RAGE (UK/2009/SALLY POTTER)

Sally Potter’s unusual murder mystery Rage describes the experiences of a group of individuals working at different levels in the fashion industry. The story unfolds through a series of ‘confessionals’ shot by unspeaking schoolboy Michelangelo on his camera phone. The characters indulge the viewer directly in their experience of the industry, and their understanding of the catastrophic events of the week in question, a plain block colour filling the background. As two models die in mysterious circumstances, the characters grow paranoid of their exposure to other people, grilling Michelangelo about his decision to upload these video confessionals online.

Essentially, Rage is a theatre piece for the Web 2.0 generation. The film was simultaneously released at the cinema, on DVD, via Internet and on mobile phones to ensure that, like the characters within it, the film was hidden from no-one. The target is two-fold, affording equal vitriol to self-important bigwigs and disingenuous YouTube philosophers. Themes are brought to the surface almost immediately: identity, duplicity, honesty. But one can’t help feeling that Potter got a bit greedy with her concept. While the simple shooting style is daring, the film manages to disengage its audience with the layers of pretence at play, to the point that it’s hard to tell whether it is deliberate. In short, the film itself is no less superficial than the caricatures within it. And while the cast is spectacular on paper, there is something grating about seeing some of the more seasoned actors constrained by these experimental parameters.

YES (UK/2004/SALLY POTTER)

Sally Potter’s Yes uses various cinematic devices in order to tell its story, but for the most part, they do not lead the film, nor do they go unnoticed. The most obvious device to identify is the use of the iambic pentameter in the form of rhyming couplets, which Potter herself describes as a means of evoking the simultaneity of thought and feeling. For me, that every character speaks and thinks in rhymes conjures up an idea of everyone straining to fulfil the most basic expectations of a ‘perfect’ human being. This is best exemplified with the scene in which He asks She: “From Elvis to Eminem, Warhol’s art/I know your stories, know your songs by heart/But do you know mine?” This demonstrates his frustration at the differences between the two, and his displeasure at his culture being seen as subordinate to hers.

Perhaps the strongest theme for me was the cleaners as all-seeing, all-knowing witnesses, in particular the cleaner who breaks the fourth wall to become our narrator (played by Shirley Henderson). As she weaves comparisons with microscopic bacteria and the larger worlds in which they reside, her hands toy with various manifestations of dirt. In this way, she is showing us how well she can know a person through the evidence they leave behind. In echo of this idea, every character in the film who cleans by occupation also looks directly at the audience, perhaps to extend the idea of constant surveillance beyond the universe of the film.