Best film screenings in the North (5-12 Aug)
The best film events happening in Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds this week, including HOME's Soundtrack season and FACT's rare screening of Jacques Rivette's Celine and Julie Go Boating
Lost Highway (David Lynch) + Soundtrack season
When Lost Highway was released back in 1997, the response was pretty tepid. Nearly two decades on, it’s clear that this nightmarish and impossible to forget psychological thriller should have been as celebrated as Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive. Lynch’s film is kicking off HOME’s great-looking Soundtrack season, with Barry Adamson, co-composer on Lost Highway and co-curator of Soundtrack, providing a post-film Q&A.
Read our interview with Barry Adamson
Fri 5 Aug, HOME, Manchester, 7.50pm
Also screening this week in the Soundtrack season: Under the Skin, 6 Aug (gorgeously freaky score by Mica Levi); Anatomy of Murder, 7 Aug (off-beat jazz score by Duke Ellington); and Touch of Evil, 10 Aug (rhythmic, Latin-tinged score by Henry Mancini).
Solaris (Andrei Tarkovsky)
A space movie unlike any other, Tarkovsky works his usual transcendental magic on the genre with this story of an astronaut who discovers that the planet he’s studying from a remote space station has the power to turn his memories of his dead wife into real life manifestations. A dreamlike interrogation of faith and memory, this is one of the all-time great science fiction films, but also one of cinema's most moving odes to the power of love.
6 Aug, Hyde Park Picture House, Leeds, 5pm
Body Double (Brian De Palma)
Take one part Rear Window and two parts Vertigo, turn up the heat and you get this fever dream of pure cinema. It’s one of Brian De Palma’s most disreputable efforts but that doesn’t stop it being one of his greatest achievements. We follow a Z-list actor who likes to watch. While house-sitting for an acquaintance he pervs on a neighbour and begins stalking her. A few nights later he witnesses her murder.
What begins as a slick psycho-sexual drama spirals off into a self-reflexive riot, filled with (porno) films within films, fantasy cliches, dream sequences, Scooby-Doo bad-guy reveals, softcore erotica and thriller set pieces that build to the point of delirium. De Palma was clearly having the time of his life while creating this film; you can practically hear him cackling from off-screen.
Celine and Julie Go Boating (Jacques Rivette)
Jacques Rivette had a spooky knack of making it seem as if his characters are making up their own story as they go along, giving his films a freewheeling quality; the feeling that anything could happen. This is certainly the case for Celine and Julie Go Boating, his most well-known and well-regarded film.
We follow Celine, a nightclub magician, and Julie, a librarian, as they stumble upon a mystery when both of them visits an old dark house and the same events take place. Their whimsical quest feels like a noir take on Alice in Wonderland and has inspired other great female-driven films over the years, including Susan Seidelman’s Desperately Seeking Susan and Sara Driver’s Sleepwalk.
Due to the length of Rivette's films (most are over three hours, including this one), they’re rarely screened. Grad the opportunity to see Celine and Julie Go Boating on the big screen with both hands.
11 Aug, FACT, Liverpool, 6.30pm
The Notorious Bettie Page (Mary Harron)
While watching the first section of Mary Harron’s sorely underrated biopic of 50s porn queen Bettie Page, you might think you’re in for a gruelling watch. The opening is a grim Tennessee where we see a young Bettie abused by her father and later dragged from the street and raped. Harron doesn’t treat her subject like an exploited victim, however. Contrary to practically all films about the porn industry, Bettie has a whale of a time in her new profession. The world of top-shelf smut is actually shown to be pretty wholesome.
Formally, the film pops. Harron switches headily between noirish monochrome and melodramatic colour while peppering the film with cute visual flourishes and witty montages. This screening is a reminder of just how interesting a director she is, which makes it all the more disappointing that she’s only managed to make four features in a two-decade career.
11 Aug, Liverpool Small Cinema, 7.30pm