisingly, there’s a case to be made that it was also the birthplace of the action heroine feature film, with 1935’s Hunterwali. Weirder still, it made a star of “Fearless Nadia”, its leading lady – who was actually 27-year-old Australian, Mary Ann Evans.

There had already been some action heroines in America. However, these were almost exclusively in series such as The Hazards of Helen, which ran for 119 episodes of twelve minutes, from 1914-17. Like James Bond, the actresses who played the lead changed over time, but the most-used was Helen Gibson. She’s also considered the first professional stunt-woman in Hollywood, and graduated from that role on Hazards, going on to portray Helen in 63 episodes. Unfortunately, as with so much silent cinema, the entire set is now close to lost, just a few parts surviving. However, it’s impact was not limited to America.

“Suddenly, out of the unknown there arises a mysterious personality called ‘Hunterwali’… Protector of the poor and punisher of the evil-doers, and by her daring adventures, she leaves all people spell-bound.”

In 1933, brothers  J.B.H. Wadia and Homi Wadia founded Wadia Movietone, a production company specializing in action, fantasy and mythological films. Among the cast in early works such as Noor-E-Yaman was Evans. She had been born in Western Australia in 1908, then moved to India with her family at age five, when her father, a British Army soldier, was sent to Bombay. Though he was killed in World War I, Mary Ann picked up a range of skills, from horseback riding to ballet, and toured India as part of a theatrical troupe in the early thirties. This helped lead to bit parts for the Wadia Brothers, who then created the role of “Hunterwali” – “The woman with a whip” – specifically for her. Adopting the “Fearless Nadia” name, Evans’ blonde, statuesque appearance was quite the contrast to the typical heroines of the time. This likely contributed to her acceptance in action roles by the Indian audience, despite her Hindi dialogue being delivered with a heavy accent.

Hunterwali is the story of Princess Madhuri (Evans), who has a secret identity as a masked vigilante, fighting injustice with her whip, and the help of her faithful horse and dog. The production was a gamble for the Wadias. Production took six months and cost 80,000 Rupees – about $30,000, a huge sum at the time for a local film. But the risky, unproven concept meant they were unable to find a distributor, so ended up taking that role on themselves. It worked out: the novelty of a blue-eyed action heroine, doing all her own stunts, proved impossible to resist. Crowds flocked to cinema halls for months to see the 164-minute epic, giving Wadia one of the biggest box-office hits of the entire decade. Sadly, the film too is apparently now only available in an incomplete version.

“Nadia is to stunts what Jane Russell is to sex.”

nadia5So said Bollywood film writer, B.K. Karanjia, who remembers meeting Nadia on the set of one of her films in the forties. “To my considerable amazement, she did every stunt in a sort of bindaas (carefree) manner. She didn’t take herself seriously. She did not take her stunts seriously. She was never afraid, always laughing, whistling and joking.” Hunterwali launched Nadia’s career, which continued in films with titles such as Miss Frontier Mail, Diamond Queen, Jungle Princess and Lady Robinhood. The characters may have varied, but some elements remained the same. A fierce devotion to the oppressed and the punishment of villainy. Her loyal horse, dog and even a car (an Austin, semi-ironically named “Rolls Royce Ki Beti” – “Daughter of Rolls Royce”). Sayani Atish was a regular villain. and bodybuilder John Cawas also frequently appeared.

The main element, however, was the showcase provided for Nadia’s willingness to do her own action, in a way no modern star would do – or be allowed to do! As her career progressed, the stunts required became increasingly dangerous. Even in Hunterwali, she “fell flat on her face from a great height,” in a scene where she was supposed to swing from a chandelier, and was also almost swept away filming a scene in rapids near Bombay. Raging waterfalls? Jumping from horseback onto a ladder dangling from a plane? Fighting multiple lions? Not a problem for Nadia. “I’ll try anything once,” she famously said, and another journalist, Rauf Ahmed concurred: “In those days, Fearless Nadia did stunts that even men didn’t attempt.”

Her career lasted through the forties and fifties, albeit with the action components slowing as she moved into her own forties and fifties. She married Homi Wadia in 1961 – their wedding having to wait first for the death of his disapproving mother – and effectively withdrew from cinema. She came out of retirement for her final role in a James Bond spoof, Khiladi, in 1968, before retiring to raise thoroughbred horses. She died at the ripe age of 87, in 1995. In the past few years, there have been rumblings of a bio-pic, with names mentioned in connection with the role ranging from Franka Potente to Uma Thurman, and even Angelina Jolie said she’d love to play Fearless Nadia. Conflicts with her family reported derailed one project, but it’s still being kicked about. It’s certainly something I’d love to see; since there have been few, if any, characters in the history of motion pictures, quite like Fearless Nadia.

Read: our review of Miss Frontier Mail.