THE TROUBLE WITH JESSICA*

Writer-director Matt Winn doesn't know what his film THE TROUBLE WITH JESSICA is meant to be. Scabrous social satire on the superficial and selfish metropolitan elite? Deeply felt drama about a fragile woman barely mourned by her so-called friend? Caper comedy?  What we end up with is a little of all three and none of it satisfying.

For the most part, this film reads like a stage-play in a single location, with more or less unlikeable characters dealing with a contrived set-up.  That set-up is that Tom and Sarah (Alan Tudyk and Shirley Henderson) need to sell their beautifully appointed home fast to avoid bankruptcy. They announce this while hosting their good friends Richard and Beth (Rufus Sewell and Olivia Williams) as well as their unwanted surprise guest Jessica (Indira Varma).  Jessica proceeds to flirt with both men, decry the success of her new book, criticise both women for leading superficial pathetic lives, before committing suicide in the back garden. Obviously the remaining four adults should call the police. But what if that skewers the sale of the house?

At this point the film could have gone very dark and very funny, and the jaunty jazzy score makes us think it might. Sewell threatens to go full Armando Iannucci with comedy swearing but then the film reins him in, and inserts some moral qualms, and then limply concludes its brief running time.  I might have given it another star for a lovely cameo from Anne Reid as a nosy neighbour but had to dock it a star for being so condescending to its audience as to use flashbacks.

THE TROUBLE WITH JESSICA has a running time of 89 minutes and was released in the UK in April 2024.

VICTORIA & ABDUL

Lavish costumes and location photography cannot help this thinly plotted, dull film with its anachronistic politics.  It takes what is a genuinely fascinating late life obsession of Queen Victoria with a handsome young Indian clerk and drains it of its spikiness and shoe-horns it into politically correct nonsense.  While still apparently in mourning for her long-dead husband Albert, Victoria had already conducted a scandalous romance with her Scottish servant Mr Brown (also depicted on film with Judi Dench as the Queen.) In her final decade, she took fancy (literally, creepily) to a young muslim Urdu-speaking Indian.  The spikiness of the relationship comes from its objectification of the young male, but also the fact that she used him to learn about the culture of her dominion which she had never visited. In reality, he was the fawning man we see on screen, but also potentially a chancer (as are all courtiers more or less). His brother in law was selling Victoria's jewels in London and he was using her to advance the cause of his father's pension.  Did Abdul really believe in deference and service or was he on the make?   Stephen Frears banal film never bothers asking the tough questions - about Victoria's frustrated sexuality and exploitation of Abdul - about Abdul's motivations - about the dangerous situation in India with the rise of the independence movement, and Abdul's potential role in gaining favour for the Muslim League.  It's only interested in an anachronistic tale of love across the class, race and religious divide.   Judi Dench's Victoria is thus a radically anti-racist Queen with an enquiring mind, embattled by her small-minded Royal Household, as embodied in her pantomime-villain son, Bertie (Eddie Izzard).  The whole thing is slow-moving, and so uncurious about motives as to be a profoundly boring watch.

VICTORIA & ABDUL has a running time of 111 minutes and is rated PG-13. The film played Venice and Toronto and opened in September 2017. 

MAN UP

MAN UP is an adorable, funny, moving, smart romantic comedy starring Simon Pegg and Lake Bell, with an impeccable British accent. The required goofy set-up is that Jack (Pegg) mistakes Nancy (Bell) for his blind date, and because she has been hectored by her sister to man up and "put herself out there",  she runs with it.  The date goes surprisingly well, taking in a pop up bar, a cantina and a bowling alley, until Nancy's high school stalker Sean (Rory Kinnear) turns up and reveals the truth. At this point we need another improbable twist to keep the date going into Act Two - the couple need to return to an earlier bar to pick up some lost property and they happen to run into Jack's ex.  Cue our couple pretending to be an actual couple and a genuine moment of emotional connection in, rather improbably, a toilet.  We then roll into a third act that understands the cliches of the romantic comedy genre and satisfies them with authentic emotion, while also winking at the audience. A clever trick to pull off.

