If you had to use one word to describe the work Stephen
Frears, it would be eclectic. A director whose films resist easy
classification, Frears has worked in both his native England and
in Hollywood, and both within and outside of established genres.
A brief cross-section of films he’s worked on – My
Beautiful Launderette, Dangerous Liasons, Mary Reilly, BBC’s
The Deal – is indicative of the vast breadth of genres that
Frears has approached. In fact, the director is perhaps a living
testament to the complexities of the auteur/genre debate. Perhaps
because he himself pays genuine respect to the collaborative
nature of film as an art form – above all acknowledging the
primacy of writers who create source novels and screenplays
Frears appears to ‘tiptoe’ into his own work through
the ‘back door,’ unlike, say, Ken Loach or Stephen
Spielberg, who unambiguously ‘occupy’ their films,
whether as socially-conscious auteurs or bigname entertainers.
But while it is difficult to say just what constitutes ‘a
Stephen Frears film,’ it is possible to find Frears’
signature in the sensibility surrounding character and in the
films’ attitudes and interests. First and foremost, Frears
devotes careful attention to the way people live, how they think,
and how they react within their social environments, often on the
precipice of irreversible change. Whether a low budget indie
picture such as last year’s Dirty Pretty Things, or more
commercially successfully US star vehicles like High Fidelity,
Frears’ films are almost always received with critical
acclaim. But does he like to watch his own films as much as the rest of
the world seems to? “Every now and then when they’re on
the television, but that’s it. I did actually watch High
Fidelity when it was on TV at Christmas, though. I thought it was
rather funny.” The film he is most proud of, however, is
Dangerous Liasons. With endearing modesty he enthuses, “I
still can’t believe I was allowed near it. I had intended to
make it into a very lavish, Max Ophuls-style melodrama but once I
started working with the American actors we realised it
wasn’t going to work like that at all. The end product
turned out to be something completely other than what I
hadimagined.” What strikes me about Frears over the course of the interview
is his peculiar habit of speaking about his films as if
they’re not actually his, but merely something he played a
part in producing. Unlike the ego-obsessed Hollywood directors,
Frears insists that writers should get the most credit for a
film. “I do come second. I don’t invent the films. What
the writer has done, I admire. Maybe it has become less like that
in recent years. Maybe it’s a completely dishonest position.
For all I know, it may just be entirely an act of
self-concealment on my part. I made a little joke about being
imperialist and colonising writer’s ideas. I remember one
writer I worked with in television saying, ‘Well, you
somehow absorb it, and you regurgitate it in some way,’ and
it’s gone through my intestines in some complicated way that
I don’t fully understand.” He cites his “BBC upbringing” as the reason for his
deference for screenwriters. “I was brought up, as it were,
at the BBC, where it was the director’s place to support the
writing. We had a built-in respect for the writer’s skill,
and today I still wouldn’t cross the road without a good
script. I question, which is part of my function in all parts of
the filmmaking process: Why are you doing that? Why are you
playing it that way? You conduct an intelligent conversation with
everybody. That’s different from saying, this is what you
should do or this is what you should write. So it’s hard to
claim credit.” Is there almost a sense of insecurity in his wish to shift the
focus of attention onto the screenwriters? He pauses, before
musing, “Maybe I’m just hiding. I wouldn’t want to
pretend I can’t see that. But that may be necessary, or that
may be what I have to do. The truth is, it’s the actors who
expose and reveal themselves.” So what role does he see himself as having in a film, if the
writers and the actors should be, according to him, at the
forefront of our attention? “I think I can bring things to
life, which seems to me, far and away, the most profound thing
you can do. In giving life, you dramatise the story. Generally, I
go in and when I shoot, it’s as though there’s a sort
of path through the woods, and it’s the most interesting way
through. Often people don’t see that, and I show them the
path. Then I can say to the editor, you can go and cut it now
because I’ve shown you the secret passage.” “But the business of bringing the script to life involves
the unexpected”, he continues. “In fact, Jimmy McGovern
talked about that in an interview. On one particular section of
Liam, he thought I’d be able to give him a really good idea,
and all I said was, “It’s not good enough. Write
something better.” I didn’t know what he should write,
and he did go away and write something much more interesting. So
you’re really there in a rather destructive way, while at
the same time encouraging the writer to be adventurous, to have
the confidence to go somewhere. It’s trying to make sense of
what they’re offering.” Hasn’t he ever been
tempted to write himself? “No, never”, he insists.
