Category: CULTURE (2022)

Writer Jimmy Dougan

Close is being screened at Mockingbird Cinema from 3 March to 9 March and MAC from 31 March to 6 April

It begins in the dark: two boys hiding in a derelict house in the woods, snatches of hushed whispers half-heard over a black screen. Léo (Eden Dambrine) and Rémi (Gustav De Waele) squat close together, almost touching. Then, they run.

As the boys burst out into the lush Belgian countryside, Valentin Hadjadj’s score swells to life. The camera stays close on them, and it judders and races to keep up as they cross multi-colour peony fields.

These are the opening moments of Close, the sophomore film from Lukas Dhont which secured critical acclaim at Festival de Cannes and won the Grand Prix. A tale of a loving friendship cruelly ended, Dhont’s film follows these boys with unwavering commitment. The result is a quietly devastating film of rare power.

The bond these two boys share is physically affectionate and unfalteringly intimate. They are inseparable, spending most nights sleeping side-by-side in Rémi’s bed. Léo’s parents are working-class, growing and harvesting beautiful flowers. Rémi’s are a bit more well-off, treating Léo like a second son.

Rémi is quieter than the more outgoing Léo and plays the oboe for the school orchestra. Léo wants to travel the world and it’s a given that Rémi will join him.

But starting high school brings trouble; rumours are spreading.

When Léo rests his head on Rémi’s shoulder in class, a classmate watches with a mixture of confusion and interest for just a bit too long. Then, the dreaded question from three – a reference to Macbeth? – young girls in their class: “Are you two together?” Léo especially is befuddled, even offended.

There is, it’s important to remember, a big difference between spiteful maliciousness and legitimate curiosity. Rémi and Léo aren’t necessarily being bullied – nobody is asking these questions to torment them. The closeness of their relationship is genuinely unique for children of their age, especially between two boys. One of the film’s strengths is Dhont and co-screenwriter Angelo Tijssens’ firmly empathetic, non-judgemental treatment of these children.

There are no playground baddies.

The tragedy of Close arises not from Léo and Rémi’s mistreatment, but from the shame that unfurls in Léo regardless. It all feels achingly, sickeningly avoidable.

The difference between Rémi and Léo is the latter is a bit more… tractable. Rémi’s response to the rumours is to shrug. Who cares? They have each other. It’s Léo who pulls away and changes his behaviour. Scared of being seen as feminine, he takes up ice hockey and begins showing an interest in football to meekly ingratiate himself with the (very boring) cool kids.

To say any more of the plot would do Close a real disservice, but it’s hardly spoiling anything to say it moves almost inexorably, as if on rails, towards tragedy. There are two readings of the word ‘close’ after all. The end of this friendship rumbles distantly, like a natural disaster. Before you can react it’s here and you’re left watching these characters try to pick up the pieces.

Is Close a queer film? Maybe. But I’m reluctant to label it as such because neither teen ever explicitly identifies themselves as being queer, nor do they seem to be sexually attracted to each other. It feels silly – perhaps even reckless – to need to define them too, when the film shows so powerfully the dangers of imposing such labels on the young.

It does the complexity of their love a disservice.

Dhont’s debut Girl (2018) was a frustrating – arguably downright creepy – tale of a transgender ballerina and Close can also make for uncomfortable viewing. Some scenes have a voyeuristic quality which stop just short of feeling exploitative: Léo watching Rémi adoringly as he practises his oboe feels like a crass and heavy-handed metaphor for their burgeoning sexualities. And like Girl, this feels a touch overlong.

As for the two boys, Eden Dambrine and Gustav De Waele are nothing short of astonishing. The chemistry is startlingly livewire, radiating a deeply committed cinematic realism.

Their work left me genuinely slack-jawed, and I’m certain that Close will go on to be seen as one of the great childhood films owing to their performances.

Émilie Dequenne and Léa Drucker are sublime as Rémi and Léo’s respective mothers. Drucker does so much with silence and what hangs unsaid. Dequenne has a warm ethereality. She is first seen lounging in the grass, gradually becoming associated with nature. She embodies grace and then, crushingly, forgiveness.

