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Film: Barfuss
Release date: 13th October 2005
Certificate: 15
Running time: 118 mins
Director: Til Schweiger
Starring: Til Schweiger, Johanna Wokalek, Nadja Tiller, Michael Mendl, Steffen Wink
Genre: Comedy/Drama/Romance
Studio: Touchstone
Format: DVD
Country: Germany
“All you need is love.” opined the Beatles with tuneful utopianism. Sadly, where the rom-com is concerned, that’s not quite enough for cinemagoers; who expect their heartstrings to be tactically tugged, a generous dose of mirth, and a palatable serving of sweet and sour sentiment before reaching an amorous payoff. German actor-director Til Schweiger (recognisable to English audiences as Sergeant Stiglitz from Inglorious Basterds) stars in and helms this 2005 effort, casting himself as half of a decidedly odd couple. Schweiger’s often blackly comic tale accents a typically saccharine format with despair, as his derelict romantics brave depression and stuffy orthodoxy.
Hard drinkin’ womanisin’ ne’r do well Nick Keller – repeatedly dismissed for his anti-authoritarian quirks – is desperate for a job. So desperate that he’ll do anything for an honest Euro, and eagerly accepts a new assignment.
Arriving for his first day dressed to the nines, Nick’s determined to make good – but is aghast to learn that he’s a floor-scrubbing dogsbody, mopping the wards at a mental hospital.
With auto-destructive flair, he quickly arouses the boss’s ire and is sacked – but not before earning a measure of redemption. Voyeuristically espying a patient attempting suicide, he chivalrously intervenes, saving her. This quirky damsel, Leila, forms an unlikely bond with her slacker prince and, with naïf guile, escapes from the hospital, stalking her crush home. Stupefied, Keller threatens to turn her in. But Leila cannily plays the ace of all guilt cards, threatening suicide – forcing Nick to grudgingly offer her sanctuary on his sofa.
The mismatched pair kindle an unlikely (yet eminently predictable) affection, as Keller uses Leila as a pretend girlfriend to impress his affluent parents. His brother is due to get married, at a ceremony which his folks – in chilling corporate-speak – characterise as a “merger.” Nick’s presence is mandatory.
Setting out on a trans-Germanic road trip, fact and fantasy begin to blur as awkward rapport yields to tenderness. But, with the authorities in hot pursuit, no money and a buffet-full of fusty bourgeois obstructing their happiness – bliss is far from assured for these outlaws of lurve…
From the moment our two beauteous protagonists are introduced, it’s evident that the two are fated to intertwine. Both are unfeasibly attractive; adorably moulded, as only silver screen dropouts are. Beautiful losers. Her: sullen, kooky cutie confined to a mental hospital. Him: chiselled, middle class black sheep on the slide. As the narrative intercuts between them and a tepid, MOR instrumental jangles from the soundtrack, the trajectory of the film is preordained. Déjà vu instantaneously ensues.
Barfuss (translated as Barefoot) has been construed as a fable, or fairytale by some; but this merely disguises its innate conservatism. If it possesses any ‘mythic’ resonance, this derives from its slavish adherence to a succession of flaccid Hollywood tropes. The film is certainly accessible; but what may be considered ‘universalism’, from an Anglocentric perspective, merely reflects its similarity to mainstream US product. Dialect aside, there is little here which appears exotic, modernist or distinct. It’s all discomfortingly familiar – a Germanic cultural ventriloquism that just about gratifies our cinema-schooled expectations. The antagonising forces, like the heroes, bear the hallmarks of faded melodrama. Love must combat those timeless, implacable foes: money, authority, outrageous circumstance, patriarchy and tradition.
Despite a smattering of darkly comic wit, gags are often inane, and frequently repetitious. An early scene – in which Leila is mistaken for a prostitute and asked to gratify a leering punter – is an unsettlingly risqué, cruel extension of the ‘fish out of water’ conceit. The tone rapidly brightens thereafter, however, as narrative shifts gear into road-movie mode. Leila’s social ineptitude primes a comedy of errors that simultaneously humiliates Keller, and comically emphasises her outsider status. Watch as Leila walks into the men’s toilet; fumbles with her fork; tells Nick’s stepdad he thinks he’s an old fart, etc. These successive faux pas elicit an embarrassing pathos, as she blunders, childlike, through bourgeois mores. Regrettably, they often feel like a cheap contrivance – frequently provoked by Nick abandoning his charge, with the request that she “stay put for a minute.” She never does.
The film’s cursory rendering of institutional captivity provides a sombre backdrop to Leila’s fragile, photogenic solipsism; but little more. Dido’s presence on the soundtrack consolidates this mood; a maudlin, unrequited melancholy. Predictably, Leila’s former symptoms diminish as her malaise is transferred to a near fatal case of love sickness. Whilst spirited and not without intuitive guile, salvation is thus placed beyond her control. ‘Love’ disenfranchises Leila, rendering the character increasingly dependent on her reformed lothario. Though rewarded with optimism and confidence, she is later diminished to a blubbing, fatalistic damsel awaiting deliverance. Preferable to suicide; but hardly a feminist role model. Love may be the ultimate placebo, but it can only be administered by our hero, Nick the hesitant.
One notable aspect in which the film eschews convention is an almost total absence of...well, the rom in the com. Our characters never kiss; their love is discussed, but the concept never consummated. This curiously chaste, abstract idyll is necessary to prevent tarnishing Nick. Though his stud status is inferred from the outset, Nick’s affection towards Leila is often paternal. An ambiguous romancer-guardian, and clearly the authoritative partner, he acts in a playful, platonic manner, but never interacts with Leila erotically. She, too, is denied a sexual identity – thus assuming an almost childlike unknowing Nick never threatens to rupture. Schweiger plays safe in avoiding the messy complexities this might elicit; instead turning his romance into a perversely pure tale of self denying devotion.