That the movie works is down to a well-written script that deals honestly with dating in one's thirties, and the genuine likability of, and chemistry between, the lead actors.  I've long thought Lake Bell a hidden gem of Hollywood - her IN A WORLD... was one of the best films of 2013.  The added bonus is Rory Kinnear as the creepy friend Sean. He's genuinely laugh-out-loud funny and his character adds a bit of spikiness to what would other be just a gently funny, sweet film. 

MAN UP has a running time of 88 minutes and is rated 15 for strong language and sex references.   MAN UP played Tribeca 2015 and is currently on release in the UK, Ireland and Lithuania. It will be released in the Netherlands and Singapore on June 4th, in New Zealand on June 18th and in Germany on July 30th.

London Film Fest 2012 Day 7 - HYDE PARK ON HUDSON

HYDE PARK ON HUDSON is a great disappointment. Despite the great cast and historically fascinating personalities, the resulting movie is flabby, unfocused, and frustrating.

The set-up is that Britain is on the verge of war with Hitler, and desperately needs a reluctant USA to commit to support her. King George VI and Queen Elizabeth (of THE KING'S SPEECH FAME) are thus dispatched to the USA to woo the crowds and confer with President Roosevelt at his mother's upstate New York country house, Hyde Park on Hudson.  The President is evidently charmed by the King, and the King is happy to receive encouragement from a father figure when his own father was so cold - the basis for the oft-ridiculed "special relationship".  This important historical event is fascinating and could have been the source of a profound character study of two men, akin to FROST/NIXON. Bill Murray is mischievous and gregarious as FDR, a pleasant change from his more melancholy Wes Anderson roles, and Samuel West is a nonpareil actor who creates a warmer, less angry version of the King from Colin Firth's portrayal.

The problem is that this potentially captivating story is wrapped up in the altogether banal story of one of FDR's many mistresses - a distant cousin called Daisy who doted upon FDR and is shocked to discover that she is far from his only lover.  I'm not sure how old the real Daisy was at the time of this meeting, but Laura Linney (much as I admire her) is simply too old to play the simpering ingenue, and is also saddled with a very ill-written unsympathetic role. The movie lost pace and focus every time her dull voiceover hoved into earshot, and I was just screaming to get back the Murray-West show.  

What else is there to like and dislike? Olivia Williams is absolutely superb as Eleanor Roosevelt - I haven't seen such a mocking curtsey since Helen McCrory played Cherie Blair in THE QUEEN.  I also admire Olivia Colman tremendously but I felt she was miscast as Queen Elizabeth - somehow she just didn't have an air of majesty and the requisite superciliousness.  One can't help but feel that Helena Bonham Carter's well-meaning but hierarchy conscious Queen was closer to the truth of the matter.

Bill Murray and Samuel West at the UK première of
HYDE PARK ON HUDSON

HYDE PARK ON HUDSON played Toronto and London 2012 and will be released in the USA on Dec 7; in France on Dec 12; in Australia and New Zealand on Dec 26; in Argentina on Jan 5; in Portugal on Jan 10; in Germany and the Netherlands on Jan 24; in Sweden and the UK on Feb 1; and in Denmark on Feb 28. The running time is 95 minutes.

ANNA KARENINA (2012)

I have a major problem with director Joe Wright. I think he is a technically accomplished director who creates wonderfully fluid, extravagantly choreographed shots that are entirely at odds with the content of his films. I first noticed this in ATONEMENT, where his long tracking shot on the beach at Dunkirk didn't advance either plot or character - it was a showy distraction in what should have been (viz. the novel) a tightly structured, chamber drama. Sadly, in ANNA KARENINA, this desire to be as contrived and artificial and intricately choreographed as possible has over-taken the film to the point where all passion, tragedy and joy is lost in a never-ending series of delicate backdrops that showcase the Chanel Haute Joaillerie collection.  This film is not so much a tragic romance as a musical without songs, and a perfume advertisement that lasts two hours.

I am not entirely sure who is to blame.  Who was it that came up with the conceit to imprison what many have called the greatest novel ever written in the simplistic straitjacket of a theatre metaphor?  Was it Joe Wright, or playwright/screenwriter Tom Stoppard? In their version of 1870s Imperial Russia, high society becomes a theatre in which every aristocrat has a part to play, and rules to which they must confirm, or else be brutally cast aside.  This is the lesson which Anna Karenina learns when she sacrifices her son and her marriage to have an affair with the dashing Count Vronsky.  He also loses - his Commission, his freedom, the respect of society - but not as much as Anna -  because he can still contract a good marriage and so redeem all.  Both Anna and Vronsky learn that happiness is tarnished by the exigencies of real life, and ultimately, they are made wretched by each other and their situation. 