“Writers are extraordinary. I never suffered from the
delusion that I was capable of writing – I think that’s
one of the reasons I’ve survived so long in the
industry.” Having been in the industry so long he has no doubt ploughed
through thousands of scripts: I ask him if he’s ever let a
great script slip through his fingers. “ Thelma and
Louise”, he says without any hesitation. “Someone said
to me, ‘Oh, it’s nothing special.’ They were
wrong. I don’t think I’d have done it as well as Ridley
Scott did, but it would have been great fun.” There is, however, no typical Frears script. Dirty Pretty
Thingsand High Fidelity, for example, are worlds apart.
“Yes,” he concedes, “but at the same time, I
don’t see High Fidelity in quite the same light as others
do. I always knew that I was alone in seeing it as the story of
one man growing up, rather than about music and a certain kind of
lifestyle. It is a feminist film: a cry for men to grow up. The
people who have most stopped me behaving like a child in my life
have been women. High Fidelity is about a man dealing with that.
So I think of it as political [as Dirty Pretty Things], to some
extent.” And finally, I ask him if he has any advice for any
budding film-makers hoping to follow in his foot-steps. “Get
a proper job!”ARCHIVE: 3rd week TT 2004 

Sex is Comedy, says a recent film by Catherine Breillat, which
tells of the crude bodily mechanics of actors trying to recreate
the passion and peculiarity of sex on screen. And she’s
right. Not only do we like to find vicarious amusement in the
taboo, but sex is a funny thing in itself. What is most
emphatically not funny, it would seem, is the absence of sex. This is something that I have spent much time thinking about,
while others have been joking about their latest sexual conquests
and misdemeanours. I’m not a prude, or a nun nor even
“waiting for the right time” anymore, but a normal,
sexually-aware twentyone year old who won’t be having sex
for a very long time, possibly never. And this I have had to
explain embarrassedly in various states of undress to a number of
excited, but ultimately disappointed young men; in doing so I
refer to Sex and the City. Episode 50, “The Real Me”:
Charlotte announces over power-lunch that her vagina is depressed
and shots of a confused Carrie, a sympathetic- looking Miranda
and a truly appalled Samantha ensue. But it’s okay: a few
antidepressant pills and some vague medical waffle later,
Charlotte is pleased to have a happy hole again. U n f o r t u n
a t e l y Charlotte’s miraculous cure is an improbable
outcome for most real life sufferers of the little-known illness
termed Vulvodynia. Most sufferers, including myself, have a burning sensation on
contact with surfaces such as tight trousers, tampons and, most
upsettingly, penises. Assuredly less funny than no sex, is
painful sex. We still feel desire, most can orgasm and a few have
uncomfortable penetrative sex, while others are in constant
debilitating pain and find it difficult even to walk. Mentally, vulvodynia is extremely hard to come to terms with,
even harder for those who are misdiagnosed with sexual anxiety or
allergies. A recent survey estimated that nearly ten percent of
women suffer some form of vaginal discomfort in their life –
only a fraction of whom seek help and in many cases, GPs are
oblivious to the disorder. Much like the way in which breast cancer was viewed until the
80s – as an inconvenient and even slightly distasteful
condition to be hushed up – it is not really acceptable to
talk about vulval pain. Of course things might be different if we
compared vulvae in changing rooms, but women are shy a b o u t
complaining about this most private region of their body,
particularly if they’re afraid that somehow poor hygiene is
to blame. This is not the case. No one knows the exact cause of
