We Can’t Wait #7: 45 Years

Team Experience is counting down our 15 most anticipated for 2015. Here's Manuel...

Who & What: Directed by Andrew Haigh (Weekend, HBO’s “Looking”). Starring Charlotte Rampling & Tom Courtenay. I actually love the succinct synopsis Haigh offers over at his own site: “A marriage is thrown into turmoil with news of a long dead lover,” though if you want a more detailed version it runs something like this: Kate, “who is in the middle of preparations for her 45th wedding anniversary when her husband Geoff receives the news that the body of his old girlfriend, who died 50 years earlier in a fatal accident in the Swiss Alps, has finally been found, frozen in ice and time. Geoff retreats into a distant world of memories while Kate endeavors to suppress her burgeoning jealousy and anxiety with pragmatism.”

Why We're Excited About it: After charming festivalgoers and indie film lovers with his quietly successful sophomore effort, Weekend and transitioning quite easily into cable television with the exquisite Looking (may I direct you to my recaps?), Haigh tackles slightly different territory with this film adaptation of David Constantine’s short story. It took Berlin by storm and won Rampling & Courtenay twinned Best Actress and Best Actor honors. Thus this went from a curio title to a highly anticipated one, the type of festival find that’s always a treat to anticipate.

What if it all Goes Wrong? Thankfully, this is one of the titles on our collective list that has already screened and from all the reviews out of Berlin it seems we have little to worry about, as they all point to another strong offering from Haigh, who might have found his stride as a keen filmmaker of quiet yet poignant revelations: “a quietly moving and deceptively tragic look at aging romance haunted by past mysteries," “a drama of quiet restraint," “The emotional disquiet builds like an orchestral crescendo from near-silence to a roar," “a quietly powerful study of a long-term marriage."

When: 28 August 2015 (UK Release) and we should be hopeful that a US release date will follow shortly thereafter. The film is being distributed by Sundance Selects, which managed Haigh’s Weekend.

Courtenay, Rampling & Haigh doing press in Berlin

more entries...

Double the Looking: Looking for Gordon Freeman & Looking for a Plot

Hello everyone, Manuel here to recap Looking's newest episodes. We took a little break last weekend since it was the Holy Night of Awards (may this be your daily reminder that Julianne Moore has an Oscar!) and so we’re back this week with two brand new episodes. And boy were they good! I’m actually happy I can talk about these two episodes in tandem. One a comedic showcase the other a dramatic detour, one a sprawling ensemble set-piece, the other an almost bottle-episode character-driven piece, they exemplify the strong work Haigh & co. have been doing this season. 

More...

Click to read more ...

Looking Back: Season 1 Recap

Manuel here bringing us up to date on Andrew Haigh’s first season of his HBO show Looking in preparation for the weekly recaps that will take up this space starting next week. 

“You know how I know you’re gay? You’re boring,” With those nine words, Mick Stingley (writing for Esquire) summed up his reaction to Looking, one which continued to be echoed even as Andrew Haigh’s low-key San Francisco-set show about a group of gay men blossomed into a fascinating (if, yes, clipped and narrow) show, ably experimenting with the long-form storytelling of TV to offer mundane snapshots of the contemporary gay male experience. “Boring” became a code word for viewers (both gay and straight) who for the first time found themselves exposed to gay characters on screen who didn’t mince or flounce (no Wills or Jacks here), nor who aimed to become a banner ad for a movement (no Michaels or Emmets here). It was also an HBO show hard to pin down. It doesn’t have Sorkinean monologues, or Dunhamesque sex scenes. It doesn’t have the acidic comedy of Veep nor the pathos of Enlightened. There’s a level of mundanity in Haigh’s show that's decidedly un-HBOish; this is no Westeros nor Bon Temps. In many ways, it feels like an indie film with its closest kin being Haigh’s 2011 film, Weekend. [Full disclosure, I hated that film, but that’s neither here nor there].

I bring this all up front to showcase what it is that interests me about Looking; its rather transgressive indifference towards politics of representation. There’s transgression in the very banality that so characterized the show's first season which, while climaxing with a wedding, a hook-up, a breakup and a pitch-perfect Golden Girls shout out, nevertheless seemed quite content in what Haigh & co. bill their show as: merely looking, observing really how these young able-bodied (and damn good-looking) gay men navigate their lives. It’s not surprising then that the best episode of the first season was solely focused on Patrick & Richie in a long, romantic date around San Francisco.

So, before next’s week’s premiere episode, let’s briefly recap/meet our boys:

Click to read more ...