Carol

A long way from the Ripley novels which made her famous (no murders or psychopaths here!), Patricia Highsmith’s 1952 book ‘The Price of Salt’, published perforce under a pseudonym, provides the basic plot for Carol, a film which explores the agony and ecstasy of forbidden love, and serves as a reminder of how far we’ve come from an age when homosexuality was considered a moral transgression.

The film opens with the meeting of two very different women in the toy department of a Manhattan department store, from which point we watch the slow burgeoning of their relationship. The older of the two, Carol Aird, played by Cate Blanchett, is moneyed, confident, at ease with her sexuality – but trapped in a conventional marriage. The focus of her attentions is the (much younger) shop girl and amateur photographer Therese Belivet, played with wide-eyed, elfin innocence by Audrey Hepburn lookalike Rooney Mara. The story unfolds at a languid pace. On the pretext of thanking her for the return of a pair of gloves, Carol invites Therese to visit her at home and then to embark on a road trip in which, as it turns out, more than just geographical boundaries are crossed. As the film picks up pace, we enter a vexed world of custody battles and showdowns with private eyes as husband Harge tries to bring his wife back into the fold and restore some sort of ‘normality’ to his family. Inevitably, he is driven to using daughter Rindy as a bargaining chip, thus sparking what turns out to be a bitter custody battle. When Carol is forced to return to New York to fight Harge’s application for full custodial rights, Therese finds herself cut off from the woman she has come to love and her attempts to make contact are cruelly thwarted by the older woman. However, once the dust settles after the custody trial (Carol manages only the concession of occasional visits), the two women come together again and decide that they will pursue a life together, come what may.

This happy ending – or at least the promise of one – was unusual for the time. Most novels of this era featuring homosexual lovers had a tendency to end in frustration, doom and gloom, even tragedy. So, was this a satisfying film all round? Well, not entirely. But it was nice to look at! I think the film’s paper-thin storyline and lack of dramatic tension, certainly in the first half, are more than compensated for by its brilliantly captured mood and style, what the Telegraph’s Tim Robey describes as “a smorgasbord of […] Fifties design”. And it does have undeniably tender moments. Though not exactly bristling with sexual chemistry, the scene in which the women make love is sensitively done, while Carol’s genuine pity for her husband and desperate love for her young daughter both raise the emotional tension several notches. For some, however, the movie is “relentlessly elegant”, and I would agree that there are occasions when Blanchett’s acting comes across as stagey. If there is a pose to be struck, she strikes it, and there are times when the long, lingering glances become just a touch wearisome!

Overall, I think I would have to agree with Todd McCarthy’s analysis in the Hollywood Reporter. Carol, he concludes, is “absorbing and beautifully crafted but also a bit studied; you long to feel some blood in its veins.”

 

Watch the official Carol trailer here: https://youtu.be/EH3zcuRQXNo

 

 

Brooklyn

With emigration, and the choices it inevitably forces people to make, dominating the news on a daily basis, this adaptation of Colm Tóibín’s novel of the same name is perhaps particularly timely. The film tells the story of one young woman’s search for a better life many miles from home. Eilis Lacey, played by Saoirse Ronan (rather appositely the name means “freedom” in Irish) leaves her home in a quiet backwater of County Wexford to travel to Brooklyn. There she quickly finds a job, a place to live in a boarding-house, and a new boyfriend – Tony Fiorello (played by Emory Cohen). Despite being beset by crippling homesickness, she starts to carve out a new life for herself.

Then, following the death of her sister, Eilis returns home to attend her friend’s wedding. While back in the Emerald Isle she soon becomes involved with about-to-make-good local boy Jim and finds herself torn between whether to stay in her beloved Ireland with her lonely widowed mother or continue to pursue her new life with her husband. What happens next I found a little unconvincing. Having made so much of Eilis and Tony’s burgeoning love, subsequent passionate consummation and marriage, I found it hard to believe in her sudden misgivings at this point. She seems to switch her affection with alarming ease from smouldering Italian Tony (with just the tiniest hint of a young Marlon Brando about him?) to solid, home-grown Jim with his promising ‘prospects’.

