The Roses

Warren Adler’s 1981 novel ”The War of the Roses”, was first given the movie treatment in 1989 in Danny Devito’s film of the same name starring Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas. This latest iteration of what is essentially a noir rom-com, directed by Jay Roach (of “Meet the Fockers” and Austin Powers fame), is currently filling cinemas with audiences keen not to miss two of our finest stars strutting their comedy stuff.

As the film opens Ivy, played by the multi-talented Olivia Coleman, is working as a frustrated commis chef within a large organisation. Enter Theo Rose (played by a pitch-perfect Benedict Cumberbatch), an architect equally frustrated in his working life. They immediately fall in love over her trout carpaccio and, before we know it, Theo is suggesting they run away together.  

Flash forward a decade and we find the couple happily married and living in sun-kissed California with their two winsome children. Enjoying success in his work as an architect, Theo decides to give Ivy the leg up he feels she needs and promptly buys her the premises necessary to expand her business. So far so domestically harmonious.

Then a storm arrives, quite literally blowing Theo’s career out of the water. At the same time as his professional reputation is collapsing in spectacular fashion, Ivy is reaping the benefit of the improved accessibility brought about by the bad weather in the form of vastly increased footfall. The sudden tsunami of diners at her shack includes a famous New York food critic who raves at her new ‘find’. Almost overnight Ivy’s seafood joint, mischievously-named “We’ve got crabs!” takes off in a big way. Ivy’s star begins to rise.

Now struggling to find a job, Theo assumes the role of stay-at-home dad to Hattie and Roy, a role he takes to assiduously. Gone are the illicit treats dished up by mum at ungodly hours, in comes a régime of health-giving foods and punishing physical activity. Gradually the dynamic of Ivy and Theo’s made-in-heaven marriage begins to shift. Theo starts to feel increasingly resentful at being ‘relegated’ to house-husband, while his wife is busy courting the world’s food press. After a while, Ivy takes pity on her husband and provides him with the wherewithal to design and build their dream home, a task he sets to with gusto. Little do the pair suspect that this perfect home will become an all-important bargaining chip in the divorce battle that ensues before long.

The second half of the film shows the extent to which the delicate equilibrium of the Rose marriage has been irrevocably disturbed. Once the time comes for the kids to pack up and leave for college, the stage is set for the real fun to begin. We watch (through our hands at times) as the couple progress from fairly low-level bickering to increasingly vitriolic exchanges and stand-up confrontations. As both partners become more entrenched in their respective positions, so the language turns bluer and the insults more vicious. The final conflagration that ends the film is a cinematic feast, if a bit silly in places!

I enjoyed this film on the whole. There is plenty to laugh out loud at, and I could tell that much of the banter was making many a married toe curl! Cumberbatch and Colman are superb, equally at home in both the darker moments and the lighter, comedic parts. The minor characters are less satisfactory, some are downright lame. There are a few standout scenes, including Theo and Rose meeting with their respective lawyers as they discuss divorce, and the raucous set piece dinner party where the two stars really go for the jugular. The ending verges on slapstick, but most people seemed to enjoy it and left the cinema smiling. Who knew marital rancour could be such fun?

 

 

 

The Father

Starring Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman,The Father, co-written and directed by Florian Zeller and based on the latter’s 2012 play Le Père, is the story of how an intelligent, cultured, independent man can be brought low by the insidious disease of dementia and the effect his loss of agency inevitably has on his family.

The ‘action’ is played out (until the final scenes) within the confines a London flat and has a tiny cast. The main character is the ineffably charming and roguishly handsome Anthony, a man coming to the end of what has clearly been a happy and fulfilled life.

But we soon realise that he is in the late stages of dementia. There is much here that people familiar with the disease will recognise, the many and varied manifestations of age-related mental decline: random objects turning up in unexpected places, failure to recognise people and places with which the person was once intimately acquainted, the loss of perspective. We witness Anthony’s sudden bouts of aggression, his sudden, frightening mood changes and the capriciousness that is so typical of this condition. “I don’t like coffee” Anthony bawls at Anne when she brings him a gift of his favourite brand. He is also characteristically given to flights of fancy, telling the (would-be) new carer that he was a dancer in his young days. The more prosaic truth is that he had been an engineer.

