Felix-28 Reviews

Force of Nature: The Dry 2 (2024)

A mess, unfortunately

[3/10 · 9 February 2024]

I rather liked The Dry, although I didn't rate it (or the book on which it was based) as much as most Australians, so I had quite high hopes for this one.

Alas, they were dashed almost as soon as the film began. The overblown, portentous music was set my Dud Alert quivering, and it was all downhill from there. Ridiculously over complicated plot with about four separate strand running at once, none of which were really resolved satisfactorily, and a couple of them not at all. I pitied the actors who had to deliver what must be some of the clunkiest lines of dialogue ever written, and perhaps the poor quality of the screenplay explains why the performances were so uniformly poor; even Eric Bana, who's an excellent actor, is terrible in this.

Just don't bother. There are far better ways to spend your time.

Madeleine (1950)

Disappointing

[6/10 · 19 April 2022]

I read a book about the trial of Madeleine Smith (one of the old Penguin Notable British Trials series) before I saw this film, and I was quite excited when I got the opportunity to see the film, especially when I saw it was directed by David Lean.

Unfortunately the film was very disappointing. The book I read contained lengthy extracts from letters she wrote to her French lover, and what is evident from those letters - it leaps off the page - is the extreme passion of her feelings for him in the period following her seduction. She absolutely loved making love with him.

Perhaps it was due to the constraints of the times in which the film was made - Hollywood at its most prudish - but there is none at all of that passion in the film. The whole thing is stilted, from beginning to end.

What a pity. There's a great film of this story begging to be made by someone, and some actors, who can do it well.

Love Affair(s) (2020)

Well worth the effort

[8/10 · 19 March 2021]

After 10 minutes of this film I was on the verge of walking out and muttering to myself that it was like a very bad Eric Rohmer film; but the longer it went, the more I became engrossed. It's definitely like an Eric Rohmer film in the emphasis almost entirely on dialogue and the concentration on the loves and relationships within people's lives. A very superior Eric Rohmer film, with the screenplay developing the characters and engaging our sympathies very strongly. I didn't know the director or any of the actors, but I'll be looking out for them in the future. Also the cinematographer: what a joy it was to watch a French film shot with fixed cameras instead of the hand-held cameras with which French cinema seems to be obsessed.

It's certainly not a film for everyone; but for those who don't mind a talky film and have the patience and concentration to follow the twists and turns of the plot, it's a gem.

Lantana (2001)

Full of insight

[9/10 · 28 January 2020]

SPOILERS!!!!!

Virtually every reviewer uses the word "Australian" in his or her opinion of this film - "a great Australian film", "a disappointing Australian film", etc.

As far as I'm concerned, Lantana is an outstanding film. It happens to be Australian, but it's outstanding by any standard. There are few scripts that demonstrate such intelligence and insight about the way real people actually behave, whether well or badly, in situations that confront them.

From the very beginning, where Geoffrey Rush (a wonderful actor) snipes at his wife for having published a book about the murder of their daughter, to the end where Rush admits that he had heard but ignored his wife's call, it has a depth of understanding of human beings that very few films have.

The acting is flawless. The pacing is precise - those who call it slow have no idea how to watch a film.

I've watched it many times. It's a classic.

Double Lives (2018)

Not a crowd-pleaser but it pleased me

[9/10 · 9 April 2019]

The users who have reviewed this film before me have all disliked it. The critics have been kinder, and the user rating of 6.8 is higher than I would have expected. I fully understand the dislike many viewers would have for it, but I think it's an outstanding film, one of the very best I've seen.

The film concerns four principal characters: Alain (Guillaume Canet), a publisher; Selena (Juliette Binoche), Alain's wife and a successful actress; Léonard (Vincent Macaigne), a moderately-successful author; and Valérie (Nora Hamzawi), Léonard's wife and an aide to a well-known politician. All are in their early 40s, attractive in different ways, and professionally successful.

There are two major themes: books and publishing in the age of the internet, social media and e-books, and the sexual and emotional relationships of the principal characters.

The fulcrum on which the film moves is the work of Léonard. He writes what he describes as "auto-fiction", or semi-autobiographical novels, and the principal characters in his novels are thinly-disguised versions of his friends, lovers and colleagues. Thus when his latest novel describes a recent affair, there is public speculation about who the woman really was.

