Rebecca -Alfred Hitchcock

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Alfred Hitchcock, Film review, Joan Fontaine, Judith Anderson, Laurence Olivier, Movie, Noir Movie, Rebecca, Thriller and Suspense Movie

A Paler Shade of Noir

I watched Hitchcock’s 1940 film, which I had seen before, close on the heels of re-reading du Maurier’s wonderful 1938 novel, and whilst the film is in many ways a brilliant adaptation particularly served by excellent performances, a tautly written screenplay which sensibly uses du Maurier’s dialogue, where this is given in the book itself, stunning cinematography and of course is excellently suited to the master of suspense’s vision, I do have some reservations at choices which substantially weaken the film, in comparison to du Maurier’s edgier, unsoftened version.

Some of the choices made by Hitchcock (or possibly by Selznick, who produced the film), seem pragmatic and perhaps understandable, but there are two major changes – the rather soapy, surviving adversity as the music swells to soupy lushness, ending, for Mr and Mrs and, even more importantly, the changed revelation of how ‘the crime’ actually happened, absolutely undercuts the far more powerful, morally tainted and uncomfortable questions du Maurier leaves for her readers, and, of course, for her unnamed heroine. I can’t say more, in case someone reading this hasn’t read the book or seen the film. Did David O. Selznick demand this choice, or did Hitch himself pull his punches?  Some stars would not have wanted to be left with moral taints, but I don’t think Olivier was one of those.

The book itself creates the ambiguous ‘after the end scene’ ending, by having the second Mrs de Winter describe the Winter’s post Manderley life, at the start of the novel. We do not get this in the film, either in the beginning or at the end, which creates more upbeat than du Maurier gave us.

I suppose another contrast to the book is what happens to Mrs Danvers. Hitchcock goes for high opera, and a visual which in some ways underlines the similarity that the book has with Jane Eyre, though, again, du Maurier presents something less resolved, less black and white. Readers of course have time to think about what they are reading, and can put a book down. Viewers, at least back in 1940 could not pause and reflect; the dynamic of the movie, once started, must be clearer to follow and more direct in its journey

There were some more understandable changes, which are inevitable when adapting a book which is most careful and subtle at applying the build-up of tension quite slowly, particularly at the start, whereas the film must concentrate everything into 2 hours and 10 minutes.

I was impressed by how very quickly and deftly plot was advanced, and how much the wonderful cinematography immediately created the layered build-up du Maurier’s prose had been crafted to do. We lose of course the interior feelings, imaginings, the running-in-the-head commentary of the book’s narrator, but the way, for example, the pile-up effect of napkin after napkin, leaf of stationery after leaf of stationery, stamped with the assured R de W logo has on the second wife, is expertly rendered by shot choices and Joan Fontaine’s feelings and thoughts as they express in her body language and face.

Fontaine, Olivier, Anderson

The initial slow build of connection and suspense from Maxim and the gauche young woman’s meeting in the book is given a much more dramatic and quickly signalled ‘something is dreadfully wrong’ subtext in a film scene which is not in the book.

The DVD comes with a few extras, some interviews with Hitch and some of his film critic admirers, which were interesting, but there are quite a lot of rather hard to read text notes, biographies of the two central actors, etc.

Something I found most fascinating is that Olivier was insistent that his then lover, Vivien Leigh (they were not yet divorced from their respective first spouses) should be cast as the second Mrs de Winter. It was Selznick who, rightly, nixed this, saying Vivien Leigh did not have the right qualities to the part. Too right – if anything Vivien Leigh (and, particularly as her marriage with Olivier began to unwind) displayed behaviour and powerfully charged emotional states which put her on the Rebecca end of the spectrum – plus, of course, that fabulous erotic beauty and clear sexiness.

Vivien Leigh who became the second Mrs Olivier, rather than the second Mrs de Winter

By all accounts, Olivier was perfectly beastly to Fontaine, and rather undermined her. Hitch, we are told, as he so often did, manipulated the insecurities the young and at that stage, fairly inexperienced Fontaine must have felt, to create ‘in real’ the not good enough, can’t match up, extreme fragility and low self-esteem of the character. Fontaine was of course an American, so there was plenty of potential on-set feeling against a Yankee playing a quintessential Brit, particularly in such an iconic role, as du Maurier’s book had been a runaway best-seller from the off.