But for all the oddities thrown up by Anthony’s condition, we also get glimpses of the man he was, with his love of books, good wine and opera. He lives in what he (and initially we) think is his own home. The truth – as happens repeatedly throughout this film – is not as it first seems. The flat in fact belongs to his daughter Anne, played by Olivia Colman, who has moved her father in in an attempt to manage his condition ‘in-house’. The film is about her eventual admission that she cannot cope and her gut-wrenching decision to move her father into a nursing home.

The film opens with the latest in a long line of attempts to find a suitable carer. At first all seems well when the delightful and well-meaning Laura, (played beautifully by Imogen Poots) appears for interview. Inevitably, Anthony blots his copybook – again – with his aggressive and unpredictable behaviour. So a place in a home is the only option left.

Coleman, at her lachrymose best, plays to perfection the role of long-suffering daughter, conflicted between her need to pursue her own happiness and her father’s increasingly complex needs. But her efforts to maximise her father’s happiness are not well-received. Convinced that his daughter is only after his flat, he is also fiercely opposed to any notion of being ‘helped’, flinging stinging accusations at Anne for being “heartless and manipulating”. On more than one occasion, Anthony compares her unfavourably with another daughter who we learn had died in an accident some years before. Anne is, throughout,  the embodiment of compassion and genuine concern but, as a brief but rather alarming fantasy sequence shows in which she dreams about smothering her father with a pillow, she is majorly conflicted. Coleman plays the part to perfection - who better than her to portray putting a brave face on a wretched and intractable situation?

 I think what makes this film so effective, and affecting, is that we get to see the world through Anthony’s eyes: the paranoia, confusion and impotence that dementia inevitably brings in its wake. He is aware that things aren’t right, but can’t quite put his finger on how. “There’s something funny going on” is as far as his inchoate analysis goes.

And, for a time, we in the audience know just what he means. Which of these people is really his daughter? Is the other daughter alive or dead? Is the flat his or Anne’s? All this is confusing to the audience… until the penny drops after the first 20 minutes or so of the film. Sadly, for the main character the fog never clears and he lurches from one mis-reading of events around him to another. The shifting perspective, with the main characters in his life-story constantly morphing into others (two different actresses take the roles of both Anne and her husband) serves to perfectly illustrate the confusion that reigns in Anthony’s head and forces us to witness at first hand his loosening grip on what is going on around him. Symbolic of his feeling of being ‘lost’ is his constant searching for his watch. He admits to feeling totally at sea without it. Having it safely on his wrist gives him at least the illusion that his life has some sort of shape and logic. Of course, ultimately, his timepiece is rendered useless as, typical for late-stage dementia patients, night and day gradually begin to merge and total disorientation takes hold.

This is a film that many will find difficult to watch but it is thought-provoking on a subject that will at some time touch us all. Impeccably acted, with great insight and empathy from all the main characters, Hopkins in particular is outstanding – no surprise then that he received the Academy Award for Best Actor (aged 83, no less) for what some regard as the performance of his career.

The final scene shows Anthony now installed in his care home, being cradled by a nurse as if he were a small child which, to all intents and purposes, is what he has become. At the end he asks the nurse: “Who exactly am I?”, a question that is central to the film… and indeed all our lives. As one critic said: ”[This] is a film about grief, and what it means to grieve for someone who is still alive.” Quite so.

 

Link to official trailer:  https://youtu.be/OFnoRaLAclg

 

 

 

 

Mrs Lowry & Son

Famous for his paintings of industrial scenes in Salford, the “matchstalk men and matchstalk cats and dogs” of the 1978 pop hit, Laurence Stephen Lowry is the subject of an interesting biopic showing in cinemas now.

With a cast of just two characters (the painter and his elderly widowed mother) and the entire ‘action’ of the film taking place within the confines of his mother’s bedroom, the overwhelming atmosphere is one of claustrophobia. “Laurie” dances attendance on his parent in the hope of a word of encouragement that never comes. Terminally disillusioned, Mrs Lowry sees herself as a woman cheated of a better life by her marriage to an ordinary working man whom she blames entirely for putting paid to her aspirations to the “middle class” on which she had clearly set her sights from an early age (we are reminded at key points in the narrative that a sparkling career as a concert pianist had at one time been hers for the taking).  Never reconciled to having to move from suburban Victoria Park to a two-up-two-down in industrial Pendlebury, her bitterness has become more entrenched over the years, her obsession with class ever-present, her son a constant source of disappointment. “Why is it when I look at you I always want to close my eyes?” she tells him.

