Next Cinema Lounge

The Cinema Lounge meets Monday, April 12 at 7:00pm, to take a closer look at Terry Gilliam's embattled 1985 film Brazil, a dark comedy of terrorism and government gone awry. Did Gilliam prophesize The Patriot Act, or was he just taking Orwell to the next level?

Cinema Lounge, a film discussion group, takes place the second Monday of every month at 7:00pm at Borders Books, 600 14th St., NW in Washington, DC (near the Metro Center Metro stop).

The 18th Annual D.C. International Film Festival

An Interview with Kim Ki-Duk

By Larry Hart

After viewing the Republic of Korea’s official entry for this year’s Best Foreign Language Film, I was startled to learn of Director/Writer Kim Ki-Duk’s background as a factory worker and South Korean Army veteran. Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter…and Spring is a visually stunning mystical allegory of life, the four seasons, and the relationship of ancient Buddhist culture to the human condition.

Spring, Summer… is something of a departure for the 43 year old Kim, whose earlier films concerned such concrete topics as the U.S. 50 year presence in Korea and the relationship of two Korean exiles living in Paris. Although beautifully acted by the principals, action and dialogue are at a minimum and it is not geared to the MTV generation.

The film is divided into five segments, each in a different season and set on a tree-lined lake (more on that later) where a tiny Buddhist monastery floats on a raft amidst scenic splendor. We learn it is Spring and come to the scene through a set of doors that are more symbolic than real. (There are “doors” inside the monastery that are not needed but actually represent the rules we are meant to live by). Old Monk (no characters names are used) gives some tough love to Child Monk, who learns that torturing small creatures is not so much fun when the tables are turned.

When we return in Summer, Child Monk has become an adolescent, and when a mother brings her spiritually ill daughter for a rest cure, hanky-panky ensues. When the girl is cured and sent home to her mother, the love-sick Boy Monk deserts the monastery and, as we learn in the darker segments of Fall and Winter, the real world brings out the worst in him.

Kim is certainly not the first writer to relate the four seasons to the life stages of man, nor the innocence of Spring to Fall and Winter representing the darker side of man’s nature. However, the use of Buddhist concepts of religion and nature as interchangeable and the symbolic use of animals (I don’t think I’ll forget the scene in which a cat’s tail is put to a unique use) gives a new take on an old theme.

Kim has also cast perfectly, with veteran Korean theatrical actor Oh-Young-Soo seamlessly inhabiting the role of Old Monk. Kim Jong-ho as Child Monk and Hay Eo-jin as the girl who brings out the lust (and all the evil that seems to represent in these stories) in Boy Monk (Seo Jae-kyung) are also standouts.

I interviewed Kim through an interpreter at the Four Seasons Hotel in Georgetown (hotel of choice for visiting filmmakers) as he was doing a marathon round of promotions for Sony Pictures Classic, which is handling U.S. distribution.

It turns out that Kim developed his artistic bent (first as a painter) during his army stint. France beckoned, as it does for so many artists, and he made his way selling his works on the streets of the French Riviera.

“One day,” he says, “I awoke to discover the world of cinema and jumped into it.” Kim first gained notice as a screenwriter, then made his directorial debut in 1996 with “Crocodile.”

Although a Christian, Kim says he has always had an intense interest in Buddhism, not so much as a religion, but as part of his culture and part of the nature of humanity. Kim says he is interested in all religions.

“I believe in some way they are all part of our lives,” Kim said.

Kim went to extraordinary lengths to get use of the setting of the film. It’s in a national park and known as Jusan Pond, an artificial lake created 200 years ago. It took six months to get the government’s permission to build a specially constructed set that would float atop the lake. Kim says he could have built a set and used computer graphics that are so popular now, but it wouldn’t have been the same.

“It would have been cold and wouldn’t have had the same smell.”

Kim said the film has had modest success in Korea, with older audiences enthusiastic, but with limited appeal to the high-tech oriented Korean youth.

As for his next project, Kim is hoping that new interest in his work in the U.S. will lead a major studio to bankroll a large-scale look at the origins of Buddhism 1500 years ago and its spread from Korea to Japan.

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter…and Spring will have its premiere at FilmFest DC and is set for a May 7 release in the Washington market.

