Movie Review: Vengeance

Vengeance *** ½
Directed By: Johnnie To.
Written By: Wai Ka Fai
Starring: Johnny Hallyday (Costello), Sylvie Testud (Irene Thompson), Anthony Wong Chau-Sang (Kwai), Ka Tung Lam (Chu), Suet Lam (Lok), Simon Yam (George Fung), Siu-Fai Cheung (Wolf), Felix Wong (Python), Ting Yip Ng (Crow), Maggie Siu (Inspector Wong), Vincent Sze (Mr. Thompson).

Johnnie To is among the most prolific directors working anywhere in the world right now. In the past decade alone, he has directed 23 films. While I would hardly call myself an expert on his films – having only seen a handful - I will say that To is among the best action movie directors in the world right now. While many of his compatriots from Hong Kong have fled and gone to Hollywood to make their films, To has stayed put in Hong Kong, and carried the torch, at times seemingly by himself. His films mark a refreshing departure from the trend in Hollywood action filmmaking towards making everything bigger, louder and faster – and the tendency to edit action sequences so fast that the audience becomes disoriented. In To’s films, there are always multiple action set pieces, and all of them are expertly crafted. He stages gun battles with more skill than anyone since the early days of John Woo. As an action filmmaker, he is second to no one in the world right now.

His new film Vengeance may not quite be the masterwork that his film Election, Election II, Exiled, Breaking News or even Mad Detective were, but it is still one of the most entertaining action movies in recent years. It stars the “French Elvis”, Johnny Hallyday as an aging man who comes to Hong Kong to avenge the murder of his grandkids and son in law, during an attack that also left his daughter barely clinging to life. For unknown reasons, he has not been close to his daughter in recent years, and had in fact never even met his grandkids. But, his family is still important to him, and he needs to find out what happened and why – and make whoever is responsible for it pay.

The added wrinkle in the movie is that Hallyday is losing his memory. He has to keeps notes of everything, or he forgets. When he gets a hold of the crime scene photos, he writes on each one a single word – Vengeance. When he meets a team of hit man – Kwai (Anthony Wong), Chu (Ka Tung Lam) and Lok (Suet Lam), and hires them to help find who killed his family, he takes Polaroids of them and writes their name, and the fact that they are his friend, on them. He tells these hit men that he is a chef in Paris, and owns a nice restaurant. He offers them a lot of money, and even says that he will give them his restaurant if they help him. The trio agree, thinking they’ve met an easy mark in this old French man, but quickly they realize that he is not who he appears to be. His expertise with guns makes it apparent that while he maybe a chef now, at some point, he may have done exactly what they do now. Once they start investigating, the trail quickly leads them to Fung (Simon Yam), a flamboyant gangster, who has employed the hit men in the past. The guilt associated with the fact that the three hit men could have easily had gotten the call to kill Hallyday’s family (and would have accepted it), makes them more loyal to him than they might otherwise had been. They genuinely like the guy, and feel sorry for his loss.

In many ways, Vengeance is a typical revenge drama and action movie. The storyline is fairly straight forward, and it’s not too long before the three hit men and Hallyday go out and start mowing down bad guys. The action sequences are certainly the highlight of the movie. A gun battle that erupts after a nighttime family picnic, the battle in a junkyard, with huge square of waste (think of what Wall-E produced, and just increase the size) as shields, and particularly the final showdown, where Hallyday, his memory pretty much gone, goes after Fung and his henchmen by himself in the streets of Hong Kong are all brilliant action set pieces, meticulously crafted and executed by To. This is how shootouts in the movies are supposed to be done.

But the movie is more than just a well executed action movie. Hallyday is a genuinely gifted actor (see his work in Patrice Leconte’s Man on the Train for example), and he makes his character into a sympathetic man, and a sort of tragic figure. He may end up getting his vengeance, but if he has forgotten why he wanted it in the first place, will it really matter? The great Anthony Wong (who Western audiences probably, unfortunately, know him best for his role in The Mummy 3 last year, but has done great work in Hong Kong for years, particularly in the Infernal Affairs trilogy, where he originated the role played by Martin Sheen in The Departed) is very effective as the leader of the hit men Hallyday hires. And Simon Yam, a favorite of To’s, is wonderful as the over the top gangster. He is not just a mustache twirling mad man, but something for more insidious – a businessman with no conscience.

So while the plot of the movie is merely incidental and by the numbers, the execution of the movie is anything but. Vengeance may not be the best film of To’s long career, but it puts to shame almost any American action movie you will see this year. This is a very entertaining film, with some dark undertones that elevate beyond the realm of the revenge thriller.

Movie Review: I Am Love

I Am Love ****
Directed by: Luca Guadagnino
Written By: Luca Guadagnino & Barbara Alberti & Ivan Cotroneo & Walter Fasano.
Starring: Tilda Swinton (Emma Recchi), Flavio Parenti (Edoardo Recchi Jr.), Edoardo Gabbriellini (Antonio Biscaglia), Alba Rohrwacher (Elisabetta Recchi), Pippo Delbono (Tancredi Recchi), Diane Fleri (Eva Ugolini), Maria Paiato (Ida Roselli), Marisa Berenson (Allegra Recchi), Waris Ahluwalia (Mr. Kubelkian), Gabriele Ferzetti (Edoardo Recchi Sr.), Martina Codecasa (Delfina), Mattia Zaccaro (Gianluca Recchi).

The ghosts of Italy’s past – both political and cinematic – haunt every frame of Luca Guadagnino’s luscious new film I Am Love. Watching it, I was reminded of the themes in both Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Conformist and Vittorio De Sica’s The Garden of Finzi Continis, where the reality of fascism breaks through to people in their opulent lifestyles. But in visual terms, the film owes more to the work of Luchino Visconti – particularly The Leopard – where the massive, beautiful surroundings threaten to overtake the characters, but somehow never does. Daringly though, I Am Love is not a period piece, but one set in the present day. While the film draws links to Italy’s fascist past, it is still grounded firmly in the present world of globalization.

Tilda Swinton gives a remarkable performance as Emma Recchi, the wife of a wealthy industrialist, Tancredi (Pippo Delbono), who has taken over the family business from his father (Gabriele Ferzetti). We first meet this family at a lavish birthday party for the father, who makes a great speech about his family’s legacy being written into Italian history. He started his factory as a young man, and has made the family exceedingly wealthy – but now it’s time to retire, and leave the company in the hands of Tancredi and his son, Edoardo (Flavio Parenti), who is now out of college and ready for the responsibility. The company is what has made the family great, and the grandfather makes a wonderful speech about morality and loyalty in business – ignoring the fact that during WWII, the company used cheap, Jewish slave labor to build itself up. A few months later, the grandfather is dead, and Tancredi is looking to sell the business – which doesn’t sit well with Edoardo who has bought his grandfather’s bull about morality and loyalty hook, line and sinker.

In the films first half, Guadagnino does a marvelous job at establishing all the players in the movie. It’s only in the films second half that Emma truly becomes the films protagonist. She was raised in Soviet era Russia, and married Tancredi who had travelled there is search of art and business (an early example of globalization). Coming to Italy, she hasn’t looked back since – becoming so Italian, she says she does not even remember her original first name, it having been supplanted by Emma when she moved. She mistook all the consumer freedom in Italy that she never experienced in the Soviet Union, for true freedom. But during the course of this movie, she will get a glimpse of what true freedom really means.

It all seems to start when she comes across a letter that her daughter Elisabetta (Alba Rohrwacher) sent to Edoardo. In it, she confesses to dumping her steady, respectable Italian boyfriend, because she has fallen in love with her older, female art teacher in London. Rather than being shocked or angered by Elisabetta’s effort at self actualization, it inspires Emma to set herself free. We have already seen her and Edoardo’s much poorer friend Antonio (Edoardo Gabbriellini), a chef, making eyes at each other but so far that is as far as things have gone. They go a step farther when Emma brings her mother in law (Maria Berenson) and her future daughter in law (Diane Fleri) to Antonio’s restaurant – under the guise of welcoming the daughter in law into the sisterhood of “Recchi wives”. But the lunch serves an entirely different purpose when Emma eats Antonio’s food – through a series of close-ups, Emma digs into the food with almost orgasmic delight, and from there she never looks back. It isn’t long before Antonio and Emma are having an affair.

