prescottjudith Reviews

Avant l'hiver (2013)

Auteuil and Scott Thomas sublime in slow-burn thriller

[5/10 · 4 December 2013]

Novelist turned film-maker Philippe Claudel is covering all bases with Avant l'Hiver (Before the Winter Chill). His third outing as a director is part psychological thriller, part classic love triangle and part domestic drama with Daniel Auteuil once again showing masterly control over a storyline that crawls along at a snail's pace leaving plenty of room for angst ridden introspection and moody silences.

Auteuil is Paul, a 60-something successful neurosurgeon who is married to Lucie (Kristen Scott- Thomas) and BFF with Gerard (Richard Berry). The couple have been married for thirty years and if the union lacks a certain spark, they are happy enough entertaining friends, spending evenings at the opera and weekends with the family. The routine is shattered when Paul starts to receive bouquets of red roses from a mysterious admirer. Suspicion falls on a beautiful, young Moroccan woman Lou (Leila Bekhti), a waitress in a cafe who claims she is one of his former patients. Initially unconcerned by the unwanted attention, Paul gradually becomes intrigued by Lou who reels him in with tales of her difficult childhood and her struggles as an art student in France. Before long, he has left the comfortable family home to spend more time with Lou. Seeing a rift in the marriage, Gerard confesses his love for Lucie who is reeling from the shock of discovering her husband's interest in another woman and the disintegration of her safe, middle class existence. But worse is to come as it becomes apparent Lou is not the woman she says she is.

Putting the French middle class under the microscope is a path well-trodden by, among others, veteran director Claude Sautet – the man behind such classics as Nelly and Monsieur Arnaud and the not dissimilarly titled Un Coeur en Hiver (A Heart in Winter) also starring Daniel Auteuil. But where Sautet cast a non-too critical eye over the lives and loves of the bourgeoisie, Claudel depicts a group of people irritatingly smug in their selfish acceptance of the privilege that comes with their money and status. As Gerard bitterly points out to Paul, his only real problem is that life has been too good to him. He has a beautiful wife, a beautiful home and a career where he is admired and respected – an enviable position for most people in the 'autumn' of their existence . And yet he questions whether his life could have been different/ improved. Lucie is a similarly cold, unsympathetic character. Despite a faultless performance by Scott-Thomas, it's impossible to warm to someone who complains her days are long and empty as if the blame lies with someone else. For Paul, Gerard and Lucie, their lives have been about choices and their constant navel gazing seems almost comically self-indulgent. It falls to Bekhti to inject some relief from the suffocating, tangled relationships between the three main protagonists. Unfortunately her character is not consistent enough to offer a fresh perspective on the unfolding drama and she fails to make a real impression.

9-Month Stretch (2013)

Madcap black comedy by cinema bad boy Dupontel storms box-office

[6/10 · 19 November 2013]

Zany, black comedy, 9 Mois Ferme, is on track to becoming one of 2013′s surprise top earning films in France. It was written, directed and stars French cinema bad boy Albert Dupontel and has attracted over 1,500,000 cinema-goers so far with no signs of running out of steam.

The film is the simple story of 40-year-old, unmarried, high-powered judge Ariane Felder (Sandrine Kiberlaine) who lets her hair down at the firm's New Year's eve party only to discover six months later that she is pregnant. Not only is she unable to remember what happened on the evening in question, she has no idea who is the father of the child. Worse is to come when a DNA test reveals he is Bob Nolan (Albert Dupontel), an ex-con who was recently arrested on a grisly murder charge and goes by the name of the 'eye gobbler'.

From this unlikely scenario, Dupontel has crafted a hugely enjoyable, high-energy comedy held together by his chemistry with Kiberlaine and a storyline which is both outrageously funny and surprisingly touching. In press interviews, Dupontel has said he originally wanted to make the film in English with Emma Thompson in the lead role. Fortunately for Kiberlaine that project never saw the light of day.

She shows a deft comic touch as Felder, a lonely career-woman who spends most of her life in a tiny office dealing with a list of heinous crimes. She has reached the pinnacle of her career by remaining coolly detached from her clients and is horrified to discover the pregnancy which presents a serious obstacle to her dreams of becoming an high court judge. On the other side of the fence sits Bob Nolan, who was abandoned by his mother and shuttled from one reform school to another before inevitably ending up in prison. These two well-honed tales of the perils of modern living have been ingeniously cross-fertilised by Dupontel. who demonstrates that, despite the vast intellectual and cultural gulf that separates the two characters, they essentially suffer from the same sense of isolation and loneliness.

