Fur

In Woody Allen’s Manhattan, Issac and Tracey are browsing in an art gallery when they bump into their friend Yael stealing some time with his mistress, Mary. ‘Have you seen the photographs downstairs?’ she asks. They have. ‘They were terrific,’ says Tracey. Mary disagrees. ‘They’re like Diane Arbus,’ she says, ‘but without the wit.’ Personally I have never found Diane Arbus’ photography to be particularly witty. Some images, like ‘Two Ladies at the Automat’ have a sense of humour about them, but while I admire the way she was able to photograph people ignored and ridiculed by society with pride and dignity, I have never warmed to her photographic style.

In Fur, Steven Shainberg uses Arbus as a fictional character while once again exploring the theme of ‘not-so-innocent girl is lured into the wonderful lair of sexy, creepy, man’. I don’t know why Shainberg chose to call his character ‘Diane Arbus’ when he could have simply given her another name while still drawing on elements of Arbus’ background. Here, Arbus is an annoying spoilt and selfish rich girl, indulged at every turn by her photographer husband. She is not made anymore sympathetic by Nicole Kidman’s acting, which fails to get under the skin of what could have been a complex character. Apparently Samantha Morton was originally cast in the role, and I can’t help thinking that she would have brought more to the role.

Shainberg explores strong sexual experiences and consequently his actors need to fully embody their roles. Kidman refuses to take her clothes off, which is fine when she’s in a film where sex and nudity is simply included for the thrill of it. In Fur however, she completely ruins what should have been a tender, passionate and sad sex scene, by pulling a sheet around with her where ever she goes. If she wasn’t willing to push herself to help make the film the best it could be, then I don’t know why she accepted this role.

Completely covered in fur, Robert Downey Jnr’s Lionel sounds remarkably like James Spader, and although his character could have been explored further, he is terrific.

One of Shainberg’s strengths is his ability to depict the dark places of the soul and to manifest them visually in a way that is beautiful. In Fur, Lionel’s apartment is even more elaborate than Mr Grey’s office in Secretary. Shainberg loves to use layered shots where we see through a doorway or screen into another room, which then opens up to yet another room, creating mysterious spaces that seem to just keep on expanding and blurring the boundaries between fantasy and reality. I love the way Shainberg puts fantasy into the lives of his characters, however I felt the use of fairytale references here was a little heavy handed.

Fur has similar themes to Secretary, and while in some ways it is a more visually developed film, it never manages to be loveable in the way Secretary is. The poor acting and the under developed characters mean it never manages to get into those dark places it wants to inhabit.

Vintage suits in the year 2019…

I am not a particularly fashion conscious person, but recently, events have prompted me to look more closely at clothing in film. Film directors and fashion designers have often had fruitful relationships – take for example, Woody Allen and Ralph Lauren with Annie Hall, or Wong Kar Wai and Issey Miyake with Ashes of Time. Films can provide a designer with a place to create weird and wonderful costumes, or create a look that brings a character to life. Wong Kar Wai in particular makes use of fashion in a way that draws attention to itself and reflects each character acutely. Both his men and women dress with care, and often wear signature items that carry a value beyond their function, like Gong Li’s black glove in 2046 and The Hand. Stephen Teo notes that In the Mood for Love, ‘the array of cheong-sams worn by Maggie Cheung is Wong’s cinematic way of indicating the passage of time.’ This is true – in film, fashion can mark the era and the passing of days, months and years. But this is not all. When the period of the clothing and the time in which the film is set are mismatched, fashion can also work to evoke a sense of nostalgia within the world of the film itself.

In Bladerunner, the dystopia of the year 2019 is beset with references to the past. People ride through the rain sodden streets of LA on old fashioned bicycles, the architecture draws on the pyramids of ancient Egypt, and Rachel, the highly advanced replicant at the Tyrell corporation wears 1940’s style suits teamed with hair reminiscent of Kim Novak’s elegant coiffure in Vertigo. In a film that is so much about memory and it’s place in forming our identities, it is appropriate that Rachel, who is so concerned with having a past should be costumed in styles from an even more remote time. Pris, one of the recalcitrant nexus 6, on the other hand wears punk, very ‘of the moment’ outfits – fishnet stockings, ripped tops, tiny skirts, steel capped boots. In the streets, characters go by wearing highly futuristic outfits, bubble shaped suits and strange coats possibly meant to protect them from what looks like a highly polluted atmosphere. There is also a class distinction marked out by clothing here, and it seems a sense of nostalgia is being linked to a sense of ‘civility’ – it is the upper classes, Tyrell and Rachel who wear the most vintage styled clothes. It is as if by donning the apparel of a time that was (at least in their memories) orderly and civilised, they will somehow transcend the disarray around them.

This delineation of class through the use of clothes from the past and ‘futuristic’ clothes also occurs in that other 1980’s science fiction classic Brazil. In a particularly striking scene, the men who work upstairs at the ministry march rapidly through the labyrinthine corridors, all smartly dressed in 1920’s style pin-striped grey suits complete with top hats and corsages. Jill and other ‘terrorists’ seen outside the ministry however, wear bomber jackets, jeans, and off-coloured shirts. Again it seems that by wearing clothes that allude to an earlier era the characters are attempting to separate themselves from their own dystopic world. But as this sense of that past can only have come through images, the adoption of such outfits is nothing but a simulacra. A time one has never experienced is automatically idealised, and thus the intricacies of vintage clothing becomes all important in the projection of what could be rather than what is.

The Diving Bell and The Butterfly

The camera moves across a drifting curtain that swells with light, then recedes into the muted blue of the walls. The window frame is tilted at a sharp angle, creating a disorienting, abstracted space. These uncanny images of the hospital room where Jean – Dominique Bauby lies paralysed are for me the most unique images in Julian Schnabel’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Schnabel is a visual filmmaker. He uses a lot of layered shots – some created through the overlaying of film, like the montages of nature, and some through the use of reflections. There is a beautiful example when Bauby is pushed along the hospital corridors at night, his reflection slightly blurred from the motion. The hospital lights are reflected in the glass walls as blobs of colour against the surrounding blackness, creating the illusion of a deep endless space. These moments, when the film is given over to the image and what we see pushes toward abstraction, are the strongest parts of the film. But unlike Cassavetes, who uses abstract, experimental imagery to emphasise and develop his character’s emotional states, Schnabel’s images remain either separate from the emotional world of his characters, or employ obvious metaphors which verge on cliche.

I liked the way Bauby was irritable and not always nice, as one would be given his situation, but I couldn’t warm to him, and I think this was because some of the metaphorical imagery, the crumbling glacier, the shots of Bauby in his wheelchair stranded at sea, the montages of butterflies and flowers, were just too overblown.

Despite the highly charged subject matter, the characters, the dialogue, the action, fail to adequately capture an emotional weight. An article on Schnabel in The Age mentioned the scene where Bauby shaves his father as being a touching portrayal of the father – son relationship, however, despite the wonderful acting from both Von Sydow and Almaric, I found the scenes between Bauby and his father strangely unconvincing. Perhaps this is because these scenes are a little too much to the point – they are a bit like the moments in sit-com’s where a father says to his son, ‘I love you son.’

The film is engaging and contains some beautiful and unusual images, but, like the reflections, seems ultimately to remain on the surface.