This isn’t a film that you sit contentedly and watch.

It has no interest in being an act of simple escapism. It is a sad and upsetting experience – perhaps to a fault. Regardless, it lured me in, then left me a bit broken and bruised staring blankly at the credits.

It is a film bursting at every seam with love but has the feeling of watching a car-crash in slow motion. An unbearably moving film, Close feels, for our current culture, essential.

Close – official trailer: 

Close will be screened at MAC from 31 March to 6 April: www.macbirmingham.co.uk/event/close

It also screens at Mockingbird Cinema, at The Custard Factory, from 3 March to 9 March: www.mockingbirdcinema.com/production/close

For full listings and links to online ticket salesclick on the links above.

To read more about Lukas Dhont go to: www.imdb.com/name/nm4080113

For more on MUBI and for full Midlands showtimes visit: www.mubi.com/close

Writer Jasmine Khan / Photographers Khali Ackford & Luke Tubbs

**Grove is playing at the Hare & Hounds on Tuesday 31 January, as part of Independent Venue Week – click here for tickets**

 
“No one really knows who I am,” says Grove in the humblest of tones. I try not to laugh. After Supersonic Festival, all the BR queers know about Grove – I had to fight several of them off  just to secure this interview. Not to mention they played Glastonbury last year.

For those of you who don’t know, Grove is an experimental punk-infused force of nature. The breadth of their sonic exploration includes elements of dancehall, bass, and jungle. But what stands out beyond their complex, erratic, and magnetic sound is how Grove seems to ignite an audiences’ soul.

“With the nature of being a performer, there’s the stage and then there’s the audience,” explains Grove. “But there’s also this palpable energy. It sometimes feels like there’s a force wall that needs to be broken.”

 
I’m sure we’ve all felt it in the crowd at a gig, the tension between the stage and the floor. When it disintegrates and the audience and performance become one, that’s when music truly fulfils its human purpose.

At Grove’s performances, “You’re not just watching the show, you are the show.” Indeed they emphasise, “We are the show.”

It’s “a collective energy”, one that’s designed to be emotionally and spiritually fulfilling and one which Grove hopes “can be transformed into other aspects of our lives.”

On this point transforming or perhaps transferring energy, Grove is resolute: “People need to be reminded of that, I need to be reminded of that, that we are powerful people, that our energy and our actions hold, especially in all this…” They pause and let out an extended sigh, struggling to find an apt word they settle on, “…social/political climate that we find ourselves in.”

Grove doesn’t sound defeated, but they do sound tired, tired of complaining about the state of the country as I’m sure we all are.

 
When I ask about what happens to the collective energy Grove builds with their audience and where it goes they say, “the energy at the beginning is a bit more sinister, then building it up to that crescendo point of being like, OK we are all in this, let’s throw everything we have got into this moment.

“I use the concept of catharsis a lot, in terms of a building of energy and then a release. I think I’ve come to realise that the release isn’t meant to be one moment, but taken into the world.”

Grove isn’t massively specific about what we’re meant to do with the energy they gift us at their performances, but I think that’s their point. It’s a gift, it’s for our own purposes; spare motivation to be stored for a rainy day.

 
Grove explains, after their gigs, the ones which truly feel collaborative, they love connecting with more experienced punks who often have snippets of wisdom about how to balance action with reflection. They also shout out their regular support EJ:AKIN, “a beautifully grounding person to travel and perform with.”

Grove recently performed at Decolonise Fest in London, a non-profit DIY punk festival ‘created by and for punxs of colour’ and it’s abundantly clear through their work and our on-going conversation, that Grove is heavily focused on activism and collaboration.

However, Grove also makes it abundantly clear that they do not (and never could) represent all queer people of colour: “I represent myself at that given time, and I don’t try to hold myself to any past or future version of myself.

“I do take on those labels, but I don’t claim to speak for everybody.”

 
They continue: “I’ve even come to reconsider the whole masculine and feminine energy thing”, which was a prevalent line in bios and reviews with Grove until recently, “because I think as part of my journey with gender exploration, masculine and feminine for me are so reductive in and of themselves.