Leila’s habit of walking barefoot (hence the film’s title) can be considered as a crude metaphor for her refusal of constraint and convention. Paradoxically, the movie is overly encumbered by a set of generic binds that warp its early promise. Though it takes superficial pops at profiteering, corporate fat-cats, Barfuss’ bland pleasures embody the machinations of those myopic suits it purports to satirise. Sadly, the results are anodyne and frustratingly tame. Endurable in-flight entertainment. Just. DJO
Film: The Man Who Loved Yngve
Release date: 20th September 2010
Certificate: 15
Running time: 90 mins
Director: Stian Kristiansen
Starring: Rolf Kristian Larsen, Arthur Berning, Ida Elise Broch, Ole Christoffer Ertvaag, Jorgen Langhelle
Genre: Drama/Romance
Studio: TLA
Format: DVD
Country: Norway
A high school coming of age tale is a well trodden genre, but a coming of age story coming out of Norway could pretty much be anything, having heard stories of school classes climbing trees in forests, and being forced to drink copious amounts of beer before they’re allowed down during their graduation period.
The Man Who Loved Yngve is not that film, rather it introduces us to Jarle (Rolf Kristian Larsen), a young man with a love of music, Katrine and very little else in his sparse, cold corner of Norway.
Jump forward six months from skipping a school history trip and he has everything a young male could possibly want. Cool friends, a beautiful girlfriend, and he is the frontman in the Mathias Rust Band - but all this is fleeting as Jarle’s about to be introduced to the new boy in school, and the surprising object of his affections, Yngve…
This is a film that is surprisingly void of cliché. Set in 1989, during the height of the aids epidemic, there is always the danger of falling back and relaxing on stereotypes to tell the story. Such is the strength of Stian Kristiansen’s vision and the intelligence of Tore Renberg’s screenplay (which he adapted from his own novel) that this film is never likely to fall into that trap. The love triangle between Jarle, Katrine and Yngve is never overly forced into unnatural narrative scenarios but is allowed to flow organically between the classroom and the tennis court.
Larsen is excellent as Jarle, both as the care free boy who’s got the girl at the beginning of the film and gradually through to confused but curious admirer of Yngve to openly, at least to himself, infatuated teen. His ability to be openly smitten with the new boy yet wearing his mask of ‘normality’ with friends and girlfriend alike is a skill not yet mastered by actors twice his age. Ida Elise Broch (Katrine) is under utilised but represents the ‘gold standard’ of the dreams of every teenage boy in her role as beautiful and sexually active girlfriend/band manager. Yngve (Ole Christoffer Ertvag) has quite a similar job to that of Ida Broch in that he’s given little more to do but be a teenage honey trap for Jarle, but yet it works as this is his tale, his decisions and, ultimately, his life that he is in the process of defining. Arthur Berning, as best friend Helge, gives a strong supporting performance as the alpha male of the group, and most likely the most difficult person Jarle will have to come out to should he decide his future lays with Yngve.
The score is a dream, a strong collection of credible tracks from the ‘80s and contemporary works that sit beautifully together, and most importantly have a strong sense of the character and the influences that a young aspiring musician in Norway during the Cold War decade would have.
The film is not without a sense of humour, something that can be missing in films grounded in such serious issues as sexually and relationships, but fortunately the director has remembered that boys (regardless of sexual orientation) will be boys. Helge’s utter distain at his best friend taking up tennis is something that will make you laugh before you can fully take in just how dark that statement is, given the time period. Likewise, the scene where the best friends venture out to purchase weed from a drug dealer who has managed to break both arms and is in desperate need of someone to help him tidy up after a bowel movement is distinctly Norwegian humour.
The cinematography does an excellent job of depicting where Jarle’s attentions are directed, and his desires swinging without being overly showy or self aware, which is good, as the rest of the film is so silently mature that flashy or overly stylistic cinematography would simply detract.
The film’s real strength is shown in the last twenty minutes. This is not a criticism of the first hour and ten minutes but as the film progresses, and Jarle’s choice become more and more limited, The Man Who Loved Yngve naturally ascends to several significant scenes. The exchange of those three little words at a busy house party between the two boys, Katrine’s tearful exchange in the aftermath of the party (also the strongest drama scene Ida is given) and the showdown between best friends are fitting pay offs for the slow burning dilemmas that have been building up through the course of the film.
Previous experiences of Norwegian cinema could leave you with a misguided view that it was all machismo and death metal documentaries, but that’s clearly not the case. The Man Who Loved Yngve may not be the most original piece of cinema to come out of a nation that is crammed with creative vision, but it is a tender, confident and genuinely moving cinematic achievement. More than anything else, more than a tale of sexuality, friendship, loss, dreams and fears it is a tale of basic human needs. A story simply about love and the mental journey some have to undergo in order to accept it. DL
An international football star (Eduardo Verastegui) is on his way to sign a multi-million dollar contract when a series of events unfold that brings his career to an abrupt end. A beautiful waitress (Tammy Blanchard), struggling to make it in New York City, discovers something about herself that she’s unprepared for. In one irreversible moment, their lives are turned upside down…until a simple gesture of kindness brings them both together, turning an ordinary day into an unforgettable experience.
Film: Bella
Release date: 1st October 2010
Certificate: PG
Running time: 91 mins
Director: Alejandro Gomez Monteverde
Starring: Tammy Blanchard, Eduardo Verastegui, Manny Perez, Ali Landry
Genre: Drama/Romance
Studio: Kaleidoscope
Format: Cinema
Country: USA/Mexico
Film: Paris Je T’Aime
Release date: 4th February 2008
Certificate: 15
Running time: 115 mins
Director: Gus Van Sant, Isabel Coixet, Wes Craven, Christopher Doyle & Vincenzo Natali
Starring: Steve Buscemi, Natalie Portman, Gerard Depardieu, Bob Hoskins, Nick Nolte
Genre: Drama/Romance
Studio: Universal
Format: DVD
Country: France/Liechtenstein/Switzerland
Paris, the city of love; and what better a location to typify love in all its splendour? But just how profound can ‘love’ be? How many different kinds of love can you count on your hand? Hard, isn’t it? This is where Oliver Assayas and Frederic Auburtin step up with Paris Je T’Aime; exemplifying all the forms of love humankind has forgotten in the hype of love being all-good, using a cohesive intensity of “stories of love, from the city of love.”