While Kiberlaine is the Ice Queen who gradually melts, Dupontel alternates between the "Honey, I'm home" madness of Jack Nicholson in The Shining and a childlike vulnerability which is oddly engaging

This is humour at its darkest. – there are amputated limbs, a lunatic forensic scientist and one character is regularly clobbered with heavy objects. Alongside a winning cast of supporting actors, Oscar winner Jean Dujardin turns up in a hilarious cameo as a TV translator for the deaf with his own individual style of sign language. Ex-Monty Python Terry Gilliam also makes a short appearance as a Hannibal Lecter-like serial killer in a spoof TV report. It's been a disappointing year for French comedies but it looks like Dupontel's madcap film has pulled off an eleventh hour unexpected rescue mission.

The French Minister (2013)

Tavernier's first venture into comedy is a sharply observed look behind-the-scenes at French international diplomacy

[7/10 · 13 November 2013]

Legendary film director Bertrand Tavernier has completely changed register for his latest film, moving from the 16th century court of Charles IX of his last outing, La Princesse de Montpensier, to the corridors of the French foreign ministry with Quai d'Orsay based on the cult comic strip book of the same name. The book was co-produced by Antonin Baudry (writing under the pen name, Abel Lanzac), a young diplomat who worked as a speechwriter for former French foreign minister Dominique de Villepin. It has already enjoyed a huge critical success in France and this year took the prestigious best book prize at the annual comic strip festival in Angouleme. Quai d'Orsay draws on Baudry's experience of working with Villepin and his close knit circle of advisers and friends to depict a Kafkaesque world of confusing complexity deftly brought to the screen by Tavernier. Despite a career spanning nearly forty years, this is Tavernier's first venture into pure comedy. He has produced a film running at full tilt which weaves farce, burlesque, and fantasy into a tight, funny package that casts a sharp eye over the political machine without sliding into political satire.

Raphael Personnaz is Arthur Vlaminck, a recent graduate from the highly prestigious Ecole Nationale d'Administration, which produces most of France's top politicians from both sides of the political fence. Although he doesn't fit the stereotype of a young diplomat with his shabby clothes and gauche manner, he is hired by the minister Alexandre Taillard de Vorms (Thierry L'Hermite) to work at the foreign ministry drafting speeches for the minister himself. His lack of previous political experience makes him an easy target for the power struggles and back- stabbing of the minister's support network of advisers and back room staff. And it's not long before he's spinning between the minister, his chief of staff (Niels Arestrup) and a cabal of hard- nosed technocrats. Gradually Arthur learns the skills he needs to survive and find his place in the cut-throat world of high-level international diplomacy.

Translating what works on the written page to the big screen is a difficult task and Tavernier has plumped for the rhythm of the original comic strip, with one scene following another in quick succession. A couple of devices come straight from the comic strip format itself. Each time Vorms enters a room, for example, he is preceded by a gust of wind, a visual 'woosh', that sends books and papers flying and his language at times descends into childish invention. But Vorms is no fool. He is passionate about his role as foreign minister and is an exacting, if at times, slightly hysterical boss. L'Hermitte is perfectly cast as the academic, haughty minister who has the heart of a poet but not the talent. He shows a skill for comedy rarely exploited in recent years. One of the film's funniest scenes is a lecture by the minister to his staff on the importance of using a fluorescent pen to highlight a text delivered by l'Hermitte with just the right touch of insanity. Arestrup, as the faithful, world weary eminence grise, is the perfect counterpoint to the high-maintenance foreign minister and his Buddha-like presence often acts as a brake to stop the action from spinning out of control.

The film ends with a speech delivered by Vorms/Villepin to the UN back in 2003, the only speech ever to have received a standing ovation from the other members of the organisation. It's a moving finale to a whirlwind, behind-the-scenes tour of French diplomacy. Although some of the scenes seem to stretch credibility, Villepin is said to have seen the film and reported that it doesn't go far enough!

