Click to download the
2011 PROGRAMME
*******

Synopses are from
UrbanCinefile
(courtesy Andrew L. Urban)

For extensive film reviews and information go to
Urban Cinefile
Internet Movie Database
ABC: At The Movies
Rotten Tomatoes

For information on film classification go to
Office of Film and Literature Classification

Films are screened in the order shown, with a 15 minute interval between films.

All film bookings are confirmed by the distributors, but are subject to change.
Townsville Cinema Group reserves the right to alter its programmes if necessary.

For further information about the society or its programmes, email to
info@cinemagroup.org.au

PROGRAMME FOR 2011

Screening at Warrina Cineplex at 7:15 pm

Click on a date to view synopses of the films.
FULL SYNOPSES ARE IN PREPARATION

Links to Official Sites give detailed information, including trailers.

All film bookings are confirmed except as noted.

REVIEWS
UrbanCinefile
IMDb
At the Movies (ABC)

OFFICIAL SITE

A PROPHET (Un prophete)
France 2009 (MA15+)

Sentenced to six years in prison, the almost illiterate, 19-year-old part Arab part Corsican Malik El Djebena (Tahar Rahim) is quickly recruited by Cesar (Niels Arestrup), leader of the Corsican gang and ruling jail supremo. His first mission for Cesar is to kill Reyeb (Hichem Yacoubi). Thus the young Malik begins his jail education which he enhances with genuine education, learning to read and write. He also observes the various illegal activities being run by Cesar and others, and secretly makes his own plans.

Review by Louise Keller:
'The idea is to leave here a little smarter,' an inmate tells Tahar Rahim's newly arrived prisoner Malik El Djebena at the deadly establishment where survival is a privilege, not a given. Jacques Audiard's gritty film about prison life, corruption, discrimination, survival skills and ambition is tense, violent and full of surprises as Malik's steep learning curve includes much more than learning to read and write.
Winner of the Cannes 2009 Grand Jury Prize, Audiard's film makes no moral judgments as Malik juggles his conscience and turns every card into a trump, albeit not always cleanly.
Read My Lips is my all-time favourite Audiard film with its unique concept and wonderful performances from Vincent Cassel and Emmanuelle Devos. A Prophet has less general appeal due to the intense and violent nature of the subject matter in a high security prison. I found it difficult to keep abreast of all the characters and where they fit into the grand plan. The long running time too, may detract for some, although for those willing to walk through those prison doors with Malik and experience his 'initiation' involving Reyeb (Hichem Yacoubi), an Arab inmate about to testify in a trial, will find it a gripping experience.
Rahim's performance as the rookie 19-year-old prisoner who finds himself caught up in issues and crimes far beyond his imagination, is outstanding. It all begins when the cronies of the silver-haired Corsican mafia elder Cesar Luciani with clean, long nails (Niels Arestrup, superb) forcibly take Malik's white sneakers. The price Malik has to pay for the protection he needs, haunts him; it is as though a ghost becomes a friendly ear and an extension of himself. Then as he becomes Cesar's 'eyes and ears', life becomes even more complicated as his relationships with the opportunist Arab Ryad (Adel Bencherif), Jordi the hash-loving gypsy (Reda Kateb), the distinctive Arab leader Bahim Lattrache (Slimane Dazi) and the Corsican mafia head Sampierro (Pierre Leccia) force his life that is balancing in the midst of a cultural impasse, to zig-zag in all directions.
Every performance counts and the intensity of the film's mood leaves an imprint that is far more defined than some of the plot details, which at times confuse..

155 minutes (The film occupies the full programme)
Classification: (MA15+) Strong violence, sex scenes and coarse language

REVIEWS
Urban Cinefile - no review
IMDb
At The Movies (ABC) - no review

OFFICIAL SITE
(in French)

NUNTA MUTA
Silent Wedding
Romania 2008 (M)

Taken directly from imdb.
Review by Letitia M (Romania):
There will be others, I hope- since Malaele did such a good job with this first film of his.
The movie tells more than it just shows, even if the story is just a little bit loose in places. The essence permeates just fine and the strong symbolism it uses (like in the wedding silent feast or the silly mute comedy scenes), all the thick strokes still leave room for subtleties and interpretation.
It naturally flows from the savorous comedy bucolical scenes towards the dark drama at the end. It may very well be regarded as a critique of the Romanian capacity to adapt, our viral submissiveness that can make us just go with the wave, instead of reacting and fighting back. The amenability slowly mutates into fear and corruption. As a matter of fact, didn't we all leave with the circus? We let it control our lives and dictate the rules, we just accepted the yoke and the satire stopped doing the magic trick at some point.
Dead and buried, but the communism still wanders around. There are still uprooted people for which the absence is a state of being. People like the quiet mourners, who cannot meet today's society and it's new coutumes without the presence of the dis consideration depicted in the final scene.

84 minutes
Classification: (M) Sex scenes, sexual references, violence and coarse language

REVIEWS

Urban Cinefile
IMDb
At The Movies (ABC)

OFFICIAL SITE
(in French)

LOUISE-MICHEL
France 2008 (M)

All the female workers in the French textile factory in Picardie are given hope, when a few months after downsizing, the director presents them with new smocks embroidered with their names. But overnight, the factory is closed and the workers find themselves glumly counting their meager compensation. When the eccentric Louise (Yolande Moreau) suggests they pool their money and hire a hit-man to eliminate their former boss, everyone agrees. Louise is in charge of finding the hitman.... She stumbles on Michel (Bouli Lanners), a clueless, sloppy security guard with strange ideas.

Review by Louise Keller:
Brilliant or balderdash? After watching Benoit Delepine and Gustave Kervern's quirky, black film, I couldn't make up my mind. Louise-Michel is the strangest of films. One thing is sure, Delepine and Kervern never veer from their ambitious, improvised vision involving an illiterate, grumpy, dumpy factory worker who seeks out a security guard-turned hit-man smothered by his own problems. We quickly realise that the plot is simply the means by which we get to intimately know the two odd-ball characters - Yolande Moreau's Louise and Bouli Lanners' Michel. The fact that the film is dedicated to French anarchist Louise Michel may offer a few clues.
The setting is rural France and Moreau's Louise is the odd-one out of the group of factory workers who are trying to decide how best to use their meagre severance pay, when their livelihood is unexpectedly terminated. But they are all in agreement when Louise suggests they hire a hit-man. Best not to analyse the elements too much: after all, the entire film plays out like a dream David Lynch might have had. The incongruous is pitted against realism. Pessimism reigns supreme and the elements are all bizarre. The camera doesn't move: people move in and out of frame. For example, the camera rests on one part of the out of town trailer park in which Michel has his office, but he and Louise are out of frame most of the time. There is no background music, just a few songs with (English) lyrics that have some pertinence. "Well, you heard about the time I climbed the empire state building; and you heard about the time I was in the insane asylum. But I bet you never knew what I went through; what I had to do just to bring you... a lonely song."
Much of the attempt at comedy fails. One such attempt is the scene in which one of the trailer park residents re-enacts 9/11 with miniature buildings and toy airplanes. I scratched my head in disbelief when Mathieu Kassovitz's farm proprietor explains how he and his wife keep warm by covering themselves in excrement. Cross-dressers Louise and Michel's tap-dancing after a barrage of bullets have been fired is unexpected to say the least. I love good black comedy, but I really didn't get this one. Perhaps it whizzed over my head like some of those bullets."

91 minutes
Classification: (M) Violence and coarse language

REVIEWS
Urban Cinefile
IMDb
ABC - At the Movies

OFFICIAL SITE

AN EDUCATION
UK/USA 2009 (M)

Jenny (Carey Mulligan) lives in suburban Twickenham in 1961 London, with her square parents Jack (Alfred Molina and Marjorie (Cara Seymour), approaching her 17th birthday and an all important exam which should get her into Oxford. But when she meets the older, sophisticated and cashed up David (Peter Sarsgaard), her attention is taken by the sophisticated lifestyle he shows her, and even her father relaxes his insistence that she get a University education. She is, however, getting an education in the ways of the world and when David has one too many surprises for her, Jenny's life turns upside down and inside out.

Review by Andrew L. Urban:
A superb choice to close the 2009 Sydney Film Festival An Education gets everything right, even though Danish director Lone Scherfig is modest in her claims for the film, saying the rest of the festival program is a hard act to follow. Yet follow she did and knocked the audience for six with its absolute honesty, its crazy charm and its simple (but true and effective) story. Coming of age may be the label, but it doesn't do justice to this profoundly satisfying film that observes human nature with a wry smile.
Carey Mulligan's game teenager is a wonderful creation, certain to launch Mulligan into the cinematic stratosphere. She is vulnerable yet independent minded, strong yet playful and above all, an accomplished actress who can make us feel her emotions with ease. Her Jenny goes through such a bewildering, fascinating, uplifting yet hope-dashing journey that we have to be 100% with her all the way.
Peter Sarsgaard is equally excellent as the suave and all too smooth operator who uses a well practiced charm like some people use loose change; he has plenty of it and scatters it towards everyone he meets. Both characters engage from the start in Scherfig's beautifully realised film, which cleverly conjures up 1961 London (I remember it well). This was just a few short years before London became the cultural centre of the Western world, and Carnaby Street was just a lane in central London. It was really the 50s, still, complete with terrible food, lousy weather and a blanket of boredom over it all - at least for the likes of Jenny and her huddled parents.
Alfred Molina rides hid dialogue like a tragic knight as Jenny's underwhelming dad, who is as easily seduced by David as is Jenny. Superb support from both Dominic Cooper as David's partner Danny, in questionable business, and a scene stealing turn by Rosamund Pike as Danny's bimbo. (She is convinced that Latin will become obsolete - not even Latins speak it much anymore.)
The sheer joy of an intelligent, grown up film in this genre is enhanced by the cultural specifics of the story, the attention to detail in even the smallest roles (Emma Thompson, with just two scenes, makes an impact) and the story having something relevant to say about women's roles in UK (and other) societies only 30-odd years ago. The tone of the film remains with us, like a well loved melody, every time we pick up a piece of it in our mind.
100 minutes
Classification: (M) Mature themes

REVIEWS
Urban Cinefile
IMDb
ABC - At the Movies

Interview with Pedro Almodovar

OFFICIAL SITE

BROKEN EMBRACES
Los abrazos rotos
Spain 2009 (M)

While film director Mateo Blanco (Lluis Homar), is making his first comedy, he falls in love with his beautiful star, Lena (Penelope Cruz), the mistress of ageing millionaire Ernesto Martel (Jose Luis Gomez). Ernesto's son (Ruben Ochandiano) documents the entire shoot on his video camera, some of which becomes critical information to various characters. When their affair becomes an open secret, Mateo and Lena flee to the island of Lanzarote, where Mateo is blinded and Lena is killed in a car accident. Some fourteen years later, the blinded Mateo has withdrawn into his writing pseudonym persona, Harry Caine, his Mateo persona dead. But secrets that have lain dormant since those days start tumbling out when the film's production manager, Judit (Blanca Portillo) starts confessing to both him and to her son Diego (Tamar Novas) - with whom she has been caring for Mateo.

