On the Couch

DVD REVIEW

Whip It ****
Directed by: Drew Barrymore
Starring: Ellen Page, Alia Shawkat, Marcia Gay Harden, Kristen Wiig, Juliette Lewis

A Prophet ****
Directed by: Jacques Audiard
Starring: Tahar Rahim, Niels Arestrup, Adel Bencherif

THERE is a weird version of America that seems to be solely populated by prematurely world-weary hipster teens, bible-bashing parents and oddball best friends and relatives.
The likes of Jesse Eisenberg and Michael Cera are the kings in this 51st state and the queen, if there is one, is Ellen Page.
Whip It is one such chapter in the history of this quirky version of the US. While not quite as spikey or well-written as Diablo Cody’s Juno, this Drew Barrymore-directed tale of girl power, roller-skating and escaping small town Texas is still a fantastically entertaining flick.
Page, who is fast becoming one of the most dependable actresses of any age when it comes to putting in quality performances in interesting films, stars as Bliss Cavendar, a (surprise, surprise) smart, sarcastic young wan being raised by her former beauty queen mother and beer and American football-loving father.
Looking for a life beyond the shallow classmates and teen queen beauty contests her mom enters her in, Bliss finds her way into roller derby – a violent, all-girl sport that looks like a demolition derby on skates.
Lining out for the Hurl Scouts – the worst team in the league – she becomes tough and confidant and finds something she really wants to do with her free time and the people she wants to do it with.
What Whip It lacks in surprising plot twists it more than makes up for in pure character and hutzpah.
From the brilliant Marcia Gay Harden as Bliss’s uptight mother and Alia Shawkat as her best friend, Pash, to Juliette Lewis as the Iron Maven – the toughest, meanest player in the roller derby league – the cast of characters all have more angles to their character than you might expect from fairly formulaic tale.
If you’re looking for a better, smarter, funnier version of Step Up or other teen-inspiring nonsense then Whip It is a perfect choice and if you don’t well up at the end, even a little bit, then you’re a soulless monster. SOULLESS!
If Whip It is a well-made milkshake of a film, A Prophet could best be described as a well-crafted plate of steak tartare. While the prospect of a plate of raw, seasoned mince served with an uncooked egg atop it might not be to everyone’s taste, fans of the French delicacy enjoy a depth and variety of flavour and experience that you just can’t get out of other meals.
And so it is with Jacques Audiard’s crime epic plotting the rise of Malik El Djebena (Tahar Rahim) from a friendless, illiterate Muslim street thug at the start of his six-year jail term, to a mover and shaker on the Mediterranean drug scene all from within the prison’s walls.
There isn’t a soul to empathise with or root for and while the main character reveals what could be considered an admirable animal cunning and ability to manouvre between the Muslim and Corsican factions in the prison, you are never anything less than conscious of the cut-throat little scrote he really is.
Which isn’t to say that he isn’t a fascinating character to watch, he is. But if you’re looking for the jolly, gentlemanly gangsters of the The Godfather you might want to keep looking because A Prophet is a hard movie about hard people.
Taken under the wing of the big Corsican boss in the jail, César Luciani (Niels Arestrup), El Djebena suffers under the racist taunts of his boss’s other minions as he establishes himself within the chokey’s complex hierarchy.
As his web of connections and influence grows, so do those of Luciani’s wane and El Djebana’s extra-curricular drug dealing activities, coordinated from within the prison, begin to complicate the pair’s relationship.
It’s a fascinating yarn to watch marred only by undeveloped plot threads – one that seems to imply El Djebana has prophetic visions and another about him slowly losing his mind and hallucinating – and a bad habit of dropping characters in and then giving them nothing to do. It’s a small niggle though because if all there was to the flick was Tahar Rahim’s performance and some slowed down footage of a monk boiling an egg, it’d still be worth watching.
In it’s monk/eggless format it’s even better – less stylish than that other recent French crime epic, Mesrine, but all the better for it in many ways.