The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is the rare intelligent mainstream film that’s full of compelling characters and emotional weight.
[Read more…] about The Hunger Games: Catching Fire Review: The Girl on Fire burns on, but not as brightlyNTLive rebroadcasts Frankenstein and Hamlet to cinemas around the world
Two landmark National Theatre productions were recently rebroadcast to cinemas around the world via NTLive: Frankenstein starring Benedict Cumberbatc and Jonny Lee Miller, and Hamlet starring Rory Kinnear.
[Read more…] about NTLive rebroadcasts Frankenstein and Hamlet to cinemas around the worldThe emotional roller-coaster that is adolescence and first love: Review of "Blue is the Warmest Color"
We’re so used to seeing Millennials jumping in and out of each other’s beds – from “Gossip Girl” to “Friends with Benefits” – that it’s easy to start to think these experiences leave no mark. Abdellatif Kechiche’s greatest achievement in his new film “Blue is the Warmest Color” is to remind us of just how intense adolescence is, both emotionally and physically, in part because everything is still a discovery. He does this by shooting largely in close-up, making us privy to intimate emotions, and by inviting us into every facet of the heroine, Adele’s (Adèle Exarchopoulos) impassioned life: we watch her lost in a book, daydreaming in class, eating voraciously, fantasizing while masturbating, sleeping, crying while snot drips down her face, interacting with friends, family, and lovers, and engaging in sex.
This is a film about first love experienced and lost, but the fact that Adele is in high school when she first falls is what colours her relationship with the blue-haired Emma (Léa Seydoux). The first time they speak is at a lesbian bar that Adele wanders into, where she sticks out as the ingenue. When she admits to Emma, with some embarrassment, that she’s still in high school, I was reminded of Woody Allen’s “Manhattan” when the seventeen-year-old Tracy (Muriel Hemingway) had to beg out from dinner with her boyfriend (Woody Allen) and his forty-something friends to do homework. But while Adele is more mature than her classmates, she’s still very much a naive girl, not the wise and mature-beyond-her-years type that Tracy was.
Although she bonds with Emma over books – reading for pleasure may be enough to make you an outcast in high school, eager to meet anyone who shares this interest – it starts to become clear that this may not be enough to sustain a relationship. Even one with passionate sex. The fact that their relationship is so compelling and emotionally resonant is a tribute to the terrific, raw performances by Seydoux and Exarchopoulos, which won them the Palme D’Or at Cannes, usually only given to directors.
Adele’s relationship with Emma starts on uneven footing. As an art student at the university, Emma seems grown-up and exotic, and she gladly takes the role of mentor. Adele’s reluctance to come out is in part because she fears being teased by her friends: they’re still at an age when being even a little bit different is enough to make you the target of cruelty. When Adele dines at Emma’s house, she comes as Emma’s partner, but when Emma dines chez Adele, she masquerades as Adele’s philosophy tutor. Adele’s parents are more working class than Emma’s, yet it’s unclear whether her secretiveness is because she expects her parents to be close-minded or if it’s merely a product of her youth.
The film is as much about feeling connected to someone as it is about feeling disconnected. Watching Adele dance in different situations lets us gauge her comfort level. Without Emma, she dances with abandon, whether at her birthday party at home or among colleagues from work. But when she throws a party for Emma’s art show, where Adele not only cooks but is the subject of Emma’s paintings, she couldn’t be more out of place and uncomfortable, unable to converse easily with Emma’s friends: her dancing here is awkward and abortive, as she tries to seem like she’s having fun.
The recent trend to subject audiences to three-hour relationship films – “The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Him and Her” and “Blue is the Warmest Color” – is somewhat baffling, considering these talk-heavy films are already a niche market and a tough sell, no matter how good they are. Like “Eleanor Rigby”, “Blue is the Warmest Color” could have been shorter and tighter. Although I suppose one argument for the length is that adolescence seems like an interminable emotional boiling pot, but as the film’s French title, “La Vie d’Adele- Chapitres 1 & 2”, reminds us, this story forms just chapter one and two of Adele’s life.
Review: In Kill Your Darlings, toxic friendships brought the Beatniks together
As a young Allen Ginsberg in John Krokidas’ directorial debut, Kill Your Darlings, Daniel Radcliffe breaks free of his Harry Potter origins.
