London Film Fest 2011 Day 13 - W.E.

It would be all too easy to write off W.E.  - a biopic of Wallis Simpson and King Edward VIII - as a self-financed vanity project from Madonna, a highly successful musician who has serially failed to translate that success to celluloid.  However, if one is able to forget who has directed the film, and review it on its own merits, a far more nuanced and fair-minded discussion can ensue.  Because, much to my surprise, W.E. is a beautifully photographed, acted, and directed film, let down only by the concept of intertwining the story we all care about with the story of a modern bored housewife called Wally Winthrop.  This unnecessary, unenlightening contemporary drama frustrates us - it comes off as an hour long PR stunt for Sotheby's New York - and takes precious time away from Andrea Riseborough's charismatic and sympathetic portrayal of Wallace Simpson.  If this movie had just had the courage to stick to the source material, it could've been truly great.

The contemporary story is bland and predictable.  Abbie Cornish plays the bored and abused houswife of a financially successful but cheating husband.  She obsessively visits an exhibition of Wallace Simpson's personal artefacts, envisioning Wallace's life and desperate to know what it feels like to be loved that much.  It is a "way in" to the story that is completely unnecessary and not helped by a completely cliched "rich woman meets poor man with a soul" love story between Wally and the security guard Evgeni (Oscar Isaac).  

The Wallace Simpson-King Edward story is told in a far more balanced and sympathetic manner than most retellings.  Madonna briefly and deftly essays her unhappy first marriage in Shanghai, with a powerful bathroom scene.  Wallace (Riseborough) then turns up in London, breaks into the royal circle, and we see her evident intelligence and wit win over the less impressive but again, sympathetically portrayed, King Edward VIII (James D'Arcy).  Once again, with elegance and economy, Madonna shows Wallace's talents for throwing parties, refusing to pander to the King - her complete understanding of her own limitations and attractions - and her foreboding at the life she would lead post-abdication.  She does not come across as grasping or materialistic but as a vibrant woman hoist by her love affair -  a truly tragic tale. These scenes beautifully portray her dilemma, and give the low budget of the film, are stunningly well produced.  The costumes, hair, the very look of that era is brilliantly captured, and DP Hagen Bogdanski (THE YOUNG VICTORIA, THE LIVES OF OTHERS) captures the crisp light of the Cote d'Azur as well as the dank, claustrophobic interiors of the royal palaces.  In the supporting roles, Natalie Dormer is particularly waspish as the jealous and manipulative future Queen Mother. I wanted to spend far more time in this story, and particularly to know more about Wallace's life post-abdication.  But sadly, that was not to be.

Andrea Riseborough (Wallis Simpson); Madonna (Writer-Director) and 
James D'Arcy (King Edward VIII)at the UK premiere of W.E. 
at the BFI London Film Festival 2011.

W.E. played Venice, Toronto, Hollywood (where Andrea Riseborough won the Spotlight Award) and London 2011. It will be released in the US on December 9th; in the Netherlands on December 22nd; in the UK on January 20th and in Sweden on March 16th.

Random DVD Round-Up 3 - LEGEND OF THE GUARDIANS: THE OWLS OF GA'HOOLE

I really rather liked LEGEND OF THE GUARDIANS: THE OWLS OF GA'HOOLE. It is a beautifully animated, brilliantly voiced, old-fashioned story in the manner of WATERSHIP DOWN.  Moreover, it is blissfully absent of the sort of post-modern wit that propels the SHREK franchise. What's even more astonishing is that it was directed by Zack Snyder - purveyor of visually lush but morally vacuous, if not morally objectionable, fare like 300 and SUCKER PUNCH. The protagonists were sympathetic and endearing and their adventure story more compelling than any plot description would suggest. 

The story is based on the Guardians of Ga'Hoole books by Kathryn Lansky books, and this film focuses on two young owls, Soren and Kludd, who are kidnapped by some nasty racial purist owls. Luckily Soren is taken under the wing of a fellow inmate and taught how to outwit his captors and to eventually seek out the Jedi like Guardians who can teach him how to use his Gizzard and "save the world". If this sounds very STAR-WARS then it succeeds for the same reasons that Star Wars succeeds - it's a classic Saturday Morning Adventure Serial with good triumphing over evil, framed as a coming-of-age story. 

LEGEND OF THE GUARDIANS: THE OWLS OF GA'HOOLE went on global release in autumn 2010. It is now available to rent and own.

LIMITLESS

LIMITLESS is a nicely executed sci-fi thriller but falls down on the screenwriters inability to fully explore the ramifications and consequences of its initial conceit. For all that, a perfectly decent DVD-night film. 

