My Fathers, My Mother and Me – review

A powerful portrait of a man looking for his upbringing, says Adam Turner-Heffer

MY FATHERS, MY MOTHER AND ME (2012)

DIRECTOR: Paul-Julien Robert

COUNTRY: AUSTRIA

RUNNING TIME: 93 mins

WINNER of the best documentary prize at the London Film Festival, My Fathers, My Mother and Me (or Meine Keine Familie) is a powerful, intriguing story of the film’s director Paul-Julien Robert’s upbringing. At the beginning of the 1970’s, Robert’s mother Florence joined a commune in the Austrian countryside – called the Friedrichshof commune – who believed that the nuclear family is a corrosive force to a child’s development and that all children should be brought up in a community rather than with singular parents. Paul-Julien is a product of this ideal.

My Fathers, My Mother and Me is a remarkable film largely because it is dealt with so expertly by the man who lived it. Robert isn’t even necessarily a professional director; this is his début and is more of an exorcism than a film, but it is crucial that it is auto-biographical. Otherwise, the effect would be lost.

This documentary works because of its structure. In the first half-an-hour of the film, Robert presents the commune’s ideals objectively and without comment; both in the use of the seemingly endless amount of archive footage and in his interviews with the participants (including his mother) early on. As a result, initially the Friedrichshof sounds fairly appealing. It’s ideas and manifestos are borne out of the real life struggles these young and frustrated (mostly German, Austrian and Swiss but some travelled across Europe) individuals who want to break away from negative conventions and create something positive. At first look, the commune is an appealing space for artists and free-thinkers to live, work and create in their artistic and sexual exploits, and it seems a positive experience.

It is a powerful and moving story, excellently presented by a man who lived it

However, once they put this theory of the nuclear family as corrosive into practice, things take a wild turn for the worse. When the first children of the extended family emerge, at infant level at least, things seem stable. Simultaneously, present-day Paul-Julien goes in search of his biological father, interviewing the three candidates who all had relations with his mother around the time of conception. He also interviews the fellow children, his extended brothers and sisters and cousins, and it is here that the cracks in the veneer begin to show. While the older, original members seem fairly content with their decisions, they are slowly shown to be largely in denial, as Paul-Julien’s generation are increasingly seen as having emotional and physical issues as they entered their adult lives. Paul-Julien himself openly admits he has struggled largely maintaining long-term relationships, while his brothers and sisters are depressed and angry at their parents.

At the heart of all this, is the Friedrichshof’s co-founder, artist Otto Mühl, who initially comes across as an intelligent, witty and urbane revolutionary. Spear-heading the commune and constructing its manifesto, as well as creating accompanying art-pieces, Mühl seems to be a great leader. But with all respect and power, so often follows corruption, and in perhaps the most dramatic turn since Nabokov’s Humbert Humbert, the charmer becomes the deceiver as time goes on. Mühl becomes increasingly bullying and authoritarian especially as the children become old enough to respond. Mühl forces the children’s biological parents to separate in order to work and raise money for the commune, and while they’re away, he repeatedly forces the children to “perform” in-front of the remaining commune and mostly for himself, which becomes increasingly menacing.

In perhaps the film’s most crucial scene, Robert and his mother sit in a small empty cinema, and he projects the archive footage from when she left her son to work. Earlier in the film, Florence is still confident in past decisions, happy she took part in a counter-revolutionary movement with various sexual partners and, somewhat unconvincingly, says she does not regret leaving her son to work. But after showing her the increasingly abusive footage, in which Mühl actively and repeatedly mentally tortures “his” children, Robert’s mother, and the audience invested, hopes come crashing down about this man.

It is a powerful and moving story, excellently presented by a man who lived it. It is clear throughout the film and in interviews or the Q&A he participated in after the screening, that he is a quiet and affected man, who has had to come to terms with not being brought up in the traditional manner despite having 3 potential fathers and being regularly abused by a man considered a saint by his own parents. It’s a stunning sociological story about the human condition and what would happen in practical terms. It’s hard to say if Mühl’s theories are indeed wrong, being as initially convincing as they are, yet, so often the case with any ideology, he manages to undermine them by becoming an abusive bully. Either way, it is a harrowing yet essential look into a very human story and a must watch where available.

