onsdag 23 januari 2019

The latest BBC Woman in White and the Fosco challenge

So, I finally made my way through the BBC's latest The Woman in White adaptation. I wasn't blown away by it, but it did have some virtues. Above all, it stays faithful to the original story, or nearly (I'll come back to that), which sets it apart from the adaptation from the Nineties, not to mention the musical. Sir Percival Glyde's "Secret" is finally the same as in the book - hooray! - and Sir Percival dies dramatically in a church trying to destroy the evidence of it. The events leading up to this climax play out the same way as in the novel, too. The two heroines - the resourceful Marian Halcombe and her put-upon half-sister Laura Fairlie who is married off to the dastardly Glyde - are well-cast. Jessie Buckley has strong, somewhat masculine features which we might consider handsome today but would not have gone down well in the 19th century (hence Walter's reaction in the book: "this woman is ugly"), Olivia Vinall as Laura is pretty as a picture, and the acting of both is top-notch. Vinall plays Anne Catherick too, which makes every sort of sense, though she has to sport a somewhat off-putting set of dentures as Anne just to show that while similar, the two women are not identical. Marian is not, mercifully, made out to have a thing for Laura's true love Walter Hartright (for a moment, the narrative seems to be heading that way, but it backs away just in time). Instead, she is shown to be the true and loving sister she is in the book, and a good friend to Walter, too. As for Walter, he never resents Marian's early insistence that his and Laura's love isn't meant to be - as Laura is engaged, and Walter is her tutor, he can see for himself that things look hopeless. Another thing I thought worked well was the framing device of having a scrivener, Erasmus Nash, question various witnesses in the case which then leads to flashbacks of what happened. It gives a taste of the novel's clever structure of several narrators. I don't remember there being a Nash in the novel, and I suspect he may have been created as an excuse to shove Art Malik into the story, but I like Art Malik, so I can see why this is something one would want to do.   

As to elements that were more mixed: Charles Dance has and is fun as Frederick Fairlie, but beneath all that old-man make-up he is too much the picture of health to convince as an invalid. It is true that Mr Fairlie is a hypochondriac, with nothing much actually wrong with him, but he should at least be able to put up a show of being frail and infirm - Ian Richardson, with his wavering tones, was more convincing than Dance, whose voice still rings out with Tywin-like toughness. Dougray Scott is the right type for Sir Percival Glyde, and overall I'd say he earns a pass not without distinction: it's a tricky part, as the charismatic villain of the piece is so obviously meant to be Fosco, and Sir Percival is more of a second-league scoundrel. All the same, a little more plausible amiability in the early  stages of the story wouldn't have gone amiss. One reason why Sir Percival's marriage to Laura isn't halted is that no-one is able to find fault with him or pin something on him: it's only after the marriage that his true nature reveals itself. While Limmeridge House and Blackwater Park are both convincingly "house-cast" - the one looks imposingly affluent, the other gothic - other locations, like what passes for 19th-century London, isn't quite as persuasive: you get the impression that the budget wasn't exactly abundant.

When I looked up reviews of this adaptation, more than one of them spoke of it being a version of the tale "for the #metoo generation". Though they meant it as praise, I'm sure this labelling of the series didn't do it any favours. No need to fear a preach-fest, though. It's true the first scene features Marian railing against men who are allowed to "crush" women and go unpunished, but this and other outbursts of the same vein only occur when she is deeply upset on Laura's behalf. I didn't find them against character, and wouldn't be surprised if some of them were actually in the book (I haven't checked). Maybe the focus gets a little skewed as we never see Marian being scathing about her own sex, which I believe she was in the novel, but all the same I'd say the levels of modern right-on-ness are well below alarming. In fact, the most jarring scene for me wasn't Marian being a proto-feminist but Mr Fairlie's footman, Louis, rising up against him and demanding that he should apologise to his niece Laura at the end. Fond of Louis as Mr Fairlie seems to be - he is mentioned surprisingly often in Fairlie's narrative in the book - a servant would never be allowed to behave like that without being dismissed without a character. After all, there are other handsome footmen out here.

There are more serious problems with this adaptation than excessive pandering to modern sensibilities. For one thing, it feels way too long at four hours and a bit: the tense atmosphere of the novel doesn't quite translate, and I found myself yawning, especially in the beginning. Walter is little more than a pretty boy, whereas he should be a man of parts although he's the standard hero type. Above all, there's the presentation of the novel's main villain Count Fosco.

Yes, now it's finally time to address what I hinted at in the title. Riccardo Scamarcio is charismatic, but not in the Fosco way: he is far too Byronically dashing, and only a size-zero supermodel would call him fat. I could see Scamarcio working well as a world-weary seducer who's been at his game a while but is still very good at it. The novel's Fosco, though, is quite another sort of bad guy. He doesn't charm the domestic staff or Marian with smarmy hand-kisses but with bonhomie: he is the steely, amoral mastermind disguised as a jovial, humorous, sociable fat foreign gentleman. Although Fosco is a little too easy to like and "high-prestige" for me to be completely smitten with him as a villain, I appreciate him, and I've always assumed that the part in all its showiness would be an absolute gift for an actor. It seems, though, as if it's harder to bring Fosco into other media than the novel than one would have thought. The musical played him too much for laughs. In the Nineties adaptation, he was strangely muted - even though he was played by Simon Callow. Here, he is suddenly a Latin charmer, probably in order to make Marian's attraction to him more plausible to the viewers. This really isn't necessary. Fosco is no more conventionally handsome than Marian is conventionally pretty, but this doesn't stop them from coming across as attractive, exciting people in the novel. The challenge to rise to would surely have been to make this work in the TV format, too.

torsdag 10 januari 2019

My my, I actually really enjoyed the Mamma Mia sequel

It might be a good idea to start the year on a positive note. A couple of months back, I watched Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again in the cinema and found myself enjoying it a lot more than I expected. So why were my expectations so low to start with, seeing as I'm a massive ABBA fan? Well, people seem to assume that if you love ABBA, you'll love the Mamma Mia films and if you don't you'll hate them. However, it's not quite as simple as that.