Review by Louise Keller:
With its themes of revenge, sexual obsession, love and jealousy, Pedro Almodovar follows his own tried and true recipe for grand melodrama in this, his latest tale in which characters spin complex webs. It's engaging and involving, although it is not Almodovar's best work: the twists and revelations seemed oddly familiar. There's no great emotional hit, either. However, the strength of Almodovar's films is his characters and he knows how to get us hooked on their soap-opera lives. With Penelope Cruz, his favourite leading lady centre stage, looking sexy and seriously beautiful, we are assured of a sensual ride. Additionally, there is a duality associated with each character, which occasionally is too clever for its own good.
The story is slow to get started, although the film starts with a bang when Lluis Homar's blind scriptwriter Harry Caine has a quick but passionate nude romp on the lounge with a pretty blonde stranger who has just helped him across the road. That cheeky shot of a foot with bright red polish that flops in satisfaction heralds good sex. Almodovar is toying with us. This scene is inconsequential but ripe viewing.
We meet all the key characters in confusingly different time zones and situations as if in a jigsaw waiting to be put together. It is not until Harry starts to tell his story to Diego (Tamar Novas) that the pieces start to fit. You see Harry is really Mateo, the film director, but now he is blind, he likes the idea of being someone else. There's Harry's brusque producer Judit Garcia (Blanca Portillo) who has a secret, Ernesto Martel (Jose Luis Gomez), the rich sugar daddy obsessed by Penelope Cruz's Lena. There's creepy Ray X (Ruben Ochandiano), aka Ernesto Martel Jr. who voyeuristically slinks in the shadows with a video camera to record everything. I love the scene in which the possessive and fanatical Ernesto sits with the hired lip-reader (Lola Duenas) and watches his mistress with her lover on the big screen on the wall of his lounge room.
There is no shortage of things to talk about in this colourful, larger-than-life drama and there are moments to savour. However, the overall impact of Almodovar's cinematic embrace is somewhat broken, which for me, is a disappointment.
127 minutes
Classification: (M) Sex scenes, drug use and coarse language

REVIEWS
Urban Cinefile
IMDb
ABC - At The Movies - not reviewed

OFFICIAL SITE

FOOD, INC.
USA 2008 (PG)

Filmmaker Robert Kenner argues that health and safety - of the food itself, of the animals produced themselves, of the workers on the assembly lines, and of the consumers actually eating the food - are often overlooked in the giant US food production industry. Worse, much of it is deliberately hidden by corporations protecting their interests and even by regulatory agencies such as the USDA and FDA. Bigger breasted chickens, herbicide resistant soya beans and limitless supplies of minced hamburger beef all come at a price - including the danger of e coli bacteria that causes illness in an estimated 73,000 Americans annually.

Review by Andrew L. Urban:
An activist-made film of considerable interest, Food, Inc. is also a piece of investigative journalism that tells us a thousand things that are pertinent to eating everyday food. Did you know that chickens are now farmed to fatten in 45 days and grow bigger breasts (most popular part) than their pre-industrialised ancestors, which took over 70 days to be ready for consumption? Neither did I. It's done by methods that are not likely to endear themselves to the average city eater, which is why chicken moguls won't allow cameras inside the commercial coops. Nor will they talk to this filmmaker; and they're not the only ones. Wallmart is the only major corporation that does, and it explains how it's jumped onto the organic bandwagon.
Monsanto, the evil empire of this film, which has patented Round Up pesticide-resistant soya beans, takes a dictator's approach to farmers, with legal teams and on the ground enforcers generating fear and loathing among farmers. It, too, refuses to be interviewed by filmmaker Robert Kenner, as does the USA's biggest meat packing company.
And it's not only company execs that are silent: in one shocking scene, the mother of a young boy who died of e coli refuses to answer a question about how she has changed her eating habits for fear of being sued. Don't laugh, the US meat industry has done it before, suing Prha Winfrey when she declared on TV during the mad cow disease outbreak that she would never eat another hamburger. After she spent $1 million defending herself, the court found in her favour. How would a suburban mum go?
The aim of the filmmakers, they say, is to lift the veil on the underbelly of an industry that touches everyone; and they succeed. Some of the footage is confronting, the information is certainly surprising and at times shocking, and the filmmaking is technically effective. But it does cram a lot of information into 94 minutes - as did An Inconvenient Truth. You almost need a study guide to rehearse the film's information load.

94 minutes
Classification: (PG) Mild themes

REVIEWS
Urban Cinefile
IMDb
ABC At The Movies - not reviewed

OFFICIAL SITE

THE BROTHERS BLOOM
USA 2008 (M)

Brothers Stephen (Mark Ruffalo) and Bloom (Adrien Brody) have been conmen since their orphan days when they moved from foster home to foster home. Bloom has had enough but Stephen, with his sidekick Bang Bang (Rinko Kikuchi) persuades him to do one last spectacular job - to lure the eccentric New Jersey heiress Penelope (Rachel Weisz) into an elaborate plot on a plane, boat and train that involves fellow-conman The Curator (Robbie Coltrane) and their one-eyed former mentor Diamond Dog (Maximilian Schell).

Review by Louise Keller:
'I want an unwritten life,' says Adrien Brody's Bloom, tired of living by rules and playing roles his brother has created. Rian Johnson's story about two con men embarking on their final scam has plenty of promise and entertainment value, but wilts when it matters most - we do not believe it. The film's strength lies in the credible relationship between Mark Ruffalo's Stephen and Brody's Bloom, both utterly convincing as the puppeteer and puppet who live by the storyboards. The first hour especially grabs our attention before disintegrating into a swirl of confusion. We expect the lines between reality and fantasy to become blurred, but we do need to have a stake in the characters or at least believe in their reality.
When mulling all the elements around before writing this review, it occurred to me that Johnson has got so involved with the manipulation of his characters that he has become lost in his own contrivance. I like his idea of colouring the characters surrounding the Bloom brothers as larger-than-life caricatures. This is especially effective in the case of Rinko Kikuchi's wonderful creation of Bang Bang (her smuggler name), who barely speaks, but conveys plenty as she steals the limelight with a withering expression or as she works on her target practise with Barbie dolls. Maximilian Schell is almost unrecognisable as the one-eyed Russian Diamond Dog, the former-mentor and current enemy. Robbie Coltrane's The Curator is fine, although Johnson's first choice of Ricky Jay would have had more grit.
Ironically, film's most interesting character, Rachel Weisz's eccentric heiress Penelope flounders in the wilderness. It's as though Johnson has written Penelope, the epileptic photographer who uses a watermelon as a pinhole camera, for laughs. When we meet her, she crashes her canary yellow Lamborghini, demonstrates her skills from her collection of hobbies (playing piano, harp, accordion, banjo as well as juggling, uni-cycling, martial arts and origami) and can barely keep awake when someone is talking to her. The Penelope who joins the brothers on planes, boats and trains believes Bloom is constipated in his soul. 'She feels like one of your characters,' Bloom tells Stephen.
The settings are gorgeous through Steve Yedlin's lens as we travel from Berlin to Montenegro on the Adriatic to New Jersey, picturesque Prague before ending in a run-down theatre in St Petersberg. It is there that we discover whether or not The Brothers Bloom have executed the perfect con - in which all parties get exactly what they want. If the con and the characters do not feel real, how can the film?

113 minutes
Classification: (M) Violence and coarse language

REVIEWS
Urban Cinefile - not reviewed
IMDb
ABC At The Movies - not reviewed

OFFICIAL SITE - none

PEACEFUL TIMES
Friedliche Zeiten
Germany 2009 (PG)

Review from Festival of German Films, April 2009:
Peaceful Times screened on a wet, cold Monday evening, but the lush, warm tones of Neele Leana Vollmar's latest film were more than enough to bring the audience to the murmuring point; giggles and belly laughs erupted from the cheerful audience for this pleasant, but grim comedy set in 1960s Germany.
The focus is on two sisters: Kasa with luxurious blonde hair and Ute, with empathetic eyes and the narrator. Even though they're only 9 or 10, they seem to be handed the responsibility of guarding their parents, who are a mismatched couple and seem to be frayed at the edges.
While Peaceful Times is decidedly humourous, the subject matter is provocative and stirring... the mother and father fled East Germany, living in the West to give their three children a better future. Sure, it's more open and there's less threat of random Stasi interrogation, but the mother, Irene, still pines for her home.
There are people that belong to a place and, when removed from it, find that a piece of their heart begins to wither and shrink. Irene is constantly terrified in the West - afraid of the Russians invading, as they did in Czechoslovakia, afraid of her judgmental West German neighbors, even afraid of burglars.
On the other hand, the father, Dieter, is the one that pushed the family to leave. In West Germany, he has a good job at an electronics company and he's able to enjoy imported cigarettes and listen to American music. Best of all, he's pleased to buy a new house, decorated the way he likes, for his family to grow up in.
It's a stirring film, especially when we see little Kasa and Ute take care of their mother, who always seem on the verge of suicide. Ute makes sure to use the washroom at the same time as her mother to count the number of sleeping pills she takes, and Kasa tries to orchestrate their parents' feelings towards each other.
Families are often dysfunctional, but it's rare that we see the kids take charge. As the two girls struggle with their own situation - as East Germans, they're teased incessantly at school - they cling to each other automatically, and try to heal their parents' broken love.
I say: One of my favourites in the festival, and a deliciously funny film. Strongly recommended!