For Lowry, however, the house, within spitting distance of the local mill, is perfectly placed to provide him with the essential material for his paintings. Working by day as a rent collector, as his father had before him, “Laurie’s” evenings are taken up primarily with ministering to his mother’s needs – an endless round of pillow-plumping, food preparation, meals taken formally à deux and polite conversation. Dutiful, uncomplaining, and self-effacing to a fault, his duties as his mother’s sole carer mean, however, that only the bare minimum of time is left over to spend on his true love, painting. He retreats to his dark attic studio to fulfil his true calling, or to ‘do his hobby’ as his mother insists on calling it. “I am a man who paints, nothing more, nothing less” Lowry intones more than once.

While grudgingly conceding a liking for her son’s ‘Sailing Boats’ (the only painting of his on which she apparently ever deigned to make positive comment), she continually ridicules and derides her son’s ‘mission’ (as he describes it) to try to capture in paint the day-to-day reality of life in a northern mill town – the chimneys, barrack-like factory buildings and hollow-eyed workers. During one of the pair’s more violent fallings-out, Mrs Lowry declares loftily, lips fully pursed: “Where is the beauty?”  The brutal pleasure she takes in reading aloud the negative reviews of her son’s work leaves a sour taste.

Vanessa Redgrave has been much lauded for her portrayal of Mrs Lowry, perfectly capturing as she does the acerbic, overbearing ‘parent from hell’. But for me it is Timothy Spall who gives the standout performance here, perfectly capturing the lonely man, unloved and unappreciated during his lifetime – most notably by the one person who could/should have encouraged him to follow his artistic muse instead of undermining his efforts at every opportunity.

So what do we learn about Lowry that we didn’t know before? Not much – his ‘strange’ character is already well-documented. But as a study of thwarted ambition and the effect this can have on a man who spends his entire life desperately seeking approval but receiving none, the film succeeds very well. Although occasionally tending towards the mawkish and with annoyingly intrusive ‘background’ music, Mrs Lowry & Son is a sensitively acted biography of one of this country’s most-recognised, if not most-loved, artists. And - something he never achieved in real life – L.S. Lowry now has the last word. After years out in the cold, his paintings now sell for millions of pounds and the Lowry Centre in Salford, dedicated to the arts generally and Lowry’s art in particular, attracts large numbers of visitors every year from all over the world. Not bad for a ‘hobby’ painter.

The Limehouse Golem

Directed by Juan Carlos Medina and based on Peter Ackroyd’s 1994 book Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem, this film is a must for fans of TV’s Ripper Street series in particular (also set in 1880s London), or indeed Victorian melodrama in general.

The story is a double-pronged criminal intrigue encompassing both a domestic poisoning and a series of other seemingly unconnected and (trust me) grisly serial murders. Assigned the task of solving these crimes is the suave Inspector Kildare (Bill Nighy). The film opens with the domestic incident - the death by poisoning of John Cree, husband of Lizzie. Although she is arrested and tried for her husband’s killing, Kildare is convinced throughout of her innocence. As he fights to keep her from the gallows, we find ourselves gradually drawn into the tragic story of ‘Lambeth Lizzie’s earlier life. Brought up by a cruel mother, she is later taken in by music hall folk when orphaned and it is here that she meets and marries the aspiring playwright John Cree. But why, and at whose hand, does he meet his death? Did he abuse her once too often? Or has he too been done to death by the Golem, a mythical figure from Jewish folklore who the public assume to be responsible for the other killings, so ferocious and ‘inhuman’ are the attacks?

The plot leads us up no end of blind alleys and is a baroque mixture of fictional and actual historical figures, incl. George Gissing and Karl Marx, Dan Leno and John Cree. All are frequenters of the British Library and readers of a book in which the killer has scrawled messages in his victims’ blood. They are therefore all at some time in the frame for the murders. The film’s structure takes the form of a series of multi-tiered flashbacks. Weaving our way through a complex interplay between truth and fiction, between real life (the infamous Ratcliffe Highway murders of this period are referenced more than once) and the staged version, we reach a startling - and for me unexpected - conclusion.