Adam Turner-Heffer can also be found at http://adamturnerheffer.tumblr.com/ and https://twitter.com/Severed799

The Arbor – review

An unconventional docu-drama about playwright Andrea Dunbar, her family and her estate during and after her life is unusual and captivating, says Sean Lightbown

Lorraine and Lisa portrayed by Manjinder Virk and Christine Bottomley

The Arbor (2010)

DIRECTOR: Clio Barnard

COUNTRY: UK

WATCH IF YOU LIKE: Red Riding: In the Year of Our Lord 1974, Raining Stones

Behind my house as a kid there was a field. It wasn’t big – maybe enough for two games of jumpers -for-goalposts football at a push – but it was enough to muck about on. On Saturdays the local kids and I would descend on it like locusts. It’d usually be football or tig, but sometimes we snuck into a neighbouring house’s back garden to climb one of its enormous 20 foot-plus trees. If you managed to negotiate the brambles and twigs and cuts and bruises and ever got to the top, you would see a vast, endless parade of terraced houses and tarmac. And then your mum would shout you in for tea.

These memories coming back was one of only a series of surprises with The Arbor, Clio Barnard’s first feature film from 2010. It is part documentary, part drama, telling the story of playwright prodigy Andrea Dunbar, a working-class Yorkshire lass whose plays, written from the tender age of fifteen, managed to find themselves played in London and New York theatres. And, in the case of her work Rita, Sue and Bob Too, becoming a feature film itself.

The fact that this unorthodox narrative doesn’t become tiring is a testament to the power of the story and indeed the performances of the actors

Yet to limit The Arbor as a portrayal of this colourful, brutal and tragic life – Dunbar died at the age of 29, leaving three kids from three different fathers – would be to do it a disservice. What we see for most of the film is her family and friends’ depiction of life on The Arbor – the estate road from which the play and film’s name comes from – how each of them saw it, and how each of them went on in life.

However, we do not see a Ken Loach-esque ‘warts and all’ portrayal. Instead, Barnard decided to use real-life interviews, and get actors to lip-sync them for the documentary. The result is an extremely powerful tale spanning generations of tragedy, regret and, in the end, some form of redemption.

‘Tale’ is the key word. While this is a documentary, we are constantly reminded throughout about how subjective personal accounts are. Andrea’s eldest daughter Lorraine, played superbly by Majinder Virk, provides consistently painful, hateful and sometimes chilling memories from her past and present. This is balanced well with accounts from her sister, Lisa (Christine Bottomley), whose almost-cheerful nature about her mother’s writing provides a clear antithesis. The effect of this, plus several other similar scenes involving Andrea’s siblings, friends and lovers, is that we’re challenged. We are given several accounts of the same events, but from different perspectives, and it is up to us to decide. Indeed, the opening sequence, featuring two dogs in a field chewing over what remains in a charred bonfire, is shot in such a way that you feel you are being pulled into a dream. In a recurring motif, scenes from Dunbar’s The Arbor play are acted out on the estate itself, with a crowd of (I assume) local residents gathered around watching and reacting. Fiction is being mixed with reality, and we are reminded that what we are watching is retelling and opinion, not wholly undisputed fact.

All this wouldn’t matter, however, if the stories and performances weren’t so compelling. From Lorraine and Lisa’s childhood memories you are drawn into a very dark and personal journey through these people’s lives and the life of the estate itself. We grow up with them, get in touch with their anger, and hear their reasonings and regrets. Alongside this sits several instances where actors perform sections of Dunbar plays in front of current residents of The Arbor, not only reminding us of the film’s insistence on blurring reality and fiction, but also showing us Dunbar’s dramatizations of life on the estate.