It is also in the films second half that the themes in the movie truly start to take root. Emma is, in her own way, caught in a totalitarian regime herself. Her husband Tancredi seems nice, but he is never really there, and with his money, he truly does control her. Her son, Edoardo, is nicer, but more naïve and in two heartbreaking scenes near the end of the film, they both essentially say the same thing to her – that she no longer exists. It is also in this section where the reality of the business truly hits home, with the arrival of Mr. Kubelkian (Waris Ahluwalia), an Indian American businessman, who talks of globalization with phrases like “Commerce is democracy” and “War is a growth opportunity”. An old regime of fascism in Italy may have been toppled, but a new one – and this one global – is taking hold.

Swinton carries the film with her remarkable performance. I have no idea how she learned to speak Italian with a Russian accent, but she did, and she pulls it off remarkably well. But it is really in her quiet moments where she takes off – often not saying a word. The films devastating and brilliant climax is pulled off with her saying nothing, all because of the looks she exchanges with her family. She has lived under political fascism in the Soviet Union, economic fascism in her marriage, and she is finally breaking free to have true freedom – whatever it costs her, she no longer cares.

Movie Review: The Girl Who Played with Fire

The Girl Who Played with Fire ****
Directed by: Daniel Alfredson.
Written By: Jonas Frykberg based on the novel by Stieg Larsson.
Starring: Noomi Rapace (Lisbeth Salander), Michael Nyqvist (Mikael Blomkvist), Lena Endre (Erika Berger), Sofia Ledarp (Malin Erikson), Peter Andersson (Nils Bjurman), Georgi Staykov (Alexander Zalachenko), Yasmine Garbi (Miriam Wu), Micke Spreitz (Ronald Niederman), Tehilla Blad (Young Lisbeth), Annika Hallin (Annika Giannini), Michalis Koutsogiannakis (Dragan Armanskij), Paolo Roberto (Paolo Roberto), Tanja Lorentzon (Sonja Modig), Per Oscarsson (Holger Palmgren), Anders Ahlbom (Dr. Peter Teleborian), Jacob Ericksson (Christer Malm), Niklas Hjulström (Richard Ekström – Prosecutor), Magnus Krepper (Hans Faste), Reuben Sallmander (Enrico), Ralph Carlsson (Gunnar Björk), Johan Kylén (Inspector Jan Bublanski), Hans Christian Thulin (Dag Svensson), Jennie Silfverhjelm (Mia Bergman).

Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy has become one of the literary events of the past decade. Think of it kind of Twilight for adults – not because the books are about vampires, which of course, they are not, but because Larsson has created characters and an intricate storyline that has involved millions of adults across the world. Lisbeth Salander is his greatest creation – an antisocial, bisexual, brilliant computer hacker, with a dark past which explains why she so adamantly hates violence against women. But the other main character - Mikael Blomkvist – is just as important as Salander. He is more normal, more instantly likable, and it’s because of him that we allow ourselves to let Salander into our lives in the first place. The books are all breathless thrillers, but what raises them above the level of most novels in the genre is two things. The first is that they are connected to the larger world – Larsson used his novels to talk about the corrupt, morally bankrupt place Sweden has become in the past few decades. More importantly however, it’s because the characters in the book feel real – they are involved in a thriller plot, but we believe in them and that they would actually find themselves in the position they are in.

They knew what they had in Sweden, and they rushed a trilogy of movies into production to capitalize on the popularity of the novels, before Hollywood could get a hold of them (and they have, with a proposed 2012 release date for the first American film). The films were a huge hit in Sweden, and around Europe last year, and this year, North American audiences have got a chance to see them. The first movie, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo did very well for a foreign language film in the spring, so now we have a chance to see the second movie – The Girl Who Played with Fire, and in my opinion, it’s just as good as the first film.

Once again, the key to the movie working in the performance by Noomi Rapace, who has made Lisbeth Salander her own. When we left her in the last movie, she had just had a huge financial windfall and taken off for parts unknown, while Blomkvist regained his reputation by bringing down his adversary – all this and they had time to catch a serial killer as well in the first movie. But things get complicated once again, when Millenium Magazine decides to publish an expose on the sex trade in Sweden – and name names. When the reporter working on the story, along with his fiancée and Salander’s new, wicked guardian, all turn up dead, Salander is fingered as the prime suspect. Although Blomkvist has had no contact with her for a year, he knows she is innocent, and sets about trying to prove it – while Salander tries in her own way, and her dark past is dredged up for all to see.

This film has a new director – Daniel Alfredson – but you wouldn’t know it. The film moves with the same wicked pace as the first film, adding layer upon layer to the mystery, and making the characters come even more to life. Rapace fits the role of Salander like a glove – and she continues to deliver one of the most fascinating performances of the year. I’m not quite sure how she manages to make a character who rarely speaks so fascinating, but she does. For his part, Michael Nyquist gives Blomkvist some added depth this time around as well. The supporting cast is excellent – from Peter Andersson as the horrid guardian to Georgi Staykov as the evil Russian mobster to Micke Spreitz as a hulking blonde goon and even ledgendary Per Oscarsson as Holger Palmgren, Salander’s beloved former guardian suffering from a stroke. This series has known precisely who to cast at each step of the way.

The series, both the books and the movies, work as well as they do because they concentrate more on the characters then even the twists and turns of the plot. They do not seem like characters in a thriller – doing and saying things simply because the plot requires them to, but rather they feel real. The movie ends in a bloody shootout, and even then it feels natural – as if it was the only way it could end. I’m sure that with the success of the first film, and what is sure to be success with this one as well, that we will see The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by the end of the year. I don’t think that this film is quite as good as The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo – which surprised me with how good it really was. I wasn’t surprised by the quality of this film – but I loved it just the same. Bring on the third movie – the sooner, the better I say.

Movie Review: Wild Grass

Wild Grass *** ½
Directed By: Alain Resnais.
Written By: Alex Réval & Laurent Herbiet, based on the novel L'Incident by Christian Gailly
Starring: André Dussollier (Georges Palet), Sabine Azéma (Marguerite Muir), Anne Consigny (Suzanne), Mathieu Amalric (Bernard de Bordeaux), Emmanuelle Devos (Josepha), Edouard Baer (Narrator).

Alain Resnais is one of the most daring filmmakers in history. For his films Night and Fog, Hiroshima, Mon Amour, Last Year at Marienbad and Muriel in the 1950s and 60s, he established himself as one of the masters of the French New Wave. He has never stopped working in the years since, even if his films have become somewhat more obscure, and less highly touted. Now at 87, he has made Wild Grass that many critics believe is his best film in years. And while I quite liked the film, I must admit that I do not see the masterpiece that others see – but that doesn’t mean that Resnais is not back in fine form.

The film is about the strange connection between two strangers, and how their relationship progresses when one character finds the others wallet. Sabine Azema plays a woman who goes shopping one day and has her purse snatched by an unknown assailant. Andre Dussollier finds her wallet in the parking lot of a local mall. After some debate as to what to do, he decides to turn the wallet over to the police, here represented by Mathieu Amalric. When Azema picks up the wallet, she asks about the man who found it. She calls him up to thank him, but Dussollier is not satisfied with a simple thank you. He wants more. He starts writing Azema long winded letters about himself, and making phone calls to her. At first she is annoyed - she even goes back to Amalric to report him, who goes to see Dussolier to tell him to back off. But then Azema has a change of heart, and starts wanting to connect with him. By then, he has lost interest though. He is married to a much younger woman (Anne Consigny), with two grown children, and has decided to stick with his normal life.

The movie is a very strange comedy, based on the irrationality of the characters. Why do these characters behave the way they do, and make the decisions that they do? Honestly, I have to admit that I have no idea. To some this may seem charming, and it was for me for the first two thirds of the movie. But in the last act, I grew frustrated. It can be thrilling in a movie, even a seemingly lightweight comedy like this one, when you have no idea what is going to happen next - but when it’s based on the completely irrational behavior of the characters, it started to grate on my nerves a little bit.

Yet, having said all of that, it is impossible to deny the skill that is involved in making this film. Eric Gautier’s cinematography favors wonderful, swooping crane shots and the use of color in the movie is mesmerizing. And while I do not think I ever fully comprehended the characters, it is clear that the actors all do, as their performances are all wonderful. Dussolier has the central role, and his face is one of the most fascinating I can recall seeing on an actor. He seems to always be thinking about something, and mulling over his options as each new development happens. Azema is more of a free spirit, and she is equally wonderful. Consigny is quite good as the wife who has no idea what is going on, and Emmanuelle Devos is fun as Azema’s best friend who find herself drawn into the events without ever quite understanding them. Best of all may just be Amalric as the increasingly put upon cop, who is just trying to stay sane. And while I’m not sure if every scene leads effectively into the next one, taken by themselves they all work wonderfully well.

