The Decade List: The Tulse Luper Suitcases (2003-2004)

The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part 1: The Moab Story - dir. Peter Greenaway
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The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part 2: Vaux to the Sea - dir. Peter Greenaway

[Edited from an earlier post]

As my interest in the world of film (and, really, everything else) has been going in and out of periods of remission, fancy my surprise that a director I’d “written off” could give me a much needed jump-start. Thanks a marathon on The Sundance Channel, I got to witness Peter Greenaway’s three film entries in his epic, confusing multimedia project The Tulse Luper Suitcases (none of the films have been released theatrically in the US or even on DVD anywhere outside of Russia and Spain, still to this day). Might I suggest that the trilogy—the first titled The Moab Story, the second Vaux to the Sea, the third From Sark to Finish—is a dizzying array of brilliance.

With the combined efforts of 8½ Women, Nightwatching and, to a lesser extent, The Pillow Book, Greenaway shifted from a primary obsession of mine to a director I’d pegged as “losing it.” The Tulse Luper Suitcases encompasses all the good things about the aforementioned films and expands upon his examination of cinema and its boundaries. In short, the films depict the life of 20th century collector/traveler Tulse Luper who is better known as Greenaway’s alter ego and has received mention in other of the director’s work. The films contain sixteen “episodes,” each of which surrounding Luper’s imprisonments, both physical and metaphysical.

In episode four or five (forgive me, I can’t remember which except that it happens in Vaux to the Sea), it becomes more clear that The Tulse Luper Suitcases are to Greenaway as Histoire(s) du cinema are to Godard. It’s a quite literal comparison as this segment focuses on Luper’s confinement in a cinemahouse in France which plays The Passion of Joan of Arc and Boudu Saved from Drowning, among others. Here, the cinema becomes a reflexive look at the newly shaped world for Luper, ever advancing through each stage in his own personal reflection. Greenaway even introduces Joan of Arc and Boudu as characters into the series with character numbers; all of the expansive cast of individuals receive a number and their name in text upon entering the films. However, it isn’t simply the cinema that is the mode of Greenaway’s examination, as history itself reveals itself as the catalyst for the understanding of both man and Luper himself.

The band news, unfortunately, comes in the final film, From Sark to Finish, a confused, unpolished and rushed conclusion to Luper’s adventures. Gone are the glorious fascinations of narrative and visuals, the latter of which is, at times, completely astounding particularly in Greenaway’s use of frame-on-top-of-a-frame. Even the original Luper, JJ Feild, is replaced briefly by Stephen Billington and later by Roger Rees, who plays the aged Luper/double in Vaux to the Sea. Missing too are the recognizable faces, from the wonderful Isabella Rossellini to Steven Mackintosh to Valentina Cervi as Luper’s mistress Cissie Colpitts (a name you should recognize from Drowning by Numbers). However, most damning is that, perhaps through budgetary constraints, episodes are glossed over; one, which depicts Luper’s homoerotic relationship with one of his former captors, doesn’t even include any filmed footage. It’s a sad conclusion to a remarkable experiment, albeit one I won’t soon forget.

The Moab Story

With: JJ Feild, Valentina Cervi, Steven Mackintosh, Jordi Mollà, Tom Bower, Scot Williams, Caroline Dhavernas, Raymond J. Barry, Drew Mulligan, Yorick van Wageningen, Jack Wouterse, Naím Thomas, Debbie Harry, Michèle Bernier, Isabella Rossellini, Molly Ringwald, Keram Malicki-Sánchez, Ana Torrent, Nigel Terry, Patrick Kennedy, Francesco Salvi
Screenplay: Peter Greenaway
Cinematography: Reinier van Brummelen
Music: Borut Krzisnik, Eduardo Polonio
Country of Origin: UK/Netherlands/Spain/Luxumbourg/Italy/Hungary/Russia/Germany
US Distributor: N/A

Premiere: 24 May 2003 (Cannes Film Festival)
US Premiere: 12 April 2004 (Philadelphia International Film Festival)

Vaux to the Sea

With: JJ Feild, Valentina Cervi, Isabella Rossellini, Roger Rees, Raymond J. Berry, Franka Potente, Ana Torrent, Steven Mackintosh, Jordi Mollà, Ornella Muti, Maria Schrader, Scot Williams, Francesco Salvi, Anna Galiena, Marcel Iures, Gaspard Ulliel, Keram Malicki-Sánchez
Screenplay: Peter Greenaway
Cinematography: Reinier van Brummelen
Music: Architori, Borut Krzisnik, Eduardo Polonio
Country of Origin: UK/Netherlands/Spain/Luxumbourg/Italy/Hungary
US Distributor: N/A

Premiere: February 2004 (Berlin International Film Festival)

Peter Greenaway's Nightwatching on DVD in September

E1 Distribution announced a 15 September DVD release date for Peter Greenaway's Nightwatching, which stars Martin Freeman as Rembrandt. They will release the film in two editions; the special edition will also contain Greenaway's Rembrandt's J'accuse. Nightwatching also stars Natalie Press, Toby Jones and Jodhi May. Koch Lorber also announced Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon and Bruno Romy's Rumba for the same date.

Also, Sony announced Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck's Sugar for 1 September on DVD and Blu-ray. The fourth season of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia will be out 15 September. Zeitgeist is releasing Sergei Dvortsevoy's Tulpan on 22 September. And finally, Lionsgate will have 1988's Homeboy, which stars Mickey Rourke as a boxer, on 1 September.