No doubt a similar ‘in reverse’ happened when the Brit, Leigh, won the coveted role in Gone With The Wind, which her American counterparts had failed to carry off, though I don’t think either George Cukor, who initially was on board as director, or Victor Fleming, who did direct, had reputations for mis-treating their actresses in order to get specific performances, in the way Hitch did, particularly with the women who were not yet established stars

My other ‘I can’t quite love this film, though I do admire it a lot’ criticism is of Franz Waxman’s score, which, to my taste is a little too ‘this is a love story’ – which is certainly where the Hollywood choice moral, rather than du Maurier’s darker, more bitter and difficult book, and the soupy almost happy ever after ending, at least for Mr and Mrs – are leading. I would have preferred a little more salt, a little more sourness, a little more bitterness in that music.

A stunning example of George Barnes’ craft (photo from Pinterest)

Most curiously, though the film was nominated for a whole cluster of awards, it won just two: Best Cinematography for George Barnes, and Best Picture – despite the best picture award (which thus went to Selznick) it did not win the Best Director for Hitchcock

Alfred Hitchcock by Jack Mitchell

Olivier, Fontaine and Judith Anderson, as a magnificent, intensely still and unhistrionic villain were all nominated, along with Robert Sherwood and Joan Harrison for best adapted screenplay, Waxman for the score, and also nominations for editing, art direction and special effects.

I found it a fascinating and rewarding experience to revisit book and film so closely together

Rebecca, Movie – Hitchcock Amazon UK
Rebecca, Movie – Hitchcock Amazon USA

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Gett : The Trial of Viviane Amsalem

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Film review, Gett : The Trial Of Viviane Amsalem, Israeli Film, Menashe Noy, Ronit Elkabetz, Sasson Gabai, Simon Abkarian

Sombre Film With A Rather Old Fashioned Feel : but then, so are Rabbinical Divorce Laws

Viviane Amsalem, an Israeli woman, wants a divorce, as she and her husband are not compatible. She has lived apart from her husband for 3 years. Unfortunately for Viviane, this is Israel, and the `Get’ or divorce ruling, can only happen if the husband agrees to the divorce. And Viviane’s husband does not want to release her

Shot entirely in soulless official hearings rooms and waiting areas, this is a claustrophobic film, with a trio of powerful performances from, particularly from Ronit Elkabetz, as Viviane Amsalem, Simon Abkarian as her stone-faced brooding, implacable husband Elisha, and Menashe Noy as Carmel, Viviane’s fiery, impassioned lawyer. Sasson Gabai is equally excitable and prickly as Elisha’s advocate, brother, and upholder of traditional rabbinical values.

The divided couple, both deeply suffering, one wanting her freedom, the other savagely unable to let her go `she is my destiny’, despite the fact that both leak hard suffering through their association in every glance, givw wonderfully internalised performances, electric with seething, restrained bitterness. The advocates roar and gesticulate, with fiery expression.

The film misses its final star, for me, because a few of the `star turn’ witness performances are a little too much bravura character comedy `we need some laughs here’. And though we certainly do, at times that dialogue and some of those performances are a little too obviously `play this for laughs’ and verging on caricature. Performances for the stage rather than film. Oppressive though the film and its subject matter is, a lighter touch on the `breathing space’ moments would have better kept the integrity of what the film is about.

Though the dreadful rigidity and wrongness of the system is clear, what is well done is that the husband is not played as a pantomime villain by Abkarian – he performs the role without commenting on it. It is a truthful, restrained performance which means that Elisha makes sense to himself.

Elkabetz is a multi talented woman, as she co-directed and co-wrote, as well as starred in this.

Her powerful pressure-cooker performance eventually and agonisingly explodes as the film reaches a dreadful climax and the final images had me out of my chair with shock and disbelief. Skilfully done.

This film is Israel’s entry as `Best Foreign Language Film for the 2015 Oscars.

In filmic terms, it has no whistles and bells, no fast cutting, soundtrack et al, and has nailed its submission to issue and performances.

Costumes are almost unremittingly black and white (!) throughout, pre-and-post credits and titles against a heavy red background. Sudden appearances of colour in clothing are shocking, as if we have forgotten light, shade and nuance could exist at all.

I received this as a review DVD from the Amazon Vine programme UK. The film does not yet appear under the above name on Amazon USA. Maybe it will be retitled.

