QUICK’N DIRTY: LIVE FROM TALLIN
Towards the end of Jamie Adams’ Turn Up the Sun, someone describes its key location as being full of “chaotic energy”. Certainly this remote 11th-century English manor house comes with a messy history. For it is said to have played host to royal orgies, and to have been the site of several tragic deaths. More recently, celebrated photographer Thomas Alexander (James McAvoy) – designated “ARTIST. ROMANTIC. NARCISSIST” in the film’s opening, and haunted by his own ghosts – has moved in, and seems determined to tap into the genius loci.
This weekend will see a convergence of artists on the place. The agent Dolly (Leila Farzad) – who has her own history with Thomas – has hired the manor house so that her client the pop singer Patricia (Aisling Franciosi) and Patricia’s photographer boyfriend Peter (Lucas Bravo) can shoot the cover of Patricia’s latest album there. Peter is a huge fan of Thomas’ work, and hopes to reproduce Thomas’ most famous photograph of a woman – red-haired like Patricia – wandering the grounds. Yet what neither he nor Patricia realises is that Thomas is still actually on the premises, along with his latest young girlfriend Jemima (Almudena Amor). Indeed he has been waiting for Patricia and Peter to arrive, and spying on them ever since.
Thomas boasts that his gift is – or was – to make something out of nothing, immortalising models, actors or other artists of questionable note by capturing them in iconic photographs. Yet for all his rockstar bluster and mercurial mood, Thomas knows he has long since lost his mojo, even as Patricia is in the ascendant. Everyone here wants something. Fanboy Peter just wants to be Thomas, Thomas wants to regain his glory days by capturing Patricia, Patricia wants an image that will take her career to the next level, Dolly has never lost her love for Thomas. Only Jemima remains utterly inscrutable. As they all pursue their different ends, this scenario seems indeed to have become infected by the chaotic energy of the place, with history possibly repeating.
Like the masterful photographer he is, Thomas manipulates all of these moving parts towards an end that only he has the vision to see coming. It is an electrifying, mesmerising performance from McAvoy who, even as he menaces, roars and intimidates, somehow manages to show vulnerability. He, like all the players, improvises his lines – a method of filmmaking that reflects Thomas’ ethos that the best photography finds truth and magic in its unscripted moments. All the impromptu dialogue and criss-crossing narrative threads may at first seem arbitrary, but will ultimately merge into a perfect, terrible moment captured on Thomas’ and Adams’ respective cameras – and in this harrowing instant, more than one shot is taken, and more than one star is born.
Turn Up The Sun just showed in the Rebels With a Cause section of the 29th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival;. It is running out of competition.
