THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN - PART 2

Bella's journey from whiny reactive teen to Ripleyesque super-mum.

And so the fantastically successful commercial juggernaut that is Twiglet drifts to a close, with this polished, camp but ultimately rather silly final film.  The movie picks up in media res, with our previously whiny, reactive, pathetic heroine Bella (Kristen Stewart) opening her colour-enhanced, fake-eyelashed eyes as a sparkly vampire, all her spider-senses tingling.  The first forty-minutes of the flick see her hop skip and jump through a new world of heightened colour and smell, astonishingly controlling her urge to feed off humans, and coming to terms with the fact that her child, Renesmee, survived because her old flirt-friend and werewolf (Taylor Lautner) "imprinted" on her.  And where's Bella's husband in all this?  Looking on smugly as his "new-born" wife kicks ass and looks hotter than ever.

In the movie's second act, Bella's in-laws, The Cullens, gather up a brood of global vampires to testify to the fact that Renesmee isn't an  out-of-control, dangerous child vampire, but actually a half-human cute little moppet.  Their aim is to reason with the Vampire world's equivalent to the Papacy, led by Michael Sheen's hilariously camp Aro, that Renesmee shouldn't be killed, and failing that, to do battle.  This leads us to the final act of the film, which seeks to give fans of the almost absurdly bloodless novels a humdinger of an action sequence, while also remaining faithful to the more talky, banal denouement of the book. Suffice to say that, as one would expect in this world of emasculated, proto Christian revival vampires, all ends happily for the good guys, and even for the bad guys, because basically the entire plot motivation of this movie has been a gross misunderstanding. 

There's a lot to like in this instalment of the series. Production values are top notch.  Guillermo Navarro's photography of Bella's newly heightened world is beautiful; the bleach blonde dye jobs on the Cullens are less cheap; the CGI wolves are superb; and the Volturi superbly over-the-top.  The acting is just fine, with the exception of Stewart who really does sell it well. Michael Sheen is, of course, stunning, and Dakota Fanning seems to share in his sense of mischief.  I can honestly say I had a fun time watching this movie.

Of course, it doesn't really hang together.  Aro's speech to pre-emptively kill the unknown quantity that is Renesmee kept cracking me up as a caricature of Tony Blair's pro Iraqi war campaign.  The knowing homo-eroticism of Lautner stripping off for Charlie (Billy Burke) broke any seriousness this movie might have had.  And, as with the X-MEN movies, I'm always struck by the disparity and ill-use of the super-powers handed out to the different characters.  Bella has self- control and a defensive shield. Awesome. But this other guy can CONTROL THE ELEMENTS!!! I mean, isn't that game over for the Volturi right there? And as for Alice's power to see the future, so crucial in allowing the screenwriters to have their cake and eat it, if she can see various potential outcomes, doesn't that rather confuse which  of her prophesies to believe in?

Ah well, I guess this isn't a movie we should think about too deeply.  In today's recessionary climate it seems like a nostalgic throw-back to the boom years in which it was written - when beautiful people drove beautiful cars, and a virginal young girl who waited till  marriage would be gifted a beautiful cottage stocked with pretty handbags and shoes. I mean, who needs an education anyway? And let's not even get into the sheer creepiness of poor Renesmee being promised, in utero, to a guy who's already gone through puberty.  To all those pop-culture commentators praising Bella as a modern heroine I say, no no and again no.

But like I said, better not to overthink it.   Better to enjoy the camp hilarity of Sheen's maniacal laugh and Gap ad models ripping each other's heads off. 

BREAKING DAWN PART 2 is on release pretty much everywhere except Armenia, Cambodia, Germany, Singapore and India where it opens next week; Hong Kong where it opens on December 20th and Japan where it opens on December 28th. 

London Film Fest 2010 Day 8 - MIRAL

Julian Schnabel's latest feature, MIRAL, is a deeply frustrating movie. There's a brilliantly tense ticking bomb scene intercut with Roman Polanski's REPULSION; Schnabel's trademark fluid handling of the camera; and somewhere underneath the soap-opera-bad romance there's a genuinely fascinating drama. But man, does it get swallowed up by the hammy dialogue and piss-poor acting that surrounds it.

