Random DVD Round-Up 1 - THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT

By the time I got round to watching THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT on iTunes, it had been well-reviewed by Ebert and The Guardian, and garnered a stack of award-season acclaim. And the film certainly had pedigree. Annette Bening and Julianne Moore are capable of both opening a movie AND portraying characters of emotional depth and nuance (see BEING JULIA and SAFE). Mark Ruffalo has impressed me ever since his turn as a bent cop in Jane Campion's IN THE CUT. And if we look at the younger members of the cast, Mia Wasikowska showed balls as well as ethereal beauty in Tim Burton's ALICE IN WONDERLAND, and Josh Hutcherson's performance in BRIDGE FROM TERABITHIA contributed to the emotional punch packed by the film. Most of all, I loved writer-director Lisa Cholodenko's spiky, emotionally skewering drama LAUREL CANYON, and was eager to see how she would bring that wry observational skill to the topic of a gay marriage brought under pressure by the appearance of the childrens' birth father. Put simply, I was ready to believe that the critical and commercial success of THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT was well deserved and looked forward to seeing it myself. 

Imagine then, my disappointment, to discover a drama filled with characters drawn in two-dimensions, behaving in ways that seemed at odds with their temperament. I neither understood their actions nor cared about the consequences. A drama that should have been nuanced and sophisticated thus seemed as trite and crass as romantic-comedies dealing with more conventional relationships. I can, then, only, conclude, that the praise heaped upon this film reflects our collective relief that one can now make a movie about a gay marriage and treat it as a matter of fact rather than as a cause. But, then, again, doesn't the heaping on of accolades suggest that we aren't quite there yet? 

At any rate, here's how the film works. Nic (Annette Bening) is married to Jules (Julianne Moore) and they have two kids, 18 year old Joni (Mia Wasikowska) and 15 year old Laser (Josh Hutcherson). The characters are drawn in broad strokes. Nic is the professionally successful control freak - Jules is the stay at home mum turned landscape gardener - a wannabe hippie with low self esteem. The kids are similarly broadly drawn - Joni is the swot and Laser is the jock. Basically, they are happy enough until the kids get in touch with their birth father, an immature but charming restaurateur called Paul (Mark Ruffalo). Nic is immediately suspicious of his destabilising influence, but Jules connects with his laissez-faire non-judgmental attitude. 

Some of what follows is deeply predictable. Joni starts acting out in teen rebellion, spurred on by her motorcycle driving dad. Laser actually wisens up when his cool dad points out that his cool friend is actually an arsehole. But the real shock - the real crass and incredible (as in I literally don't believe it) - is that Jules has an affair with Paul. What kind of loving mother would really give up her family for a drifter like Paul?  (Unlike many message-boarders I don't have a problem with the fact that she has an affair with a man rather than a woman - I can buy that she's maybe bisexual rather than a lesbian.) Just because she felt her wife wasn't giving her enough support at home? I mean, maybe I could buy it in a movie that took her emotional state before the affair more seriously, but in this sunshine rom-com, I just didn't get it at all. As a result, when Nic reacts with understandable rage and distress, Annette Bening's performance seems to be coming from a different place entirely. It's worthy and heartfelt but entirely out of keeping with the rest of the film. Worst still, it makes Julianne Moore's performance as Jules during the repentance scene look utterly shallow by comparison.

What I was left with was a film that was trying to be very right-on and deserved credit for trying to treat gay marriage like any other marriage - worthy of cinematic exploration.  But I was also left with a film full of characters that acted in ways that I didn't buy into because they weren't sufficiently well-drawn. Poor Annette Bening tried to take the  material to a more profound level, but was, frankly, running on her own. This isn't, then, a bad film, but it isn't a great one either. Too uneven in tone - too uneven in its performances - too unfair to its male lead character - too easy on its female lead character - and just too thin altogether.

THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT played Sundance, Berlin, London and Toronto 2010 and opened last year in the US, Iceland, Israel, Australia, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Argentina, France, Greece, Ireland, the UK, Brazil, Uruguay, Germany, Portugal, Austria, Chile and the Netherlands. It opened earlier this year in Belgium, Kazakhstan, Russia, Singapore, Poland, Spain and Hong Kong. It is currently on release in Estonia, Italy, Mexico and Turkey. It opens on April 7th in Hungary and on April 29th 2011. It is available to rent and own. THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT was nominated for BEst Film, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor and Best Screenplay at the 2011 Oscars. It won the Berlin Teddy for Best Feature Film. It won the Golden Globe for Best Film and Actress - Musical or Comedy.

Random DVD Round-Up 4 - THE PRIVATE LIVES OF PIPPA LEE

THE PRIVATE LIVES OF PIPPA LEE is a movie that is utterly, wretchedly disappointing. Despite an all-star cast, and handsome production values, the resulting film is uneven in tone, superficial where it wants to be profound, and undeserving of the big emotional punches it tries to pull.