96 minutes
Classification: (PG) Mild themes

REVIEWS
Urban Cinefile - not reviewed
IMDb
ABC At The Movies

OFFICIAL SITE (in Italian)

I, DON GIOVANNI
Io, Don Giovanni
Austria/Italy/Spain 2009 (M)

Venice, 1763. Writer Lorenzo da Ponte (Lorenzo Balducci) is leading a very cavalier life. Originally a priest, his numerous affairs result in him being sent into exile in Vienna. Supported by his friend and mentor Giacomo Casanova (Tobias Moretti), da Ponte is introduced in Vienna to the King's favourite composer, Salieri (Ennio Fantastichini), and a newcomer named Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Lino Guanciale). Seeing an opportunity to undermine his rival's ascension, Salieri tricks Mozart into hiring this unknown libertine as his librettist. But da Ponte's own nature and sentimental wanderings in Vienna only inspire the composer, and lead to one of Mozart's most bold and powerful compositions: Don Giovanni.

Review by David Stratton:
Back in the late 60s and early 1970s, Spanish director Carlos Saura was making pungent political thrillers like RAISE RAVENS; but for the past thirty years most of Saura's films have been, in one form or another, inspired by music, starting with his marvellous trilogy of flamenco films.
I, DON GIOVANNI attempts to explore the genesis of one of Mozart's most famous operas, but it's not as amusing or engaging as the rather similar SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE.
Opera lovers will no doubt have a field day - there's plenty for them to enjoy in this ribald version of how Mozart and Da Ponte created this very raunchy opera.
Visually the film, with its shifting backdrops, is interesting. But the characters themselves are never very engaging, and that's an essential ingredient if you want to enter this rarefied world of sex and music.

120 minutes
Classification: (M) Sexual references, violence and nudity

REVIEWS
IMDb
Urban Cinefile
(none)
ABC - At The Movies
(none)

OFFICIAL SITE
(none)

MY WORDS, MY LIES - MY LOVE
Lila, Lila
Germany 2010 (PG)

David, a waiter, finds an unpublished manuscript in a dresser drawer. To impress a girl, he claims to be the author. When the novel becomes a best-seller the real author introduces himself in his life and begins to take-over David's life.

Review from IMDb website:
Despite a couple of moderately serious third-act developments My Words, My Lies - My Love (an unforgivably awkward English-language alternative for the perfectly acceptable German original Lila, Lila) is pretty breezy, lightweight stuff. Swiss-born director Alain Gsponer -- displaying unambitious competence in his third full-length feature -- keeps the focus firmly on his performers with watchable results.
His film is never going to be confused with Lynne Ramsay's rather more probing existential tale of literary deception, Morvern Callar (2002), but pulls off the relatively unusual feat of being a romantic comedy that has equal appeal to both sexes. And while hardly a significant chapter in the filmographies of Bruhl and Herzsprung, it's certainly more than a minor footnote.

104 minutes
Classification: (--) not listed

REVIEWS
IMDb
Urban Cinefile
(none)
ABC - At The Movies
(none)
OFFICIAL SITE
(in Italian)

A MATTER OF HEART
Questione di cuore
Italy 2011 (G)

Alberto (Antonio Albanese) and Angelo (Kim Rossi Stuart) find themselves in adjacent beds in the cardiac unit of a Roman hospital. Garage owner Angelo was rushed there after a heart attack, while scripter Alberto checked himself in after complaining of chest pains. Latter is a nonstop joker, covering his empty home life and inner turmoil with a gregariousness that wins over the impressionable Angelo, whose medical condition is significantly worse than Alberto's.
Revelling in shared adolescent behavior, the two men continue to see each other despite their worlds being miles (literally) apart. Angelo's pregnant wife Rossana (Micaela Ramazzotti, terrific) doesn't understand why her husband is so keen to push Alberto onto the family, and she resists his increased presence in their lives. However, as Angelo's condition deteriorates and his preoccupations increase, it's clear to the audience he's ensuring his family will be emotionally cared for after his death.

Review from IMDb website:
This is the best I have seen lately. First, the director knows how to film nowaday's Italy, its streets, its cafe, restaurants etc... in a manner that you feel like going there, everything seems so vivid and beautiful. We are in Rome, a town that I have never come to, but after seeing that movie, it's like you had been there, and certainly feel like going back. But, it would not be so interesting if this was the only interest of that film. The main thing that really attracted me during it, was its characters, whom are so attaching, so real, and beautifully acted by such great actors. I found their playing subtil, well-balanced. The dialogues are nevertheless the best part of this film. It is true that it's a melodramatic movie, but in a good way, a way that should be moving you, and even be a little bit instructive, about love, friendship, family, etc... Of course, I wouldn't have liked it, if there wasn't a touch of humour, of comedy, and this is again one of the best thing in this film : it moves you, but it mainly (from time to time) is funny, never it is pontificating. So, for those whom like delicate, tender film, about friendship, life, and death, and all those themes, I would strongly recommend that one, you should not be disappointed. This is definitely one of the best movie actually on theater.

104 minutes
Classification: (--) not listed

REVIEWS
IMDb
Urban Cinefile
(none)
At the Movies (ABC)
(none)

OFFICIAL SITE
(none)

25 KILOS
Spain 2009 (MA)

Review from IMDb website: I saw this film in Catalan with no subtitles in an art house in Barcelona. I had no expectations; I went in blind by pure chance. Usually a critic of Spanish films and its celebration of the mediocre, I fell in love with this film. The main characters are Abel and Kay, though you don't find that out easily. In my notes, I just refer to him as "creepy guy" till I do find out his name. And indeed, the film begins with a creepy guy and a bad girl. Why should I follow them on their journey? Because they are as riveting as their journey. It takes you on a roller coaster ride that you don't want to get off. Emotional, suspenseful, and disorienting, its unique sense of rhythm keeps you uncomfortable and heavy with anticipation - but of what you have no idea.

86 minutes
Classification: (--) not listed

REVIEWS
IMDb
Urban Cinefile
(none)
At the Movies (ABC)

OFFICIAL SITE

THE DOUBLE HOUR
La doppia ora
Italy 2010 (M)

Sonia (Ksenia Rappoport), a young woman from Eastern Europe, has recently moved to the northern industrial town of Turin. She wants to find a boyfriend so she signs up for a speed-dating service - facing the blunt and the sleazy - until she meets Guido (Filippo Timi), an ex-cop turned security guard who has been making the rounds of the singles' scene for a while. Against all odds, the two hit it off and a romance quickly develops. (SBS.com)

A 'double hour' shows on a clock as, say, 23:23PM. In this psychological thriller, the double hour is loaded with significant dread. Here, bad things happen at the double hour; characters who are supposed to be dead, turn out to be alive. For the movies heroine, Sonia (Kseniya Rappoport), a hotel chambermaid, the revelations that emerge at the double hour are 'visions' of things left undone, which is to say, they represent a bad conscience. Giuseppe Capotondi's film is a dark and gloomy piece. It's got violence, but the bloodletting is delivered here not quite in the style of a turn-on. It's got sex, but its shot in a way that emphasises the exertions of the act; any pleasure the characters may derive from it seems incidental. But the real cue to the movie's miserable disposition is in the film's murky look; all the actors appear so pale and wan they could have loped into this from a zombie movie. This is one of those thrillers which is diabolical and diabolically difficult to describe in any truly meaningful way in a review. This is because much of its incidental pleasures derive from surprise; since the narrative is so full of reversals, twists and things-that-might-be-true-but-may-not-be, any attempt to describe its action in detail is truly treacherous. So what follows must be cryptic. The plot starts off as a romance. Sonia gets off with a night watchman called Guido (Filippo Timi) but before anyone can say "can we still be friends," the relationship is soured by a third party. What follows is a maze of storylines that feed into a standard set of thriller tropes; there's a copper chasing a murderer, and innocent characters set up to take the 'fall' for the villain. The script by Alessandro Fabbri, Ludovica Rampoldi and Stefano Sardo is a sort of variation on the Hitchcock model of thriller where the plot becomes a metaphor for the psychological dilemma that bedevils the hero. In The Double Hour Sonia is lonely; she meets Guido through 'speed dating'. This is a neat variation on the idea of the fateful chance encounter. (Though in thrillers like this, there is no such thing as 'chance'; every line, cut, and moment has some kind of meaning.) Still, for all of the film's smarts, The Double Hour ultimately feels a little thin; part of this is because unlike, say, Hitchcock, Capotondi's film doesn't seem to want to dig too deep into the murkiness of Sonia's world. Obsession, perception, relative morality aren't story values to be tested, investigated and explored – they're plot devices. In the end The Double Hour has the visceral impact of, say, mystery TV. (SBS.com)

95 minutes
Classification: (M) Coarse language and sex scenes

REVIEWS
IMDb
Urban Cinefile
ABC - At The Movies
(none)

OFFICIAL SITE

WELCOME
France 2010 (M)

Bilal (Firat Ayverdi), a 17-year-old Kurdish refugee from Iraq, has arrived in Calais - like thousands of others - after three months of clandestine travel, desperate to be reunited with his girlfriend Mina (Derya Ayverdi), now living with her family in London. Simon (Vincent Lindon) is a swimming instructor in Calais, just about to finalise his divorce from Marion (Audrey Dana), one of the volunteers helping to feed the refugees around the port. On an impulse and against the law, Simon offers Bilal and his friend Zoran (Selim Akgul) a bed for a night or two and is soon helping Bilal to improve his swimming - as Bilal plans to reach England whatever it takes. Complications change everyone's life.

