The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 11

ursday September 4 1986 11 Two of a kind Bob Hoskins, left, in Mona Lisa and John Hurt, right, in Jake Speed Derek Malcolm reports from ht Venice Film Festival Thun a Craus TS $HQg StereK Malcolm reviews Neil Jordan's Mona Lisa, and Miracles, and Tim Pullein reviews Jake Speed THIS, said Gian Luigi Rondi, director of the Venice' Festival, will be a happy and Seaceful event Almost as he id so, the usual row was brewing. This was because his committee had decided to bend the rules of the competition in order to include James Ivory and Ismail Merchant's A Room With A View, which ought to be disqualified since it has already been shown outside its country of origin (Britain), though not in Italy. The jury, headed by Alain Robbe-Grillet and including Peter Ustinov and a group of distinguished film-makers, are unlikely to quibble, but there might be a bigger fuss if the film gets the Golden Lion. The other UK entrant is hero of a long-running series of pulp novels; the pleasing conceit of the picture A 1 Mexican adventure involving terrorists, police who seem worse and a great deal of strangely inanimate action. It was a big mistake for both of them.

Jim Koufs screenplay is the victim of his clear obsession to be an action director as well, so that the whole thing is like a road movie without brakes. It careers this way and that in an altogether desperate effort to entertain, leaving Conti and Garr high and dry in its wake, mugging furiously to make a point or two. This is an awful lesson in how not to deploy talented performers, and I was intensely sorry for both of them. Tim Pulleine adds: One of the traditional pleasures of the cinema has been coming upon an ostensibly formula movie vitalised by idiosyncratic treatment, a species to which Jake Speed (various cinemas, 15) proves to be a welcome addition. The title character is evidently the NEIL JORDAN has come a fair way since winning the Guardian fiction prize in 1979 with Night in Tunisia.

And there isn't much doubt that Mona Lisa (Odeon, Haymarket, 18), his third film, will carry the process further. It isn't as haunting as Angel, nor as imaginative as The Company of Wolves. But it is tighter and better constructed than either, and the Eerformances flourish as they aven't before in his films. The one everybody will notice, of course, is that of Bob Hoskins as our less than invincible hero a smalltime crook, just out of prison, who is re-employed by the man for whom he took the rap as driver and minder for a high-class call girl. And rightly so, since Hoskins seizes the chance of a part written for him with both hands.

A lesser actor might have verged into caricature of the innocent dummy who, having fallen for the girl, has to pursue her missing prostitute friend through what one Ken Loach's Fatherland. which is actually "Anglo- ixerman since it was made largely in West Germany with a German cast It all goes to prove the absurdity of qualifying movies by country. An American critic came out of Loach's film saying that it emanated not from Britain nor West Germany but Moscow. This, of course, was a complete misreading of it since it is about the corruption of socialist ideals through power as much as it attacks capitalism "the ones who rule are always carried by the others," as the protagonist's father says in the final reel. Written by Trevor Griffiths, it is a complete change of style from Loach and, good as it is, it is not one of which I entirely approve.

He has tried to tell a European story in a European way, but there isn't the same extraordinary sense of almost extemoorised reality that we generally get from him. Perhaps it is the old tale of a director moving away from what he knows best into an entirely different landscape. But, even so, this is an intriguing and by no means insignificant film. The central character is an East German Liedermacher (a musician who sings olitical songs) who gets into ifficulties with the government and is obliged to leave with a one-way visa to West Berlin. What he finds on the other side of the Wall is equally depressing look, he says to the agency girl driving him around, there's a peep show.

This is so men can see women's bodies, she replies, as if he were a child. He soon realises that, to the agency, he is simply, an instrument thrxitirghwnich they can make money. The other Dart of the story concerns the singer's search for his father, also a musician who left the East What he eventually finds out about it all persuades him even further about the corruption of the world's ideals. Put boldly, this is a de pressing parable for our time, jointly fashioned by Griffiths and Loach, two com mitted but hardly starry-eyed members of the Left But it is filmed with great intensity and tells its story well. Loach is not a world-class talent for nothing.

