POLY STYRENE: I AM A CLICHÉ - Glasgow Film Festival review

As the legendary frontwoman for punk band X-ray Spex, lead singer Poly Styrene was known for her bold sense of fashion as well as being one of the most prominent people of colour within the punk scene. Leaving behind boxes of photos and newspaper clippings after her death in 2011, her daughter Celeste Bell uses this archive along with excerpts from Poly's diaries to try and understand more about her mother and their often fraught relationship, and the issues that caused her to kill off her band at the height of their success.

Written and co-directed by Celeste (alongside Paul Sng), I Am A Cliché follows Poly's journey from Brixton teenager to performing on Top of the Pops and at New York's iconic CBGB's, as she confronted cruel jibes about her appearance, racist mindsets and her own mental health issues that saw her admitted to a psychiatric ward. Born Marianne Elliott-Said in 1957 to a white British mother and black Somalian father, Poly placed an ad in Melody Maker to form X-Ray Spex after seeing Sex Pistols on her 19th birthday in 1976, adopting her "plastic, synthetic" pseudonym by looking through the Yellow Pages. This was also a time when the racist attitudes of the National Front were prevalent (as well as certain factions of the punk crowd), and the film looks at Poly's identity issues as a mixed race woman - using the lyrics for her songs Identity and Half Caste - along with taunts her about her curly hair, the braces on her teeth, and her unique fashion sense that involved brightly coloured plastic and vintage materials clashing together.

The film uses new audio interviews with performers influenced by Poly's work, such as Kathleen Hanna and Neneh Cherry, and admirers and contemporaries such as Vivienne Westwood, John Robb, Don Letts, Jonathan Ross (whose first ever gig was X-Ray Spex at The Roxy) and Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore (who saw them perform at CBGB's). Also included are some of her former bandmates, Lora Logic and Paul Dean, who talk about the band's musical journey and Poly's lyrics, and how they were unaware of the extent of the psychological problems she was facing at the time, downplaying the hallucinations she was having. These effects of these ongoing mental health problems - misdiagnosed as schizophrenic, she was eventually found to be bipolar -  is something Celeste speaks about firsthand, waking up to find her mother stood at the foot of her bed.

With Celeste as our guide walking in her mother's footsteps, due to her resemblance to her mother it's almost like we're seeing a ghost re-enact scenes from a former life. The film's masterstroke is using actor Ruth Negga to narrate pages from Poly's diaries, allowing us to build a far deeper connection than would be possible through just the use of old clips and photos. At the core of this film is that connection between mother and daughter (Celeste states at the start of the film that "People often ask me if she was a good mum"), and the narration from both women feels like we are hearing from both sides. Whereas Celeste can now look back on her life with her mother and the embarrassment she felt at her DIY fashion sense when out shopping with her "what an ungrateful brat I was" , Poly can also talk about how she felt being criticised by audiences for her looks (with the record label slimming down her image on their album cover) and then suddenly called a sex symbol, a label she rebelled against by shaving all of her hair off in Johnny Rotten's bathroom.

There's a sombre tone to the film that makes it extremely moving as Celeste continues on her journey through her mother's life, from finding religion in the Hare Krishna movement to custody problems to efforts to reconcile before she passed with a shared love of music. It's an extraordinarily revealing documentary that paints Poly/Marianne as a troubled woman, not given the support she needed in an unforgiving music scene. It's a powerful film that could only be made by someone close to her, allowing Celeste to deal with a lot of her own trauma from her relationship with her mother, whilst also showing her to be the trailblazing punk icon she really was.

Verdict

4/5

Glasgow Film Festival runs between 24th February and 7th March. All films are released at different times, whereafter they can be rented for three days at £9.99 each.

Poly Styrene: I Am A Cliché is on general release from 5th March, and can be pre-ordered via the Modern Films website where you can help support your local independent cinema. 

D.O.A. A RIGHT OF PASSAGE BLU-RAY review

Newly re-issued on blu-ray is the classic punk documentary, D.O.A. A Right of Passage.

