Film Reviews by PD

This film tells the little-known but important tale of Norwegian-born Sonja Wigert. She established herself as one of Scandinavia’s most famous actresses, but her visible success during the Nazi occupation of her home country blighted the rest of her career, and it was only 25 years after her death in 1980 that the other side of her wartime life, working as an 'agent' for the Swedish intelligence service, was revealed. Much of the narrative revolves around her relationship with Terboven (Alexander Scheer), the most senior Nazi in occupied Norway, who she's been recruited to spy on and discover the true identity of Germany’s most important secret agent in Oslo. After starting an affair with the officer, she’s recruited by the Germans as well, agreeing to spy on their behalf so that they will release her elderly father from prison. What they don’t realise, of course, is that she’s a double agent.

Although the context of her story is unfamiliar, the actual narrative bears all the hallmarks of a conventional spy yarn, even if it is based on a true story. Jonsson adopts a suitably respectful tone but, ultimately, this doesn’t save the film from the feeling that we’ve been here before and the overall effect is of something rather conventional. All the elements are there for suspense, tension and heroism, but none of them are sufficiently developed, with a romantic sub-plot that feels like it’s been bolted on to pad things out. Jonsson tries to mix things up with the narrative, opening the film at what is essentially the mid-point, then filling in the back story and moving it forward to its conclusion, and this works up to a point, but you get the feeling that the director hasn't been nearly daring enough here, opting instead for a rather safe, tv-style which doesn't do the intriguing subject matter nearly enough justice.

Bolso Berdal makes a brave attempt to make her character one of flesh and blood, but she’s hampered by a rather weak script, plus the fact that Wigert was an actress makes us continually question the sincerity of the emotions on display. So what was clearly intended as a tribute to an unsung – and misjudged – war hero ends up being watchable enough but something of a missed opportunity, sadly.

This highly original, clever piece by writer-director Safy Nebbou is a highly watchable film, with Binoche, as ever, quite superb as divorced academic Claire. At times there is a touch of Woody Allen comedy of manners, at other times more than a touch of Michael Haneke creepiness: the script frank and perceptive about the cloak of invisibility that, past a certain age, even the most charismatic women take on in the eyes of many men. Already insecure about ageing, Claire remains principally attracted to younger guys; after all, if her ex-husband could leave her for a woman young enough to be her daughter, why can’t she play the same field? Claire confesses this and more to her quietly quizzical psychoanalyst Dr. Bormans (Nicole Garcia) in what turns out to be a crucial framing device, dipping the story into shifty realms of potentially unreliable narration and outright fantasy.

After a dalliance with 'Ludo' fades into unanswered phone calls, Claire nurses her wounded confidence by turning to social media — inventing a fake profile for imaginary 25-year-old fashion intern “Clara” in order to cyber-stalk Ludo and his attractive bro circle. What starts as a mildly vengeful mind game gets progressively more sinister, whilst Claire’s repeated therapy sessions with Dr. Bormans, meanwhile, are more than a mere device enabling a secret-bearing protagonist to speak her mind: the two women’s long verbal volleys are laced with perceptive, lightly caustic commentary about the disproportionate degree to which women’s social and sexual behaviour is scrutinised and judged by society, themselves included.

The central construct takes a huge suspension of disbelief (the impossibly gorgeous Binoche seems to me far more beautiful and interesting than her adopted younger self), and the last half hour is a bit silly (the 'plot twist' you can see coming a mile off), but Binoche somehow makes it all credible, and for anyone who’s ever been ghosted on the dating trail — or been an offender themselves — her evocation of the desire for human connection and terrified self-sabotage is uncomfortably easy to empathise with.

I was really looking forward to this one - having liked director Justin Kurzel’s take on MacBeth, I was anticipating a unique take with a fresh delivery. The first section (Kelly as boy, played brilliantly by Orlando Schwerdt, with a nice turn from Russell Crowe) certainly delivers; it's thoroughly gripping and convincing, with some great camerawork and lighting, top notch acting and a great buildup, but all is undone by a terribly disappointing second part (Kelly as man played by George Mackay). It's like someone trying too hard to be edgy/quirky/unique, and not coming close to any of them, and it’s so cliche-ridden that's it's difficult to suspend disbelief and take seriously at times. And it's never a good sign when both myself and my sister (a self-confessed Ned Kelly geek from Melbourne) start double screening during the final shootout. Peter Carey's novel deserves better treatment than this, I'm afraid.