The fact that this unorthodox narrative doesn’t become tiring is a testament to the power of the story and indeed the performances of the actors. Bottomley and Virk’s portrayals of the two sisters – one filled with hope, the other regret and anger – are compelling, and they somehow manage to play off each other despite rarely occupying the screen together. The supporting performances are also strong, helping to provide more rounded, and on occasion, completely different, accounts of events, constantly keeping you wondering.

The Arbor is a brave movie, not only in subject matter but also in its execution. It is at once abstract and yet grounded. Where it is intangible it is also personal. It is quite original and, more often that not, brilliant.

Kiss the Water – review

A documentary about an eccentric fishing-fly maker from the Highlands may appear niche, but Steve Dallimore finds heart in this dreamlike tale.

Fly-making – a labour of love

KISS THE WATER (2013)

DIRECTOR: Eric Steel

COUNTRY: USA, UK

RUNNING TIME: 103 mins

WATCH IT IF YOU LIKE:  The Bridge, Bending Steel

IT’S often the mark of a good documentary that the film appeals to people with no real interest in the subject matter. So, when making Kiss the Water, a film about fly fishing in the Scottish Highlands, director Eric Steel must have either been supremely confident of making a good film or intent on appealing to a very niche audience.

The film is only Steel’s second after 2006’s The Bridge, a thought-provoking if morally dubious piece on suicide at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. While it’s understandable that he’s chosen a much lighter subject matter, the initial concern is that fly fishing may be a little too insubstantial to warrant 82 minutes of the viewer’s time.

Kiss the Water focus, however, is expert fly (a small fishhook tied with small colourful threads to act as bait) maker Megan Boyd, and when Steel explains that he first heard of Boyd when her obituary was published in the New York Times, it becomes clear that there’s more to her than to your average fly tier (if such a thing exists).

Despite rarely leaving the Highlands Megan Boyd’s expertise was of world renown, leading to royal appointment by Prince Charles and eventually an OBE. That Boyd declined to collect her OBE because of a conflicting prior engagement (she was due to attend a bridge game with a group of friends on the same evening) indicates the other reason she makes for a compelling subject: by any measure, she was an eccentric character. Boyd dressed in full suit and tie for her work and made any journeys for supplies by motorcycle in an era when few women drove at all.

Large parts of the film are made up of long, atmospheric shots of the Scottish countryside and innovative animated sequences, lending Kiss the Water a dreamlike air

That Steel eschews traditional documentary format to tell the story of a very non-traditional life is a masterstroke. While the film utilises talking heads to provide some insight into Megan’s life, large parts of the film are made up of long, atmospheric shots of the Scottish countryside and innovative animated sequences, lending Kiss the Water a dreamlike air, similar to Terrence Malick or the more meditative works of Gus Van Sant. Rather than being a point A to point B story, it feels more like a patchwork assembly of memories, and it’s all the better for it.

Conspicuous by her absence is Boyd herself, who only features once in the film. While to an extent this was due to a lack of usable photos or footage (Boyd retired in 1985 and died in 2001) there’s enough in the film to suggest it was also a stylistic decision.

Steel explains at the outset that there are two sorts of fishing stories; the one that you caught and the one that got away. It’s the latter that best describes Steel’s portrayal of Boyd; she’s the one that can never be measured or truly understood, the one whose story will always remain incomplete but is nonetheless worth telling, if only to let imagination fill the gaps the sparse facts can’t fill.

The film isn’t without its flaws. There’s a small segment that suggests an allegorical connection to Princess Diana that is poorly judged, badly realised and thoroughly unnecessary. The film’s ponderous pace and elegiac tone come perilously close to outstaying their welcome in its comparatively brief running time, but as this is only the second film of what is hopefully a fledgling documentary career for Steel, these are forgivable missteps.

The film’s tone and subject matter mean it clearly won’t be for everyone, but Steel has done an admirable job of turning what could have been a special interest curiosity into a charming, fascinating portrait of a truly unique individual. Indeed, it seems appropriate that the film should have as broad an appeal; as one of Boyd’s friends explains, she never enjoyed fishing either.