David Cronenberg’s new film ‘Eastern Promises’ shot in Deptford

it seems David Cronenberg’s new film ‘Eastern Promises’ was shot in my manor of Deptford, also it looks like used the classic buger bar "mr wimpy" in deptford high street as a location as well as the river, so I'm looking forward to catching it has anyone seen it yet?

http://www.timeout.com/film/chicago/features/show-feature/3590/david-cronenberg-interview.html

Briefly, and at the dumbest zero level, if you scramble Frear's Dirty Pretty Things (same scriptwriter, Steve Knight, chosen for his portrayals of embedded immigrant hothouse body-horror subcultures) with Borat's wrestling-disgust desublimation (Cronenberg's Scorsese-like explosively redemptive climax being a gorefest hyper-choreographed ballet of butchery, tattoo-testicle designed for a S/M trio of wrestlers-from-hell in the theatrical claustrophobia of a Russian steam bath), with Viggo Mortensen reprising his split noir-character identity, from A History of Violence , with the enigmatic past that problematizes the status of his present all in the context of an eroticized macho-on-macho violence, and further nods to Mulholland Drive via oneiric Naomi Watts, and Days of Heaven via a young though dead girls's voice-over narration, and finally, Cammell/Roeg's Performance, with its ritualized internecine London-Mafio power violence, we might begin to summarize the film. As mainstream-accessible as History to boot. In short, a euphorically deranged, psychohorrific, skin-flick-knife, eroto-viseral, deeply disturbing psychic invasion up real close and personal.

Yeah, I'd reckon it's worth seeing, and you can read K-punk's review in next month's Sight and Sound, though I''ll never agree with him on Cronenberg.

[Certainly trumps the just-over fuut-testicle anglo-roosky equivalent ...]
 
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bnek

Well-known member
this film was pretty terrible. were any of the 'russians' actually russian? fucking awful acting, cringe-worthy dialogue, nothing particularly redeemable except for one violent scene in a bathhouse which was quite fun. i wouldnt tell anybody to see it.
 

tox

Factory Girl
this film was pretty terrible. were any of the 'russians' actually russian? fucking awful acting, cringe-worthy dialogue, nothing particularly redeemable except for one violent scene in a bathhouse which was quite fun. i wouldnt tell anybody to see it.

I completely agree. This is an awful flick... the worst I've seen for a couple of months. The whole premise was ridiculous and **SPOILER** there was no attempt to explain away why the police weren't involved in identifying the woman etc, from the start. Surely that is standard practise when a randomer dies in a hospital? It just went down hill from there. Amazingly irritating.
 

gumdrops

Well-known member
terrible film. so much wrong with it. saw it last night.

saw it after counterfeiters, incidentally, which has nothing to do with the same subject as this, but was a 100 times better.
 

crackerjack

Well-known member
terrible film. so much wrong with it. saw it last night.

saw it after counterfeiters, incidentally, which has nothing to do with the same subject as this, but was a 100 times better.

I've been meaning to see it for a couple of weeks, and now I don't whether i've been completely put off or need to see it, just to join in the slagging. fwiw, i didn't think History Of Violence was all that - good thriller, but the allegorical depth i was expecting either escaped me entirely or just wasn't there at all.

what was counterfeiters like then? quite fancy that.
 

crackerjack

Well-known member
Nick Cohen's twuppence on EP.

If the BNP had been given a camera crew, it couldn't have produced a more revolting depiction of immigrant life in London than David Cronenberg's film Eastern Promises. It starts as it means to go on with a Kurdish barber forcing his son to cut a customer's throat. A pregnant Russian child prostitute then dies having a Caesarean. Anna, a naive midwife at the hospital, resolves to find the newborn child's father. The trail leads to a Russian restaurant. The apparently avuncular proprietor does not solely bring exotic cuisines to grateful Londoners of the upper-middle class, he is also a people trafficker, who holds girls in sex slavery - and has a psychopath for a son, for good measure.

