Frightfest ’17: Voice from the Stone

Ever since the death of his mother, young entitled Jakob Rivi has refused to talk. For some reason, his sculptor father Klaus considers this a problem, rather than a consolation. More nurses have been fired at the Rivi estate than Trump West Wing staffers, but the oddly intense Verena might be different. However, she might be dealing with supernatural matters outside her area of expertise in Eric D. Howell’s Voice from the Stone (trailer here), which screens during the 2017 Frightfest in the UK.

To call the Rivi’s home a manse or a villa would be an understatement. It has crenellations. It has also seen better days. Much of the masonry is chipped and cracking, unfortunately including Jakob’s room. Ever since the death of his pianist mother Malvina (doesn’t “mal” usually mean bad?), he has supposedly heard her speaking to him through the aperture in his wall. It seems he is afraid that if he starts talking, she will stop.

Enter Verena (presumably named after St. Verena, the patron saint of nurses and lepers, don’t you reckon?). At first, she is having none of Jakob’s spookiness. Yet, as her protective mothering instincts start to kick in, she begins to suspect there maybe something to it after all. The more driven she is to help Jakob, the more she and Klaus feel their powerful mutual attraction. She even starts sitting as a model for his unfinished statue of Malvina after he realizes how much they look alike. Yeah okay, if he says so, but not really.

Based on Silvio Raffo’s Italian novel, Stone clearly echoes Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca and Henry James’ Turn of the Screw, but it is really stingy with the sinister elements until late in the third act. There is at least one uncanny plot twist supposedly hiding in plain sight, but it is distractingly obvious (especially considering one late 1990s blockbuster is famously constructed around a similar revelation).

What works here is the atmospheric, Hammer-esque 1950s costumes, sets, and trappings. Castle Rivi and the family mausoleum are terrific gothic locations, but Emilia Clarke and Marton Csokas are no Joan Fontaine and Laurence Olivier. Of the two, he fares the better, mostly just brooding and glowering like Edward Rochester’s less imposing cousin. The work of Clarke, (a Game of Thrones fan favorite) is rather lightweight, but she tries to compensate by opening her eyes impossibly wide. It is hard to imagine anyone would confuse her with Caterina Murino, which is why the audience starts to pine for Malvina along with Jakob (let’s just say he looks awkward on-screen and leave it at that).

Stone looks great, but it has no passion or sense of urgency. It is a strange choice for Howell, considering the grittiness of his Oscar-shortlisted short Ana’s Playground, but one could argue both films fully capitalize on the architecture of their settings. The ending almost redeems Voice from the Stone, but there are much better genre films at this year’s Frightfest UK, including Psychopaths, Sequence Break, Game of Death, Mansfield 66/67, The Villainess, Devil’s Gate, Meatball Machine Kodoku, and the short film Bad Heads. Here in the U.S., it is already available on DVD, but it has its UK premiere this Friday (8/25), as part of Frightfest.

The Prey: The French Fugitive

Franck Adrien is not exactly a touchy feely kind of guy, but he’s still a better father than Will Smith in After Earth, even if he is behind bars.  However, he must break out of prison to protect his family from the serial killer who recently shared his cell in Eric Valette’s The Prey (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Adrien took the fall for his last heist, but not before he squirreled away the loot.  He will not say where, not even when his wife Anna asks.  His accomplices ask too, but not so nicely.  Of course, Adrien can handle a prison beatdown.  Unfortunately, he is incapable of walking away from a fight.  When the guards allow a gang of toughs to administer some frontier justice to Adrien’s cellmate, he intercedes in spite of himself.  This leads to a mistaken bonding moment.  Unfortunately, Adrien realizes just how bad Jean-Louis Maurel truly is soon after he is released on a technicality.

Even though his sentence is nearly up, Adrien must escape for his family’s sake.  Already a fugitive, Maurel raises the stakes for his Adrien by framing him for some of his past murders.  The detective charged with apprehending him, the ambitious Claire Linné, has a sense something is wrong with the picture, but all her colleagues are idiots.  Adrien finds only one ally, Carrega, the obsessive ex-cop who could never make a case stick against Maurel.

As Adrien, Albert Dupontel gives one of the most hard-nosed, unabashedly masculine performances of the decade.  His work has a visceral physicality that allows almost no room for verbalizing.  Indeed, his character cannot even seem to growl “I didn’t do it, flic” at Linné.  It’s actually quite impressive to behold.  This film could never be remade with Robert Pattinson or Leonardo DiCaprio, though Heaven help him, Martin Scorsese might try anyway.

