49th PARALLEL***** - Pantheon Film Of The Month

49th PARALLEL aka THE INVADERS is a fascinating piece of British propaganda from 1941, with a deeply nuanced view of World War Two, but ultimately arguing for the US to enter the war. It was created by the iconic pairing of Michael Powell (director) and Emeric Pressburger (writer) who went on to create masterpieces like THE RED SHOES.  Behind the lens, we have a young David Lean as editor and DP Freddie Young, both of whom would go on to collaborate on LAWRENCE OF ARABIA. And on screen, we have Laurence Olivier with a laughable Quebecois accent, as well as Leslie Howard (GONE WITH THE WIND) and the legendary Anton Walbrook.

The plot is radical insofar as it centres the narrative on a handful of Nazi submariners who come ashore in Canada and have to journey incognito to the US which is still neutral. On the way, they meet Olivier's Quebecois trapper who doesn't even know the war has started, and posits the radical idea that all men must have some goodness inside of them, for he wouldn't shoot Polish women and children. That said, as propaganda, the film is careful to show him as saying his loyalty is to Canada and thus Britain, not to France, as an ally of Germany. 

As the film goes on, the Nazis take shelter with a kind of German emigre mormon community, and one of them starts to question what they are doing, which again feels radical for a propaganda film and reflects all the nuance and humanity that Pressburger (an "enemy alien" - ludicrous - in Britain at the time). But as these things go, naturally the Nazis must come to a bad end, and show the valiance of the Canadians along the way. This is most eloquently and powerfully displayed in Anton Walbrook's monologue roughly half-way through the film, where he explains why immigrants left famine and persecution in Europe and came to Canada for peace, security, tolerance and freedom. It remains incredibly stirring stuff.  

It's equally impressive to consider how this film was made - partly funded by the UK taxpayer - filmed on location in Canada when travel was both restricted and dangerous - with an international cast of major talent, often working at half scale or donating their fees to charity. Freddy Young's black and white photography is superb and most of all, we have a score by Ralph Vaughan Williams. It is no surprise that this film was a huge commercial success, and apparently remains once of the highest grossing British film in the US of all time.

49th PARALLEL was released in 1941 and won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. 

JUMP, DARLING - BFI Flare 2021

JUMP, DARLING is a beautifully shot, deeply moving, darkly funny relationship drama about the unlikely friendship between a grandmother and her grandson. The grandma is played by acting icon Cloris Leachman, who sadly passed away earlier this year. She brings all of her steely dry humour to this role as a feisty 80-something woman called Margaret who clearly needs someone to care for her, but is resisting moving into an old age home. The grandson, Russell (Thomas Duplessie), is licking his wounds after a break-up and decides to stay with his grandma while tentatively dipping his toe back into the drag performance world.  

What I love about this film is its nuanced depiction of really tough topics with sensitivity but also humour.  To start off with Russell, he's clearly struggling with owning his choice to be a drag performer rather than a mainstream actor, and this ambiguity is partly forced by his boyfriend's contempt for his profession. Is he performing as a drag queen, OR is his narrative that he's just doing this while he tries to become a mainstream actor the real performance? 

We chart Russell's growing confidence via a scene where he uses a powerful drag performance to effectively shame the closeted guy he is currently sleeping with.  Again, the question of who is really performing is raised: is it Russell as a drag queen, or the gay guy pretending to be straight?

And in the final, most powerful and moving scene of the film, we see Russell respond to an almost aggressive interrogation by an elder in the drag scene - and admit he does drag because it's his vocation. That acceptance is something truly beautiful and powerful, especially becuase in both their stories we see the price he is going to have to pay - not least rejection by some in mainstream society.

There's a similarly impressive and nuanced approach to the theme of suicide and suicidal ideation.  The grandmother and grandson are both dealing with memories of the grandfather committing suicide and imagine themselves in his shoes in dreamy unnerving scenes.  One senses that the grandmother both fears the memory and works it into her nightmarish vision of what it would be to move into a nursing home. For Russell it feels more like an exploration. 

