THE AFTERMATH

James Kent (TESTAMENT OF YOUTH) returns to our screens with another earnest, deeply felt, beautifully staged, but ultimately un-engaging wartime drama. This time, we're in Hamburg in 1946 during the British occupation of the city they bombed. Jason Clarke - by far the best thing in this film - plays the only really fascinating character - a tight-lipped British officer, turned humane by his brutal experiences of war, struggling to communicate with his wife since the death of their son.  The wife is played by Keira Knightley taking a million steps back from her more challenging and interesting performance as COLETTE to play the kind of role she did before - very posh, very repressed, very superficial British woman. She acts out at her husband's coldness and grief by at first being hateful to the Germans she blames for her son's death, and then having an affair with one of them - the moody, soulful, pretty architect, now houseboy played by Alexander Skarsgard. I've commented before at how uncomfortable I feel when an affair with a third person merely exists to cause self-reflection and evolution for the protagonist. Skarsgard's character is used here in more way than one, leaving a bitter taste in the mouth at the film's resolution. I came to the conclusion that I couldn't believe it because the husband seemed to be operating on such a deeper plane of intelligence and profundity than his wife.  The result is a rather obvious, predictable film, with a hammy lead actress performance and a so-called passionate love affair at its centre than fails to catch fire. 

THE AFTERMATH is rated R and has a running time of 108 minutes. The film was released earlier this year and is now available to rent and own. 

HOW I LIVE NOW

HOW I LIVE NOW is a deeply odd film - half teen angst romance, half dystopian road movie.  In the first half, precocious teen actress Saoirse Ronan (ATONEMENT) plays the rebellious American teen Daisy who is shipped by her uncaring father to stay with her country bumpkin cousins in England.  At first, she's cool and aloof but is soon won over by their ramshackle charm - especially that of the brooding eldest son (and her first cousin) Edmond, played by George Mackay (SUNSHINE ON LEITH).  The backdrop to this sunkissed coming-of-age summer is an impending war.  What I really like is that because these kids are in the country, rather than in some sprawling urban metropolis, we're not seeing those standard shots of terrorist bombs in London. Rather, we're seeing fighter jets fly over head and small kids say, "wow, that's cool" before running off to a picnic.  

Once the war comes, the surrounding topsy-turviness allows Daisy and Edmond to have a taboo relationship and to commit, in their narcissistic teen angst, to make their way back to the farm if they are split up, which naturally they soon are.  What then follows is a kind of road movie through wartorn Britain, where we see the standard, rather lazy shots of cars overturned on motorways, and troops rounding up civilians.  There are hints at how the terrorists have brought England to its knees - and apparently much of Europe too - by poisoning the water supply, for instance.

Each part of the movie worked well enough on its own terms.  Ronan is a good enough actress to bring greater authenticity to the love story than the kids in TWILIGHT ever did.  And I liked the hints and glimpses of the dystopian England and found them to be truly sinister.  I even liked the fact that director Kevin Macdonald was allowing his heroine to be spiky and selfish rather than an instant maternal figure for her little cousin.  But the two halves of the film just didn't cohere.  And despite some strikingly gruesome visuals, I never felt the heroine was in genuine peril - or at least enough peril to make the final road movie genuinely thrilling.

All in all, a rather disappointing film, then - bulging with interesting ideas but lacking in follow through. 

An audio review of this movie is available below:

HOW I LIVE NOW has a running time of 101 minutes and is rated 15 in the UK. It played the Toronto Film Festival in 2013 and is currently on release in the UK, Ireland and Hungary. It will be released in the USA and Russia on November 8th, in Greece on November 14th and in France on February 19th.