Truth or Dare

Truth or dare - seems that it’s not as agonising a dilemma as it ought to be. The same question at the age of thirteen brings forth the inescapable threat of close quarters schadenfreude: whether you admit to kissing Ally - the boy whose freight train braces might remind you of a romantic tryst with Robocop - or discover your latent talent for necking a bottle of White Lightning faster than a speeding airgun pellet, the options appear grim. And yet, once pubescence subsides, it becomes apparent that the truth is much stranger than fiction, and usually funnier, too. Bruno, the follow-up to Sacha Baron Cohen’s and Lary Charles’ (returning to directorial duties) Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, illustrates the lop-sided balance between the comedic merits of truth or dare. Baron Cohen, clearly a fan of the latter, appears to have failed to distinguish between the two concepts – in many scenes, Bruno seems to be the agent rather than the casual observer, and thus skews the legitimacy of his satire. There’s another problem, too: his Bruno persona is not imbued with quite the same sense of endearment and doe-eyed vulnerability that Borat embodied on occasion, and therefore, it’s likely that much of the material will seem more contrived and gluttonously expectant of your laughter as a result. The kids will like it, though.

Baron Cohen’s acerbic mockumentary is the exception to a week otherwise brimming with features of a steadier pace. By introducing itself with a car crash, Lake Tahoe would seem to defy such a description, but even the most softly spoken of films should sometimes be prepared to grab you by the lapels and slap you around a bit. The otherwise hushed tone of Lake Tahoe, screening at the Glasgow Film Theatre, is orchestrated neatly by director Fernando Eimbcke, and represents a sound addition to a buoyant Mexican film industry. After crashing the family car into a telegraph pole, sixteen year old Juan (Diego Cantana) shuffles around his sleepy town attempting to elicit help from a variety of idiosyncratic figures, including a Bruce Lee enthusiast and an aspiring punk singer. Juan’s family problems are slowly revealed through his quest to find the part required to fix the dusty Nissan sedan.

Claire Denis’ 35 Shots Of Rum, screening exclusively at the Cameo, shares a similar desire to disseminate atypical family relationships, transcending the comparatively formulaic and privileged sniffling of Rebecca Miller’s The Private Lives Of Pippa Lee; more on that later. Set in amongst the concrete fortresses of the Parisian suburbs, 35 Shots Of Rum follows Lionel (Alex Descas) and his adolescent daughter Josephine’s (Mati Diop) shifting relationship, as external forces begin to interfere with their hermetic intimacy. Realising that their existing relationship is outgrowing itself, both father and daughter are confronted with the stark possibility of a future without one another. In contrast, The Private Lives Of Pippa Lee appears to have more to say for itself, but is missing the depth to utilise the considerable talents of a cast that includes Robin Wright Penn, Wynona Rider, Alan Arkin, Keanu Reeves, Maria Bello, and Julianne Moore. Penn plays Pippa, a woman whose marriage to Herb Lee (Alan Arkin) is ostensibly a healthy one. Pippa’s own idea of how secure her marriage is begins to change when Lee suddenly announces plans to relocate them both to a retirement home. Subsequent events prompt a series of flashbacks depicting a younger Pippa (Blake Lively) in her salad days, as Pippa attempts to rediscover herself outwith her Stepford Wife persona

Jeffrey Levy-Hinte presents an altogether funkier trip back in time to 1974 in his excellent music documentary, Soul Power. Screening at the Filmhouse, Soul Power presents a dense collage of intimate and energetic footage covering a three day concert that was initially organised to complement the legendary ‘Rumble In The Jungle’ between George Foreman and Muhammad Ali, and is now remembered as a watershed moment in its own right. With performances and music from Bill Withers, The Spinners, B. B. King, James Brown, and Miriam Makeba, Soul Power reads like a who’s who of soul artists, all of whom were at the height of their powers. Any music documentary that offers an alternative to the overabundance of hair metal or the torpor of shoegaze is alright with us, and with that in mind, Levy-Hinte’s refreshing feature gives a much overdue big screen outing to The Godfather of Soul and his luminous contemporaries.