I'm not going to lie. Like many people I booked this film because of the legendary Cloris Leachman - and she is wonderful here.  But it's Thomas Duplessie who really impresses in a performance that is by turns vulnerable, powerful, bitchy, flamboyant, contained.  I also absolutely loved the music choices for the pivotal drag lip sync scenes and the neon-lit dance scenes shot by DP Viktor Cahoj. This really is a film that in its look, sound, style and performances punches way above its weight as a low-budget debut feature. 

JUMP, DARLING has a running time of 90 minutes and is not yet rated. It played the Toronto Inside Out Festival and is currently playing BFI Flare. It does not yet have a commerical release date.

MATTHIAS & MAXIME - BFI London Film Festival 2019 - Day Two

MATTHIAS ET MAXIME starts of with such joyous energy that one feels the immediate intimacy and zaniness of an old bunch of schoolfriends. The banter, the in jokes, the casual intimacy is all there.  And despite the almost constant gaggle of overlapping conversation, one soon gets a real feeling for the characters, each friend essayed so superbly and concisely. From Frank's easy FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH baked confidence - to Rivette taking on the MC role, directing all activities as well as playing chorus.  There's Matthias (Gabriel D’Almeida Freitas), who seems to have shit together more than the others.  He's on the fast track at his law firm and he's the only one who apparently has a serious girlfriend.   And finally, there's Maxime, played by the writer-director-editor-costumier Xavier Dolan. Babyfaced, quieter, browbeaten by his abusive, addict mother (MOMMY's Anne Dorval), desperate to escape to a gap year in Australia. 

The events of the film are set in motion by Rivette's hilariously annoying wannabe Valley Girl sister Erika, who's making a parlous student film and ropes in Matthias and Maxime.  Sharing a kiss on screen prompts an identity crisis in Matthias, who turns cruel in his denial, devastating poor Maxime.  The emotional consequences of this unravel over the next ninety minutes.

MATTHIAS ET MAXIME shares the best and worst characteristics of all Dolan's films. At their best, they give us insight into the LGBTQ experience in a way that feels authentic and raw and moves us deeply.  They give us precise visual coding, and an obsession with dated, faded suburban interiors. They give us gloriously choreographed set-pieces and 80s synth-pop.  They feel like Sirkian melodramas made contemporary and thrilling.  But they also tend to the indulgent, with sagging overlong third acts, and plots that are rather predictable. On the whole, I can overlook the faults, because Dolan does something so particular and unique, and simply never fails to move me. The picture he paints of a loving, self-sacrificing son is just heart-breaking.  And I love the ambiguity of the ending. Moreover, this is one of the most joyous and laugh out loud funny of Dolan's film, especially in the breathtakingly good opening thirty minutes, with Erika stealing the show!

MATTHIAS & MAXIME has a running time of 119 minutes. The film played Cannes and London 2019 and does not yet have a commercial release date. 

THE HUMMINGBIRD PROJECT - BFI London Film Festival 2018 - Day Five

One of the film's I really wanted to see at last year's BFI London Film Festival but couldn't fit in was Canadian writer-director Kim Nguyen's THE HUMMINGBIRD PROJECT.  It stars Jesse Eisenberg and Alexander Skarsgård as super smart trader/techies who want to construct a straight-line pipe from New York to Kansas that will enable to trade milliseconds faster than their rival, played by Salma Hayek. The film's name thus comes from the tiny amount of time that can result in massive profits - the time taken for a hummingbird to flap its wings. 

The resulting film is really odd, even for someone like me who works in the City. It's a very slow build. Jesse Eisenberg does his thing of arrogant smart guy, and that's become dull.  Skarsgård by contrast is playing against type - from hunk to bald programmer - and isn't convincing at all. And Hayek's is the hammiest, silver-wigged boss since Meryl Streep in THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA.  And yet, as much as I really wouldn't recommend this film, by the time I rolled into the final half it did build up a certain manic energy and tension, seeing Eisenberg push himself physically over the edge, and Skarsgård pulling off double-crosses.  There's a point at which Eisenberg is waving a chainsaw. Did it jump the shark? I honestly don't know. By that point the movie was operating on such a plan of surreality - completely unbelievable and yet bizarrely compelling.  I still don't quite know what just happened here. 