Gett: The Trial Of Viviane Amsalem Amazon UK

The Great Beauty

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Film review, Italian Film, Paolo Sorrentino, Rome, The Great Beauty, Toni Servillo

Flowers of Beautiful Emptiness

Paolo Sorrentino’s much lauded, multi award winning film about La Dolce Vita, the hedonistic, excessive, stylish – but ultimately exhausted ennui of Roman high-life is itself a feast of beautiful, empty, melancholic ‘so what’ exhaustion.

The conundrum at the heart of this, is: how can you make a film about a group of sophisticated, pretentious, self-indulgent excessive artists or, more properly, for the majority, pseudo-artists, without your own art-work being subsumed into the gorgeous soft porn, sated, over-indulged luscious skin and vision-fest you are portraying.

I was not completely certain, despite the wit in the script, the gorgeousness of the vistas and especially the stunning, stylish women, which the camera lingers lovingly over, in their often naked voluptuousness, whether what I was watching was art, or merely another excuse to show beautiful women naked, and a parade of ageing powerful men clustered like vampires in a feeding frenzy round succulent female flesh.

The central character, through whose eyes we ingest Rome’s beauty, fiddling whilst – not necessarily Rome, but life itself, burns and is destroyed, is Jep Gambardella, a 65 year old journalist, of acerbic, mordant pen. Jep is lionised by his society, he is, as he always wanted to be, a mover and a shaker, and delights in being the sort of man who attends the best and wildest and excessive gatherings, but is not only the man who attends those parties – but the man whose dismissive words can make those parties FAIL. Once, many years ago he wrote a novel which was praised high, now he makes and unmakes reputations.

The unseen presence which stalks through the film is the grim reaper; death. Although it is hearing of the death of his first love which brings existential despair up close and personal for Jep, we see through his eyes, as he plunges into the swings and roundabouts of parties, sex, and spectacle that he (and all around) are doing this to stop awareness of the knowledge that we are all on that journey to the grave.

The film swings constantly between the overindulgence of spectacle, movement, noise and distraction, and silence, emptiness, spaciousness, some kind of surrendering acceptance, as exemplified by the presence of a 103 year old nun, soon to be canonised. However, the spectacle of the lizard-faced, decrepit nun crawling in suffering penance on hands and knees up a flight of stairs as part of her spiritual, saintly journey, is no particular solace either.

The performances, (especially Toni Servillo as Gambardella) are all impeccable, the whole filmic quality of the piece is lush, wonderful, artful, but at the end I was left looking for something which I’m not certain I found – something to value, some quality of heart. In some ways, though the characters in this piece have a sophistication and finesse, and a stylish wit and brio, which makes them at least knowingly witty company, I was left with the same feeling of distaste for humankind which reading Bret Easton Ellis’s The Laws of Attraction gave me. And the point of that comparison, is that this is as partial and incomplete a view of humankind (very little that is kind, in this) as the other side unreal saccharine view of traditional Hollywood. This was a world peopled pretty well by only the stunningly beautiful or the Fellini-esque grotesque. It missed the extraordinary of ordinary itself.

As filmic spectacle, it is indeed splendid, but is it more than just a very finely lacquered mind-game to be dissected and debated. And is that enough?

The Great Beauty Amazon UK
The Great Beauty Amazon USA

Inside Llewyn Davis

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Carey Mulligan, Coen Brothers, Garrett Hedlund, Inside Llewyn Davis, John Goodman, Oscar Isaac

Uncomfortable, hilarious, poignant and musical is the brew

This Coen Brothers film, about the burgeoning folk scene in the early 60s had me wincing, laughing, and absorbed for its 90 minutes. The film opens in Greenwich Village in 1961 at a precise time just BEFORE Dylan burst onto the scene.

Llewyn Davis (an excellent performance by Oscar Isaac) is an utterly self-obsessed, careless, narcissistic musician. He is however a man of talent, self-belief, and creativity. And also laziness, prickliness and melancholy.

So the nub of the film is the self-obsession and belief which the artist MUST have, if they are to be putting their creative vision out there – married with the fact that the person themselves may not be particularly likeable. We (the consuming public) half forgive the often careless and badly behaved artist if their WORK touches us.

The Coens present us with this – in many ways Davis is a rather unlikeable human being, careless of everyone else’s feelings, tender of his own. At yet, there is a curious vulnerability about him which is attractive enough to allow him to use people, because they see something in that vulnerability which they want to protect, not to mention a sense that what the artist creates may be much finer than the artist himself. So, as that fineness of creation is IN the artist, this means they must, surely, be a better person than they appear to be. Well, that I think is the theory that has artists forgiven for what would be unindulged behaviour in non-artists.