The atmosphere of the time is well captured, giving a real sense of late 19^th century Limehouse – the poverty, destitution, widespread child cruelty and prostitution, and opium dens. And there is some great acting here too. Bill Nighy is suitably sombre (no daft twitches here!) as he sets about grappling with this seemingly intractable case. It is revealed early on that he is “not the marrying kind” and this adds an extra layer to his characterisation, as do the intimations of lesbianism around Lizzie’s character, superbly played by Olivia Cooke. Other familiar faces include Daniel Mays, his down-to-earth Constable Flood providing the perfect complement to the debonair, enigmatic Kildare. I also particularly liked the range of oddball characters in the music hall. They are all there: the randy midget, the louche transvestite, and the lascivious stage manager (“just call me Uncle”) played superbly by Eddie Marson (was there ever an actor more suited to creepy roles?). But top of the bill for me has to be the character of Dan Leno, probably the Victorian era’s most famous comedian, played by a gorgeously effete Douglas Booth.

Despite having to watch the violent bits through my fingers (the Evening Standard’s film critic describes the film as “riotously gory”), I really enjoyed this movie. The music hall scenes not only perfectly captured the sweaty crush of the hoi polloi at play - visually like something straight out of a Walter Sickert painting – I also got a bit of a singalong! Fortunately, the cinema was half empty so nobody batted an eyelid when I joined in with ‘she’d never had her ticket punched before’ in the back row. For anyone like me who is a sucker for this kind of penny-dreadful-style entertainment, The Limehouse Golem makes for a very satisfying hour and a half.

 

*See the official trailer here: https://youtu.be/MCJp8-MebGY

 

Their Finest

Looking for a movie to fill a dull bank holiday afternoon, and not being averse to a rattling good wartime yarn, we decided to give Danish director Lone Scherfig’s latest offering a look. Movies set in the dark days of the 1940s seem to be de rigeur at the moment (with Dunkirk coming down the line later this year) and Their Finest’s stellar cast, plus the promise of “a smart, witty, top-notch comedy” boded well for our afternoon’s entertainment.

Based on the 2009 novel Their Finest Hour and a Half by Lissa Evans, the film’s action takes place in the London of 1940. Despite applying for a purely secretarial role, Welsh lovely Catrin Cole (Gemma Arterton) finds herself unexpectedly taken on for a job writing films for the Ministry of Information. She and chief screenwriter Tom Buckley (Sam Claflin) are forced into close quarters when working together on a propaganda film for the Ministry of Information about the evacuation of Allied troops from Dunkirk. Predictably, the two grow romantically close, but this is wartime and the path of true love cannot be expected to run smoothly…

Essentially, this is a film about film-making. But there are other (to me more interesting) themes. As any self-respecting war movie should, Their Finest - for all its shortcomings - does capture the uncertainty of life during this period. The true-to-life setting (very impressive) is also matched by attitudes to women that it is easy to forget were once prevalent. The casual sexism of the period is flagged up early on with Tom Buckley unapologetically hiring Catrin solely for the purposes of adding a female perspective to the work in hand, basically what amounts to the ability to write “slop”, i.e. women’s dialogue. Yet the film is chock full of women taking on and ably fulfilling traditionally male roles, women who patently had no intention of “climbing back into their boxes” once the war was over. Of course, with the benefit of hindsight we know this is precisely what they were expected to do and it was to take many years before any sort of real equality could be achieved. Even Ellis Cole (played by Jack Huston), Catrin’s ‘husband’, who she claims espouses radical political views and therefore might be expected to be in favour of advancing the female cause, turns out to be just another chauvinist pig who feels his male ego threatened when Catrin takes to her new role with gusto.

There are lots of big names involved in this film. The wonderful Helen McCrory and Rachael Stirling both make an appearance, as do Richard E. Grant and Jeremy Irons, though the latter two parts are so sketchily drawn as to be eminently forgettable. Bill Nighy, perfectly (if somewhat predictably) cast as ageing, narcissistic ex-matinee idol Ambrose Hilliard, is very funny. Arterton is lovely (natch!) but, dare I say it, I found her character pretty boring. In fact, I felt there was a lot of room for further development of all the major figures in the story.

Reviews of Their Finest are generally very positive, particularly those from over the pond. I have a suspicion that there is maybe more of an appetite for this kind of “plucky Brits with their backs to the wall” movie there. One critic from the Detroit News even goes so far as to describe the film as “sizzling with chemistry”. Mmm, I’m not sure this was felt in our cinema, in contrast to the decidedly palpable sizzle that went round the room when watching Allied recently (see last review!). Robbie Collin of the Telegraph also heaps praise, calling Their Finest "sparklingly adapted" and a "handsome, rousing, rigorous entertainment you can’t help but play along with".