Try not to be fooled by the title – translated to Paris, I Love You - which would mislead the hopeless romantic into believing they were about to view a tale of happy-ever-after romance from the passion capital, and although this is not entirely untrue, there are other surprises in store structured around love at its best, its worst, and it’s most downright bizarre!
Paris Je T’Aime takes an innovative approach to screening the model love story - by showing the good, the bad and the ugly sides in all types of dealings. Originality is the key - this film doesn’t merely account for the soppy saga of a male and a female, and their romantic journey and fruitful encounters, but does, using eighteen short pictures produced collectively akin to a slideshow, portray eighteen mini fables of how love can take on many forms – ones often overlooked.
Each one of the five minute long shorts were put in place formerly to represent the districts of Paris, and each shot therefore is named after said administrative districts, or “arrondissements” to be precise, of the city. Although, the eighteen short films, each directed by twenty-two separate administrators, are screened collectively without any headings, nor any specified introductory or ending clarification - so focus is required to ensure full perspective is gained…
The film begins with the first short set in Montmarte where we watch as an obviously lonely man believes his luck could be in a positive transition when a woman suffering from low blood sugar levels collapses outside his car where he attends to her and they appear to hit it off immediately.
However, this optimistic short is not an example of a pattern to follow, as screened subsequently are tales of love and the possibility of it, love in its peak form, dying love, and love that has already been lost. Not only focussing upon the everyday granted relationships, the film explores homosexual relationships and the relationship between divorcees, between father and daughter, between employees and employers, between strangers on the street, between a mother and a baby, between married couples, between a grieving mother and her deceased son, between fiancés, between an actress and her drug addiction/dealer, between a blind boy and his girlfriend and, also, peculiarly, between a vampire and her prey-turned-lover!
Praise must go to the opening sequence where Paris in all its wonder and exquisiteness is shot skilfully using artistic cinematography, including awe inducing long shots of the city by day and night. Slow sweeping scans hypnotise and have the ability to make us fall in love with the charming Paris, echoing the title immediately. This captivating scene further enhances our lust for Paris, as fireworks appear onscreen alongside the great Eiffel Tower, accompanied by fairytale Cinderella-style melodies. One begins the movie adoring Paris, and ends feeling still in love but sceptical of what that love truly means and its level of sanctuary.
It would appear, as there are numerous varying characters throughout, many of whom are Hollywood big timers, including Maggie Gyllenhaal and Elijah Wood, that the city is the uniting protagonist of the show. As well as a star-studded cast, which also features the more established Gena Rowlands and Bob Hoskins, the films represent various nationalities including British, French and American. Yet, this cast of Hollywood elites and diverse representations don’t exactly improve on the show’s prominence as much as they conceivably should and perchance the main flaw with the production - the mise-en-scene is overcrowded; making for claustrophobic viewing.
The entire film is innovative and, at times, truly gripping, however, it would seem rather than the good shorts out shining and thus cancelling out the bad shorts, the ghastly drag the superior down. Even so, the unison of sensations experienced whilst watching range from cheerfulness to wretchedness, from jolt to wonder, and from perceptivity to total perplexity, so commendation should be given to the twenty-two directors for making this occur.
Each short reeks of individualism and distinction from the next, making for a fine watch. If you enjoy array in a movie and tiny segments of stories rather than an extensive drawn-out single narrative then you’ll care very much for Paris Je T’Aime and will declare the title with a personal sentiment.
Paris, Je T'Aime will have you smiling and perhaps crying, and is certainly uplifting, but mostly you’ll be left with a mood that is not just unsatisfactory but aptly uncertain and uneasy. It’s like the French take on British classic Love Actually - although, not quite as good, actually. VMF
Film: My Sassy Girl
Running time: 123 mins
Director: Kwak Jae-young
Starring: Cha Tae-hyun, Gianna Jun, Han Jin-hie, Hyun Sook-hee, Kim Il-woo
Genre: Comedy/Drama/Romance
Country: South Korea
Region 1 release.
Based on a collection of true stories that were posted on the internet by author Kim Ho-sik, My Sassy Girl was turned into a film by one of South Korea’s biggest movie directors, Kwak Jae-young, going on on to receive numerous awards and attention since its release in 2001, including a 2008 Hollywood remake, a Japanese television drama and being given the Bollywood treatment.
The film portrays Kim Ho-sik’s stories of a young student called Kyun-woo who comes across an attractive unnamed girl whilst she attempts to commit suicide in an underground station. The nameless girl ends up on the same train as Kyun-woo but is completely intoxicated and begins causing an assortment of troubles, including arguing with others and vomiting on a nearby passenger’s head. Soon Kyun-woo is forced into assisting the girl by passengers mistaking his identity as the girl’s boyfriend and is shamed into taking care of the situation.
Kyun-woo takes the girl to a nearby hotel where he plans on leaving her for the night, but soon the police burst into the scene and start accusing him of an array of offences. Kyun-woo spends an uneasy night in jail, deeply regretting his decision to help the girl and attempting to forget about the entire night. Soon after, however, the girl contacts him via mobile phone, and reluctantly he agrees to meet and explain the situation. He is soon flung straight back into a familiar situation from that of the night before, with the unnamed girl again becoming uncontrollable.
Once Kyun-woo takes care of her for the second time, he begins to ask himself questions as to why the girl is acting in such a way. He starts to develop an odd sense of responsibility for her, which in turn enables him to tolerate her exhaustive and rather abusive personality.
Their unusual partnership begins, and their adventure together ensues. They go through moments of being best friends, mortal enemies, betting buddies, squash partners and hostages. Their time together creates a great example of an odd and unlikely friendship that overcomes great odds and times of trouble to find nothing but forgiveness and compassion…
The film is sectioned into three distinctive parts. The separation of these parts allows for the narrative to continue at a steady pace, even whilst the plot takes twists and turns towards the unimaginable and unforgettable.
The performances from the main cast are immaculate, their portrayal of the characters described within the novel are right on par, and although Gianna Jun’s efforts as the anonymous girl are sometimes judged as overly brazen to the point of annoyance, to others she executes the perfect balance of compassion and tyranny that goes hand in hand with this film’s heart-warming core and content.