[Read more…] about Review: In Kill Your Darlings, toxic friendships brought the Beatniks togetherGreat cinematography in not-so-great films ("Prisoners" & "Rush") and one of the year’s best comedies ("Enough Said"): what to see in cinemas now
“Prisoners”
While his previous film, “Incendies”, was about how people silently deal with the damage from atrocities committed against them, Denis Villeneuve’s latest film, “Prisoners,” is a study in what pushes people over the edge to commit evil acts. Keller Dover (Hugh Jackman) is not one to suffer in silence, so when his daughter goes missing, he kidnaps and tortures the man he believes is responsible. We are never really sure he’s right, and neither is he. The local detective (Jake Gyllenhaal) is the only one detached enough to think rationally and follow the breadcrumbs, though we never get to know him well; his twitchy eye stands in for a personality. Shot by the great cinematographer Roger Deakins, this is a film you experience viscerally: the violence is palpable, it’s always cold and rainy – the water on the lens blurs the image -, and you empathize with Keller while watching him become the thing he hates most. But it is heavy-handed — Keller is not-so-coincidentally a carpenter, and the constant presence of crosses reminds us he is meant as something of a Christ figure. Unfortunately, the film takes too many seemingly unrelated tangents that you can put the pieces together almost too easily.
“Rush”
Much like “Prisoners”, the reason to see “Rush” is the exquisite cinematography by Anthony Dod Mantle, which ensures that the high stakes car racing has the same invigorating effect on the audience as it does on the two drivers. We watch the pistons fire as the cars ready to race and the sweat on the drivers’ tightly shot faces when it gets intense; you’ve never seen car racing like this before. Niki Lauda (Daniel Brühl, in his first major English-speaking part) and James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth) start out hating each other in the early 1970s — Niki is abrasive and arrogant while James is too irresponsible and overtly charming – but as the rivalry fuels their ambition, it slowly deepens into a great respect. What drives these two men to risk their lives day after day to be the fastest drivers? It’s a mixture of ambition, daring, and self-absorption: it’s fitting if frustrating that their marriages are more about arm candy than a mature relationship. As complicated as these two men are, they are still archetypes stuck in the 1970s, uttering aphorisms, which keeps the film from being a truly great one.
“Enough Said”
Writer-director Nicole Holofcener has made her name with dialogue-driven female-centric films, like “Walking and Talking” and “Please Give”, that are by no means chick flicks. Over the years, the characters in her films have aged and matured, at pace with her own aging, and that of the frequent star of her films, Catherine Keener. In Holofcener’s very funny and moving “Enough Said”, Keener plays Marianne, a sophisticated, divorced, and self-centered poetess; she lives in a the sort of dream home you see in magazines and pals around with Joni Mitchell. Julia Louis-Dreyfus stars as Eva, another divorced woman and mother, whose daughter, like Marianne’s, is about to leave the nest for university, and she’s feeling lonely. Marianne desperately needs to cling to someone and Eva needs to feel needed, so when Eva starts working as her massage therapist, they become friends, if somewhat toxic and adolescent ones. Eva also starts dating Albert (James Gandolfini), whom she starts to fall in love with, in spite of his gut, until Marianne starts poisoning the well: Eva learns he’s the ex-husband Marianne has been bad-mouthing, and Eva’s insecurities and desire for Marianne’s approval threaten to jeopardize her budding relationship.The film starts out with a non-stop succession of realistic yet funny encounters or witty one-liners — the characters are intelligent but not hyper-intellectuals — but as they slowly fall into their own traps, the film becomes equally moving and heartbreaking. Holofcener strikes the perfect balance of finding the comedy in mid-life troubles without exploiting or making light of them, or being too bleak, and in so doing creates a very realistic portrait of a group of adults on the brink of major changes.
The Hollow Crown: ‘Henry V’ — Measuring what use the King made of his wilder days
Thea Sharrock offers a radical reinterpretation of Shakespeare’s “Henry V” for The Hollow Crown, featuring a great lead performance from Tom Hiddleston. Listen to us discuss Sharrock’s “Henry V” on episode 2 of the 21st Folio podcast.
Read our reviews of the previous installments: Richard II, Henry IV Part 1, and Henry IV Part 2
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