“The music that I make reflects how I view gender – you just chuck it all in a pot and see what happens.

“You don’t need to label it, it’s more about the holistic experience of what you’re listening to.”

Getting back to what we’ll be listening to, I’m keen to ascertain whether we can expect anything beyond Grove’s typical experiential gig when they perform in Brum shortly.

 
“I’m going to be trying out some new tunes from an upcoming release,” says Grove. “It’s going to be very exciting and a lot more politically focused, a small body of work.”

And how would Mx Grove like their audience to show up?

“I want people to bring themselves authentically, unbridle themselves from the weight of being perceived. Move your limbs in ways you’ve never done before.

“If that’s not your thing just listen attentively, and engage in whatever way that means to you, that would be dreamy.”

I try to get a date for their upcoming ‘more politically focused release’ but Grove tuts at me and laughs it off, providing an answer almost as specific as their gender identity. “There’s no set date, it’ll be released sometime after March.” So, sometime between March and the end of time then?

I can’t wait.

Finally, I need to know whether Grove’s Spotify bio, which says ‘legendary pussy music’, is about their sound or themselves. Grove laughs again, louder this time: “I never expected anyone to actually mention it, but my friend Annie said it.

Grove insists it’s about the music. But, I’ll continue to insist it’s about both.

 
You can catch Grove, said legendary pussy (music), at the Hare and Hounds on Tuesday 31 January – tickets priced at £7.00 as part of Independent Venue Week.

For tickets to Grove’s upcoming Hare and Hounds show go to: www.independentvenueweek.com/uk/show/grove

For more from Grove go to: www.theyisgrove.com

For more from Hare and Hounds go to: www.hareandhoundskingsheath.co.uk

For more from independent venue week go to: www.independentvenueweek.com/uk

Writer Jimmy Dougan / Images from Nan Goldin and P.A.I.N

 
Acclaimed photographer Nan Goldin thrives in the edges. Her world is dimly lit, glanced fleetingly in a bathroom mirror or through the cigarette haze of a back-alley dive.

Her work, capturing 70s New York and beyond, is comforting and intimate yet violent and bleak. In one of the hundreds of images compromising her iconic The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, she stares back at us: her autumnal frizz frames a pale face defined by two purple welts around her eyes, inflicted by a boyfriend.

In another, an emaciated man lies dying from AIDS-related causes in a hospital bed as his partner tenderly kisses his forehead. Scrawny drag queens apply makeup in the back of a cab, nude lovers reach for each other in filthy bedrooms.

 
The intimacy of Goldin’s photography is the perfect subject for documentarian Laura Poitras’ searing new film, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, which releases in UK cinemas from 27 January.

“I survived the opioid crisis. I narrowly escaped,” Goldin narrates. She was hooked on OxyContin, a highly addictive prescription drug manufactured by Purdue Pharma, a company owned by the Sackler family. Known for their artistic philanthropy, the Sackler name tarnishes the walls of galleries on a global scale, from the Guggenheim to the Tate to the Louvre.

Goldin’s fury is palpable. The opioid epidemic is a manufactured crisis, and she holds the Sackler family responsible for the fatal overdoses of over 500,000 Americans. To highlight this, she formed the protest group Prescription Addiction Intervention Now or (P.A.I.N.), composed mainly of recovering addicts and the loved ones of the dead.

 
All the Beauty and the Bloodshed is almost two films in one. Like Goldin’s photography it resists easy categorisation, deftly skipping across the years to give us both an evocative portrait of a singular artist, and a taut documentary about unchecked capitalism and a fringe-group committed to fighting it.

I am struck by the way Poitras’ posits Goldin’s drive for justice as resulting not only from her experiences with OxyContin, but from a miserable childhood in a repressed suburban home.

When Goldin was 11, her sister Barbara ended her own life at the age of 18. Goldin speculates, gently, that perhaps her sister couldn’t confront her own burgeoning homosexuality. The death was swept under the rug and Goldin – who recounts overhearing her parents decide to tell the family it was accidental – was sent to a foster family, just like her sister had been.