The British barely feature in their own capital. Apart from Anna, a second-generation Russian, they are minor characters: police officers who examine mutilated corpses or passers-by who run for cover when Chechen assassins storm a public baths. Whether as victims or victimisers, Cronenberg's London is a city of foreigners.
All right, all right, I know a storyteller is under no obligation to accept the constraints of a documentary maker. I wouldn't have mentioned Eastern Promises if the critics hadn't treated his fantasy as realism. 'This is the kerb-crawling reality. This is London,' declared the man from the Times. Cronenberg shows London as a 'magnet for hucksters, desperadoes and fortune-seekers; a militarised, relentlessly surveillanced police state in the making,' said the Telegraph. Our own Philip French was more restrained, but still saw it as a picture 'about the dark underside of globalisation and multiculturalism'.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2204932,00.html
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
I've been meaning to see it for a couple of weeks, and now I don't whether i've been completely put off or need to see it, just to join in the slagging. fwiw, i didn't think History Of Violence was all that - good thriller, but the allegorical depth i was expecting either escaped me entirely or just wasn't there at all.

what was counterfeiters like then? quite fancy that.

I don't think History of Violence had allegorical depth (did it? who knows.), but thought it was brilliantly constructed and an interesting collision of environments.

Counterfeiters is fairly good, but to be honest seems to belong to a lineage of ok-ish films about World War II/30s Germany that leave very little impression in the memory. It would have made an excellent psychological three-hander, save that the obligatory scene-setting (which is fairly redundant, after all, for anyone with a rudimentary grasp of history) tended to overshadow these, more interesting, aspects of the plot. In the end, it was A Film About The Holocaust (sort of).

I appreciate that the subject matter is different, but I can't help comparing all such films to the incredible visceral impact that Downfall had upon me. Now THAT transported me to 1945.
 

crackerjack

Well-known member
I don't think History of Violence had allegorical depth (did it? who knows.), but thought it was brilliantly constructed and an interesting collision of environments.

Well no, that was my problem. I think I just read the wrong reviews beforehand, some of which portrayed the Viggo character as a metaphor for America - trying to live nice, but can't escape his/its violent past etc. Apart from that not being there, i agree it was good.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
That's interesting for me, as it was the first film in ages I saw while reading absolutely no reviews beforehand. I think it's the way to go; there was a real frisson of 'I have no idea what's going to happen' that I very rarely have. :D
 

gumdrops

Well-known member
"'about the dark underside of globalisation and multiculturalism'"

yeah, cos none of the things going on in that film were ever there in london before east european/russian immigrants right?

what struck me about this film is that despite the idiot critics and perhaps cronenburg himself (ive not read any interviews with him) seeing it as a true depiction of the 'real london' or at least the real criminal london, the whole thing had a complete lack of authenticity and depth. i dont know who wrote it or if they actually know anything or much about russian mafia overlords in the city (or london for that matter), but it didnt often feel like it. there was a real lack of gravitas. the characters were cardboard 'evil foreigner' cutouts (even the russian uncle was your typical 'backward foreigner with archaic customs'). im no expert in east european accents so i could be off the mark but some of the accents struck me as 'insert generic european accent', and worse than all that, the plot was quite shoddy, with too of it seeming UTTERLY generic, with little that seemed unique to russian mafia or russian mafia in london.

the history of violence film, from what i remember, was a lot more believable and interesting.
 

tox

Factory Girl
the characters were cardboard 'evil foreigner' cutouts (even the russian uncle was your typical 'backward foreigner with archaic customs').

that bit where he came out with all the racist stuff at the christmas dinner table was cringe worthy for all the wrong reasons. it was almost bizarre.

do not waste your £4.50 on this film (or £10 if you live in the rotten crime ridden hell-hole that is David Cronenberg's London).
 

gumdrops

Well-known member
that bit where he came out with all the racist stuff at the christmas dinner table was cringe worthy for all the wrong reasons. it was almost bizarre.

yeah, that bit just seemed totally unbelievable/out of nowhere. not cos i dont think he or russians could be racist but it seemed so forced (ditto for the mums 'stupid russians' reaction). it was kind of like race/immigrants as done by 1970s british tv. like i said, i do wonder if the person writing this has any experience of the subject matter/people at hand.

have to say i am surprised cronenburg was behind this, it seemed so mawkish for the guy who did videodrome and the fly.
 
