Nadine comes to Paris

Review of Ian Simpson's NADINE

Review by: Rick McGrath

Rating: 9 out of 10

“Nadine, is that you? Every time I see you, you’ve got something else to do…” Chuck Berry may have been perplexed about the restless activities of his future bride, but he’s not even in the same tenement flat as Ian Simpson, who actually follows his Nadine as she finds lots of something else to do.

None of it nice.

Shot in a seductive mixture of arthouse cool and cinema verité brutal, Nadine is an incredibly powerful look at what it means when “some day… everything goes wrong” for a psychologically disturbed teen at the ignored end of Britain’s impoverished lower classes. The basic plot was revealed on Quiet Earth when Nadine’s second trailer was posted: "Nadine, a teenage girl who is a regular self-harmer, is subjected to a hostile mother, an abusive stepfather, a drug addicted boyfriend and crude sexual violence from the locals. She lives on a desolate council estate surrounded by nature where she finds occasional solace. However, the profound weight of indifference, injustice and cruelty, proves too much for Nadine, whose life enters a rapid downward spiral."

That’s close enough, although the downward spiral is misleading: Nadine’s story is about her misadventures at the bottom of the spiral, and surely anything else must be up from here. This bone-toss to optimism is one of the odder elements of this excellent movie, as writer/director Simpson has chosen to bookend his drama with short docu-style interviews in which Nadine discusses her life and mulls about the future. In between we get to experience what’s she’s talking about. It’s depressing. It’s shocking. It’s a subculture of aggression and instinctual violence equal to the middle-class antics of the characters stuck in the zoo that is JG Ballard’s classic High-Rise.

Yeah, the plot is cool and the action zips along, but what separates Nadine from your run-of-the-tenement-hopeless-poverty-sucks stories is Simpson’s killer direction and his actor’s incredibly great performances.

Simpson’s sense of style is sensational. Apparently shot in black & white, Simpson has allowed just one colour onto his palate – a dark burgundy red, sort of like dried blood. It’s used subtly and seemingly without specific symbolic sense, on shoes, a car, a nightgown, on white sheer curtains… and often not at all. He uses a wide variety of shots, from very long to lingering close-up, and has an affinity for the long slow zoom and perfectly-paced panoramic pans. He’s also very patient. What’s also impressive is his sense of the restrictive aspect of this nether world, where adults hide alone in alcoholism and race hatred, where kids overlap in drugs, sex and casual violence, and to emphasize the “innerness” of it all Simpson keeps it tight and combustible in claustrophobic rooms, ugly tenement halls and the surrounding roads of South London, breaking only occasionally to meander through a neighbouring park, where Nadine comes to recharge – such a romantic.

Simpson also took a chance by casting nothing but non-actors to fill this movie’s many roles. Believe me, you’ll find this unbelievable if you get to see Nadine. I have no idea how Simpson cajoled these performances out of nothing, but there they are and all you can do is wonder. His greatest find is Lisa Jane Gregory, who plays the hapless Nadine to perfection. She’s amazing, especially as a physical actor, although she can turn on the waterworks and crank the emotions as well. Gregory’s presence is amazing. In her suicidal, self-cutting mode, she’s a walking billboard of defeat. Slouched shoulders, perpetually downcast eyes, knock-kneed legs bursting out from under a miniskirt, pigeon-toed feet shuffling in chunky-soled hooker shoes, broken nails, ragged, greasy hair, complete lack of make-up, and underneath, a simmering aggression, all make Gregory’s Nadine a character to watch and remember. The psychic power of the character comes from her unresolved relationship with her lost father, and Gregory is surprisingly good at conveying that emotion. It’s apparent she unknowingly blames herself, hence the self-mutilation as a form of punishment, and her relationships are all coloured with a kind of self-disgust… perhaps the idea behind Simpson’s sporadic use of spot red throughout the film. Menstrual red? The rest of the cast also does a fine job, but you can see how Simpson has carefully set them up so less acting becomes more acting. Nadine’s “boyfriend” Wayne rarely moves or talks. Not only does this make him more enigmatic (he’s supposed to be an artist), it does away with virtually every amateur fault! This basic technique – keep it simple when you have to – works well with the sparse style and B&W format Simpson has chosen, and actually adds to the vacancy of these people’s lives, where their social status and possibility of escape is so low that any intellectual concerns are completely dominated by the instinctual emotions, by addictions, by the need for action – any action – to postpone a death by boredom.