Thirty Minutes with Matthew Ryan Hoge, Writer and Director of The United States of Leland

By Adam Spector

Matthew Ryan Hoge took a strange path to filmmaking. Yes, he earned a Bachelor’s Degree from the University of Southern California’s School of Cinema. But he then spent two years teaching young violent offenders at a juvenile hall in Los Angeles. Hoge’s first film, Self Storage, never found distribution. Rather than grow discouraged, Hoge wrote The United States of Leland, based in part on his experiences at the juvenile hall. Leland is a quiet, thoughtful high school student who one day kills Ryan, the retarded younger brother of his ex-girlfriend. In a juvenile hall, Pearl, a bright teacher, tries to understand Leland and make sense of the seemingly inexplicable crime. Pearl wants to help Leland but also plans to write a book about the youth. Outside the hall, both Leland’s and Ryan’s family try to cope with the murder and its aftermath.

Hoge’s script eventually ended up with Kevin Spacey, who became its champion. Spacey, and his production company Trigger Street, helped find financing. He also took the small but pivotal role of Albert, Leland’s father. Don Cheadle starred as Pearl, while up-and-comer Ryan Gosling played Leland. Jena Malone, Martin Donovan, Ann Magnuson, Chris Klein, Michelle Williams and Lena Olin rounded out the talented cast.

After strong word of mouth at last year’s Sundance Film Festival, Paramount Classics bought the distribution rights. The United States of Leland opens in limited release this month. A couple of weeks ago Hoge visited D.C. as part of a promotion tour. He was kind enough to sit down with me to discuss his film, his experiences, and his future.

Adam Spector: You’ve been very open about the role of your experiences teaching in a juvenile hall in creating this film. How much of the film is autobiographical? Was there a Leland or was he a composite? Did you face similar challenges as Pearl did in getting to know some of the inmates?

Matthew Ryan Hoge: There was never a Leland. That part was fictional. Leland was a character I’d been carrying around for a while. He probably came from reading The Stranger by Albert Camus a few too many times in my youth. Most of the kids I interacted with in the facility were caught up in the gang world, so they were very different from Leland. Those characters were represented in the film but they were not the heart of it. But a lot of it was autobiographical--a lot of what Pearl is going through. He has access to the kids I never had. I never really had that kind of time outside the classroom. But the experience I’d like the audience to take is sort of what I had teaching, where I showed up hearing about these kids. My first day ... the kids were grouped together by offense and I was going into a classroom with 17 kids that had been charged with murder.

AS: Threw you in the deep end, huh?

MRH: I had never taught a class, nothing. I walked in finding all of this stuff out. There are really no lesson plans in juvenile hall because you have an incredible range (of kids). You have three kids who can’t speak English and a kid who was in the Harvard track. So you’re just scrambling for the 3-4 hours you have for class. So I just had this feeling. I’d never been around anyone who had killed someone, so I had an idea, as I think anybody else would, as to what sort of person is capable of that. And over the time I spent with the kids I just had to revise that notion, because I was not there to witness what they did. Their lives are now being defined by that one action, but I wasn’t there for that action. I don’t know the kid that did that. I’m interacting with them in a different way. And so the more distance I got from knowing what was in their case file ... I felt that I really got to know them. And the sense, especially when you’re dealing with such young people, that they’re just kids. Most of them can’t really explain why what happened happened. They’re incredibly remorseful. They know what they did was wrong. And it’s a different side, something that you don’t see in the media ... You have these kids shooting up high schools and things like that ... we just turn them into absolute monsters, and there are so many other things going on that influence these kids, that influence the situation. I just wanted to get past that, take the audience on a journey so that when you hear about Leland’s case you think “This guy must be a monster, there’s no way we could understand him,” and we try to pull people along to that goal.

AS: Make him more of a three-dimensional character.

MRH: Yeah, just realize that ... the next time you pick up a paper and read about some shocking crime committed by a 15 year-old, a 17 year-old, to just think past the easy answers of “This kid was mentally insane,” “this happened because he played too many violent video games,” or “his dad wasn’t there,” and it’s never that simple. These could be our kids, could be your kids, could be anybody’s kids.

AS: Following up on that, how important was it for you to give no single reason why Leland committed his crime? Early on he comes right out and says that everyone is asking why. It’s clear that Leland himself didn’t want to give one single reason. Also, Leland commits his crime with a knife, not a gun. Was that because you wanted to stay away from the whole gun debate or was that more incidental?

