The Arbor

If Dunbar blurred the lines between reality and the stage in fictionalizing her life, then Arbor director Clio Bernard is a kindred spirit. The result: highly stylized artifice perversely masquerading as real life. With its players becoming unstuck in time -- they're forced to relive the events yet unable to divert from their tale's inevitable tragic destination -- The Arbor, by its devastating closing sequence, has achieved a singular brew of heady self-awareness and emotional poignancy

**TRUE/FALSE SCREENING**A woeful account of the players surrounding Andrea Dunbar's life and beyond her death unfold in a truly unique manner. Seeming to draw inspiration from "A State Affair" (3rd installment in the Bradford Arbor trilogy of stage acts) Clio Barnard uses recorded interviews and lip synched actors to play out the events recounted. At first the style may addle, but I soon found it both easy, and enjoyable, to follow along. Heartrending yet beautiful, I fully suggest a viewing.

THE most depressing episode of creature comforts.

Overall good, and that means it missed a great opportunity of being memmorable.

The film's subject is very interesting and the content is very strong, although the focus on the broken mother daughter relationship feels a bit exploitative, but I found the style of voice over reenactments to be a real barrier. I eventually overcame it by the end, but I still don't understand what it adds vs straight interviews.

A powerful film which creatively makes the most of the medium and draws the viewer in by deliberately blurring the lines between truth, dramatisation, and a further level of dramatisation within that. Using these techniques it paints a vivid picture of some of the characters living in this rough suburb. The first half was gripping whereas later on I felt too much attention was given to the daughter's drug addiction and family issues. A stronger sole focal point would have suited the film better.

How much you're captivated by this film is probably entirely dependent on how successful you find the film's stylistic concept of having actors lip sync the words of its interviewees. I for one was not, unable to understand what truth is gained by taking the real people in a brutal tale of miserable existence and replacing them with more polished, more attractive versions, then drawing attention to it.

It's grim up north.

Absolutely engrossing and audacious. An altogether captivating experience and daring, successful cinematic experiment.

O Caramanchão estreava no Tribeca Film Festival há 10 anos. Gostei da maneira unusual que isso foi feito, é um documentário que usa atores como "dublês de corpos" de depoimentos originais e ainda homenageia o estilo da dramaturga em questão. O engraçado que a cópia que eu peguei já estava com legendas em inglês porque não dá para entender absolutamente nada o que esse povo fala. DVDRip eXceSs.

"A mother-daughter tragedy presented in a cinematic hall of mirrors, The Arbor aestheticizes its grim nonfiction narrative with mixed results." - Bill Weber

A unique and riveting documentry of an extremely tragic life and legacy.

The multiple levels of artifice dressing up the rather matter-of-fact statements of what really happened mirror Dunbar's writing, which took her real life and turned it into brutally realistic drama.

I've been a huge fan of Alan Clarke's adaptation of "Rita, Sue and Bob Too" for ages, and that's what eventually led me to this. My idea of Andrea Dunbar's story had been sketchy. I had thought of her as a genius writer in the kitchen sink tradition. Little did I expect her to be cast as a semi-villain in Clio Barnard's innovative docudrama about her daughter Lorraine - whose mother neglected her out of racism, drank herself to death, and set her on course to an unbelievably tragic life.

A terribly tragic narrative enhanced by the unique approach of the form. By interspersing the overly dramatic news footage with scenes following actors lip-syncing the voices of the actual participants, the film recaptures the horror of these tragic lives in a quiet, almost subversive way. Further, the illusion of reality created by using actors with real voices significantly points to the illusory qualities of the kind of lives we see portrayed on the screen--people there, but not all there.