You don’t need balls to make great movies, is the gist of this rigorous, idiosyncratic documentary, which was researched, shot and edited by a man (Mark Cousins).
The narrator, Tilda Swinton, introduces us to hundreds of extraordinary films (many of them foreign and obscure). True, we’re only seeing clips, but these fragments beckon us in with outlandish visuals, pioneering displays of technique and story-telling so concise it’s often downright painful to have them interrupted.
This is the first of five chunks (which will be released over five weeks; each will have a different narrator; next up is Jane Fonda). The series is accessible — it’s definitely aimed at film outsiders — yet even if you’ve been to film school you won’t be bored and surely everyone will enjoy Cousins’s nifty turns of phrase. Re a pair of lustful strangers, we learn that “their genitals meet before their eyes do” (in Lola Randl’s film, The Visitor).
Only one sentence jumps out for the wrong reason: “This is the story of what makes a good film.” In 2016, Cousins released the spectacularly dull Stockholm, My Love. So, if he’s such an expert on good films, why did he make one that was pants?
BFI Player, Blu-ray