MRH: To me the weapon was just a question of access. There wouldn’t be a gun in his home. Also, the nature of the crime ... I think the conditions of shooting someone are just very different. To kill someone with a knife, it’s just grisly. Just to even consider what this must have been like. I think I just wanted something, an act that when you first meet Leland you just can’t put the two together. Again, the experience I had with these kids was to find out that this kid who was doing great in my class had stabbed his mother 40 times. You just can’t get your head around how this person could have committed that act.

AS: And every other time, in the flashbacks, when Leland was with Ryan he shows him the utmost kindness.

MRH: This isn’t about the reason why this happened. It was very important for me not to have a clear “why” because I didn’t want any place for the arrow of blame to really go. I wanted to keep it sort of shifting. If you look at the film toward the end there is ... I don’t think it’s the “why” people expect there to be at the end where you find out he didn’t do it or you find out it was some elaborate thing. But the truth is that a series of things happened to Leland that because he is the person that he is makes this action. So there is a reason his character does this action at this point in his life. But I didn’t want it to boil down to “Let’s blame Albert” . . . or “Let’s blame Becky, the girlfriend,” because I don’t think it’s ever that simple.

AS: To play devil’s advocate, both of Leland’s parents seem very removed from their son, especially Albert, who doesn’t seem to show much love at all. Given your goals for the film, are you at all concerned that people might see it and immediately blame the parents?

MRH: Yeah, but I think that it’s sort of instinctual for a lot of people. That’s why there’s always talk of suing the parents when one of these kids shoots up a high school. And the fact that Albert is really removed is a key part of the story. That’s Leland’s emotional model. He’s got his mother who is a very feeling and a very emotional person and his father is on the (other) end of that pole. That’s who Leland is looking up to. That’s how you’re a man. That’s how you exist in this world is this incredible wall that you build up. You kind of view the world from this third person perspective and you’re never really emotionally entangled. So I think that it is critical to Leland’s psychology because he’s sort of said “OK, I’m going to be like my dad.” He keeps this wall up, and then everything changes. It’s as if someone who has never seen light and suddenly there’s all these shards of light. He’s never felt anything and all of a sudden he falls in love with Becky and has his heart broken. He goes to New York and has that moment where, as a kid you realize that the adult world is as messed up, as conflicted, as the kid world. You realize, “Oh Sh-t, it’s not going to get any better.” And so all these things happen and it’s because he’s kept all these things out for so long. It just completely overwhelms him. It creates this enormous mess inside of him that he starts projecting onto other people.

AS: At one point in the flashbacks Becky’s going through a rough time and she wants Leland to tell her that everything’s going to be OK. That’s pretty standard during a crisis, but Leland refuses to do that. What does that scene mean to you and what does it say about Leland?

MRH: To me there’s a logic to it. It’s like saying “Say you’re always going to be there.” Well I’m not always going to be there. I think he (Leland) doesn’t understand that it’s a real human need, that you want people to say that everything’s going to be OK even if the other person who’s saying that really can’t control it. We want to be reassured that everything is going to work out and it‘s an exchange that he takes seriously because he’s sort of new at this whole emotional connection with people, and it’s something where he’s getting his hands dirty for the first time. I think that he has a more logical head about it and he’s learning how you get emotionally tangled up with people.

AS: The way I look at the film is that you get to know Pearl better than you get to know Leland. Leland is always at a distance. Yet it is Leland who provides the voiceover narration, not Pearl as some people might expect. Why did you make that choice?

MRH: To me it’s a division. Pearl is the protagonist of the film. Leland is the heart of the film and I just felt that it was key to stay with Pearl and to tell Pearl’s story. It’s a way to get into Leland. Also, Leland is just keeping people out for the bulk of the film and the hope is with Pearl. It’s this idea of why people go through awful things, bad things happen to them and that is how we become better people. If Leland had never wound up in this juvenile hall, I don’t think Pearl would have ... he’d be living the same kind of life ... this collision with this kid forces him to reevaluate his life, the choices that he’s made, the moral decisions that he’s making, and he comes to a point at the end when he genuinely wants to be different. And for me it was important that ... with the protagonist of the film you’d have some sense of hope.

AS: But how come Pearl didn’t provide the voiceover?

