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It's a Free World... (2007)
A miserable world
Ken Loach is one of Britain's most prolific directors nowadays. His movies and his personal style have also gathered a faithful group of fans and followers (and many awards, as well). He takes on many subjects that would otherwise have a hard time finding their way to the big screen, such as the Irish revolution or the actual state of unemployment and abuse of immigrants, which is the theme of 'It's a free world....'
The script, written by Loach's regular screenwriter Paul Laverty, is really sober. There is not much in the sense of artificiality, with dialogue that seems real and fitting to the characters and setting. Perhaps too much. Their mumbling is quite hard to follow, and abundant, and most of the action on the screen feels a lot like a filling. This can be blamed on Loach's approach on directing, following his usual style of being just an observer. Although it's a commendable approach, it can also lead to make the movie quite boring and messy, which is the case with 'It's a Free World....' Most of the time, the movie just feels interested on showing how miserable are everyone's lives, which is guess is fitting to the context of the film, but it is a bit too much. The supposed-to-be humorous breaks, to make the movie easier to swallow are quite obtuse and scarce, leaving us with plain drama. And that is my main grumble about the movie: it feels so obsessed to show how miserable everything is that most of the times it just forgets that it is a movie. At the end I just wanted it to finish, as I was not only bored, but annoyed with how obvious and manipulative the movie turned out to be.
The acting, as usual with Ken's movies, is filled with fresh faces. Most of the actors are newcomers, and that actually helps immersing the spectator in the movie, for good or bad. Their gibberish is so hard to follow that you might actually need the help of subtitles in order to know what is going on in most scenes. From the ensemble, Kierston Wareing stands out as the lead character, giving a much-needed stream of energy to the film. The rest, however, feel amateurish, which can be a good or a bad thing, considering the documental-like approach of Loach.
'It's a Free World...' sure isn't a movie for everyone. It is, like every Ken Loach film, a film striving for showing a reality, to criticize a wrong, and somehow, be food for thought. Sadly, that seems to be the one and only motivation behind this movie, it being absolutely oblivious that, after all, it is a film. That is a common problem, for me, with English social dramas: the obsession of showing how miserable life is, and nothing else. At the end, I was absolutely bored and pleading for it to end, instead of being shocked and disgusted to the reality 'It's a Free World...' tried so hard to criticize. I would still recommend it to those interested in the problems of immigration and work nowadays, but warning them that, as a film, it does not deliver at all.
The Future (2011)
The not so bright future
Miranda July is a sort of one-woman-show in the indie movie-making scene. Her big-screen debut, Me and You and Everyone We Know, was also written, directed and starred by herself, a feat she repeated with The Future. While it's an achievement by itself, it can be the root of all kind of problems, especially if you are not that much into her personal way of movie-making. And sadly, I am not.
July's script is just way too pretentious. Almost every dialogue feels so much out of place, so self-conscious, so full of itself, so cheesy that absolutely put me off from the very beginning. Even the most basic conversation between the lead couple of actors (July as Sophie, and Hamish Linklater as Jason) is so laughably unbelievable that it could kill the movie by itself. It feels like watching a bunch of pretentious hipsters trying to outsmart each other with metaphorical non-sense at every chance. And that applies not only to the couple, but to each character in the film.
The direction is not as awful as the script, as far as indie movies are concerned -for the most part. It is slowly paced, which is fitting with the movie setting. The shots are well-planned, and sometimes, even beautiful. But it has the same faults as the writing: too pretentious, too self-conscious. It oozes an overwhelming sense of artificiality. And I'm not even mentioning the decision to include a talking cat as a narrator. It is so unintentionally hilarious that I honestly can't believe how anyone thought (or Miranda, for what it's worth) that a pair of cheap fluffy gloves could give the impression of a cat (and spit a salve of cheesy gibbering while at it).
The acting is sterile, at best. It is not actually a lack of acting talent from the cast, I guess, but a side-effect of such an awful script. Linklater and David Warshofsky (as Jason and Marshal, respectively) are the two that more or less can be saved from it. On the other hand, ironically, July's character –Sophie-, looks constipated, at best. She's so annoying on screen that makes the movie even harder to withstand.
I acknowledge that July's style is very personal, more like a hit-or-miss kind of thing, as far as taste is concerned, and that many people like The Future. But to me, it was an absolute chore, a stinking disaster, and a pretentious waste of celluloid that is unintentionally hilarious at best. It tries so hard to plant a thought on the spectator that misses the basic point of plot coherence. A waste of my time and money.