Le coeur des hommes 3 (2013)

Third outing for Coeur des Hommes franchise offers nothing new

[5 November 2013]

For the third in the series of successful Coeur des Hommes films, director Marc Esposito has tried to give a contemporary feel and breath new life into the tale of the lives and loves of four middle-aged Parisian friends by replacing Jeff (Gerard Darmon) with Jean (Eric Elmosnino), a single-father struggling to bring up his four-year-old daughter. But the ploy fails to bring anything fresh to the format which struggles to move the story on from the previous two outings.

It seems nothing significant has happened in the lives of the original band of three – Alex (Marc Lavoine), Manu (Jean-Pierre Darroussin) and Antoine (Bernard Campan). They have certainly grown older but no wiser and the conversation revolves as always around women, love and sex, though not always in that order. Along comes 40-something Jean, who is single and enjoys a stream of affairs with young, attractive women. Surprisingly, he willingly joins his new friends in their habitual round of family gatherings, male-bonding weekends on the coast and boozy nights in with the boys. He is soon eager to slip the bonds of fatherhood to make the most of his new life.

Le Coeur des Hommes 3 resembles a gallic Sex and The City with the four female BFFs replaced by their male counterparts and the backdrop of New York's trendy bars and cafes substituted with cosy French cafes and restaurants. But whereas SATC explored female relationships and those between members of the opposite sex, this film focuses on the behaviour of what appears to be a giggling, sniggering band of adolescent boys. The four male leads display an attitude towards women that is outdated, insensitive and openly misogynistic while the women who are unfortunate enough to have relationships with these men are seen as weak, manipulative, hapless creatures who can only gaze hopelessly at the display of chest-beating machismo.

These characters are in desperate need of a reality check. Middle-aged men attracting younger women like bees around a honey pot smacks more of male fantasy than real life. The original trio of actors skilfully go through their paces while Elmosnino plays catch-up. He is a hugely talented actor who was highly praised for his performance as French singer Serge Gainsbourg in Gainsbourg: A heroic life and his role here sits at odds with his previous work.

It has been ten years since Esposito directed the first Le Coeur des Hommes film. Like its characters, these films have failed to move with the times and it's to be hoped they will now go into early retirement.

The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet (2013)

Jean-Pierre Jeunet visually masterful take on Reif Larsen novel

[22 October 2013]

Only a director with the creativity and imagination of Jean-Pierre Jeunet would attempt to bring to the big screen in English the best-selling novel by Reif Larsen "The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet". The book, described by author Stephen King as a combination of "MarkTwain, Thomas Pynchon and Little Miss Sunshine", is illustrated with charts, lists, sketches and maps to help recount the adventures of the quirky, gifted 12-year-old boy of the book's title . Jeunet has faithfully reproduced the visual elements of the novel to recreate the offbeat world of T.S Spivet and the use of a 3D format is perfectly suited to breathing life into T.S.'s illustrations which Jeunet's does by drawing on his trademark mix of poetry and fantasy. But the plot does not lift from the page and the young boy's eventful journey seems flat and doggedly two-dimensional.

The adventure starts off promisingly enough. T.S.Spivet (Kyle Catlett) lives on a farm in the 'Big Sky Country' of Montana with his amateur entomologist mother (Helena Bonham Carter), his cowboy father (Callum Keith Rennie) and elder sister (Niamh Wilson). A phone call to the ranch from the prestigious Smithsonian Institute in Washington informs the young Spivet that he has won a prize for one of his inventions. Since the death of his twin brother in a shooting accident, Spivet's mother and father have sidelined the surviving son. Feeling neglected and un-loved, T.S. decides to travel on his own to Washington to accept his prize. The journey takes him across America on a freight train and into a series of encounters with a gallery of colourful characters.

While the scenes in Montana are a triumph to Jeunet's bold, sweeping breadth of vision, once Spivet hops on the train, the action, conversely begins to falter. The characters he meets could have come straight from a cartoon strip – ageing sailor Two Clouds (Dominique Pinon) is a dead ringer for Popeye – and they add little or nothing to the narrative or the tone of the film.

As the lead actor, Catlett carries a lot of responsibility for one so young. No one can deny he is as cute as a button – with his oversized trousers and constant puzzled look – but he lacks the range of emotions needed to create real empathy. This may explain why a film about grief remains oddly unmoving until a a scene towards the film's finale which seems unashamedly designed to pull the heart strings. This latest Jeunet is undoubtedly a glorious visual treat, but it lacks the magic and mystery of 'Amélie' his most successful film to date. I

Brotherhood of Tears (2013)

Globe trotting thriller builds tension gradually towards surprising finale

[7/10 · 16 October 2013]

This film is a fast-paced thriller designed to keep the audience guessing until the final minutes. Despite a few clunky plot twists and turns it retains its credibility mainly due to the talent of its lead actor, Belgian-born Jérémie Renier.