THE HUMMINGBIRD PROJECT has a running time of 111 minutes.  It is available to rent and own.

ABU: FATHER - BFI London Film Festival 2017 Preview

Arshad Khan's biographical documentary is fascinating and beautifully constructed. Using a mixture of family photos and home videos intercut with animation, clips from Western and Bollywood films, he creates a compelling and authentic collage of life in 1980s Pakistan and then as an immigrant in Canada.  His childhood seems impressively liberal - he dances with his siblings to Western music.  But he knows he's different, and when dressed by his sisters in girls' clothes he is molested. Later, his father becomes increasingly religious and thus disturbed by his son's homosexuality. He tries proselytising in the car in Canada, and then confronts his son and asks him to get psychological help - equating homosexuality with alcoholism - something that can be recovered from.  But at least Arshad is out of the closet, working as an airline steward, and discovering the gay subculture.  9-11 proves to the tipping point, as for so many others.  His parents become even more extremely religious and he becomes politicised. This is where I found the documentary to be the most fascinating - because it takes us into tv clips of radical preachers that we might not otherwise see and shows the impact on a previously liberal family.  The mother who used to dance to Pakeezah songs in her living room now refuses to leave the house without the permission of her husband, and thinks her son is belligerently refusing to be straight.  They make pilgrimages and there is a kind of rapprochement between father and son, but ultimately this is a story about failed connections and irreconcilable differences. Arshad's articulate sister posits a theory that when immigrants fail to find an easy entrance to a different society then can fall back on religion because it's a place of belonging and easy answers.  In this discussion of why assimilation fails, and why liberal humanist values do not translate, this documentary moves from being a personal journal to of universal and urgent relevance today.  In that, it makes a superb viewing partner to the equally provocative and interesting AZMAISH: A JOURNEY THROUGH THE SUBCONTINENT - also playing at this year's festival.

ABU has a running time of 80 minutes. The film is playing the BFI London Film Festival 2017. There are tickets available for both screenings.

IT'S ONLY THE END OF THE WORLD - BFI LFF 2016 - Day 11

ITS ONLY THE END OF THE WORLD is the least Dolanesque of all of Xavier Dolan’s films. Rather than a three hour epic of melodrama, often with extreme mummy issues and queer themes, set to an 80s synth-pop soundtrack, we get a relatively taught if no less histrionic 90 minute chamber drama. This is because the film is based on a stage play rather than Dolan’s own musings. The film stars Gaspar Ulliel as a famous author returning home to his estranged family after a 12 year absence to tell them he’s dying. But as the family bicker and fight and make-up over lunch, the tension mounts as to whether he’s actually going to do the deed. We sense that his tongue-tied sister-in-law (Marion Cotillard) actually figures out his news early on and tries to facilitate him telling at least his elder brother (Vincent Cassel). And it may be that the elder brother also figures it out near the end and tries to protect their little sister (Lea Seydoux) from the news. The mother (Natalie Baye) meanwhile - gloriously larger than life in typical Dolanesque form - seems to be utterly in the dark. 

THE CALLING

THE CALLING is a deeply derivative second-rate thriller directed by Jason Stone and based on the novel by Inger Ash Wolfe.  Susan Sarandon is wasted as small-town detective Hazel, on the trail of a serial killer who takes pictures of his victims' mouths enunciating words. She's helped by recently transferred deputy Ben (Topher Grace), who in a moment of gonzo wackiness uses his mom's donated airmiles to go chasing leads on his own and getting into trouble.  Naturally it all turns out to be linked to religious nutters, with Donald Sutherland playing a wise old Catholic priest who turns the cops onto the fact that the killer is harvesting victims to power a resurrection.   