The intensity with which Wright and Stoppard used the theatrical metaphor is dazzling in the open twenty minutes of the film - so ingenious it quite crowds out our attention.  I barely noticed Anna and Vronsky fall in love, or Kitty's heartbreak when Vronsky leaves her for Anna.  Anna's brother Stiva becomes a caricature of a decadent aristo, like a larger than life minor comic character in Dickens.  I kept waiting to see marionette strings.  And as for the production design - it was so rich and beautiful as to be claustrophobic, and then became a parody of itself, with Princess Betsy turning into Effie Trinkett from THE HUNGER GAMES with her outlandish dresses and coiffeur.   Underneath all the anachronistic dance moves that distracted with their inelegance and artifice, I detected what looks to be a more mature and nuanced performance from Keira Knightley, and especially Jude Law as her dogmatic husband Karenin.  Too bad those performances didn't have room to breathe. But as for poor Aaron Taylor-Johnson, his Vronsky was never more than a vain poseur.  When never feel and see his love for Anna, and his motivations are not rich enough - either in respect to Anna or the  eligible young Princess Sorokina. Maybe it's the fault of the script, but Jude Law did better with less.

The result is a film that looks fabulous and moves with the intricacy of a Swiss watch, but which feels insubstantial and skates over us too lightly.  Perhaps it's because Vronsky is so poorly written.  Perhaps it's because the larger, metaphysical discussion is entirely absent.  In the novel, Anna's attempt to escape society's constrictions is contrasted with the gloriously good but conflicted and occasionally delusionally idealistic Levin, who flees to the country but never quite loses sight of the dark backing to the mirror.  We see nothing of Levin's confusion, nothing of Kitty's process of maturing, nothing of his happiness and final equivocations.  Short-changing this story might have seemed like a narrative necessity in a two hour film - editing the "secondary" story to give Anna and Vronsky more screen time. But it's a fatal cut.  Anna's story works in relation to Levin's.  And, indeed, it's possible to see ANNA KARENINA as Levin's story after all.  Without it, the film has none of the intellectual heft of the book - and it loses perhaps the best description of happiness in literature.  Still, given these constraints, I have to say that Domnhall Gleeson was absolutely superb as Levin.  I just wish I'd seen more of him.

Of course, I am well aware that after my tirade against TINKER TAILOR, I might be giving the impression that I have a pantheon of novels that have become so much a part of my life that I cannot conceive of a film-maker's interpretation that would do my vision justice. Not so in the case of ANNA KARENINA.  I admired the 1997 Bernard Rose adaptation, starring Sophie Marceau, Sean Bean and Alfred Molina, very, very much indeed. 

ANNA KARENINA played Toronto 2012 and is released this weekend in the UK and Ireland.  It opens on November 16th in the USA and on December 6th in the Czech Republic, Germany, the Netherlands and Portugal. It opens on January 3rd in Russia and Turkey; on January 10th 2013 in Denmark; on January 17th in Australia; on January 24th in Australia; on January 31st in New Zealand and Brazil; on  February 14th in Argentina, Norway and Sweden; on February 21st in Italy; and on March 13th in Belgium and France.

London Film Fest 2011 Day 9 - WILD BILL

Jimmy and Dean fending for themselves in a Newham council flat.

There are those of us of a certain age who have grown up with Dexter Fletcher. As kids we watched him as the cute wanna be tough guy "Babyface" in Alan Parker's delightful BUGSY MALONE. As teens we watched him in the TV show "Press Gang" playing a cool American wannabe journo.  In our errant twenties we watched him plan a heist in Guy Ritchie's superb caper flick, LOCK STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS, and more recently, we've seen him cover up for Robert De Niro's cross-dressing pirate in Matthew Vaughn's STARDUST.  This familiarity bought Dexter Fletcher a great deal of goodwill from the London Film Fest Audience who watched his debut directorial effort.  And the good news is that the film is really worth watching, despite a somewhat predictable plot once the initial set-up is in place.  

