BEL AMI - corruption and decadence in fin-de-siecle Paris

Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod, better known as theatre company Cheek by Jowl, have brought a gorgeous new adaptation Guy de Maupassant novel, BEL AMI to the big screen. Rachel Bennette's adaptation is faithful to the spiky, scabrous, but ultimately tragic tale of a a young man's corrupt rise to power in decadent, politically slippery late nineteenth century Paris.  The result is a film that begins as a beautifully costumed frothy, sexy, jaunt but slowly and satisfyingly develops into a much darker, deeper film.  I thoroughly enjoyed it - luxuriating in Odile Dicks-Mireaux's wonderful costumes and Stefano Falivene's cinematography.   But most of all, I enjoyed the quality of the ensemble cast.  Robert Pattinson is genuinely impressive and charismatic as social-climbing, narcissistic, capricious George Duroy, an ex-soldier who arrives in Paris without a penny and shamelessly uses his contacts, and their wives sexual frustration, to his advantage.  (It is a far more credible transition to post-franchise adult drama than Daniel Radcliffe achieved.)  But the real fun comes with the three women who Duroy exploits. The first is pretty little housewife Clotilde, played with infinite vulnerability and subtlety by Christina Ricci in heart-breaking performance.  The second is Kristin Scott Thomas' pious, pathetic Virginie, wife of Colm Meaney's newspaper editor.  It is rare to see Scott Thomas look undone by love, as opposed to her characteristic froideur and supreme control, but she is completely convincing.  And finally, there is Uma Thurman as the beautiful, brilliant Madeleine Forrestier - in what is surely a career-best performance. Thurman is simply maginificent.  She perfectly articulates the constrictions placed on an intelligent political woman in an era when she had to exercise her influence through men.  The resulting film, and tragedy, is as much Madeleine's as Georges', and I would love to see Thurman offered more roles like this.

BEL AMI played German 2012 and is on release in the UK, Portugal, Belgium, Lithuania, Ireland and the UK. It opens on the 22nd March in the Czech Republic, it opens on 29th March in Russia, Singapore and Estonia, on 5th April in the Netherlands, on 13th April in Italy, on 26th April in Germany, on 24th May in Australia, on 8th June in the USA, on 27th June in France and on 18th October in Argentina.

iPad Round-Up 2 - THE CONSIPIRATOR

Yet another thumpingly pedestrian issues-film from Robert Redford.  The movie takes the form of an historic court-room drama, with James McAvoy playing the lawyer defending Robin Wright's Mary Surrat of conspiracy to murder President Lincoln (she was Booth's landlady and her son has mysteriously fled.)  This being a Redford film, the politics are naively simple and oppositional: McAvoy's lawyer is the champion of all things good - liberty, the constitution and the right to a fair trial even in the wake of an appalling political crime.  Kevin Kline's war minister represents the forces of evil:  putting ends before means, willing to sacrifice right to expediency, with a contemporary relevance in that Surrat was denied a civilian trial before her peers, and tried under military law. 

The issues are fascinating, the casting top notch, Newton Thomas Sigel's cinematography is superb, and the dilemmas at the movie's heart are clearly highly relevant today.  The problem is that it feels like a college debate rather than a movie.  Movies must entertain. If they educate and provoke as well, then all to the good. But no-one ever learned anything while their eyes were rolling to the back of their head in boredom.  Castigat ridendo mores. Moliere knew this. Redford apparently does not  He needs to treat his subject matter with a little less respect and his audiences with a little more.  

THE CONSPIRATOR played Toronto 2010 and opened in summer 2011 in the USA, Hong Kong, South Korea, Ireland, the UK, Portugal, Australia, Turkey, Kuwait and Germany. It opened last month in Singapore. It goes on release in Belgium on November 16th and in Spain on December 2nd. It is available to rent and own.