The problem with the film is not the plot or the acting which are just fine as police procedural's go. It's the fact that everything echoes other, better, more unique works.  So when we see Sarandon is one of those hurry cop hats riding through the country to investigate a murder it immediately recalls FARGO.  And the scene of Ben going to investigate a spooky house on his own resembles SILENCE OF THE LAMBS.  Moreover, while the atmosphere is suitably sombre and some of the emotional content genuinely moving, the film lacks pace.  For a thriller, and one chock-full of outlandish material no less, it's not that thrilling.  

THE CALLING has a running time of 108 minutes and is rated R.  The film opened earlier this year in the US and Canada and is currently on release in the UK and Ireland. 

WHITE BIRD IN A BLIZZARD - LFF14 - Day Nine

WHITE BIRD IN A BLIIZZARD is the latest Gregg Araki movie after his brilliantly crazy over-the-top half-disastrous KABOOM which played the London Film Festival back in 2010. This movie seems far tamer and more contained - is equally hit and miss - but as ever contains just enough surprising good stuff to keep you in your seat.

The film plays as a kind of did-anyone-do-anything turned whodunit. As it opens, we’re in late eighties suburbia and Kat (Shailene Woodley) seems like a remarkably well-adjusted confident girl even as her depressed mother (a typically deliciously unhinged Eva Green) goes missing. Kat’s assigned a therapist and whatnot but seems utterly unfazed by her mother’s disappearance, using it as an opportunity to bang the hot cop assigned to the case. Fast forward a couple of years and she’s at college, and still looks really well adjusted. Until she goes home and everyone else seems to be telling her that they told her something was odd about her mum’s disappearance, only she was in denial. And so we work our way back through the events of the disappearance until we see Kat accept how deluded she was.

As a mystery thriller, the movie doesn’t work particularly well, with at least one major plot hole. It isn’t suspenseful, although I suppose part of the point is how Kat isn’t suspicious - hence the title. But what Araki does well is showing with a casual intimacy relationships between teenagers and young college students.  He talks about sex without flinching or judging and it's a pleasure to see Shailene Woodley break out of her far more conventional goodie two-shoes heroine roles to play a far more self-absorbed equivocal and sexually confident character.

WHITE BIRD IN A BLIZZARD has a running time of 90 minutes and is rated R.  The movie played Sundance and London 2014.  It opened earlier this year in Brazil and France. It opens in the USA on October 24th, in Iceland on November 7th, in Belgium on November 12th and in the Netherlands on November 20th.

MOMMY - LFF14 - Day Nine

MOMMY is Xavier Dolan’s greatest film and indeed one of the best in this year’s festival. It’s brutally authentic, emotionally captivating and technically astonishing. It rightly one the Special Jury Prize at Cannes this year and confirms him as one of the emotionally literate and astute directors of his generation. I’ve had issues with Dolan before - in terms of his pacing, repetition, bagginess and over-use of cinematic technique - but none of that ill-discipline is evident here. Rather he has honed his craft, pared down his view (quite literally) and delivered an unforgettable unique and vital film.

The film stars Dolan regular Anne Dorval as Diane - the exuberant, feisty mommy who is desperate to keep her son Steve (Antoine-Olivier Pilon) out of juvenile detention and ultimately a mental institution. Society may have branded her son a troublemaker and a reject but she is a mother, with all the tenacity, sacrifice and fierce love that this entails. She matches Steve’s energy and joy - and despite any judgments we may make about her appearance, manners and language - she is utterly at peace with herself. And that in itself is a rarity on screen these days. The second strong woman in the piece is Kyla (Suzanne Clement) - at first a hesitant, nervous and compromised personality who is brought to life through her interaction with Steve and Diane. It’s almost as though she abandons her conventional family (husband, daughter - who we never see) to become the third player in the weird set-up across the road. Diane becomes breadwinner, Steve the child, and Kyla home-schooling him, the mother. And so the relationship blossoms, but always with the threat of Steve’s extreme ADHD in the background, forcing Diane and Kyla to make tough choices about what is truly best for him.

