Cross-Channel + Discrepancy reviews
Review by on 28 Sep 2010
I liked Cross-Channel, especially once you slipped into the slow pace, and the acting of the younger brother particularly, was excellent.
Discrepancy was pompous derivative bollocks, worthy of Vulva from Spaced.
Discrepancy was pompous derivative bollocks, worthy of Vulva from Spaced.
Review by on 26 Sep 2010
The underlying premise at the heart of CROSS-CHANNEL was promising. The ferry as a location gestured to so many concepts that could have been intriguingly explored in the right hands – ideas of transition, of cultural identity in a space that occupies the gap between nations, of personal histories in a space filled with strangers.
However, Peck’s film left me feeling that the work never really approached what it could have been. This tale of two brothers who become caught up in a non-specific gangster activity seemed sadly clichéd, and the East London duo felt like stock characters – one a sensitive family man and the other (of course) a shady, gambling, womanising type. I was left waiting in vain for a narrative nuance that never came, while the whole story was presided over by a third, unseen voice, whose words were too earnest to ring true.
Furthermore, given that the introducer described what we were about to see as “beautiful”, for me CROSS-CHANNEL failed to deliver aesthetically. These coastscapes should surely be a gift to a talented cinematographer and there is always a stark poignancy in finding unexpected beauty in an industrial landscape. It was a great sadness, then, to see that this potential had gone to waste, as the camera lingered so long over shots and sequences that added little to the work’s narrative or aesthetic.
A disappointing piece – a solid foundational concept marred by a lack of ambition and a blindness to the beauty that surrounded it.
Nicola Runciman
However, Peck’s film left me feeling that the work never really approached what it could have been. This tale of two brothers who become caught up in a non-specific gangster activity seemed sadly clichéd, and the East London duo felt like stock characters – one a sensitive family man and the other (of course) a shady, gambling, womanising type. I was left waiting in vain for a narrative nuance that never came, while the whole story was presided over by a third, unseen voice, whose words were too earnest to ring true.
Furthermore, given that the introducer described what we were about to see as “beautiful”, for me CROSS-CHANNEL failed to deliver aesthetically. These coastscapes should surely be a gift to a talented cinematographer and there is always a stark poignancy in finding unexpected beauty in an industrial landscape. It was a great sadness, then, to see that this potential had gone to waste, as the camera lingered so long over shots and sequences that added little to the work’s narrative or aesthetic.
A disappointing piece – a solid foundational concept marred by a lack of ambition and a blindness to the beauty that surrounded it.
Nicola Runciman
Review by on 25 Sep 2010
4* for "Cross Channel". It's a while since I've been on a ferry but this film brought that experience right back to life. The slow pace as the boat pulls out of dock, the view from the deck, the changes in the light in the sky, the sea churning mid-channel, the cranking of the engines, the arrival at one's destination. All this and the time available for musing and wondering about the other passengers and their back stories. All round very engaging.
As to "Discrepancy" if only there were an option for zero stars it would be possible to rate it. That was ten minutes of my life I will never get back.
As to "Discrepancy" if only there were an option for zero stars it would be possible to rate it. That was ten minutes of my life I will never get back.
Review by on 25 Sep 2010
DISCREPANCY, the accompaying short to CROSS-CHANNEL, was
an aural onslaught. The source (manifesto?) from the 1950s, if
true, which the voiceover acknowledged was not much surprise -
hectoring was much more in fashion, just as experimentally
yoking it to disparate images and challenging viewers to object
would have been at any time from the early twentieth century
onwards.
Fair enough, the thesis was duly counterposed (and so modified)
by antithesis, etc., but we agree with THE FIRM’s Steve that
arthouse films are where it’s at, so does what this film separately
said and did really constitute a discrepancy of interest? I doubt it.
CROSS-CHANNEL deliciously and almost provocatively relishes
showing us, albeit not in the technically challenging audacity of a
single take, the way out to the sea from Portsmouth, and we only
cut between views with any greater frequency after this
sequence. Maybe this is what the narrator likes looking at, and
his commonplace feeling that the ship is all his (and hence that
the two men who unwittingly attract his attention are a kind of
intruding temptation to him), and so must possess it, is what he
proceeds to try to do with them.