There are many long scenes of discussions about writing, the validity of autobiographical novels as fiction in their own right, trends in the types of books that sell well or don't sell well, the future of publishing and a whole range of related topics. The discussions often take place at dinner parties where the hosts and guests are all more or less connected with writing or publishing; they are all intelligent, well-educated and articulate; and their conversations have a very convincing air of reality, with the speakers -- who are, after all, actors reciting lines -- appearing to advance their own genuine opinions. None of the many different points of view are portrayed as being clearly right or wrong; the questions discussed are difficult and many different opinions are valid. One of the reasons I enjoyed this film so much is that the discussions were intensely interesting.

The personal relationships at first are very secondary to the questions about writing and publishing; but as the film progresses they assume greater importance. The persons involved feel their emotions deeply, but at the same time they are very clear-sighted and realistic about what they are doing. There is a scene where Selena, the actress, tells a friend whom she works with that she is sure that her husband (Alain, the publisher) is having an affair, as he in fact is. The friend asks her why she doesn't confront him. She replies that she doesn't see any need to; she is sure that Alain loves her, and that the affair will run its course and end; that to confront him would provoke a crisis and probably change the basis of their relationship; that there is more to love and a marriage than sexual fidelity; and that after 20 years of marriage it's not surprising that Alain might find another woman sexually attractive. What she doesn't say is that she herself has been having an affair for six years with Léonard, the writer.

There are a number of short but very powerful moments where the characters do directly face their emotions. I won't mention all of them in order to avoid spoilers, but one example is where Léonard's wife Valérie asks him directly if he is having an affair and he is unable to give a direct answer.

There's no real action and there's a huge amount of talking. It's not for everyone. But it's a highly intelligent and sophisticated film and I rate it very highly.

Couples and Robbers (1981)

Nasty little film

[7/10 · 9 November 2016]

I saw this film back when it was first released as a short with some feature that I can't now remember. This one stuck in my mind. It's pretty well made, but it has a really nasty, unpleasant air about it. The poor young couple who impulsively steal a car for a joyride on a summer's day and then return it are actually no nice at all.

For some reason it reminds me of another film I saw at about the same time called The Ragman's Daughter. Also not a nice film. For a long time I thought the two films were made by the same director, but it seems not.

I have to give it 7 because for what it is, it's done well. But it left rather a bad taste in my mouth. It's also memorable as the first time I saw Rik Mayall, who played a nasty policeman.

The Dandelions (2012)

Worth watching

[8/10 · 29 March 2013]

I'm not normally a fan of films about children, but I liked this one a lot. It's a bit corny, a bit predictable, and at the end rather shockingly tragic, but it's well done every step of the way.

The two little girls really are very cute: shy, withdrawn little Rachel, and naughty, mischievous Valerie who befriends Rachel for no particular reason at all, both are excellent and a joy to watch either alone or together. The story involving the relationship between Rachel's parents is also pretty predictable and not without holes, but again it's done with a light and deft touch and is in the end touching rather than annoying. The character of the grandmother is probably the least satisfactory simply because while she's always there, we learn next to nothing about her.

There's a small role for Isabella Rossellini as a child psychiatrist: she's put on a kilo or two since Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart, but she's still got more real beauty than a thousand of those American actresses who can still fit into the dresses they wore when they were 18 but look as if they've spent their lives pickled in formaldehyde.

Not a great film, but I'm very glad I saw it.

Elles (2011)

Disappointing but some redeeming features

[7/10 · 2 March 2013]

I was expecting Juliette Binoche to be as fabulous as she normally is, but she was the disappointment among the three female leads.

To be fair, I think it was the fault of the part, rather than faults in her performance. I think the idea was that her character, the journalist, got so involved in what she was researching and writing that she forgot about her own life and family until the story was finished; but the result was that her character was just a mess.

What I liked about the film was what seemed to be a much more honest and realistic portrayal of the two prostitutes than we normally see. Both were very believable. Both students, one (Anaïs Demoustier as Charlotte) in control of what she was doing, and the other (Joanna Kulig as Alicja) drinking to much and seemingly headed for disaster. Both of them liked sex; Charlotte liked the sex she had with her customers apparently just as much as she liked the sex she had with her boyfriend. You don't see that in Hollywood movies. In Hollywood movies the prostitutes never kiss and they never have orgasms, and they all hate what they're doing. In this film, Charlotte didn't hate it at all, in fact she liked it a lot; whereas Joanna said that she liked it, and seemed to like the physical sensations, but also seemed to hate the idea of what she was doing. That seemed pretty realistic to me.

