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Film
Festival Screenings
Locarno
Film Festival
Locarno, Switzerland 1400 hrs, 5 August 2002 (Kusaal press screening)
Locarno, Switzerland 1615 hrs, 6 August 2002 (official competition)
Locarno, Switzerland 2200 hrs, 7August 2002 (public screening)
Edinburgh
Film Festival
Edinburgh, Scotland 2000 hrs, 21 August 2002, Cameo One Cinema
Edinburgh, Scotland 2130 hrs, 24 August 2002, Cameo Two Cinema
Chichester
Film Festival
Chichester, England 2000 hrs, 5 September 2002 |
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SYNOPSIS
Somewhere
in a not too distant England, around 2011. Revengers Tragedy
thrusts us into the toxic atmosphere of a court hungry for power,
obsessed with money, tormented by sex. Flaunting their wealth, the
ruling class reign over a population kept in calculated poverty. Ten
years ago, on their wedding day, the Duke violently murdered Vindici’s
young bride-to-be. Vindici fled, leaving his family destitute. Now back,
he has only one goal: to eliminate the Duke and his clan. Vindici seems
to have his revenge when the Duke’s younger son is arrested for the
rape of a young female aristocrat. The play which inspired Revengers
Tragedy was written in 1607 by Thomas Middleton, who was one of
Shakespeare’s young collaborators. A reflection on love, family and
hatred, it was long considered the product of an insane and barbaric
mind. It was only after the second world war that it was rediscovered
and came to be considered the first British black comedy. Alex Cox was
particularly keen to ensure that the settings and costumes embody this
nightmarish society. Apart from sentimental reasons, it was the
metaphorical quality of Liverpool’s urban landscapes which led the
director and his set-designer Cecilia Montiel to choose the city as
their location. «Catacombs, half-flooded tunnels, palaces, red-stone
cathedrals of impossible dimensions, abandoned warehouses, deserted
docks … in all, a concentration of symbols of might, ingenuity and
ruthlessness, that fits perfectly with the play’s characters»
explains the set-designer. Jumpy and incisive, Revengers Tragedy
is a droll and appalling comedy, which reflects a particular society,
one still, as it was in 1607, obsessed with power, ephemeral beauty and
sex.
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Revengers
Tragedy
A Bard Entertainment/Exterminating Angel Prods. production.
(International sales: Pathe Intl., London.) Produced by Margaret
Matheson, Tod Davies. Directed by Alex Cox. Screenplay, Frank Cottrell
Boyce, based on the play by Thomas Middleton.
Vindici - Christopher Eccleston
Lussurioso - Eddie Izzard
The Duke - Derek Jacobi
The Duchess - Diana Quick
Castiza - Carla Henry
Carlo - Andrew Schofield
Lord Antonio - Antony Booth
By DEBORAH YOUNG
A Jacobean horror-comedy about family, love, revenge and the criminal
aristocracy set in a war-torn English futureworld, "Revengers
Tragedy" is an ambitious, sometimes exhilarating but ultimately not
very new attempt to unleash the power of great literature past by
punking it up. With iconoclastic fervor, director Alex Cox ("Repo
Man," "Sid and Nancy") and screenwriter Frank Cottrell
Boyce attack the 1607 play by Shakespeare's young collaborator Thomas
Middleton, designing a lawless and corrupt world around body-pierced
villains in feather wigs, who recite the play's quaint dialogue without
batting a false eyelash. Although maliciously successful in drawing a
parallel between the foulness of power then and now (references to Tony
Blair's Jubilee Britain are not accidental), the film pays more
attention to displaying its inventiveness than to emotionally involving
viewers in the characters' torments. This lack of empathy, along with
pic's hard-to-follow English, is the limit that distribs will face in
rustling up auds for a film that otherwise can bank on some youth
appeal.
A bus full of dead passengers weaves down a grimy Liverpool street
patrolled by gangs of punk-grunge "Cockneys," setting an
apocalyptic scene for the return of anti-hero Vindici (a wild-eyed,
intense Christopher Eccleston, star of Cox's 1992 "Death and the
Compass"). In his secret lair, he talks to the skull of his dead
love Gloriana, who was poisoned on their wedding day for refusing her
favors to the all-powerful Duke (Derek Jacobi). Half-mad with grief and
murderous rage, Vindici has come back to seek sweet vengeance.
