REVIEWS Keep The Lights On REVIEWED BY ANTHONY KAUFMAN


A tender portrait of a gay man in his thirties, Ira Sachs’ fourth feature film (after The Delta, Forty Shades Of Blue and Married Life) marks not only a return to the director’s experiences living in New York City in the late 1990s/early 2000s, but to a modest film-making style and sensibility that recalls a bygone era of US independent cinema. That is to say: Keep The Lights On is not just set over a decade ago, but feels as if it was made then, as well. It should come as little surprise the film- makers cite Parting Glances, Bill Sherwood’s semi- nal 1986 gay film, as one of their influences. The story focuses on the dissolution of a trou-


bled homosexual relationship over a 10-year period, from the point of view of Erik (Lindhardt), a Danish documentary film-maker living in the West Village. The film begins as Erik randomly meets and has passionate sex with lawyer Paul (Booth), who responds afterwards: “I have a girl- friend, so don’t get your hopes up.” But as the two lovers become further entangled, it is not Paul’s heterosexual past that is the problem: the nice lawyer turns out to have a mean crack habit. Working in a more intimate, low-budget vein


than his more recent films, Sachs offers snippets of his characters’ lives, including Erik’s random encounters with other men, conversations with his straight, female best friend (Nicholson) and the inevitable deterioration of his relationship with Paul. The film has a nicely relaxed atmosphere, particularly in a pair of brief dramatic-comic scenes between Erik and his Danish mother (Steen). The slightly grainy, though well com-


My Brother The Devil REVIEWED BY DAVID D’ARCY


In My Brother The Devil, Sally El Hosaini takes to the streets — the London streets — in her portrait of two Egyptian brothers from an immigrant fam- ily who fall into the neighbourhood gang culture. Egyptian kids in a London youth gang thriller


offer a novel twist on an urban-growing-pains for- mula that has been almost everywhere. Welsh-Egyptian El Hosaini turns unlikely ingredients into luminous cinema that will take


the film to festivals worldwide and pile up awards. Still, clever marketing will be needed to bring kids from the illegal-download culture into cinemas, where this film should be savoured. The debut is a promising career start for the director and the two appealing leads. The two brothers in the title are older Rashid


(Floyd) and Mohammed — or Mo — (Elsayed), who have adopted the street talk and style of their London peers. As their bus-conductor father talks about the Arab Spring, Rashid earns drug money


PANORAMA


US. 2012. 101mins Director Ira Sachs Production companies Parts and Labor, Tiny Dancer Films International sales Films Boutique, www. filmsboutique.com Producers Ali Betil, Jawal Nga, Jay Van Hoy, Lars Knudsen Executive producers Marie Therese Guirgis, Lucas Joaquin, Ira Sachs Screenplay Ira Sachs, Mauricio Zacharias Cinematography Thimios Bakatakis Production designer Amy Williams Editor Affonso Goncalves Main cast Thure Lindhardt, Zachary Booth, Julianne Nicholson, Souléymane Sy Savané, Paprika Steen


posed 16mm cinematography, by Dogtooth cine- matographer Thimios Bakatakis, further adds to the film’s warm tones. Movie industry insiders may also delight in


Erik’s rise through the film festival ranks with his documentary within the film, a portrait of a real- life gay photographer named Avery Willard. The project takes Erik to Berlin, where he wins the Teddy Award. The reference seems appropriate: Keep The Lights On plays here in the Panorama section and could also be destined for accolades. But one of the film’s central problems is that


the core relationship is never fully realised. While Danish actor Thure Lindhardt exudes a likeable


vulnerability, becoming increasingly sympathetic as we get to know him, Zachary Booth’s Paul is more of an empty cipher, serving a dramatic pur- pose as the troubled love of Erik’s life, but not a fully drawn character. If the two are such great lovers, it is hard to see it. Having said that, late in the film, there is one particularly powerful scene that shows the sad sacrificial lengths to which Erik has gone to try to save the crack-addled Paul, holding his hand in a hotel room as he hits rock bottom. But as a film that is framed around this partner-


ship, it is far more successful as an examination of Erik, a confused boy-adult trying to grow up.


PANORAMA


UK. 2012. 105mins Director/screenplay Sally El Hosaini Production companies Wild Horses Film Company, Rooks Nest Entertainment International sales Pacha Pictures, pachapictures.com Producers Gayle Griffiths, Julia Godzinskaya, Michael Sackler Executive producers Sally El Hosaini, Mohamed Hefzy Cinematography David Raedeker Editor Iain Kitching Production designer Stéphane Collonge Music Stuart Earl Main cast James Floyd, Saïd Taghmaoui, Fady Elsayed, Aymen Hamdouchi, Ashley Thomas, Anthony Welsh, Arnold Oceng, Letitia Wright, Amira Ghazalla, Elarica Gallacher, Nasser Memarzia


n 12 Screen International at the Berlinale February 9, 2012


which he sneaks into his mother’s purse. When Mo discovers the allure of street life, girls and competing gangs, he yearns to imitate his brother, and things get violent. In a debut film whose subject is volatility, El


Hosaini avoids the kind of over-dramatisation that is usually unavoidable in this genre. James Floyd is cocksure as the handsome Rashid, who gets side- tracked from street rackets into a job and a gay relationship, but not before a bloody brawl sets him up for a revenge match with a rival gangster. Fady Elsayed plays a kid growing up fast on the street as Mo, ambitious for a reputation among his peers. Meanwhile non-professionals in the cast keep realism from turning into melodrama. El Hosaini’s special achievement in My Brother


The Devil, however, is the stunning look of the film. Cinematographer David Raedeker was forced by circumstances at the time of filming — the riots in Hackney, east London, last summer — into shoot- ing much of the film in interior spaces. His close- ups in cinemascope give tight shots an extraordinary radiance and a visual depth in mini- mal light, an effect that is entirely unexpected in this kind of movie. It is rare to find a first-time film with such an


elegance that is still true to its gritty locations. The contrast of the young cast’s faces against the grey- ness of the cityscape adds to the film’s subtle tex- tures. The radiance of My Brother The Devil should also work as an audition tape for Letitia Wright, who plays Aisha, a Muslim girl who tries to set Mo straight. Wright’s face is one of many that make El Hosaini’s debut a luminous event.


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