Blue is the Warmest Colour

Abdellatif Kechiche brought us the excellent Le Grain et le Mulet some years back and returns with this long love story between two women that is very affecting in its honesty and naturalness.  High-school student Adéle falls for blue-haired arts student Emma, suffers the taunts of her classmates and very slowly submerges herself in new worlds.  It is a film about a journey of discovery, learning and heartbreak and something that we can all identify with.  The performances of Adele Exarchopolous and Lea Seydoux are superb, especially the former who shows us every nuance of feeling in many key scenes.  And then there is the sex.  Uninhibited, in your face, and at times rather lengthy, it adds to the realistic nature of this relationship and the poignancy when things start to go wrong.  Sure, the film could have been a little shorter but by the end, we feel that we have been party to a veritable slice of a person’s life and to a strong relationship that will mark both people forever.  It is so genuinely acted that you feel it must be real. Good screenplay too.  Well worth the watch and a sign of how far we have come in portraying adult relationships on celluloid.

★★★★+

La Proie (The Prey)

French polar (thriller) that is by no means original but gives a good lesson in how to keep the suspense rolling up to a cliffhanging finish.  Eric Valette manages to gloss over gaps in the story to keep us entertained all the way.  Albert Dupontel is a great central character as the wronged Franck, a bank robber who is suspected of other murders.  Stephane Debac conveys the screwy serial killer Maurel and Alice Taglioni as Claire, the police agent on the case does well.  Natacha Regnier is also effective as Maurel’s wife.  While the music is a bit obvious, the chases and the pace of the movie more than compensate and you feel that you’ve been to a good couple of hours of entertainment.

★★★+

To The Wonder

It would be wrong to write off this latest film by Terrence Malick as a failure and a pretentious bore.  We know Malick is not the easiest to follow and likes to show visually what occurs deep down.  As ever, the cinematography of Emanuel Lubezki here is sublime with many shots emanating a great beauty.  Even shots of polluted rivers and the like.  Malick and Lubezki often work at speed replacing one fine image with another and yet despite this, the film still seems slow.  Perhaps with images alone and reading the symbols and body language we might have followed this film better but the words tend to get in the way.  There is a lot of silence but then voiceovers and muted snatches of conversation.  With this we are supposed to divine the plot and it is hear that perhaps we needed more clues as user forums show that many viewers had vastly different opinions about what happened.  The use of (elliptical?) flashbacks don’t help and while we are able to piece together some of the story many of the motives are left unknown.  Perhaps we are supposed to watch again and again and work it out. What does work for me is seeing the film more conceptually and noting the symbols.  To the Wonder is about a desire for wonder, for ultimate love, for something that is missing and the characters are in search of that.  Some like Neil are more afraid than others.  I was not worried about wacky scenes like Marina dancing with a broom in a supermarket – but she is a rather moody and ethereal character and irritates a lot.  Olga Kurylenko and Ben Affleck seem to lack the skills to really convey what is happening to them or they are not given the same chance as Pitt and Chastain in the Tree of Life.  Hope arrives with Javier Bardem in his role as a rather lost parish priest but his role evaporates and Rachel McAdams does what she can as a rival love interest. Still, for all these frustrations there is a lot to contemplate and there is no doubt that Malick shows us  a view of modern life that is different to most other contemporary directors.  For that and the beauty he gets the score he does.

★★+

Dallas Buyers Club

It’s pretty much a biopic and nothing out of this world as a movie but it does have two excellent performances and the theme which is how members of the public started to act to circumvent the slow moving FDA in the provision of drugs to HIV sufferers in the 1980’s.  The lack of access to AZT trials and the failure to consider a cocktail of other drugs to help boost the immune system led some to desperate measures including Texan white trash electrician Ron Woodrof who once he got over the shock of his diagnosis set to work with a ragbag of contacts to provide such drugs to those needing them.  Much of the film is to do with that and his constant run-ins with the law.  Although Jean-Marc Vallée, the Canadian director of C.R.A.Z.Y. adds his signature touches, like T-Rex music, the direction is fairly straightforward.  A good script and photography help but it is really the transformation of Matthew McConaughey, richly deserving of his Oscar and Jared Leto who make this film.  Leto is good – maybe not superb but for both it is a brave move.