Maybe we do believe, unlike what Orwell says, that an artist IS a special kind of man!

Davis stumbles through, journeying from New York to Chicago and back, in pursuit of fame and fortune, insulting people wittingly and unwittingly, coercing his way into places to stay, meals to be fed – and making at one point a terribly wrong decision around a recording session which the audience knows will sting. Davis is careless and selfish, sure, but he is also gauche and possessed of a certain gullible innocence – he both exploits and IS exploited.

I’m sure I’m not alone is also rooting for the parallel ginger cat story, one of those wonderfully real Coenesque eccentricities, which left me, as a cat fancier, wondering and worrying about one development. (can’t say more, spoiler avoider)

Llewyn Davis’ has a Dylanesque musical style and voice, and indeed Oscar Isaac has some of that intense street-waif sexiness of the young Dylan, as in the album cover of the Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, and there is almost a sub-text of ‘could this be a version of Dylan’. There is a neat barbed moment around this in the film, which had me wincing and laughing in equal measure.

With a great musical trawl through, in terms of live performance and soundtrack music, this was a thoroughly enjoyable film

Other performances of note in the film are the sweet faced, sweet voiced, foul mouthed and angry character played by Carey Mulligan, John Goodman as a fairly obnoxious jazz musician and Garrett Hedlund as Johnny Five, a beat poet, in the road/Chicago section of the film.

The 40 odd minute ‘extras’ have a certain rough-cut charm, probably particularly to musicians.

I have one small criticism of the sound quality of the spoken material, which seemed unusually quiet and muttery from some of the performers, so I had to have the volume turned up beyond normal levels to properly hear much of the dialogue.

I received this DVD as a copy for review purposes from Amazon Vine UK

Inside Llewyn Davis Amazon UK
Inside Llewyn Davis Amazon USA

The Wall (Die Wand)

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Die Wand, Film review, Julian Roman Polsler, Marlen Haushofer, Martina Gedeck, The Wall

As powerful and plangent as the book : deepening mirrors

I came to this 2013 filmed version on the back of reading Marlen Haushofer’s 1968 published book. Indeed, the republication of the book, and its reaching a new and wider audience, has come precisely because of this film. We appear to have a virtuous circle going on, for once, in the relationship between the single writer’s vision and the collaborative vision of the film.

Normally wary of film adaptations of books which have strongly resonated, I might have passed Die Wand by, except for the fact that thoughtful reviews re-iterated the powerful sense evoked by the book, speaking of the patience, depth and meditative quietude and despair in the film. I’m so glad I trusted the sensibilities of the reviewers, because with this film, is something which deepens my earlier reading of the book – and the book itself is deepened by the dynamics of vision, sound and embodiment of the narrator in Martina Gedeck’s deep performance The film, directed by Julian Roman Polsler runs for 108 minutes, and can be watched with German or English narration, and is also subtitled. I chose to have Gedeck’s voiceover, and English subtitles. A performance of this truth needs no other interpreter getting between actor and viewer, in my opinion.

The word which the film owns is ‘reverence’ – not a sterile reverence for Haushofer’s strange and disturbing book about the only woman left alive, in a lonely landscape, after some cataclysmic event has turned all life outside her Alpine valley to stone – but a reverence for the living world itself, for authenticity, and for, in Haushofer’s words, love as the rational choice. Not the gushy gushy of sentimentality, but a respect for the nature of matter, of the living and the dying of things, of the tangled, interconnecting web which human being alone have choices about – often taking the wrong paths of enmity and hatred.

Certainly this is not a film to satisfy if what is wanted is a ‘what happens next’ as, like the book, itself, a journal written by the narrator over four months as she looks back over her two years since ‘the end’, as she waits, implacably, for her own, time is looked forward to and back. There is no fast cutting, there is the slow pace of the breathing landscape, the camera and the actor observing the stillness. In this, it reminds me of the film Into Great Silence, an uspoken filmic observance of life in a Carthusian Monastery.

The transformation of the city dwelling narrator, as Gedeck inhabits her (it is a performance of inhabitation and revelation rather than of demonstration) in her designer cream frock, full faced and jittery, to the shorn haired figure, like one of the Fates, staring into the inevitability of whatever new or old may befall, is haunting.

