Reviews

Dirty
tricks in

Northern
Island

HIDDEN AGENDA. Directed by Ken
Loach. Screenplay by Jim Allen. Great
Britain, 1990. Hemdale Films. At the
Ridge Theatre, Oct. 8, 9:30 p.m., andthe
Paradise Theatre, Oct. 11, 4:30 p.m., as
part of the Vancouver International Film
Festival. Slated for a regular run after the
festival.

Hidden Agenda is a taut political
thriller — a film where the line separating
fact and fiction is purposely blurred and at
times the viewer is left unsure whether this
is a movie or a documentary.

Either way, Hidden Agenda is from the
relatively select school of political films
which succeed in being both entertaining,
frightening and thought-provoking.

That this film strikes a raw nerve for
the Thatcher government and the
establishment media from Britain was
evident at its premiere at the Cannes film
festival this spring when a press
conference given by director Ken Loach
tumed into a shouting match. Members of
the British press accused the film of being
leftist propaganda and a vehicle for the
Irish Republican Army. But then Loach is
no stranger to controversy, for in his 20
years in film and television he has seen
four of his documentaries banned in Great
Britain.

Hidden Agenda is the story of the
assassination of an American lawyer and
human rights activist by the special branch
security forces of the Royal Ulster
Constabulary (RUC), the Protestant police
force of Norther Ireland, and the
investigation that follows.

The RUC naturally claims the killing
was an accident and that the lawyer was
travelling in the company of known IRA
terrorists. But the international media
attention in the wake of the killing forces
the Norther Ireland authorities to Tespond
by calling in Peter Kerrigan, a senior :
British police officer, to conduct an
intemal investigation. The government
hopes it can diffuse the crisis, even, if
necessary, by throwing out a few
sacrificial lambs from the RUC.

The whole thing could come to a neat
and tidy conclusion except for one thing
— Kerrigan is a bit too principled to play
within the rules of the game. His
investigation stumbles across not merely
the obvious misconduct of the Irish
security forces, but a dirty-tricks campaign
that extends far beyond the sordid politics

of keeping Northern Ireland under British ~

control.

What Kerrigan unwittingly finds is
unrefutable evidence exposing a
conspiracy of the top decision-makers of
the Tory party and the MIS (the British
security service) to destabilize the
previous Labour government of Harold
Wilson and to discredit the former Tory
leader, Edward Heath, so that a right-wing
leader more to their liking, Margaret
Thatcher, can assume the leadership.

It is nothing less than a covert coup —
a subversion of the parliamentary process.
In the end Kerrigan finds out not only
about the power the Tory establishment
can utilize to achieve and maintain power,
but also the persuasive arguments they can
make to retain confidentiality.

— Paul Ogresko

6 « Pacific Tribune, October 1, 1990

Message on teen Sexuality

HUSH-A-BYE-BABY. Directed by Margo
Harkin. Starring Emer McCourt, Micheal
Liebman, Cathy Casey, Julie Marie
Reynolds, Sinead O’Connor. Derry Film
and Video Workshop, 1989. At the Pacific
Cinematheque, Sept. 29, 7 p.m., and Oct.
1, 12 noon, as part of the Vancouver
Intemational Film Festival.

This is an Irish feature film which docu-
ments the experience of teenage sexuality
from the perspective of pregnancy. I say this
because, although reviewers and promoters
say it is an exploration of sexuality, it is
important to get the message in this film
quite clear. All female sexuality is over-
shadowed by the fear and the reality of
pregnancy, but infinitely more so if you’re a
teenager. In fact, what the film really high-
lights is how little attention our societies pay
to the awakening of sexuality and the high
price young women and men pay for it.

Goretti, Dinky, Majella and Sinead are
15-year-old girls enroled ina convent school
in the town of Derry in Norther Ireland. The
time is 1984, a year after the abortion ref-
erendum in the Republic of Ireland which
instituted the rights of the fetus in the Irish
constitution. The girls are just discovering
boys, or in other words, their budding sex-
uality.

Goretti meets Ciaran, a boy who has
caught her eye before. Soon they are in love
and making love at Goretti’s sister’s while

_ she babysits.

Just before Goretti discovers she is preg-
nant, Ciaran is “lifted” — mysteriously ar-
rested by British army troops. When the
realization of her pregnancy dawns on her,
Goretti has no one to tell. She tries to write
Ciaran in confidence by writing in Irish, but
since prisoners are not allowed to receive
letters in Irish, he never gets her note. Feel-

a

Emer McCourt and Michael Liebman in Hush-a-Bye Baby.

ing tremendously alone and abandoned, she
tells her friend Dinky, whose reaction is
telling:

“Are you sure you’re pregnant? Maybe
you’ve got cancer,” she’says hopefully.

Clearly when you’re a teenage woman,
anything is better than pregnancy. This in-
tense feeling of desperation and denial is
intensified in sexually repressive cultures
such as those dominated by the Roman
Catholic Church. Goretti begins having
recurring nightmares of statues of the Virgin
Mary. She hears of an infant abandoned in a
local church. In her literature class, she is

asked to explain a metaphor on the pain of
childbirth as punishment for sinning.

