The subject matter put me off watching this for a long time. Anyone who has had family members succumb to some form of dementia will identify with much of this film, which basically takes the view of an 80-year old man who finds himself losing control of his mind and doubting what he is seeing and hearing.
Florian Zeller wrote the stage play and directs for the first time, this filmed version, which reports suggest is better than the play. Christopher Hampton, famous British playwright, joins Zeller for a superb screenplay that uses some interesting devices to place the spectator in the shoes of this old man, Anthony. And who better to play Anthony but Anthony Hopkins?
For this performance he was the Oscar winner and words can’t quite do justice to praise it. A stunning tour-de-force moving from charm to rage to pity and in such a way that it never seems forced or theatrical. Surely one of his best roles ever.
Olivia Colman, as his daughter is also compelling and perfectly conveys the patience and frustration of seeing a loved one decline in front of you.
Rufus Sewell and Olivia Williams also appear in minor roles. Although most of the action takes place in one London flat, the film loses the claustrophobia of the theatre, largely thanks to the tremendous performances and Ludovico Einaudi’s score.
It may not be a perfect film but The Father takes a very delicate subject, makes it accessible and moving.
This film has themes in common with others recently viewed. Like Ema, it proposes that dance and moving your body is an important form of healing. Like Un amour impossible, it explores the issue of families with absent members.
Here the situation is the following: Walter was a refugee from the Angolan civil war and has been living and working in New York for 17 years until he could be reunited with his wife and daughter who after leaving Angola had been living in Tanzania. The film commences with the meeting at the airport after so long and as can be expected the return to being in a family produces its tensions, not the least being cramped living conditions.
Walter seems a decent type and has been working hard to reunite his family but things change. His wife Esther has become fervently religious and quite critical of things Walter thinks little of but enjoys doing like dancing and having a glass of wine. Their intimate life is also clearly affected by the long absence. We discover too that Walter had a live-in lover who he has ditched to welcome his family.
Daughter Sylvia is basically in a state of shock and just wants to dance, something her mother frowns on but which connects her to her friends left in Tanzania.
The story is a small simple one of how the three of them attempt to overcome these differences and in the case of the two women, the move to a completely new world. Director Ekwa Msangi uses a triptych method in the first half, telling the story from the point of view of each character and then lets the story carry on to a natural end.
Acting is good with Ntare Guma Mbahoi Mwine very solid as Walter,
Zainab Jah shows subtlety in a difficult role and Jayme Lawson convinces as Sylvia. A delight is Joie Lee in a cameo role as a neighbour of the family who deftly handles Esther.
All round solid and thoughtful movie but I would like to see something a little bit meatier from Msangi who clearly has a big future.
2018 French film that sort of slipped under the radar. It’s very good. Catherine Corsini has a good catalogue of films, generally about women. Un amour impossible is based on a best-selling book and concerns Rachel, a young woman of Jewish origin, who feels off the shelf at 26. The year is 1959. She meets Philippe and he seems to be a dream come true.
Handsome, intelligent, a translator, he sweeps her off her feet and after a few months of an idyllic relationship Rachel falls pregnant. Philippe blithely announces that he can’t marry her and moves away. The reason being that his family wouldn’t accept her as she isn’t from a rich family or the right breeding. Rachel accepts this and has a daughter Chantal who she brings up alone.
She wants Philippe to recognize his daughter and over the next few years they meet up occasionally but Philippe who now has his own wife and children refuses to do so. Rachel moves ahead professionally and once Chantal is a teenager the bond between her and her father becomes stronger and he finally accepts to play more of a part in her life.
This, however, brings negative consequences, especially in the mother-daughter relationship. The film ends sometime in the 2010s as mother and daughter try to put their lives in some sort of perspective, especially given the arrogant and superior behaviour of the father.
Theme-wise, this is a story of classicism, of sexism, of toxic masculinity and female passivity and of changing times. It is also about family relationships, parent-child intimacy and the new reality of split families.
Virginie Efira, a Belgian actress, is excellent as Rachel,
Niels Schneider hits the right notes as the magnetic selfish Philippe and Estelle Lescure as adolescent Chantal is a sure fresh face. Jehnny Beth plays the adult Chantal who is basically the narrator of the story effectively too.
Jeanne Lapoirie films some lovely scenes of France through the years, all well curated to fit the periods and Gregoire Hetzel accompanies with good music. A surprise all round.