Alice Taglioni’s Linné looks pretty credible in her action sequences too, which is a cool bit of fair play.  She also invests her character with refreshing intelligence and professionalism.  You want her on the case, but not so much Zinedine Soualem as her dumb copper boss.  Sergi López adds some nicely rumpled world weariness as Carrega.  As a bonus, there is also Zen’s Caterina Murino in the rather thankless role of Anna Adrien.

Valette stages some nifty fight scenes (Adrien’s prison escape is a particular dozy) and capitalizes on some picturesque backdrops.  Tightly paced, The Prey delivers gritty action with an art house luster and a distinctly French sensibility.  It should well please genre fans and Francophiles alike when it opens this Friday (6/7) in New York at the AMC Empire.

Zen and the Art of Police Corruption

Aurelio Zen has a reputation for integrity. As a result, his career has stalled. Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, the higher-ups sometimes need a police detective of his intelligence and talent to handle especially sensitive cases. To survive, he will reluctantly learn how to play the political game in Zen, Masterpiece Mystery’s newest series based on the novels by Michael Dibdin, which premieres this coming Sunday on PBS.

Zen might just have the coolest opening credits ever. They certainly establish the Rome setting. However, Zen is Venetian—another reason the detective is such an outsider in the Roman force. In the series opening Vendetta, Zen is to vet the handling of a high profile murder case. His captain makes it clear Zen is supposed to sign off on the half-bungled investigation quickly and quietly. It will not be that easy. Amedeo Colonna, a powerful ministry official unofficially “requests” Zen sabotage the case against the politically connected suspect. Further complicating matters, Zen starts to think the accused might actually be innocent. Yet, whatever course of action Zen chooses, his career will likely suffer. This predicament will repeat for Zen.

Though Zen spends most of season one on thin ice professionally, his personal life heats with the arrival of the captain’s new civilian secretary, Tania Moretti, a beautiful woman going through an ugly divorce. In this gossipy backbiting environment, they try to keep their relationship on the down low. It is not clear how long this will be sustainable though now that Zen is increasingly assigned high profile cases. The second installment, Cabal, starts with an apparently open and shut suicide that Zen’s captain would like him to hurry up and close. This time the Ministry agrees, but prosecutor (and potential lover) Nadia Pirlo encourages Zen to keep digging.

Arguably the weakest link of season one, Cabal posits a shadowy uber-conspiracy in the tired Da Vinci Code tradition, right down to the furtive cell phones calls exchanged by limousine riding government officials and ominous Vatican Cardinals. Frankly, raising the intrigue to the macro level undercuts the series’ gritty portrayal of petty precinct politics and the grasping corruption of the officialdom above them.

The series concluding Ratking returns to its strengths, placing Zen in yet another Catch-22. Evidently, it is illegal to pay ransom to kidnappers in Italy. Nonetheless, Colonna wants Zen to facilitate such an exchange to ensure the safe return of a major party contributor. Unfortunately, Zen’s by-the-book interim captain is itching to bust him for any infraction. It would be business as usual for Zen, if he were not so aware a man’s life hangs in the balance.

Ratking might have the best twisty-turny crime store of the series. Not exactly whodunits or procedurals, Zen the series is more about watching the protagonist try to carry out his duties honorably, while negotiating the malevolent bureaucracy and petty departmental in-fighting.

Perfectly cast in the lead, ethnically ambiguous Rufus Sewell certainly passes for Italian. He also conveys the appropriate combination of righteous intensity and everyman resignation. Furthermore, the chemistry forged between his Zen and Caterina Murino’s Moretti is nothing short of electric. Frankly, even though it is always safely PG, Zen is still pretty darn hot by PBS standards.

Seen by a handful in the unfairly dismissed Garden of Eden and by the entire world in Casino Royale, Murino projects a smart and sophisticated sexuality, not unlike some of her legendary predecessors of Italian cinema. The supporting cast (partly Italian, but mostly British) provides plenty of color and verve, particularly Ben Miles as the stone cold Mephistophelean Colonna.

At one point Colonna tells Zen: “I didn’t know you had it in you.” Some might echo the sentiment after watching Zen on PBS. Sleek and stylish like an Italian sports car, but decidedly grubby in its depiction of police corruption, Zen is feature quality television. While Cabal need not be appointment TV, Vendetta and Ratking absolutely should not be missed. Unfortunately, Zen the series' future is somewhat up in the air in the UK right now, but viewers should not let that dissuade them. Even though most Zen’s personal life remains unsolved at the end of series one, it allows him to enjoy some temporarily last laughs that are well worth sticking around for. Definitely recommended, Zen debuts on PBS’s Masterpiece Mystery with Vendetta this Sunday (7/17).

(Photos: WGBH)