I cannot help but admire Resnais, who at an age when most filmmakers, are well, dead, is still taking chances, and still pulling off much of what he attempts. There are not many directors of any age, who would attempt something like Wild Grass, and even fewer who could make something this good out of it. Perhaps I just need to see the film again to fully appreciate it. I saw it at the Toronto Film Festival, and sometimes in the midst of seeing fives films a day, and going on little sleep, the more complex movies sometimes seem overly so. Whatever the answer, Wild Grass is certainly one of the more interesting films of the year, even if I do not think it is necessarily a great one.

Note: After writing this in review in full – I did not change a word – I went read the rather lengthy review of the film in the September/October issue of Film Comment. What I came away with from that reading, was that I did not really miss the point of the movie. It is about the irrationality of its characters in the depths of “mad love”, and the confusion is all part of the fun. This makes me feel good. I still admire Resnais’s film – the camera work, the colors, the performances, the brilliant Vertigo homage at the center of it all – but I still don’t quite love it. Strangely though, I think I want to see the film a second time now more than I wanted to see the film the first time.

Movie Review: The Secret in Their Eyes

The Secret in Their Eyes *** ½
Directed By: Juan Jose Campanella.
Written By: Juan Jose Campanella & Eduardo Sacheri based on the novel by Sacheri.
Starring: Ricardo Darín (Benjamín Esposito), Soledad Villamil (Irene Menéndez Hastings), Pablo Rago (Ricardo Morales), Javier Godino (Isidoro Gómez), Guillermo Francella (Pablo Sandoval), José Luis Gioia (Inspector Báez), Carla Quevedo (Liliana Coloto).

It’s 1974 in Buenos Aires. A beautiful young woman is raped and murdered in her apartment. The DA assigned to the case is Benjamin Esposito (Ricardo Darin) who is disgusted by the crime scene. When the police bring in a suspect, who has even confessed, Esposito throws them out. It’s clear to him that the police strong armed a mentally unstable man into confessing to a crime he did not commit. He has a suspect in mind. This is Isidoro Gomez (Javier Godino), who he has seen in old photographs looking at the victim in a way that makes him uncomfortable. To raise his suspicions even more, Gomez has taken off – leaving his apartment, his mother and his job behind. A year goes by and everyone else moves unto other cases. But Esposito cannot let this one go. It’s not because the crime itself was so brutal, or even that the killer remains free. It’s because the husband of the dead woman, Ricardo Morales (Pablo Rago) had a look in his eyes of pure love for his wife. It’s the kind of love that Esposito had never seen before, or felt himself, and it haunts him.

This is the setup for Juan Jose Campanula’s The Secret in Their Eyes, an uncommonly intelligent thriller from Argentina. The movie flashes back and forth through time – from the mid-70s when the original investigation took place, and 1999, when Esposito, now retired, plans to write a book on the case that has haunted him for the last quarter century.

The first hour of the movie is quite good – involving, intelligently written and performed, and quite well directed by Campanella. Even the inevitable romantic subplot, between Esposito and his new boss Irene Hastings (Soledad Villamil), is handled well. Darin and Villamil have great chemistry together, and you can feel the sexual tension between them, that neither really act on. She is young, beautiful and the daughter of a man with connections. He is older, more broken down, and has a solid career – but nothing spectacular. They want each other, but both wait for the other one to make a move.

What I admired in this part of the film is the subtlety of the filmmaking. The movie is called The Secret in Their Eyes, and that’s an apt title, as Campanella likes to give us close-ups of the actors eyes, which tell us more than pages of dialogue would have. The first half of the movie was very good in the way that foreign language films that are popular in North America are – that is, the film doesn’t really feel like a foreign film, just a Hollywood movie with subtitles.

But the second half of the movie kicks things up a notch, and this is really where the film goes from a good thriller, into a near great one. It starts with a breathless chase through a soccer stadium – shot in seemingly one, unbroken shot which I’m still trying to figure out how they did it. It is followed by a great interrogation sequence that would have fit right in among the best scenes on Homicide: Life on the Street, which contains the best interrogation sequences I have ever seen. And then the movie keeps twisting, yet it never feels like something out of a screenwriter’s playbook, but rather it comes naturally from the story and the characters. The one moment that is a little too much overkill, is easily explained by the fact that the movie is a loving look back by a man who was infatuated at the time. The movie remains intelligent and well made right up until the shocking conclusion.

Note: I saw this movie at the Toronto Film Festival last fall, before it was nominated and ended up winning the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar this year. While I do not think it comes close to matching fellow nominees The White Ribbon (which ranked very highly on my top 10 list last year) or A Prophet (which will undoubtedly rank very highly on this year’s list) – it is a fine winner. Or at the very least a hell of a lot better than last year’s winner, Departures, from Japan, or many recent winners. I would say in the past decade only The Lives the Others, The Barbarian Invasions and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon were better.

Movie Review: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo ****
Directed by: Niels Arden Oplev.
Written By: Nikolaj Arcel & Rasmus Heisterberg based on the novel by Stieg Larsson.
Starring: Michael Nyqvist (Mikael Blomkvist), Noomi Rapace (Lisbeth Salander), Lena Endre (Erika Berger), Peter Haber (Martin Vanger), Sven-Bertil Taube (Henrik Vanger), Peter Andersson (The Lawyer Nils Bjurman), Ingvar Hirdwall (Dirch Frode), Marika Lagercrantz (Cecilia Vanger), Björn Granath (Gustav Morell), Ewa Fröling (Harriet Vanger).

Out of all the literary characters of the last decade, perhaps the one that most sticks out in my memory is Lisbeth Salander, the heroine of Stieg Larrsson’s Millennium trilogy (which is saying something, because the third book in the series, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, won’t be published here until May). She is a brilliant computer hacker, who has been beaten down by a series of brutally violent men in her life – starting with her father, and shooting out from there (which is why the direct translation for the Swedish of the first book is Men Who Hate Women, not The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo). Now in her early 20s, she makes her living as a researcher for a security firm, but is horrible with people because she will not talk to them. She hides herself behind her goth appearance, and has no real relationships to speak of. She is bi-sexual, and likes sex, but has never had what you call a proper “boyfriend” or “girlfriend”. It isn’t until she meets Mikael Blomkvist, the crusading investigative journalist for Millennium magazine, that she starts letting her guard down just a little bit at a time – and that’s scarier to her than maintaining her distance. She is a completely fascinating character, who proves more elusive just when you think you’re starting to get a handle on her.

Which is why, I looked forward to the cinematic version of Salander is Niels Areden Oplev’s Swedish film with a mixture of high anticipation, and trepidation. The worst thing you could do with this character – and the equally great series she is a part of – is to dumb it down, and make it more palatable for a mass movie audience (the whole idea of which is absurd of course – since the books were so uncompromising, but also huge best sellers, in and outside of Sweden). I know they plan on making an American version of this series as well, and I wonder if they’ll pull it off. But when it comes to the Swedish version, I can now breathe a sigh of relief. They didn’t screw it up. In fact, they made a masterful film out the first book in the series.

The movie opens with Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) being found guilty of slandering a prominent Swedish businessman, and being sentenced to a prison term of a couple of months, and ordered to pay a fine. But the real damage has already been done to his reputation as a journalist, and to the magazine he helped found, Millennium. When he is approached by a mysterious lawyer with asking him to meet with Henrik Vanger (Sven-Bertil Taube), another wealthy, powerful Swedish businessman, his curiosity gets the better of him and he agrees. It turns out that Vanger wants to hire him to look in the disappearance, and presumed murder, of his beloved niece nearly 40 years before. Blomkvist, who is desperate to get out of Stockholm, accepts the assignment which will take him to a nearly deserted island town. Salander knows about this, because before Vanger hired Blomkvist, he asked the security firm she works for to look into him – and she got the assignment. Unlike her other clients, she finds something fascinating about Blomkvist, and keeps the secret link to his computer running. When she finds out he is looking into a 40 year murder of a teenage girl, she is more fascinated – and eventually gets involved in helping Blomkvist investigate the murder herself.

This may sound like a typical murder mystery thriller – and in a very real way, it is. There are only a limited number of suspects, because the island was shut off from the mainland during the time the young woman disappeared, so in a way, this is like one of those country house murder mysteries – just 40 years removed from the crime.

