Capone's Art-House Round-Up with THE DRESSMAKER, GOAT, and THE SEASONS IN QUINCY!!!

Hey, folks. Capone in Chicago here, with a few films that are making their way into art houses or coming out in limited release around America this week (maybe even taking up one whole screen at a multiplex near you). Do your part to support these films, or at least the good ones…


THE DRESSMAKER
Those few times a year when a film escapes from Australia and makes its way stateside, you can usually count on it being a familiar story told through a quirky filter. Based on Rosalie Ham’s novel, THE DRESSMAKER is the story of a woman who was run out of her small town as a girl after an unexplained death and is now returning to exact a type of revenge on those who she believes wronged her. Kate Winslet (the film’s one non-Australian) plays Tilly Dunnage, who may have accidentally killed a young boy when she herself was a young girl, but neither she nor anyone else in the town seems to know exactly how it happened.

While she was away, Tilly became a masterful seamstress and dress designer. When word of her abilities gets out, the women in this rundown village line up outside her door to have her make them a touch of the glamorous. But Tilly has other motivations; she wants access to the town’s folklore, including details about the boy that died, his family, and her role in his demise. Of very little help is Tilly’s borderline demented mother Molly (Judy Davis), who stuck around after Tilly left town, but let her household and mind go to rot.

The Dressmaker is about the lengths that a small town will go to to alleviate boredom, even if it means falsely accusing someone of murder or any other number of lesser dramas and bits of gossip. Director Jocelyn Moorhouse (A THOUSAND ACRES, HOW TO MAKE AN AMERICAN QUILT, PROOF, working from an adaptation she worked on with P.J. Hogan) has a keen sense of the energy that keeps a closed community like this going, even if there’s no truth behind gossip. While Tilly is there for one reason only, she can’t seem to resist the charms and muscles of Teddy McSwiney (Liam Hemsworth, in arguably his best work), and THE DRESSMAKER turns briefly into a love story before the mystery solving kicks back in.

Other colorful characters that Tilly crosses paths with include the dowdy Trudy Pratt (PREDESTINATION’s Sarah Snook), Tilly’s first customer who is looking for a full-blown transformation; Beulah (Kerry Fox), the local teacher who might know more than she’ll admit about the boy’s death years earlier; and Hugo Weaving’s (THE MATRIC, THE LORD OF THE RINGS) Sgt. Farrat, the town’s only source of law enforcement, who also has a keen interest in Tilly’s creations. It may sound like a mish-mash of personalities, vying for camera time by out-weirding each other, but in fact, all of these character make sense together and feel like they’re part of the landscape (or soon will be).

And just as one mystery is being put to bed, and Tilly’s belief that she is somehow cursed is nearly laid to rest, an unnecessary third-act nightmare kicks in and sours a certain amount of good feeling I was having about THE DRESSMAKER, which is a shame because it’s one of the better performances Winslet has given of late. My other major issue with the movie is that Davis’s Molly is played so broad and cantankerously that she quickly shifts from colorful to burdensome, which is a true shame because Davis really is one of the best actresses on the planet.

THE DRESSMAKER is at its best when it functions as an existential murder mystery, with clues and remembrances being unveiled, helping Tilly complete the missing pieces of her own identity. Identity is a big theme here, with many of the locals realizing that a pretty dress can’t cover up an ugly soul. Despite its getting lost in the final act, the movie manages to be enticing and darkly humorous to the core. Not a bad entry from Down Under.


GOAT
The latest film by Andrew Neel (DARKON, KING KELLY) is a much-needed slap in the face at a male culture that might not be born in a fraternity environment, but it’s certainly finely honed there. Based on the memoir by Brad Land, GOAT is a sometimes vicious examination of the modern definition of brotherhood as seen through the eyes of Brad (Ben Schnetzer, also currently in SNOWDEN and seen previously in WARCRAFT and PRIDE), a 19-year-old college student who was brutally assaulted over his summer break and is committed to getting his life back on track with the new school year. His older brother Brett (Nick Jonas, “Kingdom”) invites Brad to his fraternity’s parties, where he shares his story of being attacked with its members, many of whom want him to rush.

Seeing the organization as a place where he’ll be protected and appreciated, Brad agrees even though brother Brett doesn’t think it’s the best idea given Brad’s mild PTSD issues. Adapted by Neel, Mike Roberts and filmmaker David Gordon Green, Goat puts a microscope on the way ideas about masculinity have become too warped and corrupted, using violence, alcohol and forms of mild psychological torture. The end game is meant to be bonds with your captors that last a lifetime, but for some, the price for that type of security is too high.

Schnetzer and Jonas are both quite good, as the former convincingly plays a vulnerable young man trying to prove his manhood, while Jonas is the brother torn between helping his sibling and letting him go through the rituals that he did and hopefully come out the other side a stronger person, which doesn’t seem likely.

In GOAT’s final third, someone reports the fraternity’s hazing rituals to the college, sparking an examination. Everyone assumes the rat was Brad, but he claims innocence. Director Neel doesn’t shy away from showing us just how bad the hazing process really is, and the tension levels in this movie are astronomically high as the film goes on. The level of graphic detail of some of the hazing stunts is often shocking (and, I have little doubt, accurate), and even a comic cameo by a recent alum played by executive producer James Franco can’t quite cut the disgust level that audiences will likely feel.

There’s a certain amount of glorification going on as well, but that comes in small doses, and it certainly doesn’t cover up the gross insecurity on display that the fraternity brothers try to bury with booze and drunken sex. GOAT is not always an easy film to watch or digest, but it does seem important for some young men to view prior to hitting college. Some may see it as a recruitment video for bad behavior in general, while others (including the filmmakers) may see it as an angry cautionary tale. Either way, it’s a heartbreaking experience for so many reasons.


THE SEASONS IN QUINCY: FOUR PORTRAITS OF JOHN BERGER
Less a biopic or profile of British intellectual and self-proclaimed storyteller John Berger, THE SEASONS IN QUINCY comprises four visual essays (by four different directors, including his longtime friend Tilda Swinton, who also acts as occasional narrator) that watched one after the other make up a fairly complete portrait of the man’s achievements, both past and present. Produced by London’s Derek Jarman Lab, the film is set primarily in the French Alpine village of Quincy, where the subject retreated many years ago.

We see Berger with various combinations of family and friends, including Swinton, his children and grandchildren, and others who have little connection with the world of art, essays, novels, history, and television that Berger has worked in for decades. No matter where he is or who he’s with, Berger is a man whose words you simply listen to, whether he talking about the desperate state of world politics or telling Swinton a memory of his father slicing an apple in a peculiar manner. No matter the subject, you take it in because there’s a quality and weight to Berger’s voice you simply can’t ignore.

Swinton, along with co-directors Colin MacCabe, Christopher Roth and Bartek Dziadosz, reveal that part of Berger’s appeal is that he is also a fantastically engaging listener as well. And he finds a way to link the thoughts of others with his own encyclopedic knowledge on so many subjects. But nothing is more captivating than when he’s going through his own personal archives of experiences, from his father’s time in World War II to more recent experiences with his own family.

The collective content of these four short films feels like it was created with a fine paintbrush. The locations of inherently lovely, but I’m talking about the content of the spoken word, which draws out thoughts and images from the listener’s mind and creates fully realized portraits that we can gaze upon long after THE SEASONS IN QUINCY is over. Let’s face it, most of us right-thinking people will watch Swinton in just about anything, so having her as a our guide into Berger’s story makes me all the more eager to step in. But I wasn’t expecting something so graceful and fulfilling.

-- Steve Prokopy
"Capone"
capone@aintitcool.com
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