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Film: World Without Sun
Year of production: 1964
UK Release date: 23rd May 2011
Distributor: Go Entertain
Certificate: E
Running time: 93 mins
Director: Jacques-Yves Cousteau
Genre: Documentary
Format: DVD
Country of Production: France/Italy/USA
Language: French (English dub)
Review by: James Garner
Jacques Cousteau is widely regarded as one of the pioneers of marine conservation, and his documentaries introduced millions of people across the globe to the wonders of aquatic life. World Without Sun proved to a be a huge hit following its release in 1964; fascinating audiences with its footage of seven oceanauts going about their daily lives in an undersea station and exploring the hidden depths of the Red Sea off the coast of Sudan.
Cousteau established his underwater base, called Continental Shelf Station Two, in order to further his studies of marine life and to see how men adapted to life on the ocean floor. He and his fellow oceanauts spent one month living in the structure, situated 10 metres beneath the surface.
Apart from the five-roomed main base, there was also an underwater hangar that housed a flying saucer-shaped yellow submarine, and a small ‘deep cabin’ in which two oceanauts lived in cramped confines at a depth of 30 metres for one week at a time. The entire operation was supported from above by a team based on Cousteau’s ship, the Calypso, but the sense of isolation is palpable, especially in the ‘deep cabin’, where there was barely any space to move around in, and the helium-rich air the men breathed caused them to sound like chipmunks.
The oceanauts encountered all manner of strange and beautiful sea creatures when they were diving in the surrounding waters and capturing sea life to study, but perhaps the most interesting part of World Without Sun is watching the men trying to establish a daily routine in the main base; drinking, eating, smoking, listening to music and playing with their pet parrot…
The machinery involved may look a little dated now, but it has a retro science fiction-esque charm made all the more absorbing by the fact that what we’re seeing is real. That said, at the time of its release, there were accusations from certain quarters that Cousteau had faked some of the footage, allegations that he vigourously denied.
Near the end of World Without Sun, we see the two-man submarine travelling to a depth of 300 metres and discovering an undersea cavern with a pocket of air. A camera outside the craft shows the hatch being opened, and an oceanaut inspecting the cavern without the aid of any breathing apparatus. Real, faked or partially staged, it’s an intriguing sequence that sparked debate among oceanographic experts at the time, some claiming that such a cavern with an air pocket is an impossibility.
What is clear, though, is that Cousteau was something of a showman, and was highly skilled at making complex scientific data accessible and easily comprehensible to ordinary viewers with limited knowledge of oceanography and marine life. Whether you think he faked footage in World Without Sun or not, it’s undeniable that Cousteau was a crucial figure in heightening awareness of marine life and the need for stronger conservation measures. That he did so with such style and gentle humour makes him even more effective and likeable.
In one scene that sums up Cousteau’s playful spirit very well, we see oceanauts threatening scallops with starfish, their natural predators, causing the scallops to gallop frenziedly across the ocean floor. It’s a little cruel, and probably isn’t the kind of interference that would be tolerated by 21st century marine biologists, but it is quite amusing nonetheless.
Wes Anderson’s 2004 comedy-drama The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou was inspired by his boyhood fascination with Cousteau, and the DVD and Blu-ray release of this mid-60s classic will hopefully encourage a new generation of viewers to acquaint themselves with the innovative work of the explorer, ecologist and filmmaker who died in 1997.
Apart from co-developing the aqua-lung, Cousteau pioneered filmmaking techniques that allowed him and his crew to capture life beneath the waves in incredible detail. In spite of being almost fifty years old, World Without Sun still looks spectacular, and still has the power to immerse viewers in a world increasingly under threat.
World Without Sun was the second Cousteau film to win an Oscar for best documentary feature, following the earlier success of The Silent World in 1956, and has stood the test of time remarkably well. Fascinating and compelling, it brings the mysteries of the deep into your living room. JG
Film: As Far As My Feet Will Carry Me
Year of production: 2001
UK Release date: 6th June 2011
Distributor: Second Sight
Certificate: 12
Running time: 158 mins
Director: Hardy Martins
Starring: Bernhard Bettermann, Iris Böhm, Anatoliy Kotenyov, Michael Mendl, Irina Pantaeva
Genre: Drama/War
Format: DVD
Country of Production: Germany
Language: German/Russian
Review by: James Garner
Prisoner of war films have been capturing the imagination of viewers since the 1920s, and while most of them follow the same escape-from-peril formula, As Far As My Feet Will carry me is unusual in that it tells the story of a German World War II soldier who escapes from a Soviet labour camp. Based on a 1955 novel by Josef Martin Bauer that was adapted into a 1959 German TV miniseries, director Hardy Martins’s 2001 drama doesn’t try to be an exercise in revisionist history, but it does succeed in offering an alternative to the stereotypical depictions of German soldiers as unthinking automatons.
As Far As My Feet Will Carry Me begins with soldier Clemens Forell (an alias of Cornelius Rost, who chose to keep his real name secret fearing KGB reprisals) saying goodbye to his wife and young daughter as he is sent off to war. Before we know it, he is captured by Soviet forces and sentenced to twenty-five years of hard labour in a Siberian lead mine.
Conditions in the camp are brutal, and Forell (Bernhard Bettermann) wastes no time in plotting an escape, but after his first attempt he is quickly recaptured and severely beaten by his fellow prisoners. Eventually, some four years later, he escapes again with the help of the terminally ill camp doctor, and so begins an epic, almost 7,000 mile journey.
Forell’s long escape is fraught with danger at every turn, and he is chased all the way by the camp leader, Lieutenant Kamenev, but while he feels he cannot trust anybody, he receives varying degrees of help from several sources. First, he hooks up with two gold prospectors, Anastas and Seymon, but he is soon on his own again after Seymon murders Anastas and pushes Forell down a slope, paranoid that his gold will be stolen. Next, Forell is rescued from wolves by nomadic Chukchi herders, one of whom, Irina, nurses him back to health falls in love with him. Forced to leave when it becomes apparent that Soviet forces are closing in on him, Forell then sets out on an arduous journey to central Asia, where he is helped by a Jewish man to cross the border into Iran.
In Iran, he is arrested on suspicion of being a Soviet spy, and it looks as though his escape has come to an end in the cruellest of ways, just as he is on the verge of being reunited with his family...