GET HIM TO THE GREEK - They fuck you up, your mum and dad - Part Three

In fairness, the people doing the psychological damage in the alleged buddy-comedy, GET HIM TO THE GREEK, aren't just the parents. The record label, entourage, management and fans all take the blame in enabling viciously damaging pop star behaviour. That Aldous Snow, self-proclaimed white musical Jesus, manages to retain any humanity at all, in the haze of adulation and exploitation, is a miracle. This movie is about how Aldous Snow, washed up, alone, makes it from London to LA to play a comeback gig in spite of various attempts at self-sabotage. He does so in the company of a fan-boy turned record label chaperone, Aaron. It's meant to be a laugh-out-loud comedy, giving the character who stole every scene in FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL more screen time. The problem is that while Russell Brand IS funny as Aldous Snow, he's also too good to leave his performance at the level of superficial pratfalls and lascivious word-play. Brand's Snow is actually a very sad man, and there's something faintly exploitative in the screen-writer, director and audience trying to find laughter in his pain. It's almost as though we're milking Aldous Snow in exactly the same way that his record company is milking him. "We know you're physically and psychologically harmed, mate, but go on, do that funny song-and-dance act!"

Maybe I'm taking it all too seriously. After all, this is a film in which Sean Combs is genuinely very funny spoofing himself as a hard-balled record exec. (I loved the line "you're three zippers away from Thriller"), It's a movie in which Rose Byrne is really very funny indeed as Aldous Snow's ex-wife and fame-junkie Jackie Q. Maybe I should just be happy with the laughs? But even as simple comedy this movie doesn't quite work. I know Jonah Hill is essentially playing the straight man to Russell Brand's comedy protagonist, but even then, Aaron could've been a lot more interesting as a character. Where's that slightly geeky creepiness that Hill brought to his cameo in FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL? And as for the scene where Snow tries to instigate a threesome with Aaron and his girlfriend (Elizabeth Moss) - excruciating just doesn't cover it.

The best Judd Apatow movies are both funny and touching. FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL isn't just great comedy - at some level we really feel for Jason Segel's Peter as he tries to get over his girlfriend, and we're really routing for him to get together with Mila Kunis' Rachel. Okay, we've probably never been dumped for a rock star, but I think everyone can empathise with Peter's pain - and even Sarah's despair at trying to make the relationship work. At the heart of all comedy, there has to be an emotional core we can relate to. The relationship arcs in GET HIM TO THE GREEK - between Aldous and his dad; Aldous and his ex-wife; and most of all between Aaron and his girlfriend - just don't feel real, and as a result I didn't care about them. The only part of the movie that felt real was Snow's addiction and loneliness. And I simply wasn't heartless enough to laugh at that.

Additional tags: William Kerr, Michael L Sale, Sean Combs, Elizabeth Moss

GET HIM TO THE GREEK is on release in the US, UK, Kazakhstan, Canada, Iceland, Australia, Georgia and the Netherlands. It opens in July in Greece, Portugal and Estonia. It opens in August in Sweden, Turkey, France, Finland, Norway, Germany and Spain. It opens in September in Denmark and Argentina and in October in Hungary.

LAW ABIDING CITIZEN - tricksy but disposable

F Gary Gray, director of BE COOL and that godawful remake of THE ITALIAN JOB, returns to our screens after a four year hiatus with a perfectly entertaining but utterly disposable thriller. Gerard Butler stars as an apparently normal guy turned vigilante, taking revenge on a legal system that has failed his brutally murdered wife and child. I am forever amazed by Butler's ability to sustain moderate success in Hollywood despite his inability to pull off an American accent. Luckily, he's given back up by Jamie Foxx as the prosecuting attorney who agreed to the plea; Bruce McGill as the DA; and Viola Davis as perhaps the most impeccably dressed Mayor ever to appear on a movie screen. What sells the film are the sleek visuals; beautiful photography of Philadelphia's City Hall; the genuine chemistry between Butler and Foxx; and the rather satisfyingly tricksy mechanics of how the crimes have been pulled off. To my mind, the cool tricks offset the fact that we are being sold a "good guy goes psycho" movie in the first half of the film, but in fact, Butler's character was never an ordinary guy. Looking at the negatives, the least said about final five minutes - not to mention the movie's piss-poor attempt to examine the issues of doing right versus criminal justice, and the balance between civil liberty and national security - the better.

LAW ABIDING CITIZEN is on release in the US, Canada, Greece, Denmark, the Philippines, Israel, Russia, Brazil, Norway, the Czech Republic, Germany, Hong Kong, Ukraine and the UK. It opens next weekend in Hungary and Romania and on December 10th in the Netherlands, South Korea and Finland. It opens on January 28th in Australia.