London Film Fest Day 12 - SAVAGE GRACE

It's a story so delicious, you couldn't make it up. The suave heir to an industrial fortune marries a beautiful social climber. They lead a life of privelege and ease in the summer resorts of Europe. She is embarassingly over-ambitious for her delicate young son. All three have casual sex with alarming alacrity. No-one is off limits. Nothing is unexpected. And then, after an hour or two of bed-hopping, the young son and mother indulge in the only coupling as yet untried. The fuck each other. He kills her. He orders chinese take-out and waits for the cops.

All this is true. But so much is left out. We never learn of Barbara Baekeland's disgust at her son's homosexuality. We never see that she seduces him in an attempt to turn him heterosexual, rather than out of careless boredom. We never see Tony exhibit signs of mental illness - the murder is not foreshadowed in anything he says or does. As a result, the movie lacks momentum or narrative drive. It just drifts across the screen - one scene of boredom and casual sex after another. You never understand why any of the characters do anything, much less care. Even during acts of incest or murder, the dull tedium of their lives has infected the movie-goer to the point where we couldn't care less. Things aren't helped by the lack of context in the production design. Apart from one scene in the Stork Club we never see the Baekelands as social animals, living fast in glamourous parties or nightclubs. Maybe this was due to a budgetary constraint? The result is that visually, this is rather a dull film. There's also a sort of prudishness when it comes to the sex scenes. They are hinted at but never shown - certainly this movie has none of the balls-out bravery of Christophe Honoré's MA MERE.

All of this is a tremendous shame. I have great respect for all three lead actors - Moore, Dillane, Redmayne - and the subject matter could have been fascinating. But the movie had a listless, bizarrely prim feel to it. I was utterly unimpressed.

SAVAGE GRACE played Cannes, Toronto and London 2007. It opens in the US, Spain and Turkey in 2008.

OLIVER TWIST - a dull, disappointing Roman Polaski film

Let me say at the top of this review that I am soft on Charles Dickens. I really do think he is the greatest writer in the English language after Shakespeare and before Anthony Trollope and George Elliot. However, I find Oliver Twist to be one of the weaker novels. (This is relative, it's still so much better than 99.9% of novels out there.) My dissatisfaction lies in the fact that this is a novel written when Dickens was young, and so the balance is not so subtle between humour and social critique. In addition, the array of characters is not so socially varied as in later novels. Finally, I find the Oliver of the novel to be a cipher. He shows up the attitudes of the people he meets, but feels rather intangible in himself.

So, when I say that Roman Polanski's new adaptation of Oliver Twist is faithful to the novel, that is not exactly a compliment. But fans will find all the classic, mythic, scenes in place and untampered with. We see Oliver, a poor orphan in a Dickensian workhouse, draw the short straw and have to ask for more food. We see Oliver meet a gang of pick-pockets let by Fagin, and assisted by the wonderful Artful Dodger. We see the violent, evil Bill Sykes murder his soft-hearted girlfriend Nancy for trying to save Oliver. And we see Sykes shopped by his own dog! Finally, we see brave young Oliver try and convert Fagin to Christianity in prison - a raher unpalatable scene to modern ears.

The good stuff: the acting performances from British actors young, old, famous, new, are uniformly well-judged. The sets and costumes are wonderful. The movie is faithful to the source. The bad stuff: For all that, the movie is rather a dull walkthrough of familiar material. There is none of the cinematic vision and authority of previous versions. Whatever Roman Polanski told the cast, this will not be spoken of as THE Oliver Twist. Strange to say, but Polanski has created a rather, well, conventional and mediocre adaptation. Perhaps this is because he deliberately made a film for his kids, rather than a film for himself. Artists may often by egoists, but they serve their art better by following their instincts. If I were feeling mean, I could say that is more of a HBO special than a cinematic release. But even here I think it fails the test, and people who want to see a more authoritative, visually and dramatically inventive and emotionally involving version should check out the BBC's recent adaptation here.

OLIVER TWIST premiered at Toronto 2005 and went on global cinematic release in autumn and winter 2005. It was released on Region 2 DVD this week.