MRH: I think that it was also essential that, because Leland was keeping people away at the beginning of the film, that it was a way to let people know that there’s another side to him. Ryan Gosling affected for this character a really soft voice for this character, a really soothing, pleasing, gentle voice. And I think that he’s saying things as he’s writing in his journal that he can be more candid about. You can sense that there is an active, feeling person, while what he’s giving to the world is this false front. Without that (the narration) it’s very late in the film when you finally realize that there are cracks here, that he does feel things. And I felt that it would be too late. I think it’s really key to sort of invite people in.

AS: I want to talk for a moment about the look of the film. Scenes in the juvenile hall are very bright and colorful compared to the more dark, foreboding look you often see in other movies that depict these places. Was this a conscious choice based on your own experiences?

MRH: Yeah, it was a combination of two things. One: That’s really what it looks like. You see movie prisons and everything is dark and painted in shadows and grim. It’s not really like that, at least that was not my experience. So I took the production designer and the DP (director of photography) to this place to look around and get a sense. There is light flooding through these windows. The walls are bright blue, and the kids are in bright orange ... It’s a weird contrast. There’s some very grave stuff going on there. The kids are there for a very serious reason. But you have all these bright colors and sunlight. I also felt that with such heavy subject matter that it was important to be light in the treatment and to give people pleasing images. If you have something that’s gritty, dark and dingy and you’re dealing with what we’re dealing with--a serious heavy subject matter, as a viewer I’d be checking out.

AS: Let’s talk a little bit about the making of the film. How did your script end up with Kevin Spacey and Trigger Street Productions?

MRH: I don’t even know. (laughs)

AS: It just appeared there?

MRH: Yeah. he script had been around a little bit and a lot of people read it. Someone gave it to somebody who gave it to Bernie Morris, who worked with Kevin at the time, and he gave it to Kevin. And Kevin was the guy I’d always wanted to play Albert but I really didn’t know how to get into him, so some magical fairy fluttered it to his desk.

AS: You said you always wanted Kevin Spacey to be Albert. He initially became known for more acidic, sardonic type of roles. Lately, he’s gotten away from that and played nicer characters. A lot of people I’ve talked to said “If only he’d go back to more of what he used to do.” Do you think that’s one of the things that attracted Spacey to the part?

MRH: I don’t know. He’d been playing a different type of role. I think a lot of the reason he did it, to be candid, was because he wanted to get the movie made.

AS: That if he was in it people would be more likely to finance it.

MRH: And I think I wore him down. He knew I wanted him to play the part. I kept asking him and bugging him. I think it’s fun for him to play that role. It’s a different kind of role for him in the sense of ... Albert is an asshole but he doesn’t enjoy it as much as some of the other Spacey characters who really relished it. They knew they had the great line, knew they were killing you. Albert is just sort of disconnected and it’s wit but he just sort of tosses it off like he just wrote it in a short story this morning. It’s more casual, more flip. He’s less emotionally invested in being acidic.

AS: In addition to Kevin Spacey, you have a very impressive cast. Don Cheadle, Jena Malone, Martin Donovan, Chris Klein. You were an unknown director. How were you able to get such an accomplished group of people. Was it difficult getting the actors you wanted?

MRH: I’d draw up my dream cast and slide it under his (Spacey’s) door and he’d pick up the phone and call. And if I call Don Cheadle, he’s like “Yeah, I don’t know who this Hoge is.” But when it’s Kevin Spacey calling and saying, “Check this script out and by the way I really trust the guy. You’re gonna like it. He’s going to make this work” you get immediate credibility when I really had no track record as a director. So it was surprisingly easy but that’s entirely because of Kevin.

AS: How much guidance did you need to give your actors, especially some of the younger ones? Did they get the characters right away, or did you need to lead them through it?

MRH: I attached wires to them so I could shock them. (laughs)

AS: Well, that’s one way to do it.

MRH: The cool thing is that we had a lot of time before to talk. With Chris Klein, who plays Alan, we really talked a lot about the character. I think that was very helpful for him to get it. And it was different things for Ryan (Gosling). I gave him a few books and CDs, and that became a way. We rehearsed a lot. So I think that by the time we got to shooting he was pretty ready. He knew where my head was coming from. That made it easier. But I think that it’s just like trying to figure out what someone’s process is and trying to help them inhabit that role as well as they can. Their job is a lot harder than mine, so I have tremendous respect for what actors do.

AS: Music plays an important role in your film. Some of the bands are ones that people are less likely to have heard of, such as The Pixies. Are you hoping that this film will expose people to new music and how did you go about selecting some of these contributors?

