BRIDGET JONES: MAD ABOUT THE BOY****

First the irritating stuff.  Why oh why must London-set dramadies always be set among the 1 percent? Because let's be clear, most newly widowed mothers don't go back to work for a rebrand. They go back to work because they are financially insecure.  Most of them don't live in lavish picture-perfect Hampstead houses and have two kids in private school.  Most can't afford a full-time nanny. And most can't just waltz back into the same job they had a decade prior.

Second irritating point.  Renee Zellwegger.  The whole awkward tampon up the arse walk. The gurning.  The ditziness that is impervious to ageing and wisdom. The fact that she seems to have an endless stream of handsome men declare their underlying love for her.

Okay so that's two pretty major problems with this film.  BUT I still enjoyed it!  Why? Because author and screenwriter Helen Fielding has something moving and hopeful to say about grieving a loved one and about emotional growth.  We see Bridget as a widow navigate grief with her two small children, have a passionate summer fling with a hot younger man (The White Lotus' Leo Woodall) and then form a more mature attachment with her son's teacher (Chiwetel Ejiofor).  I believed in her grief, her joy, her contentment. Because Renee Zellwegger is actually a good actress when given something meaningful to do.  

And what of the emotional growth? Well that's all on the part of Hugh Grant's delicious rake Daniel, who comes to the realisation that he ought to forge a relationship with his teenage son. He has all the best lines and provides all of the film's comedy. Oh, except for a really superb cameo from Isla Fisher. Renee's prat falling does NOT count. (Shirley Henderson and the other best mates are all sadly underused.)

BRIDGET JONES: MAD ABOUT THE BOY has a running time of 124 minutes and is rated R. It is in cinemas in the UK and on Peacock in the USA.

A SPY AMONG FRIENDS eps 1 and 2 - BFI London Film Festival 2022 - Day 3

 

The first two episodes of Nick Murphy's adaptation of Ben MacIntyre's A SPY AMONG FRIENDS were screened as part of the BFI London Film Festival last night. It's hard to judge the direction of a miniseries on two episodes alone, but so far it comes across as cleverly constructed, beautifully acted and largely faithful to Macintyre's scrupulously researched book.

The book investigates the "mystery" of why the British intelligence service apparently let Philby - finally exposed as a Soviet spy - escape to Moscow in 1963, rather than bringing him in to face charges of treason.  The common answer, and one I share, is that there is no great conspiracy or mystery at all. As with Burgess and Maclean, it was far less embarassing to the SIS and the British Establishment to have Philby fuck off behind the Iron Curtain to pretty much silence in the western press, rather than to stand trial and expose just how lax security vetting was, and just how far Philby had "pulled the Circus inside out" for decades on the basis that no decent chap who went to a private school could ever be a wrongun'.

Still, TV demands drama, so this miniseries posits that a man as clever as Nicholas Elliott - who volunteered to go to Beirut to bring Philby in - would not have let him escape without getting something in return. And this is pretty much the state of play when we leave episode 2.

Guy Pierce seems to nail something of Kim Philby's notoriously mis-used charisma, arrogance and ruthlessness.  Despite his latter day alcoholism, there's a superb scene when the Soviet spy is on a train to Moscow and for a moment - just a moment - when he tells his handler how he murdered a Soviet defector who would have blown his cover in 1951 and reminds said handler not to patronise him - it's just pure ruthless muderous condescension. This is the heart of Philby's egomania.  I believe he became a spy out of ideological idealism, but stayed a spy because he got a kick out of being the smartest person in the room at any time.  It suited his vanity.

Damian Lewis is rather harder to pin down as Nick Elliott and that's probably the point. One understands how Elliott believes in his best friend right up until the point when Burgess and Maclean defect in 1951. But from then on, when it has been categorically proven that "one of us" can be a wrongun', why does someone as intelligent as Elliott remain loyal and credulous - even getting Philby his job in Beirut? Friendship?  Believing he might - like Blunt - just stop? Or trying to get him out of the way? I am looking forward to seeing what the miniseries does with this but so far - nada. 

The final lead actor in this production is Anna Maxwell Martin as the fictional character of Lilly - an MI5 interrogator who debriefs Elliott on his return from Beirut, and provides the framing device for the show.  I know why the writers felt the need to create Lilly. And to beef up the role of Flora Solomon, the real woman who shopped Philby, and Litzy Friedmann, Philby's first wife.  They want to let some women into what is basically an all-male story because frankly that's how the Establishment operated at the time, and this is nothing if not a story about a failure at the heart of the Establishment.

Maxwell Martin is brilliant as always and her character does well to show the rivalry and class antagonism between MI5 and the SIS - security versus intelligence - working class strivers vs the effete adventurers of the upper classes.  I really liked her character. But when the writers make her married to a black doctor you just think okay is this telling us something about Lilly or about appealing to contemporary audiences? I say this as a person of colour - don't add us as bit parts to make a point - give us proper characters that propel action if you must anachronistically include us. That said, I appreciate the earnest good intentions. So let's move on.

