Harry, He’s Here To Help (Harry, Un Ami Qui Vous Veut Du Bien)

Harry, He’s Here To Help (Harry, Un Ami Qui Vous Veut Du Bien)

France 2000 (117 minutes)
Director: Dominik Moll
Starring: Laurent Lucas, Mathilde Seigneur, Sergi Lopez and Sophie Guillemin

Awards and Nominations
BAFTA nomination for Best Film not in the English Language
Nomination for Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival
A further seven wins and 12 nominations

On a hot summer day Michel Pape (Laurent Lucas) is driving south from Paris with his wife Claire (Mathilde Seigneur) and three young daughters to a remote farmhouse they have bought in order to renovate. While they stop at a service station a stranger introduces himself to Michel as Harry Balesteros (Sergi Lopez) a school friend whom he has not seen for twenty years. Harry slowly insinuates himself into the life of the family and then sets about reorganising Michel’s life with advice and manipulative acts.

The key motif of the plot – a charming sociopath inveigles his way into a stable relationship before wreaking havoc – is a key plot device from films like Strangers on a Train to The Talented Mr Ripley. However it is the former that is the key to this film, which consciously echoes a whole series of Hitchcock classics: Harry is the corpse in The Trouble With Harry and Balesteros is the name of the innocent victim in The Wrong Man. Philip French has also noted a more subtle Hitchcock reference: Hitchcock is said to have abhorred eggs, but Harry eats them raw and Michel starts writing a story called Les Oeufs.

All four actors perform well in the leading roles, but it was Sergi Lopez who won a Cesar for Best Actor. Since this film he has worked with a number of major European directors and has portrayed villainous characters in films such as Dirty Pretty Things (2002) and, more famously, in Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), in which he played the psychopathic Captain Vidal.

Dominik Moll was born in Germany, studied film in New York and now teaches film at the French National Film School. After the success of Harry, He’s Here To Help, for which he also wrote the screenplay, Moll directed Lemming (2005) a psychological thriller starring Charlotte Rampling and Charlotte Gainsbourg, once again from his own script. His next film will be The Monk, based on the classic Gothic novel by Matthew Lewis and starring Sergi Lopez.

Australia

These are my film notes for last week's screening of Australia - an attempt to break the record for the number of other films mentioned in a single set of notes.

Once again I wrote the notes before I'd seen the film, and now after the screening I can report that although it had a few impressive set pieces, the overall effect was some considerable way less than the sum of its parts.

Australia 2008 (165 minutes)
Director: Baz Luhrmann
Starring: Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman, Ben Mendelsohn, Bill Hunter, Bryan Brown and David Wenham
Awards and Nominations
• Nominated for an Oscar
• A further 7 wins and 19 nominations

In September 1939 Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman) flies to Australia where her errand husband is running cattle station. After the murder of her husband she and Drover (Hugh Jackman) drive 2,000 head of cattle on a journey of several hundred miles across the desert to Darwin where they will be sold. Several years later Lady Sarah returns to Darwin to look for a young half-aboriginal boy whom she regards as her adopted son, and while she is there she witnesses the Japanese attack on the city.

The cast includes actors such as Bryan Brown, Jack Thompson and Bill Hunter who all made their names in the great period of Australian cinema in the 1970s and 1980s when directors such as Peter Weir, Bruce Beresford and Fred Schepisi were exploring the history of their country and their national identity in films like Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1978) and Gallipoli (1981). From this strong beginning subsequent generation of film makers moved away from such major themes, focussing instead on contemporary subjects and producing films such as Strictly Ballroom (1992), Luhrmann’s first film which became a global success after winning an award at the Cannes Film Festival. Luhrmann built on this legacy of anti-heroic cinema in his next two films, with Romeo + Juliet (1996) being set in Latin America and Moulin Rouge (2001) in fin-de-siècle Paris.

Luhrmann decided that his next film would be about the history of Australia, and after six months of research he settled on a story set just before the Second World War in which he could combine a historical romance with a story about the Stolen Generations, mixed race Aboriginal children who were removed from their parents and integrated into white society. Luhrmann wrote the screenplay in conjunction with Stuart Beattie, whose work ranges from the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy to 30 days of Night (2007), and Ronald Harwood, best known for his screenplays for The Pianist (2002) and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007).