MRH: Yeah. Again, I lucked out.These were my favorite bands. The guy who did the score is Jeremy Enigk, who was with a band called Sunny Day Real Estate and is in a band now called The Fire Duct, who had always been someone I admired tremendously. The Pixies and Robert Pollard, who was with a band called Guided by Voices ... If you ask anyone who runs a college radio station, they’re going to start drooling because in a larger sense, they’re (the bands) not well known but they’re sort of the alternative independent mainstays. So for me just getting a chance to work with them and get music from people I really admired. And I think there’s a segment of the population that will only see the film because of the music.

AS: Whatever works.

MRH: Yeah. (laughs)

AS: I wanted to ask you a little bit about Sundance, where Leland first gained national attention. The festival is under increasing scrutiny. I’d you to talk about your experiences. Was it what the Sundance was designed to do, foster growth and experimentation, or was it more just an opportunity for people to get a distributor for their films?

MRH: I think it’s really tough because they (the Sundance organizers) are struggling with the identity of the festival. Five years ago we’re not a Sundance film. I mean, look at the cast ... You know, I’ve been on the other side. I made a film, a $9,000 film, and I was banging on the Sundance door and nobody was answering that door then. So I know what it’s like to be shut out and the films that probably need the most help don’t get it. The good thing is that there are a lot of other festivals around ... Their intentions are really noble. They’re kind of mystified about what it’s become. Like everything else, though, if something is successful it’s going to be about business ... It’s sort of weird, the corporate tie-ins. When I was there you can’t walk down Main Street because there’s f---in J-Lo. You know everybody’s gawking at her. The good thing is that they get people to see films that otherwise wouldn’t be seen. Their documentaries are great. They gain attention and audiences for films that would otherwise be forgotten ... You want to be helping the films that need the help, while a film like ours, which doesn’t seem like it needs help, needed it too. Because the system is set up that we needed Sundance exposure to really launch a film, because it’s so hard for indies, whether it’s a $10,000 film or a $10 million film.

AS: Has this film opened doors for you? Do you have any other projects lined up?

MRH: I’m writing a script for Curtis Hanson. It’s a chance to learn from a brilliant guy and I’ve got something that I hope to be shooting by the end of the year.

AS: Something you’re going to direct?

MRH: Something that I’m hoping to get going soon if somebody gives me the money.

AS: Care to divulge what either of the projects are about or are they trade secrets?

MRH: The one I’m doing is top secret. The Curtis Hanson one is about the world of competitive Scrabble. There’s a book called Word Freak, which is about (competitive Scrabble), which I knew nothing about. Since then I’ve become a huge Scrabble guy. It was fun being immersed in something new.

AS: So this is something that is really going on?

MRH: Yeah. It’s great to have a story set in that world. Just last August they had a championship where there was a $50,000 prize and it was on ESPN, so they’re gaining a certain profile.

AS: This is a good 180 degrees from Leland. You don’t want to be just the juvenile crime director.

MRH: All I got for a long time were scripts with a troubled young person. I’ve done that. I really did have to fight to get people to think of me for this film. Something like actors who have been typecast. Everyone thinks that’s all I can do.

AS: So you wanted to avoid that from the get-go.

MRH: Yeah. I knew this was the only writing job I wanted. Curtis Hanson ... Wonder Boys and L.A. Confidential are two of the best films of the last 20 years. So it was (a) I can work with this guy and learn so much and (b) I want to do something that’s both for my enjoyment and for how I’m viewed as a writer and a filmmaker, something that’s totally different.

AS: At one point early in Leland, Pearl says that you’re not really a writer unless people are reading your work. Is that something you believe?

MRH: For a long, long time I was a writer and nobody was reading my sh-t. I know what it’s like getting rejection slips. I made a film nobody saw. I made 20 minutes of another film that I couldn’t even finish. You’re a writer when you’re going through it, you’re doing it. But the audience is essential. Whether you’re writing for a blog for two other people of if you are writing for yourself, you’re writing because you have an audience. I guess it just depends on what you hope that audience will be.

The 4th International Jewish Film Festival

Alexander Trocchi and Young Adam

By James McCaskill

EDINBURGH, Scotland. Young Adam (David Mackenzie, Scotland, 2003) was the Opening Night film at the 57th Edinburgh International Film Festival where it picked up the Best New British feature award.