I've loved ABBA since I first heard "The Winner Takes It All" as a girl and thought: "Wow, what a power ballad! And all about betrayed love *swoon*". And so, although ABBA the band hadn't been playing for ages, ABBA songs became part of the soundtrack of my teenage years. It follows, then, that I don't like ABBA songs "ironically"; I happen to think they are darned good songs, both melody- and lyrics-wise. When Mamma Mia the musical started playing in London, I went to see it and thought it was great entertainment. Although the plot was paper thin, professional musical artists and a witty script ("I'm old enough to be your mother! Well, you can call me Oidipus") made sure the soufflé didn't sag.

Then Mamma Mia! the movie came out, and was frankly a disappointment. The script felt dumbed down, and it was soon very clear that the line-up of famous actors who played in the film did not become famous for their singing talent. The only one whose singing really impressed me was Amanda Seyfried who plays Sophie, the daughter of Donna, who doesn't know which of her mother's three old admirers is her dad. Also, there was a lot of mugging all round. Everyone seemed to be in it just for the larks, and the message came across as "look, we know these songs are campy and cheesy, but c'mon, let's all have some fun!" As a true ABBA fan, I took exception to this. The film didn't seem to have any idea of what made the songs good or the musical entertaining in the first place. As mentioned, funny lines were cut and replaced by heavy-handed slapstick. "Our Last Summer", which in the musical was a touching reminiscence piece sung by Donna and one of her old beaux, became a fairly pointless number with Sophie and the three (possible) dads. One song the film didn't manage to ruin, though, was "Slipping Through My Fingers", which remained, as in the musical, an affecting moment between mother and daughter.

So when the first clip I saw from the sequel was in the same forced larky vein, I groaned. "When I Kissed The Teacher" is the only pop song I've ever heard about a teacher crush, and pretty much nails its subject matter. Though it is light-hearted - the original music video, with Magnus Härenstam as the hapless teacher, is hilarious - there is no doubt that the girl singing the song is well and truly smitten. In the film, a young Donna sings the number in lieu of a speech at her graduation from college and only kisses the teacher (a female don) for fun. Then she and her fellow graduate students run out and dance and sing, throwing their graduation hats in the air etc. Honestly, how do you manage to miss the point of a song so completely? I wasn't looking forward to the rest of it.

It turns out, though, that Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again shows more appreciation of its musical source material than the original film, and above all sounds a lot better. Most of the songs are given to Amanda Seyfried and to Lily James as young Donna, who also, mercifully, turns out to be sweet-voiced. The film takes the trouble to listen to what the songs actually say and fit the action to it rather than hamming it up at every turn. "One of Us" is allowed to be about a sticky point in Sophie's relationship with her boyfriend. "Knowing Me, Knowing You" is really used to illustrate a sad break-up - although, as Donna and Sam had only been together for a week or so, the melancholy lyrics more fitted for the break-up of a long marriage don't really feel earned. "The Name Of The Game", where young Donna comes down with a bump from cloud nine at the end, works well, as does "Mamma Mia", which she now sings after she's had her heart broken but is trying to get herself together as the lead singer in a band. Donna's two old friends may still camp it up in "Angel Eyes", but at least their antics are nicely undercut by Sophie's real anguish over her boyfriend situation. I also liked how less well-known ABBA songs were smuggled in here and there: the melody of "I Let The Music Speak" is played as accordion accompaniment in a Paris scene; the amateurish Greek band Donna joins are performing "Kisses Of Fire" when she first hears them; at Sophie's party, people are dancing to "Hasta Mañana". A highlight worth mentioning is when Cher - who plays Sophie's glamorous grandmother - delivers an outstanding "Fernando" (though it's never made clear how she and her old love were separated, nor how they can get together again so smoothly without any recriminations).

The film does cheat occasionally. It almost completely changes the lyrics of "I've Been Waiting For You" and "My Love, My Life". The first song is originally about a girl with implied heartbreak in her past who falls head over heels in love again. Her jubilant optimism drowns out any misgivings one might have, considering that the object of her affections may not yet know about her feeling or feel the same way ("I feel you belong to me/Someday you will agree/Please believe me"). The situation in "My Love, My Life" is similar to the one in Céline Dion's "Think Twice" (you've gathered by now that my music taste is not in any way cool). The woman who sings the song knows that her relationship is coming to and end, and that her significant other - whom she still loves - is working up the courage to break it off. Unlike the singer of "Think Twice", though, she's not going to plead: she accepts that it's over ("But I know I don't possess you/So go away, God bless you/You are still my love and my life/Still my one and only"). In the film, these two songs are all about the mother-daughter relationship between Donna (who has died when the film starts) and Sophie, and very touching it is, too, especially when Meryl Streep shows up as Donna's ghost at an important family event. But the original songs have a special place in my heart. All the same, they do work this way, and at least they're not delivered "ironically".

Yes, the film has its fair share of somewhat clumsy comedy, but it didn't really bother me this time around. I left the cinema in the right sunny mood, feeling that some justice had been done to one of my favourite bands. If you need something to temporarily drive away the January blues, by all means take a chance on this.