Review: Delicacy***
Audrey Tautou has come a long way since her touching, doe-eyed international debut in Amelie. The actress is typecast in such feisty, cutesy roles that it’s hard to determine whether she’s good or just a natural charmer – a bit of both perhaps. In debut directors David Foenkinos and Stéphane Foenkinos’ new romance, Delicacy, we find a more determined Tautou at play – who still commands the screen in a delightfully challenging role about life, love and death. Nathalie (Tautou) is a beautiful, happy and successful Parisian business executive who finds herself suddenly widowed after a three-year marriage to her…
Review: Headhunters*****
Norwegian actor Aksel Hennie is the ultimate, contemporary cinematic scoundrel in director Morten Tyldum’s electric crime thriller Headhunters as Roger, the country’s most accomplished corporate headhunter. Like a young Christopher Walken in looks, temperament and acting prowess, Hennie is a truly exciting revelation to discover and took 2011’s London Film Festival by storm. Roger has it all: luxurious lifestyle, stunning and smart wife Diana (Synnøve Macody Lund) and a high-flying career. But it’s not enough, and he conceals a dark alter ego. When his art dealer wife introduces him to handsome businessman Clas Greve (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) – a former deadly…
Review: Dreileben Trilogy
The Dreileben (‘Three Lives’) trilogy brings together three feature films, three German directors with one threatening tale in common. Each of the films are linked by an escaped convict lurking around the small town of Dreileben, whilst some films depend on this, others merely use it as a backdrop prop. The project was initiated due to contrasting opinions about narrative structure in the magazine, Revolver. However, this method of filmmaking has been experimented with in the past, for example, in the 2009 Channel 4 series, Red Riding. Each director emphasises their individual cinematic style and way of storytelling to providing…
Review: The Woman In The Fifth***
Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski‘s first film since 2004’s acclaimed My Summer Of Love is set in Paris and combines art-house values with supernatural thriller tendencies that keep things emotive and disorientating. Based on a novel by Douglas Kennedy, The Woman In The Fifth also serves as a haunting insight into one man’s struggle to rediscover himself and escape the clutches of mental illness. American writer and university professor Tom Ricks (Ethan Hawke) goes to Paris to reconcile with his estranged wife Nathalie (Delphine Chuillot) and resume some sort of relationship with their young daughter (Julie Papillon). But after being turned…
Review: Special Forces***
Remember last year’s The Way Back, starring Colin Farrell, Jim Sturgess, Ed Harris and rising Hanna star Saoirse Ronan, where Siberian gulag escapees seem to walk half the planet to reach a safe destination, and defy all of nature’s odds? Well, writer-director Stéphane Rybojad’s new French action drama Special Forces feels much the same, only swapping Siberia for the unforgiving terrain of Pakistan and Afghanistan, with the Taliban in hot pursuit. If ever there was a recruitment advert for the military might of France, it’s this. Diane Kruger (Inglourious Basterds) plays Elsa, a determined journalist after the inside scoop in…
Review: Oslo, August 31st***
Danish filmmaker Joachim Trier had the ominous task of bringing his second feature into the Festival arena this year, after 2006’s lauded debut Reprise. Like his first film, Trier seems to be carving out an early filmmaking pattern of producing strikingly realistic character studies, full of passion and human nature analysis. He again turns to one of his two leads of his first film, Anders Danielsen Lie, to help paint a moving picture of one person’s view of modern-day Scandinavian life – Danielsen Lie’s hometown of Oslo, and hence the title. While not a film for the dispirited – though such…
Review: Miss Bala****
Adopting the frantic, hand-held documentary style of other gritty, foreign kitchen-sink offerings, Mexican writer-director Gerardo Naranjo’s explosive look at the dominant drugs culture in his country through the eyes of a young woman, Laura Guerrero (Stephanie Sigman), is a sure-fire festival contender worthy of a look. Laura dreams of being the next Miss Mexico and following a lucrative beauty contest lifestyle that will rescue her and her family from poverty. However, after agreeing to meet her best friend one day at a private party that is besieged by the local organised crime baron and his men, Laura is pressurized into…
Review: Troll Hunter****
There’s nothing more appealing than a horror steeped with folklore that manages to question our sanity. This is precisely what foreign-based fantasies like Norwegian writer-director André Øvredal’s Troll Hunter achieve for the non-Nordic audience out there, desperate for mysteries such as Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster to have a touch of authenticity about them. Students discover that government officials have been less than honest about recent human disappearances and supposed bear killings, and track down the whereabouts of a mysterious troll hunter who has been tasked with keeping the various troll populations in the scenic Norwegian fjords under control…
Review: In A Better World****
In the film’s production notes, Danish director Susanne Bier of this year’s Oscar and Golden Globe-winning foreign-language film, In A Better World, has some stark words, which with the current unrest in the UK, bring even more poignancy to her new theatrical release: “Are we immune to chaos, or obliviously teetering on the verge of disorder?” The story begins by following Anton (Mikael Persbrandt), a doctor who commutes between his home in an idyllic Danish town, and his work at an African refugee camp, surrounded by imminent danger. In these two very different worlds, he and his family are faced…
Review: Beautiful Lies****
After the hit 2006 comedy Priceless, writer/director Pierre Salvadori joins forces again with internationally acclaimed actress Audrey Tautou for another situational romantic comedy, Beautiful Lies (De vrais mensonges), looking at how misinterpretation and unfrequented love can bring a bittersweet but charming dose of humour. Tautou plays 30-year-old Emilie, owner of a hairdressing salon who employs Jean (Sami Bouajila), a handyman who is secretly in love with her. Emilie has problems of her own; apart from her own cynical view of love and relationships, she wants to cheer up her mother, Maddy (Nathalie Baye), who still pines for her four-year-absent husband…
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