Filmed on location in Germany, Belarus and Uzbekistan, As Far As My Feet Will Carry Me has an epic sweep that is visually powerful and beautiful to watch, but in terms of the narrative, there are elements of the film that feel overly contrived and implausible. Forell’s brief romance with Irina, for example, borders on the absurd as a result of one particular scene in a tent that could almost be a parody of Dances With Wolves. The slush of the natural environment is one thing, but Martins seems to have confused that with the kind of slushy sentimentality that you’d expect from a Kevin Costner vanity project. Forell even develops a close bond with a husky that is later shot when trying to protect him, but, fortunately, this is not Dances With Huskies, and Martins does not milk the relationship between man and beast. Not too much that is.
Sentimentality is one thing, but a bigger problem is the constant pursuit of Forell by Kamenev. The fact that Forell’s stoic pursuer spends so long and travels so far in his attempts to recapture him is difficult to believe, and at times borders on the preposterous. Kamenev’s character is not particularly well developed, and he is played with a one-dimensional solemnity by Anatoliy Kotenyov, so there is little evidence of why he is so obsessed with Forell. Similarly, the idea that Kamenev is permitted by his superiors to leave his post for such great lengths of time to chase Forell is implausible.
Perhaps Martins is making concessions to Hollywood-style melodrama in an attempt to reach as wide an audience as possible, but he is on much more solid ground when he avoids the temptation to overplay his hand. The relationship between Forell and Dr Stauffer (Michael Mendl), the camp doctor who helps him escape, is far more convincing. The two men barely know each other, but as Stauffer is terminally ill, he takes the decision not to waste the provisions he has carefully hidden away and urges Forell to make the escape he knows he cannot endure, asking Forell to pass on a message to his wife if he succeeds.
In spite of its flaws, and a musical soundtrack that is sometimes annoyingly overwrought, As Far As My Feet Will Carry Me is a highly entertaining film that succeeds more often than it fails. Bettermann is thoroughly convincing as Forell, and his understated performance goes a long way in ensuring that the film’s more melodramatic tendencies do not derail it.
While As Far As My Feet Will Carry may differ from the majority of prisoner of war films in telling the story of a German soldier’s escape, in most other respects, it is a conventional POW escape drama; full of dramatic twists, heightened emotion and epic adventure. Overall, it’s an entertaining, though not particularly convincing account of one man’s great escape. JG
Film: Wushu
Year of production: 2008
Release date: 18th April 2011
Studio: MVM
Certificate: 12
Running time: 101 mins
Director: Antony Szeto
Starring: Sammo Hung, Wei Dong, Wu Dazhou, Lie Xin, Shi Yao
Genre: Action/Adventure/Drama/Family/Martial Arts
Format: DVD
Country: Hong Kong
Language: Mandarin
Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung are back together (although only Sammo appears on screen with Jackie taking on the role of executive producer) for this 2008 action film aimed squarely at the younger generation, but will their combined efforts elevate the film to the dizzying heights reached with their previous collaborations as part of the Three Dragons?
The portly, yet oddly sprightly Mr Li (Sammo Hung) is a father to two boys and a martial arts teacher who is determined to honour his late wife’s memory by bringing up his sons in a manner she would approve of. At the Wushu school of martial arts he heads up, his two young sons Yi and Er quickly make friends with fellow classmates Yauwu, Zhang and Fong (the only girl of the group) and form the Jing Wu Men.
The Jing Wu Men grow up together, and each one of them becomes an expert in a chosen martial arts discipline by the time they reach their teenage years. Soon, they are joined by Xiao Yi, a pretty girl and fellow martial artist who Zhang takes a shine to, and doesn’t particularly mind being kicked in the face by during an arranged ‘duel’. At the same time, a gang led by Le, a wayward former pupil of the Wushu school, begins kidnapping young children, and the Jing Wu Men set out to save the day.
Their efforts to defeat the gang intensify when two young twins from the school are kidnapped along with one of the Jing Wu Men and Nan, another former pupil who works as a film stuntman and fight choreographer. Mr Li, his son Yi and Yauwu are called into action to rescue the kidnap victims, but the evil Le proves to be a remarkably tough adversary. At least until he starts fighting dirty, and Mr Li starts throwing his weight around...
If you’re looking for a martial arts film with plenty of historical detail and narrative depth, Wushu is not the film to go for, but if flashy fun, cheesy music and gawky teenage romance are what you’re after, look no further. The kids start out cute and talented, and pretty much stay that way as teenagers. They have their problems, but Mr Li and his beautiful, ever supportive sidekick Miss Zhang are always on hand to help.
It would be easy to pick fault with Wushu, but it’s better just to enjoy the flaws as amusing oddities rather than labour over them. Early in the film, for example, the pint-sized Jing Wu Men basically steal, or ‘rescue’, a puppy from an old man they surmise might want to eat it, then pretty much abandon the puppy when it leads them to what will become their secret hideaway. Well, maybe they don’t abandon the puppy after all; it is possible that they hungrily devour it themselves off-camera, but we’re probably not meant to worry about that.
The main appeal of Wushu is the expertly filmed martial arts action. With the aid of split screens, slow motion and upbeat, relentlessly sugary music, the action sequences give the film an energetic, hyper-kinetic wow factor that kids and not-too-demanding martial arts fans will love. The main story and simple sub-plots do just enough to hold it all together, and the young cast are all perfectly likeable as the Jing Wu Men. It doesn’t always go smoothly for them, and they do have the odd setback to deal with, so you’re not left with the feeling of wanting to throttle them (much), but all ends well, as you would expect.
There is very little blood, though Nan very nearly does get his skull cracked open ‘like an egg’ with a sledgehammer by one of Le’s henchmen, and Mr Li gets a bloody lip in the climactic fight with Le. It could have been a lot worse for Mr Li, though, if Le had just been a bit quicker with that saw... And if you’re not in the mood for reading subtitles, there’s also a dubbed version with American accents.
Martial arts purists will probably turn their noses up at Wushu, and it’s certainly ripe for parody, but as a harmless bit of fun, it makes for entertaining enough viewing. But exactly what did happen to that cute little puppy?
Wushu won’t set the world of martial arts films alight, but it’s undemanding, well crafted fun, and there are worse things for kids to emulate than the irrepressible Jing Wu Men. JG
Film: Miral
Year of production: 2010
Release date: 4th April 2011
Studio: Pathe!