Review by Andrew L. Urban:
Although far removed from it geographically, Australians may well recognise some of the moral and ethical complications of the themes explored here. They may also be aware of the well publicised refugee situation around Calais, where thousands of mostly young men from mostly the Middle East are creating a large, desperate camp as they seek ways to get to England for a better life, reunite with families, escape their misery. With legal means closed, they resort to illegal ones. This story springs from amidst that human chaos, exploring the universal moral and emotional challenges, through the specifics of young Kurdish Bilal (Firat Ayverdi) and a typical Frenchman, Simon (Vincent Lindon).
The script is sensitive and sharp, dealing in the intractable grey of the moral dilemmas that arise through the globally replicated issue of displaced people and their treatment by host countries, Western societies which are being tested by the crisis. But it's on the individual human level that Philippe Lioret's film takes us through some of the recognisable and tangible issues. Each of these refugees is a human being with family, with dreams and aspirations and with a whole life at stake.
Firat Ayverdi and Vincent Lindon give superb performances that distil their respective characters and draw us into the story, as do Audrey Dana as Simon's ex, Marion, and Derya Ayverdi as Mina, who waits in London for the boy she met three years earlier. We learn how the authorities are cracking down on the refugees and anyone helping them - to discourage the fleeing masses from collecting at the port. Simon's impulse to help is triggered by the actions of Marion, and it's a terrific piece of writing to have him embark on this course on a whim, only to find himself propelled by newfound care for his fellow humans.
There are other elements that enrich the story - and the relationship that evolves after their divorce between Simon and Marion is full of complex and accurate observation, while Bilal's determination to get to London for Mina carries within it the tragedy that comes to haunt all their lives - and ours. It's a superbly made piece of cinema, with much to offer the film lover, but escape isn't one of them.imulation and intrigue fails to pay dividends.

110 minutes
Classification: (M) Coarse language and themes

REVIEWS
IMDb
Urban Cinefile
ABC - At The Movies

At The Movies interview

OFFICIAL SITE

BLUE VALENTINE
USA 2010 (MA)

Cindy (Michelle Williams) and Dean (Ryan Gosling) are in their 20s when they fall passionately in love. Six years and a baby girl later their relationship is falters.

Review by Andrew L. Urban: The disintegration of a relationship is captured in two time frames by Derek Cianfrance in this festival favourite film featuring two remarkable performances. Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling make the film watchable and interesting, notwithstanding the downbeat subject matter and its lack of conclusion or insight. What does make it an interesting study is the accuracy with which Cianfrance captures the destructive power of small, everyday slippage in an otherwise loving relationship. Time is corrosive, too, and he depicts longer timeframes in the past of the relationship in flashbacks while the present covers just 24 hours of their life. That, he says in his notes to the film, is what interests him, "the amplifications of time and ellipses of time, in a cinematic way," when memories play such a crucial role in our sense of what we are and how we got to the now. The film has some wonderful moments - and some underwhelming half hours. Cianfrance hasn't managed to make us really care about the relationship, even though we find both of them likeable. We do see how they can be, and are, a couple; we don't see how they destroy that relationship, only its after effects. The complications of suburban existence provide grist for the story, and the angry boyfriend who is discarded in favour of Gosling's Dean provides another texture, although it is used in a hamfisted way. When the boyfriend comes to beat up Dean after he's stolen Cindy from him, accompanied by two beefs, we are shown the way primitive man responds. This has a payoff later in the scene where Dean is drunk and feels un-manly, forcing a violence (to office furniture) as an ironic reaction against the notion he thinks Cindy has formed about him. All very well, but the resolution to the story doesn't have a payoff to compensate for wading through all this angst. Review by Louise Keller: Intense and intimate, this portrait of a relationship hits the highs and lows like a song whose melody floats to heavenly places before crashing to Persephone's realms. There is happiness and despair as lovers meet, fall in love and make promises before life's journey change the way they view each other. 'You and Me' is Their Song and the wonderful pairing of Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams brings Derek Cianfrance's 'for better or worse' film to life. Gosling and Williams are sensational as Dean and Cindy; their story is told through time shifts realized effectively through good editing. This is a tough emotional experience and while we engage wholeheartedly with the central couple, we are left less than satisfied. True to the title, we know this is no Mills and Boon romance, but the script just misses as the story's dramatic arc comes to a conclusion. Images of a child, a lonely road, a rocking horse, an empty kennel and a sleeping man mark the beginning. We quickly jump into the life of Gosling's Dean and Williams' Cindy and their little daughter Frankie (Faith Wladyka). At first, it is difficult to see what connects Dean the multi-talented but unambitious house painter intent on being a husband and father, and Cindy the dedicated doctor. But as we are transported into flashback, we meet the pair at the beginning of their romantic and tumultuous relationship. It begins by chance in an old people's home. There's a rainbow in the sky as the serendipity of their second meeting takes place on a bus. There are complications. One of the film's most charming scenes finds Cindy performing an impromptu tap dance before a door displaying a decorative heart, while Dean plays the ukulele and sings in a goofy voice. It's a magical moment in time and we move with them through time as if pebbles skipping on a lake. There's a vulnerable rawness to the performances and often we feel as though we are intruding on a couple in their most intimate moments. Sex scenes and nudity simply seem to reinforce the baring of the souls. We feel all their emotions - from angst, loneliness, hopelessness to hope, love, commitment and happiness. It apparently took Cianfrance 11 long years to make his feature into a reality, inspired in part by his parents' divorce. Perhaps he found himself too close to the project and was unable to see what the audience needed to make the journey complete.

112 minutes
Classification: (MA15+) Strong sex scenes, themes and coarse language

REVIEWS
Urban Cinefile
(no review)
IMDb

OFFICIAL SITE

UNMADE BEDS
UK 2009
(M) Coarse language and sex scenes
92 minutes

The quirky story of Vera and Axl who both live in the same London warehouse but whose paths never cross until fate steps in.

REVIEWS
Urban Cinefile
IMDb
At The Movies (ABC)

OFFICIAL SITE

THE HEDGEHOG
Le herisson
France 2009
(M) Mature themes
110 minutes

Precocious 11-year-old rich girl, Paloma (Garance Le Guillermic) is intent on ending her life on her 12th birthday - while making a film showing why life (hers and those around her) is absurd. While she plans her suicide and pinches tablets from her mother gradually, she also strikes up a friendship with new neighbour Kakuro Ozu (Togo Igawa), with whom she discusses the building's reclusive concierge, widowed Mrs Renee Michel (Josiane Balasco) and her cat Leo. But Paloma, privy to the woman's extensive library, sees the withdrawn, unsociable and unkempt Mrs Michel as a hedgehog - all bristly on the outside, but deep down she is a refined, private and even elegant person. When Ozu invites Mrs Michel for a neighbourly Japanese dinner in his apartment, her transformation begins, prodded along by Paloma's innocent curiosity.

Review by Andrew L. Urban:
An assured and engaging performance by Garance Le Guillermic as the 11 going on 12-year-old Paloma centres this engaging film which is not your usual family film, yet will please mature members of her peer group - as well as adults. It's a sophisticated story in the best sense of the word: complex and layered, observant and warmly humane. But it is edged with melancholy and infused with drama. The novel was hugely popular in France.

Garance isn't the only one to stand out among the cast; French icon Josiane Balasco again delivers a heartfelt and subtle performance as Mrs Michel, the hedgehog whose life has been on hold for many years, except for her love of books. Indeed, her love of books connects her to new neighbour Kakouro Ozu (Togo Igawa) and also to Paloma. The scenes in which Ozu hosts her to dinner are well managed, balancing Mrs Michel's gradual opening up without the overstatement that might tempt a lesser director.

Igawa's restrained performance may seem a bit clichéd, but it suits the film's tone and the story's needs. There is a running theme around a goldfish, which is how Paloma sees her own unwanted future, akin to how she sees her family's life. Her older sister's goldfish comes to play a symbolic role, referring to Paloma's initial suicide plans and a resolution that is tied up with death. As Paloma repeatedly says about dying, what matters most is what you're doing at the time of your death. We are reminded of that by Paloma at a dramatic moment. All this makes the film sound more death-obsessed than it actually is.

Told from Paloma's point of view, the characters of her family are less fleshed out and the scenes in which she is filming them are perfunctory - but effective nonetheless. The sense of place is well sustained and Gabriel Yared's music is evocative and rich. Moving without being heavy-handed, The Hedgehog is a surprise and a memorable, even haunting delight.

REVIEWS
Urban Cinefile
IMDb

OFFICIAL SITE (none)

THEY'RE A WEIRD MOB
Australia 1966 (G)
110 minutes

Sports writer Nino Culotta (Walter Chiari) arrives in Sydney as a migrant from Italy in 1965, but finds his promised job gone, along with his bankrupt cousin and sponsor. In a fix, he gets a job as builder's labourer alongside Pat (Slim de Grey) and begins to learn the fair dinkum Aussie ways, along with the weird language. Not to mention the hot Sydney summer ...

Review by Andrew L. Urban:
Regarded as a classic, this film takes a kindhearted look at Sydney in the mid 60s; it was released in 1966 and I can well relate to the story of a migrant whose job expectations as a sports writer were not met and ended up digging holes. I arrived that very year and before getting a reporting job on a country paper, I, too, dug holes. So I can attest to the film's ambient accuracy as it shows a welcoming and almost universally good natured Aussie ethos. The homogenous white urban population is variously dressed in neat frocks or bikinis on the beach, the men in plain suits or singlets ...

It's an Australia that no longer exists, making the film something of a social document worth watching. Walter Chiari is excellent as the Italian migrant, avoiding the cliché traps thanks to Michael Powell's direction and a genuinely warm hearted script. The humour is slight by today's standards but it's sincere and well developed out of both character and situation. It makes much of the prevailing Aussie language (fair dinkum, mate) and how it strikes a migrant.

Some films are popular for obvious reasons, but some just hit the right note; in this case the note of self recognition helped the film to Australian success, and its exploration of a then rarely seen Aussie society helped it internationally. A sweet and friendly film about a decent migrant meeting decent Aussies in a shiny new country.

