Fifty Shades of Feng- some notes on House of Cards 2, ep5


A couple of years ago I was in Washington, looking for the story of Archie Bunker's iconic chair from the fantastic seventies-show All in the Family, now a museumpiece at the Smithsonian. It was a great trip and the chair turned out to be a good story. But that's a different matter.

During that trip, I stayed in a hotel in the best part of the city. I could see the White House from my window. Outside, shiny, chic, chauffeured cars passed by, transporting a politician or some other hotshot.

Inside, in my hotelroom I discovered that not all of the amenities of this hotel were mentioned on their website. The room came with a bonus.

In the little hallway there was a huge pile of leaflets. Really a strikingly big pile. Some of hem were for theatreshows. But most of them were advertisements for a different branch of the entertainmentindustry: sex.

I have stayed in a lot of hotels, but in most cases such ads are hidden from plain sight. Not in Washington.There were way more sex-ads here than for pizzadelivery or Chinese takeaway.

Mistresses clothed in black leather and moustached guys with black leather caps were staring at me from every page. It was all SM, bondage, and other refined delicacies of this nature combining sex with some sort of aggression.

So to say that the bondage scene involving a Chinese captain of industry named Xander Feng and two American sexworkers in Episode 5 of House of Cards 2 came as a surprise? Nah.

It was a good scene though, and an even better opener of the episode. All you see as the episode starts, is some guy trying to breath through a plastic bag. Could be anything, right? Could be a murder, an attack - and to whom? You can't see. Then the zoom out gradually reveals what is going on here. It's masterly well done.

The connection between sex and power is as old as the world itself.
It's also a strong Washington reality, and House of Cards reflects that, notably in this episode. The sexworkers were sent to the Chinese as a, well, lubricant, for the relationship between the Chinese and Francis Underwood. Fifty Shades of Feng, New York Magazine's Vulture playfully called it.

The sexworkers in House of Cards remained anonymous. They are not important here, they're mere decoration to the story. Still, thinking of that pile of sex-ads, you wonder whether that is justified. How much of politics is done at night, between the sheets? Or whipped to conclusion by some Mistress clothed all in leather?
It adds a whole new meaning to the word majority-whip. 

House of Cards 2 It's wartime and Underwood is in to win 

Start coughing today so you can call in sick on Friday, fans tweeted earlier this week. The new season of the political thriller House of Cards is quite the event, and for bingeviewers this will be some Valentine's Day. Even if on screen things are more loveless than ever. 

Ilse van der Velden @cinema.nl

It all starts pretty normal but then your throat is slowly squeezed tight, followed by a firm slap in the face at three quarters (an OMG moment, as fans call it) and for dessert Francis Underwood, take note of  his initials, gives you the finger. And that's just the first episode. It's gripping, it's daring, and it's very, very well done. In every episode of the 4 we watched beforehand, House of Cards 2 displays strong and daring dramatic choices. They don't fool around, people.

The openingscene sets the tone. A dark park, sirens, the sound of heli's and two people running - what 's happening? But then there's the close up that pulls the plug out of the accumulated tension: it's only Frank and Claire, on their morning run. Or is it? In their tight black gear they could easily be a pair of burglars. Or hitmen. Something's off here. It's over the top, like the clouds in a painting by Dutch surrealist Carel Willink are hyperrealistic, and have an alienating effect.

In every aspect the new season of this noir thriller is an intensified version of the first. It's all just a little more dramatic: the light, the outfits (severe, dark colours), the plot and Kevin Spacey's diction. He spits his d's like bullets. It's theatrical. The whole thing hovers slightly above reality, a deliberate choice that really works out well.

Alea iacta est. In the first season, Frank and Claire have shown us what they are capable of. Now, the struggle for power has accelerated and that's how we enter season two: at full force. There is more at stake, every decision counts and even the slightest failure can be fatal. But as we soon find out, the hunter is hunted, by his own past.