The only thing that really worried me was that they seem to be hyping up the role of Litzi Friedmann as not just an instigator of Philby's move to spying but also as someone who kept him there, actively, after the war. Not sure where they are taking this but it just makes me nervous that they're going to go off piste from the facts to make a female character more important.

Finally, it's worth mentioning that other than the great performances I also really love that this show has decided to make post-war Britain look as poor and grey and grimy as it was.  This is the real world of espionage as depicted by Le Carre rather than the glamour and glitz of Fleming. The lensing and lighting and production and costume design are all punching well above the weight of a TV show. And the delicate use of make-up and CGI to age down and then age up the lead actors is first rate.

A SPY AMONG FRIENDS will be streaming on ITVx later this year.

AMMONITE - BFI London Film Festival 2020 - Closing Night Gala

AMMONITE suffers in my head from comparisons with the devastatingly brilliant PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE, which played at last year's festival and has a very similar story at its heart. In both cases a young girl trapped in either the reality or prospect of a loveless and controlling marriage meets a talented older working class woman with a professional skill.  In both cases, the meeting takes place in a geographically isolated and brutally beautiful place and the relationship that builds is a slow-burn to a physically passionate end.  But in the latter, I truly believed in the connection between the two women, and in the former I'm not sure I did.

Part of the reason for this is that it was 50 mins for the protagonists in AMMONITE to have an actual (if insubstantial) conversation and 1hr10m for them to have a kiss.  And the interest in the characters is deeply asymmetrical.  Kate Winslet's Mary Anning IS fascinating. She's so repressed and locked in - maybe as much by her consciousness of her poverty and working class status as by her homosexuality - and has a fierce pride that refuses to accept help.  By contrast, Saiorse Ronan's Charlotte is the typical silly Victorian woman, fit for nothing but to be admired for her beauty. This is not to victim-shame, but she is exactly the product of societal strictures and doesn't really display an inner life in the way that PORTRAIT's young woman does. There doesn't seem to be much under the surface.  I had the feeling in AMMONITE that I always get watching Brideshead Revisited. I can understand why Charles is fascinated by Sebastian but not why Sebastian wants to hang out with Charles!

So the relationship develops and is crystallised at a beautifully staged elegant supper party where Charlotte is immediately embraced by the ladies, and Mary is left sitting excluded at the back, full of jealousy and surprise at just how much she resents them taking *her* girl away from her. We then move to a hyper explicit sex scene.  Now, it's really great to see a no-nonsense depiction of lesbian sex on screen, but it did feel strange in a movie where so much is repressed and withheld. It just felt tonally jarring rather than a cathartic release and a meeting of bodies and souls.

On the positive side, this movie looks and sounds ravishing. The costumes and way in which Lyme Regis is depicted is as austere and fierce and unique as Mary, and the sound design batters our ears with gales and tides that hint at what Mary feels under her still surface.  The acting was also top notch as one might expect,  with Winslet giving a masterclass in facial acting where there is no dialogue.  I also loved the Fiona Shaw character Elizabeth and wanted to see more of her, because I feel so much of Mary's characters reticence is due to class rather than queer concerns and that plays into their former relationship. I also love that because Charlotte is so worldly she has only experienced love as a kind of material possession and so when she falls for Mary she also expresses that with a kind of material possession. Just as she, as a wife, was expected to be subsumed without objection into her husband's world, she now expects that of Mary.

I also love how male a space the British Museum is, and the power of these two women at the centre of it at the end - as though the director Francis Lee (GOD'S OWN COUNTRY) is finally re-centring women in British history. Here is a woman who's name is not mentioned on the fossil that's on display at the Museum, but she can reclaim it visually in this film. Truly, it has been a long time coming.

AMMONITE has a running time of 120 minutes and played Toronto and London 2020.  It opens in the USA on November 13th.

PUZZLE

PUZZLE is worse than banal, it teeters on the offensive.  The banality begins with the slow-moving uninteresting tale of a middle-age housewife who lives as a martyr tending to her family.  In her spare time she does jigsaw puzzles and soon teams up with a glamorous exotic Indian millionaire to train for a competition.  Naturally - predictably - they end up falling for each other, and the affair gives her the confidence to demand a more equitable share of labour around the house and for her sons to take control of their lives. But in the end she drops out of the competition and her affair and returns to her now reformed family. And what of the Indian puzzler who enables this renaissance? He's cast off casually having done his part. The whole thing struck me as very dodgy and unconvincing. I get why she would be fascinated by him but not what he would see in her. Every now and then the script those in a line where he says she's beautiful, but they never have a conversation that shows a spark, and the two actors - Kelly Macdonald and Irrfhan Khan - have no chemistry. The resulting film is just too dull, and then dodgy, for words. It's the racial equivalent of films that creative manic pixie dream girls whose only purpose is to prompt a character reversal in a man, or that create wise old black women whose only purpose is to enlighten the young white protagonist. Enough already.

PUZZLE is rated R and has a 103 minute run time. It played Sundance 2018 and is now available to rent and own.  