Cha Tae Hyun’s performance in the film is equally as memorable. His sense and ability to perform as a comedic actor are an accomplishment within itself. He generates the majority of the laughter and undoubtedly creates the film’s youthful innocent charm that is played well throughout. His role in this film actually made him one of Korea's ‘most wanted dates', according to a survey on Korean girls.
The script, being originally based on a novel adapted from the Internet stories, does extend the film into a full two hours twenty minutes, but audiences won’t be left feeling weary at the length with such a witty and intelligent script that perfectly reflects the feelings and reactions felt by the characters, and the circumstances that surround them. The script brings together elements of science fiction, romance, adventure and road movie, which makes for a diverse viewing pleasure that audiences may find unfamiliar. However, the film is so well written the story is at no point incomprehensive or confusing.
My Sassy Girl is a compassionate film with both a humane message and humane characters. Almost every scene in the film gives the viewers something to laugh, cry, or think about. There are no moments of silence or dead air, and every act within the film carries its own heart-warming blend of physical comedy, straight melodrama and emotional highs. LS
Film: Caramel
Release date: 8th September 2008
Certificate: PG
Running time: 92 mins
Director: Nadine Labaki
Starring: Nadine Labaki, Yasmine Al Masri, Joanna Mouzarkel, Gisele Aouad, Adel Karam
Genre: Comedy/Drama/Romance
Studio: Momentum
Format: DVD
Country: France/Lebanon
When a foreign film manages to make that break across the border and garner international success there’s often the expectation that it should act as an ambassador for its country of origin, especially when that nation is not known for its prolific cinematic output. But where does that leave Nadine Labaki’s Lebanese romance Caramel? Can any film successfully walk that balance between the light-hearted and the weighty?
For a beauty salon, Si Bette isn’t much to look at. A ramshackle salon in the city of Beirut which requires the use of a second generator if anyone wants to use a blow-dryer while the fridge is on, but it provides a living, a support-group, not to mention a hive of gossip for four hairdressers who are trying to deal with the expectations that come with being an unmarried woman in modern-day Beirut.
Layale (played by the film’s director, Nadine Labaki) is having an affair with a married man, and is struggling not only with the prerequisite guilt of her situation but also with the practicalities of doing so in a city that requires proof of marriage to book a hotel double-bedroom, and whose police deems a man and woman sitting in a car ‘indecent behaviour’.
Her friend, Nisrine has the opposite problem; engaged to the son of a traditional Muslim family, she carries a secret that prevents her from being the pure daughter-in-law she is expected to be. Meanwhile, divorcée mother of two teenage children Jamale continues to pursue an acting career despite her increasing years, betraying the contrast between her and her competition; and quiet tom-boy Rima finds herself catching the eye of an attractive, female client.
These four women are not the only ones in town with troubles, however, as a supporting cast of clients and acquaintances orbit around them, pulled in by the gravity of their little salon. The local parking attendant smitten with Layale, the lonely elderly seamstress with a rare chance for romance, and her senile sister whose penchant for collecting parking tickets are equally as vital are all weaved into the rich mix that is Caramel...
It’s this sense of community that really stands out in Labaki’s film. This is not a film about Beirut. As one might assume from the aforementioned plot points, many of the situations are arguably culturally exclusive to its location, but it’s to the film’s credit that it reaches below the surface and pulls at the strings of far more universal themes of loneliness and the pressure of others. It matters not whether Nisrine is sitting at a table full of Lebanese Muslims or East Finchley Catholics, her discomfort is all too familiar, and it’s not difficult to imagine changing a few cultural touch-stones to find an above-par western rom com with the same narrative still completely in tact.
Caramel is a film about people rather than place, and therefore it’s through the central performances that the world really comes to life. The vibrant, lived-in atmosphere can be largely credited to the four leads, who balance often exaggerated comic turns with genuine notes of pathos in their respective situations. The balance is not always perfect, as sometimes a trivial subplot clashes jarringly with a profound emotional moment, but this is only to be expected from a film that clearly never sets out to ‘tackle’ anything. This is the story of four (or more) romantics who have been unlucky in love and yet keep trying, and so the film’s tone fittingly takes on the feel of the eponymous burnt sugar the girls use in their waxing. Sweet without being saccharine, the film plays out through the gold-tinted glasses of those looking for love. It is not the main meal. It is not the balanced diet of historical context and cultural resonance that are the meat and potatoes of films that want to be ‘about’ something. You won’t fill up on it, but neither is it the sickly sweet imitation product of Hollywood’s own brand.
It’s Labaki’s deliciously sepia cinematography that elevates what could be a trivial narrative. Her film is beautifully shot and allows the narrative to play out in a surprisingly subtle and nuanced manner given the extravagant performances. Every character is awarded the appropriate respect and time of day given that, for them, they are the star of their own classic tale of romance. Invoking other genre stand-bys such as Steel Magnolias, and the other similarly-titled western-friendly offering Chocolat, Caramel is an ensemble piece that genuinely cares about each of its individual components. Its only possible failing being that Labaki sometimes awards herself more than her fair share of screen time – clearly even she feels she is the star of her story.
Caramel may flirt with the anachronistic studio-era concept of being a ‘woman’s picture’ but when the only current offering for strong female leads in cinemas sees entire platoons of the Boots ‘here come the girls’ set marching blindly into cinemas to watch four over-paid harridans bemoaning the lack of haute couture in Abu Dhabi there has never been a better time to discover the mature and believable view of romance purported by Caramel. Who says rom coms have to be dumb screen fodder? JB
Film: Eric Rohmer: Six Moral Tales
Release date: 12th July 2010
Certificate: 15
Running time: 480 mins
Director: Eric Rohmer
Starring: Jean-Louis Trintignant, Beatrice Romand, Jean-Claude Brialy
Genre: Romance/Drama/Comedy
Studio: Artificial Eye
Format: DVD
Country: France
Originally released over a nine year period from 1963 to 1972, Eric Rohmer’s Six Moral Tales can be considered the world’s first ‘relationship comedies’; in Rohmer’s hands, a genre unto itself, and as far removed from the rom com as can be imagined.