The spacious empty soundtrack, except for Gedeck’s voiceover of occasional phrases from her journal, and the natural sounds, is perfectly deepened by the underlining, sparing use of a Bach partita, melancholy and haunting, perfectly balanced in its plenitude and its emptiness.

Forgive the purpling prose, this/these, (film and book, book and film) are fully what they are, to be experienced by their next reader/viewer, who will enter into their own relationship with both film and book

Die Wand (The Wall) Amazon UK
Die Wand (The Wall) Amazon USA

The Broken Circle Breakdown

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Belgium, Bluegrass, Country Music, Felix van Groeningen, Film review, Johan Heldenberg, Nell Cattrysse, The Broken Circle Breakdown, Veerle Baetens

Lacerating and heart-breaking, beautifully told and with fine music

On the face of it, this is a simple and alas reasonably common tale : – man and woman meet, fall in love, have a time of bliss, and a child, who intensifies and changes their bliss, and then some tragedy strikes the child, and everything is changed utterly, and unravels into pain all the way.

This isn’t too much of a spoiler, as the opening of the film shows a small child in hospital, being talked through receiving something intravenously, and we see from the parents’ expressions this is not going to be good, and immediately the viewer knows where we are heading.

Any individual story is only going to work if we engage with the protagonists, though surely a suffering child almost automatically is going to grab most of us by the throat, sinew, gut and heart, squeeze and not let go. I must admit from the very beginning I was short of breath, and saying ‘oh no, no, no’

However, there has to be some leaven to get the viewer through this and this Belgian film, directed by Felix van Groeningen, manages its leaven spectacularly, both in filmic, narrative terms and the excellence of the 3 leads.

Elise (Veerle Baetens) is a quirky young woman who owns a tattoo parlour. She meets Didier (Johan Heldenberg, who also co-wrote the script) a blue-grass musician in love with America and its country music. The wonderful, intricate music runs through the film, as the band achieves greater success and scenes take in concerts from little smoky dives to larger stadiums.

The structure of the film (and it works stunningly) is non-linear, as over 7 years of relationship cuts between different moments of past and present. The audience is pretty well in the know of ‘what happens next’ all the way through, so what we focus on is the how and the internal psychology of the individuals. Intercut with this is the friction between faith (Elise) and atheism (Didier) and the wider way in which politics, medical research and individual lives collide.

Baetens and Heldenberg offer beautifully raw, real performances, and are un-airbrushed and unsentimental.

Johan Heldenberg, Veerle Baetens

However – I mentioned 3 leads – little Nell Cattrysse as Maybelle, Elise and Didier’s daughter, will not so much break your heart as rip it in pieces.

No doubt this review is screaming at the more sensitive – avoid, avoid, but, there is real joy and sweetness within it, and the savour and fizz of life, the upsides as well as the downs, are engaged with. The non-linear narrative inserts slivers of the very very good and the very very painful cheek by jowl with each other. And this is how life is.

A strong heart and a day of equanimity might be needed for this beautiful rendition of If I Needed You by Baetens and Heldenberg

Belgium’s entry for Best Foreign Language film for the 2014 Oscar nominations

I received this DVD as a review copy as part of the Amazon Vine programme, UK

The Broken Circle Breakdown Amazon UK
The Broken Circle Breakdown Amazon USA

Child’s Pose

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Berlin International Film Festival, Child's Pose, Film review, Golden Bear, Luminiţa Gheorghiu, Romanian Film, Vlad Ivanov

Corruption and a dysfunctional family in modern Romania

I’m a little unsure why the Romanian film Child’s Pose won the Golden Bear (Best Film) at the Berlin Film Festival, outside some fabulous performers by the actors, particularly Luminiţa Gheorghiu, on whose back this film really rests. The performers are truthful, understated, intense, especially Gheorghiu as Cornelia, a sophisticated moneyed architect, for whom money and corrupt power go hand in hand, who believes everything can be bought, including justice. Cornelia is also an exceptionally, almost pathologically, controlling person, in her personal relationships, as well as those she has with members of the wider society.

Barbu, Georghiu’s dysfunctional adult son, (played by Bogdan Dumitrache) who barely speaks to his stiflingly over-protective mother, kills a young boy whilst recklessly driving over the speed limit.