Neither Renier nor director Jean-Baptiste Andrea are strangers to international film-goers. Renier was Eirik in Martin McDonagh's In Bruges, while Andrea has directed a couple of films stateside (Dead End in 2003 and Big Nothing in 2006). This could account for the very transatlantic feel to La Confrerie which pays more attention to style and pace than in-depth character development.

Renier is Gabriel Chevalier, an ex-cop whose personal life has taken a nosedive. He's a gambler, an alcoholic, a widower and single-parent to a rebellious teenage daughter. Unable to hold down regular work, he takes up the dubious offer of a job which involves sitting in an empty office waiting for the phone to ring. When it does, Chevalier is told to deliver a black briefcase to a specific address. One final instruction, he must never, ever, look inside the briefcase.

Working as a well-paid delivery man, Chevalier trots around the globe while gradually being pulled deeper into a world of hired assassins and hardened thugs until a line is crossed and he wants out. Unfortunately, the job has no expiry date and to protect his family and reset his moral compass, he must solve the mystery of what's inside the black briefcase.

Andrea proves adept at building intrigue and tension in equal measure – a skill which goes to the heart of a good thriller. But La Conferie belongs to Renier. He has created a multi-layered anti-hero who seamlessly moves from being a tough man-of-action to an attentive, caring father. The scenes with his 12-year-old daughter Juliette show a completely different side to the ex-cop which helps to excuse some of his later, more erratic behaviour. Only his relationship with Clare Foczensky (Audrey Fleurot) a female police officer, hits a false note. Perhaps in the style of American movies, a 'love interest' is de rigeur? But here it only creates a time- consuming and contrived parenthesis to a film which was getting along fine all on its own. In 2012, Renier won huge plaudits in France for his brilliant portrayal in the film Cloclo of popular French-singer Claude François, most famous for co-writing the song 'My Way'. He is a hugely watcheable actor and his role as Chevalier is once again a testament to his versatility.

Eyjafjallajökull (2013)

Dany Boon fails to recreate magic of widely successful Ch'tis movie with this stop-go adventure tale

[5/10 · 8 October 2013]

Think Danny de Vito's War of the Roses meets John Hughes' Planes, Trains and Automobiles and you will have some idea of the tone of Eyjafjallajokull directed by Alexandre Coffre and starring Danny Boon best-known for his role in the most successful French film ever Bienvenue chez le Ch'tis.Boon is a great crowd pleaser with French audiences and pitting him against Valérie Bonneton, a highly versatile comedy actress, should be a sure-fire recipe for success. Without doubt, no expense was spared to bring to the big screen this tale of a divorced couple traveling to their daughter's wedding in Greece, who are forced to find alternative transport when the Icelandic volcano of the title disrupts air traffic across the globe. A wrecked Porsche and smashed light aircraft form part of the collateral damage. But the end result is an uneven, stop- go adventure that cracks a smile now and then but little more. Only the scene where the two main characters meet an ex-con turned God-squadder (a superbly funny Denis Menichon) offers a glimpse of a darker and potentially more satisfying brand of humour.

Boon is Alain, a driving instructor who raised his daughter alone after Valérie (Bonneton) quit the marriage soon after she was born. The two meet again on an Athens-bound plane just before Eyjafjallajokull erupts. Both are forced to make alternate travel plans which inevitably result in being thrown together in a desperate race to reach their destination before their daughter ties the knot. What follows is a series of mishaps, none of which is madcap enough to raise the humour from the mundanely obvious to a higher level.

Before the two main characters appear on screen together, their mutual hate has already been established. What is infinitely less clear is how they ever got together in the first place. Boon plays Alain as dopey, harmless, but essentially 'a good egg' while Bonneton's Valérie is in overdrive as a vicious, cruel, screeching harpy who is devoid of any redeeming qualities whatsoever. No-one in their right mind would want to see these two get back together which runs against the grain with films of this kind. Boon has struggled for the past five years to reproduce the phenomenal success he enjoyed with the Ch'tis and it's unlikely Eyjafjallajokull will put him back on the A list.