vulvodynia, but it is thought to be hyper-sensitivity or nerve
damage, though some sufferers cite anti-thrush drugs as the
source. A few months ago, an acquaintance of mine who suffers from
Vulvodynia took a knife to her vagina and tried to excise a
portion of flesh from her genitals, driven by agony and
desperation after a GP told her that the chronic pain she was
feeling was probably the product of her imagination. She was
hospitalised, required reconstructive surgery and now the area
hurts more than ever, but she said however stupid the act and
painful the consequences, she is glad that she did it. She is no
longer accepting her condition in silence. When I think back to my own experiences, I am shocked at my
endurance of excruciating pain for far too long. As tears rolled
down my cheeks during sex, my first boyfriend congratulated
himself on making my cry with pleasure; I concealed my pain,
because I thought I would lose him. Who would date, let alone
ever marry, a celibate girl? I dumped him to prevent the need to
find out. My next told me he was in love with my soul; sadly,
ethereal spirits can’t give you a shag and he was tempted
away by a more corporeal model after I told him about my
condition. But this is not a bitter diatribe about the male obsession
with sex. In fact the only thing I have become cynical about is
the idea that sex is necessary. Tracey Cox teaches in Hot Sex and
How to Do Itthat sex is a central and essential part of all
successful partnerships. Well, currently I’m sexless and
happy. Of course it’s a desirable, pleasurable aspect of
love, but it’s peculiarly satisfying to know that my
boyfriend would rather forgo sex than our relationship. Some say
that sex sells, but it’s not incentive enough for all
shoppers.ARCHIVE: 3rd week TT 2004 

"Sex without love”, Woody Allen said, “is a
meaningless experience; but as meaningless experiences go
it’s a pretty good one.” University is an excellent
place to test this theory out. After a few years sampling the
delights of encounter sex, most people will agree that love
deepens sexual experience, but, as they have also sadly
discovered, it can just as easily deaden it. At our age, lust
invariably precedes love; so those fresh experiences with a new
someone (who turns into an old someone) can be mind-blowing. A couple of years down the line they’re likely to be less
so. The sex deteriorates precisely because you love them: you
love them enough to spend oodles of time together, to spend
Sunday mornings reading the paper – or, if you’re a
particularly boring couple – shopping for furniture at MFI.
And it’s this love that kills lust. Everyone knows that sexual experience is as much in the brain
as any other part of the body. It’s the meaning you place on
the sexual act that heightens the pleasure of it. That’s why
public sex, unfaithful sex and first-time sex can be the most
exciting kind of nookie. We tell ourselves it’s dangerous,
forbidden, new, and we want it all the more. The same equation
applies to whoever you’re having this sex with. The guy or
gal you’ve been sleeping next to for the past couple of
years is the same one who used to be untouched, uncharted
territory: the one you secretly watched at parties. A couple of years later and the touching has subdued to a dull
tingle. Conventional wisdom says that time nullifies lust –
the longer you’re with someone the less often you get the
urge to shag them senseless against the kitchen table. But
it’s not time, it’s your mind. Time allows you to fall
in love, falling in love allows you to feel comfortable, and
comfort soon equals boredom. But when this happens fear not – you don’t need to
resort to sex toys, threesomes or S&M (unless that’s
your thing) – you only have to rethink your attitude to your
lover. Forget that he farts in bed, remember how he sexy he
looked the first time you spied him across a smoke-filled bar.