WILD BILL is set in the same London of Guy Ritchie's flicks - the East London of drug-dealers, hard-men and hard-ups in council houses.  But it has far more heart, far more subtlety, and is far better observed.  In other words, you gain a whole lot of authenticity and insight, while losing none of the comedy. In fact, one of the great comedic charms of the film is realising that Fletcher has discovered the new "babyface" -  a young kid called Sammy Williams who plays Jimmy - a little kid with an hilariously foul mouth, but also a lot of vulnerability.

As the movie opens we meet Dean (Will Poulter) and Jimmy living alone in a filthy council flat, with Dean taking on the grim responsibility of a father and the age of just fifteen. Their mother has abandoned them and their father, "Wild Bill", a violent drug pusher and addict, has been in prison for eight years. Bill emerges a reformed man - he wants a clean break in Scotland - but isn't reformed enough to want to take care of his kids.  Problem is, he has to stick around long enough to fool social services, so that Dean and Jimmy aren't put into Care.  What follows is a predictable family reconciliation, complete with a "tart with a heart" character, and an aggressive local mafiosi threatening Bill's conditions of parole.  

From left to right, Sammy Williams (Jimmy); Will Poulter (Dean);
 Charlie Creed-Miles (Bill); and Dexter Fletcher (Writer-Director)
introduce WILD BILL at the London Film Festival

But the film is elevated above its narrative clichés thanks to its genuinely sympathetic characters, the whip-smart dialogue and the fact that Fletcher doesn't flinch from poking holes in the Guy-Ritchie-style myths of East End hard-men.  Many a time we see a guy giving it all that, but turning and running at a key point, and the annoying Ali-D style white boy, Pill (Iwan Rheon) gets a verbal slapping too. I also love the fact that where ROCKNROLLA (a film I still liked) made heavy work of contrasting the poverty of the East End with the redevelopment of Stratford, Fletcher shows the same contrast with much more subtlety. It's enough to show the view of the new Olympic village from the balconies of crumbling social housing - it speaks powerfully enough of the issues facing British society - without being crass or simplistic.  

In front of the camera, I'm full of admiration for Charlie Creed-Miles who has to portray a nasty selfish character at the start of the film but also make his road to responsibility seem credible, and to Sammy Williams who steals every scene he's in.  Behind the camera, George Richmond's lensing use the Arri Alexa is crisp, and the sound-track is superb.  Overall, this is an assured debut directorial effort from Fletcher, deftly balancing raucous humour and pathos - and I can't wait to see what he does next.

WILD BILL played London 2011.

HANNA - visually brilliant - narratively nonsensical

HANNA is a visually stylish; brilliantly edited; powerfully orchestrated action movie let down by inconsistent acting styles; insufficiently developed themes; and a story full of plot holes so large you could drive a horse and carriage through them.


Let's start with the bad. HANNA is a story that simply collapses on its own lack of logic. Papa (Eric Bana) wants to keep Hanna (Saiorse Ronan) safe from evil CIA meanie, Marissa (Cate Blanchett).  Lesser-trained peeps might think to hide in plain sight in a major metropolis, camouflaged by banality.  But no, ex-CIA tough guy, Papa, decides to keep Hanna in a wintery forest, training herto be a bad-ass assassin, Kick-Girl-stylee, and then, allowing her to press a transponder button that immediately alerts the CIA to her presence!  And even then, rather that travel to some safe little town Papa and Hanna engineer a confrontation in Berlin because, hey, without that, there wouldn't be a film.  The CIA are similarly idiotic. For those who have seen the film, I simply ask why Marissa didn't run after Erik and the baby after the car accident and end proceedings right there?  


Still, let's say we go with this absurd plot and willingly suspend our disbelief, the movie doesn't help by consistently undermining the credibility and authenticity it's so desperately trying to create. (And I'm not just talking about idiot goofs like showing that Hanna's ears have been pierced).  The big problem is inconsistent acting styles. 