Paris in the 1950s continued to be the destination of choice for disaffected writers. The period just after the first World War had seen the likes of Ernest Hemingway, e e cummings, Gertrude Stein, and Ezra Pound embrace the permissive atmosphere of The City of Lights. While more attention is paid to American Beat Generation (Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Gregory Corso) British authors, including Scotland's Alexander Trocchi, felt more creative and less restricted than in their homeland's conformity and Puritanical life. At the time the French police ignored the drug fueled life of expatriates. The 50s Bohemians lived primarily in the Left Bank's maze of small street's mix of cheap hotels and restaurants, an area bounded by the Blvd St Germain and the Seine. Drugs were readily available and heroin could be delivered to your door.

The word "Beat" came from the nomadic world of circus and carnivals while in the drug world it meant robbed or cheated. Herbert Huncke learned the word from his show business friend from Chicago's North Side and in 1945 passed it along to Jack Kerouac. A few years later Kerouac remarked, "I guess you might say we are a beat generation." In November 1952 John Clellon Holmes used the quote in his New York Times magazine article. Ginsberg later wrote "The point of Beat is that you get beat down to a certain nakedness where you actually are able to see the world in a visionary way." In time the Beat Generation moved from being vilified for the drugs and overall lack of morals to respectability as America's Bloomsbury Group.

Trocchi was born in Glasgow in 1925 and enrolled in the University of Glasgow in 1942. He dropped out to serve in the Royal Navy from 1943-1946 returning after the war to finish his degree. In 1952 a travel scholarship allowed him to change the restrictive environment of Scotland for the avant-garde literary life in Paris. He edited the influential quarterly literary magazine Merlin and published articles by Camus, Ionesco, Genet, Beckett, Creeley, Sartre, and Miller. It was during this time that he became addicted to heroin which he later wrote about in his second novel, the 1963 autobiographical Cain's Book (a junkie's confessional). He was paid after writing each chapter in order to finance his drug habit. Like other down and out young writers in Paris at that time he also wrote pornographic novels for Maurice Girodias of Olympia Press, once turning Young Adam into a porn novel. It has been said that he prostituted not only his wife but his talent as well.

His first novel was Young Adam (1957) is an existential thriller set on a barge that travels the canals between Glasgow and Edinburgh. It is a deceptively simple story that draws its inspiration from Camus' The Outsider (L'Etranger). Joe (played by Ewan McGregor) is a drifter, an outsider, who with the barge captain, Les, (Peter Mullan) find a corpse floating in the canal's dark waters. Tensions develop between and the couple (Mullan's wife, Ella, is played by Tilda Swinton) sharing the cramped quarters of the barge. Slowly the viewer is drawn into the disturbed psyche of this rootless anti-hero. Conventional morality is challenged as more is leaned about Joe and Cathie, the dead woman's (Emily Mortimer) relationship is revealed. Was it a suicide, accident, or murder?

The producer, Jeremy Thomas says of McGregor, "Joe's character is reminiscent of roles from films immortalized by Montgomery Clift, James Dean and the young Marlon Brando. Ewan is ideal for the part. He can do so much without talking--he emotes without words. He has pure screen presence."

David Mackenzie, the director, said he wanted to make the film because, "I saw a chance to explore a kind of moral grey area. I find characters with human flaws and moral ambiguity interesting. Young Adam is an amoral tale and that's what makes it compelling. Joe is on the run, from himself and his conscience. He is rebellious, in a vulnerable position, who is grappling with himself about what to do. He is a character who is about as far from innocent as you can get, but he is also not guilty."

"Joe uses sex to try to fill the emotional holes in his life," Mackenzie continues, "but nothing can fill those holes for him." Thomas agrees, "If you're making adult films, it's bound to be a central theme. It's what people think and talk about a great deal. This film is very carnal. Sex acts as emotional punctuation to the story."

One particular sex scene has already caused a stir and debate about the film's rating. Mackenzie talks about it. "This scene is the penultimate flashback in the story of Cathie and Joe--which in its own ambiguous way is the most romantic element of the film. It is a scene about the extremes of their relationship in which his frustration about failing to write culminates in a act of sexual brutality. Despite Cathie's laugh and passive consent, the idea is that it is about as far beyond the pale as you can go in a relationship, even one as sexually adventurous as theirs. The scene is placed at a point in the film where Joe is most actively in touch with his own feelings of guilt--the aim is to show us that he is not an innocent man. It is designed to make the audience appalled by Joe and then, just as that has been driven home, to remind us of just how much Cathie meant to him. We wanted to be pretty unflinchingly brutal and erotic in the scene. We talked about it and rehearsed it a few times, but there is only so much rehearsing you can do for a scene like that. Then we closed the set and shot the scene in two takes and that was that. Ewan and Emily were very brave about it and just threw themselves into it."