Suddenly your hormones will be in overdrive and you’ll throw
him on the floor and do things together that’ll make Cosner
and Sarandon look like amateurs. Remember, it’s not who you’re doing, it’s how
you’re doing it. A friend of mine said the most erotic
experience she’d had was when a man ran his finger down her
spine. The man was Jack Nicholson and the place Harvey Nichols,
where she worked as a sales assistant. Now, I know he’s
supposed to be sexy but I doubt that Jack Nicholson’s
fingers are different from those of any mortal man. The
spinetingling was only more intense because of the significance
attached to the tingler. So if you need to spice up your
sex-life, you don’t need to bed Jack Nicholson, you only
have to pretend that your boyfriend is Jack Nicholson.ARCHIVE: 3rd week TT 2004 

Name one film everyone should see. The
Addiction, by Abel Ferrara. This is a seriously weird, creepy and
brilliant movie about vampires starring Christopher Walken. Who would you most like to be stuck in a lift with and
why? I have actually been stuck in a lift (on my own),
and the security guards who jemmied the doors open and dragged me
out were surprised by my glacial calm, a state I arrived at by
meditating on the ‘lift scenes’ from The Shining and
Damien Omen 2. Anyway, I should like to be stuck in a lift with
Sophia Loren, the most beautiful person in cinema history, just
so I had an excuse to gaze at her face, close-up, for a long
period of time. In your opinion, what are the three qualities every
great film should possess? It should be sublimely
beautiful, like Visconti’s The Leopard, or sublimely funny
like Preston Sturges’ Sullivan’s Travels, or sublimely
exciting, like Scorsese’s Raging Bull. What is your idea of a perfect evening? Not
necessarily a film. The most perfect evening I had recently was
being on the winning team in a pub quiz in a London club. Pub
quizzes are sporting contests for the nerd generation. You are the film police for one day, what do you ban? The
Piano by Jane Campion. This annoying, wittering, shallow,
overrated middlebrow film is so much more insidious than honest
rubbish like Sex Lives Of The Potato Men. Which authors and literary characters have acted as
the inspiration for your novels? I love VS
Naipaul’s A House For Mr Biswas, Dickens’ Bleak House,
BS Johnson’s House Mother Normal, the Letters and Memoirs of
Kingsley Amis (his account of meeting Roald Dahl is still one of
the funniest things in the language), Money by Martin Amis, What
A Carve Up! by Jonathan Coe, Girlfriend In A Comaby Douglas
Coupland. Do you have any rituals before you begin writing?
I’m sorry to say that I like to drink an entire two-litre
bottle of Diet Coke while I’m writing for that evil
Aspartame rush. What is the best piece of advice you have ever been
given? “Never drink gin after dinner” is the
weirdest advice I’ve been given. The most sound advice
I’ve been given is: “Be persistent. Persistence is the
key to success.” Your new book Dr Sweet… is a dark comedy – what
is your favourite comedy film or tv series? My favourite
comedy film is the Ealing classic Kind Hearts And Coronets, which
I love more than I can say. Favourite TV comedy: Seinfeld (which
stayed brilliant long after Friends curdled), The Larry Sanders
Show. From Britain: Baddiel and Skinner’s Fantasy Football
League, Rising Damp, The Office and Phoenix Nights. What do you never leave the house without? An
uneasy sense that I have left the gas on. Finally, any tips for the top for film over the coming
months? I recommend Uzak by the Turkish director Nuri
Ceylan, a very beautiful and sad movie about male loneliness, out
28 May. There is also a bizarre documentary coming out soon
called Supersize Me about someone who tried to live entirely on
food from McDonald’s, with horrific results. Dr Sweet And His Daughter is out now. Picador £7.99.