REVIEWS
Urban Cinefile (none)
IMDb
At The Movies (ABC) (none)

JOURNEY OUT OF DARKNESS
Australia 1967 (not classified)
92 minutes

Journey Out Of Darkness was one of the few commercial feature films made in Australia in the latter part of the '70s [sic]. With hopes after They're A Weird Mob, film-makers began to try to produce films - within five years there was to be a renaissance in the industry.

The writer-director of this film trained in documentaries in Australia and in the United States. His co-writer was the celebrated Howard Koch. What is offered is a basic story about Aborigines at the turn of the century and the question of tribal law and white law.

While the film has liberal attitudes, it suffered the drawback of having Ed Devereaux play the aboriginal tracker and popular singer, Kamahl, the Aboriginal killer.

There is good use of scenery, the Arnhem Land Dancers perform authentically and there is some atmosphere of racial questions at the turn of the century. The musical score by Bob Young, however, reminds us that this is in many ways an Australian variation on a western.

REVIEWS
Urban Cinefile
IMDb
At The Movies (ABC)

OFFICIAL SITE

A SINGLE MAN
USA 2009
(M) Mature themes
101 minutes

George (Colin Firth), an English professor in 1960s California, attempts to settle his various affairs prior to killing himself - his suicidal intentions set into motion by the tragic death of his longtime younger lover, Jim (Matthew Goode). His one-time lover and now close friend Charley (Julianne Moore) knows nothing of his plans and tries to rekindle the flame. But it's one of his students, Kenny (Nicholas Hoult) who takes a step towards George's broken heart.

Review by Louise Keller:
Life, death and living in the moment are the themes of Tom Ford's sublimely thought provoking film about a man who decides today will be different. Based on Christopher Isherwood's novel, it's an impressive debut for fashion designer Ford who wrote, produced and directed the film. But even more impressive is Colin Firth's wonderfully nuanced performance as the serious, hung-up and grief-stricken George who doesn't want to live in a world in which there is no time for sentiment. While its themes may be serious, our journey is coloured by the light and shade of the little things, which pieced together form a compelling whole.

Aldous Huxley's After Many A Summer is the book that Firth's Professor George is studying with his university s tudents. Death and the contemplation of life is all George can think about since the accident in which Jim (Matthew Goode, excellent), his lover of 16 years, died. We flit to different time frames and to idyllic days when he and Jim met at the local pub, sensual days at the beach; evenings relaxing with books and music, as we get a glimpse of their bond and life together. But the day is full of surprises. There's gin, pink Sobranie cigarettes and dancing the twist with his drama-queen neighbour Charley (Julianne Moore, memorable), for whom living in the past is the future; and there's a spark of a moment with Carlos (Jon Kortajarena) - a Spanish James Dean look-alike, over broken glass and cigarettes ('Love is like a bus: wait a while and another one comes along'). There's also the impressive Nicholas Hoult (About a Boy) as Kenny, the empathetic student who always seems to be in the right place at the wrong time.

The film's pleasures are discovering and savouring (with George) all the little things that life dishes up: his gem of a housekeeper, the brattish kids next door, a trip to the bank, the young men with sexy bodies on the tennis court. Ford effectively uses colour (or the lack of it) in telling his tale and Abel Korzeniowski's beautiful score is as grand as its scale. The 60s are brought to life with great production design, hair and costumes. Just like real life, we are never sure what is around the corner, but the journey is filled with surprises and we are glad to have been invited to tag along.

REVIEWS
Urban Cinefile
IMDb
At The Movies (ABC)
OFFICIAL SITE
(none)

EVERLASTING MOMENTS
Maria Larssons eviga ogonblick
Denmark/Finland/Norway/Sweden/Germany 2008
(M) Violence and infrequent coarse language
106 minutes

At the beginning of the 20th century in Sweden, a time of social change, unrest, war and poverty, a young working class woman, Maria Larsson (Maria Heiskanen) and her fiance Sigfrid (Mikael Persbrand), win a camera in a lottery. They get married and the camera is put away and forgotten, until under the pressure of poverty, Maria - now a mother of four - retrieves it. She goes to sell it but the kindly camera shop owner, Sebastian Pedersen (Jesper Christensen) encourages her to keep it - and use it, which she begins to do, under his instructions and in secret. But, despite her natural flair for photography, it's soon put away again, until once more, on the eve of war, an opportunity arises. Sigfrid's drinking and infidelity causes a rift, despite a fifth baby on the way, and after one incident he ends up in jail. But when he's released he builds Maria a darkroom and he starts a small business, their life finally happy and stable - at least for a while.

Review by Andrew L. Urban:
It feels like a labour of love, this film, a biography of a woman (and her family) over a dozen or so years from 1907 in Sweden. Through poverty, children and her husband's drink-driven abuse, Maria Larsson (Maria Heiskanen) not only survives but discovers an inner self she never knew existed, all by accident - and a little help from a kind man at the camera shop. The vagaries of fate are well observed in this carefully detailed biography, as Jan Troell adapts Maja Öman's memoirs for the screen.

Shot mostly in the colours of nostalgia, the period is beautifully evoked, meaning it feels authentic, if it isn't always beautiful as a time to live, especially if you're poor. Maria Heiskanen is wonderfully effective as the shy woman who discovers this 'other' her, a natural at capturing images through the lens. Even when she has to put the camera away again, we imagine she is sustained through her many trials and tribulations by the inner peace of having found that joy.

Mikael Persbrand has a difficult role as Sigfrid, a bulk of man whose heart is in the right place, or would be if it wasn't attached to the bottle. He is brutish at times and insensitive, unfaithful and unreliable - yet proud and caring and decent. It's a complex mix, and it is a challenge for us to stay sympathetic to him, even by the time he acquires some sort of self control.

Impressive, too, is Jesper Christensen as the gentleman photographer whose kindness starts Maria on the path to discovery. We recognise his feelings for her, and the fact he chooses to keep them in check not only contrasts with Siggie but alerts us to his set of moral values, which are in sync with his actions.

The story has not been pared down, so there is less focus on a throughline and more on exposition about the often hard life this family leads. I find this is a little less satisfying in that there is only the hint of Maria's fulfilment through her photography - which is after all the central engine of the story. The film covers a lot of ground, and sometimes it feels as though it's lost direction, but I recognise it is sincere and a keenly observed insight into a singular life through several aspects of early 20th century history.

What's missing is that sensation of taking flight on the wings of her self discovery, for which our spirit yearns.Chelsea (Sasha Grndeed a bumpy ride. When it all boils down, sex and money is what it's about. Needs and dreams have to fit in the cracks.

REVIEWS
Urban Cinefile
IMDb
At The Movies (ABC)
(none)
OFFICIAL SITE

THE STRENGTH OF WATER
Die Magei des Wassers
New Zealand/Germany 2009
(M) Mature themes and coarse language
83 minutes

Ten-year-old twins Kimi (Hato Paparoa) and Melody (Melanie Mayall-Nahi) live happily in an isolated Maori community and help their parents Gibby (Jim Moriarty) and Joy (Nancy Brunning) on their chicken farm. Not long after the newcomer Tai (Isaac Barber) arrives in town, there is an accident which separates the twins. Everyone responds differently. Tai is blamed and treated like an outcast while Kimi starts to behave destructively as he realizes he is the only one who sees Melody. Meanwhile Kimi's brother Gene (Shayne Biddle) seeks revenge and lonely teenage girl Tirea (Pare Paseka) finds solace in a relationship with the outcast Tai.

Review by Louise Keller:

With its unique Maori backdrop, this moody drama about life, death and coming to terms with both is punctuated by a well devised fantasy element. An affecting feature debut for writer Briar Grace-Smith and director Armagan Ballantyne, there's an appealing simplicity about the story and dialogue as it offers a peek into a specific culture and its spiritual traditions. With its striking remote landscapes, there are some parallels with Whale Rider, another New Zealand-German co-production, although the storyline is quite different. I enjoyed being a part of the community for the film's 83 minutes, although I was a little frustrated by the sound mix, which made parts of the dialogue difficult to understand.

We see the harshness of how the huge waves crash upon the rocks from the top of the cliff, one of the favourite haunts of ten-year old twins Kimi (Hato Paparoa) and Melody (Melanie Mayall-Nahi). That's where we first meet them, with their pet chicken. Life is simple on the chicken farm. Theirs is a large family and everyone chips in to help. Every day, the twins deliver the eggs to the neighbouring houses and when the man they call the Chicken Saver comes to take some of the chickens away, they believe he is taking them 'to a Chicken Retirement Farm'. What will the chickens do at the farm? Go to Chicken School of course ('What's the point of having wings if you don't know how to use them'), Melody tells her twin. Catalyst to the story is Isaac Barber's Tai, a stranger who comes to the settlement to escape from his 'allergy to cops'. He confesses this to the asthmatic Melody, when she tells him of her allergy to blue lollies.

Briar Grace-Smith's script concentrates on the close, complex relationship and interaction between the twins, as everything changes due to an unforseen event. The relationship between Tai and Pare Paseka's Tirea, the local girl who doesn't want to fit in and dreams of another life is also canvassed. The performances of the two youngsters are especially impressive and Ballantyne directs the entire cast with great sensitivity. Animals play an important role and add ballast to the way serious themes are simplified.

REVIEWS
Urban Cinefile
IMDb
At The Movies (ABC)
OFFICIAL SITE

FAREWELL
L'affaire Farewell
France 2009
(M) Violence and infrequent coarse language
106 minutes

In 1981 Colonel Grigoriev (Emir Kusturica) of the KGB, disenchanted with Russia's failing Communist ideal, decides he is going to make a difference. Discreetly, he makes contact with Pierre Froment (Guillaume Canet), a married French engineer working in Moscow and little by little passes on documents to him that contain information which would constitute the most important Cold War espionage operation known to date. During a period of two years, French President Francois Mitterrand (Philippe Magnan) and US chief Ronald Reagan (Fred Ward) personally vet the documents supplied by this source in Moscow, to whom the French Secret Service give the codename 'Farewell'.