Shot by Lech Kowalski, D.O.A. followed the Sex Pistols on their notorious 1978 tour of the USA (their last before the filthy lucre tempted them back in the 1990s), as well as document the punk scene that was thriving in the UK in their absence, with bands such as X-Ray Spex, Generation X and Sham 69 all making waves. Added to that, this film heavily follows Terry Sylvester, frontman for Terry and the Idiots, for whom this film is their moment in the spotlight.

It all starts calmly enough, the quiet before the storm at an Atlanta performance by the Sex Pistols attended by the local youth hoping to see the much hyped new big thing over from England, before erupting into Anarchy in the UK, the lyrics appearing on screen and updated to appeal to the American crowd. Following the performance the camera gets instant reactions from the audience, some loving it and some hating it with opinions ranging from "revolutionary" to "garbage". Either way, it would be hard to imagine that both groups aren't still talking about it to this day.

There's a lot to be said about the Sex Pistols and their commodification by Malcolm McLaren in a way that seems to be the antithesis of what they supposedly stood for. This film captures some of that madness, and the capitalist hypocrisy within the fashion world that ran concurrently with the scene. The Pistols' music and attitude managed to speak to disaffected youth on both sides of the pond and was genuine from the point of view of the band members. In particular, Sid Vicious and his relationship with Nancy Spungen and struggles with drug use play an important part in the film. These are some of the hardest scenes to watch as Sid is near catatonic throughout, their sad story ending with some on screen text to say what happened to Sid and Nancy after filming had finished.

Back in England, with Mary Whitehouse's "anti smut crusader" (as she's billed here) going on tv to talk about how worried she was about the children of the time, the punk scene was thriving with fantastic live performances by X-Ray Spex and Sham 69 caught on camera. There's also Terry from Terry and the Idiots reading out his banana bread recipe for our enjoyment, so a lot of bases are covered. The documentary cross cuts between locations on both sides of the Atlantic and speaks to a lot of audience members expressing their feelings of resentment towards the older generation. D.O.A. shows that a lot of things are universal, and given nearly 40 years of hindsight, are also timeless.

D.O.A. A Right of Passage may be a documentary about punk, but in its presentation is it a punk documentary? Passive observers for the majority of the performances, the one occasion where the documentarian's question is audible, asking an unruly youth with a giant X on his face at a Sex Pistols gig "what do they sing?", ends up with them being spat on. The smartest thing director Lech Kowalski chose to do was not just focus on the Sex Pistols as his subject, although this was possibly a choice made out of necessity due to how hard it would have been to capture usable footage from within their concerts and the guardedness of many members of the group. The inclusion of other bands of the era, including ex-Pistols member Glen Matlock's Rich Kids (featuring a young Midge Ure who contributes a lot to the additional documentary found on this disc), The Clash and Sham 69 in addition to the many vox pops and on street interviews helps to give an overall snapshot of the punk scene as it was.

It's a nice, polished upgrade that looks clean, but not too clean given the conditions it was filmed in. Unlike a lot of the key figures involved, the film (shot on 16mm) has aged gracefully and isn't showing too many signs of its age, including in its scattershot structure. Documentaries covering live music or bands on tour tend to follow a strict narrative pattern that's become somewhat predictable, so it's nice to see that to go along with its punk subject, D.O.A. is appropriately unfocused and unbiased on which bands should receive the most attention and at what point to cut off a live show.

One of the great documents from the punk era that truly managed to capture a little bit of magic and raw intensity from the scene, rather than being dead on arrival, D.O.A. A Right of Passage makes its blu-ray debut looking as alive and vital as it ever did.

Verdict
4/5

Special Features -

- Dead on Arrival: The Punk Documentary That Almost Never Was. - An in depth contemporary documentary that tracks the creation of the original documentary, offering new insights into the filming process and the punk scene as a whole.

- A Punk Post-Mortem. - Interview with co-writer Chris Salewicz

- Limited edition booklet