While We're Young
“A month is still in the realm of spontaneity,” Josh (Ben Stiller) to Cordelia (Naomi Watts) Writer-director Noah Baumbach continues to catalogue our capacity to be insufferable. From THE SQUID AND THE WHALE to FRANCES HA, the self-deluded artist/creative in us has been humanised, and given short shrift, to winning effect. Being out of step with your peers also predominates his work – a perennial cause of insecurity through comparison. Like Ricky Gervais, our blind spots are an endless resource to mine in excruciating detail. As with fellow writer-director Hong Sang-soo (HILL OF FREEDOM), looking at obnoxious filmmakers, questions are raised as to how autobiographical the work is. Accompanying rat race preoccupation is a contemplation of aging in a youth-prized modern world. [To read more, click here.] |
Clouds of Sils Maria
“The cockroaches must have taken a later train,” Valentine (Kristen Stewart) A cerebral ENTOURAGE is a statement that only scratches the surface of a deliriously written and acted treatise on craft and time passing. If words were bullets, CLOUDS OF SILS MARIA would be the equivalent of a John Woo flick from the 1990s. Varying speed, cadence and dexterity glue you to proceedings. At no point is the audience underestimated. Focus people, focus; there is no respite for attention deficit stragglers. [To read more, click here.] |
Suite Francaise
“So this is war,” Lucile Angellier (Michelle Williams) What an annoying voice over. Was it added later? Mostly it appears to be aimed at the lowest common denominator, spelling out the glaringly obvious. And what’s up with the clipped faux-British accent of the normally reliably excellent Williams? Her Lucile is a French country aristocrat. Set in Bussy, central France, no one bothers with French intonation, bar native Lambert Wilson. This is nothing new; William Hurt as a Russian homicide detective in GORKY PARK (1983) to Eric Bana as Hector in TROY (2004) illustrates how North Americans and Antipodeans can default to British. In VALKYRIE (2008), Tom Cruise against the grain kept his speech pattern as Claus von Stauffenberg – the film showcasing how every tongue has dialect disparity. SUITE FRANÇAISE opts out of Franco language imitation, perhaps rightly out of fear on coming across as a character from dated 1980s sitcom ‘ALLO ‘ALLO. [To read more, click here.] |