Elles

Maybe this film is not so much a bad film as something that doesn’t know very clearly how to be what it wants to be.  Juliette Binoche (quite the best thing here) is a journalist for a glossy magazine investigating teenage prostitution of the type where students pay their studies by frequenting family men or rich yuppies. So our heroine gets pally with two girls, one French, one Polish to discover that they have a very practical attitude to their trade.  She herself starts to feel increasingly alienated by the men in her family and maybe society too.  She starts to fantasise about the type of sex fantasies the girls have.  Dinners are served, kids are reprimanded, Binoche and the girls get wet, get drunk, dance a little and we all go home.  Michal Englert gives us pristine photography, top Polish actress Krystyna Janda appears in a scene and the rest, well meaning work by Polish director Malgorzata Zsumowska just seems like vacant filler.

★+

Silver Linings Playbook

One of the Oscar darlings this year with Jennifer Lawrence carrying off Best Actress.  Did I like it?  Up to a point.  It is definitely different and combines drama, romance and some comedy rather adeptly thanks to a good script and direction by David O Russell.  Acting is of a high standard and the generosity of Russell towards his actors gives us a very attractive performance by Lawrence as Tiffany and an equally cliché-free show by Bradley Cooper.  Both are troubled and confused characters who are making a mess in society but are seeking ideals or at the very least a better deal than they have had.  Max (Cooper) still holds a candle for his ex-wife Nikki but slowly and surely he learns that life is not so black and white or bi-polar.  Meanwhile Robert De Niro and Jacki Weaver as his parents head a big support cast with the aforementioned showing again why he has such a great cv as an actor behind him.  I was certainly intrigued by the film as it gives us another look at the Philadelphia lower middle classes and some scenes are very effective but as a celluloid masterpiece I am pretty sure it falls short. What it did do for Oscar fans is combine those who like comedy, drama and romance in one film and provide an alternative to history, spies, musicals and new age which were its main competitors.

★★★★

Les Témoins

I always felt that André Téchiné was a very competent but not brilliant director.  That pretty much sums up this 2007 film of his about the emergence of the Aids crisis in France in the 80’s.  A story about a group of people whose lives are affected by the arrival of Manu (Johan Libereau), a young gay man from the provinces, who in different ways relates to the group.  Infectologist Adrien (Michel Blanc – very solid) is his mentor or perhaps a sort of guardian, police inspector Mehdi (Sami Bouajila – also very good) is his lover, Mehdi’s wife (the always charismatic Emmanuelle Béart) is fascinated by his story and then there is his sister (Julie Depardieu), a budding opera singer living in a brothel.  The film shows the weaving and unraveling of the relationships as Manu goes from being the bright young spark to an Aids wracked young man.  It is an interesting story which is relatively well-told.  I didn’t especially like the voiceovers.  Téchiné has different points to make and a variety of perspectives which enrich this work.  All the same, by the end you feel you have seen a good film but no more.  It doesn’t greatly move you nor hold you in awe.

★★★ +

Zero Dark Thirty

No doubting the competence of the film making but somehow this taut spy drama about chasing and finding Bin Laden didn’t grab me.  Overlong for a start, it includes some not so attractive torture scenes and is so matter of fact that one would just love a little humanity and a few value judgements instead of the implacable military machine in action.  I guess Jessica Chastain holds it all together in the centre quite well and there is a raft of supporting actors playing grey bureaucrats and/or butch military hitmen.  Jennifer Ehle as almost the only other female in the cast is more memorable.

All that said there are a couple of good chase scenes and a couple of good meeting scenes to keep us entertained but it won’t go down as a great for me – rather too gung-ho American and matter-of-fact to be regarded as great cinema. And as a treatise in support of revenge and torture I think it deserves to lose a star.

★★★

Django Unchained

Quentin Tarantino always gives you plenty of value: a creative script, illusions to the history of film making, a great score, amazing fight scenes, connections that defy belief and a sure sense of how to set up a scene and keep you engrossed.  This time he takes the Wild West, bounty hunters, slavery in the 1860’s and blends it altogether with a German conman (played by Christoph Waltz) and creates another cracking story.  It may drag a little in the end but the sheer unpredictability and nerve of the man keeps you watching.  Jamie Foxx, Leo Di Caprio and the rest of the cast are all up to the task. It is a film that works on so many levels and while it may neither be the best of the year or of his career, Django is very good entertainment.

★★★★ +

If I want to whistle I whistle

Powerful little Romanian film about Silviu, a boy in a reformatory, who goes wild when two weeks short of his release, his absent mother of dubious means returns to town to take his younger brother back to Italy with her.  As she had failed Silviu on various occasions, he is determined that this won’t happen again.  Will anyone listen to him or will he have to take the law into his own hands?  Newcomer Florin Serban manages to produce a film that is both full of silence and full of ideas, taut and tense in action and slow in waiting and suspense, eloquent and mute.  It is not as brilliant as some films from the same country but it has that same simple Dardenne like portarayal of individuals trapped in systems that don’t really work or understand the human experience.  George Pistereanu is a find as Silviu and Clara Voda as the rather selfish mother is also compelling.

★★★★