A dramatic impresario enlists his wife and two other women to play avatars of the same person in Jon Sanders’ intriguing work of miniaturism
Director Jon Sanders and his loose ensemble of actors, led above all by his wife, Anna Mottram, who basically improvises all her own dialogue, have been tending their own little peculiar plot of cinematic garden for few films now, starting with Painted Angels and progressing up through Late September and Back to the Garden.
Most of the time, these ultra-low-budget, ultra-rarefied films are about people like, one presumes, Sanders and Mottram themselves: highly educated, haute bourgeois Brits and Europeans with cultural capital to spare, endlessly fascinated with examining themselves, their relationships, their art. Here, the result is more contortedly self-reflexive than usual as regular player Bob Goody plays a dramatic impresario who has enlisted his own wife (Mottram) and two other women (Meret Becker and Maxine...
Director Jon Sanders and his loose ensemble of actors, led above all by his wife, Anna Mottram, who basically improvises all her own dialogue, have been tending their own little peculiar plot of cinematic garden for few films now, starting with Painted Angels and progressing up through Late September and Back to the Garden.
Most of the time, these ultra-low-budget, ultra-rarefied films are about people like, one presumes, Sanders and Mottram themselves: highly educated, haute bourgeois Brits and Europeans with cultural capital to spare, endlessly fascinated with examining themselves, their relationships, their art. Here, the result is more contortedly self-reflexive than usual as regular player Bob Goody plays a dramatic impresario who has enlisted his own wife (Mottram) and two other women (Meret Becker and Maxine...
- 7/6/2017
- by Leslie Felperin
- The Guardian - Film News
★★★★☆ Reuniting the trusted troupe of actors with whom he has now become somewhat known for collaborating, British independent director Jon Sanders returns with his fourth feature, Back to the Garden (2013), a typically sombre treatise on intimacy and the stasis brought about by an untimely death. Following Low Tide (2008) and the deeply affecting Late September (2012), this is the third in a trilogy of ultra low-budget, improvisatory films that star regular actors - including Sanders' partner, Anna Mottram - and are liberated from the shackles of artistic compliance, where such freedom allows for a great amount of space for the various methods and themes to fully take shape.
- 5/12/2014
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
This valuable example of high-minded, low-budget British drama looks at the fallout from the death of a respected theatre director
Jon Sanders returns with another valuable, serious example of high-minded, low-budget British ensemble drama. As with his previous film Late September, it is a theatrical expression of a certain type of autumnal melancholy, unfashionably centring on middle-class, middle-aged people – and is again structured around a muted social gathering. A respected theatre director has died, and a year later his widow has invited a handful of his very closest friends and colleagues to the informal "memorial" party in the garden of their Kent home. But it seems that various emotional entanglements have arisen between them since the funeral. Just like Late September, this movie is devised through improvisation and the resulting passages of dialogue are sometimes uncertain, but often bracingly real – especially when the players wade into the difficult subject of death and bereavement.
Jon Sanders returns with another valuable, serious example of high-minded, low-budget British ensemble drama. As with his previous film Late September, it is a theatrical expression of a certain type of autumnal melancholy, unfashionably centring on middle-class, middle-aged people – and is again structured around a muted social gathering. A respected theatre director has died, and a year later his widow has invited a handful of his very closest friends and colleagues to the informal "memorial" party in the garden of their Kent home. But it seems that various emotional entanglements have arisen between them since the funeral. Just like Late September, this movie is devised through improvisation and the resulting passages of dialogue are sometimes uncertain, but often bracingly real – especially when the players wade into the difficult subject of death and bereavement.
- 3/14/2014
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
★☆☆☆☆ In 2007, Jon Sanders and Nora Hoppe wrote The Belgrade Manifesto, lamenting the stagnation of cinematic language and encouraging other directors to embrace the digital revolution. This all sounds exciting and with filmmakers such as Aki Kaurismäki, Gareth Evans, and Alexander Sokurov signing it, one would think it would be. It's a shame then, that Sanders' latest film, Late September (2012), can really only be praised for the fact he went out and made it on a tight schedule and budget.
