Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody (12A)
***
A hundred and forty-four minutes: who are they kidding? That's an award contender running time for a film that’s not going to be anyone’s ride to the Oscars.
The Whitney story – born into a family of soul aristocracy (daughter of Cissy, cousin of Dionne Warwick); one of the most successful US recording artists ever; hid her same-sex relationship with manager Robyn (Williams), was criticised for her music being too white; had a disastrous marriage to Bobbi Brown; hit the drugs and booze, and died in a bath aged 48 - has already been told in two prestigious, well-received documentaries.
Lemmons's film has nothing to add and covers the ground in standard, occasionally cheesy, biopic ways. It is though, perhaps, a more touching, effective tribute to the singer's talent than a more accomplished and ambitious film would have been.
And it does have a few surprises. Who would've expected Stanley Tucci's name to be listed second in the credits for a film about a major black singer? He plays Clive Davis, the kindly, avuncular music biz executive who discovered her and nurtured her talent, never steered her wrong, always had her best interest at heart, and is a producer of this film.
Houston, she had her problems, but the film is more celebration than expose, hence the film's other surprise; spoiler: she doesn't die at the end. The bath is run, the tap drips ominously, but the film then cuts back to her performance at the American Music Awards in 1994 which it has already suggested was her finest.
And this brings us to the big plus point: you hear the defining songs more or less in their entirety. It's amazing how unusual that is in a music biopic. Baz Luhrmann's Elvis is a much better film but is so busy being Baz Luhrmann's Elvis that all the songs segue away into nothing. Wanna Dance stops for all the big songs which are sung by the woman herself, with Naomi Ackie lipsyncing.
Stupid as it sounds, I always forget what a great singer Whitney was and how striking her looks. I was never a fan, but some of the Vocal performances here are really remarkable.
Walthamstow born and raised Ackie is a talented performer and plays the role as written very well, but at no point will anyone think she’s Whitney Houston. Of course not; if some actor could mimic her she wouldn't have been a unique, once-in-a-generation talent. In failing to do her justice, the film pays her the greatest compliment of all.
Directed by Kasi Lemmons. Starring Naomi Ackie, Stanley Tucci, Ashton Sanders, Nafessa Williams, Tamara Tunie, and Clarke Peters. In cinemas Boxing Day. Running time: 144 mins.
Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai Des Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles.
****
It takes a special kind of idiot to be a film critic or academic, and when they get together under the Sight and Sound Asleep big top once a decade for their poll of the greatest films ever made, they always conjure up a special kind of idiocy.
Last time they had the world rolling around in laughter with their verdict that Hitchcock’s Vertigo was the best film ever. This time though they’ve surpassed that by alighting on a three and half hour Belgian film that nobody’s heard of, in which nothing happens.
(Posed the same question, their poll of film directors came up with 2001: A Space Odyssey – which is, of course, the correct answer.)
Jeanne Dielman’s three hours and twenty-two minutes are taken up with the minute observation of a housewife's daily routine. We see her do the shopping, cooking, cleaning, tidying, sex working with a middle-aged client, and dishing up dinner to her dull son when he returns from school. Everything is shot with a stationary camera, often in long takes.
The first thing to say is the film works. The repetition, the ritual, all those scenes of Jeanne moving from one room to the next, turning on and off the lights, generate a kind of low-level tension and mirthless hilarity. It's helped by the presence of a proper film star in the lead role. Seyrig (Last Year in Marienbad,) has an effortless grandeur, and knows how to command attention doing nothing. She’s perfect for this glacial revelation of personality. The film's expression of a form of inbuilt, self-inflicted servitude, an addiction to ritual, is enormously powerful.
That said, other, better, long boring films are available. In its middle hour, it appears to be building towards something transcendent, but ultimately it's a bit of a one-trick pony.
Still, at least a female director gets to take the position of Welles and Hitchcock with disbelieving first-time viewers shaking their heads saying "That? The Greatest film of all time!" Reaction to the list has invoked the dark arts of jiggery-wokery and virtue signalling, but attempts to widen the range of opinions being sought should be welcomed. The perverse wonder of the poll is that in the quest to open it up and consider new voices and different backgrounds, they’ve come up with a verdict that is quite preposterously elitist.
Directed by Chantal Akerman. Starring Delphine Seyrig, Jan Decorte, Henry Storck, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze and Yves Bical. Subtitled. Running time: 202 mins.
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