Lilting – Dir. Hong Khaou – Seen at FACT Liverpool – 12/08/2014

Hong Khaou has written and directed what has to be quite simply the most astonishingly beautiful piece of filmmaking I have seen in years.

Lilting is a meticulously studied, meditative piece of cinema that examines the relationship between two very different characters, divided by culture and language but united in a shared grief.

Cheng Pei-pei plays Junn, a Cambodian-Chinese woman who came to England with her husband to build a better life for her family. Now widowed and aging, her only son Kai has placed her temporarily in a well-meaning but suffocatingly old fashioned sheltered home, only to have his own life tragically cut short before his long term plans come to fruition.

But Junn is not the only one mourning Kai’s death. Richard is Kai’s lover who has shared a home with him for four years, and his loss and devastation are deepened by the resentment that Junn holds for him. He is determined to make the peace with her but he speaks no Chinese and Junn no English, and besides, how can he make her understand when she never knew her son was gay?

A strange and sometimes amusing new relationship between Junn and Alan, another resident at the home (a dapper Peter Bowles) serves as a plot device enabling Richard to employ Vann (Naomi Christie) as a translator, on the basis that she can help them get to know each other. Vann also builds tentative communication between Richard and Junn too, but with each pairing she occasionally slips out of direct translation and interjects with her own conversation, causing friction but ultimately helping to steer both relationships toward their logical conclusions.

Throughout the film we keep encountering Kai (Andrew Leung) in scenes with his mother and with his partner - sometimes seeming as if memories, sometimes as imagined encounters - and some superb camera work and editing has him appear as illusory as the ghost that he has become.

The two central performances of Junn and Richard are quite magnificent. Cheng Pei-pei has tremendous poise and dignity and her ability to have us understand every nuance of her character without a word of English is magical. Ben Whishaw (who I last saw on stage in Mojo last December) is outstanding in his characterisation. There is no other word but mesmerising for his presence on the screen, and his portrayal of a young man trying to hold everything together through a grief he can’t explain is absolutely heartbreaking.

Key supporting performances from Andrew Leung and Naomi Christie are balanced well to the timeless quality of the story, while Peter Bowles is charmingly funny and a sometimes melancholy as the hapless love interest for Junn.

Looking at this picture it is almost impossible to believe it was made on a budget of just £120,000. Cinematography by Urzula Pontikos is stunningly beautiful in understated low-key colour, complemented by Mark Towns masterful editing and a hypnotic score from Stuart Earl.

There are not enough superlatives to express the heartfelt poignancy of this film and I cannot recommend it more highly. It has to be some sort of crime that Lilting is on only limited cinema release, as although it is also available on demand online it has to be seen on the big screen to make the most of it's finely crafted photography.

Please try to see this at a cinema near you while you can.

http://liltingfilm.com

Mojo – Harold Pinter Theatre – 16/12/2013

“There's nothing like someone cutting your dad in two for clearing the mind”

Ian Rickson originally brought Jez Butterworth’s play to the Royal Court stage to award winning acclaim in 1995 and he returns the directorial chair for this revival, with a cast whose ensemble and timing are as slick as the Brylcreem in the dressing room. Butterworth’s dialogue is slick too, filled with a dark brooding menace enhanced with gloomy, claustrophobic sets by Ulzt and a pounding soundtrack from Stephen Warbeck and Simon Baker.

Ezra, owner of the Atlantic Club in Soho, is an ever present but unseen character, whose efforts to prevent rival Mr Ross from poaching his star performer Silver Johnny result in his grizzly demise and he spends much of the second act represented by two dustbins downstage.

Silver Johnny himself is brought explosively to life at curtain up by a Tom Rhys Harries. Harries disappears for most of act one, having been kidnapped by the opposition, and on his reappearance in act two he has a lot of hanging around to do before he springs back into manic action in the closing scenes. Fortunately Mr Harries has youth and apparent fitness on his side and hopefully won’t have too much need of the credited company osteopath - rather him than me though.

The rest of the cast are a motley crew of club employees who are occupied through most of the play in trying to save both the club and their own necks from Joe Ross’s henchmen. Mickey, charismatically played by Brendan Coyle, is hopeful of taking over Ezra’s Atlantic but Potts (Daniel Mays) and Sweets (Rupert Grint) have a more realistic, if somewhat histrionic approach to the situation and the ensuing siege-like situation builds in ever-increasing tension leading to the final tragic conclusion. Mays is superb and special mention has to go to Rupert Grint who, in his professional stage debut here, seems to have risen spectacularly to the occasion. Some commentators have moaned of mumbling but I was seated in one of the most acoustically challenged areas of the theatre in the rear stalls and every word was delivered perfectly well for me. His character earns the nickname Sweets for providing the supply of pills that fuels the cast in their chemical highs and lows and adds other unexpected colour to their lives.

This just leaves Baby and Skinny. Skinny is not the sharpest knife in the box and played with larger than life shambling and a good deal of comic charm by Colin Morgan. He appears to have a less than welcome fixation with Baby, Ezra’s wide-boy son, who in his strangely detached way deals with the bizarre events around him and the gruesome loss of his father. It is in his incandescent performance of Baby that Ben Whishaw all but steals the stage from his fellow cast, and I suspect he could easily walk away with the whole show if he had a mind to. This is a firecracker of a part and Whishaw clearly revels in it without ever overshadowing his colleagues.

Mojo crackles with electricity throughout and its quickfire dialogue – often not for the delicate ear – rattles along relentlessly, keeping the pace moving throughout its substantial two and a half hour running time. This is a great anarchic antidote to the safe mainstream world of much of what’s on offer nearby in the West End. It should sell itself for its fine writing and gritty atmosphere as much as for the star rating of its high profile casting.

Mojo continues at the Harold Pinter Theatre Panton Street until 8th February 2014.