The language is striking. The dialogues are beautifully written and rhythmic - the comparison with Shakespeare must be made at some point and writer Beau Willimon admits he's an inspiration. A lot of the metaphors used refer to the animalistic: its about sharks, claws, blood, the battlefield. 'The road to power is paved with hypocrisy. And casualties', says Underwood. Claire, for her part, is a  contemporary version of Lady Macbeth. To get what she wants for herself and Frank, she's prepared to cross boundaries. How far she will go? Over your dead body.

'All politicians are killers,' says Willimon in an interview with the The Telegraph about the theme of his hit show. House of Cards is 'a dramatisation of that thing in them which allows them to do the unspeakable.'

'Look at the war in Iraq,' says Willimon, who's grandfathers both fought in WWII and who's own father was a marine for 31 years.  'That was justified by an outdated and erronous piece of intelligence. With thousands of American soldiers dead and hundreds of thousands of people abroad dead, is that more or less heinous than what we see Francis Underwood do?' Good question. According to Willimon, there's nothing surreal about House of Cards: this, this scenario, is his truth. It's wartime. And in House of Cards, Washington is the battlefield.

House of Cards, Netflix, Febr 14th 2014

Second Wave 

Sidse Babett Knudsen in '1864' 

Gothenburg Film Festival,  TV Drama Vision 2014

Scandinavian tv-series have caught the eye of the world. After a first wave of excellent crime series, the focus now seems to shift to historical drama. Ilse van der Velden @cinema.nl visited the Gothenburg Film and TV Festival 2014 and picked some cherries.

A love triangle between two brothers and an adorable, smart girl in the idyllic nineteenth-century countryside is shattered by the war - it's a story that could take place in almost every European country. And that's what the creators of the new Danish epic 1864 are aming for: a large, European audience. Sidse Babett Knudsen from Borgen plays one of the lead roles, Ole Bornedal wrote the script and directs.

With a budget of 23 million euro it's the most expensive Danish production ever, funded by a number of Scandinavian countries, ARTE and the Czech Republic, and released both as an 8-part TV series and as a feature film to attain more viewers and publicity. We'll see that more often in the future, as the boundaries between film and television are fading. Think of Jane Campion's Top of the Lake, which won an Emmy for best camerawork. Viewers nowadays expect quality of both their films ánd their tv series. And so they should.

1864 is gripping drama with impressive mass scenes and images that last - although we do hope the number of slowmotion scenes with people running on the battlefield stays limited. The fragment we saw, was screened January 31st in Gothenburg during TV Drama Vision 2014, a day of exploring new series from Finland  Iceland, Norway, Denmark and Sweden.

The quality was remarkably high. Instead of crime the emphasis now seems to be on historical drama. The Oscar nomination for the film A Royal Affair,  shown in 80 countries, could well turn out to be prophetic: like in crime, in historic drama too the Danes play in the premier league.

On the Norway set of The Heavy Water War

Most impressive, both visually and in every other aspect, was ​​The Heavy Water War. Again an expensive co - production ( Norway, Sweden and Denmark ) on a historical subject. Here, it's about the attempt of the Nazis to create the atomic bomb. It stranded in, of all places, Norway, in an heroic act of sabotage. Who knew? But now we do, and we want to see more. As it happens, Danny Boyle is currently working on a similar series. It's amazing that after 60 years there still are new, thrilling stories to tell about the Second World War.

These co-productions are a smart move. It means big budgets, so you can actually compete internationally, even with the giants such as Netflix and HBO.

Last but not least, there's Welcome to Sweden, a comedy by Amy Poehler's brother. Greg Poehler moved to Sweden a few years ago and used his newbie-confusion first for his stand-up comedy routine, than for his script. Thanks to his famous surname he got Lena Olin (Chocolat), Patrick Duffy (Dallas) en Ileana Douglas to co-star and cameo. Welcome to Sweden has been sold to good old NBC where it will fit just fine. Like his sister, Greg Poehler has a natural gift for comedy and he maximally exploits the differences between them funny Swedish and his own loose, noisy Americanness.

In the fragment shown, his father in law stands before him naked in the sauna - enfin. Think Meet the Parents. Not bad at all. 'Real and sweet', is what Poehler wanted it to be he said in Gothenborg. After a full day of serious business his pitch was funny and relaxed.
It had that one ingredient you can only find in America: pazazz.