There were two things that struck me particularly. One was quite early on in the film, when Juliette Binoche asked Charlotte why she kept working. The answer was that the money was hard to give up.

The second was from Charlotte again, and again in answer to a question from Juliette. The question was, what was the worst thing about the work, and the answer was having to tell lies all the time.

Both of those things rang pretty true to me.

So what it comes down to is a more realistic portrayal of prostitution than we normally get, but a rather messy movie with a rather messy central character.

Silver Linings Playbook (2012)

A mess

[5/10 · 23 February 2013]

I really cannot understand all the glowing comments about this film. I thought it was a complete shambles.

I think the basic problem is that no-one seems to have subjected the script to critical analysis. If they had, they might have found lurking in there a nice little film about mentally ill people finding ways to help one another to cope with themselves and with society. What we have instead is a mess of silly plot contrivances, incomprehensible characters and a ridiculously confected happy ending.

Just consider the principal characters one by one.

Pat. For most of the film he's an out-of-control manic depressive whose mood swings and violent outbursts bring him into constant conflict, often violent, with almost everyone he comes in contact with. Then suddenly, with absolutely no reason given, he becomes at the end of the film a support for Tiffany, a reasonable ex-husband of his wife Nicki, and generally an admirable citizen. A theme for the first half of the movie is his refusal to take his medication because it makes him "fuzzy"; then there's a single scene where he takes his pills; and from then on the pills don't get a single mention. Does he take them consistently or not? Do they make him fuzzy or not? What's the point of introducing the theme and not concluding it?

Tiffany. I'm afraid that the constant switches from in control to out of control were just too much for me.

The father. I have to confess that I've never been a fan of Robert de Niro: as an actor, he seems to me to be great at playing Italian gangsters but not much else. Here however the problem is with the part. Is he an obsessive/compulsive or not? Half the time he's rational; half the time he's not. He's a bookmaker, and apparently a successful one, but he backs his sentimental favourites. Real bookmakers don't do that, and if they do, they don't survive in business for very long.

The black friend, Eddie. Again, he goes, without explanation, from a nutter obsessed with his hair to a normal, rational human being.

And I can't resist a word about the doctor. He was good, even outstanding, as a doctor. I could even believe him when he revealed at his consulting room door that he was an Eagles fan. But when he turned up at a game IN FACE PAINT, I'm afraid it was the point at which I decided, once and for all, that the film had no hope of redemption.

I read somewhere that Sydney Pollack had agreed to make this film but died before he could get started; and that he had said that it would be a very difficult film because if its mixture of styles. Pollack was a master and he could have done it, I think, but it would have been a shorter film and one from which many ingredients had been deleted. The film ended up being made by the person who wrote the screenplay, and one can't help thinking that he lacked the objectivity to see the glaring faults in the screen play and jettison or fix them.

The one person I except from criticism is Jackie Weaver. Her part was very small and her character had the huge virtue of being consistent throughout. I thought she did a very good job as the loving mother at the end of her tether.

The Ides of March (2011)

Dullsville

[5/10 · 5 November 2012]

Sorry, but this one clunked from beginning to end.

Let's start with the plot. Idealistic staffer for presidential candidate is tempted to the other side. Then a silly girl suicides because her lover, the candidate, disappoints her. One is tempted to ask what she expected, especially as she's from a political family and is also a staffer for the same candidate: hasn't she heard of Monica? Then candidate denies having known her, to the great disappointment of Mr Idealist. Again, what did he expect?

Acting? It's OK, but I never found myself caring for a single moment what happened to any of the characters, not Mr Idealist, not the silly girl, and certainly not presidential candidate Clooney, whose only policy seemed to be some ridiculous waffle about renewable energy.

I was bored about two minutes after this started and it never got any better. Just totally unconvincing from beginning to end.

The Fairy (2011)

Unexpected delight

[7/10 · 25 April 2012]

To tell the truth, I only saw the second half of this film. It was on cable TV and I flicked onto it. I almost turned it off straight away, but while my finger was hovering over the button I found, to my surprise, that I was smiling; and then, to my even greater surprise, I laughed out loud.

