london

Kill Your Friends

Posted on by Charlotte_Sometimes

How to succeed in business without any sense of morality

With a title like that, the content of this film really shouldn’t surprise you. We have copious usage of drugs and alcohol, some rather legendary use of swearing (‘Do these shoes look like the shoes of someone who gives a fuck about The Velvet Underground?’) and of course the aforementioned killing of friends. Why? Well it’s set in 1997 and it’s about the music industry. You don’t need to be musicophile to have a rough idea what the music industry was like in the 1990’s. The people at the top possessed little musical talent themselves and gave little care to whether the artists they were choosing to spend their thousands on were ‘good’ artists or in fact whether they were producing ‘art’. Could this unsigned act make me a fortune? Yes, well sign here on the dotted line. So you four girls can’t actually sing or dance, but you’re all rather fit..? Well The Spice Girls are big right now, so we’ll take you. We’ll just get recording artists to sing your music which you’ll mime, and we’ll give you a really crappy basic routine for everyone to copy. You’re hired! This is the sole focus of Kill Your Friends, a study in the middle management wanting to become the top dog focusing less on making good music but more on making lots and lots of money…

It’s 1997 and Britpop is ruling the airwaves. Twenty-seven year old A&R man Steven Stelfox (Nicholas Hoult) doesn’t like Britpop, or any other type of music at all actually. He’s not in the job for the music, he is far from a music puritan. He’s just in it for the money, lots and lots of money. Considering he works in an industry ‘no one knows anything’ there is little stability. Every deal you offer an act is make or break. If an act doesn’t sell, your career is broken. Fuelled by greed, ambition and Class-A drugs he craves the promotion to Head of A&R at his record label and will refuse to let his opposition, his ‘friends’, take the job from him. His calculating approach to manoeuvring the music industry will be taken to a murderous new level.

First things first – substitute music for Wall Street and 90s for 80s and this sounds rather like another film doesn’t it? There have been lots and lots of the reviews for Kill Your Friends that make a comparison between it and this other film. Let’s be straight, this is not the new American Psycho. Instead of a critique of the works of Huey Lewis and The New we have a reflection on the writing prowess of Paul Weller. Whilst is may sound like it, and makes some very noble steps to try and replicate it – Kill Your Friends is the inferior product by quite a long way. Having not read either books, I cannot comment on the book-to-film transition. However I can say from a film point of view American Psycho utilises filmic elements to greater effect, particularly in the representation of the central character which makes the audience question if the murderous acts actually happened or where in his mind. Kill Your Friends does not do this, and presents Steven’s homicidal behaviour with seemingly little consequences. It should also be said just how repellent Steven Stelfox is. He is horrific. Cold and calculating, with malice seeping from every pore, the audience is forced to spend 103 minutes with him. With no redeeming qualities whatsoever, it does become an endurance test. Whilst it should be stated that this is somewhat of a success on Hoult’s part, especially considering how likeable many of his other roles have portrayed him to be, the lack of bite or satire in the script rather ill-serves him.

That is the fatal flaw of this film. It doesn’t question the ethics, lack therefore of,  of these corporate men. It doesn’t poke fun at them, nor glorify it. As I stated in the start, if you even have a passing knowledge of the music industry, you’ll know what sort of scenes crop up in this film. There’s nothing new or particularly fresh. Whilst what is shown is good and well-acted, there are no surprises. The storyline follows Steven negotiating through one drama to the next. Considering how little we care about his character we are not really going to care if he gets caught. In fact considering the nature of his crimes, there is a degree of audience desire that is hoping he does get caught.

This film is joyless, grubby and gruelling. See at your peril.

Miss You Already

Posted on by Charlotte_Sometimes

An unsentimental yet sincere depiction of illness and friendship

It may not have a particularly original plot and may be presented in a way that is ultimately wildly manipulative (read as: you will cry) the film itself is admirable in what it, mostly, achieves. It presents a relatively honest depiction of breast cancer; the impact it places upon relationships both platonic and romantic along with the physical toll it takes. Whilst that alone is immensely refreshing, this is furthered by the presentation of a friendship that will resonate with audiences’.

Millie (Toni Collette) and Jess (Drew Barrymore) have been best friends since childhood. They have experienced every first together, everything from first kiss to first child, with their polar opposite personalities allowing them to bring out the best in each other. Whilst Jess is more conservative and stable, Millie is the overconfident and glamourous wild-child yet they are totally and completely inseparable. Both are happily married, yet rather than this separating them their respective husbands (Millie is married to Dominic Cooper’s Kit with Jess married to Paddy Considine’s Jago) and Millie’s two children instead make up one big family. But the family is rocked by Millie’s life-altering diagnosis of breast cancer, just as Jess finds out that she is pregnant with her much-longed for first child, which will put their friendship and their makeshift family to the ultimate test.

Collette does any amazing job (as is to be expected) playing Millie. Her acting, along with the screenplay and the film’s direction avoid what many similar films have done in the past, of making the person suffering from cancer into some sort of saint or martyr. Instead Millie stays the same as it is implied she always was – a mostly well-meaning but often not very nice person. This feature is really the film’s only comparatively unique feature. This, along with the portrayal of her treatment, make the film feel more honest and in a sense more brutal than others of this kind. Millie starts the film loud and vulgar, and although she spends the majority of the film in an oncology unit, she still stays the same person. Cancer doesn’t ‘fix’ her personalities ‘faults’, at times it only exacerbates them, consequently making her more relatable than many other presentations of the disease. It’s a reminder that cancer can, and with the current odds will, affect all of us whether we are good, bad or, like Millie, the grey area in-between.

However, it would be wrong to say this film is truly great or fully lives up to its potential. As we only see Jess and Millie’s friendship through flashback or montage, we are unable to fully latch onto their story. Aside from their respective health concerns, and a few references to a shared love of Wuthering Heights and R.E.M’s Losing My Religion, we aren’t really given enough about what makes them such good friends. The film constantly tells us this, but never shows us quite enough to engage us fully with their bond and ultimately does not earn the empathy it had the potential to do so.

Nevertheless, the ensemble cast, with Collette at the forefront, are all reliable and supply solid performances. Jacqueline Bisset is fantastic as Millie’s actress mother, Frances de la Tour momentarily steals the show in her short appearance as a wig-maker and Tyson Ritter (lead singer of All American Rejects) pops up as a swaggering barman.

From the opening of the film the inevitable outcome is presented, yet it will withhold interest and induce multiple bursts of tears throughout.