Rather disappointing viewing in the end. The premise is an intriguing one, with young couple Tom and Gemma (Jesse Eisenberg and Imogen Poots) being imprisoned in suburban hellhole 'Yonder' with its identical Monopoly-houses and superficial perfection, and forced to raise a child (the admirably creepy Senan Jennings). Unfortunately however, the film's script simply isn't strong enough to sustain it, and the film, as with the couple, quickly ends up going nowhere, whilst most scenes are too brisk and un-nuanced to flesh out Yonder’s ostensibly forbidding world of plastic, consumer-friendly domesticity. Occasionally the one-dimensional nature of the characters is challenged, as with a suggestion of Gemma's maternal instinct counteracting Tom's ever more menacing frustration, but the film shies away from any depth or difficulty, with the result that the presumed intention of giving us a Kafka-style nightmare falls rather flat, sadly.

This one probably isn’t for you if you’re after a ‘conventional’ drama / horror / gothic (insert genre of choice) film, but I found it totally gripping, largely due to Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson’s mesmerising and deliberately unnerving performances. Director Robert Eggers’ stark black-and-white cinematography emphasises every bony plane, every facial crease, hollow and pinprick of stubble to great effect.

At its heart is a psychological study of two lighthouse workers, Wake (Dafoe) and Winslow (Pattinson), who, over many solitary days and nights, work, eat, drink and dig at each other, establishing a bristling antagonism. In time, their minds and tongues are loosened by alcohol and, perhaps, a simple human need for companionship. The wind howls, the camera prowls, the sea roars and Eggers flexes his estimable filmmaking technique as an air of mystery rapidly thickens. Much as he did in the distinctly creepy ‘The Witch’ with its isolated family of fundamentalists coming unglued in early 17th-century America, Eggers makes the secluded world in “The Lighthouse” at once recognisable and eerily surreal. Wake is the veteran keeper of the lighthouse flame, the guardian of its traditions, language and superstitions (‘never, ever, kill a seagull’, he instructs). He barks orders, sings a shanty, indulges in sentimentality, and is, depending on the mood / time of day, either (seemingly) friendly or (more usually) distinctly threatening. To Winslow’s mounting irritation, Wake also guards the key to the lantern room, and it’s this obsession (Moby Dick style), driven by the demon drink (and eventually kerosene), that becomes what gradually poisons Winslow’s mind, although what ultimately is the source of the madness is deliberately ambiguous. Getting stuck in this place with the company is enough in itself to drive anyone to distraction of course, but the film also hints that our unreliable narrator was never of sound mind even before arriving on the island. The past clearly weighs on Ephraim from the start, with his dreams about drowning under logs at the beginning of the film, whilst later, during his most unhinged moments, he sees flashes of a man killed; as Wake guesses, Ephraim definitely took this awful and secluded job because he's on the run, but as he soon discovers, he can't outrun the prison of his own guilty conscience.

It's also possible of course that both Thomas and Ephraim are having a shared delusion, or we can see Thomas and Ephraim as representing two parts of the same person. There are also subtle and not-so-subtle hints that Wake is deliberately pushing Ephraim into insanity after hearing of how his last wickie died - Thomas could've murdered him or driven him to take his own life. All readings (and more) are possible.

There’s some weaknesses – the Freudian/Jungian symbolism is laid on with a trowel, with endless vaginal keyholes and phallic tools and logs and whatnot, whilst I found the ending, with its blindingly obvious (no pun intended) allusions to the Proteus/Prometheus myth all a bit heavy-handed (I’d got that already; surely it didn’t need to be hammered home in this way?), and for me rather detracted from what had gone before. Nevertheless, taken as a whole, an engaging and original piece.

Oh dear. It's difficult to put into words how bad this one is. The premise is certainly intriguing - Hitler as imaginary friend to little Hitler Youth member Jojo, but unfortunately Roman Griffin Davis as Jojo is rather one-dimensional throughout, and Waititi’s badly misjudged performance as Hitler underlines the fact that the film is (and I'm assuming it's trying to be both) neither a hard-hitting satire nor a heartwarming 'love conquers all' piece, but ultimately a bland work from which I was glad to be released.