Loach's film must be a can didate for a prize, but I doubt whether Eric Rohmer's The Green Ray will be. It is very pleasant but much slighter than some of his other comedies and proverbs, about a young woman who can't seem to find a man, and Richard Roud on Howard's end airecieu oy Andrew l-iane lies in making him spring fully armed from the head a devoted reader to sort out the "real" case of an Amen can tourist kidnapped by Aincan wmie-siavers. The groundwork may be laborious, but once the plot is in motion there is no shortage of either incident or invention. The mixture of elaborate sequences of physical action the vivid camerawork is by Bryan Loftus and quaint annotation of behaviour and locale invites a comparison with Richard Lester which the film is just about able to withstand. And John Hurt's mock-villain, a Cockney spiv with delusions of grandeur, is a piece of comic character-drawing worthy (ultimate praise) of Denholm Elliott As cinematic fast food goes, very palatable.

Howard's reading matter includes not only Playduck, but also Rolling Egg, which features an article on "What ever Happened to Quack?" an allusion to tne pernicious new drug craze that has swept America this summer. But Howard's mastery of Quack Fu got a laugh. Our planet is saved, unusually, by the use of an untested neutron disintegrator that was dumped' by the army because of cost over-runs, a possible reference to the Sergeant York gun similarly abandoned. Are these people telling us we shouldn't abandon such weapons? Howard the Duck is due to open in London in late November; I wonder if it will. If not, the sound track record will probably do well anyway; the music by John Barry is good.

Howard, if anyone is still listening, decides to. stay on planet earth and becomes a rock star. Do see a a won't go chasing like her friends. She is introspective and depressed, inclined to tears and to feeling that there must surely be something wrong with her attitude to life. What Rohmer suggests is that she is every bit as normal as her friends, and possibly more admirable.

i The title comes from the story by Jules Verne, set in Scotland where, just before the sun goes down (when you can see it at all, that is) a green ray suffuses it At that time, apparently, you can read not only your own feelings properly but also those of others. In other words, it provides a green light for the emotions, and that's what the girl eventually gets. 'She is played by Beatrice Romand with great skill, suggesting someone who is attractive and worthwhile but not as Hollywood might have had it, a star with spectacles on until the final scene. Once again, Rohmer. knows exactly what he is doing, though some' complained that this time he was doing too little.

This was a film from a man about a woman. The British entrant in the Venezia Giovani section is a film about a woman by a woman Conny Templeman's IJanottr produced by Simon Perry, who made 1984 and Another Time Another Place. Templeman, a National Film School graduate, also sets her story in France where a young English girl on holiday takes a French lover. She is played by Imogen Stubbs and he by Jean Philippe Ecoffey. Ken Loach complete change of style The point of the film is how women waste themselves on men who seldom commit themselves in the same way.

Not that the young man, a Iiticfactivist, is. in any way a villain, it is just that the girl gradually realises that she is a stranger in a foreign land in more ways than one, and decides to opt out I didn't much care for the soft "maybe, maybe not" ending, but this is a confident and worthwhile debut. Finally, I must just mention Jos Stelling's The Pointsman, a Dutch film set 111 a peculiar looking Scotland which has a beautiful woman alighting by mistake from a train at a signal box inhabited by a strange young pointsman. After shooting a rat within inches of her feet, he offers her some coffee: "Disgusting," she says which, from there on in, becomes his name. Very weird stuff but rather wonderful like black pudding sprayed with Hollandaise sauce, but extremely well cooked.

itself DANNY GLOVER Read Tfw Women's Pnns panvrtvick BIRMINGHAM Fuluriit GLASGOW ABC BOURNEMOUTH ABC LEEDS ABC BRIGHTON ABC MILTON KEYNES Point BRISTOL Whilllarji! NOTTINGHAM ABC EDINBURGH ABC PUTNEY ABC STREATHAM ABC TUNBRIDGE WELLS Cannon TURNPIKE LANE ABC WALTHAM CROSS Embliiy WOODFORD ABC SLOUOH Grtnada SOUTHAMPTON ABC YORK ABC SOUTHEND ABC a 4g Michael Caine as his seedy and possibly vicious boss, and Robbie Coltrane as the only real friend to whom he can turn also contribute very watchable cameos, and in all Jordan seems to have learned a lot as regards directing actors. One should also mention Kate Hardie as the lost girl and Clarke Peters as the call-girl's former pimp. Both are excellent The film itself is ultimately not so resonant as either Angel or The Company of Wolves, though it is certainly better as out-and-out entertainment And. I don't quite know why. It is possibly because the sleazy, threatening and vice-ridden London it represents is not supposed to be a wholly realistic portrait, which is clear from both Roger Pratt's boldly-toned cinematography and the writing of Jordan and David Leland.

