Page 13 - Fujifilm Exposure_12 The Golden Bowl_ok

feature in focus
HOUSE!
HOUSE!
Bingo fever
in South Wales
T hree years after it was a performed-live script at the Television Arts Performance
Showcase (TAPS, see page 12), House! is now a fully-fledged new British film com- edy about to get a nationwide multiplex release. Written by Jason Sutton and sup- ported (a shade ironically, by Lottery
funding), it’s a contemporary tale of bingo hall rival- ry set in the author’s native South Wales. Co-starring alongside seasoned veterans like Freddie Jones and Miriam Margolyes are Kelly MacDonald (Trainspotting), Jason Hughes (TV’s This Life) and Mossie Smith (the upcoming Janice Beard 45wpm).
That TAPS slot, which went on to earn Sutton a place on the shortlist for the scheme’s Writer of the Year award, was watched by director Julian Kemp who happened to be present “totally by chance. At about that time I was interested in getting a feature film going and so was producer Michael Kelk. I thought House! was great. It was very funny and really tapped into the humour of South Wales. It was a simple story that had a lot of scope. So I gave Michael the script and he optioned it.”
Kemp, an experienced TV director making his own feature debut, took the unusual step of recruit- ing Norwegian DP Kjell Vassdal to capture Wales on film. Kemp explained: “I saw a fabulous Norwegian film called Junkmail and the weather is very bad in that film yet Kjell made it look spectacular. Wales is known for its bad weather - you really cannot under- estimate how much it rains there - and I thought that if he can make Oslo look great then he can do the same for South Wales.
“A lot of British films look very similar and have a pasty wash to them, a dreary look that’s partly due to our weather. But that doesn’t mean that visu- ally they can’t have a vitality. So I thought it would be interesting here to get someone with a fresh eye on this landscape.
“It’s one of the things I am happiest about in the film that he came over never having made an English-language film before and lit it in all sorts of unusual ways, technically. I just think it has it’s own ‘look’ and feel,” said Kemp. ■
House!, released on March 31, was originated on Fujicolor Motion Picture Negative
Photos clockwise from top: scenes from House!, Kelly Macdonald as Linda and Mossie Smith as Kay; cameraman Kjell Vassdal Freddie Jones as Mr Anzani; Director Julian Kemp (centre) on the set with Kjell Vassdal (left)
Jason Hughes as Gavin, La Scala’s star Bingo Caller
EXPOSURE • 11