The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part 1: The Moab Story (2003)

Director:

Peter Greenaway

Writer:

Peter Greenaway (writer)

Release Date:

18 July 2003 (Spain)

Genre:

Adventure | Biography | Drama | Romance | Thriller | War

Plot:

The first of three parts, we follow Tulse Luper in three distinct episodes: as a child during the first World War...

Plot Keywords:

Utah | Suitcase | Mormon | Flashback | English

Awards:

1 win & 1 nomination

Cast

JJ Feild	...	Tulse Luper / Floris Creps
Caroline Dhavernas	...	Passion Hockmeister
Jordi Mollà	...	Jan Palmerion
Steven Mackintosh	...	Gunther Zeloty
Raymond J. Barry	...	Stephen Figura
Scot Williams	...	Percy Hockmeister
Drew Mulligan	...	Martino Knockavelli
Yorick van Wageningen	...	Julian Lephrenic
Jack Wouterse	...	Erik van Hoyten
Naím Thomas	...	Hercule
Nilo Mur	...	Pip
Valentina Cervi	...	Cissie Colpitts
Tom Bower	...	Tom Fender
Michèle Bernier	...	Sophie van Osterhuis
Barbara Tarbuck	...	Ma Fender
Enrique Alcides	...	Hans Heiner
Shaun Phillips	...	Martino
Kevin Tighe	...	William Gottschalk
Guillermo Ayesa	...	Gerdie Ottanssen
Joan Codina	...	Emile
Xavier Aliguer	...	Pierre (as Xavi Aliguer)
Iván Andrade	...	Brodie
Lauren Hadley	...	Macey
Joshua Light	...	David
Adam Williams	...	Celam
Vincent Bonnet	...	Donald
Sally-Jo Jenkins	...	Aga
Manu Fullola	...	Gopel (as Manuel Fullola)
Oriol Vila	...	Stringly
Francesco Guzzo	...	Joe Maistersinger (as Salvatore Francesco Guzzo)
Winston Evans	...	Ivor Luper
Francine Morgan	...	Carrie Luper
Thomas Bodmer	...	Thomas J. Imox
Joan-Francesc Ainaud	...	Gordon Merovian
Phillippe Boekstal	...	Luper Autoritat
Edmon Roch	...	Blaise Poignard
Amelia White	...	Zelke
Clare Boland	...	Mare Celan
Marlene Griffiths	...	Mrs. Warren
Roger Nott	...	Constantino de Ripa
Deborah Harry	...	Fastidieux (as Debbie Harry)
Josep de Font	...	Red Fox Cadet
Ivan Labanda	...	Red Fox Cadet
Roger Padilla	...	Red Fox Cadet
Joan Pastor	...	Red Fox Cadet
Aimar Pérez	...	Red fox cadet
Phil Rowlands	...	Arthuro Balderman
Marti Santiago	...	Red Fox Cadet
Pablo Derqui	...	Luper Jove (as Pau Derqui)
Albert López-Murtra	...	Luper Jove
Ivan Massagué	...	Luper Jove
Bruno Pichot	...	Luper Jove
Ricard Sales	...	Luper Jove
Coast Alexander Ryen	...	Cappy Luper
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Rubén Arroyo
Miquel Bordoy
Roberto Citran
Anna Galiena
Remo Girone
Iain Hoskins
Patrick Kennedy	...	Hercule
Keram Malicki-Sánchez	...	Virgil de Selincourt
Cristina Moglia
Tanya Moodie	...	Guam Ravillion
Richard Pask	...	Young Tulse Luper
Molly Ringwald
Paul Rockenbrod	...	Lephrenic
Isabella Rossellini	...	Mme. Moitessier
Francesco Salvi	...	Paul / Pierre
Dávid Spáh	...	Karlheitz
Nigel Terry	...	Sesame Esau
Ana Torrent
Alec Von Bargen
Leslie Woodhall	...	Man in Overalls
Maggie Munro	...	Zealot (uncredited)

Directed by
Peter Greenaway

Writing credits (in alphabetical order)
Peter Greenaway		writer

Produced by
Wouter Barendrecht	....	executive producer
Eva Baró	....	co-producer
Jet Christiaanse	....	line producer
Jimmy de Brabant	....	co-producer
Carlo Dusi	....	executive producer
Susanne Fischer	....	assistant executive producer: Italy
Kees Kasander	....	producer
Ragna Arny Larusdottir	....	assistant line producer
Aleksandr Mikhajlov	....	co-producer
Gherardo Pagliei	....	co-producer
Elisabetta Riga	....	co-producer
Edmon Roch	....	line producer
Aron Sipos	....	co-producer
Antoni Sole	....	co-producer
Sándor Söth	....	co-producer
Esther Thedinga	....	assistant line producer
Klaus Volkenborn	....	co-producer
Michael J. Werner	....	executive producer