But, perhaps because he concentrates (very effectively) on telling his story and getting the tone of the acting ment in order to make the trip to the dreaming spires. None of the participants is paid; the 30,000 overhead is provided by sponsorship, notably by Cannon and Central TV and Budweiser chip in with 1,000 bottles of free beer. This year's Lloyds contest produced 400 entries, double the previous year's total (an increase due, it is suggested, to a mention on Film '85). Mark Bentley of the OFF suggests that of the entrants, "one third shouldn't have bothered, another third show vague promise, and about SO scripts look genuinely operable." He estimates that a quarter were comedies meant to. with a preponderance of autobiograpnically-slanted material, ana relatively few out-and-out genre items there was a really ingenious vigilante Bentley says the screenplays collectively showed a strong feeling for contemporary Britain though three of the chosen six are set in the 1960s, which maybe makes them period pieces.

Correction: only two are now about the 60s since one author decided after the consultancy stage to update his script to the present day. The rules dictate that none of the chosen scripts shall have, already been optioned. And in what must have seemed an encouraging portent to the remainder, a reserve writer was fielded right, Jordan ultimately misses out as far as his bows to other things, like the American film noir, are concerned. The psychology-seems absolutely right, but it just misses being expressed through images. That, though, is a smallish price to pay for the compensations of a much superior narrative drive, and a sense of, atmosphere created by other means.

Mona Lisa remains a little more than a good story, very well told, because it is so obviously a parable about the strong preying upon the weak, and the ultimate reasons why you can trust no one but yourself, which George, the perennial loser, discovers. If it is not a heavyweight film, there is still more to it than meets the eye and you would have to be blind not to enjoy it viscerally. Miracles (Cannon, Panton and Oxford Streets, PG) has Tom Conti and Teri Garr teamed as a divorced' couple forced together- again on a when one of the original sextet had her screenplay commercially taken up. For one of the writers, David Kane, based in Edinburgh and a full-time author a bit broke at the the experience had been "enjoyable but rather strange and very concerted." The preliminary consultation with a script editor had "given a rundown on the problems some I agreed with and some I didn't, but it's true the story rather meanders in the middle and now I've got an idea of how to cope with it" The director working with Kane was Chris Bernard, maker of Letter To Brezhnev. "Don't ask me what the writers are getting out of this," he says in Liverpudlian tones.

"I'm too busy getting things out of it myself. When they asked me here, I thought I was going to be the token working-class figure, but it hasn't worked out that way at all. What's here is a real community spirit" He adds, possibly rashly, that he is sufficiently taken with David Kane's script to want to set about turning it into a film. His enthusiasm for the programme, which Rupert waiters has hopes of extending in scope in years to is such that he declares, "If the worst came to the worst, most of the people here would be happy to bring sleeping bags and doss in the corridors." From left Keith Tutt, Doris Dorie, David Kane and Jeff Power Eim Pulleine with the hopefuls at an Oxford scriptwriting workshop AT IfortAtt SViIIacta fkvfVwrl last week you could open a aoor ana una an improvised editing suite; turn the corner and bump into a camera and a group of actors; activities quite un-donnish and non-academic: the Oxford Film Foundation's second annua! scriptwriting programme was in session. The principle is that in the words of the programme's director, Rupert Walters you can't teach the inspiration of screenwriting but you can, by dint of practical experience, pass on some of the craft Perhaps more to the point, you can also intimate something of the labyrinthine ways in which the film industry disposes itself towards the writer.

might call the bowels and sluices of London. But Hoskins, sensing that there is genuine tragedy here as well as comedy and character-building, avoids the Cockney act he could do standing on his script, and carefully avoids over-playing. It is, in a way, the reverse side of his underworld boss of The Long Good Friday, and I think the better one. But it does depend on good direction, which is what he gets. No wonder Cannes went overboard for him.

