52 Films by Women Vol 6. 29. ALI & AVA (Director: Clio Barnard)
I wasn’t really aware of the actor Adeel Akhtar until I saw
him in British writer-director Clio Barnard’s Bradford-set film, Ali
& Ava, in which his charismatic title character describes himself
as ‘everyone’s favourite landlord’. Ali takes one of his tenant’s children,
six-year-old Sofia (Ariana Bodorova) to school, where he meets Ava (Claire
Rushbrook), a teaching assistant and grandmother to five children. Collecting
Sofia from school, Ali boldly commits to giving Ava a ride home to the somewhat
racist neighbourhood of Holme Wood. When his car is stuck at traffic lights,
some local kids – young children, primary school age - throw stones. Ali gets
out of the car and engages them, playing music loudly and inviting them to
dance on his car boot, while Ava watches, expecting the worse. Finally, he
drives them all home, piled as they are in the back seat. It is a credit to
Akhtar and Barnard that the scene is utterly convincing. Ali comes across as
simultaneously brave, optimistic and willing, as the saying goes, to put
himself out there. At time of writing, Russia has invaded Ukraine; Akhtar’s Ali
reminds me a little of the ever-optimistic-in-the-face-of-danger President
Volodymyr Zelenskyy, up against impossible odds. Akhtar himself is fairly
terrific.
Barnard specialises in naturalism. Ali & Ava,
her fourth film takes as its point of departure, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s
1974 film, Fear Eats the Soul, which focussed on the relationship
between a white, widowed cleaner and a Moroccan man twenty years her junior whom
she meets at a bar. The highly prolific Fassbinder (1945-1982), who released 22
feature-length films for the cinema as well as numerous shorts, documentaries
and television series, before his death aged 37, for the most part didn’t do
naturalism. His minimalist, deadpan aesthetic is closer to the films of Finnish
director Aki Kaurismaki and also to the cinema of cruelty of Lars Von Trier. It
is unsurprising that few female directors have taken up the bleak cinema of
cruelty, practised, in the main but not exclusively, by male, homosexual
directors (Fassbinder, Gregg Araki and Todd Solondz spring to mind) suggesting
a link between a tortured aesthetic and an inability to be accepted in society.
By contrast, Barnard specialises in compassion, extended
towards the working poor. Her film is also stylised. Although contemporary,
mobile phones barely feature in it, used only as music players. We also see a
horse and cart trot down the street. The film exists in a conflated reality
that references the present – Eastern European tenants – and the 1980s,
specifically the National Front. For the most part, the stylization is unobtrusive.
When you see Ali and Ava board an old-fashioned train, with doors on hinges,
rather than electric, you wonder if the film is really set in the past. I struggled
to find vehicle tax discs as signifiers.
Opening up to Ava – their first conversation is about
musical preferences – Ali explains that he was once a DJ, and later shows her
his vinyl. Ava enjoys country music (‘Get out of the car now,’ responds Ali
with deadpan cheeriness) as well as folk (this draws an expletive). Dropping
Ava outside her front door, Ali is greeted with suspicion by Callum (Shaun
Thomas), Ava’s only son. He has recently become a father but can’t agree a name
for his baby daughter. ‘How about Paula?’ suggests Ava. Paul was Callum’s
father’s name. ‘I never thought of that,’ he replies. Callum later draws a
sword on Ali, who responds with a gasp. ‘Who do you think you are, Zorro?’ The
sword belonged to Callum’s father. Ali leaves sharpish. However, Ava is keen to
see him again. She asks Sofia to pass on a one-word note of apology: ‘Zorry.’
Ali’s cheeky humour masks heartbreak. He is separated from
his wife, Runa (Ellora Torchia), after she suffered a miscarriage. The pair
still occupy the same house but sleep in separate beds. Runa, who is devoting
herself to her studies, is sceptical about the arrangement. Ali still wants Runa
to join his family for dinner, to pretend as if nothing has changed. At the
same time he reflects on the wooden rocking chair that he built for her. Seeing
it outside the house, on the verge of throwing it out, Ali takes it down to his
room and covers it with a dust cloth. Out at the library, he sees another man,
a student, with his arm around Runa. ‘You’ve got to be careful,’ he tells her,
having pulled her to one side. ‘There are eyes everywhere.’