The movie is set in post-WW2 Jerusalem. Hiam Abbas plays Hind Husseini - the real life educator who sacrificed her personal life and wealth to run an orphanage/school for Palestinian refugees. Her struggle to keep her orphanage is lightly sketched in with a few comments and a rather redundant cameo from Willem Dafoe. Her story is the movie I would have wanted to see. What in her childhood gave her the fortitude and integrity to sacrifice her life? How did she navigate the slippery local politics and raise the money necessary? How did she really feel about never marrying?

The problem is that her story is down-played in favour of the story of Miral - one of her pupils. Miral is the daughter of a deeply emotional disturbed mother (Yasmine Al Massri in a very strong cameo performance) and a sympathetic but floundering father (Alexander Siddig). He places Miral in the school, trying to protect her from radical politics and danger. But as Miral becomes a teenager, she gets radicalised by seeing a village bull-dozed. This could have set us up for a fascinating drama playing off emotions against intelligence - and the very real and important choice between overt action and the longer game. But Rula Jebreal's script (she is the real-life Miral) keeps giving us glimpses of something interesting - say Miral's friendship with a Jewish girl - but refuses to explore it, reverting back to soap opera dialogue and emotional.

So, what do we have in the end? A movie that is a joy to behold, thanks to Schnabel's fluid camera and talent for capturing light - a movie that is earnest in its intentions - but ultimately one that is marred by the fact that it has cast an Indian girl who can't act in the central role, and its incredibly poor script.

MIRAL played Venice and Toronto 2010. It opens in Germany on November 18th and in the UK on December 3rd. It opens in the USA on March 25th.

RENDITION turns a serious issue into standard sentimental fare

As befits any glossy, Hollywood, issues-based drama, RENDITION weaves together three different plot strands on two continents and features an uncaring Senator in a three-piece suit. This is, I admit, a rather flippant opening sentence to a review of a movie that desperately wants to be a serious, intelligent, emotionally engaging drama. Sadly, it falls short.

The subject matter is certainly serious, but this film does not treat it with respect. The first segment of the film takes place in an un-named North African country. The young daughter of a police chief has run off with a young boy who tragically turns out to be a suicide bomber. His bomb does not kill her father but a CIA operative who happens to be in a passing car. This triggers the story of the second, inter-woven segment of the film, in which Anwar Il-Ibrahimi (Omar Metwally) is the victim of an extraordnary rendition to North Africa, where he is tortured at the behest of the CIA on suspicion of organising the bombing. The third segment sees Anwar's heavily-pregnant wife Isabella (Reese Witherspoon) lobby her friend (Peter Sarsgaard), his boss the Senator (Alan Arkin) and the CIA big-wig (Meryl Streep).

So, big issues all round, namely what is the optimal trade-off between security and liberty? And is it ever justifiable to remove one man's liberty to secure, (as cited here) 7,000 Londoners' freedom?

But, to my disappointment, director Gavin Hood turns what could potentially be a very intelligent film into a rather banal Hollywood drama. It starts with small choices. He and the script-writer give the victim of rendition a heavily pregnant wife to manipulate us into feeling more sympathetic for them. The exchanges between the wife and the politicians have none of the sparkle or profundity of the Streep/Cruise conversation in LIONS FOR LAMBS. Alan Arkin is wasted in a cameo as the Senator and Streep looks far less menacing than in THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE and far less interested in her role than in LIONS FOR LAMBS. In the North African scenes, I thought Jake Gyllenhaal gave a fine performance as the CIA operative who has to witness the torture. But his character's credibility is sacrificed to the requirement for a Hollywood ending. In fact, pretty much the only story that is universally well-acted and emotionally engaging without being manipulative is the love story between the police-chief's daughter and the jihadist. These two kids bring more commitment and transparent emotion to the film than the rest of the high-wattage cast put together.

RENDITION played Toronto 2007 and is on release in Canada, the UK and the US. It opens in Singapore, Slovenia, Denmark and Iceland later in October. It opens in Argentina, Greece, Australia, Germany and France in November. It opens in France in December, in Belgium and the Netherlands in January 2008 and in Norway and South Africa in February.

SPOILER FILLED FINAL COMMENT: It seems to me self-evident that the one thing a film about rendition should categorically NOT have is a happy ending. But even if the director decides he wants to go down this route, I still don't see how this film could have ended on such a note. The CIA know that Anwar has escaped and that he will go back to the US to be with his family. Furthermore, they know he can only enter under his US passport. So why don't they just "render" him again when he lands at Chicago? If only to save themselves from a PR stink? Douglas has no story if Jeremy doesn't turn up in the US, after all.