Cannes latest: reviews of 'Control', 'The Banishment' and 'Les Chansons d'Amour'

A solid debut from Corbijn, while Zvyagintsev and Honoré's latest films disappoint

May 18 2007

Anton Corbijn's 'Control' opened the Directors' Fortnight section of the Cannes Film Festival last night and proved an affecting addition to the roll-call of cinema's portrayals of flawed rock stars who recoil in the glare of fame. Two years ago, Gus Van Sant brought to the Croisette his 'Last Days', which reflected on the addictions, depression and suicide of Nirvana's Kurt Cobain following his withdrawal from the world. Now, Dutch photographer Corbijn's portrait of the fall of Ian Curtis - the fractured singer of Joy Division - marches to a similar beat. Corbijn adopts a fairly straight attitude to film biography, prefering to observe Curtis with respect and some adulation at a distance and always in the context of his family and bandmates. Although he shows the singer to have been lonely, confused and selfish, he withdraws from a minute examination of his psychological state, prefering to ponder the effects of his weaknesses more than their causes. As a director, he adopts a taut, economical approach to dialogue and a tight narrative that never lingers and is always lunging forward.

'Control' leads us from Curtis' schooldays in Macclesfield in 1973 as a 17-year-old Bowie fan who daydreams in class and falls in love and then marries Deborah, his best friend's girlfriend, right through to his suicide at home in the same town at the age of 23, when he hanged himself on the eve of his band's first American tour. The film is based on the memoirs of Deborah Curtis, which helps to explain why the conflict between Curtis' career and his domestic life emerges as a major theme. When Curtis (Sam Riley) first puts together the band Warsaw (soon to be renamed Joy Divison) with friends Peter Hook (Joe Anderson), Bernard Sumner (James Anthony Pearson) and Stephen Morris (Harry Treadaway), he works at the local labour exchange by day and gigs by night. With success and the addition of both a manager - loudmouth Rob Gretton (a very funny Toby Kebbell) - and a label boss - louche Tony Wilson (Craig Parkinson) - he ditches the job. As the pressure and his instability mount, he struggles to stay motivated while at the same time he develops epilepsy and takes the dangerous drugs necessary to treat it. He gains a lover, Belgian beauty and Joy division fan, Annik Honoré (Alexandra Maria Lara) and yet he continues to live an unhappy life at home with his wife and baby daughter, Nathalie. The great tragedy is that Curtis is unable to commit himself to any life, whether as a musician, a father, a husband or a lover. He hovers between the four and destroys himself in the process.

The film is most alive when showing Joy Division playing live and newcomer Rily has Curtis' stage-moves down pat. As a character study, this 23-year-old depressive is maybe only interesting if you bring the baggage of his reputation to the film: 'Control' doesn't work too hard to convince those who don't already revere Curtis as a pained poet. But it's a compelling tale, the music's great and well portrayed, and the film's photography is a joy and mirrors the black-and-white style of Corbijn's celebrated photo work with U2 and other bands. There are no hoary rock caricatures and there's an air of respect, intelligence and sense to the project. The two leads, Riley as Curtis and Samantha Morton as his wife, do a great job, and Morton is especially haunting as she shrieks and wails at the film's miserable close.

Corbijn and writer Matt Greenhalgh skim the surface of Curtis' short life rather than scratch away at any one aspect, and the result is solid, informative and moving - if not radical. For a debut feature film, it's an impressive achievement which has a sad power and even manages to deliver a few laughs from its parade of Mancunian folk in spite of the tragedy to which it builds.

Back in the main competition, two filmmakers delivered disappointing new films. Back in 2003, Andrei Zvyagintsev won the Golden Lion at Venice for his superb debut, 'The Return' and screening here was 'The Banishment', his first film since that triumph, which plays like the wet dream of a Tarkovsky fanatic so much does it owe visually to Zvyagintsev's Russian forbear. It's only for its virtuoso image-making, though, that 'The Banishment' can be applauded: its plot about a family from the city who fall apart during a sejourn at their remote country home when the wife annouces that she is pregnant by another man is unsatisfying and more conventional than Zvyagintsev would admit, such are his efforts to obscure and prolong its unfolding and his - certainly admirable - attempts to craft a tale that is devoid of place and time. There are many moments and scenes to enjoy, and I admired the film's sense of an enveloping nightmare: no one could argue that Zvyagintsev is not a true artist of the medium. But the overall effect of 'The Banishment' is wearying and disappointing.

A more simple failure was Christophe Honoré 'Les Chansons d'Amour', a story of love and grief in modern Paris that stars Louis Garrel and Ludivine Sagnier as David and Julie, two twentysomethings in the capital whose streets and apartments and private lives Honoré so loves to explore. Ten minutes in and the realisation hits and the hint in the title is proved: oh my God, the characters are breaking into song... The set-up couldn't be more French and nor could the execution: David is enjoying a comfortable three-way relationship with Julie and Alice (Clotilde Hesme) until tragedy strikes and David has to pick up the pieces of his life. Only you don't believe one word of it - its portrayal of both death and romance are equally implausible. A shot of a poster of Sarkozy pops up at one point and this film plays right into his hands: you can almost hear him crying that its characters are conceited, lazy, depraved and representative of all that is wrong with France. That's not true, of course, but Honoré should perhaps take a little break before his next project. His last film 'Dans Paris' stood just on the right side of whimsy, but this new film is poorly conceived and weak. The songs are dreadful too.

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