Original Music by
Borut Krzisnik
Eduardo Polonio

Cinematography by
Reinier van Brummelen		(director of photography)

Film Editing by
Elmer Leupen
Chris Wyatt

Casting by
Pep Armengol
Sharon Howard-Field
Radica Jovicic
Peter Wooldridge

Production Design by
Márton Ágh
Davide Bassan
Billy Lelieveld
Pirra Jesús Lorenzo
Bettina Schmidt

Costume Design by
Andrea Flesch
Beatrice Giannini

Makeup Department
Aurélie Elich	....	makeup artist
Sara Meerman	....	key makeup artist
Joël Seiller	....	assistant hair stylist
Evelyne Sittig	....	assistant hair stylist
Evelyne Sittig	....	assistant makeup artist

Production Management
Hebeler Guy	....	unit manager
Ragna Arny Larusdottir	....	production manager
Claude Ludovicy	....	production manager
Katalin Naszódi	....	unit production manager: Hungary
Marta Rigau	....	production manager: Spain
Sascha Schwill	....	production manager: Germany
Lionel Strutt	....	post-production supervisor
Jochem van Rijs	....	post-production supervisor (uncredited)

Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Sébastien Fernandes Tasch	....	second assistant director
Gábor Gajdos	....	first assistant director: Hungary
Dylan Gray	....	first assistant director: Germany
Tamás Joó	....	assistant director
Ángel Lafuente	....	first assistant director
Stojan Petrov	....	second assistant director: Germany
Julen Robles	....	second assistant director
Csilla Szigeti	....	second assistant director

Art Department
Pau Albin	....	assistant props buyer
Manuel Demoulling	....	prop buyer
Dominique De Pompignan	....	stand-by props
Queralt Antú Serrano	....	calligraphy artist
Queralt Antú Serrano	....	props
Seth Turner	....	assistant art director

Sound Department
Caoimhe Doyle	....	foley artist
Csaba Erös	....	boom operator: Budapest
Dani Fontrodona	....	sound recordist
Max Frick	....	sound editor
Arni Gustafsson	....	boom operator
Bart Jilesen	....	sound re-recording mixer
Bart Jilesen	....	supervising sound editor
János Köporosy	....	sound recordist: Budapest
Han Otten	....	sound designer
Han Otten	....	sound effects editor
Han Otten	....	sound re-recording mixer
György Rajna	....	utility sound: Budapest

Special Effects by
Sara Meerman	....	special effects makeup

Visual Effects by
Francesco Paglia	....	digital compositor
Mauro Vicentini	....	digital compositor
Raymond Viveen	....	digital compositor

Camera and Electrical Department
Raül Campos Arroyo	....	electrician
Ruzbeh Babol	....	camera operator
László Berger	....	assistant camera
Juan Gonzalez Guerrero	....	assistant gaffer
Laura Martínez	....	grip
Alex Narváez	....	electrician
José Alberto Pinto de Jesus	....	electrician
Frank Restle	....	crane operator
Mike Roberts	....	video assist operator
Attila Szûcs	....	dolly grip
Balázs Vákár	....	gaffer

Casting Department
Pep Armengol	....	casting: Spain

Costume and Wardrobe Department
Magdalena Marczynska	....	wardrobe assistant
Marrit van der Burgt	....	wardrobe
József Varjú	....	dresser: men

Editorial Department
Jaap Praamstra	....	additional editor
Jon Thompson	....	post-production consultant

Transportation Department
Gaby Meyers	....	driver: cast
Francois Muller	....	truck driver
Igor Pecirep	....	driver: director

Other crew
Bob Bellion	....	financial manager
Alexandre Brown	....	facilities supervisor
Pauline Burt	....	risk manager
Guy Hebeler	....	location manager
Zoltán A. Kerényi	....	managing director: Focusfilm Kft.
Joe Kotroczo	....	production office assistant
Patricia Kretschmer	....	assistant to producer
Annick Lockman	....	production coordinator: Luxembourg
Roberto Longobardi	....	production accountant
Alba Morera-Vallverdu	....	production assistant
Francois Muller	....	location security officer
Sébastien Peiffer	....	additional location assistant
Otfried Suppin	....	location assistant
Elly Verduyckt	....	script supervisor
Allard van der Werff	....	assistant: Peter Greenaway

Production Companies

• ABS Production
• Delux Productions
• Focusfilm Kft.
• Gam Films
• Kasander Film Company
• NET Entertainment
• Net Entertainment
• Studio 12-A

Distributors

• A-Film Distribution (2003) (Netherlands) (theatrical)
• Istituto Luce (2004) (Italy) (theatrical)
• Laurenfilm (2003) (Spain) (theatrical)
• A-Film Home Entertainment (2004) (Netherlands) (DVD)

Other Companies

• Fatts  post-production script services
• Film & Television Facilities  facility vehicles
• Location Consulting & Facilities  facilities vehicles
• Mayflower Recording  sound post-production
• Open Casting  casting
• Open Casting  extras casting