Then, just as it seems that Eilis’s Irish roots will pull her back home for good, she is summoned one day to her former boss (the only bad person in the whole film!) and subjected to veiled threats that her ‘secret’, i.e. marrying Tony before setting sail for home, was out. I sat up at this point, pleased at this injection of (albeit mild) jeopardy – maybe a blackmail plot was emerging…. But no, the scene turns out to be merely a narrative device to prompt Eilis’s decision to return. She realises she doesn’t want to stay in this socially constricting world of “sternly jacketed women and oily-haired blazer boys”, but is drawn instead to the vibrant, brightly-coloured world that beckons to her across the pond.

My verdict on Brooklyn? I thought Saoise acted her part well, though I am not convinced she is “one of the most intelligent and compelling screen presences of her generation” (Observer film critic, Mark Kermode). The period detail was excellent and I loved some of the set-piece scenes, such as her meeting with Tony’s parents - featuring a superb comic cameo from youngster James DiGiacomo - and the scenes played out around the all-female boarding house dinner table. Julie Walters is well cast as the shrewish, but kind-hearted matriarch Mrs Kehoe - solicitous of her girls but refusing to stand for what she regards as inappropriate talk or behaviour. Fiona Glascott also provides a stand-out performance as Eilis’s sister Rose.

Yet despite some really good acting and an excellent scene offering an (all too brief) insight into the lot of Irish expat men in the US, I felt this was otherwise a pretty standard ‘follow your dreams’ movie. It also occasionally verges on saccharine, particularly in the less strong second half of the film. The critics, however, love it. The Observer’s Mark Kermode describes it as having a “deceptively low-key charm”, whilst the Telegraph judges it to be “pulse-quickeningly good”, able to “send[s] a shiver down your spine”. Mmm, it didn’t quite do that for me… though I suspect many Americans - particularly those among the estimated 39 million who claim to be of Irish descent - will absolutely love this story!

Take a look at the official trailer: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/film/brooklyn/review/

 

 

Legend

Just in case there is still anyone out there harbouring romantic notions about the glamour of East End gang warfare in the 1950s and 60s (and I know they are out there because it’s my job to refill the true crime shelf of my local Oxfam every week!), director Brian Helgeland’s new film ‘Legend’, on the life and crimes of the notorious Kray twins, will surely lay them to rest.

Having already seen the 1990 biopic ‘The Krays’, I was under no illusion about the gruesome reality behind this particular piece of East End mythology. I have a vivid memory of watching much of the action of that film through my fingers, yet I don’t recollect the Kemp brothers being quite as menacing as Tom Hardy in his excellent portrayal of these ‘iconic’ London gangsters. By contrast to the earlier film, Helgeland’s movie skips the twins’ childhood and takes us straight into turf war with the Richardson gang. An early scene, in which the Krays’ rivals are picked off in spectacular fashion in the now infamous ‘Blind Beggar’ pub, is the first of the many crescendos of violence that punctuate the movie. Though grist to the mill for moviegoers who enjoy this kind of machismo, those of a more delicate disposition will find themselves squirming in their seats. Because ‘Legend’ is (of course) very violent, a grisly chain of murders and maimings, shootings and stabbings, which is often all the more shocking because of the terrifying 0-60 speed and arbitrary nature of (mostly Ron’s) violent outbursts. I found several of the set pieces, such as the brothers’ scrap in their nightclub truly scary. Hard to watch indeed, but essential in that it provided at least a glimpse of the symbiotic relationship that existed between the brothers – loving and hating each other at the same time, Reg always looking for ways to control the psychopathic tendencies of his younger twin.

Unlike the earlier film, however, which focused on the perspective of the twins’ mother Violet Kray, the narrator here is Reg’s wife, Frankie, beautifully played by Australian actress Emily Browning. Many critics have attacked the ‘love story angle’ of this film. I thought it worked well and did much more than just “dampen the machismo”, as one critic put it. I liked the female perspective and found the early scenes of Reg and ‘Frankie’s courtship almost tender, and all the more poignant given her rapid descent into abuse, pill-popping and eventually suicide.

