Wednesday, 17 April 2024

April 18th 2024

Challengers
Freud's Last Session
Jeanne du Barry
La Chimera
Wicked Little Letters

Lots of choice again at the cinema this week. Nothing for me is a must-see but all will make for entertaining, worthwhile watching. And all so different from each other. 
 
Challengers
Dir: Luca Guaganigno
Length: 132 mins

© Universal - everyone is hot in this
sext take on love, lust and tennis
Tashi Duncan (Zendaya) is a former grand slam champion, retired through injury and now coach to her husband Art Donaldson (Mike Faist). Art is going through a bad spell losing match after match. Tashi is trying to get him into the major tournaments by entering him in a qualifying match, but he has to play his old childhood friend Patrick Zweig (Josh O'Connor). The two have a long history, from childhood friends to being in love/lust with Tashi, to Patrick having dated Tashi, and through to possibly harboring more feelings for each other than they ever let on. My initial impression of this film is that it is over-the-top in its portrayal of just about everything, but the more I dwell on it, the more I like Guaganigno's approach. And thinking back to how he directed Call Me By Your Name, a top shelf gay love affair movie, I see what has influenced so many of his choices in the way he captures and almost idolises bodies, especially those of the two guys. Every tennis match is not just tennis, but an homage to a fit, lusty, sweaty male body, while every scene with Zendaya shows just why anyone would be besotted with her. Most interactions ooze sexuality; desire, longing, lust, yet there are few if any explicit sex scenes in the film. My big beef is that the loud techno music is rather overbearing, often obliterating the dialogue. Probably intentional, but a negative for me. The structure of constant flashing back to the past made for an intial degree of confusion, but I must say the ageing (and "youthening") of the characters is superbly done. Overall quite a fun film.
3.5 - well recommended

Freud's Last Session
Dir: Matt Brown
Length: 108 mins

© Sharmill - Hopkins, as always, 
worth the watch as Freud
World War II is about to break out. Eminent Jewish psychiatrist and confirmed atheist Sigmund Freud (Anthony Hopkins) has escaped from Germany to England where he lives with his daughter Anna (Liv Lisa Fries). He is visited by writer CS Lewis, he of the Narnia stories, (Matthew Goode) and the pair embark upon a spirited and lengthy discussion on the existence of God. Occasionally we have flashbacks to previous times in each of the men's lives, including a glimpse into Lewis's war experiences. There are also several scenes outside of Freud's study concerning Anna, her teaching post and her relationship with Dorothy (Jodi Balfour), heavily disappoved of by Freud. The film is an adaptation of a play, and this is where its problem lies - it feels like a play - constrained, confined and somehow lacking filmic animation. This is not to say it's not worth a look, because the great Hopkins gives yet another rousing performance. If you love intellectual sparring, especially upon whether God does or does not exist, it could be the film for you, but it certainly doesn't shed as much light on Freud the man as I would have liked.
3 - recommended

Jeanne du Barry
Dir: Maiwenn
Length: 117 mins

© Palace - glorious to look at,. A most
unexpected woman steals the king's heart
Maiwenn directs and stars in the true story of a courtesan, Jeanne du Barry, who, two decades before the French Revolution, rose from poverty to become the favorite mistress of King Louis the XV (Johnny Depp) just before his death. Jeanne's ambitious and unpleasant husband, (Melville Poupaud) virtually pimps his wife out via other court notables, until the king notices her. Once at court she incurs the hatred of Louis' daughters. A French-speaking Depp plays the king with taciturn reserve, while Maiwenn conjures up a feisty woman, very ahead of her time, defying convention, and those at court who deride her. The huge pluses for the film are the sumptuous settings, much of it shot at Versailles, and the glorious costumes, which, en masse, look like they're the result of a pallette of a gorgeously rendered pastel painting. Despite feeling unsure of the authenticity of the representation of the relationship, and Maiwenn's character perhaps feeling too modern (deliberate?), I found myself much engaged with the plot and the characters. Again I defy the Tomatometer, which has been very unkind to this lavish and entertaining production.  
3.5 - well recommended

La Chimera
Dir: Alice Rohrwacher
© Palace - grave-pilfering rogues and an
English archaeologist
Josh O'Connor stars again, this time as an English archaeologist, Arthur, who has teamed up in Tuscany, Italy, with a bunch of amiable reprobates. When they are not singing or leading street parades, they go about discovering mausoleum-style graves underground, robbing it for the ancient artefacts and selling them off. Arthur grieves for his past love, Beniamina, the deceased daughter of ex-opera singer Flora (Isabella Rossellini), and this constant grief makes him a morose character. Arthur uses the mystical art of divining to discover where treasures may be hidden, and this vague mysticism pervades much of the film, especially its intriguingly bookended opening and conclusion. English O'Connor learned Italian for the role and speaks it amazingly well. The characters are colorful, somewhat Fellini-esque, but I found it hard to care deeply about them. Somehow I view this film as more of an intellectual exercise in pondering past, present, life and death, but in a way that doesn't speak emotionally to me, except at the very end. That said, it has won some prestigious awards and most other critics rave about it.
3.5 - well recommended

Wicked Little Letters
Dir: Thea Sharrock
Length: 100 mins

© Studio Canal  - Aghast! prim and proper Edith
can't get over Rose's bad language
Edith Swan (Olivia Colman) is a prim and proper mid-forties woman living with her deeply religious elderly parents Edward (Timothy Spall) and Victoria (Gemma Jones). Her neighbor Rose Gooding (Jessie Buckley) is a rambunctious, foul-mouthed Irish immigrant, loving mother to a little girl. When locals start receiving what were then known as poison pen letters, suspicion falls upon Rose, thanks to the level of profanity in each missive. But as the police start investigating, suspicion mounts that Rose may not be the culprit. Policewoman Gladys Moss (Anjana Vassan) sets about to solve the case, with plenty of opposition and derision from her male counterparts. This story is based upon true events back in the 1920s. Its style of humour is archetypically British, often relying too much upon the overplaying of types, especially Spall as the cruel and overbearing father. Colman and Buckley bounce terrifically off each other, and the film is not merely amusing, but also has something to impart about women's roles and the danger of preconceptions. No effort is made to spare the foul language, and the insults are at times quite hilarious and creative, with a memorable final line!  
3 - recommended - Language warning: if you can't take swearing give this film a miss!
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