In this way Nadine covers more cultural ground than the shoes of its heroine. Simpson’s overall landscape of tenement despair allows him to take a good look at other social issues of the poor and the young, such as crime, rascism and morality, and works up his plot to generously reveal the fears and hates of Britain’s version of American white trash, as well as the dog-eat-dog choices of their youthful black neighbours, who may be thugs and drug pushers, but who dress better and have more money. And get most of the white girls. Hmmm, unsurprisingly similar.

Nadine… you’re always doing something else, you wacky outsider. Is that you? This Nadine is, and if you get a chance to hang out for a day or two in her neighbourhood, I’d highly recommend a visit. But don’t stay to long, OK?

Les Dernières Nouvelles d'Alsace

Critique parue dans DNA reflets
nadine
un film de Ian Simpson
avec Lisa Jane Gregory
GB - 2007 - 1 h 15 - VOST


Nadine des esprits

Nadine, deuxième long-métrage de Ian Simpson, un Britannique établi à Strasbourg, entend selon son réalisateur « raconter l’histoire et l’existence solitaire d’une adolescente à travers un récit réaliste et dépouillée ». Ce pitch, comme on jargonne dans les professions de l’audiovisuel, n’est qu’à moitié exact.

Dans les quartiers les moins favorisés du sud de Londres, on y suit le quotidien de cette Nadine fragile, tangente, instable, qui tente désespérément de trouver une raison de survivre entre une mère méchamment hostile, un beau-père abusif et probablement fasciste, un petit ami défoncé, au centre de tous les sévices sexuels et agressions verbales ou physiques qu’on attache à celle qui serait, de notoriété publique, « la pute du quartier ». Nadine promène, le long des rues dévastées, en bordure de voies rapides et de barres d’immeubles grisâtres, sensiblement plus qu’un spleen existentiel : la violence sociale dans toute sa brutalité, cristallisée dans un noir et blanc somptueux et glaçant, nappée parfois d’une suite pour violoncelle de Bach.

Cette pure chronique sociale est à vrai dire la part la moins réussie du film de Ian Simpson : parce qu’il faut, face à ce genre de sujet, choisir son point de vue, et s’y tenir avec une grande résolution. Il y a autour de Nadine, dans ces cadres impeccablement (su)composés et dans cette velléité d’y introduire un peu de transcendance, trop de beauté formelle, ou peut-être de coquetterie, pour que la force du propos n’en pâtisse pas. Est-il bien nécessaire de passer l’image au filtre rouge lorsque Nadine tente pour la énième fois de s’ouvrir les veines ?
Faut-il comprendre que Nadine serait un film raté ? Pas du tout. D’abord parce que la densité de ses comédiens, pour la plupart non-professionnels, suffit presque à elle seule à emporter l’empathie, à donner le ton juste. Mais aussi, mais surtout parce que Ian Simpson offre à sa pauvre héroïne, et au spectateur, de splendides respirations oniriques : au milieu de tout ce désastre urbain, sans explications aucun, apparaissent soudain des troupeaux entiers de biches et de cerfs. Une forêt frémit au vent du soir. Deux bad boys s’y métamorphosent à vue en mendiants magnifiques paraissant sortis des contes de Chaucer. Le film bascule, comme si La Nuit du chasseur s’invitait coeur d’un documentaire sur le nouveau lumpenproletariat du blairisme.

La beauté qui se révèle à ces instants n’a rien à voir avec celle, toujours un peu frelatée, de l’émotion fabriquée. C’est celle, irradiante, d’un regard exact sur ce qui est, et sur ce qui est derrière ce qui est. Il faut faire, pour ses films suivants, confiance dans le cinéaste Ian Simpson.

Jérôme Mallien

Cinéma l’Odyssée - 3 rue des Francs Bourgeois - Strasbourg - 03 88 75 10 47