The Netflix trailer and description promised a cool modern spy thriller with throwbacks to 60s films of the genre with jazz on the soundtrack and a dapper Bill Nighy in the lead role. Plus it is written and directed by David Hare, so surely it'll be great, except it... isn't. It may be the only serious film I've seen in which the lead actor utilises fewer facial expressions than Roger Moore (who isn't in it, sadly). Possibly worse, there are several other great British actors in this film but they are mostly terrible - it's all so actorly - none of them seem interested in playing the character or "performing" for the viewer, instead just acting at each other (and at David Hare, no doubt). Then again, almost all the characters are upper middle class Oxbridge types with barns attached to their houses and few interests outside the civil service beyond a bit of spurious art collecting, so there isn't a lot of character to get into, I suppose. The plot is OK in a somnambulent, Graham Greene with a sense of humour bypass writing a short story on his day off to pay for a plane ticket to Frankfurt sort of way, revolving around the leaking of a classified report implicating the prime minister (Ralph Fiennes with not a lot to say). The denouement builds towards the principled Nighy facing the dilemma of jail or giving up an exemplary career, but because he looks as if he's been both botoxed and tranquillised, and his biggest action sequence involves him breaking into a jog around Cambridge while carrying a Waitrose bag, it's difficult to care what he chooses. The film is saved only by Rachel Weisz smoking rollups moodily in a mansion flat and a few atmospheric shots of London at night. I suppose I miss Hare's point, really, that modern British skullduggery bears no relation in real life to frenetic Mission Impossible-style shenanigans but instead is acted out (acted being the key word) entirely in dull offices among laconic, cynical people in even duller suits who all went to the same public school, so what should I have expected, really. 5/10 would recommend only if you're unable to watch exciting films due to a nervous disposition or similar.
Reviews
6 Reviews
Anaïs in Love
(2021)
Ridiculously charming French romance
4 January 2023
This title popped up in my Amazon Prime and looked like something light and fun. My experience of recent French films has been mixed, with many being overly erotic and taking themselves a bit seriously. This film though was a delight from start to finish. The main character Anais, young and beautiful, absent-minded and clumsy and quintessentially French, dashes around everywhere in a series of gorgeous summer frocks. She is having a relationship with a handsome man her own age but it's already over practically within the first scene. In the very next scene Anais is enrapturing a married man twice her age, although he goes on to leave her frustrated. With a summer job at a symposium (she is a student) in the lavish French countryside, she encounters Emilie, a similarly beautiful 50-something married academic, and quite unexpectedly falls passionately in love with this older woman. I won't spoil it from there, but suffice to say I laughed and cried. I had to rewind and watch the last 15 minutes again as it was so beautifully done. I lamented "overly erotic" films earlier in this review and this title was rated 18+ by Prime but it is perfectly pitched, containing one of the most sensual, tasteful and romantic love scenes I think I've ever watched, without being over the top. I'll be buying the DVD of this film as I can imagine wanting to watch it over a bottle of French red many times in the future. This film is everything anyone would ever want from a modern French romance, perhaps because the story is everything anyone would ever want from love itself.
Afternoon Delight
(2013)
Underrated, well-made drama
26 August 2022
I found this title on a streaming service and, don't judge me, but I have to admit I was attracted initially by the title and low IMDb rating which promised something a bit cheap and steamy. When I saw however that it starred Katherine Hahn and was written and directed by Jill Soloway I realised it must actually be a pretty good film, and any steam would be a bonus. Soloway was one of the people behind the legendary Six Feet Under as well as Transparent (which incidentally I found patchier but still largely excellent) and this film won't disappoint viewers who loved the realistic dialogue and natural acting of those series. Familiar Soloway territory is explored, namely middle-class people wrangling with issues of sexuality, identity and class in Los Angeles. Hahn plays (superbly, with highly-strung aplomb) Rachel, a married woman having a mid-life crisis. Her nerdy husband buys her a lap dance at a club, which seems to ignite something in her, and later, while buying coffee downtown, she runs into the dancer, McKenna, played by a young and sexy Juno Temple. Rachel befriends McKenna, perhaps thinking some of her laid-back sexiness will rub off on her, and when McKenna gets thrown out of her home, Rachel invites her to stay temporarily in the family home. It turns out McKenna isn't exactly just a dancer and Rachel decides to spice up her non-existent sex life by accompanying her on a home visit to one of McKenna's regular clients. At this point however Rachel's true character comes to the fore as she decides she no longer wants anything to do with McKenna, who in turn also reverts to type during a boys' evening with Rachel's husband and his pals. Ultimately Rachel turns out to be a pretty awful, spoilt middle-class person who doesn't know what she wants and doesn't have a great deal of respect for the working class, so that by the end I was annoyed, not by the film but by her character (though clearly that was the intention). The film is definitely worth more than its current 5.2 IMDb rating (I've seen far more pretentious and tedious films get inexplicably higher scores on here) and also definitely worth investigating - and there is indeed some steam too, if that's what you're looking for.