Tom Hardy does an incredible job with his portrayal of Reg, the cool, calculating charmer of the duo. His Ron – every bit the shambling, nutcase ‘homo’ given to random cruelty – is, many critics think, much less believable, even verging on comic. (I must admit there were occasions when the nasal twang and padded cheeks put me, ever so briefly, in mind of Tommy Cooper - but it was only briefly!) I think one critic summed up the performances well: “Reggie […] carries menace. Ronnie is truly terrifying.” Many of the minor characters, a motley line-up of spivs and chancers, are strongly played - in particular Sam Spruell as the notorious Jack “the Hat” McVitie, for whose murder Reg was given a life sentence.

Though many will dismiss ‘Legend’ as just another product of the Kray ‘industry’, and unlikely to add anything to what we already know about this well-documented period in London’s underworld history, I think it is still eminently worth seeing, if only to enjoy the performance of Tom Hardy’s career so far… and a great soundtrack.

 

Watch the official trailer here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yI3v6KfR9Mw

 

 

 

Amy

Mired in controversy during her short life, so after her death Amy Winehouse continues to have the power to provoke discussion and recrimination. Now in a new two-hour documentary, called simply “Amy”, director Asif Kapadia has set out to rescue the singer from the popstar-comes-to-grief-after-being-catapulted-to-stardom narrative that has inevitably grown up around her. Through a series of video clips and recordings – some messy, some undeniably touching – the film chronicles the eventful life of an artist many feel could have gone on to become a bright star in the world of jazz/R&B. Kapadia’s decision to dispense with a narrator makes the story of her all-too-short life all the more powerful, his technique of running Amy’s hand-scribbled lyrics on screen a highly effective way of underlining the autobiographical nature of everything she wrote.

Inevitably, any film about Amy Winehouse will explore the singer’s troubled personality, the bulimia, the addictive behaviour. But Kapadia balances this by giving us a sense of the ‘real’ Amy – funny, vivacious, spontaneous. Of all the testimonies provided for the making of this film, the most touching is that provided by her closest friends. Much of the footage, including photos, home movies and phone messages, was made available to Kapadia by Amy’s best pal Lauren Gilbert. It includes the delightfully sweet rendition of Happy Birthday - sung by Amy at her friend’s 14th birthday party – which opens the film. Sadly, this footage from earlier, happier days has the effect of making her all too-rapid trajectory from sassy but fresh-faced teenager to vulnerable adult caught in the headlights of publicity, doubly poignant.

Fans of the singer will inevitably find much of the footage in this documentary difficult viewing – shots of an emaciated and clearly exhausted Amy supposedly ‘recuperating’ on St Lucia, clips featuring an arrogant Blake Fielder, happy to blame Mitch Winehouse for his daughter’s demise rather than acknowledge the role he clearly played in bringing about her destruction, and - saddest of all in my view - footage of the singer, mute, exhausted and confused refusing to sing at the notorious Belgrade concert of 2011. By this stage Amy fit the profile of ‘tortured artist’ in every respect. By her own admission: “the greater the pain, the better the song”. No surprise then that her superb album ‘Back to Black’, with all its unfortunate associations with one of the darkest periods of her life (Fielder’s decision to go back to his long-standing girlfriend), captures like no other album of recent years the pain and torment of unrequited love.

In the end, recriminations about who or what caused Amy’s demise are, of course, pointless. Speculation about who did or did not want Amy to go to rehab futile. Kapadia has not set out to moralise, but just to tell the story of a woman who was always, by her own admission, only really interested in “doing the music”. What he has created here is a watchable, though sad film - a sensitive homage to yet another lost talent.

 

The Woman in Gold

In the week in which German courts have begun proceedings against 93 year-old ex-Auschwitz guard Oskar Groening for his part in war crimes (he is accused of being an accessory to the murder of at least 300,000 Jews at the camp), it seems the past continues to spread its tendrils forward into the present with the release of a new film set in 1930s Vienna. Based on the story of the restitution of art works stolen from Jewish families by the Nazis during WW2, specifically of the theft of Klimt paintings from the Bloch-Bauer family of Vienna, the film Woman in Gold deals with the themes of justice, loyalty and retribution. It details the struggle of one woman, Maria Altmann, who decides at the age of 82 to seek out the truth about a wrong perpetrated against her family many decades ago.