The Girl At The Monceau Bakery (1963)
A student roams the streets of Paris in search of a beautiful young blonde he has grown infatuated with. When she mysteriously goes missing, he begins a flirtation with a girl who works in a bakery. Following the blonde’s reappearance, the student must make a choice after arranging dates on the same day with both girls.
Suzanne’s Career (1963)
A young student named Bertrand is friends with Guillaume, a womaniser whom he seems to both despise and admire. When Gauillaume takes up with the seemingly naïve Suzanne, his poor treatment of the girl leads to tension within the trio.
La Collectioneuse (1967)
Adrien is an art dealer who takes a vacation at a friend's summer house alongside his artist friend Daniel and a mysterious, promiscuous girl named Haydee. Adrien becomes increasingly infatuated and frustrated by the girl’s mixture of inscrutability and apparent availability.
My Night At Maud’s (1969)
A Catholic engineer named Jean-Louis believes he has found his perfect woman one day in church. When a philosopher friend introduces him to Maud, a beautiful divorcee, the engineer ends up spending the night at her apartment after it begins to snow. His growing attraction to Maud threatens to overthrow all his assumptions about love, marriage and morality.
Claire’s Knee (1970)
While on vacation, a diplomat named Jerome is encouraged by his female writer friend to begin a flirtation with a precocious 16-year-old. Although engaged to be married, Jerome engages in a brief flirtation with Laura before moving on to her older sister Claire, culminating in a strange desire to touch her knee.
Love In The Afternoon (1972)
Frederic is a successful businessman, married with one child and another on the way. When an impulsive friend from his past named Chloe comes back into his life, their initial friendship begins to grow into something much more troubling to Frederic’s conscience...
Rohmer always occupied a singular space within the Nouvelle Vague movement with which he is chiefly associated. Significantly older than many of his peers (he did not have a major success until his fifties), many critics viewed him as self-indulgently introspective, and out of touch with the political urgency of contemporary French cinema. Further misgivings arose from the suspicion Rohmer had turned to cinema only after failing to gain much success as a writer.
Ironically, it is the very tendencies his detractors accused him of (introspection, the personal over the political, literariness…) that account for much of the strength of Rohmer’s cinema. Through their focus on a particular type of self-deluding male egoism, the films present the unfurling of thought as their main spectacle, comparing favourably in this respect to the great literature of Goethe or Proust. With their layers of suggestive narrative, intentionally slow pacing and complex characters, they admittedly demand as much from those who see them as they actually give back. Part of the joy of Six Moral Tales, though, is the way in which aspects and themes emerge in your mind for days after having watched them. A great deal of Rohmer’s genius lies in his ability to lead us in a number of directions without our ever feeling as though we are being manipulated – no music tells us what to feel, and what little symbolism is employed always seamlessly incorporated within the story.
In terms of obvious visual spectacle, the Six Moral Tales may initially come as something of a disappointment. Some picturesque alpine and seaside imagery in Claire’s Knee and La Collectioneuse, some evocative shots of Paris in most of the other films, and that may seem to be about it. The first two films in the set feature some of these stylistic tropes typically associated with the Nouvelle Vague (16 mm film, tracking shots of a character’s footsteps, etc.), and the effect is curiously to make them more conventional, even generic. It was only when Rohmer began his fruitful collaboration with Nestor Almendros that the films attained that distinctly Rohmer-esque originality. The level of beauty Almendros displays in his landscapes (particularly in La Collectioneuse, almost Impressionist-like in its use of Cote d’Azur colours) attests to the selfless discipline he brought to the overall collaboration. Incredibly subtle in its effects, it is an exquisitely precise cinematography, especially adept at capturing the nuanced minutiae of glances and gestures that are integral to illuminating the abstract ideas and complex inner emotions of Rohmer’s cinema.
It is the attention to character and the strength of dialogue that really stands out. What strikes you as most remarkable is being able to listen to people talk about love for 480 minutes without them ever resorting to the clichéd, tired or trite. The acting throughout is of a consistently high standard, and Rohmer often asks much of his cast in the many long, uninterrupted dialogue-heavy scenes. Initially, the performances in the earlier films seem somewhat awkward and mannered (particularly in comparison to the later works), but they are thrown into a different light when you realise they are, in fact, performances within performances – almost everyone is playing a role, one they present both to the outside world and to themselves. As the series progresses and the characters become slightly older, these performances become more complex and ingrained, the protagonists clasping more tightly to the masks that seem to wear them as much as they do them.
There is a telling exchange in Claire’s Knee when the writer informs Jerome there are no ingénues anymore. It is, in fact, the young, the seemingly naïve, who are often presented as being the most perceptive. Often female, they have not yet constructed those psychological walls and seem more able to see through the poses the males have. When Suzanne is married at the end of Suzanne’s Career, Bertrand comes to the realisation that he and Gauillaume were children, that she has beaten them “to the finish line.” In Claire’s Knee, the eponymous teenager is closer to the truth than Jerome can admit when she says he doesn’t like her boyfriend because he refuses to bow down to him. The younger precocious sister from that film actually reappears in Love In The Afternoon during Frederic’s daydream in which he fantasises about a charmed amulet that allows him to control the will of all the women in Paris; she is the only one resistant to its powers. It would be misleading to view all Rohmer’s women in this way, however. In many ways, they are often equally self-deluded, just as flawed as the male characters; only the focus in these films is on a specifically male psyche.
Most of the moral tales achieve their effect through a conflict between the protagonist’s words (his own, usually limited or faulty, understanding of his intentions and desires) and his actions. The student justifies his selfish decision to stand up the bakery girl after the blonde reappears as a ‘moral’ choice. Adrien believes he has a moral victory when he abandons Haydee, despite her never being all that responsive to his advances. That Rohmer often allows his male protagonists to maintain their illusions through the ironic manner in which the films usually resolve accounts for much of the subtle comedy of the Six Moral Tales.