I like the idea of ironic anti-Semitism, like the idea of treating horror with ridicule, like the idea of a film which wants to rub our faces in the horrible thing and making us confront it with an amusing tonic that helps the medicine go down, but this definitely ain't it, and after a few potential threads, Waititi ultimately just opts for the path of least resistance and you're left wondering what the point of it all was, frankly. For the film fails to attack, or even really notice, the evil before us, and the moments when people are shown hanged in the streets serve only to point up the sanitised, a-historical silliness of everything we're shown on-screen which means we are given precious little to think about en route. Awful.

One of those rather superficial BBC things which rapidly runs through the life and works of Wilde before his downfall without much in the way of depth. The format is quite a promising one, combining as it does acted scenes from some of the works with various bods commenting and making connections, but there's nothing new here, and some of the comments border on the trite. Nevertheless, it's watchable enough, and from time to time there's something to dwell on, notably the sections concerning the belief that Art doesn’t imitate life, but the other way round, as we learn from Wilde's lovely, lesser-known essay, 'The Decay of Lying', dramatised well here. “Where, if not from the impressionists, do we get those wonderful brown fogs that come creeping down our streets, blurring the gas lamps and changing the houses into monstrous shadows?” said one croquet-playing fop to another. “At present, people see fogs, not because they are fogs, but because poets and painters have taught them the mysterious loveliness of such effects.” Wilde’s grandson Merlin Holland sensibly tells us that, bewitched by his plays and stories, we have neglected Wilde’s essays. In 'The Critic as Artist', Wilde wrote: “Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”

However, most of the commentary is pretty juvenile, telling us how great Wilde was (no, never!?) and how perfect the 'Importance of Being Earnest' is (yawn), and only occasionally do we get something meaty to chew over, notably Gyles Brandreth reminding us that several of Wilde's rent-boys were 16 when they gave testimony (and so younger when Wilde had sex with them), but yet there’s no sign Wilde had any regrets - there's a telling quote from 'De Profundis' in which Wilde declared: 'People thought it dreadful of me to have entertained at dinner the evil things of life, and to have found pleasure in their company. But they … were delightful and stimulating. It was like feasting with panthers. The danger was half the excitement.' There's no comment on that, but for me that 'feasting with panthers' bit makes it sound as though Wilde considered himself willing prey when, arguably, he was the predator. All in all therefore, vaguely entertaining for an hour or so but all a bit fluffy.

Not the sort of thing I'd normally, watch tbh, but during the 'lockdown' etc ... and so pleased I took a punt on this. The strength is mainly Lisa Cholodenko’s script, which totally avoids the usual cliches with considerable sensitivity.

The film revolves around two women whose lives change as a result of a chance meeting in the building where both reside. Protagonist is Syd (superbly played by Rahda Mitchell), a young, idealistic and ambitious editor-in-training at 'Frame', an art photography magazine. Syd enters the flat of her neighbour, Lucy Berliner (Sheedy), as an outsider, suspiciously observing the latter’s friends as they go about their party routines with booze and drugs: (there's an an awful of lot of this - and perhaps the contrast between Syd’s clean and naive world and Lucy’s sophisticated, and, 'decadent' one is perhaps a tad overcooked). But the film's strength is the depiction of how the tentative friendship between Syd and Lucy evolves, and this is totally convincing, the younger Syd striving to achieve professional recognition in an industry driven by fashion and hype, battling with Lucy, the disaffected photographer prodigy who’s seen and done it all. The beauty of Cholodenko’s writing is that she etches the evolving friendship, and the transformation of the two women. I normally just fast forward through any 'sex scenes' on the screen, but here, with the heat and the awkward physicality, it's beautifully portrayed in such a way that we feel less like an awkward, intrusive 'voyeur' and more like a confidante. Similarly, the film also painstakingly dissects the culture of 'heroin chic' and its implications - one scene perfectly captures the ambivalence we feel when torn between self-interest and self-sacrifice, between protecting ourselves from trouble and throwing ourselves into dangerous situations to prove commitment to our longtime companions. Impressive stuff.