With this complex pedigree of screenwriters and with two Australian actors who made their names in Hollywood in the leading roles, rather than returning to the style of the founders of the new wave of Australian cinema Luhrmann imposes a Hollywood sensibility on the film which contains two distinct parts: a so-called “wallaby western” and then a war movie. The first part of the film echoes two famous John Wayne westerns, Red River and The Cowboys, while the sound track evokes the music that Elmer Bernstein wrote for films such as The Magnificent Seven. In the second part there are scenes which are reminiscent of From Here to Eternity, Gone with the Wind (the burning of Atlanta) and Tora! Tora! Tora!

Luhrmann is currently working on another adaptation of The Great Gatsby, although no details of any casting have been announced.

Eat Drink Man Woman

Notes as follows:

Eat Drink Man Woman (Yin shin an nu)

Taiwan/USA 1994 (124 minutes)
Director: Ang Lee
Starring: Sihung Lung, Yu-Wen Wang and Chien-lien Wu

Awards and Nominations
Nominated for Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film
Nominated for BAFTA for Best Foreign Language Film
Nominated for Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film
A further four wins and seven nominations

Senior Master Chef Chu lives in a large house in Taipei with his three unmarried daughters: a school-teacher nursing a broken heart, a career woman and a student who works in a fast food restaurant. As each daughter encounters a new man and the relationships flourish, their traditional roles within the family evolve. Chu has lost his wife, is losing his sense of taste and is aware that he is getting old. Reminiscing with an old friend Chu comments that the two main human desires are “to eat and drink and to have sex” and the film includes numerous scenes displaying the technique and art of gourmet Chinese cooking for the family’s Sunday dinner, the intricate preparations for the family meal expressing its members’ unspoken feelings for each other.

Ang Lee studied film in New York but made his name in his native Taiwan with two studies of Chinese American relationships in Pushing Hands (1992) and The Wedding Banquet (1993), the second of which was nominated as Best Foreign Film in both the Golden Globes and Oscars. Lee returned to Taiwan for Eat Drink Man Woman, a study of traditional values, modern relationships and family conflicts in Taipei, and after its international success moved to Hollywood.

Lee has subsequently directed a diverse series of films which include Sense and Sensibility (1995) from the novel by Jane Austen, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) based on the Chinese wuxia (martial arts and chivalry) genre, Hulk (2003) a blockbuster based on the Marvel Comics character, and Brokeback Mountain (2005) a small budget independent film based on a short story by Annie Proulx. To date Lee’s films have won seven Oscars, eight Golden Globes and 12 BAFTAs. He is currently working on Life of Pi, based on the award-winning novel by Yann Martel.

In 2002 Eat Drink Man Woman suffered the usual fate of a successful foreign language film in the US: an English language remake called Tortilla Soup about a Mexican chef and his family in contemporary Los Angeles. Peter Bradshaw described it as “a film so tooth-grindingly irritating you will feel your mouth filling up with enamel powder”.

Revolutionary Road

These are the film notes for last night's screening:


Revolutionary Road

USA 2009 (119 minutes)
Director: Sam Mendes
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Michael Shannon, Richard Easton and Jay O Sanders

Awards and Nominations
* Nominated for three Oscars, including Best Supporting Actor (Michael Shannon)
* Won Golden Globe for Best Actress (Kate Winslet)
* A further five wins and 21 nominations including BAFTA nominations for Best Actress (Kate Winslet) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Justin Hayes)

In 1950s Connecticut Frank Wheeler (Leonardo DiCaprio) works discontendely for a Manhattan computer company while his wife April (Kate Winslet) once had ambitions to be an actress but is now a housewife who takes part in amateur theatricals. In the throes of a quarter life crisis they plan to move to Paris to retrieve their lives, but while April becomes hooked on her pipe dream Frank gets cold feet.