The film opens with the funeral of Maria’s beloved sister and proceeds from there to tell Altmann’s story through a series of flashbacks: her happy childhood growing up in Vienna, the annexation of Austria in 1938 and subsequent suppression of the Jewish community, and her wedding followed by escape to Cologne (and from there eventually to the US). Now settled in Los Angeles, Altmann decides the time has come to “face her ghosts”, as she describes it, and seek the restitution of the many artefacts stolen during the Anschluss. She hires an ambitious young lawyer, Randol Schönberg (played by Ryan Reynolds) to fight her case for the return of a number of paintings on show in Vienna’s Belvedere Gallery. Thus begins the unlikely pairing of doughty elderly Austrian Jew and young, ambitious American lawyer in what feels at times like a reprise of the elderly woman/younger man scenario, i.e. Dench and Coogan on their crusade for the truth in "Philomena". They plead their case before the Viennese Restitution Commission but are unsuccessful as the authorities claim to have evidence that the paintings, including the famous portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer (the Woman in Gold of the title and definitely the star of the show for me!) were in fact legitimately willed to the gallery by the family. On returning to the US, Schönberg continues to research the case and finds that the Commission’s claim is actually incorrect - the alleged will in fact left everything to Maria’s uncle Ferdinand, and then in turn to Maria and her sister. Schönberg decides on the bold, but it turns out not unprecedented, move to take the Austrian government to the US Supreme Court, in a case known famously as Republic of Austria v. Altmann (2004). The case succeeds, the paintings are taken back with Maria to the US, with the Woman in Gold sold to Estée Lauder heir, Ronald Lauder, for a record £73 million. She was also awarded £11 million as compensation for the misappropriation by the Nazis of her family’s sugar refinery, the majority of this money being donated to charities, including to set up sponsorships for aspiring young opera singers (in honour of her husband).

Woman in Gold has received mixed reviews: ‘a disappointingly dull treatment of a fascinating true story’ said one critic; ‘distinctly ordinary’ said the Telegraph’s Tim Robey; ‘treacly, sentimental treatment drowned in kitsch’ was the Guardian’s Ryan Gilbey’s damning assessment. I would agree that the film lacks dramatic tension (inevitable in a film that revolves around a court case?) and that it does, at times, veer towards the schmaltzy. I was, however, sufficiently interested in the true-life story of this remarkable woman and her quest for what was rightfully hers, to forgive the movie its faults and I was unashamedly smiling inside when the verdict was delivered at the end. Helen Mirren is superb and manages a convincing portrayal of a conflicted individual, someone haunted by events of the past and yet at the same time wanting to forget (though not necessarily forgive) and move on. I thought at times Ryan Reynolds was a little over-earnest but I enjoyed seeing Daniel Brühl as the investigative reporter, whose admission that his father had been a member of the Nazi party, added an extra dimension to the plot. For a film based on such a tragically sad episode in history, the movie is surprisingly short on pathos – in fact, Maria’s anguished farewell from her parents before fleeing Austria is an all too rare moment of emotion. But if you enjoy a tale involving an underdog taking on a seemingly impossible task in the face of mightier forces... and winning through, then you will be glad you saw this film. 

  See the official trailer here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geJeX6iIlO0

Suite Franҫaise

The scene: the village of Bussy in northern France during the French occupation. The year: 1940. As the film opens, we meet the haughty Madame Angellier (played by Kristin Scott Thomas), controlling mother-in-law of the female lead Lucille, waiting in her grand chateau for news of son Gaston, reported to be in a POW camp in Germany. Parisian refugees are pouring into the village, followed by Nazi troops, and one day a German officer, Bruno von Falk (Matthias Schoenaerts), arrives at the chateau. He is to be billeted with the women. Though strictly forbidden even to speak to Falk, Lucille is soon drawn to a man who appears cultured, a fine pianist and composer of the hauntingly beautiful Suite Franҫaise of the title. Gradually a relationship starts and he tells her more about his family. Two of his three brothers are already dead in the war. Once Lucille discovers letters in Falk’s office revealing that her husband had been having an affair for years and even had a daughter, any last reservations she has about pursuing this dangerous new relationship are forgotten and their (at first) clandestine affair continues in earnest.