With the help of his brother Carlo (Andrew Schofield as a working-class
courtier, sporting a more sedate look than his Johnny Rotten role in
"Sid and Nancy"), he gets close to the Duke's eldest son
Lussorioso (standup comic/actor Eddie Izzard). This decadent fellow
plans on seducing and abandoning Vindici's virtuous sister Castiza
(Carla Henry), but Vindici is relieved to find her unbendable. Not so
their blind mother (Margi Clarke), who wouldn't mind selling the girl.
This family squabble over honor will later be settled with Carlo
attending.
Meanwhile, mayhem piles up like reeking garbage around the court. Lord
Antonio's (Antony Booth) lovely wife (model Sophie Dahl) commits suicide
or is murdered after a court of law fails to indict the Duke's youngest
son for raping her. Another offspring is caught in lascivious embraces
with his mother the Duchess (Diana Quick). The middle three sons form a
demented glam-rock clique who offer some comic relief even as they
scheme for the throne.
In a practically silent part, Jacobi makes the scarlet-lipped Duke as
vile to look upon as a Medusa head. Though a striking model of evil, his
hideous death while being tortured by Vindici's gloating family casts
moral doubt on the vendetta, particularly futile as no worthy successor
is waiting in the wings.
Taking the opposite tack to the minimalist oppression of Derek Jarman's
retold "Edward II," production designer Cecilia Montiel revels
in streets littered with wrecks and over-decorated palaces, a complement
to Monica Aslanian's gaudy peacock costumes. In the same eclectic vein,
Len Gowing's lensing adds to pic's very distinctive look.
Camera (color), Len Gowing; editor, Ray Fowlis; production designer,
Cecilia Montiel; costume designer, Monica Aslanian; sound (Dolby
Digital), Gary Desmond; casting, Gary Davy. Reviewed at Locarno Film
Festival (competing), Aug. 5, 2002. Running time: 109 MIN.
With: Margi Clarke, Paul Reynolds, Justin Salinger, Marc Warren, Sophie
Dahl.
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From
Edinburgh Film Festival Site Thanks BZC
After twenty years of
making cult movies he is still the most uncompromising filmmaker working
in the UK today. ALEX COX's latest film, Revengers Tragedy, receives its
world premiere at the Film Festival. Here Cox talks about the film,
Jacobean history, his hometown Liverpool and a life spent fighting
mediocrity. Words: Paul Dale for The List
It's from the passenger seat I first see it, a filthy white sheet
sellotaped to the wall of a pub on the Gainsborough Road in south
Liverpool, a once wealthy suburban area that has slowly, irretrievably
slipped into decline. There's writing on the sheet that reads: "ONE
YEAR AGO MY MENTALLY ILL SON WAS SHOT DEAD ON THIS SPOT BY THE POLICE.
ENGLAND 2002???" It takes a moment to remember the news story of
Andrew Kernan, the young man with a Samurai sword fixation who, in a
moment of unmedicated madness, took part of his collection to the street
and was greeted by a shot to the head rather than the leg from the armed
response unit.
Two days earlier I had interviewed the film director Alex Cox, but now I
can feel the joy and positivity he had instilled in me about the future
of this singular beautiful city slowly dissipating.
Cox, at a youthful 48, speaks fast, packing every sentence with
erudition and odd punctuation. But, even for a man of his esoteric
tastes, his new film, a version of Thomas Middleton's very bloody
Jacobean play Revengers Tragedy (here adapted and updated to a
near-future setting by Frank Cottrell Boyce), seems a strange choice.
"I've been obsessed with this thing since my early twenties,"
says Cox. "I just read it and thought it was a great piece. When I
was a lad they made me read Shakespeare, but I was kind of bored of
Shakespeare. He was a great poet, but a bit of a reactionary --
Shakespeare was a propagandist for the Tudors. I had to study the Tudors
for history and I hated them; they were the founders of the modern
British Police state. Then I read Revengers Tragedy just by chance, and
it was sensational. Here's a play where the hero is like Hamlet, in that
he has a revenge quest, but instead of being consumed by self doubt and
lots of tedious moralising about the divine rights of kings, he just
gets on with it. He gets rid of the other guy and then he gets rid of
the kids as well. I thought, "Wow, here's something that someone
who is not a monarchist can relate to."