But the movie, like the book before it, is more than just another murder mystery. It delves deeper into the psyche of its characters, and the reason behind the crimes involved, than most movies even dare to attempt. The theme of violence against women runs throughout the movie – and doesn’t just apply to the murder, but to Salander as well. Her violent, troubled past led her to a stint in an asylum, and she has been declared incompetent to handle her own affairs – so she has a guardian assigned to her. When her old one suffers a stroke, she is assigned someone new. Even Salander, with her troubled past, isn’t prepared for the sadistic cruelty that Bjurmann (Pettr Andersson) will inflict on her.

At the heart of the movie is the brilliant performance by Noomi Rapace as Salander. The rest of the cast is fine – excellent in fact – but it is Rapace who owns this movie. Salander is a difficult, almost impossible character to play, as she keeps everything so bottled up inside. But Rapace does a brilliant job at giving us glimpses into Salander – often with little more than a momentarily glance at the camera. It is a brilliant performance.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo benefits greatly from this performance, but the entire movie is a brilliantly structured, written and acted thriller. The other two books in the series have already been made into movies with Rapace redoing her role, and I cannot wait to see them. This is an early highlight of the year.

Movie Review: L'Affaire Farewell

L’Affaire Farewell ***
Directed By: Christain Carion.
Screenplay: Eric Raynaud, based on the book Bonjour Farewell by Serguei Kostine
Starring: Emir Kusturica (Gregoriev), Guillaume Canet (Pierre), Alexandra Maria Lara (Jessica), Ingeborga Dapkunaite (Natasha), Dina Korzun (Alina), Philippe Magnan (François Mitterrand), Niels Arestrup (Vallier), Fred Ward (Reagan), Willem Dafoe (Feeney), Yevgeni Kharlanov (Igor), David Soul (Hutton), Valentin Varetsky (Anatoly).

L’Affaire Farewell is different from most spy movies that we see. There are no chase sequences, not gadgets or gizmos, no shootouts. You are even hard pressed to find a scene in the movie where someone raises their voice in anger. That is because the movie is based in reality. Where spies don’t blow anything up, because if they did they would call attention to the fact that they are spies. This is a quiet, thoughtful movie about the Cold War.

Gregoriev (Emir Kusturica) is an intelligence officer with the KGB. It is the early 1980s, and he is tired of seeing country in ruins, his people poor and having little hope for the future. He has a teenage son, and wants to see him grow up and have more opportunities in life than he had. He loves his country, but hates what it has become. He decides that he is going to help save it. He was once stationed in France, so he reaches out to the French and offers to supply them with information about the Soviets activities. The French are not as experienced at this as many countries are, and they end up sending a low level government employee – and engineer actually – to pick up the information. This is Pierre (Guillaume Canet), who simply wants to do his job, and watch his kids grow up. But Gregoriev takes a shine to Pierre. The two men bond. So even if Pierre is not really sure what he is doing, he becomes Gregoriev’s contact. Through a number of years, Gregoriev provides him with a lot of information that ends up being passed up the food chain, until it eventually reaches the desk of Ronald Reagan (Fred Ward), and his adviser Feeney (Willem Dafoe). Neither of these men know Gregoriev, and don’t really care either. He’s supplying him with the information they want, and that’s all that matters. If his life is in danger, so be it.

L’Affaire Farewell works very well in the scenes between Gregoriev and Pierre. These have an uneasy chemistry with each other. At first, they are constantly feeling each other out, mistrustful of each other. But as the movie progresses, they let their guard down a little. Not only do they trust each other, they like each other. Gregoriev’s son is a music fan, but he cannot get the music he likes (Queen especially) in the USSR, so he gets Pierre to bring back tapes from France for his son. The two like each other.

The movie is even more fascinating though when it simply deals with Gregoriev and his life. Emir Kusturica is a great filmmaker in his own right, but when he steps in front of the camera, he is also a great actor. He makes Gregoriev a complex person, who we like and admire, even after we find out about the affair he is having, and other not so flattering truths. Gregoriev is not your typical movie hero, but a real person, faced with impossible decisions who is doing the best he can. He is the real reason to see the movie.

The movie is less effective in detailing Pierre’s personal life, but that’s because we’ve seen it all before. He has a wife who is constantly complaining at him to put his family first, and to let go of all this spy stuff. It’s putting his family in danger. She is the typical movie wife, whose sole purpose is to make it harder for her husband, and to pretend like it is still the 1950s, so she has to be the dutiful woman, who has no opinions of her own, except as they relate to her family. It gets a little tiresome at times.

The other problem with the movie, and it’s a more minor one, is Fred Ward’s performance as Ronald Reagan. Ward seems to be combining some George W. Bush in with his Reagan, which makes the performance feel a little off. If they are trying to draw parallels from the Cold War to the War on Terror, than the allegory is lost in translation. Willem Dafoe is much better in a very small role as the unfeeling intelligence officer, who explains that they are a nation at war, and there are causalities in any war. And it’s better for those causalities to be Soviet, than American.

Overall though, L’Affaire Farewell is an intelligent spy drama that sticks much closer to reality than most spy movies. It is a movie that knows how these things work in real life, and that there are tragedies in every situation. By the end of the movie, we feel genuinely sorry for Gregoriev, who simply wanted to make a better life for his son.

Movie Review: Mother

Mother ****
Directed By: Bong Joon-ho.
Written By: Park Eun-kyo & Bong Joon-ho.
Starring: Kim Hye-ja (Mother), Won Bin (Do-joon), Jin Goo (Jin-tae), Yoon Je-moon (Je-moon).

For the third feature in a row, Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho has made a completely different, completely engrossing movie. Memories of Murder is one of the best police procedurals of the decade – it was Fincher’s Zodiac before that movie was ever released. With his crowd pleasing The Host, he made the best big monster in the water movie since Jaws – mixing dark humor with his scarily intense film. Now comes Mother, a gripping psychological thriller about a mother’s obsessive devotion to her child.

Do-joon (Won Bin) is a little slow. He is obviously mentally challenged in some way, but now in his 20s, he wants desperately to be treated like a man, even though he really just is a kid in a man’s body. It does not help that his mother (Kim Hye-ja) is way too over protective of him. She is a widower with no other children, and just a small shop to call her own. She watches over him incessantly, although it drives him nuts. The two even share a bed together, observed from on high by Bong’s camera. Nothing incestuous is going on mind you, but something weird definitely is.

One day, Do-joon goes down to the local bar and gets drunk, and stumbles home late into the night. The next day the police show up and arrest him for murdering a local high school girl. They are able to draw a confession out of Do-joon using some questionable tactics. Most people would see the game they are trying to pull on them, but Do-joon is too naïve and trusting to see what is happening. After he is charged with murder, and put in jail while awaiting trial, he proclaims his innocence to his mother. Mother then tries to get the police, the prosecutors, even her son’s lawyer to listen to her, but they all brush her off. The case is open and shut. Do-joon is guilty.

Mother remains unconvinced. With the help of Do-joon’s one friend, Jin-tae (Jin Good) who is not all that trustworthy himself, she sets about investigating the crime herself to prove her son’s innocence. It appears that the victim was not quite as innocent as she seems. She was in fact known as the town slut – someone who would fuck any guy who gave her something as small as a rice cake. She lived with her grandmother, who spends all of her time (and money) drinking rice wine. The list of potential suspects is huge, as the girl took pictures of all of her lovers on her cell phone, and was getting ready to expose them all – including some people who do not want to be exposed.

But that’s just the plot of the movie, and does not really help to explain what the movie is about. Kim Hye-ja delivers a powerful performance as the mother, who is never named, so obsessively devoted to her child. She has been a TV star in Korea for years, often playing sweetly devoted mothers, but here she turns her image on its head. When the movie starts out, we see a portrait of a woman who will do anything to protect her child. We understand and sympathize with her – after all, wouldn’t you do anything possible to protect your children? But as the movie progresses, and dark secrets are revealed, her true personality comes out. Yes, she is fiercely devoted to her child, but the real question here is why? And would you do what she does in the film’s final act to protect your child? Where is the line between a normal worried reaction to your child, and become so completely obsessed that it borders on mania. We know something is wrong right from the opening scene – a surreal shot of Kim alone in a field, slowly dancing, the look in her eyes inviting you to try and figure her out, but remaining too mysterious to put together.