This piece, the first film by Hirokazu Kore-eda outside his native Japan, is a beautifully written drama in which a larger-than-life film-star diva — in this case, Catherine Deneuve — portrays a larger-than-life film-star diva. And Deneuve is utterly splendid as Fabienne Dangeville, a legendary French actress, now in her 70s, who approaches every moment with an 'I’m-still-here' tenacity which is at once steely and borderline tyrannical. Deneuve makes Fabienne a proudly narcissistic and theatrical glamour puss who has no patience for the idea that she should pretend to be anything other than the devious, self-adoring prima donna she is, although Fabienne is such a sly manipulator, so droll about her own royal ego, that we can’t help but feel drawn to her in a funny way. Kore-eda’s seamless dialogue is pitch-perfect throughout, suffused with the comedy of experience, and totally congruent with the cosmopolitan air of its French movie-world setting,

At the heart of the film is the relationship between Fabienne and her daughter Lumir, superbly played by Juliette Binoche, whose low-key but flawless performance is a perfect match for Kore-eda's sophisticated, subtle script. The heart of the film unfolds in Fabienne’s rustic suburban country home, where Lumir grew up, but as seemingly idyllic as the setting is, the memories are distinctly uncomfortable. Yet when confronted with the lies contained in her memoir, Fabienne offers no apology. It’s not in her nature to admit flaws; she maintains a tone of self-justifying blitheness. Fabienne speaks her mind to a fault, but after a while we realise that she’s never not acting. As the tensions mount, most films of this ilk would end build up towards an eruption of pain and confrontation, or (worse) to a soul-wrenching resolution involving copious tears and hugs. And many might feel the film that the film is weaker for not having these, but for the film is all the better for it - more believable, and ultimately more truthful.

There's some really effective touches, motifs and sub-plots, effortlessly woven into the action, notably the periodic detours to the set of the film Fabienne is shooting - inevitably, a mother-daughter drama, which offers a running commentary on the story we’re watching. Fabienne is actually cast as the daughter; that’s because the film’s sci-fi premise is that her sick mother went off into space (where you don’t age). So in many scenes, Fabienne plays a spiritual version of her own daughter: desperate, abandoned, reaching out to the mother she loves. It’s through this subplot that Kore-eda exhumes one of his oldest preoccupations: the permanence of film versus the impermanence of memory. Everything that happens between mother and daughter in the present is filtered through that past, and nothing in “The Truth” is more uncomfortably honest than the notion that families are cast much like films are cast; once people settle into their roles, it can become impossible to imagine them being played differently, or by anyone else. The beauty of Kore-eda’s film, despite its apparently light touch, is in the rhetorical way it wonders if it’s possible for people to separate themselves from those performances. A subtle masterpiece from a great director.

So, if you need anything like a 'plot' to keep you amused for two hours, you need to leave this one well alone, but if you're prepared to simply immerse yourself in artistic beauty, this one from Bi Gan has much to offer. It's one of those that's deliberately bewildering, plunging viewers into an extended dream - meets - subconscious - meets - unreliable memory world in the name of abstract motifs such as memory, time, and space, swimming in artsy references and ostentatious technical exercises.

The first half is very challenging indeed, and I suspect that many will fall by the wayside as a result, but everything (literally and metaphorically) takes off in the second half, with a hugely impressive hour-long continuous take in 3d. There's a voiceover reciting the director’s own poetry, hints of a criminal past and some regret over an old love; the film deliberately, if perhaps rather too self-consciously, evoking film noir by weaving in some fragmented backstory about someone who was murdered, and a mystery related to a gun, but given the wilfully obscure timelines and elliptical dialogue, nothing clear emerges; instead, you just have to surrender to the film’s aesthetics - and some of the cinematography by “Mustang” DP David Chizallet is truly inspired. The sheer range and weirdness of activity, including a surreal ping-pong match and a long, slow plunge down a cliff via a cable-car foreground the difficult and elaborate camera setups.