As ever Dolan has a keen visual style and a particular sensitivity for setting key melodramatic set pieces to music. He doesn’t disappoint here, but keeps the number of these set pieces in check. Moreover he pulls off a neat conceptual trick by the filming the movie in 1:1 aspect ratio - a tight boxed close-up of character that literally cuts out any peripheral distractions. In a couple of astonishing moments, utterly in synch with the emotional journey of the characters, this concept is over-written, and the result is absolutely breathtaking and immersive. It makes movies that are content merely to put a story on screen in a conservative and obedient manner (TESTAMENT OF YOUTH, I’m looking at you) seem completely passé and redundant in a festival of this calibre. Kudos to Dolan and I can’t wait to see what he does next.

MOMMY has a running time of 134 minutes.  MOMMY played Cannes, where Dolan won the Jury Prize, Telluride, Toronto and London 2014.  It opened earlier this year in Canada, Belgium, France and Luxembourg. It opens in Germany and the Netherlands on November 13th, in Italy on November 27th, in Spain on December 5th and in Romania on January 23rd.

VIC + FLO SAW A BEAR - LFF 2013 - Day Three

What to make of VIC + FLO SAW A BEAR? One third dark comedy, one third doomed love story, one third surreal tone-bending denoument, it's a movie‎ that's hard to put your finger on, and so languidly paced that I'm not sure you'd find a pulse if you did.

It's the story of two ex con lovers who live in rural Canada. The elder, Victoria (Pierette Robitaille), is pugnacious and no-nonsense. She incurs the wrath of her weird neighbours for apparently neglecting her invalid father. The younger, Florence (Romaine Bohringer), ‎has genuine affection for Vic, but wants to be part of the real world too. All of this is observed and mediated by their sympathetic parole officer - a man they mock but who is the only one who really cares.

There's much to like in the film.  The charismatic dual lead performances.  The genuine empathy one has for this odd couple.  The Wes Anderson like deliberate framing of director Denis Côte and the willingness to use abrupt changes of tone.  In particular I was intrigued by the butch gardener, Jackie, and how Cote chose to film her.  And after seeing the final act, she is surely one of the most bizarrely frightening characters since Javier Bardem in NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN. But ultimately, VIC + FLO was so odd it just slipped out of my fingers, and remains a mere collection of body parts.  I am somewhat surprised that it win the Silver Bear at Berlin.

VIC + FLO SAW A BEAR has a running time of 95 minutes.

VIC + FLO SAW A BEAR played Berlin 2013 where Denis Cote won the Silver Bear, as well as Sydney and London. It opened earlier this year in France.

London Film Fest 2012 Day 3 - LAURENCE ANYWAYS

Xavier Dolan's third film is a heavily stylised, histrionic, near three hour melodrama that is impressive in its technical aspects and ambition, but ultimately bludgeons the viewer into boredom.  There came a point when I just couldn't take yet another beautifully framed, synth-track scored, slow-mo shot of one of the leads looking 80s glam and moody.   And I really couldn't take the over-wrought scenes of the two leads arguing that interspersed all the 80s music video scenes.  I think the problem with this film is that it is both stylised AND melodramatic.  Douglas Sirk understood that if the characters are repressed one has to put all of the emotion into the production and costume design, score and shooting style. And in contemporary cinema, Nicholas Windig Refn does the same in movies like BRONSON, which are heavily stylised but have minimal dialogue.  By contrast, a straightforward two-person melodrama can stand to be simpler in its design so as not to totally overwhelm its audience.  In other words, just because you have the sheer talent to do something stunning with the visuals and sound, doesn't mean that that's necessarily in service of the story.