The film has been made entirely and independently in Liverpool (where
Cox's film production company, Exterminating Angel, is based in an old
Mission house on the edge of Toxteth). "It's entirely shot in
Liverpool. The crew was 70% based in the L8 and L1 postcodes," says
Cox, who is deeply proud of filming in his hometown. "It's a sort
of a north/south battle. There's Drew Schofield, Margi Clarke and
Christopher Eccleston on one side. They are the Revengers. And on the
other side there's Derek Jacobi, Eddie Izzard and Diana Quick. I don't
know whether they will get it outside this country. It may be hard-going
for Americans, because they may not understand the language differences.
But I think its pretty clear here: everyone can tell the difference
between a London and a Liverpool accent."
Cox has made films all over the world: his first, Repo Man (1983), was
shot on the streets of LA; Sid and Nancy was filmed in London; Straight
to Hell, his delicious spoof spaghetti western with Joe Strummer and The
Pogues, was filmed in Almeira, Spain; the brilliant Walker was shot in
Nicaragua and Tuscon, Arizona. However, it was in Mexico that Cox made
what are, arguably, his two greatest movies, Highway Patrolman and Death
and the Compass. These are dark, mature works from a master filmmaker
who, like Kubrick, was taking on board few influences from other
filmmakers, with the exception of his beloved Luis Bunuel and Akira
Kurosawa.
Ironically, it was the experience of working in Mexico City that led Cox
to return to his native Merseyside. 'Mexico City was the only place I
could make Death and The Compass,' he says, 'because it's this great
monumental city on an inhuman scale. Then I came back to Liverpool and
went: "Oh, actually there is somewhere else I could have made this
film". Liverpool and Mexico City are my favourite places; they both
have really creative communities that exist in spite of very little
encouragement from the authorities, and yet they persist.' When Cox
talks about Liverpool, its difficult not be swept up in his passion for
a city that still holds the key for the likes of Jimmy McGovern, Kevin
Sampson and Willy Russell.
Cox himself has fought many battles, among them the re-nationalisation
of Britain's railways (check out Cox's website: www.alexcox.com/). And
time and again Cox has battled to make movies; he's been kicked off or
disowned as many films as he made. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and
The Winner have been particularly crappy experiences for him. He began
his career in the early 80s by taking on the Hollywood studio Universal,
when they dropped the previously greenlit Repo Man during an executive
shake-up. Cox placed an advert in the trade paper Variety which
challenged the studio to make the film. The studio hired a PR man to
discredit the film, but extraordinary exclamations such as 'I hope they
don't show this film in Russia' backfired and turned Repo Man into a
cult project.
It seems now, In Liverpool, that Cox has finally found a base to fight
his battles against the profane and corrupt. 'I was pleased about
Revengers Tragedy,' he says, 'because we didn't have to have any
Americans in it. I was the attached unpaid director of Richard III for a
year, the film Richard Loncraine eventually directed. It was depressing
because we were under such pressure to have Americans in it. So it was a
pleasure to show that you could actually make a British film that
doesn't have Tommy Lee Jones and Jennifer Jason Leigh in it.'
So what's next maestro? I ask as a parting gesture. 'The thing I'm most
directed towards is a film with Michael Madsen and Eddie Izzard called
Helltown,' says Cox. 'It's just non-stop mayhem and fighting, but it's
also like a Kurosawa Samurai film in that at the beginning the hero sets
out his agenda and he spends the next 89 minutes doing it, obviously
with a few setbacks along the way.'
Two days later I'm sat in a car driving through The Beatles' old
stomping ground Wavertree. I wonder if Andrew Kernan, the young man with
a Samurai sword who was shot dead by the police, would have shared Cox's
optimism about Liverpool's future? And would Kernan have made the grade
as a Kurosawan protagonist? I slump deep into my seat.
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