A history of Violence had levels, and Cronenberg demonstrated his ability to conciously manipulate the audience in a way which not many directors can (currently) do, also Viggo gave a real performance, that character had some subtleties that many actors wouldn't have thought to construct.

which made Eastern Promises even more mmmmrrrrrrhhh. it looked nice. but it wasn't a thriller, i guessed the plot and i didn't really care anyway. i wanted to like it, so im being nice about it.

as far as it 'being london', in that sense it is comparible to A History... because it is as much a vision of london as AHOV is of america. how many times do you think Ed Harris arrives in a blacked out benz with one bleached eye to collect an old debt from an average joe in middle america.?

those lapping up Cronenberg's portrayal of London, if you can call it that, might just be the same people who are depressed, bored of the rain and have long lost the energy to enjoy London properly.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
OK, I watched this yesterday and I'm not nearly so down on it as everyone else - with a few provisos. I certainly preferred it to A History of Violence which I just found silly. There were nice shots of places that I know well such as Broadway Market and Old Street which always makes me childishly happy.

"im no expert in east european accents so i could be off the mark but some of the accents struck me as 'insert generic european accent'"
That's exactly what I thought at first but I soon kind of got over it and just went with the flow. Anyway, I could be totally wrong, for all I know they (or some of them) might really be Russian.
The thing that spoiled it for me though was the plot-twist and convenient happy ending. What are we supposed to think - that's the end of people smuggling and prostitution? IF the film was aiming to highlight that why pretend that it can be so easily dealt with?
 
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empty mirror

remember the jackalope
I liked EP quite a bit more than History of Violence. It was refreshing to watch a mafia film without Italians and that was not set in NY; Russian mafia cinema does not seem to be such a minefield of cliche as Italian. And of course the bathhouse scene was tops.

Anyone read the graphic novel on which A History of Violence was based? Do it. You will like the film even less. Cronenberg flattens the dimensions explored in the graphic novel. Being from Philadelphia myself, I am always excited to see my city on film; this movie was disappointing in this regard. For a 5-minute scene, they got the Yuengling Beer right, but that's all... Seriously, not a memorable scene in this flick.

What was the last good Cronenberg picture? I think I stopped paying attention after Crash, though I rate him quite high. Videodrome is one of my favorite pictures.
 

straight

wings cru
Those lapping up Cronenberg's portrayal of London, if you can call it that, might just be the same people who are depressed, bored of the rain and have long lost the energy to enjoy London properly.

which from my recent calculations on whether i could afford to take a job down there that energy involves commuting 2 hours a day and working 50 hours a week to live in something resembling that russian steamroom above a halal butchers
 

Gavin

booty bass intellectual
Anyone read the graphic novel on which A History of Violence was based? Do it. You will like the film even less. Cronenberg flattens the dimensions explored in the graphic novel. Being from Philadelphia myself, I am always excited to see my city on film; this movie was disappointing in this regard. For a 5-minute scene, they got the Yuengling Beer right, but that's all... Seriously, not a memorable scene in this flick.

I thought the graphic novel was worse than the film -- the main character in the book was basically a reluctant criminal dragged along by his friend while in the film he confesses he enjoyed killing, doing it for fun and profit! Quite a bit more depth there I thought. Also, the graphic novel doesn't have the requisite violence+sex Croenenberg explorations.
 
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