The performance by Hye-ja is the centerpiece of a movie that is truly one of the best made films of the year. Bong Joon-ho always uses an interesting color scheme in his films, and this one is darker than his others. Even the blood seems more like dark crimson, than bright red. He directs his movie with confidence from beginning to end – even making great use out of the surreal bookends of his film. This was Korea’s official entry into the Foreign Language film race last year, and while it isn’t quite the masterpiece that two films that were nominated were (The White Ribbon and A Prophet), it is much better than the film that won – Argentina’s The Secret in Their Eyes (which is admittedly, a damn fine thriller itself). Mother continues Bong’s dark streak that he continues to carve through the Korean film landscape. Perhaps what connects his last three films is their focus on families being destroyed, and the offsetting of horrific moments with some interesting, dark comedic beats. No matter what, I think that Bong is the best director working in Korea right now – a country whose filmmaking community has experienced somewhat of a resurgence in the past decade. Mother is a great film.

Movie Review: Vincere

Vincere *** ½
Directed By: Marco Bellocchio.
Written By: Marco Bellocchio & Daniela Ceselli.
Starring: Giovanna Mezzogiorno (Ida Dalser), Filippo Timi (Benito Mussolini / Benito Albino), Fabrizio Costella (Benito Albino), Corrado Invernizzi (Dottor Cappelletti), Fausto Russo Alesi (Riccardo Paicher), Michela Cescon (Rachele Guidi), Pier Giorgio Bellocchio (Pietro Fedele), Paolo Pierobon (Giulio Bernardi), Bruno Cariello (Giudice), Francesca Picozza (Adelina), Simona Nobili (Madre Superiora), Giovanna Mori (Tedesca), Silvia Ferretti (Scarpette rosse), Corinne Castelli (Lacrime), Patrizia Bettini (Cantante).

When Vincere opens, Benito Mussolini (Filippo Timi) is a no name socialist provocateur in pre WWI Italy. In his opening scene, he tells a roomful of Union Men, and clergymen, that if God does not strike him dead in the next five minutes, then it is proof that God does not exist. After his speech, the meeting descends into chaos. This is when Mussolini first sees Ida Dalser (Giovanna Mezzogiorno). There is sexual chemistry between them even in the midst of all the arguing and fighting around them. It isn’t long before these two are falling in love, getting married and having a son, who they name after Benito himself. But then Mussolini goes off to war, becomes a hero, and then wants nothing to do with Dalser. He has married someone else, and denies ever marrying Dalser. Because he has become a powerful politician, he has the power to silence her - even enough influence to put her in a mental institution to shut her up.

Thus is the story of Marco Bellocchio’s new film Vincere (which means Victory). Bellocchio has been making incendiary political dramas since the 1960s, when his debut film Fists in the Pocket caused a stir. With Vincere, Bellocchio tells a little known story from Italy’s past. In the early scenes of the movie, Mussolini is portrayed as darkly handsome, and dangerously sexy. You can see why a fiery beauty like Mezzogiorno’s Dasler would fall for him as quickly as she does. The movies numerous sex scenes are extended and erotic, without ever becoming overly graphic. Once Mussolini comes back from the war, and refuses to acknowledge Dasler, we see him only through his numerous speeches in newsreel footage - paunchy and overly angry. The film also mixes in various political propaganda ads to show just how Italy was changing at the time.

Yet the movie remains Dasler’s story. To a certain extent, the movie reminded me of Clint Eastwood’s Changeling about a mother who is branded insane by the LA police force when they return her “son” to them, and she insists that it is the wrong boy. Yet Vincere never devolves into melodramatic nonsense, like Changeling often played as. Dalser is portrayed as obsessively stubborn. She is repeatedly told that if she will just stop insisting that she is Mussolini’s rightful wife, then she will be released from the hospital and be reunited with her son. But she just cannot do it. Against her better judgment, she loves Mussolini, and believes that he loves her as well. All these years of torment are just his way of testing her. While she is not insane when she enters the hospital, as the years drag on, she slowly becomes so.

And her poor son fairs no better on the outside. Abandoned by his father, and having his mother taken away from him, and given to a rich, arrogant man to be raised, Benito Jr. simply really has no chance at a normal life. Played late in the movie by Tippi again, we see him as the spitting image of his father, who does a mean impression of the President himself. But he cannot deal with all the pressure

The movie is carried by the great performance by Mezzogiorno (and to a lesser extent Tippi, who is great in the opening and closing scenes of the films, but not on screen at all during the long middle segments). Mezzogiorno never loses our sympathy, even if at times we become frustrated with her actions. Sure, what Mussolini did to her was heartless, cruel and wrong, but does she never stop to think about what her actions are doing to her son? Although we believe that she loves her son, we simply want her to give in and take the offer to get out. The amazing thing about the performance is that Mezzogiorno makes us understand her actions, even while we disagree with them. It is one of the best performances of the year.

Bellocchio is a master filmmaker, and Vincere is undoubtedly his best film in a number of years. It is a classically well made, and well structured story. His anger is palpable and comes across on screen remarkably well. Now well into his 60s, he shows no signs of slowing down. Vincere is one of his triumphs of his career.

Movie Review: A Prophet

A Prophet ****
Directed By: Jacques Audiard.

Written By: Jacques Audiard & Thomas Bidegain and Abdel Raouf Dafri & Nicolas Paufaillit.

Starring: Tahar Rahim (Malik El Djebena), Niels Arestrup (César Luciani), Adel Bencherif (Ryad), Hichem Yacoubi (Reyeb), Reda Kateb (Jordi), Jean-Philippe Ricci (Vettori), Gilles Cohen (Prof), Antoine Basler (Pilicci), Leïla Bekhti (Djamila), Pierre Leccia (Sampierro), Foued Nassah (Antaro), Jean-Emmanuel Pagni (Santi).

No matter what the political implications of Jacques Audiard’s A Prophet are (and there are a lot of them), what haunts me about the movie is the difference between the opening and closing scenes in the film. When Malik (Tahar Rahim) walks into prison in the film’s opening scene, he is 19 year old kid, given six years for punching a cop, with no family and no friends either in prison, or outside. Two and half hours later (approximately 4 years in movie time) he walks out of jail having become a murderer, drug dealer and major crime figure. In a very real way, Malik had to go to prison to become a criminal.

When Malik arrives at the prison, he is completely alone. He is a Muslim, but not a devout one, so he is stuck into the cell block populated by the Muslims. Any chance he has of befriending anyone there goes away almost immediately when two inmates beat him up for his shoes. From then on, he doesn’t trust the other Muslims.

Then something happens. A new Muslim comes into the prison, for only a few weeks until he has a chance to testify at some big trial. He approaches Malik about selling him some hash, and when Malik says he has no money, the other inmate, Reyab (Hichem Yacoubi) says he can arrange it with the guard so Malik can come into his cell and suck him off. Malik refuses, but there are no secrets in the jail. Word gets back to the Corsicans, who essentially run the prison, of Reyab’s offer. They want Malik to kill him for them, and tell him that if he doesn’t they’ll kill him instead. When Malik slashes Reyab’s throat with a razor blade, his fate is sealed. He no longer has to worry about anyone messing with him, because he is under the protection of the Corsicans, led by Cesar Luciani (Niels Arestrup), but he still doesn’t really have any friends. The Corsicans treat him as their servant, making him clean up and make them coffee. Malik doesn’t mind so much. He is always listening, always learning.

Eventually Cesar will need more and more from Malik. Most of the rest of the Corsicans are either released or transferred to a prison closer to their home, meaning that Cesar has no one else he can trust. His grasp on the prison is slipping, as the Muslims, who have always out numbered the Coriscans, now wield some influence with the guards as well. When Malik gets the chance for work release, Cesar starts sending him on errands for him – meeting and negotiating with his associates on the outside. What Cesar doesn’t realize is that Malik is no longer just working for him. He has made contacts with Jordi (Reda Kateb), the prison drug dealer, and another inmate who has since been released Ryab (Adel Bencherif), and he has his own thing going now. He is turning himself into quite the little drug kingpin. We realize long before Cesar does that eventually Malik will turn on him – having learned all he could from him, sooner or later, Malik will have to make his move.

I have mentioned the Corsicans several times in this review now, and if you’re like me, you probably have no idea who they are, as I don’t think I’ve ever heard of them on the news. Apparently, some Corsicans (from Corsica an island governed by France that is between France and Italy, that have their own language), believe they should have independence from France, and some committed terrorist acts to try and further this aim. The Corsicans in this movie say they are political prisoners, but really operate much more like the Mafia then the IRA.