I'm not generally a fan of French comedies. Far to many of them seem to think that it's funny to watch people shouting at each other as a result of some ridiculous misunderstanding. But occasionally there's one that's less aggressive, more subtle, and this is one of them. "Subtle" is probably not a word that would normally be used to describe the purely visual and physical humour of this film, but for me there was subtlety in the way the physical contortions of the two lead characters were performed without flamboyance or theatricality, and used to create situations that were totally unexpected.

Although not generally a fan of French comedies, I am certainly a fan of French cinema in general. One of the reasons for that is its ability to produce the occasional offbeat gem, like this one. It's funny, it's innocent and it's warm-hearted. I liked it a lot.

House of Tolerance (2011)

Naked women can be boring

[4/10 · 20 March 2012]

I wouldn't have believed it, but it's true.

Beautiful naked women parade around the screen for just over two hours. And yet it is just plain tedious.

Nothing happens in this film. It's unrelievedly gloomy, the girls are all depressed, none of them like sex, and the men all want to do bizarre things with them.

We don't learn much about many of the girls.

We learn little or nothing about the legal or social system in which the maison close operated, i.e., what was legal and what was not.

I really do not understand what the point of the film was.

Avoid it.

Paperback Hero (1999)

Sweet and simple

[8/10 · 6 January 2012]

Sometimes it's good to watch a film that tells a simple story well, has characters who are all decent human beings, has actors who play those characters straightforwardly and sympathetically, and doesn't take itself too seriously. This is one of those films.

Australia has only a small film industry by world standards, and it suffers from the fact that when anyone of real talent emerges, he or she is invariably whisked off to the dollars of Hollywood very rapidly, so that most of our best people, not only actors but directors and all the others who work to make a film, don't make films in Australia. It's therefore a welcome surprise when an Australian film turns out to be good. One very common problem is the lack of good screenplays: most of them have fundamental problems of structure, and nearly all of them have not been developed sufficiently. This one's a good one. The idea of a truck driver writing Mills and Boon romances is interesting in itself; the enlisting of a local girl to "front" for the real author is a predictable but acceptable nest step: and the romance that slowly but surely emerges out of the background to take over towards the end is also predictable but very nicely and gently done.

The film didn't make much of a public stir when it was released, in fact I don't recall it in cinemas at all. It comes up every now and again on TV, and it's much underrated. It also deserves a much higher user rating than its current 6.1. Perhaps it's the lack of pretension itself that leads viewers to mark it down.

If you're looking at IMDb wondering whether to bother with this film, then my suggestion is to bother. It won't change your world, but it will amuse you and leave you feeling happy.

Random Hearts (1999)

Rubbish

[3 January 2012]

I decided to watch this on cable because it was made by Sydney Pollack and stars Harrison Ford and Kristin Scott-Thomas.

I wish I hadn't. Or perhaps I wish I'd known something about who the writers were. Because this was about as bad as a Hollywood movie can get. Every cliché you can think of, and all of them put in the most obvious places.I can sort of see how it managed to attract the sort of money that's needed to make a Hollywood movie with that sort of star power, because if you take the elements one by one, all of them would sound OK. It's just that they were put together in a manner that makes no sense whatsoever.

It's a waste of 131 minutes.

Absolute Power (1997)

Rubbish

[6/10 · 31 December 2011]

First the plusses. It's watchable. The plot moves smartly and the viewer can understand what's going on. That's about it for the plusses.

The biggest minus is the absolute predictability. I saw this on cable with my wife (there being nothing better on at the time), and we missed the opening scene in which the murder occurs. After we'd been watching for about ten minutes I said to her, "You know, I don't think Clint committed the murder and I think all those nasty CIA guys are going to end up dead." She replied, "And I don't think the estranged daughter is going to remain estranged."

That's Hollywood, I guess. It wouldn't do to have the bad guys winning.

I think the thing that most disappointed me about this particular effort from Clint was that he was supposed to be a master of disguise, and we saw him in about half a dozen different disguises, but in every single one of them he was instantly recognizable as good old Clint.

Don't bother.

Angel & Tony (2010)

Lovely

[8/10 · 12 March 2011]

I was hoping this film would be good and I wasn't at all disappointed. It was lovely.

I saw Clotilde Hesme in Le fils de l'épicier, another little charmer. Her smile lit up the screen in that one, and it does the same in this one. She's an excellent actress. The acting is all good, actually.