Certificate: 15
Running time: 108 mins
Director: Julian Schnabel
Starring: Freida Pinto, Hiam Abbass, Asma Al Shiukhy, Neemeh Khalil, Jamil Khoury
Genre: Drama
Format: DVD
Country of production: France/Israel/Italy/India
Language: English
The plight of the Palestinian people and their ongoing struggle for recognition and statehood forms the backdrop of Miral, US artist and director Julian Schnabel’s 2010 biographical drama, but the film is really about the early life and political awakening of its titular subject, Palestinian author and journalist Miral Shahin. Based on a semi-autobiographical novel by Schnabel’s partner Rula Jebreal, who also wrote the film’s screenplay, Miral has caused a fair degree of controversy for the way it portrays the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but it is dedicated “to everybody on both sides who believes peace is still possible.”
Where most biopics focus almost exclusively on the lives of the subjects whose stories they seek to tell, Miral is unusual in the way it interweaves stories of people who had a profound impact on the life of its central subject. Miral Shahin (basically a pseudonym for Rula Jebreal) was born in 1973, but the film goes as far back as 1947, just before the formation of the Israeli state, in order to establish context and expose viewers to people who are vital to Miral’s life story.
The film opens in 1994, as two women carefully prepare the body of an old woman for a funeral, praying in Arabic as they do so. As we will later discover, the body is that of Hind Husseini, a Palestinian woman who set up the Dar El Tifl children’s home in 1948. Over the years, the home provided refuge and education to thousands of Palestinian children, one of whom was Miral.
Also central to Miral’s story are Nadia, her deeply troubled mother, and Fatima, a former nurse who helps Nadia when the two women are thrown together in prison. Nadia is imprisoned for six months after assaulting a Jewish woman on a bus, while Fatima received three life sentences for planting a bomb that doesn’t go off in a cinema. After Nadia is released from prison, she gets married to Jamal, Fatima’s brother, and has Miral, but when her daughter is still a young child she kills herself, wracked by guilt over her drinking and adulterous affairs.
After her mother’s death, Miral is taken by her father Jamal to Dar El Tifl, where she is placed in the care of Hind. Jamal is a deeply loving man who continues to visit Miral at weekends, but he is determined that she will not end up like Nadia or Fatima. By 1987, however, the Palestinian uprising is in full flow, and Miral becomes increasingly politicised. Eventually, after being caught with revolutionary literature, she is detained, interrogated and tortured by Israeli authorities. Soon after, in 1993, the Oslo agreement, in which the Israeli government agrees to the creation of a Palestinian state, is signed, and Miral leaves her homeland to study in Italy…
Miral isn’t quite in the same league as The Diving Bell And The Butterfly, Schnabel’s powerfully intense 2007 biopic about the French journalist and author Jean-Dominique Bauby, but it’s certainly not the one-sided failure that some critics have described it as. Schnabel’s mother was involved in the Zionist movement in the US, and his girlfriend Jebreal has clearly given him insight into the Palestinian struggle, so he is arguably well placed to understand both sides of the conflict.
Inevitably, perhaps, given the true life story that Miral is based on, it’s a film that will be seen by some as a simplistic account of an ongoing, highly complex conflict. The film makes it clear that the 1993 Oslo agreement is yet to be honoured by the Israelis, and the archival footage used in Miral doesn’t present a favourable view of their occupation of Palestinian territories, but Schnabel also attempts to show that not all Israelis are the coldly indifferent, right-wing zealots they are sometimes painted as.
Towards the end of the film, Miral befriends Lisa, the Jewish girlfriend of her cousin Samir, and it dawns on her that many younger Israelis do not share the older Israeli generation’s contempt for Palestinians. In one pivotal scene, Lisa dismisses her father, an Israeli army officer, by joking that he thinks all Palestinians are terrorists. In another important scene, Schnabel deploys subtle humour to show how Miral’s aunt attempts to make Lisa feel uncomfortable by exaggerating her Arabic identity when Samir brings Lisa home for a meal.
Miral is also full of Schnabel’s trademark visual panache, and he makes highly effective use of close-ups and saturated colours that heighten the atmosphere. Miral does have its flaws, though; some of the performances are a little wooden, and star turns by Willem Dafoe and Vanessa Redgrave are unnecessary distractions. Redgrave barely features, but Dafoe pops up a couple of times as Edward Smith, an American man who first meets Hind in 1947 and then reappears in 1967 as a US colonel working for the UN to briefly help Hind, and gaze admiringly at her. There’s no doubting Dafoe’s acting ability, but his character seems tacked on in a slightly cloying attempt to show that Americans are not always the bogeymen in the Middle East.
Miral is unlikely to be remembered as one of Schnabel’s best films, but it’s a brave and heartfelt attempt to tell the story of an inspirational Palestinian woman and the people who had an influence on who she became. JG
Film: Shock Labyrinth 3D
Release date: 31st January 2011
Certificate: 15
Running time: 93 mins
Director: Takashi Shimizu
Starring: Yûya Yagira, Ai Maeda, Suzuki Matsuo, Ryo Katsuji, Shôichirô Masumoto
Genre: Horror/Thriller
Studio: Chelsea
Format: DVD
Country: Japan
Best known for his Ju-on/The Grudge series, Japanese director Takashi Shimizu returns with Shock Labyrinth 3D, a 2009 supernatural horror in which a group of teenagers find themselves unwittingly revisiting an amusement park’s hospital-themed house of horrors where one of their friends disappeared in mysterious circumstances ten years earlier. The film is released as a two disc special edition, with a 3D version (two pairs of old school 3D glasses provided) on one disc and a standard 2D version on the other.
When Mikoto (Ryo Katsuji) returns to his hometown in the company of old friend Ken (Yuya Yagira), he is in for an unexpected, not altogether pleasant surprise. Arriving at the home of their blind friend Rin (Ai Maeda), Mikoto and Ken are greeted by the strange presence of a disturbed young woman who claims to be Yuki (Misako Renbutso), a former friend who disappeared many years earlier after the group broke into an amusement park’s house of horrors.
Unsure of what to make of Yuki’s apparent reappearance and strange behaviour, Mikoto, Ken and Rin decide to take her back to her old home, but once there, Yuki falls down a flight of stairs and has to be rushed to hospital. Together with Yuki’s younger sister Miyu (Erina Mizuno), the friends drive Yuki to a hospital, but find themselves at a place where their health and safety is placed under serious threat; a place where rubbish food and surly nurses are the furthest things from their minds.