There had been several earlier unsuccessful attempts to film the 1961 novel by Richard Yates, but it was only after Kate Winslet told her husband Sam Mendes that she would like to play the part of April Wheeler that he agreed to direct it, and only when DiCaprio had been cast as Frank Wheeler that the film actually went into production. Winslet and DiCaprio made their names in Titanic (1997), and since then both actors have had successful careers in a number of high profile films although this is the first time that they had worked together again. Nonetheless the friendship that they had developed while making Titanic endured, and this helped them portray a couple so convincingly in this film. Both actors received praise for their performances, but it was Winslet who won the awards (although as she had been nominated for Best Actress Oscar for her performance in The Reader she was ineligible for a nomination for her performance in this film, and she competed against herself in the BAFTAs, winning the Best Actress award for her performance in The Reader). The shoot was so emotionally and physically draining for DiCaprio that he postponed his next film for two months.

Revolutionary Road was Yates’ first novel, and was a finalist in the National book Award of 1961 (Catch-22 was also shortlisted). Despite being championed by writers as diverse as Kurt Vonnegut, Dorothy Parker, William Styron and Tennessee William and receiving almost universal critical acclaim for his work, none of his novels sold well and all went out of print after he died in 1992. However in recent years there has been a resurgence of interest in his work: in the UK Nick Hornby made one of the suicidal characters in his 2005 novel A Long Way Down carry a copy of Revolutionary Road so that it could be discovered on his corpse.

Sam Mendes made his name as a stage director with award-winning productions in both the UK and the USA. In 1999 as a novice film maker he directed American Beauty which won five Oscars, including Best Director and Best Film. He followed this with Road to Perdition (2002) which included Paul Newman’s final screen appearance in a major role. It has just been announced that Mendes will direct the as-yet-untitled next Bond film, which is due for release in 2011.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Le scaphandre et le papillon)

France 2007 (112 minutes)
Director: Julian Schnabel
Starring: Mathieu Amalric, Emmanuelle Seigneur, Marie-Josee Croze, Anne Cosigny and Max von Sydow

Awards and Nominations

* Nominated for four Oscars including Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay (Ronald Harwood)
* Won BAFTA for Best Adapted Screenplay
* Won Best Director (Julian Schnabel) at the Cannes Film Festival and nominated for the Palme d’Or
* A further 39 nominations and 32 nominations

In 1995 Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric), the 43-year-old editor-in-chief of Elle magazine, suffered a massive stroke that left him with a condition called locked-in syndrome. He was paralysed apart from some movement in his head and eyes, and his sole method of communication was by blinking his left eye. With the help of transcribers who repeated the alphabet to him until he blinked at the selected letter, over a period of 10 months Bauby dictated a memoir of his life - The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Bauby eventually completed his book and it was published to critical acclaim; shortly after its publication Bauby died of pneumonia.

The film was originally to be made in English with Schnabel as director working from Ronald Harwood’s screenplay and with Johnny Depp as Bauby. Depp withdrew from the film because of scheduling conflicts with other projects and Pathé took over as producer. According to Ronald Harwood Pathé wanted to make the movie in both English and French and that this is why bi-lingual actors were cast although everyone secretly knew that two versions would be impossibly expensive and that Schnabel had decided that it should be made in French – even going so far as to learn French in order to make the film.

Julian Schnabel made his name as an artist and after participating as the Venice Biennale in 1980 subsequently became a major figure in the Neo-expressionism movement before moving into film making. He insists that he is essentially a painter, although now he is better known for his films:

“Painting is like breathing to me. It’s what I do all the time. Every day I make art, whether it is painting, writing or making a movie.”

Both of Schnabel’s earlier films were concerned with artists: Basquiat (1996) is a biopic of the painter Jean-Michael Basquiat and Before Night Falls (2000) is based on the autobiographical novel by Reinaldo Arenas. Schnabel has subsequently directed a documentary film of a live concert by Lou Reed in New York as part of his Berlin tour, which Schnabel also designed.

Burn After Reading

This is one of the films I've been most looking forward to seeing this year. I bought a copy in the HMV sale but have not had a chance to watch it yet.

Over the holiday I caught up with In Bruges (brilliant), David Tennant's final performance inDoctor Who (alas) as well as his RSC Hamlet (to be able to purchase tickets for the first night was brilliant and for the RSC to open it on Susan's birthday was even better). After being snowed in this weekend we caught up with Goodnight and Good Luck, an excellent story about the fight against McCarthy with George Clooney, as star, director and co-writer.