He wants to know what he cannot know by eavesdropping,
although that seems perfectly successful (contrary to his claim
that he could not catch everything over dinner), and so feels free
to substitute his imaginings for being actively present to the
person with whom he asserts a seven-year relationship and to
spending time with whom he is supposed to be looking forward
so keenly.
As I observed in the post-screening question session, this film
reminded me of the t.v. series called [The] Canterbury Tales, and,
because of that, of Chaucer’s own story-telling. With that feeling
of reverence for the journey, which almost smacks of pilgrimage
and of enjoying it as much as where it takes the traveller, one is
led to the parallel feeling that the heart of the film is not so much
what is told, as the telling itself.
Ron Peck made clear that he had felt, in this unseen narrator, a
person whom he did not much like because of his ascriptions of
bad motives to the two men, but there is also his total
self-obsessed certainty that we want to know what he has to
say. Here, the parallel with Chaucer is so relevant, because the
more grotesque of his pilgrims are highly self-revelatory (through
some sense of needing to tell the truth about themselves?), even
though that ultimately condemns them out of their own mouths
when they seek to charm us.
Where this film also wins is not so much in what we are shown
the men pictured doing or talking about (because, perhaps, we do
not quite share his fascination), but in its sure pacing. The
narrator neatly delivers us back to dock in such exquisite detail
that we need never wonder how what he keeps calling ‘vessels’
are brought alongside the quay with such grace and beauty.
an aural onslaught. The source (manifesto?) from the 1950s, if
true, which the voiceover acknowledged was not much surprise -
hectoring was much more in fashion, just as experimentally
yoking it to disparate images and challenging viewers to object
would have been at any time from the early twentieth century
onwards.
Fair enough, the thesis was duly counterposed (and so modified)
by antithesis, etc., but we agree with THE FIRM’s Steve that
arthouse films are where it’s at, so does what this film separately
said and did really constitute a discrepancy of interest? I doubt it.
CROSS-CHANNEL deliciously and almost provocatively relishes
showing us, albeit not in the technically challenging audacity of a
single take, the way out to the sea from Portsmouth, and we only
cut between views with any greater frequency after this
sequence. Maybe this is what the narrator likes looking at, and
his commonplace feeling that the ship is all his (and hence that
the two men who unwittingly attract his attention are a kind of
intruding temptation to him), and so must possess it, is what he
proceeds to try to do with them.
He wants to know what he cannot know by eavesdropping,
although that seems perfectly successful (contrary to his claim
that he could not catch everything over dinner), and so feels free
to substitute his imaginings for being actively present to the
person with whom he asserts a seven-year relationship and to
spending time with whom he is supposed to be looking forward
so keenly.
As I observed in the post-screening question session, this film
reminded me of the t.v. series called [The] Canterbury Tales, and,
because of that, of Chaucer’s own story-telling. With that feeling
of reverence for the journey, which almost smacks of pilgrimage
and of enjoying it as much as where it takes the traveller, one is
led to the parallel feeling that the heart of the film is not so much
what is told, as the telling itself.
Ron Peck made clear that he had felt, in this unseen narrator, a
person whom he did not much like because of his ascriptions of
bad motives to the two men, but there is also his total
self-obsessed certainty that we want to know what he has to
say. Here, the parallel with Chaucer is so relevant, because the
more grotesque of his pilgrims are highly self-revelatory (through
some sense of needing to tell the truth about themselves?), even
though that ultimately condemns them out of their own mouths
when they seek to charm us.
Where this film also wins is not so much in what we are shown
the men pictured doing or talking about (because, perhaps, we do
not quite share his fascination), but in its sure pacing. The
narrator neatly delivers us back to dock in such exquisite detail
that we need never wonder how what he keeps calling ‘vessels’
are brought alongside the quay with such grace and beauty.
Film details
Cross-Channel + Discrepancy
MICROCINEMA
Director: Ron Peck
Actor: Mark Tibbs
Actor: Alan Milton
Actor: Clementine Dubois
Actor: Audrey Mabboux-Stromberg
Actor: Mark Tibbs
Actor: Alan Milton
Actor: Clementine Dubois
Actor: Audrey Mabboux-Stromberg
United Kingdom, 2010.
114 mins. English
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