At the hospital, Yuki soon disappears again, and as the hapless friends wander through the eerily deserted building, they begin to realise that they have somehow been lured back to the hospital of horrors they had all tried to forget…
Largely filmed on location at a haunted hospital attraction in Japan’s Fuji-Q High Land amusement park, Shock Labyrinth is a strangely unsatisfying beast; a horror without any real scares, but with plenty of atmosphere and a smattering of vaguely surreal sights to prevent it from being a complete disaster.
The plot is a bit of a mess, to put it mildly; a blur of flashbacks and muddled narrative strands that never really add up to anything substantial. There are suggestions that past and present are intertwined, and that actions in the present are somehow inextricably linked with what happened in the past, but this potentially intriguing plot device is never really explored with any conviction. It’s one thing to keep viewers guessing, but in Shock Labyrinth, there is a sense that ideas have been floated, but not followed through on.
In the final few minutes, there is an attempted explanation of events that have unfolded and what caused them, but it seems tacked on and not particularly convincing. The mannered, over-expressive acting doesn’t help matters either, although in the case of Misako Renbutso’s vengeful Yuki, it is at least in keeping with her character, thinly sketched as it is.
As an audiovisual spectacle, Shock Labyrinth is more successful, though the 3D version is virtually unwatchable, unless you enjoy giving yourself migraines. Best stick to the 2D version, where gently falling feathers and a hovering bunny backpack floating through space, and walls, make for visually engaging, rather than eye-wateringly irritating viewing.
Director Shimizu also makes fairly effective use of the film’s setting; a less than hospitable hospital populated by creepy mannequins, with plenty of long, dimly lit corridors and stairwells for the cast to trudge nervously through. In the absence of a coherent plot or dialogue that rises above the mundane, however, the visuals are left to do all the work.
Vengeance is a powerful theme in the right hands, but Shimizu has failed to deliver with Shock Labyrinth. Attempts have been made to show why Yuki has a right to be unhappy with her friends and younger sister, but most of the punishments seem to be ridiculously out of proportion with the crimes. Perhaps that wouldn’t matter so much if the film was more coherently structured, or if there was some indication of Yuki gaining some sense of closure, but Shock Labyrinth fails on both counts.
Shimizu seems to be aiming for a younger, teenage audience with Shock Labyrinth, so the absence of gore is excusable, but even so a horror has to have more tension than is evident here to succeed. In short, there are no real shocks, and it’s more of a dead end than a labyrinth.
Takashi Shimizu fans may well be disappointed by Shock Labyrinth, and even the impressive cinematography is let down by a 3D version that will have most viewers lunging dizzily for the eject button. JG
Film: Dawn Of Evil – Rise Of The Reich
Release date: 28th February 2011
Certificate: 18
Running time: 106 mins
Director: Urs Odermatt
Starring: Tom Schilling, Gotz George, Wolf Bachofner, Simon Schwarz, Anna Unterberger
Genre: Biography/Drama/History
Studio: Revolver
Format: DVD
Country: Austria/Germany/Switzerland
The life of Adolf Hitler is endlessly fascinating, and director Urs Odermatt’s 2009 historical drama about Hitler’s formative years in Vienna is one of many films to focus on the Nazi dictator. In recent years, we have seen the final days of Hitler in director Oliver Hirschbiegel’s intense 2004 drama Downfall, but Dawn Of Evil - Rise Of The Reich looks at a very different Hitler; an aspiring young artist whose struggle for recognition leaves him frustrated and dangerously unhinged.
In Vienna, Hitler (Tom Schilling, who played a minor role in The Baader Meinhoff Complex) moves into a dilapidated boarding house, where he is befriended by an old Jewish man, Schlomo Herzl (Gotz George), who ekes out a living selling bibles on the streets. Though insecure in some ways, the young Hitler has an arrogant self-regard when it comes to his command of spoken language and his more questionable artistic skills.
Rejected by the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, and struggling to support himself, Hitler falls in with a group of anti-Semitic bigots, and sets about winning over a nubile young servant girl called Gretchen (Anna Unterberger), who is fond of standing naked at her window platting her hair when she is not having sex with the elderly Schlomo.
After much hand-wringing, Hitler eventually abandons his artistic ambitions and turns his attention to politics, a pursuit he clearly has more talent for…
Hitler has been portrayed in many films since the end of World War 2, but director Urs Odermatt’s 2009 historical drama about Hitler’s formative years in Vienna is unlikely to be remembered as one of the best films about the Nazi dictator, if at all. It may be a little unfair to compare Dawn Of Evil - Rise of The Reich with Downfall, director Oliver Hirschbiegel’s 2004 drama about Hitler’s final days, but where Downfall was mesmerising and intense, Urs Odermatt’s film is tedious and laboured.
The best thing to be said about Dawn Of Evil - Rise Of The Reich is that it is a well acted and well shot film. In just about every other respect, it is a resounding failure. Perhaps the film’s biggest flaw is its screenplay; an ungainly mix of drama that is lacking in dramatic tension or believable character development, and moments of poorly conceived comedy that fall horribly flat. It’s not that Hitler and comedy can’t mix, as the likes of Mel Brooks and Spike Milligan have shown, but in the context of Dawn Of Evil - Rise Of The Reich, the comedy is just plain bad. In one mystifyingly preposterous, incompetently shot scene, a distraught Hitler tries to hang himself from a bridge but ends up swinging from the rope, the noose caught under his armpits. It’s absurd, certainly, but in a way that makes you wonder what on earth the filmmakers were thinking, not in a way that anybody over 5 years of age will find amusing.
To be fair, there is a certain dry humour to the scene in which Hitler shows Schlomo his paltry art works, enthusing over his dubious talent and listing titles that frequently make mention of ‘twilight’, when so such effect is visible, but it comes across as a cheap gag given what we know about Hitler’s lack of artistic talent and thwarted ambitions. There are times when the dialogue is so excruciatingly overwrought that it’s unclear whether Odermatt is aiming for an absurd parody of serious biopics, and failing, or just being pretentious.
Hitler’s transformation from delusional struggling artist to spittle-flecked fascist is both tediously drawn out and remarkably unconvincing. Dawn Of Evil - Rise Of The Reich seems to want us to believe that drinking beer with a raw meat-eating paedophile and a couple of sneering thugs is enough of a catalyst to set in motion the madness of a man who will turn to mass genocide.