Writer/director Audiard draws parallels between the Muslims and the Corsicans. Both are angry with the French government, and feel marginalized and have lashed out in violence against what they believe are their oppressors.

A Prophet looks at this fascinating, rarely seen subculture with his eyes wide open. Audiard is meticulous in his view, but his characters never become ciphers – never just mere stand-ins for his larger political issues. A Prophet is a fascinating, violent look at these men. This is a key movie in Audiard’s career – the moment he goes from the promising director of such films as The Beat My Heart Skipped, into a master filmmaker. His movie is an epic crime drama, the likes of which we rarely see. The pace is dizzying, the scope huge, and yet intimate. He never loses sight of Malik in the grander scheme of things. Newcomer Tahar Rahim delivers one of the best performances of the year as Malik – his confidence slowly building, as he transforms from the naïve kid we see at the beginning of the film, into the hardened criminal at the end. Malik’s transformation is almost tragic, but Rahim makes it feel real and genuine. Malik may be happy with himself by the end of the movie, he doesn’t realize that he has sold his soul.

Movie Review: 1981

1981 ***
Directed By: Ricardo Trogi.
Written By: Ricardo Trogi.
Starring: Jean-Carl Boucher (Ricardo), Claudio Colangelo (Benito), Sandrine Bisson (Claudette), Gabriel Maillé (Jérôme), Dany Bouchard (Marchand), Léo Caron (Plante), Marjolaine Lemieux (Aline), Élizabeth Adam (Anne Tremblay).

Ricardo Trogi’s 1981 is a nostalgic look back at his own childhood. It’s kind of like a Quebecois version of the Wonder Years, that great show of the late 1980s when Fred Savage told us all about his formative years in the 1960s.

The movie stars young Jean-Carl Boucher in a marvelous comic, yet natural performance, as the young Ricardo. He is 11 years old, and his working class parents – Benito (Claudio Colangelo) and Claudette (Sandrine Bisson) have just packed up Ricardo and his younger sister and moved them to a new, more expensive house. With that means, of course, a new school and Ricardo enters a world where cliques have already formed, and he is on the outside looking in. Not only that, but while at his old school, he was just about to start learning handwriting instead of printing, here he is already expected to know it by heart. This isn’t all bad news though, as one day the teacher asks her star pupil Anne Tremblay (Elizabeth Adam) to help Ricardo with his cursive. She brushes elbows with him, which he takes as a sign that she loves him as much as he loves her. The fact that she virtually ignores him for the rest of the school year doesn’t diminish this belief.

Trogi gets the details right as to what it is like to be 11 years old. The way the teacher towers over you, and makes you feel small by comparison. How you do and say things you normally wouldn’t just to make friends. How you obsess over the smallest of details over the girl you are “in love” with. How it seems that everything your parents do is designed to specifically ruin your life. The most brilliant, unforgettable scene in the film involves Ricardo once again complaining that his parents never buy him anything and accusing his mother of “living beyond their means”, and she just goes off on him. Who hasn’t had a moment like this with their parents, where they just push things a little too far, and end up touching a nerve that sets off their parents? Like the scene I remember from my childhood, the incident is never brought up again – by either the parent or the child.

1981 doesn’t really break any new ground. There really is nothing here that you haven’t seen in other movies – or the Wonder Years for that matter. But what it does, it does with skill, style and wit. It is a highly enjoyable little film.

Movie Review: Before Tomorrow

Before Tomorrow **
Directed By: Marie-Hélène Cousineau & Madeline Ivalu.
Written By: Susan Avingaq & Marie-Hélène Cousineau & Madeline Ivalu based on the novel by Jørn Riel.
Starring: Madeline Ivalu (Ninioq), Paul-Dylan Ivalu (Maniq), Peter-Henry Arnatsiaq (Apak), Mary Qulitalik (Kuutujuk), Tumasie Sivuarapik (Kukik).

Before Tomorrow is said to be the third part in a trilogy following Atanjuarat and The Journals of Knud Rasmussen. Although not directed by Zacharias Kunuk as the other two films were, he is on hand as a producer, and his star – Peter-Henry Arnatsiaq has a supporting role in the film. I know that The Journals of Knud Rasmussen was largely seen as a disappointment following the groundbreaking and brilliant Atanjuarat, but I found it to be a fascinating story about the moment in time when the Inuit’s “lost their way”. Both of those films were enthralling because they were a glimpse into a culture that has largely been ignored by cinema – or at least since Nanook of the North in 1922. But they succeeded beyond the level of a mere ethnographic film because they both had strong narrative threads that pulled us through the movie. Atanjuarat is a tale of lust, revenge and violence. The Journals of Knud Rasmussen a story of choosing between what you believe is right, and your own survival. The problem with Before Tomorrow is that no such narrative exists. It takes nearly half of its running time setting things up before the main thrust of the narrative begins. And when it does, it is hardly enthralling or engrossing. The filmmakers seem much more interested in taking gorgeous shots of the Canadian North – which it must be said it does brilliantly well – then in actually telling a story. As a result, I found Before Tomorrow to be an incredibly boring film.

The movie is about an old Inuit woman named Ninoq (Madeline Ivalu – who also co-wrote and co-directed the movie), who for years has gone to an island with her friend to dry out the fish in able to store it for the winter. Both women are getting old and closer to death (the friend more than Ninoq), and her son Apak (Arnatsiaq), wants her to let a younger woman go instead, but she will hear none of it. It is her job, and she’s going to go. Her grandson Maniq (Paul-Dylan Ivalu) volunteers to go with the two old women so he can look after them if something goes wrong. Soon, the old woman’s friend is dead, and when the family does not come back for Ninioq and Maniq, they head back to the camp themselves – to discover their entire family has died from a mysterious illness brought their by outsiders. Now the old lady and her grandson are left to fend for themselves for the winter.

I know what the movie is trying to say – that Inuit women are strong, and without them the tribes would not be able to survive. Early on in the movie, an old man tells a sexist story, and while the women laugh along with everyone else, when they retire and are alone, they mock the old man. When the rest of the family has died, it falls to Ninioq to raise her only grandson – and protect him from the elements. They help each other to survive.

But for me, the narrative never really took hold. For far too long in the movie, there is not much happening at all. There are long shots of the two of them walking in the snow covered landscapes, or trapped in their cave dwelling with only a small fire going. Not much is said, except for the occasional story that the old woman tells her grandson. Far more often however, they two just sit there, trying to survive. If the filmmakers were trying to show the monotony and boredom that comes along with this sort of life, then they succeeded brilliantly. It’s just not something I really felt the need to watch.

The film is directed by Madeline-Helene Cousineau and Madeline Ivalu. They do not have the same sort of cinematic eye that Kunuk showed in his two films. Too often when stories are being told, they place the camera directly in front of the people doing the talking. It is almost like one of those Andy Warhol screen-tests. They favor long, unbroken, steady shots for most of the rest of the movie, and while it makes for some breathtaking vistas, it is not very exciting to watch – and after a while, when they are simply capturing the same vistas again and again and again, it grows tiresome. When something exciting – like the wolf attack – actually does happen, the directors do not find an interesting way to shoot it, and it comes across as incredibly fake and staged.

I’m sure there are some who will like – perhaps even love – Before Tomorrow. Judging on its 10 Genie Nominations in fact, I would wager a lot of people will. It is a specific type of film for a specific type of audience. I have to admit, that in this case, I am not that audience. After the triumphs of Atanjuarat and The Journals of Knud Rasmussen, this just felt like an afterthought.

Movie Review: Paris 36

Paris 36 **
Directed by: Christophe Barratier.
Written By: Christophe Barratier & Julien Rappeneau.
Starring: Gérard Jugnot (Pigoil), Clovis Cornillac (Milou), Kad Merad (Jacky), Nora Arnezeder (Douce), Pierre Richard (Monsieur TSF), Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu (Galapiat), Maxence Perrin (Jojo), François Morel (Célestin), Élisabeth Vitali (Viviane), Christophe Kourotchkine (Lebeaupin), Eric Naggar (Grevoul), Eric Prat (Commissaire Tortil), Julien Courbey (Mondain), Philippe du Janerand (Triquet).

Paris 36 is an erratic little musical comedy set in Paris in 1936. For the most part, Paris 36 is content to be a nostalgic look back at the cabaret clubs of yesteryear. All the different stereotypical characters you would expect in a movie like this are there. The father whose wife first left him and now has taken his son away. The communist agitator. The new girl who dazzles with her talent and beauty. The mean, lecherous landlord. The talentless impersonator. Etc, etc. If this sounds like your type of movie, then I’m sure you’ll love it. I enjoyed part of it, but got bored after about an hour, as I had to wait for the movie to catch up to me.