 
The spectre of Barbara haunts the film, even down to the title. This is, in a way, a reckoning. But I also get the impression that Goldin is calling out to Barbara across the ether for forgiveness. Goldin has seen what shame and repression can do, and she won’t let it happen again. Goldin isn’t protesting. She is crusading.

A chronic smoker, Goldin’s narration is gravel-rough. While some of her observations about her life in 70s New York can border on cliché (her first roommates were “running away from America”, apparently), there is a heightened poeticism to her words which brilliantly evokes a very particular time and place in American history.

Titans of art pass through the frame like displaced travellers, and I wonder if Goldin isn’t evoking so much as resurrecting: Cookie Mueller, David Wojnarowicz, Maggie Smith’s Tin Pan Alley. All are remembered, then delicately – gloriously – fall back into the cosmos.

 
Poitras lets the material breathe: swathes of the film simply set Goldin’s grainy videography to the music of the era. Her directorial flourishes are minimal yet impactful, such as dividing the film into seven titled chapters. Each begins with a sequence of photographs or filmed footage from Goldin’s life accompanied by her commentary, before sharply switching to the present day to follow P.A.I.N.

These latter sequences grip like a thriller, a feeling heightened by Poitras’ handheld camerawork and narrated testimony from The New Yorker journalist Patrick Radden Keefe.

Goldin’s protests have the touch of an artist: a fountain in the Met’s Sackler Wing is filled with empty pill bottles. Prescriptions rain down from the Guggenheim’s atrium, a child plays amongst corpses outside the V&A.

It is strange and beautiful.

 
All the Beauty and the Bloodshed is a singular work, representing the perfect marrying of two artists. It demonstrates a kind of synthesis between form and content, Poitras’ rare willingness to expose the corrupt and powerful collides with Goldin’s own experiences with grief and addiction.

Not since 2012’s The Act of Killing has ‘the documentary’ felt so exciting and raw, a medium of genuine political potential which seeks to radically undermine, and subsequently transform the ways in which we experience the world.

To the extent we can confidently discuss the future of any medium in the present moment, I feel like the future of the documentary is here.

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed – official trailer

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed will be screened at Mockingbird Cinema, at The Custard Factory, from 27 January to 2 February.

For full listings and links to online ticket sales visit: www.mockingbirdcinema.com/production/all-the-beauty-and-the-bloodshed

To read more about Nan Goldin and P.A.I.N. go to: www.sacklerpain.org

For more on Mockingbird Cinema visit: www.mockingbirdcinema.com

Writer Mark Roberts / Photographer Connor Pope

 
Passing Fancies, open Wednesday through Sunday, is an unassuming glass fronted bar opposite the large ‘Foliage Man’ (I’ve trademarked the name, before you ask) in the Custard Factory. It’s fancy without ‘classy’ expectations, specialising in reasonably priced, curated boutique cocktails and small plates.

When you meet Thomas Matthews you see why Passing Fancies is swiftly becoming the go to place for cocktails in Digbeth, the passion and personality for excellent, affordable, beverages starts at the top and flows generously all the way down to the bartenders.

Tommy is one of three owners of Passing Fancies along with Eve Green from Grain & Glass, and Matt Arnold of The Edgbaston Boutique Hotel. He greets me warmly at the door and offers me an unfiltered Stella Artois, which as someone who doesn’t like lager, banged.

 
We sit down at the bar and I ask Tommy what spurred the idea of Passing Fancies.

“I started competing at a national level in 2016, and it was always this ongoing joke that wherever the finals were being held, we [Birmingham] were the butt of the joke.”

“I took that really personally”, Tommy continues. “We don’t have the densest population of great bars like London does, but we still have quality. We still have smart, driven and creative people.”

Community is something Tommy is eager to talk about, something that clearly drives him, and this passion is focused on Birmingham and its developing bar scene.