For me, though, this was a film that couldn’t decide what it wanted to be. I found the ‘romance’ pallid and contrived, the plot a bit flimsy (though Tom’s death under a rogue lighting rig at least rescued it from complete predictability!) and the comedy (it is, after all, billed as such) a bit underwhelming… apart from Bill Nighy who has been allowed to steal the show yet again! As the film ends, with our heroine’s completed movie also coming to a close, Catrin’s neighbour turns to her and says: “watch it a second time and you’ll get more laughs”. Mmm, maybe.

 

*Watch a trailer here: https://youtu.be/id0HEelDIuk

 

Denial

If ever there was a time to applaud the efforts of individuals who stand up against people who pervert the truth for their own ends, it’s surely now. To my mind the release of David Hare’s film ‘Denial’ could not be more apposite…

The film revolves around two principle characters. The first is the historian and Hitler apologist, David Irving, who has had made it his life’s work to tell the story of the Holocaust ‘from the other side’. The other main character is Deborah Lipstadt, Professor of Modern Jewish History and Holocaust Studies at Emory University in Atlanta. In 1977, Irving published “Hitler’s War”, in which he argued that Hitler initially had not known about the Final Solution and later tried to stop it. His contention, expressed in even more extreme terms in a later (1991) version of the book, was that Hitler did not order the systematic extermination of the Jews and that camps such as Auschwitz were never death camps (just labour camps), and that the mass gassings never took place. In his eyes these events were fabricated to satisfy the Jews’ own agenda. In response Lipstadt in 1993 published “Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth & Memory”, in which she accused Irving of being a dangerous Holocaust denier, distorting the truth to conform to his own ideological leanings.

‘Denial’ picks up the story in 1996 as Irving decides to bring a libel case against Lipstadt (and her publisher Penguin Books) for what he perceives as serious damage to his professional reputation. Unlike in other cases, the onus with libel is on the defendant to prove his/her innocence, i.e. Lipstadt is faced with having to prove the Holocaust happened. But how to do that when the Nazis destroyed evidence of their actions when their defeat was imminent, blowing up the gas ovens as they retreated?

The first half of the movie (we know it actually took four years to prepare the case) shows us Lipstadt assembling her team of lawyers, while Irving prosecutes his own case. The second half of the film deals with the case itself. But, though this was a complex trial lasting ten weeks, there are no lengthy courtroom scenes here and the film never gets bogged down with legalese. By skilful cross-examination, Rampton is able to expose Irving’s various claims as absurd and prove Lipstadt’s contention that his work shows him to be a racist, anti-Semite and a distorter of historical evidence for his own ends.

The title chosen for the film of course refers first and foremost to the central plank of the film, Irving’s denial of the Holocaust, but also Lipstadt’s self-denial in having to keep quiet throughout the trial process. Her legal team decide early on that neither she nor any Holocaust survivors will be called as witnesses – they wanted it to be Irving who was on trial and not the survivors, who they felt would be vulnerable in the face of humiliating cross-examination by a clever man such as Irving. Only during the press conference that follows the verdict is Lipstadt able to voice her feelings and explain her motivation. In response to inevitable accusations that she was seeking to block free speech, she says: “Now, some people are saying that the result of this trial will threaten free speech. I don't accept that. I'm not attacking free speech. On the contrary, I've been defending it against someone who wanted to abuse it. Freedom of speech means you can say whatever you want. What you can't do is lie and expect not to be held accountable for it. Not all opinions are equal. And some things happened, just like we say they do. Slavery happened, the Black Death happened. The Earth is round, the ice caps are melting, and Elvis is not alive.”

There are several stand-out performances in ‘Denial’. Tom Wilkinson (a brilliant, but much taken-for-granted actor) is superb as Lipstadt’s defence barrister Richard Rampton QC. Rachel Weisz plays Lipstadt with great energy, her fierce intellect and passion for her cause coming to the fore even in the opening scene. But most credit has to go to Timothy Spall for his depiction of the chilling figure of David Irving. Ineffably civil, smart and well-spoken, he nevertheless sends a chill down the spine. The Guardian critic Wendy Ide describes him neatly as “effectively repellent”.

So why, some may ask, are we still watching films about the Holocaust? What is the relevance to our situation today? I think recent political events are testimony enough to the need for an ongoing and dogged pursuit of truth in an age where politicians can spout “alternative” facts at times when the truth doesn’t quite suit them. And, of course, Holocaust denial still goes on. Just last week, the White House released a statement on Holocaust Memorial Day that completely omitted any reference to Jews or anti-Semitism, talking instead simply of “innocent victims”. A spokesman said this language was used in the interests of “inclusivity”; Lipstadt herself called it “softcore Holocaust denial”.