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- 9/25/2012
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
Rock Of Ages (12A)
(Adam Shankman, 2012, Us) Julianne Hough, Diego Boneta, Tom Cruise, Alec Baldwin, Russell Brand, Paul Giamatti, Catherine Zeta-Jones. 123 mins
Doing for 1980s hair metal what Mamma Mia! did for Abba, this glossy musical gives you the broad pleasures of pantomime rather than rock'n'roll danger, with theatrical star turns and a playlist of power ballads hung around an archetypal tale of a smalltown girl and a wannabe rock star boy on La's Sunset Strip. You can stop believin' now.
Cosmopolis (15)
(David Cronenberg, 2012, Fra/Can/Por/Ita) Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, Sarah Gadon. 109 mins
Don De Lillo's prescient novella makes for a cool Manhattan odyssey, centred on Pattinson's jaded banker and the Occupy zeitgeist.
Polisse (15)
(Maïwenn, 2011, Fra) Karin Viard, Joey Starr, Marina Foïs. 128 mins
A Wire-like approach to a French child protection unit reaps dividends for this docu-style procedural.
Red Lights (15)
(Rodrigo Cortés, 2012, Us/Spa) Cillian Murphy, Robert De Niro,...
(Adam Shankman, 2012, Us) Julianne Hough, Diego Boneta, Tom Cruise, Alec Baldwin, Russell Brand, Paul Giamatti, Catherine Zeta-Jones. 123 mins
Doing for 1980s hair metal what Mamma Mia! did for Abba, this glossy musical gives you the broad pleasures of pantomime rather than rock'n'roll danger, with theatrical star turns and a playlist of power ballads hung around an archetypal tale of a smalltown girl and a wannabe rock star boy on La's Sunset Strip. You can stop believin' now.
Cosmopolis (15)
(David Cronenberg, 2012, Fra/Can/Por/Ita) Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, Sarah Gadon. 109 mins
Don De Lillo's prescient novella makes for a cool Manhattan odyssey, centred on Pattinson's jaded banker and the Occupy zeitgeist.
Polisse (15)
(Maïwenn, 2011, Fra) Karin Viard, Joey Starr, Marina Foïs. 128 mins
A Wire-like approach to a French child protection unit reaps dividends for this docu-style procedural.
Red Lights (15)
(Rodrigo Cortés, 2012, Us/Spa) Cillian Murphy, Robert De Niro,...
- 6/15/2012
- by Steve Rose
- The Guardian - Film News
This British ensemble piece about a 65th birthday party gone wrong is an interesting and high-minded experiment in improv acting
Jon Sanders's zero-budget British ensemble piece is an interesting and high-minded experiment in improv acting: a melancholy, autumnal drama about an ageing married couple, Jim (Bob Goody) and Gillian (Anna Mottram), who throw a family party for Jim's 65th birthday that ends in disaster. Sanders allows the actors to devise the scenes on camera; sometimes the resulting dialogue is clunky, but sometimes brutally and all too plausibly real. Late September is arguably comparable to the recent work of Joanna Hogg – but with much lower production values, looking at times like a moody and startlingly depressing daytime TV drama from yesteryear. But there is something uncompromising in its pessimism, something that another kind of dramatist or film-maker would have tried to dissolve, or sweeten, or explain away.
Rating: 3/5
DramaPeter Bradshaw
guardian.
Jon Sanders's zero-budget British ensemble piece is an interesting and high-minded experiment in improv acting: a melancholy, autumnal drama about an ageing married couple, Jim (Bob Goody) and Gillian (Anna Mottram), who throw a family party for Jim's 65th birthday that ends in disaster. Sanders allows the actors to devise the scenes on camera; sometimes the resulting dialogue is clunky, but sometimes brutally and all too plausibly real. Late September is arguably comparable to the recent work of Joanna Hogg – but with much lower production values, looking at times like a moody and startlingly depressing daytime TV drama from yesteryear. But there is something uncompromising in its pessimism, something that another kind of dramatist or film-maker would have tried to dissolve, or sweeten, or explain away.
Rating: 3/5
DramaPeter Bradshaw
guardian.
- 6/14/2012
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
★☆☆☆☆ Director Jon Sanders' third feature Late September (2012) is a lumbering, tiresome arthouse experiment that cheaply muses on the relationship of a couple who realise, after forty years, that their marriage is failing. Shot over a 24-hour period, the film follows Ken (Richard Vanstone) and Gillian (Anna Mottram) in and around their picturesque cottage in Kent as they prepare for Ken's 65th birthday.
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- 6/14/2012
- by CineVue
- CineVue
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