THE HANGOVER's Bradley Cooper stars as Eddie Mora, a hapless novelist with a loyal but alienated girlfriend (Abbie Cornish).  At wit's end, he takes a dodgy pill called "Limitless" from his ex brother-in-law and suddenly has absolute focus and boundless energy. He writes an amazing novel in one day, gets a sharp new suit, and - obviously - this being Hollywood, and greed always being manifested in stock trading - he becomes a day-trader.  His ability to make quick money gets him a job with legendary fund manager Carl Van Loon (Robert de Niro) and all goes well until the dodgy Russian that staked him in the stock market, Gennady, comes looking for money - and then, even worse, the diminishing stock of "Limitless".

The movie start off with real energy and style. Cooper is convincing both as the self-pitying schlub and as the slick trader. Abbie Cornish is sympathetic as the girlfriend and Robert de Niro - well, he barely has to act to look scarily impressive.  Behind the camera, I loved the way cinematographer Jo Willems (30 DAYS OF NIGHT, HARD CANDY) made subtle changes in lensing and film stock to show the difference between the ordinary world and the crisper, sharper world when on Limitless.  But the movie really falls down on Leslie Dixon's (MRS DOUBTFIRE, LOOK WHO'S TALKING) script.  I loved Carl Van Loon's big speech where he talks about having to earn rewards - but that isn't played out in the endgame for Eddie Mora.  Not at all. And one can't help wonder how a darker, more daring director like David Fincher would've treated the material during the black-out.  

LIMITLESS is on release in the US, Belarus, Bosnia, Israel, Kazakhstan, Russia, Canada, Turkey, the US, Philippines, the UK, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Brazil and Bulgaria. It opens in April in Greece, Kuwait, Poland, Armenia, Belgium, Hong Kong, Hungary, the Netherlands, Singapore, Finland, Spain, Taiwan, Germany, Italy, Denmark, Mexico, Portugal, India and Sweden. It opens on May 24th in Indonesia. It opens in June in Lithuania, Norway, Colombia, Estonia and Peru.

London Film Fest Day 6 - BRIGHT STAR

I had the misfortune of studying Keats in the same term I was taught Byron. As a result, despite admiring his poetry, we teenage girls couldn't help but think Keats a bit of a sap in comparison to dashing, dangerous Byron. He was, after all, just a bourgeois doctor, who talked drippily of sensory experience and the unfortunately named "negative capability" - being open to everything and comfortable with uncertainty. Worse still, his only love affair was with the unfortunately named girl-next-door, Fanny Brawne. As with Byron, Keats' life was cut short, but rather than being killed in a dashing Greek adventure, Keats died of TB - far more pedestrian a death to teenage girls. We teenage girls came to the brutal conclusion that when it came to Keats, it was best to stick to the poetry, and leave off exploring his life because, frankly, he didn't have much of one.

Unfortunately, Jane Campion's new film about the love affair between Keats and Fanny Brawne has not changed my opinion one jot. Ben Whishaw is, of course, a marvellous actor, and is deeply affecting as the limpid Keats, reaching out to touch Fanny's hand at a dinner party. But what can we make of Australian actress Abbie Cornish's Fanny - with her uncertain English accent - and her characterisation as a girl who liked to flirt and sew? Apparently Keats and Fanny bonded over the shared experiences of grief, but frankly, there is not much in this film to suggest why they had such a powerful attraction to each other. By far the most interesting character in the piece is Keats' friend, fellow poet and benefactor, Mr Brown, played by Paul Schneider. He is a fascinating because he was arguably interested in Fanny himself, was evidently a bit of a rogue, but also deeply protective of his friend. Paul Schneider gives a compelling performance but it's a shame that he too cannot pull off the accent required of the role - in this case, Scottish.

When introducing the film, writer-director Jane Campion said that she used to be frightened of poetry and that the audience shouldn't worry if they were, because this film catered to them. That is, to my mind, it's flaw. Because I didn't understand the relationship between Fanny and Keats - because the script and performances hadn't convinced me of it or made it compelling - I was looking to the film for insight into how love had affected Keats' work. But, a few recitations apart, there is very little about the process of writing, or what Keats thought about writing in this film. Indeed, the only clumsy reference to inspiration is in a scene where Fanny's little brother is trying to find a nightingale's nest and then we switch to a scene in which Keats pens his favourite ode. Oh dear.

The upshot is that this film contains a not particularly interesting nor convincing central romance and not much else. Can we say anything positive about it? Well, Jane Campion is, as ever, brilliant at creating a sensory impression - close-ups of flowers, women sewing, etc. The film looks great. But this is by no means a film that should be bracketed with the superb PORTRAIT OF A LADY, THE PIANO or IN THE CUT.

BRIGHT STAR played Cannes, Toronto and London. It is currently on release in the USA, Israel and the Netherlands. It opens in the UK on November 6th and in December in Germany, Greece and Australia. It opens on January 7th in Portugal and on January 13th in France.