Review by Andrew L. Urban:

It is one of the great untold (in cinema, at least) stories of recent history: high ranked Russian KGB officer decides that Russia needs to be saved from its destructive Communist Party path. He single handed alters the course of history by passing secrets to the West. The quiet, calm and deliberate nature of how he does this is reflected in the film - which may frustrate some people. There is none of the usual spy thriller stuff, albeit there are plenty of tense moments. There are no simple black and white characters, albeit there are conflicting agendas. There is not a James Bond figure in sight, albeit his name is mentioned in an ironic sense, and there is a torture scene or two.

Emir Kusturica, the larger than life Bosnian filmmaker (his film Underground [1995] won the Palme d'Or at Cannes) and actor makes a powerful impression as Colonel Grigoriev, intelligent and likeable, noble and flawed all rolled into one tangible human being. A man with a mission - a mission he alone understands. It's a character study as much as anything, and the plot details sometimes get fuzzy.

The popular and busy Guillaume Canet (Tell No-One, Hell, etc.) is excellent as Pierre Froment the slightly naive and totally reluctant instrument who is pushed into playing the second most important role in changing the course of Russian Communist history. He combines the innocence of a man out of his depth with the determination of a man wanting to do the right thing - and paying the price for it in his marriage.

Also effective is the lovely Alexandra Maria Lara (Downfall, The Reader, Control) as Jessica, Pierre's wife, largely kept in the dark but terrified for her young children by the risks to which Pierre is exposing them. Lara has a difficult role and she does it superbly.

Olekseii Gorbunov, Willem Dafoe and Niels Arestrup provide splendid support, and the production looks marvellous, authentic and moody. Perhaps a little more economical writing and editing would have tightened the film to its benefit and strengthened the central story, which has less impact than it should, given the impact it had on the world. We are told about that impact, rather than shown it in visual terms.

REVIEWS
Urban Cinefile
(none)
IMDb
At The Movies (ABC)
(none)
OFFICIAL SITE

MAMMUTH
France 2009
(M)
92 minutes

Belgian humourists Benoit Delepine and Gustave de Kervern (Louise-Michel) have forged their own brand of politically incorrect, absurdist comedy that is both distinctive and droll. Sporting a gigantic belly and long blond locks, Gerard Depardieu is deadpan-funny as the retired slaughterhouse worker who, goaded by his wife, sets out on his ancient Mammut motorbike to track down his former employers.

Review by Patricia Maunder:

Despite the film's potential, Mammuth unfortunately doesn't work as it seems uncertain as to what kind of film it wants to be. The end result is a confusing mix of genres that is not funny enough to be a comedy or moving enough to be a drama. French superstar Gerard Depardieu does what he can with the material and brings his considerable charm to the role but it's not enough to make this film a memorable experience.

REVIEWS
Urban Cinefile
IMDb
At The Movies (ABC)
OFFICIAL SITE

EVERY JACK HAS A JILL
Jusqu'a toi
France/Canada 2010
(M) Coarse language
79 minutes

Jack (Justin Bartha) decides to take the romantic Paris vacation he has won despite just being dumped by his girlfriend. Chloe (Melanie Laurent) lives alone in Paris in a life that is not in line with her expectations. When Chloe accidentally ends up with Jack's suitcase, she decides to open it and is taken by the contents. She falls in love with Jack, even though she knows nothing about him - except for the contents of his suitcase - and decides she is going to find him.

Review by Louise Keller:

Does the contents of a suitcase spill the beans about its owner? That is the premise of this soft rom-com from first time writer director Jennifer Devoldere, in which Jack the awkward American (Justin Bartha) meets Chloe (Melanie Laurent), the pretty blonde French girl. The question that Devoldere is really asking, is whether reality can live up to expectations. The idea is valid, but the film stumbles and crumbles in the wake of an underdeveloped script that hasn't really been thought through its consequences. There are some charming moments however, and the film provides entertainment for the undemanding.

Bartha last played the hapless bridegroom in The Hangover, and here he plays Jack, whose Coke can has just won him a trip to Paris. When his mother wheels out his father's old red suitcase for him to take on his trip, its significance goes over his head. So does Gabriel Garcia Marquez?' book One Hundred Years of Solitude, which his friend slips into his suitcase 'in case he gets bored'. Not so Melanie Laurent's Chloe, who finds the case, opens it and plays mind-games with his owner, when she plants photos and puts in train a treasure hunt that brings them together.

Every Jack Has a Jill (Jusqu'a toi) seems to want to be another Amelie, but that it is not. Nor does Laurent have the magnetism of Audrey Tautou. Even at just under 80 minutes, the film lags, despite some sweet ideas, including Maurice Benichou's Paris hotel receptionist, who quickly loses all sense of co-operation when he realises that no suitcase means no tip. There's plenty of anticipation, but when Chloe and Jack finally get together, the fireworks are sluggish. Perhaps it is the lack of charisma of both characters that make us shrug off any emotional involvement, which is why we don't care what happens to either.

REVIEWS

Urban Cinefile

IMDb

At The Movies (ABC)

OFFICIAL SITE

LEBANON
Israel/France/Lebanon/Germany 2009
(MA15+) Strong themes and violence
92 minutes

During the First Lebanon War in June 1982, a lone Israeli tank and a paratrooper platoon are dispatched to search a hostile town that has already been bombarded by the Air Force. The mission gets out of control. The young tank crew - Shmulik (Yoav Donat) the gunner, Assi (Itay Tiran) the commander, Hertzel (Oshri Cohen) the loader and Yigal (Michael Moshonov) the driver - are aged just 20, operating a killing machine. Motivated by fear and the survival instinct, they try to follow orders, even when they don't understand them.

Review by Andrew L. Urban:

Perhaps the most notable aspect of this film is that it's a coproduction between Israel, Lebanon, Germany and France. Given the subject matter, this collaborative effort is promising, although perhaps it is also the reason for the film's loss of direction . . . a bit like the tank. Shot entirely within the cabin - except for the bookend shots - the film gives us a very real sense of the claustrophobia and disorientation which engulfs these young men. If this were the way to deliver its message, it would work well, but it seems to be the very message itself.

But that message goes to that senseless Lebanon war which traumatised Israel as much as it traumatised Lebanon. Filmmaker Samuel Maoz was a tank gunner there and now immerses us all in its awful garbled idiocy.

A commander speaks to the men via radio, but the commands don't make much sense. Nor does the tank's mission stack up; they're told to clean up a small Lebanese village after it's been attacked by the air force. Then there's unexpected resistance, mayhem on the street - all observed in fear through the tank's scope.

When the tank is stuck, help is on its way via two phalangists, but they turn out to be useless thugs who don't help them at all. All the while the young men are becoming more and more traumatised.

Their inexperience and their hopeless situation is compounded when a prison is taken inside. The sense of chaos is multiplied by the camera seemingly fixed onto some structure within the cabin so that every shake and shudder is magnified and sometimes all we see is a dark blur.

The young cast deliver credible and harrowing performances and the veracity of the war is hell scenario is executed with skill, but the film probably has more meaning and impact at home than for those who are, no matter how empathetic - distanced from the events.

REVIEWS

Urban Cinefile

IMDb

At The Movies (ABC)

OFFICIAL SITE

GET LOW
USA 2009
(M) Mature theme
79 minutes

Felix Bush (Robert Duvall) is a hermit in early 1930s Tennessee who has no regard for anybody in the town or anyone who wants to get to know him. But one day, after an old fellow hermit dies and he hears people in the town telling stories about him, he decides he needs to get his own stories out in the public - at least one of them - one that has haunted him for 40 years. This would be via a funeral (or at least wake), while he's still alive. The job of arranging the early wake falls to Frank (Bill Murray) the local funeral director and his only employee Buddy (Lucas Black). Felix's big bad secret involves Matty (Sissy Spacek) who has just returned to town, and is also known by the preacher Charlie Jackson (Bill Cobb) a few hours drive away in Frank's car. But Charlie is reluctant to tell the story. Felix has to try and tell it to the crowd himself and he doesn't rightly know if he can do that.

Review by Andrew L. Urban:

Supposedly germinating from a true story, Get Low is one of those great stories that rise to universal relevance by its examination of a part of human nature we all understand intimately well: guilt.

But for what might appear as a basic guilt trip, Get Low is rather fun - at least for the most part. We are seduced by Robert Duvall's crusty old hermit (a performance loved by critics and actors alike) as he shoos off youngsters throwing stones at his window, isolating himself in his remote hut outside town and befriends only his donkey, now that his dog is dead. Whispers about him spread stories of a crazy past, but Felix is resolutely silent. And he has good reason, which once he articulates touches us deeply.

Bill Murray is dryly wicked as the funeral boss with a flask in the top drawer and an eye on the main chance, and Lucas Black is great as the naive young husband and father dragged into some strange goings on in what he thought was a calm job. Sissy Spacek is splendid as the mysterious woman from Felix's past and Bill Cobb is charismatic as Charlie, the preacher who knows Felix's secret.

As Felix tries to come to terms with his demons, we see the casual cruelty fuelled by ignorance in a small community; sadly, the same applies in large communities. The writers also observe how life's nuances resist easy classification o r labelling and how the predominant moral colour of most lives is an uneasy grey.

A performance film with soul and heart and a terrific sense of the place and time, with music to match, this is a film for the movie connoisseur..