The story is simple, and predictable enough if you want to predict things, but it's very nicely told, with delightful understatement and restraint. The film is beautifully photographed, again with great restraint, so that the beauty of the northern sea and sky and the pale and subtle colours of the landscape are allowed to emerge and speak for themselves.

The film doesn't pretend to be anything more than a simple romance. It certainly doesn't pretend to be great. But it is in fact very good.

Black Swan (2010)

Rubbish from beginning to end

[1/10 · 15 January 2011]

I'm just back from watching a preview of Black Swan. Natalie Portman and Milla Kunis as ballerinas in an unnamed American ballet company, Vincent Cassel (well-known and rather good French actor) as the director of a new production of Swan Lake, Barbara Hershey as Natalie Portman's mother. Film directed by Darren Aronofsky (responsible for The Wrestler).

Verdict: Complete load of garbage (that's the polite word for it).

There's the germ of a good idea in there. Ballerina driven to succeed by domineering mother; duality of Black Swan/White Swan personality; jealousy and back-biting within the ballet company. Unfortunately, whatever might have been made of it was thrown out the window by the writers and Mr Aronofsky, and the result is a ludicrous succession of increasingly less believable and more ridiculous set pieces, propelled by cliché-ridden psychobabble dialogue and grotesque CGI horror effects (blood, tearing skin, etc). Oh, and of course, a camera that is stationed perpetually looking over the shoulder of the principal character and can't stay still for a single damn second.

There's one user review on IMDb that says that the result is a feast of so-bad-it's-almost- funny high camp, and that just about nails it. There were two points at which I (and most of the audience) laughed out loud at some piece of surpassing crassness. There's a lesbian scene that is so gross, crude and unerotic that I couldn't watch it. (Watch The Hunger (Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon) or Mulholland Drive (Naomi Watts and Laura Herring) to see well it can be done.)

The director tries everything he knows to make the film intense and compelling, but fails more completely with every new trick. At no point does the film engage any emotion other than amazement at how inept the whole thing is. The really sad thing is that it's been nominated for a swag of awards, and almost all the critics' reviews and user reviews on IMDb say that it's great, a masterpiece, tour de force, etc, etc. For those who think it's high art, here's the latest news: the emperor has no clothes.

I gave it a score of 1 out of 10 because that was the lowest available.

A Kiss Before Dying (1956)

Peculiar but entertaining mixture

[7/10 · 1 January 2011]

I read Ira Levin's book when I was young, sometime in the 1960s, and loved it. It's very chilling, and I think as good as Rosemary's Baby. Better than the Stepford Wives and Boys from Brazil.

This film is a quite bizarre mixture of the chilling and the comical. Someone above has mentioned the scene where Bud and Dorie are having an intense conversation when suddenly a middle-aged woman in a completely see-through blouse with a great big bra underneath walks between them and halts the conversation; she has nothing whatsoever to do with the plot, and when it happened I literally burst out laughing at the incongruousness of it. I also laughed at Jeffrey Hunter's ridiculous attempts to manipulate heavy Clark Kent spectacles and an unlit pipe in a vain attempt to appear mature.

The good points about the film are the plot, which is gripping even though it's been shortened markedly from the book, and some of the acting, particularly Robert Wagner and Joanne Woodward -- and I also enjoyed George Macready as the father of Dorie and Ellen.

The fact is that I was consistently interested or amused or gripped by something or other for the whole of the film. You can't really ask for much more from a film.

In the Beginning (2009)

Good but too long

[8/10 · 19 March 2010]

This is a peculiar film. It's said to be based on a true story, but I can't find any details of the true story after a search (which I admit was short) on the net. Other reviews tell the story, so I won't repeat it. It's compelling to watch, but at the same time painful to watch, because while you're watching a group of characters and coming to like them more and more, you know it must all end in tragedy.

François Cluzet is excellent as the con-man who gets vastly out of his depth and flails about ever more frantically to keep his head above water. Emmanuelle Devos is at her most striking and most vulnerable; the more I see of her the more magnificent I think she is. It's a pity she's not a little better at choosing her roles; some of the films she's been in have been shockers. There are also very nice turns from Gérard Depardieu as a very tough, seasoned crim, and Soko and Vincent Rottiers as a struggling young couple.

The film is too long by about 30 minutes. The Hollywood vice of prolixity seems to be affecting the French now. It's 130 minutes long; the version shown at Cannes was 155 and must have been excruciating. There are too many scenes that are prolonged to the point of tedium, and there's a section just after half way through where the story progresses very little which could have been cut entirely. It would have been a much better film if it had been a bit tighter.