LION - BFI LFF 2016 - Day 9

LION is an emotionally intense human interest story that comes complete with lovely cinematography.  However, a straightforward structure, slack pacing and ho-hum soundtrack prevent it from being truly great, as opposed to a well-made tear-jerker.

The film is based on the memoirs of Saroo Brierley. He was born in a small north Indian town in the early 80s, but through a twist of fate was separated from his family and ended up on a train to Calcutta, 1600km away.  Unable to speak Bengali, or even knowing the name of his hometown, the boy becomes one of many homeless children, and only narrowly escapes a predator to end up in an equally brutal state orphanage. But a kindly social worker intervenes and arranges for him to adopted by a white Tasmanian family, where it appears that he lived a very happy childhood.  However, when Saroo goes to university he finally meets people from India, and this triggers a wave of memories and a desire both to find his birth family, but not to hurt his adoptive parents.  And so begins a needle in the haystack search for a faint memory of a train station with a water tank, without even knowing if he'll find his family at the end of it. 

BREATHE IN

For a written review of the film, read on, but for a podcast review of this film, you can either listen directly here, or subscribe to Bina007 Movie Reviews in iTunes.

Arthouse director Drake Doremus scored a critical smash with his 2011 romantic drama, LIKE CRAZY.  With its handheld DV shooting style, semi-improvised script, and willingness to show the highs and lows of young romance, the movie struck most critics with its fresh authenticity. I, on the other hand, found it precious and irritating.  Doremus' follow up is this new drama, BREATHE IN, which has received far less critical acclaim. I liked it more than LIKE CRAZY, but still not enough to recommend it.

The plot is conventional and hackneyed.  A pretty young girl enters the lives of a dissatisfied middle aged couple, and an affair with the husband throws their emotional lives out of kilter.  In this case, the girl is Sophie, a music prodigy exchange student from England, and the husband is Keith, a man who dreams of an artistically valid life, but is condemned to teaching music in up-state New York to fund his conventional existence.

What gives this movie merit is that Doremus and co-writer Ben York Jones, eschew the typical pyschodrama - making it very clear that neither Keith (Guy Pearce) nor Sophie (Felicity Jones) have dodgy intentions, and that their connection is earnest and beautiful. In fact, the film-makers even create a small role for Kyle MacLachlan as the conventional sleazy older man, to point out how far Keith does not fit that cliché.  But that mature approach has its own pitfalls.  It makes for a movie that's all longing glances and undeclared affinity, but there's little erotic tension or passion or, well, drama. And when the conventional genre structure demands a melodramatic cathartic denouement - let's just say it feels artificial and at odds with the tone of the rest of the movie.

So, overall, BREATHE IN is a disappointment thanks to it's rather thin plot.  The photography is beautiful.  The acting is great - nuanced, subtle, mysterious - and I even loved newcomer Mackenzie Davis as the errant father's teenage daughter.  But the movie just felt like it had too little meat on its bones.  If you want to watch something with more substance, but covering a similar theme, why not check out another Sundance alum: Ry Russo-Young's stunning NOBODY WALKS?

BREATHE IN has a running time of 98 minutes. It has been rated 15 in the UK for strong language. It played Sundance 2013 and is currently on release in the UK and Ireland.  It will be released in the Netherlands on November 7th. It does not yet have a release date in the USA.

London Film Fest 2011 Day 4 - LIKE CRAZY

God I hated this movie. I hated it from the opening scene where kookily sweet English girl Anna (Felicity Jones) propositions  goofy, nerdy American boy Jacob (Anton Yelchin) with a quirkily, goofily, cutesy letter under his windscreen-wiper.  I hated the falling in love scenes - all reading each other's poetry and carving each other's names on a chair - adolescent crappiness - and the self-indulgent, stupid manner in which the girl screws up her visa application by over-staying her welcome.  I had no sympathy for the couple. She just seemed selfish and juvenile - he just seemed weedy and pathetic.  Her parents seemed unbelievably nice - why didn't they just slap them both round the face and tell them to get on with it?  And as for so-called honest insights about the problems with long-distance relationships - jealousy, cheating, feeling left out, expense - frankly, there's nothing more profound in this flick than in the mainstream rom-com GOING THE DISTANCE.  

Just because you film everything in a ramshackle indie style; give it a score by Dustin O'Halloran; and neither of the lead characters ever wash or comb their hair, doesn't make a movie authentic or interesting.  I really just don't get the hype it's receiving.  It struck me as juvenile, self-indulgent and banal - just like its milquetoast lead characters.  ENOUGH ALREADY!  

LIKE CRAZY played Sundance 2011 where it won the Grand Jury Prize - Dramatic beating TERRI, MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE and HERE. Felicity Jones won the Special Jury Prize for Acting.  The version shown at London 2011 has been cut to achieve a PG-13 rating.  LIKE CRAZY will be released in the US on October 28th and in the UK on February 3rd.

Felicity Jones on the red carpet for the UK premiere
of LIKE CRAZY at the BFI London Film Festival