White Elephant Reviewed by Fionnuala Halligan


By taking an insider perspective on the slums of Buenos Aires, Pablo Trapero returns to the social concerns established in earlier films such as Lion’s Den (which bedded down in a women’s prison). White Elephant (Elefante Blanco), a well- made and involving — if not dramatically revolu- tionary — drama, brings a gritty immediacy to the Hidden City where priests Julian (Darin) and Nicolas (Dardenne brothers mainstay Jérémie Renier) wage a futile battle for its inhabitants’ sal- vation. Unlike its Brazilian counterparts such as City Of


God or Carandiru, White Elephant follows a con- ventional narrative line that should help it connect well with international audiences (arthouse dar- ling Ricardo Darin will also be an asset here). Trapero presents us with two priests — the patient, persuasive Fr Julian, who realises his time may be limited, and the taciturn, impetuous Fr Nicolas. They are our entré to a world that feels entirely authentic, a slum that is framed by Argentina’s troubled relationship with the Catholic Church and the tradition of activism by religious orders. Fr Julian approaches his mission in the “villa”


through social programmes — mainly the con- struction of a hospital on the site of an abandoned ‘white elephant’ building which is now occupied by teeming families, its environs a network of corru- gated tin shacks where rival drug dealers violently


Dario Argento’s Dracula Reviewed by Mark Adams


A bloodsucking Euro-pudding of epic proportions, you have to hope Dario Argento’s Dracula was always planned as a bit of tongue-in-cheek, fang- in-neck, Gothic silliness. In fact it is so lushly loopy that against all odds it could become something of a 3D cult title, and certainly for those of us who have ‘experienced’ it there is a certain ‘I was there’ badge of honour to go alongside having been at the Cannes screenings of The Brave or Southland Tales. In truth though, what stands in the way of mak-


ing the film a must-see cult number is that bizarrely, Argento lets things slip when it comes to the boobs, blood and barbarism that any self- respecting 3D horror B-movie really needs. Instead it is more sub-Hammer fare that never really makes the most of the stereoscopic 3D. The film got its biggest laugh in the opening


credit block with a line stating that it is a ‘film of cultural interest’, and from then on lacks any kind of knowing humour until a scene close to the end where Dracula (for some unexplained reason) turns himself into a giant green mantis to attack a drunken villager. For Argento it is almost as if the vampire genre


has never moved sideways into Buffy The Vampire Slayer, The Twilight Saga, True Blood and Let The Right One In territory, as he takes it back to its Bram Stoker roots (well, at least he riffs off Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 adaptation) and favours cob- bled Transylvanian villages, horse-drawn carts, busty village maidens and pointy stakes.


n 12 Screen International at Cannes May 23, 2012 German actor Thomas Kretschmann plays


MIDNIGHT SCREENING


It. 2012. 106mins Director Dario Argento Production companies Multimedia Film Production, Enrique Cerezo PC, Les Films de L’Astre International sales FilmExport Group, www.filmexport.com Producers Roberto di Girolamo, Gianni Paolucci, Enrique Cerezo Screenplay Dario Argento, Antonio Tentori, Stefano Piani, Enrique Cerezo, based on the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker Cinematography Luciano Tovoli Editors Marshall Harvey, Daniele Campelli Production designer Antonello Geleng Music Claudio Simonetti Main cast Thomas Kretschmann, Asia Argento, Marta Gastini, Rutger Hauer, Unax Ugalde, Miriam Giovanelli, Giovanni Franzoni


Count Dracula as a stuffy and moody vampire who finds, in the form of fetching Mina Harker (Gas- tini), the reincarnation of his beloved Dolingen De Gratz, who had died some 400 years before. With the help of Mina’s friend Lucy (Asia


Argento), to whom he promises eternal life via a little bloodsucking action, Dracula lures Mina to the Transylvanian village of Passo Borgo by pre- tending to offer her husband Jonathan (Ugalde) a job as his castle librarian. Luckily the day is saved by the arrival of Abraham Van Helsing (Rutger Hauer hamming things up nicely) and his bag full of crosses, stakes, holy water and a healthy supply of garlic.


Kretschmann looks the part and has a few suit-


ably daft lines (“I am nothing but an out-of-tune chord in the divine symphony,” is his best as he sets about entrancing Mina), while Argento’s daughter Asia provides her trademark silky sexu- ality without really smouldering… that is until she is set on fire and reduced to ashes. Miriam Gio- vanelli as sexy Tania — who is bitten early in the film — gives you hope the film will launch into B-movie sexploitation territory, but her busty scenes are few and far between, and while there are a few nice 3D horror moments (heads chopped off, eyeball impaled etc) Argento’s reputation as a horror maestro is not enhanced with this flabby and flailing movie.


UNCERTAIN REGARD


Arg-Fr-Sp. 2012. 110mins Director Pablo Trapero Production companies Morena Films, Matanza Cine, Patagonik International sales Wild Bunch, www.wildbunch.biz Producers Juan Gordon, Pablo Trapero, Juan Pablo Galli, Juan Vera, Alejandro Cacetta Screenplay Alejandro Fadel, Martin Mauregui, Santiago Mitre, Pablo Trapero Cinematography GuillermoNieto Editors Pablo Trapero, Nacho Ruiz Capillas Music MichaelNyman Production designer Juan Pedro De Gaspar Main cast Ricardo Darin, Jérémie Renier, Martina Gusman


ply their trade. Fr Nicolas, meanwhile, is a troubled soul, attracted to social worker Luciana (Gusman) and scarred by the violent failure of his mission in the Amazon jungle. They are at once at odds with each other and with the more conservative official arm of the church, which has mired the building project in red tape. After the action of Carancho, Trapero also starts


White Elephant with a bang — a raid in the jungle that slowly leads to the shantytown. Julian has brought his old compadre Nicolas here to, he hopes, one day take over his life’s work. It is a 15-minute intro before the camera pulls back to reveal the Hidden City and its 30,000 inhabitants


with an involving tracking shot from Fr Julian’s quarters through the slum. White Elephant works best when tackling these


surrounds, with a clear-eyed, seemingly authentic take on the villa and its problems, and the priests feel real as well: from Darin’s middle-class social activist to Reinier’s “gringo” traveller, a man who cannot take the long view. Their faith is sorely tested, and the film makes heavy reference to the “martyred” Fr Mujica, killed in the 1970s, as if to signpost the way. Once Fr Julian makes a fatal mis- step of meeting with the drug kingpins, White Ele- phant is set on a dramatically inevitable course, but Trapero plays out his points to the closing frame.


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