As Goretti’s desperation mounts, and she
faces the necessity of telling her parents, her
anguish and fear is palpable.

This film is remarkably well done. This
is Harkin’s first feature film, and the mes-
sage, in spite of the film’s incredible gentle-
ness, and in spite of the political background
of an occupied land, is quite clear: the reality
of teenage sexuality must be recognized. We
cannot continue to condemn young women
to such pain and a life of impoverished
motherhood.

— Marie Lorenzo

Why re-make this good French film?

MAMA, THERE’S A MAN IN YOUR
BED. Starring Daniel Auteuil and Fir-
mine Richard. Directed and written by
Coline Serreau. French with English
subtitles. At Cineplex Odeon theatres.

The story is that French director Coline
Serreau already has a contract with Disney
studios to re-make her latest film, the pop-
ular Mama, There’s a Man in Your Bed, for
American audiences. Presumably, the bulk
of U.S. and possibly Canadian audiences
just can’t handle reading all those subtitles,
or tread the unfamiliar terrain of anon-North
American film. Whatever, release of the
U.S. version of what is known in France as
Romuald et Juliette will mark the second
time one of Serreau’s films has been run
through the strainer and spoon-fed to
English-speaking audiences. The first was
the witty, and charmingly Gallic, Three Men
and a Cradle, which became New Age pab-
lum for West-side Atlantic audiences when
re-made as Three Men and a Baby.

The difference this time, though, is that
Serreau herself is to direct the American
version. So the result may be a film that does
Not toss out its underlying uncompromising
social realism along with the original lan-
guage.

Not that the original is without its faults.
While Serreau wrings laughs and moral les-
sons from the unlikely partnership of a top
corporate executive and the black woman
who cleans his office at night, her penchant
for happy endings — which worked well in
Three Men, because it remained in the realm
of probability — is carried to the extreme in
Mama, making the conclusion pure goo.

Mama sets its social parameters from the
beginning, jumping back and forth between
morning scenes of the family of Romuald
(Daniel Auteuil) and Juliette (Firmine

Richard). The former rises amid luxurious
surroundings to picture-perfect wife and
children. Atthe same time, Juliette is coming
home to sleep in her slum apartment, over-
crowded with her five offspring.

Romuald is the quintessential upscale ex-
ecutive whose drive and ambition threaten
to obliterate his own inherent decency.
Anxious to make his mark, he convinces the
board of directors to back his plan of gob-
bling the competition in the yogurt business
and opening up franchises in the U.S. To do
this, he promotes a young associate to the
job of vice-president, over the heads of two
older colleagues, and orders the man to in-
crease production at the plant by cutting
comers on hygiene testing.

The two underlings meanwhile have
been plotting skulduggery: one engages in
insider stock trading and pins the blame on
Romuald; the other arranges contamination
of the company product, causing several
consumers to suffer mild food poisoning.
The company’s stock plummets.

But Juliette, quietly cleaning the building
during the late-night plotting, overhears
enough and sees enough evidence to get
wind of the plan. Her initial attempts to
convince Romuald are met
with polite dismissal; later,
acting her suggestions, the
boss discovers the truth be-
hind the warnings.

Forced to hide out be-
cause the stock fraud squad is
on his trail, Romuald heads
for Juliette’s. It is, he accur-
ately observes, the last place
anyone would look for him.

Thus begins the relation-
ship and growing attraction
of opposites. Juliette in aid-

AUTEUIL

ing Romuald shows a cleverness that belies
her perceived role as a menial. But in spite
of the co-operation, the master-servant
relationship remains: the white executive
accepts her bed, while Juliette sleeps in the
bathtub; although she faces an increased

workload by helping to solve Romuald’s

dilemma, he sits idly by while she continues
to wash dishes, iron clothes and cook meals.

Mama, There’s a Man in Your Bedis light
comedy, but it’s light comedy European
style. There are real Juliettes labouring in
underpaid, menial jobs in Paris, andthisfilm
does not compromise reality in presenting
their lives through a principal character.
Juliette is not conventionally attractive — |
she’s heavy-set and plain-faced — but her
qualities, which include a strong sense of
independence, make her attractiveness to
Romuald believable.

The film also excels in those little touches
that add up to complete cinematic enjoy-
ment. Juliette’s toddler climbs out of his crib
one-handed, because the thumb of his other
hand is firmly lodged in his mouth. An un-
derstanding rent collector weeps without
shame along with Juliette when she tells
how her eldest son has been arrested for

cocaine possession.

One wonders how this will
be handled in America, where
inter-racial love affairs are pre-
sented infrequently, and the
lovers usually look like mag-
azine front covers. Perhaps Dis-
ney will produce a genre-
bender, but with an original as
competent and universally ap-
pealing as this one is, who
needs a re-make?

—Dan Keeton