Such conflict is given its most extreme manifestation in the strange mix of Les Liasions Dangereuses meets Lolita that is Claire’s Knee. Despite some initial misgivings, Jerome takes to the writer’s challenge with a little more enthusiasm than seems necessary. There are definite shades of Humbert Humbert in his waxing lyrical over his preference for the svelte body-type of Claire, and the scene in which he kisses the younger girl is quite uncomfortable viewing (although mentally very mature, she does appear physically much younger than her stated sixteen years). As Jerome continually attempts to rationalise his increasing obsession, the symbol of Claire’s knee and his desire to caress it gives us something by which to measure the diplomat’s drift from reason.
Perhaps the most conventionally satisfying films are those in which some sort of understanding is reached, even if it is a compromised one. In an epilogue of My Night At Maud’s, the now happily married engineer comes to suspect the wife he was first drawn to for some idealised purity may actually have more to hide from revelations with his night with Maud than he. Realising the jeopardy such suspicions could lead to, or even their meaningless in relation to the lives both now lead; he makes the decision to instantly put it from his mind. In Love In The Afternoon, Frederic and his wife come to realise the detachment they believed essential to their marriage has actually been detrimental to them both. The closing scene in which the couple tearfully embrace is the closest Rohmer comes to emotional catharsis in these films - a highly moving climax to the collection, and arguably the least ambiguous in its optimism.
Some may find these films easier to admire than to truly love, but what is undeniable is that the best of the Six Moral Tales represent the crowning achievements of a true master of French film. An essential collection for fans of European cinema. GJK
Film: Leaving
Release date: 9th July 2010
Certificate: 15
Running time: 85 mins
Director: Catherine Corsini
Starring: Kristin Scott Thomas, Sergi López, Yvan Attal, Bernard Blancan, Aladin Reibel
Genre: Drama/Romance
Studio: Metrodome
Format: Cinema
Country: France
Following her critically acclaimed performance in Il y a Longtemps Que Je T’aime, Catherine Corsini’s Leaving again sees Kristin Scott Thomas venture into the French filmmaking industry in a story of passion and betrayal and the complexities that arise when a family is broken apart.
Suzanne (Kristin Scott Thomas) is an Englishwoman living in southern France who, for the past fourteen years has lived a comfortable upper class existence as a housewife on account of her husband, Samuel (Yvan Attal), a successful doctor.
When Suzanne decides that she wants to return to her work as a physiotherapist, Samuel arranges to have their garage converted into a surgery for her. Suzanne begins to realise a growing attraction to Ivan (Sergi López) one of the builders her husband has employed. An act of carelessness from Suzanne causes Ivan to suffer a leg injury, and she volunteers to drive him to Spain to visit his daughter. The two bond over a meal and, afterwards, Ivan kisses Suzanne, and so begins a passionate and damaging affair that will have dire consequences for everyone concerned.
When Suzanne eventually decides to leave Samuel in favour of a life with Ivan, the lovers find themselves blissfully happy for a short while, until Suzanne finds that she can no longer access her husband’s bank account, and Ivan discovers that Samuel has used his friendship with the local Mayor to have him blacklisted.
Penniless and unable to find work, Suzanne and Ivan find themselves resorting to increasingly desperate measures to survive…
To get the obvious out of the way, it is fair to say that, in terms of story, Leaving wins few points for originality. We are accustomed to seeing stories of marital breakdowns and affairs in everything from Hollywood films to soap operas to celebrity gossip magazines, and Corsini’s story does not re-write the book on such matters. Nor does it attempt to. In the case of Leaving, the fact that the story is one that we are familiar with acts as a help rather than a hindrance, enabling the plot to unfold without any unnecessary complications, and our attention to be fully concentrated on the absorbing performances from the three leads.
The chemistry between Scott Thomas and López is palpable, and the intense happiness that they experience in the early days of their union serves to make the eventual disintegration of their life together all the more tragic. One scene in particular, in which Suzanne is forced to sell her expensive jewellery at a petrol station in order to pay for their petrol, is heart-wrenching to watch, and Scott Thomas plays it to perfection, displaying Suzanne’s shame and humiliation through her shaking hand and the helpless look in her eye, as she attempts to maintain an external aura of calm.
All of the intensity of the passionate sexual attraction between Suzanne and Ivan is equalled in the simmering, venomous relationship between Suzanne and Samuel, as he desperately tries to convince his wife to return to him and their children. Samuel is unrelenting in his refusal to accept that his marriage is over, and resorts to devious, underhand tactics to hinder his wife’s new relationship. The performance of Yvan Attal is sensational, he shifts effortlessly and seamlessly between ice-cold passive-aggressiveness and red-hot fury, as he struggles with so many conflicting emotions: his love for his wife and desire for reunion; his embarrassment at having lost her to a man he clearly feels is beneath him; and his satisfaction at seemingly having the moral authority in the situation.
It is a credit to Corsini that none of the characters in Leaving are stereotypical, and her approach to the film avoids making judgement on who is right and wrong, leaving it for each viewer to ponder on the moral complexities of such situations. Suzanne is a likeable character who seemingly falls hopelessly in love, and so we would question whether we can blame her for leaving her family to live with another man. However, at several points in the film we see her put her own needs and desires before her duties as a mother - her children are rarely taken into consideration when she makes several life changing decisions, and she fails to show any real gratitude for her husband, who’s money has allowed her to live in luxury without working for so many years. Samuel, too, could easily have been played as a cold, emotionless husband who deserves to lose his wife, but we see in him a genuine love for Suzanne and desire to keep his family unit intact at any cost. Despite how devious and underhand his attempts to hinder Suzanne may seem the question still remains, if Suzanne is willing to do anything for love then is Samuel not entitled to do the same? Ivan is not the traditional knight in shining armour - he may be kind, genuine, artistic and deep, but he is also an ex-con, and shows little remorse for the fact that he has torn a family apart. All of these aspects of the three central characters combine to display perfectly the point that Corsini is trying to make: as wonderful and empowering being in love can be, it can also be selfish - depriving us of the ability to make rational judgements, and filling us with jealousy and rage. Leaving shows us both sides of the spectrum - we see love in all its blissful glory, and in all its petty shame.
