Jonathan Nossiter is curious about people and the places that shape them. We value his feel for actors, but Signs & Wonders shows how readily that curiosity can turn into a lecture.
Fi1m perspective
In Signs & Wonders (2001), Charlotte Rampling and Stellan Skarsgård give emotional force to people who are difficult to judge. Nossiter's willingness to let characters remain awkward or disagreeable gives the actors something worth attempting, and what they leave uncertain is more interesting than a tidy explanation would be. That seriousness keeps a frustrating film from being easy to dismiss. We rate his interest in human behaviour more highly than his ability to trust it: the writing keeps pressing for a judgement where the performances have left us room to think.
His feature debut, Resident Alien (1991), mixed fiction and documentary; Sunday (1997), co-written with James Lasdun, established him in narrative cinema. Lasdun returned for Signs & Wonders, which used digital video in pursuit of intimacy. With Mondovino (2004), a documentary about the globalisation of wine, Nossiter turned that close attention towards people within an industry. Across these changes of form, place, memory and the passing on of knowledge remain recurring concerns.
In Signs & Wonders, Adrian Utley's music sustains the unease even when the drama labours. But Lasdun and Nossiter's screenplay returns to its concerns after we have had time to understand them. We grew impatient with the lecturing because it crowded out the uncertainty Rampling and Skarsgård could suggest. The problem is not that the characters are difficult company; it is that the film keeps telling us how much their difficulties matter. A little less insistence would have helped those performances.
In Mondovino, Nossiter is also cinematographer and editor, so the closeness of the filming and the selection of voices are both his responsibility. The small-crew observation makes room for spontaneous exchanges, though the editing can push its case too hard. His interest in passing culture on extends to the post-apocalyptic Last Words (2020), which brings cinema itself into that concern. It is an interest worth following, provided the people on screen are allowed to do more than explain it. Approach Signs & Wonders for its actors, with no expectation that the film will leave them alone.
Biography
Jonathan Nossiter is an American filmmaker. He directed and co-wrote the screenplay for the psychological thriller Signs & Wonders (2000), which starred Charlotte Rampling and Stellan Skarsgård and premiered in competition at the Berlin Film Festival.
Born in 1961 in Washington, D.C., he is the son of journalist Bernard Nossiter. Raised in France, England, Italy, Greece and India, Nossiter studied painting at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and the San Francisco Art Institute, as well as Ancient Greek at Dartmouth College. He worked as an assistant director in English theatre and on Adrian Lyne’s Fatal Attraction (1987).
His other films include the award-winning Sunday (1997), the documentary Mondovino (2004) and Rio Sex Comedy (2010). He has also worked as a sommelier.