Peter Bradshaw will be appearing at Borders on 27th May, 7pm. ARCHIVE: 3rd week TT 2004 

Vice is the order of the day as Oxford’s theatres
shamelessly ‘sex up’ their repertoire, in an attempt to
banish the Fifth Week blues. From incest in Phaedra’s Love
to the oldest profession in the world in Lulu, this is not a week
for the faint or pure of heart to venture into the OFS, or other
such dens of iniquity. Lulu provoked moral outrage in the nineteenth century with its
prostitute protagonist and portrayal of a society mired in vice
and corruption. Lulu is picked up off the streets as a child by a
wealthy businessman, and proceeds to climb the social ladder via
a series of marriages and affairs, bewitching all who cross her
path. Her complete amorality has destructive consequences as she
leaves suicides, murders and bankruptcy in her wake. Lulu’s complex character prevents the audience from
condemning her outright; this production makes it abundantly
clear that it is society which is to blame. It is a world of
dissipation and decadence, in which children are viewed as sex
objects, teetering on the brink of the abyss of vice, where
husbands are shot by their wives and die whilst drinking
champagne. Lulu is the means by which this society is unveiled,
as she uncovers the hidden desires of those around her. Alwa is
reduced to a worm writhing at her feet and the Countess begs Lulu
to ‘trample’ her. In this sense, Lulu is innocent, a
mere catalyst for the realisation of society’s sordid
fantasies. Yet she is dangerously aware of the manipulative power
of her sexuality. Both her narcissism and her role as reflecting
the degradation of society are realised on the stage, by means of
two huge mirrors which make up the backdrop. Although interesting in theory, the duality of Lulu’s
personality fails to come to life on stage. Victoria Ross
captures the underlying naivety of Lulu, with her ringlets and
‘baby eyes’, but lacks the sexual magnetism which is
crucial if we are to believe in her destructive, enchanting
powers. The erotic speeches are faithfully delivered (albeit in
cut glass Queen’s English), but there is a lack of chemistry
in her interaction with others. Ben Levine looks perfect as
Schoning, his goatee beard bristling with Machiavellian intent,
but he overacts and his movements are unforgivably stiff. Mischa
Foster-Poole is similarly unconvincing as Alwa, hapless and
embarrassed as he talks dirty to Lulu. There are some gems, including Charlie Covell as the engaging
lesbian Countess, who wears a tailcoat over her ballgown and
dominates the stage with her deep, resonant voice. Her
transformation into a gibbering wreck when faced with the
prospect of sleeping with a man is both subtle and amusing. Ed
Behrens is wonderful as Puntschu, the banker with an unhealthy
obsession for young girls, delivering his sleazy lines with a
sinister camp lisp. The beautiful costumes, designed by Rmishka
Singh, deserve a mention as they make an invaluable contribution
to the sense of period. This is a thoughtful production of Luluwith all of the right
ingredients for success. Undoubtedly marred by a lack of sexual
tension on the stage, it remains a provocative and
thought-provoking piece of theatre.ARCHIVE: 3rd week TT 2004 

Judging by the tabloid-esque advertising for this production
(the poster looks like something from the Daily Star), I was
expecting this double bill of American sex to be lurid and
sleazy, typical of the current theatrical trend for shocking, yet
not artistically essential, displays of the sexual act. It was an
immense surprise, therefore, to discover that one of the plays
was written by Albee, of Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?
fame. His play, The American Dream, is extremely well-constructed,
with a generous splash of anti-American satire. It reverses the
traditional concept of the family unit in a ridiculous manner,
and symbolises in each family member a different sub-category of
American culture. Daddy is the ineffectual masculine influence,
while Grandma is a dotty old woman, and Mommy a bored and
outmoded housewife. The most interesting character is the Young
Man, who represents the American Dream, fully aware of his own
incredible worth, yet lacking in any sort of human quality which
would flaw him and still provide improvement. This production is
entertaining, but crying out for a more inspired style of
direction; it feels laboured at the start, and many opportunities
for stylised movement are left untapped. The play palpably lifts
in energy as the characters begin to move, creating a much-needed