Also Known As:

Las maletas de Tulse Luper: La historia de Moab (Spain)
Le valigie di Tulse Luper - La storia di Moab (Italy)
As Maletas de Tulse Luper - Parte I: A História de Moab (Brazil) [pt]
The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part 1: The Moab Story (Greece) (festival title) [el]

Runtime:

France:127 min (Cannes Film Festival)

Country:

UK | Spain | Italy | Luxembourg | Netherlands | Russia | Hungary | Germany

Language:

English | German | Dutch | French | Spanish

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Certification:

Netherlands:16 | Spain:18

Filming Locations:

Almería, Andalucía, Spain

Company:

ABS Production

Trivia:

'Tulse Luper' was first mentioned in Greenaway's A Walk Through H: The Reincarnation of an Ornithologist (1978), as the owner of the 92 maps.

Movie Connections:

Featured in The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part 3: From Sark to the Finish (2003)

If Bill Gates set out to make a Russ Meyer film after visiting the Holocaust Museum . . .

I saw this film last night at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington DC. Antwerp was also shown, I believe. Peter Greenaway was there, presented comments before the film, between the films, and answered questions after the film. It started about 8PM, and when I left around 1AM, Greenaway was still answering questions. The film was shown in high definition, although the Hirshhorn projection system sometimes had trouble keeping it in focus. Antwerp repeated about twenty-five minutes of the end of Moab.

I won't attempt to describe much of the plot of Greenaway's mad project, such as I saw it, other than to say it traces the life of the title character through the two world wars of the twentieth century. If it is ever completed, one would expect there to be ninety-two "suitcases", hyperlinks as it were, to elements of Tulse Luper's life; one would expect there to be ninety-two common archetypical objects representing human existence; and one would expect there to be ninety-two characters in the movie, many of whom are introduced in split screen "auditions", which Greenaway imagined are analogous to parallel worlds. However, other than the number of times Tulse is physically assaulted, I can't recall any of the numbers going beyond thirty, so clearly there is a long way to go before the film can ever be called completed.

Greenaway described his visual metaphor as capturing elements of toolkits from multimedia computer graphics. The influence of a high bandwidth internet experience is also present. There was something analogous to a magnifier icon for creating a box around an element of a scene to be highlighted. There were panels of foreground videos playing over a background video reminiscent of a Windows Media Player or a Real Player. And there was one scene that split and adjusted the frame of the movie horizontally, like something I'd seen editing a Word document. Of course, all of these elements are subtly redefined to be nonobvious, and graphically balanced and symmetric. In one of the most visually impressive sequences in the film, the camera moves slowly from left to right, and then back, over a row of typists, each of whom has a bare light bulb above her head, and between each of them there is a semi-transparent display of rapidly changing document pages as might be scanned from a database.

Thematically, the film captures the best elements of Greenway. He said he expected Tulse Luper to be his magna opus, and the way he described the infinitely recursive structure of the story, it is likely to be an unfinished symphony. The numbers from Drowning by Numbers are here. The brutality of The Cook the Thief His Wife & Her Lover is, too. The film is expressly referential to Greenaway's earlier works, and he suggests that Tulse Luper is his alter ego.

Greenaway makes much of the architectural elements of the frame -- the Cartesian grid, lots of horizontal and vertical lines, vanishing perspectives, conic shadows of divergent illumination from a point source -- but for me what makes Greenaway Greenaway is brutality for an underlying theme, and lots of artfully naked, sexually expressive people. The visual elements could certainly exist without the rawness, but his films would not be as powerful without it. One scene clearly showed the results of a castration, and many others involved some sort of sexual domination. Greenaway said he is an atheist; I wondered, is he also a practitioner of sexual dominance in his personal life, or is he just doing this to be interesting? Between films, Greenaway sounded almost apologetic in explaining it was about totalitarianism and anti-semitism, but it's problematic for a Britisher in our age of anti-Americanism to present so many fascist characters uttering slurs against the Jews. It's sort of like Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice talking about the Holocaust. Does repeating blood libels, like the Jews supposedly being responsible for communism, somehow perpetuate the injury? Early in the film, a character repeats a mantra to "destroy the evil" as a way presumably to end war, but then later another suggests this sounds like too much of a violent thing to do; one wonders, which is it?

This was certainly the most powerful movie experience I had in 2003, although admittedly I didn't see very many good movies this year. And the scale of Tulse Luper is such that I'm sure it will be one of Greenaway's very best, even if it never achieves a state of completion. It helps vastly of course to see it in the theater and in high definition. While Greenaway regretted the French subtitles, as the version we saw was shown at Cannes, I actually found they added another dimension to the film: not only did they help me catch what the characters were saying when they spoke too fast to hear, but the nuances of French vis-a-via English were enlightening.