Bi cites a truckload of artistic references and inspiration, from Chagall to Dante, from Billy Wilder to Modiano (whose short story “Last Evenings on Earth” is chosen as the Chinese title - don't expect anything to do with Eugene O'Neil), although the connections are a tad tenuous, whilst, by contrast, the influence of Wong Kar-wai on the visual style, nostalgic songs, femmes fatales with retro haircuts, the theme of transience invoked by broken-clock motifs, and the staged poses of lovers in a permanent state of aroused but unrequited desire, is clear if perhaps a little too obvious in places; meanwhile, the largely unprofessional cast largely gives us range of standalone emotive facial expressions rather than anything resembling 'character'. Liu Qiang’s production design evokes the recesses of the mind through dark, underground sets like a coalmine shaft, a basement pool hall, and flooded chambers with leaking roofs and dripping walls reminiscent of Tsai Ming-liang locales, whilst, with its ethereal electronic touches, the wonderful score by Lim Giong and Point Hsu contributes most of the dreamlike tone intended. Much to admire here, but definitely hard work at times!

This highly original, deliberately disturbing, piece is a tale of domestic-violence revenge with a fairy-tale like quality. The plot's rather basic and the feminist message isn't very subtle, whilst some of the comedic touches are a tad clumsy, but Mirrah Foulkes' script and direction are largely excellent, and there's so many wonderful, ingenious touches that overall it's a highly enjoyable watch (if not for the squeamish or easily offended). The whole cast play their respective parts with great gusto (I suspect they really enjoyed themselves), but Mia Wasikowska is particularly good as Judy, who perfectly combines her vulnerability and inner strength, and Damon Herriman's Punch neatly displays the toxic combination of the demon drink and the need for applause. The design is simply spellbinding, whilst Francois Tetaz's wacky, sinister score which includes pretty much everything from light orchestra to retro prog-rock, is a perfect accompaniment to the incongruous matching of the brutality and absurdity being played out on screen. Terrific stuff.

In a nutshell, this long (over 3 hour) film examines the lasting damage done by China’s one-child policy and the Cultural Revolution. The story is an intimate one, yet it embraces a large cast of characters who reflect the immense changes that have swept China over the last 50 years, and shows the resilience of those Chinese who lived through it all who were later able to recover their faith in life.

The entire film is cleverly constructed out of flashbacks to the 1970s and '80s that tell the characters’ backstories a little at a time. It can be a tad confusing at times (you feel the need to turn back the pages as it were) but, particularly the first half, in which we get to know the characters, is thoroughly engrossing, and the script can be forgiven for sometimes withholding crucial information until it's ready to divulge it. Whereas other films have revealed the horrors of the death camps and whatnnot, here the scenes set during the Cultural Revolution are relatively restrained - the film being more interested in showing the steep personal price individuals paid, which affected the rest of their lives. A powerful, understated piece.

This piece deals with some very important themes (conscience vs career/life and the 'legality' of war to name but two) but rather eschews any depth or difficulty in favour of a rather run-of-the-mill tv style drama which unfortunately simply has the effect of dissipating the impact it should have.

Knightley is very engaging as our heroine, and despite being rather incongruously glamourously beautiful she does pretty well with a basic script; she's particularly good at conveying the character's sheer vulnerability. Unfortunately, much of the rest of the (strong on paper) cast are reduced to stereotypes with the result that it's difficult to take it seriously at times. And whilst there are some good moments (notably, some chilling original footage of Blair, in full tv evangelist mode, telling us that 'war is not inevitable' (a classic case of 'never believe it until it has been officially denied'!) and a stoney-eyed Bush casually informing us of the 'links' between Saadam and Al Qaeda) there's way too many cliche-ridden and melodramatic scenes for the thing to be believable (you get the feeling that the 'reality' was much more interesting). Moreover, whilst I get that making the intricacies of the law / political context are extremely tricky to make 'entertaining', much of the script is based on the premise that the audience is simply too stupid to grasp the complexities of the subject - there's that BBC news-style of constantly repeating things to make sure we've 'got it' for one thing, and some of the writing could, sadly, been lifted straight from Wikipedia.

So all in all a watchable enough piece but not one that we'll ever come back to, I fear. All the Presidents Men it ain't, I'm afraid.

In this superb film, Mexican director Alfonso Cuarón uses a large canvas to tell the story of 'ordinary' lives that are, of course, extraordinary. Shot in black and white, the film is set in Mexico City in the early 1970s (apparently a re-creation of Cuarón’s home as a child), and centres on a young indigenous woman who works as a maid for a middle-class white family that’s in danger of falling apart. Cuarón uses one household on one street as a synecdoche of the city (the country?), working on an epic scale but with a distinctly personal sensibility with the effect that the film is less of a drama than a meditation on the past or a dream.

