Mike Leigh
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Connections, in both directions
Flutur (who resembles the spiky Katrin Cartlidge of Mike Leigh's Naked) shows us a one-person wrestling match, the stubbornness of a survivor in mortal conflict with a lover who can't let go.
But the underlying concern with Dupieux’s work recalls David Thewlis’ remarks about the human body in Naked : It’s “the most sophisticated mechanism in the entire universe”—a “wet, pink factory,” in his words—but “what the fuck are they making in there?
Intimacy (2001)
Directed by Patrice Chéreau
influenced by Naked (1993), Life Is Sweet (1991), Secrets & Lies (1996), Topsy-Turvy (1999)
Themes
However, unlike the themes of sexual exploration and individual empowerment that is pervasive in Breillat's films, Intimacy finds greater commonality with the profoundly desperate and marginalized protagonists of Mike Leigh's equally eviscerating and aptly titled film, Naked (1993), and the Bruno Dumont films, The Life of Jesus (1997) and L'Humanité (1999), where attraction and human desire become inextricably bound to the characters' misguided search for identity, validation, and sense of purpose in an aimless and oppressive existence.
Audiences may best remember Spall as the quiet, decent family man in "Secrets & Lies" or the foolish gourmet in "Life Is Sweet," but he's also good in loud, disruptive roles.
Audiences may best remember Spall as the quiet, decent family man in "Secrets & Lies" or the foolish gourmet in "Life Is Sweet," but he's also good in loud, disruptive roles.
Striking out on his own, he follows Claire back to her lair, which turns out to sport a morose and moribund husband named Andy (Timothy Spall of Mike Leigh's Topsy-Turvy) and yet another broodling.
Twisting the relentless upbeat energy of Poppy from Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky into something more sinister…
The bubbliness of her character in Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky…
Hawkins’ Laura is initially introduced as an unfiltered, troublesome cousin to her Happy-Go-Lucky protagonist Poppy, only to plumb new depths with every scene…
Hawkins, so sweet in practically everything (Happy-Go-Lucky, Paddington), pulls off a terrifying about-face…
…many may be fond of her bubbly turn in Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky…
Hawkins, forever remembered for Mike Leigh’s comedy Happy-Go-Lucky (2008)…
That doesn’t mean that movies can’t tackle the psychology, but with only a few exceptions (e.g., the English writer-director Mike Leigh’s 1990 film Life Is Sweet , which depicts a young, working-class bulimic woman), films about eating disorders take the form of hokey, know-the-symptoms public service pamphlets aimed at teens.
When Ellen secretly investigates—perhaps expecting a stash of chocolate bars like those similarly hidden, gorged on, and purged by Jane Horrocks’s bulimic Nicola in Life Is Sweet (1990)—she recoils: it is a barf bag.
When De Vere's plays begin to be performed as Shakespeare's, Elizabeth is being pressured by her council William Cecil (David Thewlis, "Naked," "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows") to choose her successor as he plots to make her own son, the Earl of Essex (Sam Reid), appear as the leader of a traitorous uprising.
It’s such a weird, depressing, Nouveau-Dickensian nightmare that teeters on the borders of David Lynch and Mike Leigh’s Naked.
Mike Leigh's Meantime (1983) offered a more cohesive attempt to describe what produces an English skinhead in London's East End; the designated turf of American History X is Los Angeles's Venice Beach.
It lets them collide, to create a unique, infectious rhythm all its own — propulsive one moment, obsessive and clinical the next, like someone had the bright idea of cross-breeding Mike Leigh’s Naked with David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers.
Not that such a character needs a story to shine (may I point you to Mike Leigh’s indie masterpiece Naked, and David Thewlis’ amazing misanthrope therein?), but it would be nice to have such a full-formed screen presence be pointed in a certain direction.
As Joseph, a truculent, desperately alcoholic knucklehead, Mullan falls somewhere between the feral ferocity of Robert Carlyle's Begbie in Danny Boyle's Trainspotting and the visionary nastiness of David Thewlis's Johnny in Mike Leigh's Naked.
And when Jack appears on American TV, it’s with James Corden—another Brit whose rise rests as much on his indefatigable ability to enthuse as on his talent (never mind forgetting “Octopus’s Garden,” the real shame is that everyone, including Corden himself, has forgotten how genuinely moving he was in Mike Leigh’s All or Nothing ).
When his soldier father (David Thewlis, "Naked," "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix") receives a promotion, young Bruno (Asa Butterfield, "Son of Rambow") is unhappy about leaving his friends and splendid home in Berlin.
David Thewlis' Johnny in Naked is a notable example, as is Nicola, the nasty plumber played by Jane Horrocks in Life Is Sweet.
And that’s when I realized what this movie is: It’s really just Mike Leigh’s Naked all over again… except that this time the sadistic philosopher is a celebrated, wealthy writer who looks pretty cool as he tears the world down around him.
But Leigh doesn’t present this seeming disjunction between the artist and his art as ironic, the way Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus bludgeoned you with the contrast between Mozart’s coarse manner and supernal music.
Cinematographer Dick Pope gives the tight interior scenes the same kind of heightened realism he used with director Mike Leigh on such films as "Naked" and "Secrets & Lies."
She's Natalie Portman's character in Garden State, Kate Hudson in Almost Famous, Jennifer Aniston in Along Came Polly-- free-spirited, gorgeous women with no inner lives of their own, just enough “depth” and “sense of adventure” to inspire a schlubby guy to break out of his mold and tap into life, or some other kind of nonsense.
Cusack employs a rather obtuse “period” accent to mouth the “literate” dialogue of hack screenwriters Ben Livingston and Hannah Shakespeare (!), which is even worse than the cornball flowery speech Mike Leigh used in Topsy-Turvy.
I think of Leopold Bloom in Nighttown from Joyce's "Ulysses," Jimmy Stewart in George Bailey's alternate universe in "It's a Wonderful Life," or Yossarian in the Eternal City in "Catch-22."