Ronan does a good job in trying to convey what it must be like for an isolated child to suddenly be part of the modern world, with its incessant babbling.  Director Joe Wright, together with his DP Alwin Kuchler, and his editor, Paul Tothill, do a stand-up job of depicting sensory overload.  I also loved Hanna's tentative first friendship with a teenage camper, played by the scene-stealing Jessica Barden (TAMARA DREWE).  There is a real sense of intimacy and authenticity - in particular, I loved the scene in the tent - it was intimate but never felt voyeuristic or exploitative.  I also really loved Hanna's reaction to seeing a real family interact for the first time - her simple smile at seeing a mother and father hugging a child. I completely disagree with reviewers and commentators who say that the film loses pace at this point.  After all, this is not just an action film but a character-driven film - and Hanna's response to the family moves this film beyond KICK-ASS and into some altogether more interesting territory.


The problem is that all this good character-work is completely undermined by Cate Blanchett's hammy performance as the CIA agent, Marissa.  Blanchett's Marissa isn't so much a fully developed character as a colour-coded compendium of caricatured evil: posion-green Prada shoes, bright orange ill-fitting fright-wig and ever-shifting Southern accent (as if, in this post-Osama world, the worst thing you can sound like is a Southern Republican).  It was almost as much of an embarrassment as the throw-back costume design of Tom Hollander's sleazy German night-club owner and his skin-head Droogs - as if A Clockwork Orange had been crossed with Smiley's People.  


I suspect the problem was that Joe Wright was trying to explore the fairytale themes in the story - Hanna as a little red riding hood in a cottage in the woods and Marissa as a kind of evil step-mother figure and/or the big bad wolf.  The cottage in Berlin is out of Hansel and Gretel...  These themes are suggested in the visuals - costumes, colour choices, and even more explicitly in the final scene between Marissa and Hanna. But, those themes are obstructions to credibility and are never fully developed.  I think that's why, when I finally left the cinema, I felt I had been given a taste of something deeper, something clever, but that the film hadn't followed through.   


Still for all those criticisms, and the final sense of disappointment, I really did enjoy watching HANNA and I think it's definitely worth the price of admission for the brilliantly choreographed and scored action sequences and the friendship scenes between Ronan and Barden. Joe Wright needs to make a flick that either pure character-driven action - like BOURNE - or pure character. He needs to stay focussed and pick a script that hasn't been worked over so much that it becomes a mass of contradictions and poorly developed themes.

HANNA is on release in Aruba, Greece, Hong Kong, Canada, the US, Malaysia, South Korea, Taiwan, Iceland, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia and the UK. It opens on May 11th in Belgium, on May 13th in Italy and on May 26th in Germany and Switzerland. It opens on June 9th in France, Argentina, Estonia, Spain and Turkey. It opens on June 16th in Hungary, on June 23rd in Portugal, and on July 7th in Sweden, the Netherlands and Norway. It opens on July 21st in Singapore, on August 27th in Japan and on September 1st in Australia and New Zealand.

THE GHOST WRITER - the joy of skewering Bliar

I eagerly anticipated the release of Roman Polanski's latest film, THE GHOST WRITER. Partly because I think Polanski is a fascinating director, with a technical mastery beyond many of his contemporaries and an obsession with the sinister that is as compelling as it is unwavering. Partly because I have always loved Robert Harris' intelligent, well-researched, political thrillers. And partly because his novel, "The Ghost", is a thinly veiled skewering of a particularly slippery figure - Tony Blair. I was not disappointed. THE GHOST WRITER reminded me a lot of MICHAEL CLAYTON - it's intelligent, suspenseful, provocative and beautifully made. Indeed, quite superbly photographed by DP Pawel Edelman.

The plot centres on an un-named writer (Ewan McGregor) who has been hired to ghost the memoirs of an oleaginous former Prime Minsiter, Adam Lang (a perfectly cast Pierce Brosnan). The plot is driven by his investigation of the accusation that Lang illegally handed war criminals to the CIA. The Ghost doesn't know whether to trust Lang, his wife Ruth (Olivia Williams), his mistress (Kim Cattrall) or his aides. And of course, this being Polanski, there are no idealistic pay-offs for truth-seekers.

When I left the screening I had a wistful feeling. Because as polished and convincing as THE GHOST WRITER is, somehow, because you know it was made by Polanski, and you know what he is capable of achieving, you end up feeling a little short-changed by a "mere" good thriller. I loved the Hitchcock reference, but it wasn't necessary to the plot. And that kind of slight mis-step seemed to me indicative of a true auteur turning in a "place-holder" film.....