Even so, the truly remarkable performance, perhaps because it was not so obviously expected, comes from Cathy Tyson as the call-girWn her first film part This niece of Cecily has the same natural intensity and presence, and an extraordinary capacity to make herself felt on the screen, like very few leading women in British films. No doubt Hoskins helped her, but the result is that she is very nearly as good. Six neophyte scenarists are selected (they must be under 25), principally through the screenwriting competition sponsored by Lloyds Bank. They are brought to Oxford to discuss their scripts with story consultants, then to see selected scenes shot and edited under the supervision of an established director. Finally, they get to talk over what might be termed marketing techniques with agents, lawyers, and producers.

Among the last category were Verity Lambert and Al Clark, while among 8articipating directors were harles Sturridge, Chris Ber- nard, and from the US Martha Coolidge, who proved to have passed up the chance to direct a Twilight Zone seg- BEST ACTRESS WComnFMhol IHTIHNATIONAI CRITICI MUZ CANNE1 111 hilar IousVwswce I OBSERVER ftjSfjjP WINNER I -IT HAS NOT been a-great summer for Hollywood, and one of its last hopes, Howard the Duck seems to have laid an egg. Howard is based on a 1970s Marvel Comics character: a duck from outer space (an egg-shaped planet, in fact) arrives by misadventure on what he calls our fowled-up planet of hairless apes. The film comes to us from George Lucas (whose Industrial Light and Magic Company provided the visual tricks); and it was directed by Willard Huyck who co-wrote the script with his wife Gloria Katz, also the producer. The New York Daily News which has a four star rating gave it zero stars, and headline writers amused themselves with: Lame Duck and Howard the Duck is a Turkey. The New York Times doesn't go in for headlines; it has post-scripts instead: "Some of the special effects are gruesome enough to be upsetting to anyone who's squeamish, at any age." But an tne papers were nam-pered by Universal's intelli gent decision to release no frontal views of Howard.

The idea may have been to create suspense, but it may also have been dictated by the fear that seeing this ridicu lously implausible costume, inhabited serially by no fewer than eight midget actors, would keep people away. In any case, people are staying away in droves. Howard's first weekend in 1,500 theatres across the nation was, according to Variety, disastrous. And the NY Times reports that in its second weekend, grosses plunged 49 per cent Total revenue in 17 days is $13.4 million. Given the modest leneth of 100 minutes, this may turn out to be the most expensive turn per minute ever made.

The cost estimates range from $35 million to $52 million. The real problem is Howard himself, an utterly charmless, cigar-smoking boor, who is not helped by the script's sophomoric attempts at humour. performances. SUNDAY OBSERVER, Philip French THE COLOR PURPLE. 'rattling' good THE DAILY MAIL, Shaun Usher with genius.

is still I 1 magnificently Spielberg." THE FINANCIAL TIMES, Nigel Andrews "The technical mastery on hand here is of order. The filming and A Film by MARGARETHE VON TROTTA starring BARBARA SUKOWA "A MAGNIFICENT ROSA" "ATOWERING PERFORMANCE" PMIJp French, the first A Alice unforgettable "SUPERB AS ROSA" cue No mm in London at iL-. -lL II IC IIIUIIICI II IIUS IllUf serious intent or raises more important questions" DeitkMaktM THE GUARDIAN mnmm Gr' TODAY, Angela Brooks STEVEN SPIELBERG FILM The Color Purple, Walker's Pulitzer Prtle Winning Story Soundtrack available on Warner Records and Tapes WARNER BROS. p. STEVEN SPIELBERG Rim THE COLOR PURPLE ADOLPH CAESAR MARGARET AVERY RAE DAWN CHONG mining WHOOPI GOLDBERG a.

Rim Editor MICHAEL KAHN, A.CE Prpducta. DeUgtxr MICHAEL RIVA Director of Ptiotogmpriy ALLEN DAVIAU licd upon the nowl by ALICE WALKER Mu QUINCY JONES Screenplay by MENNO MEYJES Exkum Producer. JON PETERS wd PETER GUBER Product by STEVEN SPIELBERG KATHLEEN KENNEDY FRANK MARSHALL QUINCY JONES A BRILLIANT COMEDY OF THE SEXES. A MOVIE THAT MANAGES TO BE INTELLECTUALLY AND SEXUALLY Directed by I fcVfcN SMtLbEKG AMBIIN Psycho (Saturday. ITV, 10 pm).