The film was written and directed by Rebecca Miller(THE BALLAD OF JACK AND ROSE), based on her own play. It features the eponymous Pippa Lee (Robin Wright Penn) as a middle-aged woman, questioning her life choices through a series of flashbacks. Despite her picture perfect middle-aged existence, we learn that, as a young girl, Pippa was damaged by her exposure to her mother's addiction to speed and resulting psychological problems. The young Pippa (Blake Lively) thus high-tails it to New York where she almost falls into become a soft-porn model for her aunt's girlfriend (Julianne Moore) out of sheer boredom, develops a drug habit of her own, but then is rescued by an older man (Alan Arkin.) Fast forward to her present day crisis, and Pippa is living with her aged husband in a retirement community. She is insulted by his affair with a damaged even younger woman (Winona Ryder) and so trips into an affair of her own with an equally damaged young man (Keanu Reeves).

As I said, this is a well-cast film, and handsomely photographed. I have no doubt that Miller is trying to earnestly explore middle-aged feminine angst and to say something profound about self-esteem and addiction. The problem is that none of it seems real. It all seems like a very stage-y very contrived set of scenes, clumsily shuffled into a movie. At times it almost seems like a caricature of one of those Woody Allen films, except without the wry humour, where old men seem to be able to attract ever younger more attractive women and everyone spends the whole time discussing their neuroses and committing suicide.

Enough already.

THE PRIVATE LIVES OF PIPPA LEE was released last autumn and is available on DVD and on iTunes.

London FIlm Fest Day 9 - CHLOE

Atom Egoyan's latest film, CHLOE, treads familiar territory - sexual jealousy, paranoia and the transgressive desires that rock mainstream marriages. Julianne Moore plays a successful gynecologist (of course!) who suspects her flirtatious husband (Liam Neeson) of cheating. As in the laughably dissimilar EXTRACT, she tests him by setting him with a beautiful young prostitute (Amanda Seyfried evidently trying to shake off that MAMMA MIA! wholesomeness). In contrast to the more simplistic French source film, NATALIE, Egoyan and screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson (SECRETARY) keep us guessing as to whether the husband is really cheating, or whether he is the victim of his wife's insecurity. We also have a classic Egoyan relationship between the wife and the prostitute: is the wife really falling for the hooker, or is she just trying to get close to her husband in a really fracked up way? And is the hooker really falling for the wife, or is she just being emotionally or indeed financially manipulative?

I really loved this film. Moore gives a strong central performance as a woman d'un certain age in a crisis, and Seyfried is convincing both as seductress and vulnerable young girl. They sell their relationship, and that makes the film. I also love the very particular production design from Phillip Barker, and the locations chosen - in particular the marital home. The wife is, by virtue of architecture mirroring her psyche, a voyeur, condemned to look through picture windows and listen at doors and stare at reflections. It works wonderfully.

CHLOE played Toronto 2009 and will be released in France in March 2010.

London Film Fest Day 3 - A SINGLE MAN

A SINGLE MAN is a wonderful film. It is what film should be - brave in subject matter and style, even if not every bold choice succeeds.

Tom Ford, of Gucci and Tom Ford Menswear fame, makes an assured and impressive directorial debut with his adaptation of Christoper Isherwood's novel about a middle-aged man mourning the loss of his long-time lover. The movie opens as George wakes up, and confronts the pain of getting through the day. Then, like THE HOURS, the movie follows him as he dresses impeccably, teaches a literature class to bored college students, cleans out his desk, cleans out his bank account, and prepares to die. These morbid actions are inter-cut with flashbacks to his life with his younger lover Jim

- how he heard the news of Jim's death; intimate moments together; how they met. As the night draws on, the tension builds. George is distracted by dinner with his wonderfully washed up best friend Charley, and then an encounter with an enigmatic young student called Kenny. The question remains: can George find the strength to continue.

A SINGLE MAN is one of the few films to give an intimate, credible portrayal of a long-term homosexual relationship - free of politics or prurience. It's also one of the few films to deal credibly, un-melodramatically, with grief. The relationship between George and Charley - a woman with whom he had a brief fling in her younger days, and who evidently still holds a torch for him - is also utterly believable and heart-breaking. All of this is portrayed sensitively but not earnestly: A SINGLE MAN can be funny and touching and ridiculous all at once.

The success of the film is at all levels of the production. In front of the camera, Colin Firth gives a career-best performance as George - depicting grief, fascination, lust, doubt - and often in extreme close-up. It's an incredibly empathetic performance and deservedly won a prize at Venice. In supporting roles, Julianne Moore is very good as Charley, with young Ryan Simpkins stealing scenes in support. (Matthew Goode and Nicholas Hoult have much smaller roles.) Aside from the acting, I loved Dan Bishop's luxurious production design and DP Eduard Grau's honey-tinged visuals. But most of all, you have to credit director Tom Ford and editor Joan Sobel with their daring non-linear story-telling and the clever inter-cutting of shots in each scene. The film has a dreamy, high-sensory-perception feel, which reminded me a little of THE VIRGIN SUICIDES. The only visual tick I found a little annoying and forced was the fact that whenever George looked at something he connected with, the screen warmed up several shades of orange.

A SINGLE MAN played Venice, where Colin Firth won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor, Toronto and London 2009. It will be released in the USA on December 11th; in Italy on January 22nd; in Australia and New Zealand in February.

Eventual tags: drama, tom ford, christopher isherwood, david scearce, colin firth, julianne moore, matthew goode, ginnifer goodwin, nicholas hoult, ryan simpkins, paulette lamori, lee pace,