Accurate and funny
26 August 2022
I was drawn to this title while browsing a streaming service because I suffer from anxiety and panic attacks myself, and I have to say these conditions are represented very accurately in this film. Unlike the main character I haven't become addicted to anti-anxiety medication but the film shows how easy it is for that to happen. Having said all that, the movie doesn't set out to be an instructional film or semi-documentary about anxiety, it's just a well made, well written film about a woman who suffers from this very common mental health condition. She's successful in her work, less so in her love-life perhaps, so you might say that while some folks are functioning alcoholics, she is a functioning anxiety-sufferer. Her misery at being unable to lead a normal life or find a partner who wants to stay with someone with her condition, and her many attempts to find a cure for this horrible condition are also very familiar. She runs the gamut of treatments, from different kinds of therapy and new-agey silliness to medical doctors, none of which ultimately help. Visually the film is very stylish, with sumptuously-decorated rooms and exotic exteriors, and together with the lead actress's high-octane performance this is a very entertaining but also serious look at how a middle-class creative/professional battles daily with her mental health.
Looking for Light: Jane Bown
(2014)
Great photos, lovely woman, disappointing documentary
11 August 2022
As a fan of Jane Bown's magnificent photos, I was excited to see this film turn up on a streaming service, especially as I've never seen her appear on camera before, nor as far as I know even read so much as an interview with her. It soon becomes clear why that might be, as she doesn't really have very much to say about her career. Slightly tense conversations - with some tantalising period details about her early life - are interspersed with talking heads, mostly from her days at the Observer, so apart from singer Richard Ashcroft (I think the only one of her subjects to contribute) and fellow black & white legend Don McCullin, you wouldn't really recognise anyone. Faceless colleagues out-crass each other: a sweary photographer tells of how he was once sent in Bown's place to meet a subject, who unsurprisingly despatched him as he only wanted Bown to do the job, while the latest in a long line of bespectacled white men speaks highly of a journalist who (and I quote) "topped himself". Newspaper men are so charming. Tiresome hack Lynn Barber, whose every celebrity interview was always split fairly evenly between alienating the subject and talking about herself, obviously takes the opportunity to say how "resentful" she was that Bown was able to charm the pants off their subjects in about two minutes. Sometime socialist Polly Toynbee (okay, maybe not all the talking heads are male) laments occasions when she and Bown had to take the stately Observer company car to "some dreadful housing estate" to do a report. Bown by comparison is taciturn and sparing with her memories and remarks, but as much as I would have liked to hear more from her, it only makes her more fascinating. Several classic photos are included in the film (and lingered on long enough to marvel over), perhaps the best being her legendary portrait of Samuel Beckett, about which Bown and another newspaper colleague do thankfully have interesting things to say. Nonetheless, apart from the novelty value of Jane Bown having the camera turned on her for once, the viewer would probably get more out of looking through a book of her beautiful photos than from watching this.
45 Years
(2015)
Dreary and disappointing
11 August 2022
Warning: Spoilers
The excellent pairing of the legendary Rampling and Courtenay, together with the drama-laden first five minutes, made me think this was going to be a superb film. Sadly I just found it boring, frustrating and underdeveloped. The premise is that a middle-aged couple's lives are stirred by the arrival of a letter with news about an old flame of Courtenay's, namely that her body has finally been found after she died during a hiking trip with him decades before. Courtenay decides to go to Switzerland to see the body, but not before his and Rampling's long-planned 45th anniversary party (whatever that is) at the weekend. The rest of the film follows just that week, so it doesn't deliver on the suggestion that he or they might undertake some sort of Swiss adventure. All we get is dull scenes, albeit acted with class and finesse by the two leads, of middle-aged people going about their dull middle-class, middle-England lives. That would also, of course, be fair enough, if there was ever any real drama. Instead Rampling's character becomes anxious at the shocking possibility that her husband would have, er, married someone else had the girlfriend not had a tragic accident. Courtenay promises his agitated wife that he'll forget the whole thing, yet even when he's clearly making an effort, the idea that he has A Past still irritates her. The week passes slowly and the whole action builds up to the anniversary party, a peculiar black tie affair at a hired venue, at which Courtenay makes a speech to their assembled friends. So, after nothing much happening so far except a build-up of tension (albeit well acted tension), if anything's going to explode it'll be here, right? Will Courtenay get drunk, blab about his lost love and cause a fuss? Will Rampling grab the mic from him and have a meltdown? Or will they maybe just Not Say Anything and Everything Carries On As Normal? You guessed it. The director and writer meanwhile flesh out the slightest of plots not with, say, flashbacks to the fateful holiday or further confessions of dark secrets or revelations about the couple's deep feelings for each other after 45 years, but with weird asides - on a short car journey, Courtenay's character suddenly vomits by the roadside - something he ate at lunch, car sickness, or something more sinister? It's never discussed. Rampling, alone in the house, sits down at the piano and plays a haunting little piece which seems to go on for hours, and then the scene ends - her character isn't a musician and it's the only time in the film she does this, so why even bother? Which I'm afraid to say is what I ended up asking of myself as the credits rolled.
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