Intertwined with the main ‘romance’ is an important sub-plot involving Madeleine and her husband Benoit. Unable to fight because of an accident, Benoit is reduced to making feeble gestures like stealing the Germans’ uniforms while they swim. The couple are routinely humiliated by Bonnet, the German billeted on their farm. Events then take an even darker turn when Benoit is caught pilfering by the Viscomte’s wife – an excellent cameo performance by Harriet Walter. She tells her husband that Benoit tried to shoot her (a fabrication). Nazi soldiers come to arrest him but he manages to escape having first shot an officer. Retaliation comes with the arrest of the Viscomte, who is to be executed if Benoit is not found within 48 hours. Madame Angellier meanwhile is complicit in hiding Benoit in the chateau. The Viscomte is duly executed at the hands of a sickened Falk. Lucille agrees to help Benoit get to Paris to join the resistance. She goes to Falk for a travel pass, he agrees to issue one and Lucille and Benoit head for the checkpoint, unaware that a suspicious soldier has issued orders for the car to be searched on arrival. In a dramatic confrontation with said soldier, Benoit is shot and wounded but the pair manage to escape with the help of Falk who arrives on the scene at this point. This, we are told as the film comes to an end, was the last Lucille ever saw or heard of Falk. Bruno’s promise to meet her again one day “not as a soldier” was never to be.

Suite Franҫaise is more than just a love story and goes much further than most ‘sleeping with the enemy’ films of the past. As critic Emma Dibdin puts it: “Suite Française works far better as the story of a community in flux than it does as a brooding romance”. It deals with issues of collaboration, compassion and betrayal and presents us with a thought-provoking study of what happens when ordinary people are confronted with extraordinary events and faced with unfamiliar moral dilemmas. Many of the characters behave as you would expect: the rich (typified by the figure of the Viscomte) hoard their wealth and abuse their power, the poor (the likes of Benoit and Madeleine) live hand-to-mouth existences and the village’s young female population are excited by the arrival of handsome soldiers. But there are others among these ‘ordinary’ people who demonstrate incredible courage and compassion. A meek, obedient Lucille in the early part of the film develops into someone who finds the courage to shrug off her fellow villagers’ accusations of collaboration and risk all to save Benoit.

The film is beautifully shot (in Belgium, not France) and has many poignant scenes. It also boasts excellent performances by the main characters, especially Michelle Williams in the lead role. At first sight, the film looked as if it would be peopled by stock ‘war film’ types but as the story unfolds we get to see more of what the actors can do. Kristin Scott Thomas is, as always, excellent. Her icy demeanour in the first half of the film (“more terrifying than the Nazis”, according to the Telegraph’s Tim Robey) gradually peels away to reveal the anxious, grieving mother underneath. One critic has compared her performance to Miranda Richardson’s nuanced portrayal of Miss Lorimer in the recent Testament of Youth.

Written by Irène Némirovsky before her death in 1942 in Auschwitz, this was the second (and last) of a planned sequence of five books. Ironically, her elder daughter Denise kept the notebook containing the manuscript of Suite Française for fifty years without reading it, believing that it would be too painful to read. It was eventually published in France in 2004, and became an immediate bestseller. I can see why.

See the official trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cR0L6invGQ

Testament of Youth

Vera Brittain’s famous memoir Testament of Youth opens with the following poignant line: “When the Great War broke out, it came to me not as a superlative tragedy, but as an interruption of the most exasperating kind to my personal plans.” What unfolds over the next 600 pages is, despite its value as a document of a turbulent period in 20^th century history, first and foremost a very personal story. It chronicles not just Vera’s own fate but that of her entire generation, of the young men and women around her whose lives were shaped by world events far beyond their control. Testament of Youth was unique in being the only book written about WW1 by a woman, but hers is not a sentimentalised account. As she was keen to emphasise: “I have tried to write the exact truth as I saw and see it […], since a book of this kind has no value unless it is honest.”