“I look at the industry as being one community. No matter what bar you work in,” Tommy explains with a laidback but palpable enthusiasm. “We’re all still in hospitality, we’re all doing the same thing. We just do it to different levels.”

 
And “different levels” is Tommy being modest. Tommy is an award-winning bartender, and was bar manager of Couch in Stirchley which ranked No 37 in Top 50 Cocktail Bars 2022, and The Edgbaston Boutique Hotel ranking No 24 and 25 in 2018 and 2019 respectively.

On top of Tommy’s credentials, Passing Fancies has just received a 9/10 in Class Bar Magazine, probably the industry’s biggest bar publication.

“We got lucky”, explains Tommy when the recent accolade is brought up. “I used to work at The Edgbaston Boutique Hotel and I heard that unfortunately they were closing, so I hit them up.

“We got £20-24K’s worth of kit for peanuts”, says Tommy, pointing to a centrifuge in one corner and a rotary evaporator in the other.

The conversation develops as we talk about the kit he’s using.

 
“It was a building site in here, and we had the bartenders from Couch learning how to use the centrifuge,” Tommy laughs.

“I don’t like people that hoard information. I’ve never understood the secret recipe side of things. If everyone knows all the secret recipes, is everyone not just better as a whole?

“There’s this beautiful line between plagiarism and inspiration and I think when you believe people will be inspired by your techniques, they’ll have their own version with their creativity.”

Maybe everything is a remix after all?

“The scene is just blossoming the more people talk to each other”, Tommy gleams.

Passing Fancies is also built upon the idea of community, from the inside. Tommy remembers his bartending past and explores his business model with me.

“So I sat down with Matt and Eve, and we chatted about our combined two decades of experience in hospitality. We’d been through the not so nice employers and the 90 hour weeks,” Tommy laments.

“We just looked at it and went ‘what didn’t we like when we were in the trenches?’”

 
Tommy goes on to describe an all too familiar story in the industry. “The lack of respect, this assumption that you’d come in on your day off to do stuff, zero hours contracts, your head on the chopping block to go home but you’ve still got bills to pay.”

Because of this, Passing Fancies decided to incorporate a fixed salary, fixed hours, and a 5% service charge equally split between all bartenders.

Tommy clearly understands the logistical issues with zero hours contracts: “You’ve got this crazy up and down weekly pay that you have to try to explain to the banks if you want a mortgage.

“Even if you work in hospitality, you should be entitled to the ease of getting the things you want in life.”

It’s important to note that Tommy, Matt, and Eve are all, fundamentally, bartenders in the eyes of the bar. “Now obviously there are perks for Eve, Matt, and I being business owners – but the directors are bartenders in the eyes of the bar. It’s super transparent.”

Tommy comes to an epiphany. “Now I say it aloud, it sounds very socialist and I mean I’m not into politics at all.”

I nod in Marxist approval.

 
“Sometimes when you have a bar manager who is this super, crazy, skilled person, sometimes that intimidation gets in the way.” Tommy goes on, explaining another aspect of his, Matt, and Eve’s business decisions.

“They (workers) don’t want to come across as stupid, or get laughed at or whatever. We’ve created this even playing field so everything is just a flavour lead conversation on what is delicious.”

For Tommy at least, this is the foundational idea behind Passing Fancies.

“The one thing all of the team ask before anything goes on the menu is, is it delicious?”

And I can vouch for them. The cocktails, the beer, the whiskey Tommy gave me after the interview – both of them – are outstanding.

If you’re in the Custard Factory and you’re passing, you should fancy a pass into Passing Fancies. Okay I’m bad at endings. Can you blame me? They plied me with booze.

 
To book a table at Passing Fancies go to: www.passingfanciesbar.co.uk

Writer Jasmine Khan / Photographer Connor Pope

 
Heading to The Spotted Dog before hours risks bumping into their seemingly strict landlady, but jazz guitarist and growing local legend Tom Ford says the pub feels most like home in Brum, so we’re risking it. Welcomed in from the rain by the landlady, she’s much less stern when you’re not pushing your luck after last orders, and she lights a cosy fire to dry us off.