McGregor says he was drawn to the film because, "This is a story about addiction. Alexander Trocchi was a heroin addict, and as a heroin addict you go from one experience to the next trying to find something that will make you feel something. Joe is like that--he never finds what he's looking for. He's constantly unfulfilled. He's permanently frustrated character--and that's fascinating both to play and to watch." He also believes that Young Adam will also be an antidote to some of the fluffier British films we have been served up in recent years. "We've lost the plot in edgy stuff. If we keep churning out cheesy romantic comedies about people getting married, audiences will get bored. They make whole movies dedicated to people desperate to get married. Who cares?"

"There's a real honesty about this film,"said Tilda Swinton. "It tells Ella's story so convincingly. There's a beautiful section in the book where Trocchi describes her as being like a wild animal trapped beyond her lair. At another point, he writes, 'I'd never seen anything more beautiful than Ella in her abandoned position.' As far as her character is concerned, that's the key image. She decides to abandon herself and step onto that tightrope of sexual adventure and uncertainty. I understand the way she ticks."

The actress continues, "The Beat Movement seems such a modern concept. In the aftermath of the war, the whole question for Joe is, how do you become an artist and relate to society when society itself is so perverse? Hew feels alienated because he has lost faith in traditional patterns. He is searching for something different--for adventure, for autonomy, for freedom. But he comes to see that is an impossible task. Themes about alienation and the search for meaning are more relevant now than ever."

The sex scene between Ella and Joe has a fly land on Swinton's nipple. Probably the one scene ever filmed that needed a fly wrangler and a dab of strategically placed honey.

Peter Mullen, the cuckolded Les, thinks the audiences will identify with him. "People will relate to him because like so many of us he feels dispossessed. The only thing that matters at the end of the film is that you have seen the world through someone else's eyes--whether that be some comic half-wit or an emasculated barge owner like Les." Mullen feels that the subject of this film is hugely relevant. "It will strike a particular chord with young people because it's railing against the hypocrisy of society. These characters really resonate. Why is is so essential that a film has a happy ending."

"Ewan phoned me," Mullen continues, "and asked me to do this job and I've loved it. In the past I've had to smash his kneecaps--in Shallow Grave--and drag him downstairs and inject him with heroin--in Trainspotting. So this was a nice opportunity of do scenes together where I don't have to inflict violence on him."

Emily Mortimer plays Cathie, the young woman whose passionate relationship with Joe, the detached anti-hero of the film, ends tragically. The talented young actress admits being gripped when she first read the screenplay. "It's so rare that you read a script where the questions it poses continue to resonate for a long time afterwards. I found that I just keep on thinking about it." For her it was "a hipster view of Camus, but there is something more angry about this. This film will make people think differently and more aware of other points of view. There is an element of all of us in Cathie. She's Everywoman. She is desperate for adventure; she wants to live on the edge and experience new things, while at the same time she accepts the need to live by the rules. Like any sentient human being, she longs for excitement, yet realizes that it can't be sustained forever."

The sex scenes are an integral part of Young Adam and Mortimer did not have a problem filming them. "It's worrying and sometimes totally irresponsible--if a gratuitous sex scene comes three-quarters of the way through a film just to wake the audience up. That's really sick and cynical--it's merely appealing to people's basest instincts." She continues, "Sex is also a manifestation of Joe's inner duality. He has a terrible urge for meaning at the same time as an abhorrence of meaning and a desire to lose himself. It's an impossible search for calm. He's searching for something you know he'll never find."

McGregor feels that, "It would be terrible if everyone lived like Trocchi. He was incredibly selfish--to the point of destroying other people's lives."

An article on Young Adam could not end without some notes on the soundtrack. Ex-Talking Head David Byrne has provided a subtle and sensitive background for the film. This is not thumping music but one that underscores the existential storyline.

Mckenzie has provided the cheerless world of Joe but one filled with beauty. He has been true to Trocchi's vision of the anti-hero looking for freedom but a journey between the narrow banks of a canal.

Shoot Out at the Grand Canal

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