The film is set for the most part in a neighbourhood where families live behind locked gates, and where a myriad of servants busily keep homes running. In one such house, Cleo (the quite wonderful Yalitza Aparicio) lives with and works for a multi-generational family that seems incapable of doing the slightest thing for itself. A series of events slowly upends the stability of this world, and the film includes an earthquake, an unexpected pregnancy, death and betrayal, but carries you through with the sheer power of its humanism. In one of the most astonishing sequences, Cleo and the family’s grandmother, Señora Teresa (Verónica García), watch a student demonstration turn into a police riot through the window of a furniture showroom. Cuarón doesn’t identify the incident — apparently known as the Corpus Christi Massacre of 1971 — but gives us harrowing flashes of chaotic violence and human suffering.

Like Cleo, the camera is often mobile, anticipating and following her movements like a faithful companion, whilst the family’s four children tend to blur into a cacophonous but rather charming little mob. The constantly-on-edge mother, Sofía (Marina De Tavira) is unfairly berated by her husband and she, in turn, occasionally rebukes Cleo, a chain of exploitation that Cuarón represents coolly, occasionally letting a camera movement comment for him. There's a minimal plot, and this, together with its length, might put off some, but for those with patience, there's much to admire in Cuarón's vision of a woman and a world shaped by a colonialist past that inexorably weighs down the present without being at all heavy-handed - the director's, and Cleo's, viewpoints are instead created via visual choices, staging and camerawork. There are many scenes that can be truly called 'great', perhaps particularly two stunning sequences, one involving childbirth, and one towards the end involving dangerous waters, that are viscerally terrifying and emotionally overwhelming.

Few of the male characters come out of this tale very well, and of course the film is dedicated to Liboria Rodríguez (“for Libo”), the woman who raised him, who is beautifully depicted as something of a stoic, loving, heroic figure that is totally compelling.

Directed by Ljubomir Stefanov and Tamara Kotevska, this film is a documentary about the life and labours of one Hatidze Muratova. Originally commissioned to make a video about conservation efforts in Macedonia, the filmmakers apparently spent three years with Hatidze, and as a result, the film is great at recording the rhythms and textures of rural life, the directors shaping their observations into a neorealist fable; an impossibly stirring tale of struggle, persistence and change.

Hatidze lives with her mother Nazife, who is bedridden and partly blind, a dog named Jackie, a few cats, and ... quite a few industrious bees. Hatidze’s methods are intimate and humane; she’s endowed with a loving touch that, seemingly, the bees and the other animals recognise. She speaks to them and sings to them, but, above all, she nurtures and nourishes them, telling the bees, “half for you, half for me”, treating the hives that she sustains on another rock wall, alongside her home, with familial care. And Hatidze isn’t entirely isolated from the rest of the world. Skopje is only a little more than 12 miles away, and she travels there, on foot and by train, to sell her honey. Because of its superior quality and her shrewdness, it fetches a good price. But just as we are settling into Hatidze’s company, appreciating the edges and contours of her personality and savouring the deep pleasure of her work, the pastoral calm is shattered by a family rumbling into the village in a noisy trailer that turns out to be the quietest thing about it. At first, Hatidze welcomes these neighbours - Turkish speakers like her, but the the sheer chaos that surrounds them conspire to disrupt Hatidze’s routines. From this point the film unfolds with a novelistic intricacy and tightly sprung dramatic mechanism, and we get caught up in its destructive power, its brewing enmities, and its overarching, tragic sense of the disturbance of cosmic order.

Films of this kind inevitably raise questions - I found myself wondering what she thought of the filmmakers who were following her on this perilous mission—how she and they arranged the shooting, and what effect the filmmakers’ presence had on her. Solitude is one of the film’s prime subjects and also its dramatic mainspring, and its details and practicalities are merely hinted at, and rather unexplored. Much of the movie is filmed in the Muratova home; Hatidze displays the daily details of her domestic life and her labours to the filmmakers, who must have virtually lived with her for the time while they were filming. But the terms of their complicity, the relationship that they and Hatidze share, remain a somewhat frustrating blank. However, for all of this, this is powerful, intriguing work.