 

Watch a trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yH7ktvUWaYo

 

Allied

Though not a huge devotee of Brad Pitt’s films, I always look forward to anything starring Marion Cotillard so was attracted by the prospect of settling down to this romantic WW2 thriller on a cold and dank December afternoon. I particularly looked forward to judging for myself whether there really was any Bogart/Bergman-style chemistry between the two leads. Was this the new Casablanca maybe?

The action is set in 1942. Canadian intelligence officer Wing Commander Max Vatan (played by Pitt) is parachuted into the Moroccan desert to assassinate a high-ranking Nazi officer at the embassy in Casablanca, helped by French resistance fighter Marian Beauséjour (Cotillard). They masquerade as man and wife, putting on a convincing performance for the locals. Marian decides early on to test Max’s mettle in a quietly seductive scene, but he’s a stalwart professional and doesn’t take the bait. But of course, as in all good romances, he soon finds himself unable to resist Marian’s charms and in the run-up to their death-defying mission they finally succumb to their mutual passion in the midst of a fierce sandstorm (cue much sand, much fumbling and some decidedly vertiginous camerawork!)
Bonnie and Clyde-style, the pair carry out the assassination (undeniable shades of Mr & Mrs Smith here) and then manage to escape in the chaos that ensues. Max invites Marian to come back with him to London - where he’s stationed with British Intelligence – and marry him.  A daughter is born (in a frankly rather hammy air raid scene) and the Vatan domestic idyll is complete, cosy home in Hampstead an’ all.

Then one day Vatan is called in by his superiors to be told that his wife is in fact a German spy, – V-section having already intercepted several messages they think are being sent by her to Berlin. They announce their intention to ‘blue dye’ her, i.e. plant sensitive information which they can then track back to her. Vatan’s role is to act normally - not an easy gig given he is now completely besotted by her. Despite explicit orders not to carry out his own investigations into ‘Marian’s’ background, Vatan is unable to resist pursuing his own enquiries.

The first takes him to a fellow officer Guy Sangster, said to have been smuggled out of Dieppe in 1941 by Marian. Vatan shows him her photo but Guy is unable to identify her, or indeed anyone, as he is now blind. In a second attempt to get at the truth about his wife Vatan goes to see Paul Delamare, a former resistance associate of hers, who has been imprisoned in Dieppe. The drunkard tells Vatan about the real Marian: “she paints, laughs a lot…. and plays the piano”. She was by all accounts renowned for her performances of ‘La Marseillaise’ for the Nazis. The rest of the film hinges on this small piece of info. Vatan takes Marion to the local pub and sits her down at the piano, demands that she play the French anthem. She can’t. Vatan knows she’s an informer, but is still desperately in love with her. He knows that their only recourse is to escape or both be killed by V-section. They collect their daughter Anna, drive to the airfield to catch a plane out of the country but as officers arrive to remonstrate with Vatan, Marian gets out of the car and shoots herself dead at Max’s feet. Vatan is left to bring up his daughter alone…

So… Bogart and Bergman? Mmm, not sure. But there is still more than a hint of Hollywood glamour here. Pitt in a Wing Commander’s uniform is not a bad look and Cotillard is always mesmerizing, managing to smoke those endless cigarettes every bit as languorously as Bergman, Bacall and their ilk! But critics are divided on how convincing the lead characters are together.  Robbie Collin in the Telegraph describes the movie as a “swanky, sexy spy thriller”, while the Guardian critic finds it a “passionless potboiler” (but then what do Guardian readers know of passion, I ask myself?) My view lies somewhere in the middle.

I thought many of the scenes in Allied  were beautifully shot – loved the images of sultry Casablanca – and I liked the clever use of mirrors throughout to point up the contrast, so essential to the film’s theme, between what is and isn’t ‘real’. A nice touch.

My verdict? Allied is a good old fashioned romance. Pitt was ok (though hats off to him for a very passable French accent), but Marion Cotillard for me steals the show. And even if you find the story/their romance a bit far-fetched, there is always the thrill of Cotillard’s to-die-for outfits – très chic. As one critic said: “Espionage never looked so good”!

*Click here to view trailer: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3640424/videoplayer/vi4001674777