And what is the story?  Laurence and Fred (Frederique) are long-time lovers who have to deal with the fact that Laurence is a trans-sexual. This brings practical problems - he loses his job and is beaten up - as well as the more low-level difficulty of people staring at him in the street.  She tries to be supportive and brave but end sup ducking out into a conventional marriage.  They meet, they talk, they fight - can anything ever be resolved?  Is there a natural ending to this tale of two people in love, but unable to live together?  Writer-director Xavier Dolan, evidently thinks not - so in love with this lead actors' performances and the 80/early 90s kitsch retro styling of his movie. And to a certain extent he is right.  Melvil Poupaud and Suzanne Clement give brave and compelling performances as Laurence and Fred.  For the first 90 minutes or so this film is absolutely captivating.  But as it goes on the performances are drowned (quite literally at one point) in mannered style.  My suspicion is that there is an absolutely stunning 100 minutes movie inside this film, but this edit really just doesn't do it for me.

LAURENCE ANYWAYS played Cannes, where Suzanne Clement won Un Certain Regard - Best Actress, and Xavier Dolan won the Queer Palm., It also played Toronto and London 2012. It opened earlier this year in Belgium, France, the Netherlands and Sweden. It opens in Poland on Nov 9, in the UK on Nov 30 and in Germany on March 13th 2013.

TAKE THIS WALTZ

This movie made me angry from the opening credits' sepia-tinted focus on Michelle Williams' blue-laquered toenails.  Poor Margot, it seems to say, so quirky, so right-thinking, making muffins with her face scrubbed clean.  It's like a Williamsburg dream. Except it's not.  It's a part of hipster-heaven-imagined Toronto where a young boho-wannabe couple who never seem to do much work can afford to live in a ramshackle-beautiful house interior designed just-so.  The couple are desperately irritating, right up until you realise that they are really really creepy.  They seem to have a kind of asexual buddy relationship where flirtation consists of speaking in infantile voices and drinking milk and poking fingers in your husband's mouth.  Plus the wife is clearly depressed and the husband so engrossed in making chicken cacciatore that he doesn't notice. So she starts flirting with the neighbour who is, of course!, a rickshaw driver who hangs out at the beach each morning to think.  I couldn't make this stuff up. Except he's clearly not as groovy and right-on and at peace with nature as all that because he's soon stalking her at the Y and then she's stalking him, and it all ends in the unsexiest sex-talk over martinis and a confession about nothing.  Still, as unappealing as I found the cocktease wife Margot and her stalkerish fancyman Daniel (Luke Kirby), at least there's a kind of raw honesty and commitment in their performances.  You realise that the first time you see Seth Rogen (the chicken-chef) react to his wife's confession.  Director Sarah Polley decides to do something that should showcase real acting talent - smashcut close-ups of his different reactions. Except, we learn, Rogen can't act - or at least not that kind of raw drama - he seems to be acting "at" it - and does that annoying Brad Pitt thing where you keep groping your face because that looks natural, right?  I mean, let's be clear, we have to blame Sarah Polley for this self-indulgent, risible mess, just as we lauded her for the Alzheimers drama AWAY FROM HER.  She wrote these absurdly incredible characters and their unsexy sexy language.  She exposed Rogen's inadequacies.  And in a montage designed to show Margot tiring of her new man, she reduces her film to an Ikea advert with a teenage-naive-embarrassing cut to what racy sex might actually look like.  Of course, this movie isn't as radical or subversive or raw or authentic as it thinks it is.   Chicken-man's sister turns out to be that movie cliché - the wise alcoholic.  Basically, the meaning is that we always take the weather with us.  And that very few movies live up to the Leonard Cohen song they're using.  Go home.  Go home. There's nothing to see here.    

TAKE THIS WALTZ played Toronto 2011 and Tribeca 2012. It was released earlier this year in Taiwan, the USA (Video on demand), Australia, Canada, Turkey and Sweden. It was released earlier this month in New Zealand, Japan, Denmark, Ireland, the UK, Greece, the Netherlands and Spain. It will be released in Belgium on September 19th; in France on October 31st; and in Brazil on November 9th.