I still give it 8. The power of the story and the quality of the performances and the direction make it worth that.

Murmur of the Heart (1971)

Very disappointing

[4/10 · 26 December 2008]

I bought the Criterion DVD edition of this film, having been an admirer of Louis Malle for a long time, and having heard that this was one of his very best films. I thought that if it was as good as Pretty Baby, Atlantic City, Damage, Vanya on 42nd Street - I could go on - then it would be worth waiting for (not to mention the high price).

Well, it's not. I didn't like the way the film began, and although I kept expecting it to click into gear and improve, it never did.

The rather anarchic household was tedious and not nearly as funny as it was no doubt intended to be; but that's not the real problem.

The boorish elder brothers deserve a slap in the chops; but they're not the real problem either.

The three brothers' obsession with sex is overdone, though not greatly so if I remember my own adolescence correctly; that's not the real problem either.

And neither is the relentless "free-spiritedness" of the intensely irritating mother, although it certainly doesn't help the film.

No, the real problem is the supposed resolution of what passes for a plot. Mother gets drunk, son undresses her, falls into bed with her and passion overwhelms them. Yeah, right.

And then mother sobers up enough to have some deep and meaningful words with son about remembering and cherishing their secret moment of passion. And son says of course. Yeah, right.

And then son slips out of bed, tiptoes down the hall, tries (but fails, in the one faintly believable scene in this ridiculous sequence) to rape one of the two sympathetic characters in the whole film (the other being the nice prostitute at the brothel), and moves on to spend the night with another girl, a willing one this time. As if.

And finally, when he creeps back to his own room the next morning and finds his father and brothers there, fully clothed while his mother's still in just a dressing-gown, the film ends with everybody laughing.

I've got nothing against sex, nothing against nudity, I love French films and I respect and admire Louis Malle. But this film misses the mark completely. As a comedy it is without a laugh in it from beginning to end. And the plot is so ridiculously unbelievable that if there's supposed to be some insight in the film, it is entirely lost.

Welcome to the Sticks (2008)

Forced and Tedious

[3/10 · 5 October 2008]

Well, it just goes to show that you can't go broke by underestimating the taste of the public.

This is a one-joke film, and the joke entirely depends on the funny way northern French people speak.

It doesn't sound like much, and it isn't much.

I saw this on a free ticket. Within 30 seconds I was wondering whether it could possibly be as bad as it looked as though it might be, and I spent the rest of the film finding out that yes, indeed it could.

Lots of mugging at the camera.

Lots of ridiculously contrived plot situations.

And with every single set-up, the punchline is obvious from the outset.

Don't bother.

Dangerous Liaisons (2003– )

Surprised at some reactions

[9/10 · 25 September 2008]

I saw this on DVD, with French sub-titles (I'm learning French).

I'm absolutely amazed at the number of commentators on this site who disliked this production. I've seen four versions of the work, and in my opinion this is by far the best. It is ravishing to look at, the story is compelling and presented with great clarity and sophistication, and the acting is outstanding. Yes, Catherine Deneuve was too old for the part. But she didn't look it, or act it; regardless of the date of her birth, she retains an allure that I for one would find difficult to resist if I had the honour and good fortune to meet her. As for Rupert Everett, who cares about whether he's used botox or not? He's got exactly the right sort of snake-like ability to fascinate and attract. And both of them can actually act. I think it's one of Catherine Deneuve's very best performances, probably because of the quality of the screenplay with which she had to work.

I found it compelling from the very first moment, and I'm about to buy the DVD.

Ce que mes yeux ont vu (2007)

I liked it too

[8/10 · 9 September 2008]

This was shown on World Movies last night. I didn't quite know what to expect, but I thought it might be something like Possession, the excellent novel by A S Byatt which was made into a much less good film; i.e., a story in which a present-day researcher solves a mystery about some aspect of the life of a historical figure. Well, it is that: the historical figure is the painter Watteau, and the present-day researcher is Lucie Audibert, who is played charmingly by Sylvie Testud.

There's a side-story about a deaf-mute mime who does his act outside Lucie's work, and with whom she strikes up a relationship. It adds little to the film, although there seems to be some real chemistry between Lucie and the mime, Vincent, played by James Thiérrée.