REVIEWS
Urban Cinefile
IMDb (none)
At the Movies (ABC) (none)

SECOND-HAND WEDDING
New Zealand 2009 (PG)

90 minutes
Classification: (PG)

REVIEWS
IMDb (none)

OFFICIAL SITE (none)

CINEMA PARADISO (Nuovo Cinema Paradiso)
Italy 1989 (PG)

120 minutes
Classification: (PG)

REVIEWS
Urban Cinefile
IMDb
At The Movies (ABC)

OFFICIAL SITE

THE RETURN (Vozvrashchenie)
Russia 2003 (M)

Two brothers living in the Russian hinterlands, twelve-year-old Ivan (Ivan Dobronravov) and the teenage Andrei (Vladimir Garin) have few memories of their father, who disappeared 12 years earlier. Suddenly, he reappears without explanation and offers to take them away on a camping trip. However, his treatment of them is brutal and abrupt, and Ivan in particular grows increasingly resentful.
Review by Jake Wilson:
As generic as its title, Andrey Zvyaginsev's The Return could equally have been called "The Journey", "The Mysterious Stranger" or, most appropriately of all, "The Father". The premise could be politely described as familiar: two young boys and an unpredictable loner embark on a seemingly aimless journey though a chilly, semi-industrial landscape. Inevitably, the trio wind up on a desolate beach, where mounting tensions lead to a bleakly ambiguous conclusion.
In his first feature, Zvyaginsev succeeds in generating feelings of mystery and alienation through various orthodox techniques - using faded, high-contrast film stock, isolating the characters in long shots, stressing the sounds of rain and lapping water. But there's not much here that wasn't done better long ago by old-school European art filmmakers such as Antonioni, Angelopoulos and Tarkovsky.
This loyalty to tradition is of a piece with the film's view of the nameless patriarch played by Konstantin Lavronenko - a tight-lipped sociopath with a distinctly warped notion of parental responsibility. All but incapable of directly expressed emotion, he's like the sole citizen of a country where the only law is survival - at his best with practical tasks like preparing a boat for launch or stopping a car from sinking into the mud.

110 minutes
Classification: (M)

REVIEWS

Urban Cinefile
IMDb
At The Movies (ABC)

OFFICIAL SITE

HOW I ENDED THIS SUMMER (Kak ya provyol etim letom)
Russia 2009 (M)

Grigory Dorbygin (Pasha), is a young intern with the experienced Sergei (Segei Puskepalis) in the isolated wilderness of a Russian arctic island meteorological station. When Pasha takes a personal and dramatic message for Sergei but fails to pass it on, guilt begins to grow and his small lapse soon grows into a tumour on his heart and soul.
Review by Andrew L. Urban:
Filled with cinematic gems, from the time lapse photography of the landscape to the raw storyline (Ingmar Bergman comes to mind), the film has an immersive quality with its magnetic subtlety. It starts promisingly and proceeds with dramatic grip until the third act, where filmmaker Aleksei Popogrebsky lets the reins fall from his storytelling hands.
Using the power of close ups and the possibilities of this stark landscape, Popogrebsky ignites our curiosity with his laconic style. The two men, whose relationship is at first mentor and trainee, hardly communicate but for the purposes of their work. It's a basic sort of relationship and the setting underlines their isolation in the arctic summer. Both actors are terrific.
It's only when the crackling short wave radio on which they communicate regularly with their HQ brings bad personal news for Sergei that the dynamics are altered. Pasha (officially Pavel) can't find the right moment to pass on the message, first because he gets in trouble with Sergei for failing his duty when the news is fresh, and later because it gets ever more difficult to find the right moment.
Popogrebsky is rightly fascinated by what can develop from such a seemingly small failure and manages to keep us on edge as we wait for Pasha's realisation that he can no longer keep the message secret. The film's tone is beautifully maintained, and Dmitri Katkhanov's sparse score works a treat.
All of this works well, until Popogrebsky makes a few flawed decisions of his own. The film then presents us with some decisions that the characters make which I find hard to accept, but they are crucial to the film's resolution. Flawed, but exceptional all the same.

124 minutes
Classification: (M)

REVIEWS
Urban Cinefile
IMDb

OFFICIAL SITE

POTICHE (Trophy Wife)
France 2010

In provincial Sainte-Gudule, Northern France, Suzanne (Catherine Deneuve) is the housebound wife of businessman Robert Pujol (Fabrice Luchini), who oversees the umbrella factory inherited from Suzanne's father with an iron fist and is equally tyrannical with his family. It's 1977 and women are not expected - nor wanted - to step out of their roles as shadows of their husband. When the workers go on strike over pay and conditions and take Robert hostage, Suzanne has to step in to solve the crisis, with help from the once active Communist and now Mayor, Maurice Babin (Gerard Depardieu) with whom she had a brief fling in their youth. She is soon managing the factory. To everyone's surprise, she proves herself more than competent. But when Robert returns from a forced rest on a cruise in top form, things get complicated ... he wants his job back, but Suzanne has grown to love being in charge.
Review by Andrew L. Urban:
From jogging housewife to running for parliament, Suzanne Pujot (Catherine Deneuve) makes light of a journey that symbolises how far women were able to come in the 70s and 80s. But it's not all downhill on the way up, and there are personal hurdles to overcome and private pain to ease.
Francois Ozon loves to tell stories about women, and he's usually a bit better at it than here, although there is much to like in this multifaceted film. Deneuve, for one. She invests in Suzanne a depth of character with the minutest detail. Her forbearance in the face of a (rather one dimensional) chauvinist husband Robert (Fabrice Luchini) and her ability to make light of her housewife status at the beginning of the film make all the difference to the tone of the film. She's no victim; she's a serene and self assured woman who rises above the pettiness of her male partner.
Ozon also does well with the character of Nadege (Karin Viard), Robert's secretary and mistress. Viard is a wonderfully adaptive actress who can morph into any character she's given. There is one scene where the writing lets her down, but her performance remains intact.
Gerard Depardieu plays the old commie Mayor who was once Suzanne's lover for a brief summer afternoon. Now he's recruited as her ally in turning things around at the umbrella factory she inherited from her father - and which her husband runs like a fiefdom; badly.
But the feminist themes are treated with sensitivity and balance - and in the context of the period. Suzanne's children, Joelle and Laurent, are strong supports as played by Judith Godriche and Jeremie Renier, although once again some ropey writing gets Joelle into a situation (viz her shareholding in the company) that is not credible.
A couple of other flaws mar the film's consistency, but there is much to like in the story, the relationships and the performances.

103 minutes
Classification: (M)Brief sex scenes

REVIEWS

Urban Cinefile
IMDb

OFFICIAL SITE

MADE IN DAGENHAM
UK 2010

In 1968 Dagenham, young wife and mother Rita O'Grady (Sally Hawkins) works with 186 other women as machinists for Ford UK, sewing car seat covers - for a wage well below male rates of pay. When union organizer Albert Passingham (Bob Hoskins) encourages them to demand better wages to recognize their skills, the women agree to take industrial action. Rita's down to earth approach attracts Albert, who encourages her to take part in further negotiations - not just for higher pay but for full equal pay with men. Previously apolitical, Rita launches into the fray with enthusiasm, leaving her factory worker husband Eddie (Daniel Mays) to look after their children and the chores. The strike that ensues threatens to break up relationships and not all the male-dominated unions are supportive. But the Minister for Employment, Barbara Castle (Miranda Richardson) is, as is Lisa (Rosamund Pike), the wife of senior Ford executive Peter Hopkins (Rupert Graves).

Review by Louise Keller:
Never underestimate the power of women is the moral behind this rousing and uplifting true story in which 187 machinists fight for what's right and as a result, raise the bar for all women by getting equal pay. A crowd-pleaser with many elements including its 1968 setting, complete with hot pants, eyeliner and fashion references, Calendar Girls director Nigel Cole knows how to involve us and get us hooked. Inspiring as only a true story can be, it's about ordinary women standing up for a principle. The action is funny and awkward as it builds its momentum in the lead up to its game-changing and satisfying conclusion. The result is like a huge wave: you can see it coming but it's not until it hits that you are swept away.
The action starts in the Ford machinists' workroom in Dagenham near London, where the women cope with the heat by stripping into bras and petticoats. But the heat rises in different ways when their bid to be graded above their status as non-skilled labour escalates and changes direction. When we first meet union man Albert Passingham (an in-form Bob Hoskins), we know straight up he has great affection for the women as he banters and playfully covers his eyes. He is the unsung hero of this story - the man of principle whose life-long admiration for women begins from his role-model mother.
This is Sally Hawkins' second role-of-a-lifetime (following her Oscar winning role in Happy go Lucky) and she delivers beautifully as Rita O'Grady, wife and mother-of-two who, propelled by Albert's encouragement, represents her fellow-workers and takes a stand. In the beginning the stakes are small. There's a meeting, a one-day strike and low-key demonstration in the rain. There's dissention in the ranks. As it snowballs into a major division of the sexes, including a clash with husband Eddie (Daniel Mays is excellent), things become really interesting and a hilarious meeting with Miranda Richardson's fiery redhead Government Minister (complete with nips of sherry) is one of the film's funniest scenes. The divine Rosamund Pike is a stand out as the elegantly dressed Lisa Hopkins, the former history student who wears Biba and whose life and aspirations connect with Rita's in unexpected ways.
Screenwriter Billy Ivory has written a well structured script with enough attention to character to make us understand the English working class plight. From the coal face on the factory floor to issues of national significance and beyond, the story is an exuberant one with a splendid pay off. Watch for the clips featuring the real women from Dagenham during the closing credits.

113 minutes
Classification: (M) Coarse language

REVIEWS
Urban Cinefile (none)
IMDb
ABC - At the Movies

OFFICIAL SITE (in German)

LOURDES
Austria/France/Germany 2009

Christine is a wheelchair-using woman with severe multiple sclerosis. In order to escape her isolation, she makes a journey to Lourdes, the iconic site of pilgrimage in the Pyrenees Mountains, along with other people with varying disabilities. During her stay she begins to regain the use of her limbs. This is in contrast with others, who appear to have stronger faith than Christine but experience only slight, passing improvement. Her fellow pilgrims are eager to call it a miracle; however, as the pilgrimage draws to a close, exactly how accurate a claim this is becomes uncertain.