The truly bizarre love triangle involving Hitler, Schlomo and Gretchen is equally unconvincing. Gretchen is initially presented as an independent free spirit who for some reason is drawn to the withered old Schlomo, ostensibly because he is such a good storyteller, though the film offers absolutely no evidence of this, other than his claims that he is writing a book. Hitler, once his curiosity about ‘intercoursing’ and fellatio has been sparked, then moves in to wrest her away from Schlomo, but is harshly rebuffed. Except, then he isn’t, and very soon Gretchen is remodelled as some kind of proto-Nazi ice maiden. Has Hitler given her an early form of Rohypnol? Has she been hypnotised by his vapid chatter about beauty and art? Who knows, but it’s just one of many questions that is left hanging in the air in this odd, mystifyingly mixed up film.
Dawn Of Evil - Rise Of The Reich is a missed opportunity to tell the story of Hitler’s early years. Where it could have offered insight, it comes across like an unintentionally surreal soap opera about a failed artist, as filmed by a failed director. JG
Film: The Hunter
Release date: 28th February 2011
Certificate: 15
Running time: 92 mins
Director: Rafi Pitts
Starring: Rafi Pitts, Mitra Hajjar, All Nicksaulat, Hassan Ghalenoi
Genre: Drama/Thriller
Studio: Artificial Eye
Format: DVD
Country: Iran/Germany
Since making his first feature film, 1997’s Season Five, London-trained Iranian director Rafi Pitts has gradually established a reputation as a central figure in the new wave of Iranian cinema. His latest film, 2010’s The Hunter, is a brooding, intense drama about a Tehran man whose life is turned upside down following the deaths of his wife and daughter in a shoot-out between police and insurgents.
Recently released from prison for an unspecified crime, Ali (played by Pitts himself) is pleased to be reunited with his wife Sara and young daughter Saba, but frustrated that the only job he can find is as a factory night watchman. His working hours mean that he doesn’t get to see his family much, and his only real pleasure other than the time he gets to spend with his wife and daughter is hunting in a forest on the outskirts of the city.
One day Ali comes home to his flat to find his wife and daughter missing, and after waiting in vain for their return, he decides to go the police. Hours later, after being treated with indifference bordering on disdain, he is finally told by the police that his wife has been killed, but there is no word about his daughter.
A fruitless search for Saba ends when her body is finally discovered and Ali is called in to identify her corpse at the morgue, but he seems incapable of confronting the reality of their deaths and allowing his grief to surface. He visits his parents but acts as though everything is as normal and says nothing of the deaths of Sara and Saba. Soon after, he commits a shocking crime that forces him to go on the run, with two very different policemen in pursuit…
On the surface, The Hunter has the appearance of two different films joined together in a slightly unwieldy fashion: the first, a tragic drama set mainly in a dispiriting urban Tehran leading up to elections; and the second, a rural chase thriller set in the secluded woodlands that Ali once hunted in. There have been plenty of glib descriptions of The Hunter as a film in which the hunter becomes the hunted, or in which the line between hunter and hunted becomes blurred, but that doesn’t do justice to a film that is more than just sum of these two parts.
The two parts of The Hunter may jar, but how can they not? Ali is, to put it mildly, an emotionally reserved man who does not know how to deal with the fact that the two people he loved most in life have been torn away from him, not temporarily by imprisonment or the demands of his job, but permanently through death. Ali broods over their loss, and even after committing the act that sets off the second part of the film, he shows very little emotion.
The chase scenes in the second part of the film are actually fairly brief, and refreshingly unspectacular, and once they are over, The Hunter once again becomes an intense human drama, albeit with very different protagonists, bar Ali. Some viewers will be frustrated by Ali’s lack of emotion, but it’s a major part of what makes The Hunter so intriguing. Where other characters are relatively transparent, Ali is opaque and difficult to read. Even when he snaps and turns to violence, he gives very little away, and we can only guess at what is going on in his mind. Some critics have questioned Pitts’s decision to cast himself in the lead role, but apparently this was a last minute decision that was forced on the director when his chosen lead turned up for filming in an unfit state.
Pitts’s undemonstrative performance may have divided critics, but few have questioned the work of cinematographer Mohammad Davudi, who invests Tehran with all the qualities of a bleakly alienating dystopia, dominated by muted colours and gloomy, utilitarian architecture. Davudi’s eye for detail and atmosphere is no less impressive in the latter part of the film, when the camera moves from foggy car chase to dank woodlands.
One of the most thought provoking aspects of The Hunter is one that has been overlooked by many critics: the relationship between the two policemen who arrest Ali, and the way in which Ali eventually pays a cruel price for showing more humanity than either of them. One of the policemen is an unwilling conscript from the military, the other a volatile thug who seems to have a history of taking the law into his own hands. The way this relationship plays out is unexpected, and raises uncomfortable questions about the future of Iran.
The Hunter is, in essence, the kind of film that raises more questions than it answers, and the character of Ali may strike some viewers as being too thinly sketched to properly engage with, but give it a chance and you may well be won over by its uncompromising minimalism. JG
Film: Slingshot
Release date: 28th February 2011
Certificate: 15
Running time: 86 mins
Director: Brillante Mendoza
Starring: Nathan Lopez, Coco Martin, Jacklyn Jose, Jiro Manio, Kristoffer King
Genre: Crime/Drama
Studio: Peccadillo
Format: DVD
Country: Philippines
The Philippines may not be widely known for its contributions to contemporary cinema, but Filipino director Brillante Mendoza has developed a reputation as something of a film festival favourite and prolific maverick with features such as Lola (2009), Service (2008) and Foster Child (2007). Slingshot (2007) is one of the films that has helped to cement his reputation: a hard-hitting, unrelentingly chaotic drama set in the squalid slums of Manila.
Slingshot opens as residents of one of Manila’s slum areas scramble about, desperately trying to prepare themselves for an imminent police raid. As the hand-held camera jerks about through filthy streets with open sewers and ramshackle structures that appear to be on the verge of collapse, we meet many of the characters we will learn more about during the course of the film.
Characters such as Odie, Caloy, Rex, Leo, Tess, Elmo and Rod do whatever it takes to survive - some of them struggling to hold down menial jobs to support themselves and their families while others engage in lives of petty crime. There is no real linear narrative to speak of; instead Mendoza jumps from character to character, giving us just enough time to gain an impression of who somebody is and what their circumstances are before cutting to somebody else…
The are few luxuries, and there’s not a lot to laugh about, but people do their best to get by in remarkably difficult circumstances. For many, the only means of escape is provided by sex, drugs or alcohol, but each one leads, in its own way, to further degradation and hardships.