I found it quite compelling. The pictures on the screen are beautiful: the cinematography is by Jean-Marc Selva, which is not a name I had ever heard before, but it one I'll look out for in the future. The story moves along steadily, never hurriedly, and an atmosphere of tension is gradually created and built. Although Watteau is long dead, there's a sense of sadness and loss at the part of his life that is revealed, which is complemented and counterpointed by the sadness and almost desperation that surrounds Lucie's. Sylvie Testud is superb. She's as thin as a sparrow and not particularly pretty, but one of the things I like about French films in general and this one in particular is that they are about (not always, of course, but quite often) rather ordinary-looking people who are shown to be men and women of substance.

I've given it a score of 8 out of 10. I'd prefer to have given it 7.5, but that's not possible, and it's better than a 7. It's not a great film, but it's a very thoughtful one.

Après lui (2007)

I can't believe I'm the first

[6/10 · 7 August 2008]

to comment on this film. It received a mainstream release in Australia, although it was hardly a raging success. The biggest thing about it was that Catherine Deneuve was here for the premiere.

Anyway, it's not much of a film. The user rating is about 5.5, and that's not far wrong. Anybody reading this probably knows the setup, but for those who don't it's about a woman whose son is killed in a car accident. The car was driven by his best friend. Although the woman's ex-husband and daughter regard the other boy as almost a murderer, the mother doesn't, and forms a relationship with him. (Not a sexual relationship.) That setup itself makes you think.

The problem is that it didn't make the makers think hard enough. The film goes nowhere. Catherine Deneuve as the mother does reasonably well with a difficult part, and she's the only one I was interested in.

It's not bad, it's just not really worth bothering with.

Mongol: The Rise of Genghis Khan (2007)

How to trivialize a great story

[4/10 · 21 June 2008]

Well before the film ended, I was looking at my watch in order to see how much more I had to endure. Two hours and six minutes long, it is. It's divided roughly equally between battle scenes (about a dozen of them, all more or less interchangeable), and plot development.

One would have thought that with the subject being the son of a minor tribal chief who conquers half the world, plotting would have been relatively easy. There's a fair bit of raw material there from which to make a pretty good story. However the writers fluffed it completely. We get no real history. We get instead a Hollywood version of history.

What sustains young Temudjin through his long -- almost endless, actually, or so they seem to the viewer -- tribulations? Why, the love of a good woman, of course.

How does he get out of prison? Well, an old monk, who recognizes his innate goodness and greatness, sets out across the continent to take to this good woman a talisman that symbolises Temudjin's love for her, dropping dead just close enough to her for her to find him as he lies there, talisman in his hand. And of course she then goes and, having (inexplicably) become rich and powerful, rescues him.

How does he escape from the shackles? Well, he goes off to the shrine of the great wolf-god Tengri (or some such name) and Tengri sets him free by magic. Yeah, right.

Why does he want to become ruler of the Mongols? The wolf-god again, apparently. Off goes Temudjin to ask for guidance, and -- surprise! surprise! -- he gets it. "Laws," he says to himself. "What the Mongols need are laws. Good, simple ones." Golly, it was impressive.

And then finally, how does he win the decisive battle against his rival's more powerful forces? Better tactics, certainly, but also through the aid of the good old wolf-god again, who sends a storm at the height of the battle. All the troops cower as the thunder rolls and the lightning flashes (Mongols are scared of thunder, you see) -- but not our Temudjin. The troops, completely wowed by his bravery, acclaim him king!

I don't know what induces people to keep producing this kind of garbage. The funny thing is it's interspersed with all sorts of gritty realism: lots of slurping of milk, dirt and violence. It's as if the producers of this movie wanted to get the trivial things right so that viewers wouldn't notice how infantile some of the big stuff is.

There's heaps of violence in graphic close-up: slashings, impalings, spouts of blood, sprays of blood, clouds of blood -- the blood guys had a great time, actually. Despite the realism, it's impossible to take seriously.

I must mention the ludicrous CGI final battle scene. How anyone can think these things look realistic is beyond me. They don't. Oh, and it's all shot in the standard Hollywood style -- breathtaking panoramas for the spectacular scenery, and the super-close-up Stedicam stuff for the battle scenes. And the standard Dolby super-sound-effects of whumps and thumps and the constant low-frequency hum to sustain tension.

Tedious.

Avoid.