Charlie Kaufman is definitely an acquired taste. Some of his films like Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine have memorable scenes but most are overly verbal and leave you in just as much bewilderment as when you started. ” I’m thinking of ending things” fits the pattern. We meet a young woman (Jessie Buckley, excellent) going with her recent boyfriend Jake (Jesse Plemons) to visit his parents at their farm upstate.
It is winter and snowing. The drive there in poor conditions is a long talkfest. Things get weirder at the farm.
The mother (Toni Collette) veers between glee and tears and the father (David Thewlis) has a creepy line of wisdom. Suddenly time shifts change and the parents grow older then younger.
Other people appear. Our heroine discovers poems and paintings in Jake’s childhood bedroom that she thinks she has written but seem to predate her and be of other authorship. They head home in the snow. A stop is made in the middle of nowhere at an ice cream parlour.
Then they pass by Jake’s old school where he disappears and after chatting to a caretaker, we witness a sort of ballet.
The film finishes with an award ceremony for Jake as a renowned physicist in his old age. Does it make any sense? This is the eternal puzzle. Especially when some of the ideas are Kaufman’s and some are borrowed from other writers and films.
My gripe with his work and this film is that while it can be intriguing to try to make some logic out of all the thoughts and input, it is not necessarily very engaging cinema. I found the scenes in the dark car dragged a lot here and while I kept watching to see what was revealed next, I did keep asking myself “What am I doing here?” There are possible interpretations of it all but don’t go if you want clarity.
I wouldn’t watch it again but am grateful for seeing the actors at work, especially Buckley who is new to me. Otherwise it could be classed as pretentious or mind blowing. The abyss between critical acclaim and box office rejection says a lot.
One of the more beguiling films this year and somewhat hard to decide where I stand on it.
First up the director is Pablo Larrain and he returns to Chile to film this story of revenge and liberty set in Valparaiso. The city itself is one of the stars of the film, old-fashioned with higgledy-piggledy streets running up and down the hills, cable cars and trolley buses that have seen better days and the canyon like streets lined with granite buildings, all seemingly oblivious to the port and ocean close at hand with its lines of container cranes.
Ema is a dancer, a teacher of movement and dance in a primary school and lately mother of an adopted 6 year-old boy, Polo.
She and her husband Gaston (Gael Garcia Bernal), a choreographer are on the point of breaking up after they return the boy to Social Services because of his grossly unacceptable behaviour. This act triggers not only the matrimonial crisis – her husband is 12 years older than her but also a chain of reactions from Ema. She becomes even more devoted to dance but to reggaetón, largely with a group of women friends. Gaston is horrified as his dance is more classical, more avant-garde. But Ema claims that reggaetón is about revering the body and therefore life.
She also takes up torching! Yes, going round town burning traffic lights, portakabins, old cars with a tank of some gas strapped to her back and wielding a flaming torch. Polo himself had torched Ema’s sister’s face so there are connections there.
Ema also embarks on a series of seemingly concurrent affairs with her girlfriends, the female divorce lawyer and a firefighter and at one point thrusts one of her friends into Gaston’s bed only to kick her out again. The rationale behind all of this emerges in the final act, otherwise Ema would just come across as crazy or selfish and perhaps there is a sort of incredulity here with her quite open and often destructive behaviour as she uses her charm and her body to get what she wants.
That it more or less works is partly due to a superb performance by Mariana di Girolamo in the lead role. With platinum coloured hair and a range of totally unfashionable track suits, she somehow commands the screen and creates an unforgettable character. She completely overwhelms Bernal, Santiago Cabrera, Paula Giannini, Amparo Noguera and others who act perfectly well.
Other features of the film which stand out are the editing, the photography by Sergio Armstrong and the ambient music of Nicolas Jaar.
But most of all, the film seems to give us a character that represents a new generation – one that refuses to follow traditional steps to doing things and instead focuses on what feels right in the moment. This character, who may be representative of her peers seems far more accepting of contradictions and volte-faces. Whatever is meant for a particular moment is fine. Duties and responsibilities are seen through different filters, not necessarily negating them but approaching them differently. And as Ema says at one point, the power is in the body and in listening to what the body wants rather than the mind.
Lots of food for thought here. I’m not sure that it totally works but there is plenty to remember and admire in this film.
Spanish horror movie of sorts of which the main attraction is seeing lead actor Mario Casas, tackling the role of a very unpleasant revenge artist, who after being crippled in an accident takes it out on his girlfriend Vane (Deborah François)
and colleague Ricardo (Guillermo Pfening) among others.
Shades of Misery, of Hitchcock, etc.