The Most Wonderful Newspaper Article Of Our Age

In my line of work, I have to read a lot of newspaper articles. Seriously, a lot. Many of them are vicious and unpleasant right-wing shrieks of terror as the world slowly disassembles their medieval belief systems. The likes of Peter Hitchens, Amanda Platell, Charles Moore, Melanie Phillips, Richard Littlejohn, Kelvin McKenzie, Leo McKinstry, and many many more yank handfuls of hair from their scalps in an effort to out-selfish each other, demonising everything and everyone that would look vaguely out-of-place in a 1950s Somerset country house. Reading their nauseating bilewords smeared across the page like a mental skidmark has been one of the more upsetting things I have had to do in this life, and tends to make me forget that not all Fleet Street pundits are Mannequins of Lazy-Thinking Evil.


This week, thanks to a link from, of all people, The Internet Commenter Formerly Known As Moriarty, I have found my favourite piece of UK journalism of the decade. Anne Billson, novelist and Buffy fan, has said the unsayable about the British film industry; it is in a terminal state, and the causes have been there all along.

I agree with so much of what she wrote that I could just copy and paste the whole thing here and just finish off this post with multiple exclamation points of joy, especially with her catty single-sentence drubbing of Mike Leigh. I love it so much I'll pretend I don't mind that she didn't give some praise to John Boorman, who made one of the most visually innovative movies of all time (as well as three of the battiest and most lovable), though I suspect she's more concerned with the recent crop of British film directors. Of all the targets she hit, this in particular struck me as a salient point:

I once heard a British film director say in an interview that he wasn't interested in telling a story visually (why were you directing a bloody film then?), and it's clear he's not the only one. Historically, Britain has produced more world-class writers than painters, and words tend to be valued far above visual imagery, if only because reading and listening apparently require more effort than looking, and so are deemed to be worthier pursuits.

Later on Billson mentions the UK directors who emulate shots from American directors for no other reason than that they liked that shot, not because it is the right shot for the scene. It's funny that she mentions Atonement earlier in the piece. Though there were some shots there that were admirable, the big setpiece single take shot of the Dunkirk evacuation is one of the most overrated shots of the past few years. I take my hat off to Joe Wright for managing the logistical nightmare of it, but what was the point of it? On a narrative level it was meaningless, even though a lot of extraneous information was handed to us.


While I understand that Wright was making a visual reference to the Dunkirk passage in McEwan's novel, it still looked stupid, with the characters wandering around the beach in circles in order to show everything off while Dario Marianelli's music did a lot of the heavy lifting. Compare that to single takes like the nightclub scene in Goodfellas, or the opening long takes from The Player, or Snake Eyes, or The Bonfire of the Vanities. Story happens in those scenes. We discover things about the characters. In Atonement, we're just checking out a beach.

This is not to say there are no British directors who have an amazing eye. Sadly, they're often not lauded in the UK and their careers stall. My favourite British style-genius of the past decade, Lynne Ramsay, created two distinctive and brilliant films, almost got to adapt The Lovely Bones, and then disappeared to work on un-named projects. Garth Jennings has spent so long making Son of Rambow made and promoted that he doesn't even seem to have anything else in the pipeline. Michael Winterbottom once made movies I couldn't wait to see, though that has sadly changed over time. Peter Greenaway buggered off to the Netherlands a while back and his movies retreated to the kind of Matthew-Barney-esque obscurity they always should have had, that weird successful period back in the 80s notwithstanding. We're still waiting for the next movie by the wonderful Pawel Pawlikowski. Terence Malick is now more prolific than he is, shockingly enough.


Many other UK directors who understand what to do with a camera (to varying degrees) have hopped over to America as soon as they could; Paul Greengrass, Martin Campbell, Edgar Wright, Roger Michell, Mike Newell, Stephen Frears, Kevin MacDonald, Pete Travis, etc. etc. The other conspicuous style-addict in British cinema, who won an Best Director Oscar this year and whose name I'm sick of reading everywhere, is probably going to spend some time in Hollywood making worthy films for a while. In fact, the only British director who wants to keep filming in the UK is Neil Marshall, bless him. His next film, Centurion, already sounds unmissable.


Still, I'm surprised Billson doesn't mention the Scott Brothers, as they are surely two of the most influential directors of the past twenty years even if they have made movies that many people consider beneath contempt. Their style has been adapted and ripped-off more than almost any other filmmakers around; surely that's something the patriotic UK film buff can be pleased about. That said, I can understand why she doesn't mention other style-heavy filmmakers from the same background (i.e. advertising), such as Alan Parker and Adrian Lyne, who barely have a good film between them.


Sadly for the UK, Ridley and Tony Scott stayed away while their films became more interesting (Tony Scott had a run of fun action movies in the early 90s, and Ridley makes a lot of flat but ambitious films I feel compelled to see, such as Kingdom of Heaven and Black Hawk Down), and Alan Parker came back to run the UK Film Council. Disastrous. It would have been the worst of all worlds if Adrian Lyne had made anything in the last seven years. I will never forgive him for his disastrous adaptation of Lolita, which remains one of the five worst films of the decade. Yes, worse than Fatal Attraction, Nine and a Half Weeks, and Indecent Proposal glommed together into a big lump of misogynistic Silly Putty, and then bounced off our eyeballs for over two hours. The man is a menace to society.

Why am I dragging up all of this bile? Because last week I saw possibly my favourite British movie of the last ten years, and what's most horrible is that I don't think Billson would like it, primarily because it's not that visual. More on that tomorrow...

ETA: And by "tomorrow" I of course meant two days from now...