The story may be as old as France itself, but the performances of Scott Thomas, López and Attal give Leaving enough raw emotion and depth to make it a thoroughly engaging drama that draws the viewer so effortlessly into its world that it is impossible not to be affected by its outcome. PK
Film: The Treasure Hunter
Release date: 12th July 2010
Certificate: 15
Running time: 102 mins
Director: Yen-ping Chu
Starring: Chiling Lin, Jay Chou, Eric Tsang, Daoming Chen
Genre: Action/Adventure/Romance
Studio: E1
Format: DVD
Country: Taiwan
When Stephen Chow (Kung Fu Hustle and Shaolin Soccer) pulled out of The Green Hornet reinvention scheduled for release in 2011, many were left baffled by director Michael Gondry’s decision to cast Jay Chou, gargantuan pop star, as Kato; stepping into the shoes movie phenomenon Bruce Lee left behind. With Seth Rogen already mysteriously cast as The Hornet (he did write the screenplay) anticipation for its release is slightly muted. The Treasure Hunter, starring Chou and available to buy this month, provides the perfect opportunity to assess his acting credentials in a film billed as “Indiana Jones meets The Mummy.”
Lan Ting (Red Cliff’s Chiling Lin), an adventure novelist living in the city, agrees to meet up with her estranged father; the man she hasn’t forgiven for leaving home so he could explore ancient ruins instead of raising a family. A collision on route ensures she never sees her father, awakening days later in a desert, held hostage, used as a bargaining tool for an ancient map that will lead her captors to a secret tomb filled with treasures.
Met instead by Ting’s childhood friend Qiaofei (Chou), with news of her father’s mysterious demise and the map her enemies have been seeking, she is attacked, along with the others, by more furtive foes hell-bent on retrieving the map and killing all those that have seen it.
Narrowly escaping, the custodians and convicts must join forces and overcome their differences if they are to banish the ghosts of old and ultimately prevail…
Director Yen-ping Chu must have thought he had potential gold on his hands by pairing two of Taiwan’s hottest properties together for this supposedly exhilarating desert romp. Sadly, although Jay Chou and Chiling Lin are both attractive to look at, and handle their roles more than adequately, they’re let down by a nonsensical story in which too many characters spend the duration of the film doing very little. It wouldn’t be so bad if the twosome had some kind of chemistry going on, but their relationship is more wooden than Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman’s in Attack Of The Clones.
Chou spends the majority of the movie with the same glum facial expression, no matter what emotion he’s supposed to be conveying, whilst Lan Ting seems almost worried to get too close to her co-star in case she upsets his adoring teenage fan base. Fortunately, seeing as the film is a cross between Indiana Jones and The Mummy, at least the viewer will be rewarded with tremendous action and adventure, right? Well, not quite. Whilst the CGI is easy on the eye, obvious wire work ruins the few fight scenes we are forced to endure. Chou’s performance suffers heavily with this, the punches he throws are tamer than those witnessed on a school playground - Bruce Lee has nothing to fear whatsoever. Admittedly, the duel between Qiaofei and a masked Dao Dao is briefly entertaining, but Chu’s decision to have a young boy play guitar during it is simply baffling.
Considering its running time, there are surprisingly few action scenes. The Sandstorm Legion offer some menace, but they also provide the film with its first of many illogicalities: can horses really outrun a car and a motorcycle? The finale, located in the lost tomb, finally raises some interest, involving a zombie and some white-haired ghosts, but it suffers from similar flaws - the scenes just aren’t long enough and lack any kind of tension. All too often characters are introduced to offer brief conflict; the Eagle of the Desert is much talked about during the opening scenes, but the duel between him and Qiaofei is lost in a sandstorm of sentimentality.
Lan Ting’s character infuriates simply because the death of her father has little impact on her persona. She basically grieves for two minutes, accepts it and moves on. Even when they are confronted by his apparent murderer, more of a mummy than a man, she’s primarily concerned about hitting the deadline for her next novel, or whether Qiaofei still loves her after all these years. As for the murderous mummy, another villain popping up to satisfy the audiences need for Chou to play tough, the Andrex puppy would probably offer more resistance.
Director Yen-ping Chu never commits to a particular tone, somehow managing to steal the worst parts from films of similar ilk, moulding them into a bland, pointless experience. The amount of money spent to achieve this is staggeringly obvious - some of the visuals are a feast for the eyes - but while he handles the visual aspect of the film with style, wire work aside, he is rather careless with the amount of annoying, and frustratingly redundant performances – Pork Rib (Eric Tsang) is supposedly the clown of the piece, but he’s so over the top it hurts, and others drift in and out offering very little to a plot lacking in mystery, suspense or drama.
Playing tribute to Indiana Jones and The Mummy, The Treasure Hunter manages to plunder all of the worst bits from both to create a mess of a movie. Devoid of originality, plot and action, only die-hard Jay Chou fans will find anything here worth to treasure. DW
Film: Amelie
Release date: 15th April 2002
Certificate: 15
Running time: 116 mins
Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Starring: Audrey Tautou, Dominique Pinon,
Genre: Comedy/Romance
Studio: Momentum
Format: DVD
Country: France
Rejected by the Cannes Film Festival for being “uninteresting,” but welcomed by the hearts of the French and Francophile alike, Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amelie is a rare exception to the rulebook of foreign cinema. Despite the original setback, the whimsical story of a lonely Parisian waitress has gone on to be nominated for five academy awards and won the Cesar for Best Film.
A departure from Jeunet’s cannibalistic black comedy Delicatessen, Amelie details the life of shy waitress, Amelie Poulain (Tautou), who, rather than drunkenly gallivanting about town every weekend like most girls her age, prefers a simpler existence filled with simple pleasures, such as skimming stones, immersing her hands into sacks of grain and cracking the crust of her crème brulee.
In shock from the death of Princess Diana, Amelie inadvertently discovers a childhood box of treasures belonging to her apartment’s previous tenant and attempts to return it to the original owner. Glowing from her good deed of the day, she is inspired to carry out unselfish acts for family, friends and even strangers. These include the exploits of a garden gnome to awaken her father’s inner globetrotter, seeing for the blind, and an act of revenge towards the local fruit seller causing him to literally go bananas.