physicalisation of the dialogue. Sex Slaves, by Adele Shank, despite being a weaker play, is
acted far better, featuring a fine performance from Gus Docx as a
film director escaping the frantic world of Manhattan to the
Philippines in search of a bride. The farcical elements of the
play are enacted skilfully, and the unpleasant subject matter,
involving Filipina women reduced to sexual commodities, is
contrasted with some great laughout- loud moments – my
favourite involved plucky Phoebe Wood- Wheelhouse and an
hilariously embarrassing stripping scene. The two plays are book-ends of the absurdist tradition;
Albee’s play is acknowledged as marking the beginning of the
form, and Shank’s signals the dawn of blending the absurdist
genre with its adversary, naturalism.ARCHIVE: 3rd week TT 2004 

Seduction, suicide, and sadism: based on a Greek tragedy,
Phaedra’s Love has been updated to depict a disturbingly
dysfunctional family. Phaedra becomes obsessed by her desire for
her stepson Hippolytus who is a selfish, unfeeling lothario and
the exboyfriend of Phaedra’s daughter. Phaedra’s Love does possess Sarah Kane’s
“trademark ultra-violence” with the play starting as an
uncomfortably intimate drama and moving through incest, rape,
imprisonment and rebellion, to a bloodbath resulting in the death
and destruction of a Greek royal family. However, the director
believes Phaedra’s Love to be Kane’s “most
accessible play” though some areas regarding sexual acts and
mutilation seem uncomfortably drawn out. As disturbing as
Phaedra’s Love is at points, it is well-directed by Lucy
Burns. The destructive mood is conveyed well by a set which has
waste emerging from wounds in the black walls. The acting is of high quality. Hippolytus is well acted by
Philip Contos, who makes himself hateful in his selfish boredom.
Matthew Trueman and Kate Donald deliver strong performances, and
Valentina Ceschi portrays Phaedra’s varying moods and
emotions powerfully. Worth seeing, this psychological roller coaster will send you
reeling. Be warned, it is not for the faint of stomach, and if
you plan to sit near the front, wear clothes you do not mind
staining with the remains of the dead.ARCHIVE: 3rd week TT 2004 

Faust of the Colonnadeis a piece of new writing by David
Cochrane. The play is set in the confines of a Don’s room in
an unknown, ancient university at an unspecified time. It focuses
on the Don’s experiences of an affair with a male student,
and how he has managed to convince himself that it was his fault. This is certainly interesting writing and some of the
performance is really quite enthralling. Henry Shevlin, playing
the Don, is suited for the part and pulls off a good performance
with only fleeting moments of instability. What I did find problematic was the verbosity of the two
leads, especially the Don. While this is supposed to reflect the
language of intellect, in places it ended up muddled and
pretentious, in fact undermining the entire point of its
inclusion. Another problem was the movement of the two actors which was,
at times, a little forced, as if they were moving for the sake of
moving. This weakened the performance rather than maintaining
attention as the focus was drawn away from the speech, causing
confusion. These are however, teething problems of what is a very
commendable script from a promising student writer, and energetic
direction from the enthusiastic Edward Saatchi and Tim Partridge.
Such things should not occupy the thoughts of anyone considering
going to see Faust of the Colonnade. It really is worth the time
and thought to see and understand this production.ARCHIVE: 3rd week TT 2004 

Sing, O goddess, the unutterable stinkiness of Troy’s
script, son of Benioff, that brought countless ills upon the
cinema-going public. Many a brave soul did it send hurrying down
to George Street, and many an actor did it yield a prey to
reviewers and merciless critics. But enough of this Iliad-pillaging. Troy hardly bothers with
it, so why should Cherwell? Naturally, such an attitude from
Hollywood is to be expected; this is after all a
‘re-imagining’ that encompasses the entire Trojan War,
not an adaptation of Homer’s rather more focused tale; it
was inevitable that liberties would be taken. A great deal of the
story has been changed – ten years become three weeks,
heroes die different deaths, the all-powerful gods are now mere
concepts, but still, remember that this is a movie, and even the
most radical of alterations can often be accepted if they make
cinematic sense. No, this multitude of adjustments to a tale