Which brings me back to the notes for this week's film:

Burn After Reading

USA 2008 (96 minutes)
Director: Ethan Coen and Joel Coen
Starring: George Clooney, Frances McDormand, Brad Pitt, John Malkovich and Tilda Swinton

Awards and Nominations
Nominated for two Golden Globes (Best Picture and Frances McDormand as Best Actress)
A further 10 nominations including BAFTA for Best Original Screenplay

When Osborne Cox (John Malkovich) is fired from the CIA he begins to write his memoirs. Katie Cox (Tilda Swinton) wants a divorce and at her lawyer’s request copies many of Osborne’s personal files on to a CD which Chad Feldheimer (Brad Pitt) and Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand) find at a local gym. Litzke is planning cosmetic surgery and decides to blackmail Osborne Cox in order to finance it. Meanwhile Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney) is having affairs with both Katie Cox and Linda Litzke.

The summary of the plot reads like a classic farce, but it leads to mayhem on a huge scale that starts with a broken nose and ends finally with execution by CIA gunmen. The Coens described the film as “our version of a Tony Scott/Jason Bourne movie” and they wrote the screenplay while working on their adaptation of No Country for Old Men (2007). The brothers created characters with George Clooney, Frances McDormand, Brad Pitt and John Malkovich in mind, and the script derived from their desire to involve the actors “in a fun story”. Tilda Swinton was the only main character who did not have a part written specifically for her, and the Coens struggled to develop a common filming schedule for their A-list cast.

The Coens identified idiocy as a major them of the film and described Clooney and Pitt’s characters as “duelling idiots”. Clooney had worked with the Coens twice before and acknowledged that he usually played a fool in their movies:

“I’ve done three films for them and they call it my trilogy of idiots”.

The Coens told Pitt that they had written his role specifically for him and he did not know whether to fell flattered or insulted; he told them that he did not know how to play the part as the character was such an idiot:

“There was a long pause and then Joel goes...”You’ll be fine.””

In a career of nearly 25 years the Coens have produced a series of brilliant films that have been successful with both festival and multiplex audiences. In recent years they have reached new heights of success: No Country for Old Men won four Oscars, including Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Film, and their most recent film A Serious Man (2009) opened to rave reviews at the London Film Festival.

The Secret Life of Bees

These are the notes for our last screening before the Christmas break:

The Secret Life of Bees

USA 2008 (110 minutes)
Director: Gina Prince-Bythewood
Starring: Dakota Fanning, Queen Latifah, Paul Bettany and Jennifer Hudson

Awards and Nominations
10 wins and 14 nominations

In South Carolina in the early 1960s Lily Owens (Dakota Fanning) is haunted by the memory of her late mother. In order to escape from her lonely life and cruel father Lily flees with Rosaleen (Jennifer Hudson), her caregiver, to a South Carolina town which holds the secret to her mother’s past, and while she is there she meets the intelligent and independent Boatwright sisters (Queen Latifah, Alicia Keys and Sophie Okonedo) who show her their Black Madonna and tell her about her mother.

The film is based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Sue Monk Kidd. Kidd took three and a half years to write her novel and explained its origins in an interview:

“I grew up surrounded by black women. I fell they are like hidden royalty dwelling among us, and we need to rupture our old assumptions and develop the willingness to see them as they are....

As a girl I lived in a country house where at least 50,000 bees hived within the walls of one of our shut-off rooms. When I went in there, I could hear hummy-honey leaking through the wall and puddling on the floor. That image stayed with me for years before I decided to write it. And then when I finally did begin, I was told that it might sell as a short story but not as a novel. I sold the short story but... it wouldn’t let me go. Four years later I had to go back and write the novel.”

Bythewood is one of the very few African-American female directors to have a film distributed by Hollywood. She made her name by directing Disappearing Acts (2000) and both writing and directing Love & Basketball (2000), with Spike Lee as producer which won her the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay. For The Secret Life of Bees her executive producers were Will Smith and his wife Jada Pinkett Smith.