Robert Tanitch reviews the latest DVDs
THE LONDON SPY (Universal Pictures). Tom Rob Smith’s television screenplay is more of a gay love story than a spy story. Promiscuous Danny (Ben Wishaw) falls in love with a virginal genius, Alex (Edward Holcroft), who has invented a lie-detector based on speech patterns. Alex is found dead in a trunk. Is his death the result of some sexual perversion or has he been murdered? Tearful Danny (who is very much the little lost boy and out of his depth) is convinced it was murder. He turns to his mentor (Jim Broadbent), who is also gay and a former spy, and thinks it highly likely all the international intelligence agencies were involved. Danny also has a chat with Alex’s formidable mother (Charlotte Rampling). Filmed at a funereal pace and stretched to 5 episodes, it is always enigmatic and on the point of being interesting; but it never quite delivers the goods.
HITCHCOCK TRUFFAUT (Dogwoof). If you are an Alfred Hitchcock fan then Francois Truffaut’s seminal 1962 book of interviews is indispensable reading. Truffaut, critic and highly successful director, had a rapport with Hitchcock. The publication of the week-long interviews led to critics taking Hitchcock much more seriously than they had before. Hitchcock, master of suspense, was not just an entertainer; he was an artist who wrote with a camera. Kent Jones’s documentary, based on the original tapes with clips, concentrates on Vertigo (recently voted the Best Film ever by international critics, supplanting Citizen Kane) and Psycho. There are comments by Martin Scorsese, David Fincher, Peter Bogdanovich and others. Somebody now should publish the original tapes Truffaut made in full.
BEAT GIRL (BFI). Disenfranchised youths, living in the 1959 pre-permissive, coffee bar/Beatnik era, have to learn there is more to life than kicks and guitar. Daddy (square David Fararr) marries a French tart (plastic Noelle Adam) to the disgust of his teenage daughter (OTT Gillian Hills) who decides to become a striptease artist in a Soho joint (run by Christopher Lee). The script is terrible. The acting is terrible. The sets are cardboard. Edmond T Greville’s direction is wooden. John Barry provides the soundtrack. Adam Faith rocks it. Oliver Reed, in a small role, makes certain he is noticed. Pascaline’s erotic dance gets the film banned in many countries.
JOY OF MAN’S DESIRING/BESTAIRE (New Wave Films): two documentary films by French Canadian Denis Côté. Who said working never killed anybody? Côté observes the factory work place. For the DVD viewer watching it is just 70 minutes spent and that’s it. But for some unfortunate people it’s half their lifetime, day in, day out, the same frustrating grind on the same machine. Watching people in a factory doing numbingly monotonous, soul-destroying jobs is not a very enjoyable experience but it could be a salutary one. There is no commentary as such but the film speaks volumes. It’s Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times without the laughs. Côté’s Bestaire looks at animals in cages in a safari park in Quebec and the animals look back at us and ask the same question: why are animals in cages for our entertainment?
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