THE GHOST WRITER played Berlin 2010 where Roman Polanski won the Silver Bear. It is on release in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Poland, the US, the Philippines, Belgium, France, Canada, Greece, Israel, Estonia and Italy. It opens this weekend in Denmark and Norway. It opens on April 8th in Portugal and on April 16th in Finland, Spain, Sweden and the UK. It opens in May in Thailand, the Netherlands and Romania. It opens in June in Hungary and the Czech Republic, and on August 19th in Argentina and Slovakia.

SEX & DRUGS & ROCK & ROLL - Spasticus Autisticus

SEX & DRUGS & ROCK & ROLL is a fast-paced, manically inter-cut biopic of Ian Dury, New Wave singer, genius wordsmith, ladies man and radical. Born working class, crippled by polio, trained by Peter Blake, married to a middle-class portrait painter, father to two kids, living in suburbia. That's how we meet Dury - a punk radical playing shitty pubs with a dodgy band, desperate for fame, and deeply at odds with his suburban home life. Somehow his wife puts up with his shit, even when he shacks up with a pretty West Indian girl much younger than him and moves out. Somehow the Kilburn and the High Roads turn into The Blockheads, the seminal songs are written, and the money comes rolling in. Before you know it, Dury and his crew are in a swanky rented country house, generally pissing about and not getting much work done. His girlfriend and wife are both simultaneously in love and at wits end with him. His young son is much loved but exposed to drugs and not much schooling. His young daughter is basically ignored. The End.

If the plot summary above seemed to have no structure, well, neither does the film. It survives as entertainment purely on the strength, charisma and sheer bravado of Andy Serkis' (best known as Gollum) leading performance. You get a good sense of Dury as wordsmith but you don't really get how he became famous. One minute he's playing pubs, the next he's famous. You never get how his character might have changed. His girlfriend Denise (Naomie Harris) complains that fame has changed him, but the audience doesn't see it. He just seems as much of an egotistical but charming arse as ever. His wife (Olivia Williams) evolves - moves on - but Dury never changes. He's just too clever by half, too selfish by half, and a lot of fun to be around.

If you love Ian Dury's music, you'll get a kick out of this film. Serkis is genius, and ably supported by Olivia Williams and Naomie Harris. But if you don't know who Ian Dury is, this film isn't going to help. You get a lot of stuff about his early life, but it doesn't tell you about art school and how he became a radical performer. You get the starting point (the film posits that being crippled was the defining change) and the final product, but nothing inbetween. You don't have a clue why he's married to an RA.

So, all in all, this is a great little film that could've done with a bit more substance, and a bit more exposition, a little more context.... As it is, it's unlikely to get an audience beyond the core fanbase. Still, anything that makes you dust off your old vinyl, it's no bad things.

SEX & DRUGS & ROCK & ROLL is on release in the UK.

London Film Fest Day 7 - AN EDUCATION

AN EDUCATION is a British coming-of-age drama set in the swinging sixties, based on the memoirs of the British journalist Lynn Barber. It's essentially the story of an intelligent young girl swapping a place at Oxford (and a conventional life) with her dream of being an urban sophisticate, in the arms of charming man (Peter Sarsgaard). As I was attending another screening, Our Gmunden Correspondent took my ticket. Here are his thoughts:

"Just a few thoughts on An Education.

Yes it was nice. The film is a fine period drama on the clash of bourgeois and bohemian life in the early sixties, expressed in the ambivalent experiences of young Jenny, coming of age. There is everything a good film needs to have, a perfect script, great set design, catchy music, and, above all, impeccable performances of a dream cast (even if it sometimes felt a bit overacted, meaning that the actors seemed more to enjoy themselves in showing off their great talent and skill than actually embodying a persona; but good, no doubt). It is entertaining and a pleasure to watch and to listen to. If that's what we are looking for in a film, mission accomplished, all good. If we are setting higher standards, want to see revelations and revolutions in filmmaking, it seems like a little etude, do everything you are expected to do and you will get a good movie, which is not more than the sum of its parts, rather less even. It would be worth looking the flick just to hear the actors talk, devour the great sets and sounds, and accomplish the perfect editing, yet there is something missing. It lacks the subtlety of showing the inbetweens of lifestyles, that there is grey zone between good and bad, between the deeds society demands and the pleasures the individual needs. To cut it short: Watch it, enjoy it, don't think about it too much. Full stop."

