Overcoming the prospects of a future like that will be tough, but Alfonso Arau's sublimely sensual LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE (1992) shows the way, with a lot of great food, a little magical realism and time.
Along the way there are sneaky flourishes of surreal style to perk up the film's drab, low-budget realism: every time a clock is shown, it happens to be 9 30, and references to a legitimate movie called "Confusing Sarah" pop up in unexpected places.
McDowall's latest play Brilliant Adventures, a bold drama fusing gritty realism with time travel fantasy, earned glowing reviews at the Royal Exchange in Manchester and has now moved to Newcastle's Live Theatre.
If a film with him was ever going to be praised for its realism, every time another character met him he or she would have to open with something like, "Fuck me, you look like a human tree".
The latter of those subjects as well as the ambitiously inventive storytelling ― think magical realism, multiple time jumps per episode and aesthetic absurdism (such as her agent's office having a huge sign outside that states it's her agent's office) ― seems to have scared mainstream audiences away.
Writing in several different registers, Rushdie combines the wonder of fairy tale with the grittiness of hard, political realism; at times, especially in the long section recounting Max's wartime experiences, it reads as something close to reheated journalism: 'On June 13, the government of France abandoned the capital to the aggressor.
Realism has no time for dreamers.
Now regarded as classic rock, Reed's brutal realism at the time found scant acceptance.
When Merkel and Hollande meet for the first time, realism might trump campaign rhetoric.
"The 8800 enables us to display that level of realism in real time".