Mendoza offers no respite as he immerses you in this overcrowded, polluted and crime-ridden world in which friends and family think nothing of turning against one another, politicians scrabble for votes leading up to a national election and many of the police are corrupt and sadistically violent. The poverty is grindingly oppressive, and when there are moments of flickering brightness they are quickly extinguished. In one instance, the happiness of a young woman who is overjoyed with a new pair of dentures she obtained from the proceeds of stolen goods is cruelly turned to despair when she loses them down an open drain.
Slingshot has the feel of a documentary shot on the fly, but the lack of editorialising means that it is up to you to interpret what you are seeing amid all the noise, squalor and chaos. Most of the cast are not professional actors, but at no point does Slingshot feel staged, and it’s almost as though the cast members are repeating things they have actually done, or are recreating situations they have already experienced.
The only contrivance is arguably the decision to shoot the film in black-and-white: Mendoza may have felt it echoed traditional black-and-white documentary photography but it undermines the naturalism of the film, and seems like an ill-judged concession to aesthetics. Some may argue that the absence of colour highlights the brutal intensity of Slingshot, or that it prevents the chaos of what unfolds on screen from becoming too overwhelming, but wouldn’t such arguments be missing the point that the film is an attempt to show the underbelly of Manila as it is, not to exaggerate or soften it?
Mendoza seems to be on firmer ground in the way he captures the claustrophobic, overcrowded nature of Manila (apparently the most densely populated city in the world) and the distinctive mix of Asian, US and Spanish cultures that is a result of the turbulent history of the Philippines.
Another strength of Slingshot is the way it exposes the jarring differences between the modernised Manila of pristine shopping malls and the decaying, labyrinthine slums that are home to the film’s main protagonists. Mendoza doesn’t dwell on or sensationalise these differences; he simply presents them as the stark reality that they are to Manila’s poor.
Unsurprisingly, there is no happy ending or sense of resolution in Slingshot, and even viewers who have a degree of faith in politics and religion will find it difficult to be seduced by the words of hope and redemption spouted by politicians at a mass public rally in the film’s final minutes. As the politicians attempt to sell themselves into power, there is a final streak of black comedy as we see a pickpocket at work in the candle-cradling crowd.
Brillante Mendoza’s Slingshot is a roller coaster ride of despair and depravity, but it also possesses a vitality and urgency that is difficult to ignore. Flawed as it may be, there are few films that match its intensity or raw drama. JG
Film: Involuntary
Release date: 28th February 2011
Certificate: 15
Running time: 98 mins
Director: Ruben Östlund
Starring: Villmar Björkman, Linnea Cart-Lamy, Leif Edlund, Sara Eriksson, Lola Ewerlund
Genre: Comedy/Drama
Studio: Trinity
Format: DVD
Country: Sweden
Sweden's official submission for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2010 Academy Awards, and an award winner at various international film festivals, Involuntary tells five parallel stories that take place in and around the suburbs of Gothenburg. Intercutting between the five different stories, director Ruben Ostlund takes an unflinching, unsentimental look at how group dynamics impact on human behaviour.
Involuntary begins as it ends, with the view from the front of a vehicle driving through city streets at night. Only at the end of the film do we realise that the view is from an ambulance transporting a man to hospital. The man is Villmar, a grandfather who earlier in the evening refused professional medical attention after he was injured by a firework that exploded in his face at a birthday party.
Very different to the stoic Villmar are Linnea and Sara, two giggly teenage girls who take pictures of themselves posing together as models and get drunk with their friends, leading to Linnea passing out and being abandoned by the side of a road. Alcohol is also an important ingredient in the story of a group of thirty-something men holidaying in the country, one of whom is sexually assaulted in a prank gone too far.
In contrast, the mood is as sober as it is sombre in the story of a teacher who feels she is being ostracised by her peers after she accuses an older male colleague of abusing a pupil, and in the tale of a middle-aged actress on a coach trip who lets a young boy take the blame after she accidentally breaks a curtain rod in the on-board toilet…
The individual stories may, on the surface, sound as though they’re lacking in dramatic tension, but the way Ostlund weaves them together gives Involuntary an intriguing, surprisingly absorbing quality. Not a lot happens, but it happens in such a way that issues of group identity and behaviour are slyly, fascinatingly dissected.
Comparisons have been made to Michael Haneke, but while Ostlund shares something of Haneke’s detached, unsentimental approach, his narratives are, for better or worse, clearer cut and more obviously resolved. The Swede has also injected Involuntary with a streak of deadpan humour that adds a touch of warmth where Haneke would probably opt for an icier, more solemn feel.
The humour in Involuntary is hardly laugh-out-loud funny, but it does raise the odd knowing smile, and serves the film’s overall theme well. The discomfort of the teacher who feels that that her colleagues are marginalising her is contrasted against her earlier attempts to teach a group of pre-schoolers that submitting to peer pressure is wrong, and on the coach trip the solitary actress has to cope with a talkative fan who pesters her incessantly.
There is also a certain wry humour in the way that Ostlund deliberately sets out to tell five separate stories that do not converge or intersect at any point. If Involuntary was a Hollywood film, the five separate stories would most likely overlap at some point, but the only link in Ostlund’s film is the way the characters in each of the five stories are affected by the groups they are a part of.
Some viewers will enjoy this approach, while others may just find it alienating. Similarly, Ostlund’s use of long takes and unusual camera angles and positions will not be to everybody’s taste. Individual scenes were apparently painstakingly rehearsed and then shot uninterrupted, with Ostlund filming as many as twenty takes of each scene before achieving what he was looking for. Maria Lundqvist is the only well known actor in the film, but the entire cast deliver exceptional, highly naturalistic performances.
The results often feel more like a documentary than a work of fiction, but Ostlund counters this by placing his camera in unusual positions: at one point at floor level so that we see only the lower limbs and feet of the characters, and in another scene facing a car door so that we watch the reflections of men talking. Ostlund also allows the camera to film when there is very little movement, and, at times, his visual approach seems closer to contemporary art photography than filmmaking.
The overall effect is a highly distinctive film that some viewers will find poignant and quietly entrancing for the same reasons that others will find it obtuse and uneventful. Like a William Eggleston photograph, Involuntary has a low-key, quotidian charm that is refreshingly lacking in melodrama and hyperbole.
