35 Shots of Rum

Claire Denis is one in a long line of women that have been among the first rank of French directors. From Alice Guy-Blaché, through Agnès Varda and Marguerite Duras, to Nelly Kaplan and Diane Kurys, French cinema has continuously provided a space for female directors to bring their artistic merit to the fore. Denis returns to Irish screens this year with 35 Shots of Rum, an affectionate and tender portrait of Lionel (Alex Descas) and his daughter Joséphine (Mati Diop), who are at a transitional stage in their lives.

The film centres on their own particular relationship and that of two neighbours in the same apartment block, whose lives have become intertwined. Though the details of the characters’ lives are never made clear, the film elicits themes of letting go.

As in life, our encounters with these characters are, for the main part, mere glimpses into their lives. The film pulls the viewer into these people’s lives at a particular moment. Rather than spoon-feed a back story and character motivation in an effort to tell a complete story over the course of the film’s duration, Denis rests the camera on how things are, simply as they are, always maintaining a distance from the characters.

The film’s progress is marked by an elliptical naturalness that reflects life’s nature as moments of experience. As such, rather than being the sum of their narrative parts, the characters reveal themselves in subtle ways, culminating in a beautiful dialogue-free scene in a late-night café illuminated by music, when the four characters play out their pasts, presents and futures.

With restrained, affective performances and a beautiful score by Tindersticks, this is probably the only time the experience of 35 shots of rum will leave a sweet taste in your mouth.

Sorority Row

Sorority Row is an unoriginal re-hash of Mark Rosman’s standard ’80s slasher flick The House On Sorority Row. What was once a mildly amusing genre that could claim to be the illegitimate son of Hitchcock, the slasher film has now collapsed under the weight of its own limitations being no more than a box-ticking formulaic exercise and stands as testament to mainstream Hollywood’s impotence.

Sorority Row boasts a ‘girl power’ line up of sorority sisters who bring upon themselves the forces of evil when a prank they try to pull goes awry. As a result, they each become the object of a manic killer. That’ll learn them.

The actresses have obviously been cast as type rather than any consideration of talent. There is one whose squirrel cheeks seem ready to burst at any moment and spew forth puss; one whose future plastic surgery is already mapped out onto her dullard expressionless face; one who has the face of a retarded horse wearing glasses; one who has the voice of that same horse chewing pint glasses; one whose expressions constantly seem suffocated in Clingfilm; and the other who seems to be Barbie’s separated-at-birth sister who’s escaped from the attic where she had survived on buckets of fish heads.

Despite their varying specious appearances, at least the girls’ characters can claim a crumb of interest. The boys on the other hand have all the appeal of geriatric amoeba. These witless baboons are all moulded from the same identikit oblong-faced vacuous jock clay - the enamelled faces that scream out to be pressed against a hot iron and pummelled with a selection of cooking pots. They strut around kissing their own biceps, punching the air yelping out inane verbal sounds.

The film staggers through its death set up pieces and ends with a ridiculous whimper and dénouement that, by this stage, no one cares about. Such pointless drivel can only be bad for one’s mental health.

Of course, this type of film is produced and discharged for a particular audience; but that does not excuse its vileness. The director behind this hackneyed tripe, Stewart Hendler, obviously has a big future in Hollywood. That’s the real horror of this film.

Sorority Row has all the joie de vivre of toilet trading and would only truly satisfy if it were a snuff movie.

Birth

Emerging from a grubby pit; hypnosin sets off in an attempt to forage for visual and aural pleasure