Review from The Guardian:
"Leaving the miraculous out of life is like leaving out the lavatory or dreams or breakfast," wrote Graham Greene, but the miraculous certainly does tend to get left out of films, unless they are specifically about the life of Christ. So a contemporary movie set in Lourdes, among the believers and wheelchair-users who have come to that famous shrine in the hope of a cure, must inevitably trigger a series of expectations in the viewer: expectations of irony and disillusion, of some grotesque reversal, or maybe, in place of a cure, some violently satirical Dr Strangelove moment, a nauseous anti-miracle, like the ex-Nazi's euphoric scream of "I can walk!" in Kubrick's film at the instant when the earth's nuclear destruction is guaranteed.
Furthermore, this movie is by Jessica Hausner, the Austrian director whose name is habitually mentioned in the same breath as Ulrich Seidl and Michael Haneke: film-makers who are capable of exposing the refrigerated cruelty beneath the surface of gemutlich European middle-class life. But Hausner manages and controls our expectations in this superbly subtle, mysterious and brilliantly composed film. It concerns what seems to be a genuine miraculous event, after which Hausner adroitly, and repeatedly, allows us to suspect that something counter-balancingly awful is about to happen, bringing us close to the brink of apparent catastrophe, and then allowing the danger to recede, while at the same time letting us suspect that disaster has in fact in some way happened - or perhaps something entirely the opposite of disastrous. Either way, as the action of this outstanding movie proceeds, you get the eerie feeling that everything on screen has been invisibly deluged with something very important.
Sylvie Testud gives a tremendous performance as Christine, a young Frenchwoman who has multiple sclerosis and has come to Lourdes as part of a religious tour group organised by the Order of Malta. Her arms and legs are immobile and her hands are clenched fists. At Lourdes, she takes an alert and intelligent interest in the proceedings, though without seeming fervent or desperate, and relates easily to her fellow pilgrims, including a woman with a disabled child, and an older woman Madame Hartl (Gilette Barbier), who takes it upon herself to be Christine's companion and roommate. Elina Lowensohn plays the senior nurse and tour group leader, something of a martinet who disapproves of any impious or egotistical behaviour. There is also Kuno, played by Bruno Todeschini, a handsome male volunteer who in the most refined, discreet and gentlemanly way, admires Christine's quiet beauty and courage.
Like everyone else, Christine absorbs the ruling ethos at Lourdes that spiritual healing is the important thing - a credo that allows everyone to leave without thinking that they have had a wasted or disappointing journey. Also, everyone is quite aware of the routine phenomenon of the "phantom" miracle. Some, in the heat of the moment, do indeed rise from their wheelchairs, only to sink back, hours or days later, when the euphoria has worn off. Everywhere, there is a patiently rational and metaphorical approach to the miraculous. And yet...
As events unfold, it seems possible that some sort of strange quantum of health and sickness is in force. If physical strength should suddenly desert one of the party, it might migrate to someone else - but if divine grace should be visited on someone via these mysterious means, then this might cause ripples of dissatisfaction and resentment among the rest of the group, and the status quo ante could yet be reasserted. A cool, elegant and almost imperceptibly black-comic detachment is created with Hausner's group compositions, in which the viewer must always stay attentive for something vital happening in the middle distance.
The last film featuring a scene in Lourdes was Julian Schnabel's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, in which Mathieu Amalric's disabled magazine editor Jean-Dominique Bauby remembers a dirty weekend spent in that bizarrely chosen location. Jean-Pierre Cassel was cast in the significant dual role of priest and vendor of cheap commercial trinkets. All the worldly, knowing irony of that scene - all the i-dotting and t-crossing - is utterly absent from Jessica Hausner's grippingly enigmatic work, shot on location in Lourdes itself: the mass scene appears to have been filmed with the actors "embedded" among genuine pilgrims. The audience is entitled to wonder if some of the ambiguity and restraint of Hausner's film was contrived to get official permission for these sequences, but even that possibility has its own subversive fascination.
Towards its end, I found myself thinking of Dreyer's Day of Wrath, in which Anna's vocation for evil appears to pass from the metaphorical to the real: a sense that witchcraft is not merely a parable for disempowerment, but something that she is literally capable of doing. It is a moment of astonishment that punctures the rational fabric of the film - there is no clearly comparable sense here, but certainly a batsqueak of anxiety that the miraculous might be real, and that it is therefore just as alarming, unsettling and threatening - and perhaps, also, just as absurd and banal - as everything else in the real world. Some viewers may find themselves disconcerted or even exasperated by the film's final moments, but I found in them a final flourish of Hausner's sheer, exhilarating technique and intelligence, like that of a superb musician. It is her best film yet..

95 minutes
Classification: (G)

REVIEWS
Urban Cinefile (none)
IMDb
ABC - At the Movies

OFFICIAL SITE
click on TRANSLATE

WOMEN WITHOUT MEN (Zanan-e bedun-e mardan)
Austria/France/Germany/Rest of the world 2009

The Anglo-Iranian comic Shappi Khorsandi recently revealed that Jon Snow had told her about a conversation he had once had some years ago with the then prime minister, Tony Blair. The premier had asked Snow, plaintively, why Iran hated the British so much. Snow replied hesitantly: "Well, you know, because of Mossadeq..." - that is, the left-leaning Iranian leader, toppled in 1953 by a coup instigated by the British and American governments because of his determination to nationalise oil. Blair replied blankly: "Who?" Perhaps watching this excellent movie would be a way for Blair, and the rest of us, to brush up on British and Iranian history.
Review from The Guardian:

With this debut feature, the photographer-turned-director Shirin Neshat has made a picture with vision, poetry, sexual frankness and historical sinew. It brings together, on screen, the personal and the political in the story of four women and the way their lives are affected by the turbulence of the anti-Mossadeq coup, and revives the memory of a lost generation of Iranian politics and culture: the westernised liberal intelligentsia, a white-collar class exiled and effaced by the Shah's regime, but also fiercely repudiated by the theocracy installed by the Islamic revolution of 1979. In some ways, Neshat's film addresses the same issues as Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, and further underlines the fact that it is Iran which, in the 21st century, has repeatedly offered the world a vivid, unapologetically feminist cinema.
World Without Men is based on a 1989 novel by Shahrnush Parsipur, and weaves together the women's lives in complex and enigmatic ways. Munis (Shabnam Touloueh) is serious, cerebral, obsessed with listening to the radio for the news of the Mossadeq situation, and bullied by her brother for neglecting her demure womanly duties. Munis's friend Faeseh (Pegah Ferydoni) is in love with this same brother who makes Munis's life a misery. Fakhri (Arita Shahrzad) is a stylish, elegant married woman in her 40s, in love with an old flame. Finally there is Zarin, a prostitute, played with characteristic intensity by Orsi Toth, the Hungarian actor who has appeared in Kornel Mundruczo's films Delta and Johanna.
Neshat's movie-making style owes something to Mohsen Makhmalbaf, but has absorbed other influences, too - her camera movements are distinctly Tarkovskian. And for the magic-realist tropes of the literary original, Neshat has found a visual manner with something of Bunuel: this surfaces in the disquieting vision of Zarin's client having an eyeless, mouthless face and also, I think, in the grand dinner-party-cum-soiree that Fahkhri throws in her new orchard estate. The army turn up, intending to search the property for seditious materials, but the troops end up staying for dinner, and their commanding officer exchanges flirtatious badinage with the guests.
Everything is imagined by Neshat with clear-eyed compassion and narrative drive, and she shows a bold candour about sexuality and women's bodies. The film is shot by cinematographer Martin Gschlacht, who recently worked with Joanna Hausner on Lourdes. He creates tremendous images using painterly, washed-out colour tones, framing dream-like tableaux, but also creating plausible action sequences. Neshat has directed a quietly tremendous film which ensnares both the heart and the mind.

95 minutes
Classification: (M) Mature themes, nudity and violence

REVIEWS
Urban Cinefile
IMDb

OFFICIAL SITE

INCENDIES
Canada/France 2010

In contemporary Canada, when Nawal Marwan (Lubna Azawal) dies, she is survived by her twin adult children, Jeanne (Melissa Desormeaux-Poulin) and Simon (Maxim Gaudette). Among her requests, the most unusual is one to deliver two sealed envelopes, one by each of the twins to their father and their brother respectively. However, their father as they know passed away years earlier during the war in the Middle East (where Nawal was raised) and they have no knowledge of any other offspring. Simon sees this as further indication that his mother was crazy but Jeanne wants to respect her mother's final wishes, which means finding out who their real father is and who this unknown brother is. As Jeanne goes on her quest with what little information she has on hand, she finds a history filled with turmoil. Eventually, Simon reluctantly joins her, as they piece together their mother's past and thus their own history.

Review by Andrew L. Urban:
An unforgettable story superbly told, Incendies is adapted from a play (by Wajdi Mouawad) but you'd never know it. Indeed, so adroit is the adaptation that it's hard to imagine how it could be a play, given its geographical settings and its time frames. The story springs from the nature of conflict and how wars ignite fires that burn out of control.
In this case - although the film avoids pinpointing it to be able to deal with its own dynamics instead of the setting - it's the tragic multifaceted Lebanese civil war (1975-1990) shattering hundreds of thousands of lives. The war and what it's about, while crucial to the story, is not the subject matter, strange as it may seem. What it's about is life; a mother's unconditional love for her children, her dying wish to gather them all into her bosom despite the most horrendous odds and wretched event. And it's about how death is not the end but an event to teach us about life.
Lubna Azawal is outstanding as Nawal, who we first meet as a young woman in forbidden love with a man; the tragic traditions of family honour (a misnomer if ever there was one for honour killings) launch her life into a new trajectory. She is pregnant and alone but she survives. Then things get worse.
We discover pieces of her story as we follow her adult twins on a search for a brother they didn't know about and a father they thought had died. These were instructions in her will and they send her children into the past that's charred with the fire of hatred as well as amazing courage.
Melissa Desormeaux-Poulin delivers a wonderfully touching performance as the daughter Jeanne. But in the film's only false note - an error of casting judgement - Maxim Gaudette plays her twin Simon, genetically at odds with the story as a young man who could have no Middle East genes in his DNA. However, his performance, if muted, is splendid.
The structure of the film perfectly suits the story and the subject matter as it takes us back and forth in time and in place, revealing personal histories that grow more and more exceptional with each new turn. Denis Villeneuve directs with a sinewy sensitivity, using the camera to best advantage to give cinematic life to the places and the characters. All the creative departments excel in a collaboration that rightly earned the film accolades, including a nomination for the Best Foreign Language Film Award in 2011 (the Oscar went to In A Better World).
Incendies carries a mighty payload of emotions and leaves powerful resonances in its wake.

130 minutes
Classification: (MA15+) Strong themes and violence