‘The Dog’ is a notorious Birmingham pub with its original woodwork, quirky decor and plentiful candlesticks in Jameson’s bottles. Tom and I soon find ourselves seated in front of the smouldering fireplace. Fair warning, I know this chat might get a tad deep.

We both agreed too many interviews centre around emphasising an artist’s social media persona, rather than exploring what they really think. Ahead of our interview, Tom said: “Music can either be McDonalds, or a home-cooked meal”, and that stuck with me.

“Everything with this stuff is super subjective”, says Tom when I remind him of his previous statement which summarised a larger discussion around entertainment and authenticity. Delving back into it, Tom explains there’s nothing wrong with McDonald’s music, it can be great to play and you can play entertaining music authentically.

But home-cooked meal music hits differently.

 
“Last year I listened to an Australian band called Amyl and The Sniffers, they’re a punk band”, muses Tom. “It’s not that they’re breaking ground with new sounds you haven’t heard before, but the authenticity of what they’re doing is so strong.

“Their ‘originalness’ breaks through the constructs of the genre they’re playing.”

To Tom at least, authenticity isn’t about what you’re playing, or how, or maybe even why you’re playing a certain song. It’s about an immersive and intuitive energy a musician must bring to feel genuine, one which relays the meaning behind the music they’re playing without performatively forcing it down the audience’s throat.

Getting closer to home Tom smiles and says, “One of my favourite musicians is… I’m going to say Liam’s last name wrong now”, referring to well-known local psych musician Liam McKeown.

“Liam’s in so many different projects and I feel like if he’s involved in a project, he adds so much weight to stuff. Even when he’s playing a more subdued background role.

“He’s one of the most natural musician’s I’ve heard; it doesn’t matter what setting he’s in, he’s him.”

 
We conclude that music which intends to entertain can be just as authentic as music which intends to bare the artist’s soul. But the issue arises when everyone’s expected to make music and market music at the rate of a fast food franchise, if they want to be successful that is.

“There’s this ongoing debate about the pros and cons of modern technology, connectivity”, tells Tom. “It’s difficult for young musicians because there’s an expectation to fit a certain template and also have a skill that wasn’t needed before.

“There’s this stress for musicians, any kind of creative person who has to survive, there’s more of an importance placed on content creation.

“It’s something a multimedia specialist would’ve done 10 years ago, but now it’s something that everyone’s got to master, and still have time to write music and perform.”

Tom continues: “From an authenticity point of view, the problem is people follow set permitters that other people have been successful with. You get that in music, that happens in a creative way, it can lead to great stuff.

“But, in a social sense, you see people pressured into joining in with the same thing as everyone else, and I think if anything it’s going to stop people from having the confidence to find themselves and be authentic.”

 
We agree, if an artist is naturally passionate about content creation then it’s a win-win. But if not, social media marketing expectations can drain creative energy like nobody’s business.

So Tom, you’ve got a good social media following but you’re clearly not that into social media, how do you manage it?

Tom replies, “It’s important to engage on some level, but I feel confident in the idea that if you’re struggling to find your place in it, wait until something feels natural and in the meantime use it for your local network.

“People will hear about you. If you have 1000 followers but they’re people that you actually want to have direct contact with that’s great, that’s what it should be used for.

“In terms of the stress of thinking you need to go viral. Well, that’s no different than thinking I’ve got to win the lottery or I need to have a hit single – there’s no sure fire way to do it.

“Even if you do a gig at The Sunflower Lounge to 10 people, and eight of the 10 people have never heard of you. But four of those people want to go to your next gig…

“The Australian band are a perfect example, their Spotify streams are not bad but not that good. That being said I know people with more [stream] that can’t sell rooms out like Amyl and The Sniffers.

“Online doesn’t always translate to real life.”

Tom Ford’s upcoming track titled ‘1998’ will be released on 8 January, and he’ll be live and in conversation at Hockley Social Club on Thursday 16 March following his latest EP dropping on March 10.

 
For more from Tom Ford go to: www.thetennischampion.bandcamp.com

For more from The Spotted Dog: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php