Overlooked DVD of the month - PONTYPOOL

Okay. So the first thing you have to do is banish thoughts of a Welsh town. This Pobtypool is a town in Canada. And this film, PONTYPOOL, is a superbly claustrophobic, chilling little lo-budget horror flick from Canadian director Bruce McDonald. Based on the book by Tony Burgess, the movie takes place almost entirely within a small-town radio station, where a grizzled old DJ, Grant Mazzy, is stuck with his producer and studio manager on Valentine's Day, broadcasting his sardonic wit to local listeners. In a reverse of the Orson Welles War of the Worlds scenario, the radio station starts getting calls from listeners seeing savagery on the roads, and before they know it, they're hemmed in by infected zombies, who succumb to the infection by stumbling upon their words.

I love the fact that this is a film subverts the very concept of Talk Radio as quite literally an agent for broadcasting virulence. I love Stephen McHattie's charismatic central performance. (It reminded me of how when we saw Richard Jenkins in THE VISITOR, it was like we were really SEEING him for the first time, even though we'd seen him as a character actor in loads of films before that.) And I love the simplicity of the central conceit.

Definitely worth checking out on DVD.

PONTYPOOL played Toronto 2008 and was released in 2009 in Canada, Turkey, the UK and Austria. It is available on DVD.

London FIlm Fest Day 12 - POLYTECHNIQUE

POLYTECHNIQUE is Canadian film director, Denis Villieneuve’s, fictional retelling of the Montreal Polytechnicque masssacre in the late 1980s. A disaffected student, angry at feminists studying mechanical engineering who apparently wanted the best of both words, entered a classroom, split the girls from the boys and shot the girls, before walking through the rest of the university, shooting at random, before committing suicide. In dealing with this material, Villeneuve chooses to take a formal approach, establishing the motives of the killer and its impact on the students by recreating the events of that day rather than in essaying the journey to that place. Villeneuve takes accounts of the massacre and creates a killer and a composite male and female student. The male is shown being ushered out of the room before the girls, his friends are massacred, and then takes us with him for the rest of the day. The movie then cuts back to the classroom and shows us the shooting from the perspective of the female character and shows us the impact on her life.

The film is well-made and has moments of real impact, but I have a few problems with it. First, I think that Villeneuve makes a wrong choice in taking the killer at his word at being angered by feminists and following up this theme in the struggle of the female character to be taken seriously in the male-dominated world of mechanical engineering. This is, I think, pandering to the killer’s twisted view of the world. And after all, aren’t all these psychopaths just using whatever particular beef they have as a justification for a more basic need to cause hurt and gain attention? The other reason I think Villeneuve makes a mistake in focusing on the feminism theme is that it leads him into mawkish territory - particularly in the final, cliché ridden monologue of the female character.

POLYTECHNIQUE played Cannes 2009 and London 2009 and opened in Canada in February.

AWAY FROM HER - watching a heart break

AWAY FROM HER is that rare thing - a love story featuring a retired couple - played by Julie Christie and Gordon Pinset. After the first flush of love and middle-aged marital infidelity they have settled into a profound emotional and physical relationship. This is snatched away from them when the wife is diagnosed with Alzheimers disease, enters a residential care facility and in forgetting her husband, falls for another man. Julie Christie gives a brave and touching performance as a women struggling to separate her current life from snatched memories that disturb her. But it is Gordon Pinset who quietly reveals a breaking heart as he watches his wife attach herself to another.

AWAY FROM HER is a beautifully written and acted film, based on a short story by Alice Munro and directed by debutante Canadian, Sarah Polley. I loved the graceful moving camera that slowly weaves its way through a cafe of sufferers and families, or moves through a house. It is a patient interrogator of emotions that are selflessly held back as the couple try to handle this tragedy with a touch of grace. However, the disadvantage of such a deliberately patient shooting style is that the film can seem a little dragging in parts. I also found the frequent inter-cutting between the past, the wife's admission to the care facility and the husband's subsequent friendship with his rival's wife (Olympia Dukakis) un-necessarily complicated. Nonetheless, AWAY FROM HER is an important film, and an acting master-class.