The film charts Cornelia’s cynical attempts to bribe witnesses, buy out opposition, subvert police procedures whilst showing absolutely no sensitivity or empathy whatsoever towards the un-powerful, ordinary family who have lost their young son. Cornelia has little, if any, nobility of character, and neither she, her feckless son, her ineffectual husband (Domnul Fagarasanu) or the various people she corrupts or may corrupt if the payment she makes is high enough, have much to like about them. A scene with Vlad Ivanov as another driver at the accident scene is particularly charged and powerful, his character matching Cornelia’s in unforgiving steel.

Why, given some terrific performances, was I left a little unsure about the film?

To be honest, some elements of the story line – notably Barbu’s peculiar obsessions which border on to some sort of OCD – seem a little gratuitously tacked on, and the revelations which came out in the scene between Cornelia and Carmen, Barbu’s partner, (Ilinca Goia) almost seemed like a subplot without a home, rather than something which really added depth to any of the characters.

As a film (as opposed to the dramatic or psychological aspects) there were some curious choices made in camera work – which at times almost seemed amateur, in terms of how some scenes, particularly at the start of the film were panned. I wondered in fact whether this was perhaps `a student film’ because the camera work seemed so unsophisticated and uneven

A standout performance then, from Georghiu, who absolutely carries the film, 5 stars – but her light makes a reasonably good film (okay, 3 star) appear more than it is

The film is directed by Calin Peter Netzer, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Razvan Radulescu

Romanian Film, English subtitles

I received this DVD as part of the Amazon Vine UK programme
Child’s Pose Amazon UK

The Silence

Tags

Anna Lena Klenke, Baran bo Odar, Burghart Klaussner, Film review, German Cinema, Jule Böwe, Sebastian Blomberg, The Silence

From the Dark Side of The Psyche

Don’t expect ‘The Killing’ despite the DVD publicity cover by-line – this is not a who-done-it, it’s not even particularly a why-done-it (though that does get revealed,though its isn’t particularly the point of the film) The crime and the perpetrators are clear within minutes of the start of the film. The journey of the film is the effect of the rape and murder of a child upon the lives of the community – a bit like dropping a stone into a pond, and setting off wider and wider ripples. It isn’t an on-the-edge-of-your-seat sort of film, its a settling ever more steadily into darkness, dysfunction, despair. In keeping with the title of this German-with-subtitles film, there is indeed a lot of silence. Not just between people, but also a lot which goes unsaid, underneath the words which are being spoken, and also the silence within a person, trying to bury thoughts and words and memories which are horrific, foul or unbearable.

A very uncomfortable subject indeed – paedophilia, the rape and murder of a child opens the film, and the investigation of that crime, and the ‘copycat’ crime 23 years later is the exterior journey. The audience knows everything about this very quickly, so what we watch is character and relationship, and the exposition of damage. Perhaps startlingly the perpetrators are also handled with a judicious and cool eye. We, (the audience) are not allowed the comfort of purely dismissing them as monsters – horrible and unforgiveable though they are – they are shown to have the same need for connection with another human being as we all do. The director and actors manage a very difficult balancing act here. The crimes are appalling indeed, and we are asked, not to condone or to forgive the perpetrators but to nevertheless recognise that the ‘monster’ is an ordinary person as well as monstrous. The film flings the sometimes awful, uncomfortable truth that we want the good to be rewarded, the bad to get their just deserts, but life itself is not so tidy. Unlike Hollywood, there are no ‘wraps’; whatever happened, goes on happening.

To add to the disturbance, there are scenes of bright primary colours, yellow cornfields, blue skies, in fact the brightness of the colours are almost sickeningly so at times, whilst other scenes are shot very very darkly lit indeed. Uncomfortable viewing indeed, but again, unlike Hollywood splatter gore-fest films, this is in no way a gratuitous or sick film; its grimness is in its refusal to give the audience release, any more than the characters in the film are allowed release or ‘closure’. Sometimes, refusal to ‘resolve’, leaving the viewer uncomfortable and disturbed, is what makes a movie work.

I received this as an ARC from Amazon Vine UK

The Silence DVD Amazon UK
The Silence DVD Amazon USA

Petit Nicolas

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Film review, French Cinema, Kad Merad, Laurent Tirard, Maxime Godart, Petit Nicolas, Valerie Lemercier

Cute beyond winsome, perfectly rescued by stylish, quirky charm

Set in 60s France, all in poster bright cartoon colours and a rather anarchic, slapstick performance style, this is a child’s eye view of the world.

