Francesca Joseph came to drama from documentary and it shows: she is generous with ensembles, honest about how people talk, and reluctant to let anything in her stories turn nasty. Two features, both ensemble comedies, neither sharp enough.
Fi1m perspective
Ian Burfield's Walter in Tomorrow La Scala (2002) is serving life and has been cast as the barber in Sweeney Todd. He barely speaks for the first stretch, learns the part faster than anyone expects, and sings it in a voice nobody has trained. That is the Francesca Joseph scene: a group of people who should not be in the same room, a job that needs doing, and the camera waiting to see who turns out to be good at it. She is patient with the waiting, and it is the best thing she does.
The patience comes from factual television. She created and directed Driving School for the BBC in 1997, and before that she directed opera and theatre, until she decided to stage an opera in a prison with lifers in the chorus. Tomorrow La Scala, which she wrote as well as directed, came out of that. A second feature, Four Last Songs (2007), gathered expatriates on a Mediterranean island around a concert, the same shape in warmer weather; the reviews found its script uneven, which is close to the complaint we had about the first. Around the two films came episodes of EastEnders and Mistresses and the television film Learners. No third feature has followed.
What works is the ensemble. Joseph lets dialogue be worked up with the cast rather than handed down, and her prisoners sound like men talking, not actors reciting. Burfield, Shaun Dingwall and David Oyelowo are each given room, and only Kulvinder Ghir is shortchanged. Dan Jones scored both features and St John O'Rorke cut them, and the first, at least, is brisk and does not outstay its welcome.
What does not work is the danger she keeps out. Her prison has nobody in uniform who minds the company, no inmate who stays frightening for longer than a scene, and one crisis that is over before it registers. We laughed at the prop razor, then noticed that nobody on screen seemed to remember what the man holding it had done, and the laugh went sour. A film about putting murderers on a stage ought to frighten us at least once. She has said of her research, "I never felt frightened at Wormwood Scrubs," and we believe her; the trouble is that she made the film so that we never would be either. Joseph is good with actors and less certain where to put the camera, and the tonal switches, farce to drama to romance, happen between scenes rather than inside them.
See Tomorrow La Scala for Burfield and for its last twenty minutes, which earn something the rest has not worked for. If a third feature ever arrives, we would like somebody else to write it.
Biography
Francesca Joseph is a British director and writer. She began her career making television documentaries, including Driving School (1997).
Her debut feature film Tomorrow La Scala! (2002), which she also wrote, was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the Cannes Film Festival. It centres on an opera company staging Sweeney Todd in a maximum-security prison. Joseph later directed the feature Four Last Songs (2007) and episodes of television series including EastEnders and Mistresses.