AN EDUCATION played Sundance 2009 where John de Boorman won the Cinematography Award and Lone Scherfih won the Audience Award. It also played Berlin, Sydney, Brisbane, Toronto and Helsinki 2009. It is currently on release in New Zealand, the USA, Australia and Israel. It opens next week in the UK. It opens in February 2010 in the Netherlands and Germany and opens in April in Norway.

Overlooked DVD of the month - THE HEART OF ME

THE HEART OF ME is a beautifully acted, intricately plotted, emotionally devestating costume drama based on the novel by Rosamond Lehmann. It starts off looking like a conventional period drama. In post-World War One Britain, an upper class man called Rickie (Paul Bettany) is cheating on his snobbish, cold wife Madeleine (Olivia Williams) with her bohemian sister Dinah (Helena Bonham Carter). When Dinah becomes pregnant he decides to leave his wife, who is devestated, but apparently more so because of the social shame than because of the emotional hurt. Events take a turn and reveal significant character flaws and development. Rickie can be callow - amazed and appalled by the magnitude of his decisions. Madeleine developes a sort of predatory survival instinct that seems monstrous but also plausible. Dinah has a quite remarkable capacity to love but also to act like a spoiled, hurt child.

If the movie were just about an affair it would be a rather narrow and unoriginal film, no matter how well-designed the sets or how convincing the performances. (And they *are* convincing. Olivia Williams won the BAFTA for Best Actress that year, edging out Helena Bonham Carter, Samantha Morton for IN AMERICA and Tilda Swinton for YOUNG ADAM.)

The real strength of the film is to show the consequences of the affair through the following decade, mixed up in the chaos of World War Two. Is it possible to be reconciled after such a betrayal? What does one learn from such events? There are no trite answers or melodramatic flourishes. Just a realistic, tremendously affecting exploration of horrific events.

THE HEART OF ME played London and Toronto 2002 and was released in the UK in 2003. Olivia Williams won the Bafta for Best Actress. THE HEART OF ME is available on DVD.

FLASHBACKS OF A FOOL - a melancholy drama about guilt and fear

The first half hour of Baillie Walsh's intriguing movie is a witty indictment of the savage superificiality of Hollywood. Daniel Craig plays Joe Scott - a self-indulgent, narcissistic, ageing Hollywood star whose cocaine-fuelled lifestyle has alienated his personal assistant (Eve) and his agent (Mark Strong in a fantastic suit and an even better accent). The death of Joe's child-hood best friend leads him to drunken reflection and takes the movie into an extended hour-long flash-back sequence. Amid the pitch-perfect bric-a-brac of 70s Britain, a teenage Joe (Harry Eden) demonstrates that character is fate. He could've had the life of his best friend Boots, dating a local schoolgirl called Ruth. But instead, he drifts into a relationship with a predatory older woman (Jodhi May) only to be brought up short by the consequences of the relationship. Guilt-ridden, he runs away, and presumably kept running all the way to Hollywood and the ultimate life of no consequences, until his past catches up with him.

FLASHBACKS OF A FOOL has much to recommend it. It's patient, intelligent, the characters seem credible and the period detail of 1970s Britain is impressive. The use of period music in the score is absolutely spot-on, and special mention must be given to John Mathieson's wonderful photography. The cast is good, with Helen McCrory and Miriam Karlin particularly good in smaller roles. The only slight mis-step is in the final segment, where the ageing star returns to Britain. On his way to confront the grieving widow he makes a statement about how standing still is more courageous than taking action which seems utterly trite and belies the more enigmatic atmosphere of the rest of the film. In addition, I feel Claire Forlani is mis-cast or perhaps mis-dressed (is that even a word?) as the widow. In her Tiffany necklace, skinny jeans, riding boots and perfect make-up, she looks nothing like the widow of a heavily indebted, poverty-stricken rural Briton.

These quibbles aside, FLASHBACKS OF A FOOL is a melancholy, visually impressive movie that deserves attention.

FLASHBACKS OF A FOOL is on release in the UK and opens in Portugal on June 5th.