she stood by the bedroom window

‘ I like your hands’ she says, ‘you have hands like my father’
‘your father’s hands´ he says. ‘
‘And my father’s mouth.
Your father’s mouth?’
‘My father was an artist. He made wooden sculptors´ he had hands like an artist
I’m not an artist he says. You are’
No I’m not’ she replies. I work in a shoe shop.
‘I thought you painted.
Painted? I do like to paint though.
What kind of things?
She doesn’t answer.
I sell wood’ he says.
‘ I liked to paint’ she says after some time. ‘I’d like to paint your toes’
mistrust sets in.
my toes? why? He mutters.
Are you hungry?
A little’ he says.
I love the snow’ she says ‘it’s like a brand new page.

Toothache- A film noir with a social message, 28 December 2006
Author: George_SS from United Kingdom

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Toothache is Ian Simpson's first full feature outing as a Film Director and succeeds in engaging and continuing to draw in the viewer throughout the film.

This comedy which is set in Paris very soon after the completion of the Eurostar, when cross channel activity was at a high. So we are treated to an ensemble of characters Anglo and Gallic; a young talented Ludovine Sagnier,a magnificent Julie Depardieu, the very passionate Englishman Oliver Millburn and the exciting and hilarious Marc Barbe. To say the casting is superb is an understatement. Ian Simpson's choice to cast the very French Marc Barbe as an American Producer in Paris is a master touch and extremely funny.

In essence Toothache centres around this bourgeois quartet and all their personal dramas whilst collectively they maintain some sort of equilibrium or facade. We have the characters displaying emotions of unrequited love,stress of a new pregnancy,failure and loss.

Through out the film Ian Simpson's ,sometimes sardonic, style pervades and his brutal clips of real down and outs in Paris may upset. There is also a social side to this film and a very real message;life's realities for this underclass and how distant it is from our Bourgeois Quartet's masquerades and petty problems.

Getting back to the comedy, of which there is so much,is enhanced by Simpson's clever camera techniques and cuts. The dialogue is brilliantly written; the combination of British humour and Gallic dead pan is a joy to watch and will leave you in hysterics. You really want this film to keep going on, it builds and builds on the humour. The four characters also combine so well...a sitcom could be written around them.

The musical score is interesting and daring and works, especially in a passionate scene on a bridge over the Seine.

If you get a chance to watch this film please do as you are in for a unexpected treat. A Cult Classic.

He doesn’t sleep

He doesn’t sleep. Later he has to see his father and he is afraid. He knows the questions that will crop up. ‘Wayne you got a job yet?’ ‘I’m writing Dad’ ‘I mean a real job?’ ‘I work in a bar’ You still drinking?’ ‘Not really’ ‘Drink will be the death of you’
His mother will be sitting in the couch opposite listening to our conversation with the huh-huh and humming from time to time, strange agreeable sounds to his father’s advice, occasionally breaking out to an old gospel number like ‘My father house’ to increase the guilt. His guilt.
Another reason he was afraid of seeing his father. Father was not at all well. He was stricken by tuberculosis caused by chronic bronchitis and in certainty could go any time. The doctors say its ‘touch and go but he should be alright’; whatever the heck that meant. “What exactly does doctors get paid for” he pondered. ‘Bloody doctors’ he says out loud.
He steps out of the bed and leaves his sleeping girlfriend. He sits on the bed edge for a while staring at his feet. His right foot had a lump the size of a golf ball. Cancer he thought.
It is 4.24 am. She mutters his name “Wayne” he remains silent. “What you doing?”
He says nothing. At 4.26 he leaves the room.
There is a half bottle of port in the kitchen cupboard. He contemplates before deciding on coffee. He takes his mug into the living quarters and picks up a couple of sheets of A4 from the desk where an empty glass with a whiff of scotch from the night before remains. He reads what he wrote the on the sheet.
Title- HE DOESN’T SLEEP. Underneath this bold yet inane intro is intangible scribble that he does not quite understand. He sits down at his desk and fishes for a biro in his nearby rucksack. He knew what to write; Wayne have you got a job yet?’ ‘I’m writing Dad’ ‘I mean a real job?’ ‘I work in a bar” “‘You still drinking?’ ‘Not really’ ‘Drink will be the death of you’
A storm a brewing it is a matter of time before the rain falls in buckets. Wayne continues to write. He writes about his mother singing the gospel hymn ‘my father house ’whilst he speaks about employment and alcohol with his father. He writes about the inconsequential comments of doctors and his hatred of them. He then lays his pen to rest. Feeling like a cigarette he creeps into the bedroom where his sleeping girlfriend lays and sneaks into her handbag for a Marlboro light. He rips of the butt of the cigarette, cutting away the light from the Marlboro, as he fires up the cigarette a voice from the corner of the room says “ I’ll have one and a cup of coffee too.”
He turns to find himself facing a man of such magnificent stature he is almost blinded by his presence. The man is soaking wet but shines like the sun.
“You’re an angel,” Wayne declares.
“Yes I’m an angel. A exhausted, overworked, soaking wet, absolutely knackered angel who could murder for a cup of coffee and a Marlboro, but not the light kind…
“I rip the ends off”
“I do the same”
Wayne remains seated diminished with astonishment. The angel sits down on the arm of the sofa.
“An angel who drinks coffee and smokes. Now that’s really something”
“ Nothing wrong with a good cup of coffee and a damn good cigarette” says the angel.
“No of course not” Wayne replies. “ But where’s your wings?”
“Cliché” Says Angel “ the wing idea comes from the notion that we fly but we don’t fly we just appear. Wings… I hate them.
“Right” says Wayne.
They sit in calm for what seems like forever ever.
“Look, you gonna get me this cup of coffee and a cigarette or what?
“Sure thing”
Wayne leaves the room looking back once to check if the angel was still around.

He doesn’t sleep. Later he has to see his father and he is afraid. His phone rings. It is 4.24 am. He leans over his sleeping girlfriend to answer.
“Mother?”
“Hello son”
A long and telling silence follows.

My research to make this film has been thorough and passionate, taking the road through French regions of Alsace, Lorraine, through Moselle, the mountains of the Vosges along the valley of the Rhine, to Germany into the depth of the black forest…. It had seemed never-ending.

… and to Meisenthal where the artist is occasionally based ‘a weird and wonderful place’ according to several of the locals.

My father was a man of wood. For most of his working life he worked with timber. In a timber yard he worked, chopping, sawing, carving, carrying, and selling all types of wood, to all types of customers, for all types of reasons, for types of …

What is human?

A closer look at the work of the artist the intensely chiselled features freeing the human trapped in the wood. From tree to man or in my film interpretation- from man to tree.
What is human? Who is this man in wood?