established for nearly three thousand years isn’t what
rankles upon seeing Troy. The disappointment is that ham-fisted
direction and, most crucially, a sniggerinducingly bad screenplay
have turned what could have been the most glorious of the summer
blockbusters into an insipid, uninspired, disappointment. Victor Mature and Charlton Heston could get away with cheesy,
overlytheatrical dialogue in the classic 50’s epics, but
very few of the stars on show manage to rise above the risible
lines they’ve been force-fed. Brad, Bean and Byrne cope
well, Bana struggles manfully, Bloom is, as ever, appalling,
whilst Brian (Cox) turns Agamemnon into a scenery-chewing panto
villain. Perhaps most importantly, as Helen, Diane Kruger has a
face that may have launched 300 or so ships, but a personality
that would have struggled to float a dinghy, leaving us
wondering, without the machinations of the gods, what all the
fuss was about. There are some redeeming scenes; the portrayal of
noble Hector means that we’re rooting for the losing side
when his showdown with Achilles comes, and Peter O’Toole,
between wide-eyed stares, shows us how this acting lark should be
done when pleading for his son’s body. Yet far more common
are terribly misjudged moments, some blame for which lies with
director Wolfgang Petersen (witness Odysseus’ hilarious
lightbulb moment when watching a soldier carve a wooden horse)
but more with writer David Benioff, who is not even above
pilfering wholesale from the likes of Gladiator. At one point,
Achilles tells Briseis that it never ends, and it’s
difficult to know whether he’s referring to the cycle of war
or Troyitself. It’s sadly ironic that a film so insistent on
reminding us that immortality is achieved through memorable deeds
should ultimately prove so forgettable.ARCHIVE: 3rd week TT 2004 

Sprawling, overcrowded, dirty and disease-ridden, the
monolithic complex of Sao Paulo’s House of Detention, a.k.a.
‘Carandiru’, once Latin America’s largest
correctional facility, gained infamy for the military
police’s frenzied massacre of 112 prisoners in 1992. Adapted from prison doctor Drauzio Varella’s book:
Carandiru Station, the film attempts to consolidate the
doctor’s fragmented narrative. It chronicles his experiences
in endeavouring to combat the H.I.V. epidemic prevalent amongst
the ignorant, often promiscuous, drugabusing inmates, leading up
to the day of the massacre. From the outset, a dilapidated
building – dark, dingy and dangerous – mirrors the
standard of care for the agglomerated, forgotten Brazilian
criminal underclass. The film proceeds like a cleverly
constructed puzzle of narratives as the doctor gains trust
amongst the inmates employing good-humoured South American
pragmatism and innate skills of good listening, patience and
chat. Twentysix prisoners reveal tales, often comical and always
highly entertaining; many storylines resembling Mexican
soap-opera plots (watch out for the lovable transvestite
‘Lady Di’ and the chauvinist juggling two women), yet
betray an underlying sense of sadness and personal tragedy. Director Hector Babenco’s sophisticated technique mirrors
Robert Altman’s Short Cuts, alternating between the
‘outside world’ and the omnipresent prison, allowing a
brief glimpse into moments of personal failure. There is a sense
of foreboding as these highly unique and individual characters
plummet, concluding their tales in the lost fortress of
Carandiru. Babenco’s ambitious project culminates in the
massacre; the two hours and 26 minutes seem overdrawn, with so
many stories that the final massacre is somewhat of an
anti-climax, even though the visual violence is shocking. This
could have been a shallow Love Actually style intermingling of
meaningless stories; fortunately it succeeds in creating an
affinity between the audience and the ‘celebrities’ of
Carandiru, highlighting the indignity of their deaths. Political
and social criticisms remain implicit in the actions of this film
due to the lack of an overt worded condemnation of the Brazilian
prison system. Babenco incorporates all sensationalism into a realm of
humanism and compassion. Above the violence and social injustice
rises a battle to survive and maintain a remnant of integrity. A
fictional, quasi-docudrama, prison life seems merely an extension
of a squalid, shanty town existence. The film’s success lies
in revealing the prison as a Brazilian social metaphor and a
microcosm of Brazilian emotional stealth, humour and solidarity
in the face of corruption and injustice.ARCHIVE: 3rd week TT 2004