While Brittain’s book covers the period of her life from 1900-1925, the new film, released appropriately enough to coincide with the centenary commemoration of World War One, spans just the four years of that conflict. The opening scenes introduce us to a young Vera, growing up in provincial comfort in the north of England. We see her arguing with her parents, railing at the narrow expectations of class and gender to which she is expected to conform (including demurely playing the piano at home until, presumably, it is deemed time for her to marry). This is not the life Vera wants - she has set her sights set on reading English at Oxford. When she wins an exhibition to Somerville College it is up to her brother Ted  (played by Taron Egerton) to plead her case with their father, a favour she is to return later in the film when he in turn has to beg his father for permission to sign up to fight.  Vera then meets and falls in love with her brother’s best friend, Roland Leighton (played by Kit Harrington). He too has won a place at Oxford, but finds his plans immediately thwarted by the outbreak of war. Vera, dismayed at his decision to sign up, enters Oxford on her own but soon finds she has a deep-seated need to “do something”. That something turns out to be nursing, a job for which she openly admits to being (at first, anyway) temperamentally unsuited. With characteristic energy and determination, she knuckles down and is soon exposed to the horrors of war. Roland comes home on his first leave already numbed and traumatised by what he has witnessed. In an attempt to get him to open up to her, Vera asks Roland: “Have you written any poems?” The words ring hollow, pointing up as they do the stark contrast between the calm, settled existence they have both known and the horror of the conflict into which they have been plunged. By the end of this scene Roland has proposed to Vera. He promises they will marry on his next leave at Christmas and tries to reassure her by saying that his being posted to headquarters rather than the front line will mean he is safe. Sadly, as preparations for the wedding get underway, news comes that Roland has been killed. In a desperate attempt to find out exactly what happened to him, Vera visits his friend Geoffrey. He (eventually) tells her the messy truth of her fiancé’s death. She decides to go to France to be near her brother Edward and starts work at the military hospital in Etaples where she nurses soldiers hideously wounded on the front line, including Germans. Edward, too, is seriously wounded but then recovers sufficiently to be sent to fight in Italy. On his departure, he makes his sister promise to return to her studies at Oxford. This does not happen immediately as Vera is summoned home to sort out what is described by her father as a “domestic crisis”, i.e. she is to minister to her hysterical, overwrought mother. While at home, news comes in June 1918 of Edward’s death in Italy. Following the armistice, Vera takes up her place at Oxford, where she meets Winifred Holtby who was to become a lifelong friend. One of the final scenes of the film shows Vera’s first meeting with the political scientist George Catlin whom she went on to marry in 1925. As the film closes, we see Vera making her views felt at a political rally and get a sense of the direction her life is to take. Brittain went on to become a prolific speaker, journalist and lecturer, devoting herself to the twin causes of pacifism (even as late as the 1970s she was demonstrating with CND) and feminism.

All in all, I thought this was an excellent film and that Alicia Vikander played Vera with just the right mix of vulnerability and grit. Vera’s daughter, Shirley Williams said she was anxious that her mother should not be portrayed as merely a romantic heroine, but as someone who had real political conviction and was always passionate in her support of the pacifist cause. I think the film succeeds in doing that and I felt that anyone watching the film without having ever read Brittain’s memoir, would still get some sense of what Vera was like and what she stood for. Despite the obvious potential for sinking into melodrama, the film manages to avoid it and the poignancy of Vera’s story is never lost. The film is also beautifully shot and has some effective cinematic moments, such as the crane shot sweeping over the ranks of the dying at Etaples towards the end – very moving. Testament of Youth certainly pulls no punches in its unvarnished portrayal of the suffering caused by the Great War. Watching the film, as one critic put it, is like being “pummelled by sadness”. Yes, this is a sad story but it is also a story of courage, conviction and is, strangely, extremely life-affirming.

See the Testament of Youth trailer here: http://youtu.be/vKt_G23eUJc