Isolated from a young age due to a wrongly diagnosed heart defect, Amelie feels comfortable within her sheltered life yet due to the superhuman responsibility undertaken, she begins to desire the love and friendship of another. However, unbeknownst to Amelie, as she watches the world from the outside looking in, a kindred spirit is observing her actions. Known as ‘the glass man’ due to his brittle bones, Amelie befriends the wise and short fused Mr Dufayel who has painted Renoir’s famous work ‘Le Déjeuner Des Canotiers’ on multiple occasions, yet is never satisfied with the end result. Through his dedication to painting the image perfectly and their own philosophical discussions about the lives of it’s inhabitants, Amelie begins to reassess her life, and gain the courage to speak to quirky photo booth rejects collector, Nino…
With his previous outings containing darker elements, Jeunet’s Amelie is a refreshing take on love, life and friendship, leaving the film to be difficult to label; an aspect that probably contributed to the reasons it wasn’t allowed to enter the Cannes Film Festival. However, this is exactly what makes the film charming and endearing without the sugar coating often added to plots containing elements of romance.
Whilst, to some, the lead character may seem perfect on paper, the combination of Jeunet’s direction and Tautou’s performance provides an honest portrayal of an introvert with the character’s subtle cracks visible to the audience. Audrey Tautou’s quietly moving performance transforms Amelie into someone who is relatable to audiences despite the great lengths she goes to commit acts of kindness for others.
Narrated by the haunting piano of Yann Tierson, the lead character’s loneliness is felt even when surrounded by large groups of people, whereas in contrast, the happier aspects of the soundtrack are what some may perceive as francophone music adhering almost to a stereotype.
Jeunet’s vision of Amelie’s world is dominated by the colours green and red that, although at first puzzling, creates a unique trademark aesthetic that has since been imitated, most famously by the TV series Pushing Daisies. Not that this is a negative aspect of the film - in fact, the effect is quite the opposite, and separates Amelie’s home from the trite tourist hubbub so often associated and portrayed in Parisian set films.
Whilst being quietly and at times daringly comic, Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amelie is a film of poignancy, wit and intelligence, yet still keeps a certain amount of simplicity in tact without seeming too pretentious. A film that will have you re-evaluating your own life and relationships, Amelie will be with you long after the end credits have rolled. SR
Film: My Name Is Khan
Release date: 28th June 2010
Certificate: 12
Running time: 161 mins
Director: Karan Johar
Starring: Shahrukh Khan, Kajol Devgan, Christopher Duncan, Tanay Chhecla
Genre: Drama/Romance/Bollywood
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Format: DVD
Country: India
Indian super-star Sharukh Khan takes the lead in this sprawling American/Indian epic, chronicling the effects of Bush’s “war-on-terror’” on the Islamic community.
My Name is Khan follows the life of Rizwan Khan, a young man who suffers from Asperger’s Syndrome.
After the death of his mother, Khan moves from India to America and is given a job selling cosmetics to hair-saloons. It is here that he meets the love of his life Mandira, played by the beautiful Kajol.
Soon Khan and Mandira are living an idyllic married life. However, this serenity is short-lived as Mandira’s child from another marriage is brutally beaten to death by a group of blood-thirsty youths. Mandira is driven to a mission of justice and, with the understanding that, post 9-11, it is Khan’s Islamic beliefs that got their son killed, throws Khan out onto the street.
With this, Khan begins an epic journey across America to meet George Bush with his message “My name is Khan and I am not a terrorist.”
Not a single scene in this film goes by where Shibani Bathija’s script does not know exactly what it is trying to express. Post 9-11, the Islamic community have been persecuted, and unfairly blamed by a domineering culture in desperate need of a scapegoat. In My Name Is Khan, we have a film that is brave enough to step up and defend the persecuted minority, which is something to admire. Sadly, the film is burdened by its own self-importance, and forsakes intelligent discussion for shameless emotional blackmail. Shibani Bathija’s script makes no attempt to penetrate further than the surface, and reduces this morally complex issue to the level of preachy rhetoric, lazy slogans and vacant, near mechanical cliché.
My Name Is Khan has a disturbing and offensive reliance on moral dualism and simplistic caricature. White America is portrayed as a seething mass of ignorance and stupidity. A populous so idiotic that even the mention of the word ‘terrorist’ is enough to incite a full-blown riot. In more than one scene, the American people somehow manage to take time out of their busy schedule of yanking Burkas, and assaulting young children, to become a blood-thirsty Frankenstein-esque angry mob. Which would be fine if taken in the context of satire or comedic social commentary; but here it is nothing more than faulty and overly simplistic representation.
With the character Mama Jenny, the film stoops to new lows creating a creature so steeped in stereotype that she resembles a cartoon character more than an actual human being. A jive-talking, over-weight, gospel singing nightmare. Perhaps more bafflingly given the film’s main narrative arc, the portrayal of Muslims who aren’t the lovable and comfortingly impotent protagonist are either ashamed of their faith or actually the Jihad wielding fanatics of so much Murdoch fantasy. For a film supposedly about tolerance, it is, at times, outrageously racist.
Karan Johar’s direction relies on a certain brand of Bollywood emotionalism to try and carry his audience through the long running time. At times, it stylistically resembles the works of Milos Forman in its opulent colour, massive scale and character-based humanitarianism. But Karan Johar is playing with fire here, and in light of its subject matter, this cheesy and over-romanticised version of current affairs appears bad-taste, even dangerous.
But most of the anticipation for this film was because of Shahrukh Khan. A huge star in India, many were betting that this would be his breakthrough performance, and for the most part he does create a very likeable, and convincing main character. But they are times where his performance becomes mocking, both he and the film don’t seem to mind occasionally playing the main character’s Aspergers Syndrome for laughs. Ultimately, even if his portrayal was the thing of Oscar winners, it would still be surrounded by a glossy, patronising and offensive melodrama, and Shahrukh’s undeniable talent does little to change this.
An exploitative exercise in sentimentalism that reduces complex issues to the level of Hollywood weepy. AC
