London Unplugged
A diverse, uneven but often rewarding set of views recording life in the capital today
This film incorporates the following segments: (a) Dog Days; (b) Felines; (c) Club Drunk; (d) Unchosen; (e) Pictures; (f) Little Sarah's Big Adventure; (g) Shopping; (h) Mudan Blossoms; (i) The Door To; (j) Kew Gardens.
In one sense this amiable portmanteau film suggests a continuation of the concept featured first in Paris, je t'aime (2006) and then in New York, I Love You
(2008) each of which brought together a series of short pieces
reflecting life in the city directed by different hands. But there is a
major distinction to be noted in that those works, disappointing though
they were, made use of much established talent. In contrast, London Unplugged
was specifically designed to give opportunities to newcomers. To their
credit some established names supportive of the project (Juliet
Stevenson and Imogen Stubbs amongst them) gave their services free and
that without hogging the best roles! Stubbs is part of an ensemble
piece and Stevenson shares the screen with a haunting performance by
Eve Pearce.
Like most features made up of bits and pieces, London Unplugged
is uneven. But its good intentions are matched by effective colour
photography and it is able to touch on many aspects of London today
from the cost of renting and the loneliness so often inherent in living
in a big city to the problems of asylum seekers and the difficulty many
have in making meaningful contact with others. The film incorporates
ten tales connected by a thread in which we see a real-life athlete,
Yourlance Bianca Richards, running from east to west, from Stratford to
Kew, while she confides her thoughts in voice over.
The two most effective segments come first. Both Dog Days and Felines
are written and directed by George Taylor yet they are quite different
in character, one being a romantic tale and the other sinister. These
pieces together with Layke Anderson's Shopping set in a Soho sex shop contain the best acting in the film. As a narrative of obsession The Door To
also works well: it shows a Norwegian worker seeking access to a club
in Earl's Court used by a woman who has attracted his attention. For
meatier material, you need to turn to Unchosen
centred on a woman refugee and her hidden secret, but here the acting
is less confident and some of the other sections are rather too slight
to register in any memorable way. Two of them support the idea that
some aspects of life remain much the same over the ages: that's
suggested by the fact that both are based on material first created a
hundred years ago. However, Pictures,
adapted from a tale by Katherine Mansfield, feels too unreal to
convince as portrayed here in this 21st century version; Virginia
Woolf's Kew Gardens fares better in its fusion of past and present in a manner that touches on the poetic - it's slight but original.
The odd one out here is the film's single animated sequence, Mitchell Crawford's Club Drunk.
I could have wished that it had not been interrupted by a shot or two
of ordinary exterior footage, but this brief work with its downbeat
portrayal of some people's pleasure is designed with real panache and
an eye for telling colour detail. London Unplugged
may be of mixed quality, but it's an admirable venture and its best
pieces may well introduce us to artists of whom we shall hear more.
Cast:
(a) Melanie Grey, Ivanno Jeremiah; (b) Juliet Stevenson, Eve Pearce,
Berwick Wickens, Chris Wilson (d) Dimitra Barla, Max Pritchard, Poppy
Miller; (e) Miriam Gould, Polly Lister, Shaun Prendergast; (f)
Nina Cryan, Jane Kinninmont; (g) Ricky Nixon, Bruce Payne; (h) Qi
Zhang, Kotryna Sniukaite; (i) Stephen Cavanagh, Tuva Heger-Bratterud;
(j) Anjana Vasan, Christina Carty, Imogen Stubbs, Simon Wilson, Natasha
Wightman. In the interlink segment: Yourlance Bianca Richards.
Dirs (a)
and (b) George Taylor from his own screenplay, (d) Ben Jacobson and
Nicholas Cohen from a screenplay by Devorah Corona, (e) Rosanna Lowe
from a screenplay by her and David Cohen based on the story by
Katherine Mansfield, (g) Layke Anderson from a screenplay by Ryan
Child, (h) Qi Zhang, Natalia Casali and Kaki Wong from a screenplay by
Qi Zhang, Natalia Casali and Kotryna Sniukaite, (i) Andres
Heger-Bratterud from his own screenplay, (j) Nicholas Cohen from the
story by Virginia Woolf, Dir, Screenplay and Ed (c) Mitchell Crawford, Dir and M
(f) Andrew Cryan from a screenplay by him and Jane Kinninmont. Dir of
Front credits, interlink segment and supervising direction
Nicholas Cohen, Original Concept Qi Zhang and David Cohen, Pro Nicholas Cohen, Ph Donny Johnson, Ben Daily and Davide Scalenghe.
Psychology News/London Film School/Four Corners Film/Migrant Resource Centre-Munro Film Services.
90 mins. UK. 2018. Rel: 18 January 2019. Cert. 15.