Involuntary offers an absorbing and insightful look at how different individuals abandon free will in the face of peer pressure, and is filmed in such a way as to encourage viewers to use their own free will and imagination to interpret events that unfold. JG
Film: Equinox Flower
Release date: 17th January 2011
Certificate: U
Running time: 118 mins
Director: Yasujiro Ozu
Starring: Shin Saburi, Kinuyo Tanaka, Ineko Arima, Yoshiko Kuga, Keiji Sada
Genre: Comedy/Drama
Studio: BFI
Format: DVD
Country: Japan
It was only after his death in 1963 that the films of Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu began to be widely appreciated in the west, and he is now held in high esteem by the likes of Mike Leigh, Jim Jarmusch and Wim Wenders. This dual format disc containing two of Ozu’s best loved films shows how important the twin themes of family and the impermanence of life and culture was to the influential director. There Was A Father (1942) and Equinox Flower (1958) both explore shifting family dynamics to quietly powerful effect.
Ozu’s first colour film, 1958’s Equinox Flower, is probably the pick of the two films; a slyly amusing comedy starring Shin Saburi as Wataru Hirayama, an old-fashioned father and businessman who is in for a nasty surprise when he discovers that his eldest daughter has decided to marry a man he and his wife know nothing about.
Mr Hirayama (somehow it seems inappropriate, given his character, to refer to him by his first name) is a likeable but deeply paternalistic man who believes that is his task, with the support of his dutiful wife, to arrange marriages for his daughters.
Mr Hirayama is aware that Japan is changing and that the traditions he holds dear are not as important to the younger generation, but when it his own daughter challenging him he finds it difficult to adapt.
Eventually, however, and partly due to a little deviously amusing trickery on the part of a younger female relative, he begrudgingly accepts that his daughter’s will is her own.
Earlier film There Was A Father (packaged as a bonus feature) is a 1942 wartime drama about the relationship between a similarly straight-laced father, Shuhei Horikawa (Chishu Ryu), and his son Ryohei.
Shuhei is a widower and teacher who decides to quit his profession following a tragic boating accident. This change sets in motion a series of events that will separate Shuhei from his young son, with the tearful youngster carted off to boarding school.
As the years go by, and Ryohei reaches adulthood, he realises that his father made great sacrifices in order to give him the best possible education, but he still yearns to spend more time with him…
In some ways, particularly in terms of its visual style, Equinox Flower appears far ahead of its time. Ozu is known as a director who refused to pander to Hollywood conventions relating to both visual techniques and narrative structure, and Equinox Flower has a highly distinctive look that owes much to the ‘tatami shot’ that Ozu pioneered; a low shot named after the tatami mats used in Japanese homes to sit on, and beautifully composed static or near static shots that linger on the screen, highlighting the visually arresting geometry of domestic and urban spaces.
The use of colour is also important, especially the contrast between the rich, warm colours in the shots of domestic interiors and the more intense colours of commercial signs in the city. This contrast isn’t just a visual device; it draws attention to the shift from traditional to modern values that is central to the film’s story and Mr Hirayama’s dilemma.
For its time, the acting seems wonderfully understated, even in the film’s more comic moments, or when Mr Hirayama is responding with petulant anger to his daughter’s refusal to submit to his will. The humour in Equinox Flower is subtle but pointed; in one particularly enjoyable scene that redefines the notion of toilet humour. Mr Hirayama, unable to continue listening to an annoying woman’s incessant chatter about her attempts to arrange a marriage for her daughter, politely excuses himself by claiming he needs to go the toilet, then heads straight back to his office to escape her babbling.
The performances in There Was A Father are similarly understated, but in place of comedy there is an aching sense of loss, of physical distance between father and son, but also of love and connectedness. In spite of living far from one another for many years, there is a strong bond between father and son that is evident even when they are apart.
There Was A Father does show its age more than Equinox Flower, not simply because it was shot in black-and-white, but because the best print available has deteriorated over time, to the point that the sound quality is sometimes quite poor, and the film scratchy. Even so, it’s interesting to see an earlier example of Ozu’s work; one that shares the underlying thematic focus of his later work.
If you’re interested in Asian cinema of the past and want an introduction to one of Japan’s most influential and respected directors, this double bill is a great place to start. Ozu’s films are clearly rooted in the Japanese experience, but his explorations of family life have a universal appeal that transcends time and place. JG
Film: Mulan
Release date: 21st June 2010
Certificate: 15
Running time: 107 mins
Director: Wei Dong
Starring: Wei Zhao, Jaycee Chan, Rongguang Yu, Xu Jiao, Vicki Zhao
Genre: Action/Adventure/Drama/Romance
Studio: Cine Asia/Showbox
Format: DVD & Blu-ray
Country: China
Not to be confused with Disney’s 1998 animated blockbuster Mulan, director Jingle Ma’s 2009 epic offers a more sophisticated and nuanced retelling of the story based on a sixth century Chinese poem. Mulan: Legendary Warrior charts the early life and rise to power of Hua Mulan, a fearless heroine who disguises herself as a man and goes to war in place of her ailing father.
We first meet Mulan (Zhao Wei, perhaps best best known in the West for her role in Shaolin Soccer) as a young girl who causes her father a great deal of consternation by fighting with boys and generally refusing to behave as he believes a daughter should. It is clear from an early age that Mulan will not conform to what is expected of her, and when she reaches adulthood, and her ailing father is summoned to join the war against invading Rouran tribes, she takes his sword and armour and sneaks off to join the Wei army in his place.
At this point, you have to ignore the fact that Zhao Wei is one of China’s most strikingly beautiful actresses, and simply accept Mulan’s not particularly convincing attempt to disguise herself as a man. There are strict rules about no women being allowed in the army, and Mulan cannot let her guard down for a second. When she is recognised by childhood friend and fellow soldier Tiger (Jaycee Chan, son of Jackie), she has to convince him to keep her secret, but very soon she faces a far more serious threat to her true identity being revealed.
After admitting to the theft of another soldier’s pendant in order to avoid a strip search, Mulan is scheduled for execution, but when Rouran fighters launch a surprise attack, she is released by a young officer, Wentai (Chen Kun), and proves herself in battle by killing the Rouran general. Mulan and Wentai both rise quickly through the ranks of the army, and develop a special bond that is central to the latter half of the film.