Nicolas (an enchanting performance by serious faced Maxime Godart) mistakenly assumes his mother is pregnant and is afraid he will be abandoned and unwanted when the new baby arrives. With his goofy collection of young friends he embarks on various plans to get rid of the baby.

Meanwhile, his parents are worried about money, trying to climb the social ladder, currying favour with Nicolas’s father’s boss – a hilarious dinner party scene, where you know every single gag before it happens, but delight in the infectious, witty performances

This really is a totally feel-good film, but done with great wit and style, by all performers.

It is the quirkiness, the great look of the film, the expertise of the performances and somehow a lack of saccharine sentimentality that make this so good. I also appreciated the homely, rumpled, real lived in faces of the adult cast ((Valerie Lemercier and Kad Merad as Nicolas’ mama and papa appear innocent of a cosmetic surgeon’s knife! )

French Film, English subtitles, 91 minutes. Director Laurent Tirard. This really is a film that can be enjoyed by both children AND adults. In patronises neither audience, nor does it indulge or overplay its feel-good nature. The length of the film is just right and stops the good jokes and set pieces from overstaying their welcome
Petit Nicolas Amazon UK
Petit Nicolas Amazon USA

I received this as a review copy from the Amazon Vine Programme

Barbara

Tags

Barbara, Christian Petzold, Cinema of Germany, Film review, Nina Hoss, Ronald Zehrfeld

The masterly effects of European restraint over Hollywood excess

The German film Barbara, directed by Christian Petzold, is set in East Germany in the 80’s, and follows a young doctor, Barbara (a performance of intensely reined in emotion by Nina Hoss) who is under surveillance by the authorities, and is planning defection to the West, as her boyfriend is from `across the wall’

Any successful dictatorship survives best when it can persuade the oppressed to carry out its work for them by making everyone suspicious of everyone else, and by being able to exert the possible blackmail of pressure being put on the friends and family of those who step out of line. The result (as is beautifully shown here) is that if you don’t quite know who you can trust, who might be friend and who might be informer, the best thing to do is to batten down the hatches of your own responses, guarding not only your actions and your speech, but also the expressiveness of your readable emotions, in order to avoid interpretations by watchers who may be apparatchiks of the ruling elite.

This leads to an intensely pervasive atmosphere of paranoia and inhibition. And it really shows which actors are overindulgent in showing subtext because they doubt the intelligence of the audience at reading what is going on, and those actors who can properly inhabit the truth and objectives of the characters they are playing. And the actors here manage this beautifully. Barbara, in Hoss’s superb portrayal, for the most part completely controls her outwardly shown responses, and we, the audience, only really see what is going on when she thinks she is unobserved, or when the unexpected – sudden noises for example – briefly force a jumpiness which shows the tension within, before she quickly returns to impassivity. There are a couple of sequences where some fairly unpleasant body searches will occur. Hollywood would no doubt have shown this with graphic overabandon. Directorial choice here shows both interrogators and interrogated reining in responses – the interrogators are not displayed as deranged twitching cartoon characters, but as men and women going about their daily work (and all the more chilling for that) and the viewer does not actually see what happens, but it is obvious what WILL happen, and also what HAS happened from the increasing automatic response to the unexpected, which breaks, more and more, through Barbara’s attempts at self-control

I had to stop watching at one point, through over-identification with the character. A brilliant piece of film-making, as it engages the audience’s own powerful imagination, which ratchets up the suspense much much higher (well, it did for me) than the overdone splatter of brutality.

Although it is life behind a very Iron Curtain, and how people survive and accommodate it, which is the main focus, as an offset to the bleakness are some beautifully tender relationships of trust which slowly build between Barbara, her fellow doctor and superior (who is possibly also charged with making sure she does not step out of political line) and their vulnerable patients. Barbara’s colleague Andre – an equally fine, unstated, warmer performance by Ronald Zehrfeld – must also struggle with some complex matters, and has to find the line between his position as a healer and whether healing should only be given to the good and moral amongst us

The end is surprising and in some ways, inconclusive – we can only surmise, as this is a film in many ways more filled with silence, and private thought unverbalised, than it is with explanations.
Barbara Amazon UK
Barbara Amazon USA – though do note that it only seems to be available for non-USA PAL format viewing

I received this as a review copy from the Amazon Vine programme