AWAY FROM HER played Toronto 2006 and Sundance, Berlin and Dublin 2007. It opens in the UK this Friday, in France on May 2nd, in Norway and the US on May 4th, in the Netherlands on October 4th and in Spain in November.

CRAZY is what would happen if That 70s Show had emotional heft, visual style and a guy singing Charles Azanvour songs

CRAZY is a wonderful, if somewhat structurally incoherent, movie. It tells the tale of a French-Canadian family of five sons growing up in the 1970s and 1980s. The first strand of the story is based on the child-hood experiences of director, Jean-Marc Vallee. Vallee grew up in the kind of intensely spiritual family that we see portrayed in CRAZY, with a mother whose fondest desire is to go to Jerusalem and who believes that her son has a gift for healing people. So as the family are eating “ironed toast”, or spaghetti with dad’s “special sauce”, you get random telephone calls with relative calling up to say, “Unky Herb just cut himself on a knife: pray for him, Zac!” I loved all this stuff. No-where have I empathised with a character more in recent cinema as when young Zac sits in church and imagines the priest telling everyone that “midnight mass is already too long. Why don’t you all just go home and open up your presents?!”

The second strand of the story is based on reminiscences of one of the director’s friends, Francois Boulay. Boulay apparently also grew up with four brothers, and had a tortured relationship with his father on account of his bisexuality. Zac is all over the place with his sexuality – in denial, experimenting, being brutally homophobic, and finally self-accepting. What I love about this film is that we see clearly that Zac’s mother and father love him deeply, and while the father cannot understand or condone his sexual leanings, he is only trying to protect Zac from what he perceives to be an unliveable life.

CRAZY works in part because of its wonderful observation of the small but funny incidental things that make up normal life. And let me be very clear, I laughed my way through this movie. Sure, a lot of the comedy here is specific to the fact that this is a Catholic French-Canadian family, but we can all recognise the trademarks in our own families. Here, the father sings the same old hackneyed Charles Aznavour songs every Christmas. We all have a dad or an uncle who does the same. CRAZY also works because it creates that intimate, authentic feel of watching old home-movies. I love the fact that whenever there is a big family argument, you always having your kid brother sucking a Popsicle nonchalantly in the corner. The director explained that he consciously strove for this effect. Despite shooting with one camera, he was aiming for a “second camera feel”. What he means by that is that he wanted the footage not to look properly staged and framed and lit, but as though someone had just left a camera running in the corner of the room – a camera that was picking up reactions and odd details rather than providing the perfect Hollywood close-up of the melo-dramatic family reconciliation. CRAZY also works because the cast are great to a man. Special shout outs have to go the actors playing the parents, and the two kids who play Zac. The younger Zac may be the director’s son, but this is not a case of simple nepotism –he’s absolutely fantastic. And finally, this movie has an AWESOME sound-track and uses it to the max. The tour de force is a long sequence set to the Stones’ “Sympathy for the devil”. Outstanding.

The only flaw with CRAZY is that once the excitement at seeing something so visually inventive and tragi-comic wears off you realise just how incoherent the structure of the movie is. After the first hour, the movie seems likes a random assortment of comic interludes from the life of Zac and I lost confidence that the film-maker knew exactly where he was going with it all. I came out of the screening thinking that the 127 minute movie could have been a good 45 minutes shorter and lost none of its emotional punch. My only other slight criticism is a scene near the end when Zac goes travelling and ends up in the middle of the desert. This was the one scene that felt contrived to me (apologies to Francois Boulay if it really happened) and just a little too “cute”.

At any rate, despite its tendency to feel like a funny yet over-indulgent scrap-book, CRAZY is a delightful, original, and desperately funny movie. If you are lucky enough to have it playing near you, you should definitely check it out.

CRAZY played at Toronto 2005 and opens in the UK tomorrow. It opens in France oon May 21st 2006 and in Germany on May 25th. Despite being sold to 50 countries, it has not found a US distributor. However, I think you can get hold of it on DVD.