The film is about the employees of an old theater who are all put out on the street when the owner loses it to the mean money lender Galapait (Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu). They spend a few months looking for other work, but there is none. They then decide to overtake the theater and run it themselves. Galapait doesn’t really like the idea, but he goes along with it anyway for a short while. He thinks it will help his image. Also he has just met the beautiful Douce (Nora Arnezeder), and wants to be able to help her get a job on stage – which is her dream – so she will be grateful and do things for him.

The other major characters are Pigoil (Gerard Jugnot), the stage manager who discovers that his dancing girl wife is having an affair, and ends up running off with one of the other performers. He is mired in depression, and starts drinking too much, so his son Jojo (Maxence Perrin) earns money by playing his accordion in the street. When the mother returns, now married to a respected business, she takes Jojo away from Pigoil, and doesn’t allow him to see his son. Then there is Milou (Clovis Cornilliac), the young communist agitator who drones on about his principals, but is also in love with Douce. Despite the fact that Galapait has money, and can give Douce what she wants, she falls for Milou anyway.

The movie does address the changing political times in France during the time, but only in the most superficial of ways. The communists are rabble rousing, and Hitler has gotten the juices of the right wing flowing, and the conflict between these two forces are told between the conflict between the Milou and Galapait.

But the movies storytelling is creaky, and lacks any real surprise. Roger Ebert said in his review that if the movie had been made years ago, it might today be considered a classic. And to a certain extent, I think that’s true. Had this film been made in 1936, it would have seemed a little more original, a little more daring. But this is 2009, and to me Paris 36 plays everything too safe. Yes, the musical numbers are enjoyable (especially the Oscar nominated one Loin de Paname), and just like her character, Nora Arnezeder is a star in the making. But Paris 36 just felt like a movie I had seen before – and I enjoyed it more the first time.

Movie Review: I Killed My Mother

I Killed My Mother *** ½
Directed by: Xavier Dolan
Written By: Xavier Dolan.
Starring: Anne Dorval (Chantale), Xavier Dolan (Hubert Minel), François Arnaud (Antonin), Suzanne Clément (Julie), Patricia Tulasne (Hélène), Niels Schneider (Éric), Monique Spaziani (Denise), Pierre Chagnon (Richard Minel).

Most movies about teenagers are made by people who forget what being a teenager was actually like. That is why we get movies like Adventureland (which is a fine film), that look back at those days with nostalgia and joy. But I Killed My Mother has none of that rose colored view of teenage years. This is probably because it was written and directed by Xavier Dolan, who was 19 when he made the film. He gets those years right – the rages, the arguments with parents and how they seem to be purposefully ruining your life. When you’re a teenager, you cannot see the big picture, but just what is immediately in front of you. And, if like in the movie, both you and your single mother who is raising you are undiagnosed manic-depressives, things are just worse than normal.

Dolan also stars in the movie, playing Hubert, a 16 year old kid from Montreal who is living at home with his mother Chantale (Anne Dorval). The two of them cannot seem to have a normal conversation without at least one of them flying into a rage – which of course, sets off the other one. The father, Richard (Pierre Chagnon) is pretty much out of the picture, although he still lives in town. When Hubert was 8, he decided that being a husband and father wasn’t really for him and just left. Now Chantale and Hubert just crash into each other every night. Every time Hubert complains about anything, Chantale asks him to “take a survey” at school among his friends to find out “how many other mothers would do this for their son”. The constant bickering between the two of them has driven both of them to the end of their ropes.

Hubert has other problems than just his mother. As I mentioned before, I think he is manic depressive, just like his mother and grandmother. They mention the grandmother who had to be institutionalized before her death and her problems, but neither one of them can face the fact that they as well could use help with their mental problems. Add this to the fact that Hubert is gay, and cannot tell his mother about it, and you have one confused teenager. When he is assigned a project at school to detail what one of his parents does for a living, he tells his teacher that he never sees his father (true) and that his mother is dead (not true). The teacher feels sorry for him, and takes him under her wing for a bit – but soon Chantale has been told by the school that Hubert told his teacher she was dead – which makes her barge into the school and throw a tantrum in the hallway.

I Killed My Mother is a very strong debut film for Dolan – as a writer, as a director and as an actor. There are people who have been doing this for decades and don’t have the skills to pull off all three of these jobs in one movie. Perhaps we shouldn’t be too surprised that he was able to write and play a teenager so well – after all, he still is one. But what amazed me was the portrait of Chantale, his mother. She is hardly a one dimensional monster, and this is not a French Canadian Mommie Dearest. Dolan sees her clearly, and even generates some sympathy for her. When a school administrator calls her and says that Hubert could benefit from a “more stable male influence in her life”, she flies off the handle, but we understand why, and feel sympathy for her. Dorval gives a remarkable performance as Chantale. Dolan’s cinematic eye is also well honed from a 19 year old. True, he does go a little overboard on the “artistic” shots at points, but mainly this is a remarkable visual film.

I Killed My Mother played at the Cannes film festival last year, was Canada’s official entry for the Academy Awards Foreign Language Film race (and should have at least been shortlisted), and will most likely dominate the Genie Awards later this spring. All this for a film by a 19 year old. Amazing.

Movie Review: Coco Avant Chanel

Coco Avant Chanel ***
Directed By: Anne Fontaine.
Written By: Anne Fontaine & Camille Fontaine based on the book by Edmonde Charles-Roux.
Starring: Audrey Tautou (Gabrielle 'Coco' Chanel), Benoît Poelvoorde (Etienne Balsan), Alessandro Nivola (Arthur 'Boy' Capel), Marie Gillain (Adrienne Chanel), Emmanuelle Devos (Emilienne d'Alençon).

Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel was a fascinating woman. Long before the sexual revolution, she wasn’t hung up on sexual morals (it helped that she was French), and she always had her own style. She didn’t care what people thought of her, she just went ahead and did her own thing. A poor orphan, she made her living as a seamstress and a bar singer, before falling in with a rich crowd of people, and not letting go, no matter what. She eventually became one of the biggest fashion icons of the 20th Century.

Anne Fontaine’s Coco Avant Chanel smartly concentrates on the years before Chanel was famous. After people become famous, their stories are all the same really. Its how they got there that is interesting, and Coco’s story is more fascinating than most.

We first see Coco as at an orphanage at the age of 10. Her mother has died, and her father has left her and her older sister Adrienne at the orphanage. Coco never gave up hope that he would back, but he never did. Flash forward 15 years, and now Coco (played by the radiant Audrey Tautou) is struggling to make ends meet with her sister. Adrienne has fallen in love with a Baron, who promises to marry her, so he whisks her away to his country estate, leaving Coco by herself. Through the baron, Coco has meet Etienne Balsan (Benoit Poelvoorde), another rich man with a country estate, so Coco just arrives at his door one day. Since he is attracted to her, he allows her to stay – for two days no more, but that turns into months. She slowly starts to meet his friends, who are fascinated by this woman. She is gorgeous, but she doesn’t follow the fashion trends of the day. She refuses to wear a corset, and most of her outfits look rather boyish. She says the less you show, the more you excite the men, who have to use their imagination to figure out what you are hiding.

The reason to see the movie is Audrey Tautou, who is as charming and beautiful as ever in the lead role. She has enormous, gorgeous dark eyes that are constantly showing us what is going on behind them. Coco Chanel was first and foremost a businesswoman, and she shows how he became the success she was – she used her assets to move up the ranks, slowly but surely. This really is not a romantic movie – they try to sell the notion that Chanel was actually in love with Arthur Capel (Alessandro Nivola), but I never quite bought it. She used Capel, just like she used Balsan before him. It may appear like Chanel is sleeping her way to the top, or that the men in her life were exploiting her, but I don’t think that was really the case. She used them as much as they used her – and no one ever really had any complaints as to what happened.

Written and directed by Anne Fontaine, who also made the underrated The Girl from Monaco this year, Coco Avant Chanel is a gorgeous movie. The art direction of the country estate is wonderful, but it’s really the costumes – mere copies of Chanel some will say – that are truly eye catching. Coco was right – our eyes are always drawn to Tautou in the movie, even when she is surrounded by gorgeous women wearing far less clothing. There is an enigma about Coco Chanel that we will probably never understand – which is what makes her so fascinating (this is only one of three movie made about her to debut in 2009!). Coco Avant Chanel is not your typical costume drama – and Audrey Tautou’s Coco is not your typical movie heroine.