It starts off quite well but gets rather predictable and plain unpleasant as it goes on. Even a slight twist at the end doesn’t really save it.
Casas and François act well and photography, music, etc are professional enough but holes in the plot and a certain lack of flexibility hold it back.
Maybe not the most accomplished documentaries ever but definitely a very moving one.
City of Joy is named after a complex in Bukavu, Democratic Republic of Congo which provides a short of shelter for women raped, abused and injured in the constant violence of that part of the country.
The interior of Congo lives in an almost permanent state of war with different militia groups fighting each other and international companies and governments promoting a state of chaos in order to make the most of exploiting the minerals there.
One of the most insidious acts has been the repeated abuse of women and many find their way to the Panzi hospital, which is part of the City of joy complex where Dr Denis Mukwege (Nobel Peace Prize laureate) treats them as best he can.
Those who can, stay on to study at the complex where they combine therapy and self-assertion classes to develop the leaders of tomorrow and to transform the pain they have suffered.
American writer Eve Ensler of The Vagina Monologues is a key supporter of this and is seen giving speeches and classes.
Apart from the harrowing testimony of many of the victims, the noble work of Mukwege and Christine Schuler-Deschryver,
the co-founder of the centre provide moments of admiration for the work and service done. Why should relatively ordinary people have to clean up the mess of armies and the blatant lack of action by governments who are supposed to be protecting their citizens not abusing and exploiting them.
I’m glad I got to know more of this story. Sensitive direction by Madeleine Gavin and good photography and soundtrack.
Highly satisfying Danish thriller from 2018 with minimal cast and effects. Basically, it involves Asger, a police office on the emergency switchboard.
He receives the usual calls for help from drunks and nutcases but one call grabs his attention: from a woman who has apparently been kidnapped and her children left abandoned.
We follow his actions in dealing with the call, sending out a police patrol, trying to work out the identity of the caller and the possible rationale of the kidnapper.
As the night(?) wears on, we also learn about Asger and his own failings and guilt as well.
Jakob Cedergren is effective as Asger but the real stars are first-time director Gustav Moller and his co-scriptwriter Emil Nygaard Albertsen.
They keep the tension up and our attention the whole way. As one reviewer says: less is sometimes more.
Biopic on star dancer Rudolf Nureyev, who defected to the West from the Soviet Union in 1961 and went on to become the most famous dancer since Nijinsky. Ralph Fiennes acts in and directs this correct film which stars Oleg Ivenko, a Ukrainian dancer.
The film blends aspects of his childhood in Tatarstan, his beginnings as a dancer in Moscow and St Petersburg and the famous trip to Paris in 1961 where he defected.
It is somewhat uneven in this chopping back and forth but never loses you.
The period décor and suitable photography help a lot.
In Paris he defies his minders and goes out to clubs with local dancers and a French woman Clara Saint (Adele Exarchopolous) who has government connections.
She is involved in the tense climax of the film when the KGB threaten Nureyev and he decides to seek political asylum.
It’s all very watchable and Fiennes does a good job as his ballet teacher Pushkin,
but Ivenko lacks the charisma necessary for the role and while there is some dancing, we never get to see quite why Nureyev is so brilliant.
We get some of his famous temper and stubbornness, little of his gay lifestyle. I guess these are matters for another film.
Have been a real fan of Hirokazu Koreeda’s work In the past but this, his first film set outside Japan has left me a little underwhelmed. While it pairs two giants in Catherine Deneuve and Juliette Binoche and has some interesting observations on our individual approaches to truth, it does seem rather artificial in parts.
Deneuve plays Fabienne, a huge French film star who has just published her memoirs.
She has a very strong belief in her own talent and tends to run down her colleagues and the movie starts with an interview with her in this mode. Daughter Lumir (Binoche), a successful scriptwriter arrives from NY with husband (Ethan Hawke), a jobbing actor and young daughter in tow.
They come for the book launch and to see Fabienne shooting her latest film – a rather convenient sci-fi movie on mothers and daughters.
Lumir and her mother have a good relationship but spar on their interpretation of the truth and Fabienne will change or delete what she doesn’t want to hear quite unapologetically.
In the course of all this, she loses her long-time PA as he and the other men in her life – current and past husbands – are all quite fed up with her. There is a long subtext about her jealousy towards rival actresses when young and the sense that she cheated on one to get a part and this actress ended up dying young.
Lots to analyse and at times a little too obviously constructed.
Deneuve is nevertheless in great form (playing Deneuve) and Binoche hangs in well with Ethan Hawke managing a goofy part well.
passionfilm 