Flashbacks of a Fool (2008)

One of my all time favorites.

Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Going back to my Music GCSE, I'd describe the structure of this film as having a simple ternary form - A-B-A' - standing aptly in this case for Adult-Boy-Adult'.The limitations of this 'song form' are plenty and frustrating for a viewer looking for a story - what happens between A and B, or more significantly, between B and A? Are we just looking here at a story of guilt? Are we supposed to draw a link between what happens in B as a way of explaining Joe's (CRAIG) behaviour in A? I'm not sure we're able to make such assumptions.So instead I could only take each of the film's three sections as self-standing, but that doesn't mean that I didn't enjoy the film as a whole.Indeed, a film that resists a coherent narrative and prevents identification with its characters is perfectly suitable structurally for such themes of guilt and escape.That is what makes this film moving. Not for the on-screen emotion, but for what is left out, unseen and lost in the hyphens of the film's structure.

Flashbacks of a Fool… Where to begin? As I began to watch the film, I had no idea what to expect. At first I anticipated a (500) Days of Summer type film, with irregular time shifts and jumps throughout. But after watching Daniel Craig skilfully applying his Touche Éclat I wondered whether it would have more of an American Psycho angle to it. In fact, after viewing the entire film I was still wondering what on earth the film was about. Yes, it was shot beautifully, and Emile Robert played the part of the stern anti-hero (the Young Daniel Craig) to a tee, but in my opinion the film lacked a certain something.. a storyline.In essence, this is basically a film about an obnoxious twerp who matures and grows into an even more obnoxious adult, who, despite having an enviable lifestyle and physique, insists on maintaining a frown throughout. You hate him as an adolescent, when he stands up his best friend's crush in order to have rampant sex with his mother's friend, and he has sex with said mother again, though this time her daughter ends up playing on an abandoned mine, and ends up getting blown up to smithereens. Oh, and Craig decides to make advances on his best friend's wife just hours after his funeral. And that's about it. I would definitely recommend this film, if you appreciate artistic cinema and naked flesh, but if you're after a gripping, eventful film, Flashbacks of a Fool is definitely worth avoiding. Not only is there no real conclusion, but if you're like me, you will genuinely wonder what on earth you spent the past 90 minutes or so watching. On the plus side though, the music is brilliant, especially if you happen to be a Bowie fan, and you get to see Daniel Craig's naked buttocks. Repeatedly.

I grew up on Bowie and Roxy Music so this film gets me fixated from the outset. It struck a deep chord of adolescent discovery and pulsating sexual growth. Evocative sums it up for me.It recalled to me the days of blue eyeshadow and glitter nail varnish; of rebellion at the mundanity of daily life and the hope of an escape through music and fashion. The attention to detail is exciting - vinyl LP covers, the old stereo record players, decadent decor with white shag pile rugs. The clothing, makeup, props and acting all add up to create a consummate reproduction of an era I loved and lived.If you loved the music of this era and are still an old rebel at heart, this film will grab you by the sound of Andy McKay's sax and take you on a beautifully photographed trip of nostalgia. The boys and men are lookers too.

Joe Scot is a successful British actor in LA, but his life and career are beginning to fall apart. When Joe receives news of the death of Boots, a former best pal from his adolescent years, a crisis approaches that has its roots in a twisted sequence of events that had occurred almost twenty years previously. "Flashbacks of a Fool" relates how an incident in adolescence can taint an outwardly successful life with a sense of failure and remorse. The pivotal episode had involved Boots and a precociously charismatic girl, and the story is told in flashback as Joe remembers how the threesome's triangulated connection had fragmented and rearranged itself after a tragic accident. Unfortunately the film neglects to explore Joe's bond with Boots, and fails to show the friendship's crucial importance. Instead of focusing attention on the central figures, too much time is devoted to the comings and goings of various peripheral characters and Joe's seduction by a sluttish neighbor.Writer/director Baillie Walsh spins his narrative with high quality yarn, and the result goes well beyond interesting, and almost enters the territory of the exceptional. Despite its shortcomings the film has strong emotional content, the motives and relationships of the characters are believable, the acting of the fine cast is excellent, and the cinematography is luscious.