As generals, Mulan and Wentai enjoy great success, but when a new, more ruthlessly ambitious Rouran leader emerges, they are tested in ways that neither could have foreseen…
On the surface, Mulan: Legendary Warrior is an epic war film, full of impressively choreographed battle scenes and military strategising, but, at its heart, it is also a well written drama in which the central characters, rather than the action sequences, are the film’s driving force. In lesser hands, the burgeoning romantic bond between Mulan and Wentai could have been overplayed, but it is to Jingle Ma and writer Zhang Ting’s credit that this is not the case in Mulan: Legendary Warrior.
There are moments when Mulan and Wentai appear to be reaching breaking point, and you half expect them to give in to their feelings and fall into each other’s arms as a soaring string section breaks out on the soundtrack, but what little physical contact there is between the two is sparingly shown and relatively understated. Even here, the idea of putting their country and their army before their own desires could have come across as bombastic, but Jingle Ma adeptly balances Mulan and Wentei’s commitment to duty with their mutual frustrations and human yearnings.
Zhao Wei is superb as Mulan, shifting convincingly from full-blooded fervour to anguished vulnerability, steely determination to forlorn resignation, making it easy to forget that she is only slightly more convincing as a man than Russell Crowe would be as Anne Frank. As Wentai, Chen Kun is inevitably overshadowed by Wei, though he more than succeeds in conveying his character’s conflicted interests, and the simmering chemistry between himself and Wei is vital to the film’s overall tone.
The relationship between Mulan and Wei may give Mulan: Legendary Warrior its backbone, but it’s a relationship that could not exist without the war between the Wei dynasty and nomadic Rouran tribes, and Ma Jingle goes to great lengths to ensure the battle scenes and the background against which the war takes place are as believable as possible. Where some directors would offer a cursory explanation for the conflict and then dive head first into a CGI-aided orgy of violence, Ma Jingle reaps the rewards of excellent cinematography that makes the most of some stunning locations and a consistently engaging narrative.
Mulan: Legendary Warrior isn’t exactly innovative, and it doesn’t really add anything new to a story that has been told many times, but it’s an expertly crafted film that fuses war and romance genres in a highly absorbing way. JG
Film: Heartbreaker
Release date: 22nd November 2010
Certificate: 15
Running time: 105 mins
Director: Pascal Chaumeil
Starring: Romain Duris, Vanessa Paradis, Julie Ferrier, François Damiens, Héléna Noguerra
Genre: Comedy/Romance
Studio: Revolver
Format: Cinema
Country: France
Most Hollywood romantic comedies manage to be about as funny as having a tooth pulled with a pair of rusty pliers and as romantic as a Valentine's Day card written by accountants, but French director Pascal Chaumeil's debut feature is a breath of fresh air: stylish, witty, and with a romantic streak that is sweetly endearing, not sickly. Heartbreaker may not rewrite the rom com rulebook, but it's certainly a cut above the norm.
Alex Lippi (Romain Duris) is a disreputable womaniser, but he’s a disreputable womaniser with a difference: along with his resourceful sister Melanie (Julie Ferrier) and unconventional brother-in-law Marc (Francois Damiens), Alex runs a business that tasks itself with getting women to split from unsuitable partners.
Alex doesn’t have sex with any of the women he charms, and he refuses to intervene if both partners are genuinely happy in their relationship, but his professional ethics don’t stop him from doing whatever else it takes to get the job done - whether it’s getting arrested or masquerading as a teary-eyed humanitarian do-gooder.
Alex, however, is about to find himself firmly out of his comfort zone. Faced with a large debt that threatens the existence of his business, and possibly even his life, he accepts a job he would normally turn down from a wealthy flower merchant with apparently shady connections. The client’s daughter, high-flying wine expert Juliette (Vanessa Paradis), is seemingly perfectly in love and set on marrying wealthy English philanthropist Jonathan in glamorous Monaco in a mere ten days.
With no time to lose, Alex, Melanie and Marc head off to Monaco, where Alex poses as a bodyguard employed to protect Juliette by her concerned father. Under normal circumstances, Alex would not have to do much more than fake a few tears and feign a shared interest or two, but as he soon discovers, Juliette is no pushover…
The basic premise of Heartbreaker is utterly ridiculous, of course, but that’s probably one of the main reasons why Chaumeil and his cast have such fun with it, and pull off it so well. While Alex is clearly a fine looking man with a stereotypically Gallic je ne sais quoi, he’s also, as Juliette points out to him, a bit of a moron, and the spy team antics of Melanie and Marc veer from the implausible to the hilariously farcical. Rather than trying to limit the absurd nature of the plot, Chaumeil revels in it, and layers one screwball idea on top of another, sometimes with joyously amusing results.
In one of the film’s funniest scenes, but not its most politically correct, Marc disguises himself (not very well) as a bumbling Polish labourer whose inept attempts to fix the faulty air conditioning unit in Juliette’s hotel room lead very quickly and deliberately to complete disaster, with the desired result that she has to spend the night in Alex’s room (her on the bed, him on the couch).
The arrival of Juliette’s old friend Sophie, a sexually voracious free spirit, further complicates Alex’s task, but she is also a jarring reminder to Juliette that her life was very different, and a lot more exciting before she settled down with the tediously wet and teeth-gratingly well meaning Jonathan (Andrew Lincoln). At this point, it begins to become more obvious that Juliette and Jonathan’s relationship is not the stuff of rom com heaven, but when Jonathan finally arrives in Monaco, it looks as though as the game is up and Alex has to accept defeat.
Inevitably, perhaps, this is where Heartbreaker has to start playing it a little more straight, and where Alex has to complete the transition from smooth conman to genuinely smitten would-be love interest. Having already played his trump cards (involving a professed love of George Michael, Dirty Dancing and Roquefort cheese for breakfast), Alex has to improvise, and rely on a little good fortune to get the girl.
Fortunately, Chaumeil is a skilled enough director to manage doing this without completely upsetting the balance of the film, and you’d have to be a hopeless misanthrope not to enjoy the way Heartbreaker concludes. Even if you do find the ending a touch syrupy, or aren’t quite convinced by the chemistry, or lack thereof between Duris and Paradis, there is a brilliant, laugh-out-loud final scene, played out over the closing credits, where we see Marc attempting to take over Alex’s role as seducer for hire.
Apparently there is already a US remake in the works, but no doubt it’ll be as bad, if nowhere near as funny, as Marc’s attempts to follow in Alex’s footsteps.
In many ways, Heartbreaker is a thoroughly conventional rom com, and an ideal date movie for the unadventurous, but director Pascal Chaumeil is clearly a new talent who knows how to make something ordinary a little out of the ordinary. JG
