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Cannes applauds Joy Division biopic

There was a palpable buzz on the Croisette today as Control, Anton Corbijn's film about Joy Division, was given its premiere - to immediate critical acclaim.
The young British actors who play the band members are all unknown names. A star seems to have been born in Sam Riley, who plays Ian Curtis - pulling off, audiences agreed, an uncannily accurate and charismatic portrayal. He had been working in a warehouse in Leeds before being chosen to play Curtis. The only "name" in the film is Samantha Morton, who plays Curtis's wife Deborah.

Control, which charts Curtis's extraordinary creative flowering and eventual suicide 27 years ago tomorrow, is one of the few films at Cannes this year that has any claim to being a UK production. For all that, it failed to find significant British funding.
According to its producer, the £3m costs for the low-budget film were eventually met by a combination of the director's own money, private equity, and Warner Music. East Midlands Media, a regional film development agency, also came in with some funds, meaning the film was shot largely in Nottingham rather than in Curtis's home town of Macclesfield.

"That was kind of hard," said Corbijn, "but it was my first movie, and people are often frightened of that. But it is a very English story, and it would have seemed appropriate to get funding from England."

Last night, amid rumours and counter-rumours that they had split, the three remaining members of New Order, to which Joy Division changed its name after Curtis's death, flew in to support the film. According to Corbijn, "New Order hardly agree on anything, but all agree that they love the film."

The same could not quite be said of the two women who dominate the film. Control is based on the book Touching From a Distance by Deborah Curtis, but according to Corbijn, "the film is about Ian and the book is about Debbie, so I extended the research and talked to everyone who was around at the time."

The film takes a sensitive look at the Curtis marriage; and at the relationship between Curtis and Annick Honoré, the young Belgian journalist whom he also loved. His conflicted feelings about these two women, as well as the pressures of performance and the strain caused by his epilepsy, are shown to have contributed to his decision to commit suicide.

"Both Annick and Debbie have seen the film," said Corbijn. "I am not sure they are happy with it, but they are fine with it. If anyone is emotionally tied up with this film [then] it is them, and it is hard for them to watch. I can't say that they are happy with it, because that's a big statement, you would have to ask them."

Life appeared to be imitating art at the Control press conference today, with Riley and the young Romanian-born actor Alexandra Maria Lara, who plays Annick, none too discreetly holding hands as they flanked the director on the platform.

Riley, 27, is a former member of the band Ten Thousand Things, which was signed to the label Polydor for four years - though he admitted they had done little to trouble the charts. He has done a little acting on TV, playing Ray Winstone's son in the 2000 ITV drama Tough Love.

He also appeared as Mark E Smith of the Fall in Michael Winterbottom's 24 Hour Party People - giving rise to a small irony in Control. When Curtis recovers from his first epileptic fit, his manager, Rob Gretton tells him: "It could be worse; at least you're not the lead singer of the Fall."

He prepared for the role, he said, by looking at "as much original footage as I could find. I went to the National Society for Epilepsy to study the effects of epilepsy. And I spent a lot of time in the mirror doing dance moves."

Corbijn said: "I was initially looking at actors I knew, because that is the way one would usually work. But I when I saw Sam at a casting and I met him I realised we had an incredible chance to have an actor who not only resembled Ian Curtis but also had the innocence and freshness that I was hoping for but never thought I would find.

"When I first met Joy Division in 1979 in Manchester, it was quite a shock - the poverty there. People were rather underdressed, wearing thin coats, shivering in the cold, and smoking. I first met Sam in the winter and he was totally the same. It absolutely brought me back to when I first met them."

This is the first feature by the Dutch-born Corbijn, 51. As a stills photographer, who worked for NME from 1979, he photographed Joy Division repeatedly, and known for his grainy, poised, black-and-white shots. He also shot the video for the 1988 re-release of Atmosphere.

Control is also shot in black and white. He said: "When you think of Joy Division your memories are in black and white, because there is no colour footage of them. The album covers were black and white, and they dressed in shades of grey quite often. Black and white felt right for this project."

Thanks to One Brain for the submission and informations

Excerpts taken from The Guardian.
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