Ali’s big romantic gesture, before he is surprised by
Callum, is to bring Ava some books. ‘No one ever brought me books before,’ she
explains. He is surprised by her living room, two sofas in the centre of the
room, facing each other: a sofa boat. Ava’s ex-husband died a year ago. The
couple had split up before then. She explains to Ali that Paul beat her
regularly, and that he also attacked their eldest daughter, Michelle. ‘One
night he came home, and I knew he was going to start [on Michelle]. So I brought
him his boots,’ Ava explains, adding that Paul hit her instead. This was the
trigger to leave him. Ali notices Ava’s dissertation on criminology that just
happens to be lying about. ‘I finished with Paul and started studying,’ Ava
adds. Ali is impressed, mostly by her bravery.
Barnard takes one aspect from Fassbinder’s film. Ava isn’t
glamorous, not by a stretch. She is overweight, though not chubby. She looks as
though she had not lost the weight she put on during pregnancy. It is natural.
She likes a drink and sings in her local pub. She has Irish roots and belts out
‘Dirty Old Town’ in a duet with Callum; he’s timid, she isn’t. She’s great with Sofia, giving her a
laminated sheet for her day and coaxing her to climb backwards down from the
metal climbing arch.
Barnard hasn’t constructed a film of big melodramatic
incident. It simmers, with the threat of Callum’s anger – the young man
idolises his late father – just around the corner.
Ali and Ava both have their reasons to visit the cemetery.
Ali looks up at the stars. When he wants to let off some steam, he puts on his
headphones and dances on top of his car. The film opens with this image.
When Ali and Ava drop in on Ava’s daughter, Dawn (Natalie
Gavin) they find her vacuuming in her underwear. She has taken something. Ava
coaxes her to drink water and put on some clothes. She is impressed by Ali.
Later Dawn loans Ava a suitcase. They go away for a weekend. A member of Ali’s
family (his sister?) even meets Ava. After their brief meeting, Ali is asked to
explain what’s going on.
The film is interspersed with shots of fireworks exploding
in the distance, like a never-ending 5th of November night. These
represents possibilities – of beauty or magic. During their weekend away, Ava
covers Ali’s eyes.
Callum is angry that his mother is forming a relationship
with Ali. He moves out. ‘Did he take the sword?’ asks Ali, drily. At a party
outside, by a fire, Ali sees Callum. Callum is wearing his father’s black
boots.
We expect a tragedy, but Barnard doesn’t give us that. Ava
has her heart broken and turns to drink – it is Dawn’s turn to fix her mother
up.
There is some dry humour – Callum and his girlfriend picking
out Irish girls’ names out of a beer glass (‘what’s Eimhear?’) – but Barnard
steers away from sex. There is only one kiss between Ali and Ava in the movie.
Her relative restraint pays dividends – the moment counts. Barnard isn’t
interested in showing the characters escape their background, rather them living
better within it.
The ending is optimistic. Barnard describes the film as
almost a musical. Ska features on the soundtrack (The Specials’ ‘(Dawning of a)
New Era’) while, against his better judgment, Ali finds himself picking up a
ukulele and performing a Bob Dylan song. (‘I didn’t know you liked him,’ he is
told.) Cultural boundaries are crossed. The chorus from Sylvan Esso’s ‘Slave to
the Radio’ is played more than once – it’s Ali’s tune. The film is gently
radical.
Barnard shot her film in late 2019. It is pre-Covid. She is
served well by her cinematographer Ole Bratt Birkeland, with whom she worked on
her debut, The Arbor and editor Maya Maffioli. Some of the
costume details pay dividends too, from Ava’s silver bracelets to Ali’s
changing headgear, variously a baseball cap and a woollen hat.
Reviewed at Cineworld Dover (Kent), Screen Six, Tuesday 22
February 2022, 19:30 screening
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