The Films of Philip Ridley: Misty Moon Gallery, Ladywell Tavern, 4pm
This is screening as part of the Scala Beyond, a six-week season
celebrating all forms of cinema exhibition across the UK, from film
clubs to film festivals, picture palaces to pop-up venues. You can find
more details here at the website.
The Reflecting Skin (1990); The Passion of Darkly Noon (1995) and Heartless (2009)
Time Out review of The Reflecting Skin:
Set amid the golden corn of the '50s Midwest, Ridley's directorial debut (he scripted The Krays) confronts 'the nightmare of childhood'. Virtually ignored by his neurotic mother and ineffectual father, eight-year-old Seth (Cooper) creates a world of his own, imagining that reclusive English-woman Dolphin Blue (Duncan) is a vampire, and that the foetus he finds in a barn is his dead friend transformed into an earth-bound angel. Reality begins to seep in when Seth's father is accused of murdering children who have gone missing in the area, and Seth's older brother (Mortensen) returns from the Pacific with tales of a bomb that explodes like a second sun. The complex, non-linear narrative is almost operatic in its visual and emotional excess, employing exaggerated camera angles, saturated colours and an ultra-loud soundtrack to create a heightened, sometimes dangerously portentous reality. Admirably ambitious but, one suspects, a little overripe for English sensibilities.
Nigel Floyd
Here is the trailer.
Time Out review of The Passion of Darkly Noon:
'Ridley's slow-burning fable builds to a shocking finale, part apocalyptic religious vision, part intellectual slasher movie. Darkly Noon (Fraser), sole survivor of a Waco-like siege, is given refuge by beautiful forest dweller Callie (Judd), whose lover Clay (Mortensen) later returns for a passionate reunion. Egged on by crazy hermit Roxy (Zabriskie), Darkly cranks himself up into a state of violent delirium. As the vengeful innocent wraps barbed wire around his chest, one recalls the disturbing weirdness of The Reflecting Skin and fears the worst.'
Nigel Floyd
Here is the trailer.
Time Out review of Hearltess:
'This fiercely imaginative ‘urban fairy tale’ from multitalented East End fabulist Philip Ridley, creator of ‘The Reflecting Skin’ and ‘The Passion of Darkly Noon’, juxtaposes familiar Bethnal Green settings, fairy tales, disturbing violence and bleak, surreal humour. Jamie (Jim Sturgess, below), a melancholy 25-year-old photographer with a heart-shaped port-wine birthmark on his face, starts to believe that the masked ‘hoodies’ prowling the streets are actual demons. His shy, tentative love for the fragile Tia (Clémence Poésy) offers a ray of hope, but his Faustian pact with the charismatic Papa B (Joseph Mawle) – the self-styled ‘patron saint of random violence’ – plunges Jamie into a frightening world of chaos. By showing us these bizarre events from Jamie’s point of view, Ridley forces us to share his hallucinatory vision of an apocalyptic world. The ever-brilliant Eddie Marsan contributes a darkly hilarious cameo as the enigmatic Weapons Man, and Ridley’s coup de grace is a quiet, emotionally charged ending as surprising as it is bold.'
Nigel Floyd
Here is the trailer.
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