Movie Review: Tokyo Sonata

Tokyo Sonata ****
Directed By: Kiyoshi Kurosawa.
Written By: Kiyoshi Kurosawa & Max Mannix & Sachiko Tanaka.
Starring: Teruyuki Kagawa (Ryûhei Sasaki), Kyôko Koizumi (Megumi Sasaki), Yû Koyanagi (Takashi Sasaki), Inowaki Kai (Kenji Sasaki), Haruka Igawa (Miss Kaneko), Kanji Tsuda (Kurosu), Kôji Yakusho (The Robber), Kazuya Kojima (Mr. Kobayashi).

Kiyoshi Kurosawa is mainly known for his horror films. He has made great examples of Japanese horror like Cure, Pulse, Charisma and Séance – some of which have been ruined by American remakes, and some are still waiting to be ruined. So in a way, his latest and best film, Tokyo Sonata, is a departure for him as it is not a horror movie in the traditional sense of the word. And yet, there is certainly a degree of mounting dread, and a certain amount of terror and uncertainty in the film. It couldn’t possibly be a more timely film, as it deals with the effects of the economic downtown in a global economy. And yet, Tokyo Sonata resonates for more reasons than that.

Ryuhei Sasaki (Teruyuki Kagawa) was the director of administration for a large Japanese firm, until they realized they could cut costs by two-thirds simply by outsourcing this function to China, and he is let go. Humiliated at being a middle aged business man now unemployed, he doesn’t tell his wife Megumi (Kyoko Koizumi) about his firing, but instead heads off to “work” every morning. He tries going to employment agencies and to other job interviews, but is dealt one humiliation after another. The employment agency says he has zero chance at getting a job at the rate of his last one, and in interviews they want him to demonstrate his skills right in front of them during the interview. How do you demonstrate that you’re good at administration work? Simple, he doesn’t.

So he spends most of his time in libraries and in large concrete squares where they give out free food. He is surrounded by other men in his situation, as well as the homeless – the line between them getting thinner and thinner by the day. He meets a friend from school, Kurosu (Kanji Tsuda), who is in the same boat and has been for months. He offers advice on how best to fool his wife, but not on how to get another job. Eventually, Kurosu takes the easy way out. But Ryuhei cannot do that. When he finally lands another job, it is as a janitor at a shopping mall – the happy employed people going about their business all around him as if he isn’t even there.

But the fact that Ryuhei loses his job doesn’t cause the problems in his family – they just bring them to the forefront. The other three members of the family are all dealing with their own problems, and cannot share them with the other members of the family. Megumi goes about her routine as the dutiful housewife, but now that one child is over 18, and the other about to enter high school, she really doesn’t have anything to do, and is getting bored. When she discovers that Ryuhei is out of work, why doesn’t she offer to get a job? Because that’s not what she does.

Their oldest son, Takashi (Yû Koyanagi), is now out of school and sees no prospects for him in the modern Japan. When the law changes, and allows Japanese citizens to join the American army, he jumps at the opportunity. Their younger son Kenji (Inowaki Kai), accidentally starts a “revolution” in his class, and instantly regrets it. He wants to take piano lessons, but his father refuses to allow him. He does so anyway, stealing his own lunch money to pay for them. This is a family who hasn’t communicated with each other in years.

For two thirds of its running time, Kurosawa’s film plays like an updated version of an Ozu film – using the family as a microcosm through which we can view all of Japanese society – in this case one that is crumbling all around them, and heading uneasily off into a modern, globalized world. But just when we think we know where Tokyo Sonata is going, Kurosawa throws one curveball after another at us – a robbery turned hostage taking, an envelope full of money that is found, and people chasing children through their neighborhoods. For some, this is when Kurosawa loses his way in this film. But I find the last act absolutely necessary to the fabric of the movie. It wakes the characters up out of their daze, and moves them off into the future. The future is not bright (a reference to another Kurosawa film), but it’s there in front of them – and for the first time it appears that this family maybe willing to face it with their eyes wide open.

Movie Review: Revanche

Revanche *** ½
Directed By: Gotz Spielman.
Written By: Gotz Spielman.
Starring: Johannes Krish (Alex), Irina Potapenko (Tamara), Andreas Lust (Robert), Ursula Strauss (Susanne), Hannes Thanheiser (Hausner), Hanno Poschl (Kentecky).

Revanche is such a carefully constructed character study, that we almost forget that it is also a wonderfully tense thriller. Here is a movie that concentrates on its characters much more than its plot, where every move the characters make, every line they speak, seems perfectly in tune with their character. The film only gradually ratchets up the tension until by the end, it is almost unbearable.

Alex (Johannes Krish) has recently been released from jail, and the only job he can find is cleaning up at a brothel. There he meets Tamara (Irina Potapenko), a Russian prostitute who has just recently moved to Austria. They are in love, but for obvious reasons, hide their affair from the other people at the brothel – including the creepy boss Kentecky (Hanno Poschl), who wants to move Tamara to an apartment to be a higher class call girl. Alex has a crazy dream of buying into a friend’s bar in Ibiza, and paying off Tamara’s debts, and just living the rest of their lives out in peace. In order to finance this dream, he decides to rob a rural bank near his grandfather’s house. The robbery goes fine, but when he returns to his getaway car, with Tamara inside, he is confronted by a police officer, Robert (Andreas Lust), who fires on them as they speed away. At first it appears like a clean getaway, but one of the bullets hit Tamara and kills her. Alex gets away with the money, and decides to hide out for a while chopping wood for his grandfather. And wouldn’t you know it, but Robert and his wife Susanne (Ursula Strauss), live in the same small town, and Susanne has taken to visiting Hausner (Hannes Thanhesier), Alex’s lonely old grandfather.

I’m sure this sounds like a typical setup for a thriller, with unlikely coincidences piled onto one another, and admittedly, that is the way a film like this would normally play out. But writer/director Gotz Spielman is more intelligent that most filmmakers. Revanche stays focused on its characters throughout the movie, and not on the needs of the plot. By the time the robbery has even taken place, Spielman has gotten us inside the different worlds inhabited by Alex, Tamara, Robert, Susanne and Hausner. As such, throughout the movie, they remain people, and not just pawns in his game.

There are no good guys or bad guys in Revanche. To a certain extent, we like or at least feel sympathy for all of the characters. Alex never wanted anyone to get hurt – he doesn’t even load the gun before going into the bank. He just looks at his options, and realizes that he has two choices – a lifetime of menial jobs where he gets little money and no respect, or pulling off one bank robbery and having his dreams come true. It’s true that these are the dreams of someone much younger than Alex, but he doesn’t see it that way. Tamara is not your typical movie prostitute. Yes, she is exploited, but she has a hand in her own exploitation. Kentecky is creepy, but he never even tries to sleep with her. This is a business to him, and also for her. Perhaps she was drawn to Alex because he is the first man to treat her with any real kindness – not just leer at her in a sexual way, or see a way for him to make money. She is the tragic figure in the movie, as she is caught in a world she doesn’t really understand, and pays the price. In the early scenes of the movie, Robert complains that he sees no action in his small town police force, but when something “exciting” finally does happen, and he gets to draw his gun and shoot someone, the guilt eats him away on the inside.

But the most interesting, most complex character in the movie is certainly Ursula Strauss’ Susanne. She has recently suffered through a miscarriage, so she and Robert are depressed to begin with. After the shooting, he spirals further down, and she thinks that having a baby would pull him out of it. The problem is that there are some issues with Robert’s sperm. The fact that they got pregnant once was a miracle, and twice seems impossible. But what about this brooding stranger over at Hausner’s place, who says he isn’t going to be hanging around for very long. Her final scene, when the truth is finally revealed, is heartbreaking. She, more than any other character, is going to be effected by the events of the movie for the rest of her life.

Revanche means Revenge in German, and in a way that is what the movie is about. Alex wants revenge on Robert for killing Tamara, and perhaps in a way he gets it. But it is a hollow victory for Alex. Tamara is still gone, and although it looks like he could get away with the robbery, he didn’t actually make enough to do what he wanted to do. Spielman has been making movies in Austria for 25 years now, but has never really broken through in North America until this film got nominated for an Oscar last year for best foreign language film. True, The Class or Waltz with Bashir still should have won that Oscar, but Revanche is certainly better then the film that did win – Departures. It is a brilliant little character study and thriller all rolled into one.