Hitchcock's celebrated 1960 shocker manages to become ever more frighteningly impressive the older It JCtfia Raging Bull (Saturday, C4, 10.55). Scorsese's 1980 boxing bio-pic with tour-de-force performance by De Niro; powerful if not exactly TnePicIwick Papers (Saturday, C4, 3.5). Lively, surprisingly successful adaptation by Noel Langley stand-out performance by Nigel Patrick a Jingle. Special interest THE National Film Theatre on Sunday afternoon has Jack Lemmon as the subject of a Guardian Lecture, in which he will be talking to Jonathan Miller. On Monday evening, a preview of the new comedy Sweet Liberty is succeeded by an on-stage interview with its star Alan Alda.

And on Wednesday, Oliver Stone's Salvador is previewed, with the director answering questions. Outside London, an ambitious week-long animation festival begins on Saturday at the Manchester Cornerhouse and takes in Max Headroom (various showings), a selection of recent British work (Saturday and Sunday), Lou Bunin's Alice In Wonderland (Sunday), and a tribute to Tex Avery (Wednesday and Thursday), plus much else. Tim Pulleine BRIEFING Best films Sugar Baby (Everyman). Romantic comedy with more than a bit of difference from Percy Adlon; expressionistic and engaging. Highlander (Various).

Hokum of an appeal-ingly daft complexion, carried off with tremendous dash by rock video alumnus Russell Mulcahey. Ossessione (Renoir). Visconti's remarkable debut feature (1942) in complete version: a powerful transposition to northern Italy of The Postman Always Rings Twice. Le Cop (Premiere). Beautifully detailed performance by Philippe Noiret as crooked cop in well crafted, if somewhat overstretched, French black comedy.

Best on TV Superman II (today. ITV, 8 pm). Best of the series so far, with spectacle and satiric comedy beautifully melded by Richard The Getaway (today, BBC-1, 10 pm). Steve McQueen as bank robber in brilliantly sustained crime thriller directed (1972) by Sam Peckinpah. The Killing (Saturday, BBC-2, 1.55).

The 1956 movie which made Stanley Kubrick's name, a grittily ingenious treatment of the "perfect crime" theme. AlMRNERCOMMl'SICATIQSiSCOMFAfiV lElEASEPflYCOtL'MlUA-CAS'NOK H'ARNt'RraSTrMMTOHS AUR.Rn, PROVOCATIVE rlWJM WARIiCK SKU3 NOW SHOWING ABC SHAFTESBURY AVENUE 838B86I 1.00, 40,110 THE EH3CUC3DOPTHD ABC FULHAMRD 3702636 1,40,5.00, HO SCREEN ON THE GREEN ISLINGTON 2263620 2.05, 5.00,8.05 Lata ahem SMIIJOpm FROM FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 5th 'Raunchy and HAMMERSMITH ABC MANCHESTER ABC HAMPSTEAD Cuinon All LEY ABC HASTINGS Cannon KINGSTON Grmtda LEEDS tningi LEICESTER ABC MUSWEUHILlOdnn NEWCASTLE ABC NEWPORT I0W NORWICH ABC OXFORD ABC PLYMOUTH ABC READING ABC RICHMOND Odoon Clinton ROMFORD ABC STAINES ABC SHEFFIELD ABC ABERDEEN ABC BARBICAN CENTRE BATH Biiu Null BECKEBHAM ABC BELFAST ABC NEXLEVHEATH ABC BLACKPOOL ABC BROMLEY Odm CAMBRWOEABC CAMDEN TOWN ENFIELD ABC H-mB EXETER ABC SKiKiRr FOLKESTONE Ctnnofl sassm Bsssff 1 CltaS. OUILOFORDCnn. LIVERPOOL ABC PORTSMOUTH ABC LOUOHBOAOUGHCurion PURLEY Ailoila.