★★★★

Le Week-End

Intelligent it certainly is, an enjoyable ride it often isn’t.  This story of a married couple, bitter and bickering in a marriage that is no longer working and on holiday in Paris to try to recapture some of the old spark is really rather heavy for the most part. Meg (Lindsay Duncan) is particularly bitchy and Nick (Jim Broadbent) is a sad sack.  Both actors are in fine form and give us a very detailed description of their states and the condition of their marriage.  They bump into Morgan (Jeff Goldblum), an old school mate of Nick’s who has transformed himself into a vibrant best-selling author with a young second wife.  Morgan is irrepressable and everything Nick has failed to become.  For us too, Goldblum injects a necessary oomph into the proceedings and provides the context at his party for the couple to at least really confront their issues and move some way forward.  Hanif Kureishi is the writer and he makes this a sophisticated but at times stagey film.  Can’t say I loved it but it did keep my attention.

★★★+

Inside Llewyn Davis

This latest offering from the Coen Brothers takes us back to the early 60’s and the folk music movement around the Gaslight club in New York.  Llewyn (Oscar Isaac convincing) is an aspiring folk singer who is trying to pick up the pieces after his partner committed suicide.  It is hard work and he is disorganised and somewhat cavalier towards his family, lovers and friends, all of whom let him sleep on their sofas. The film covers a week in which a girlfriend goes for an abortion, he travels to Chicago to try to get a recording contract or a show, he offends various people and fails to get shipped out in the merchant marine.  Despite all this activity the film has a slow pace and seems to meander from one event to another.   While the film does tie into a fairly neat conclusion, the wandering plot doesn’t help us get too excited by things.  The reproduction of this bleak winter is impressive with Benoit Delbonnel using washed out photography, the music sung by the cast is suitably soulful and depressing and there are some good moments like John Goodman’s appearance as a junkie blues man.  Carey Mulligan convinces more here than in some recent films.  Some people adored this film but I found it a correct representation of a difficult moment in the life of an aspiring musician and it’s honesty in this respect makes up for the slow pace.

★★★+

Parkland

While this film fails to really ignite, it is nevertheless quite compelling viewing as we see the backstage to the Kennedy assassination, the little people involved in the event for whom life will never be the same again.  We see the staff at the Parkland hospital who not only treat the President but also his supposed killer Lee Harvey Oswald, only a few days later.  We see the family of Oswald, his brother Robert (James Badge Dale) and wacky mother (excellent Jacki Weaver).  We get to know Abraham Zapruder, the camera buff who takes footage of the actual moment of the assassination.  Paul Giamatti lends his weight to that role.  And we see the FBI and Secret Service guys affected by the implications of this moment of history that America seems unable to reach closure on. The acting is good, the music of James Newton Howard is especially haunting but the film is somewhat messy as a whole and can confuse at times.  A pity as it has plenty of fine elements to add to the story.

★★+

Philomena

This could have been either overly weepie or an embarrassing mess.  The story of a woman who tries to trace the baby she lost 50 years after he was “sold” by the nuns at the Irish convent she was working at is heady stuff.  The emphasis this time is not on the cruelty of the Magdalene laundries so much as on guilt blame and forgiveness which are themes in the lives of Philomena (exceptional Judi Dench) and Martin Sixsmith, the journalist who helps her track him down.  Steve Coogan plays a serious restrained character here.  They make an effective and contrasting team as they both try to make sense of the lessons life sends them.  Of course, the behaviour of the Catholic church is once again far from exemplary but here the lesson is how you handle such injustices. Dench gives us a wealth of subtleties and the script while seemingly simple and meandering hides many a wise truth.  Solid and believable.

★★★★

Naked as we come

Independent family drama on a shoestring with unknown actors.  S. Lué McWilliams surprises as the matriarch who is dying and reverses her bitchy past to build bridges with her children.  Karmine Alers as the daughter has little to play with but gets a good singing moment and Benjamin Weaver and Ryan Vigilant support with good looks but not much more.  However, although there is nothing new under the sun here and the script is cliché bound, the actors do their best and the photography and music are really attractive.  Better than I expected.

★★

La Estrella

Spanish film by debut director Alberto Aranda about a woman, Estrella, who finds herself through her friendships and in learning flamenco.  Nothing original and with uneven acting and rather irrelevant subplots.  Ingrid Rubio stars and is effective enough, Carmen Machi again works well as her best friend and Marc Clotet fails to impress as the boyfriend.

Means well but doesn`t inspire.

★+