DISTANT VOICES, STILL LIVES (Terence Davies, 1988)

Working-class Liverpool in the 1940s and ’50s: Distant Voices, Still Lives, the autobiographical work by Terence Davies that took the prize of the international film critics at Cannes, begins with an exterior shot of the family house. It appears to be in black and white. The camera moves indoors, and the staircase introduces a small bit of color: red. Color will gradually be added, sort of, but mostly to punctuate a drab, sepia existence itself more glaringly (and blaringly) punctuated by Dad’s rages, and outbursts of violence against Ma and daughter. We hear voices, speaking and then in song, before we see human forms and faces. The is a film of songs, for the remembered songs conjure the vignettes of family history. I Get the Blues When It Rains, “the blues I can’t lose when it rains.” “Here I go again, I hear those trumpets blow again, all aglow again,” Taking a Chance on Love: Ella Fitzgerald’s peerless singing accompanies one of Dad’s pummelings of Ma. Her daughter asks her, “Why did you marry him?” Ma’s reply: “He was nice, and he was a good dancer.”
     Memories are Chinese-boxed: memories inside memories. The camera moves in darkness to unearth earlier memories, earlier childhood memories, for instance at Christmastime; sometimes, with unbearable poignancy, the camera outside a window looking in, trying so hard to enter. All the while disembodied singing distills life’s sadness. Then another one of Dad’s eruptions, and one doesn’t know what to do. One shakes one’s head, and every song, whether disembodied or sung by characters in the film, pierces the heart.
     And there’s the Blitz with which to contend, too.
     It’s an impressionistic movie, this one, where the shattering of glass also pierces. Dad’s illness and death compose a point around which pieces of memory gather. Pieces and damaged souls.

HIGH SEASON (Clare Peploe, 1987)

Daft and delectable, a lovely satirical comedy, High Season was one of a spate of films at the time taking up or touching upon the financial duress of artists, and showing how artists either are exploited as a result or must negotiate compromising accommodations to this reality. Other such films include Alan Rudolph’s The Moderns (1988), Robert Altman’s Vincent & Theo and Jon Jost’s All the Vermeers in New York (both 1990).
     The script from which Clare Peploe warmly, at times beautifully directed is by herself and brother Mark Peploe. (David Locke, the name of the protagonist in Michelangelo Antonioni’s The Passenger, 1975, whose story and script Mark co-authored, turns up again here.) The action takes place in a village on the island of Rhodes. An estranged, possibly divorced couple live apart: Katherine is a photographer whose latest collection is titled The Light of Greece; Patrick has been commissioned to sculpt the public Statue of the Unknown Tourist, a tacky thing whose unveiling justifies Katherine’s derision throughout, much as her coffee-table Light has justified his. How this couple bicker; but I am delighted to report that they equally love their young daughter, Chloe, who has equal access to both, is equally parented by both, and is not once used as a pawn or a weapon by either parent. Right now, Katherine is at financial risk of losing her home.
     History and politics also weigh in on the village. Penelope, who keeps alive the flame of Greek independence, despises for its commercialization the town square sculpture that her son, Yanni, has commissioned. A visitor, gay antiquarian Basil Sharp, is based on Anthony Blunt; a British agent, masquerading as an innocent tourist, is there to arrest him. A high point comes when “Sharpie” explains to dear friend Katherine, who has known nothing about his political past, why he supported Soviet interests. His involvement began when the Russians alone were vocal against the Nazis, who were hell on earth. This “blinded him” to Soviet evil. The one character whom Peploe treats with disdain is Rick Lamb, the boy come to arrest Sharpie and ship him off to Russia. This comedy admits profoundly serious undertows.
     And such funny flourishes! Penelope reveres the memory of her spouse as a hero who died for Greece. When she is reminded that her husband died, while dancing, by falling off a cliff, she sighs, “He was a wonderful dancer!”
     Who is really in love with whom; genuine art versus counterfeit art; who really cares about whom on the stage of nations: these concerns are woven into this most intelligent comedy.
     Four performances are brilliant: Irene Papas as Penelope, Sebastian Shaw as Sharpie, James Fox as Patrick, Kenneth Branagh as Rick. The other performances, including Jacqueline Bisset as Katherine and Ruby Baker as Chloe, are merely perfect.
     Make of this what you will: the credited assistant director is named Chloe Peploe.