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reverence this month to The Young Victoria, Julian Fellowes’ stirring portrait of the youthful, pre-black-attire reign of Queen Victoria, as well as letting out a loud “aaaaawwwwww” for the canine star of Marley & Me, the story of a young couple and their unruly pooch.
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THE YOUNG VICTORIA
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he coronation of Queen Victoria in 1837 may not have met with universal approval, but town planners and publicans must have thanked their lucky stars. No more would dank drinking holes or new transport links have to suffer unwieldy nomenclature: soon tube lines, pubs, roads, parks, musems and railway stations would have their status elevated by the elegant fricative of the young monarch’s forename. The ubiquity of ‘Victorias’ throughout the nation (particularly in London) are symptomatic of that British tendency to absorb history vaguely. Whilst most people can picture an old woman in mourning – usually clutching a sceptre – the difficulties of her ascension and early reign are often forgotten. Backed by the enormous (and strangely mixed) production strength of Martin Scorsese and The Duchess of York , The Young Victoria is the result of collaboration between Canadian director Jean-Marc Vallée and Oscar-winning scriptwriter Julian Fellowes (he of Gosford Park fame). The film charts the fraught rise to power of 17-year old Princess Victoria (Emily Blunt), beginning with the complicated claiming of her rightful throne from the frightfully evil clutches of her mother, The Duchess of Kent (Miranda Richardson), and her “advisor”, Conroy (Mark Strong). Once Queen, the immediate perils of politics and marriage are thrust upon her. Finding herself under the rhetorical (and romantic) spell of Whig Prime Minister Lord Melbourne (Paul Bettany), the Queen’s dangerously influential position comes under aggressive public scrutiny. After an enforced courtship, Victoria and Prince Albert of Belgium (Rupert Friend) begin to form a genuinely loving bond, and the film’s costume rom-com heart shines through.
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Inevitably there are historical inaccuracies, ranging from the minor (Albert is shown to be at the coronation, which he wasn’t) to the comparatively weighty (Lord Melbourne would have been a grand old 58 in 1837, Bettany looks about two decades out), but this is not the script of a sloppy hack . In fact, Fellowes’ dialogue uses phrases and recorded speech from many actual documents of the time, including the vast resource of Victoria’s personal correspondence. It is in this epistolary gold-mine that her growing love for Albert is revealed, as well as her lingering fear that her youth – as many attempted to warn her – would hamper successful governance. It is this external pressure to perform regally (as well as a personal drive to rule justly and with intelligence) that produces the film’s most dramatic moments: particularly during the depiction of the little-known ‘Bedchamber Crisis’ of 1839. However, it is in the intoxication of teenage love that The Young Victoria finds its most resonant material. Blunt and Friend are a plainly good-looking, likeable couple, and both the physical and emotional dimensions of their relationship are bound up in a haze of giggling, gawky excitement. Whilst familiar period ground is covered – the frustrations of propriety, grand old English cameos (see Jim Broadbent as the cantankerous King William) – the film shares more with When Harry Met Sally than The Duchess . Loud, bold and brash, Fellowes and Vallée have created a fitting elegy to a time when monarchy was going through a deep transition, and to a couple who embodied the confused spirit of a nation at the height of its pomp.
OF HAWKHURST
PG
UK Dir: Jean Marc Vallée, 2008, 104 mins Showing at Kino from 13 March
FILM
GENOVA
THREE MONKEYS
Another chance here for Colin Firth fans to nod their heads triumphantly and say “told you so”. Hot on the heels of his delightful performance in Easy Virtue comes a considered turn as Joe, a bereaved husband who takes his two young children, 16-year old Kelly (Willa Holland) and 10-year old Mary (Perla Haley-Jardine), to the Italian town of Genova to make a fresh start after the death of his wife, Marianne (Hope Davis). Also living in the city is Barbara (the ever-reliable Catherine Keener); an old friend of Joe’s who helps him shoulder the burden of his mourning and single parenthood. Deliberately echoing Nic Roeg’s Don’t Look Now in the use of a phantom of a loved one in a strange city, the younger daughter Mary begins to see troubling visions of her mother, lending her grief an air of confusion. Director Winterbottom is in less controversial territory here than the colour-blind casting of A Mighty Heart, but his ability to faithfully depict raw human emotion promises to flourish with this excellent cast and sensitive story.
15
UK Dir: Michael Winterbottom, 2008, 93mins Showing at Kino from 27 March
FLAME & CITRON The latest in a slew of films about the hidden stories of the Nazi occupation (Valkyrie, Defiance, The Counterfeiters), Flammen & Citronen is the story of actual Danish freedom fighters Bent Faurschou-Hviid, alias “Flame” (Thure Lindhardt), and Jorgen Haagen Schmith, alias “Citron” (Mads Mikkelsen). This enigmatic pair launched an individual, bloody resistance in Copenhagen in 1944, an act that resulted in a split from their own official resistance group, Holger Danske, and alienation from their loved ones. Superiors were doubted, traitors to the cause were shot, even Flame’s girlfriend, a courier named Ketty (Stine Stengade), fell under their growing suspicion. “Flame” was at one time, allegedly, the most wanted in Scandinavia, and the chance to view the nightmare of Nazi rule through the prism of another European occupied nation is a valuable historical chapter. Painstakingly researched over a number of years by director Madsen and screenwriter Lars K Anderson, much of the detail of this passionate, driven film comes from the accounts of survivors and eye witnesses.
15
Denmark/Czech Republic/Germany Dir: Ole Christian Madsen, 2008, 135mins, Danish with English subtitles, Showing at Kino from 27 March
Taking its title from the Japanese proverbial principle (“see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil”), Three Monkeys is the sixth film by Turkish director Ceylan and earned him the coveted title Best Director award at last year’s Cannes Festival. A tense, claustrophobic story of betrayal and murder, the film stars Yavuz Bingöl as Eyüp, a chauffeur to Servet (Ercan Kasal) a businessman embarking on a burgeoning career in politics. When Servet accidentally hits and kills a pedestrian, Eyüp promises to take the rap in exchange for a sizeable pay-off. With Eyüp imprisoned, his son Ismail struggles to assert himself in a fatherless environment; when he approaches Servet for financial help, a risky reacquaintance begins, as Eyüp’s impending release looms large. A moody, beautifully shot piece of work, it has given Ceylan – and his mysterious films - a deserved international platform.
15
Turkey/France/Italy Dir: Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2008, 109mins, Turkish with English subtitles Showing at Kino from 6 March
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JULIA John Cassavetes’ innovative thriller Gloria was remade once before in 1999: Sharon Stone took the lead role, with Sidney Lumet directing. French director Erick Zonca gives it another go here, casting the supremely intense Tilda Swinton as the renamed eponymous heroine. Cassavete’s original saw his equally fiery wife – Gena Rowlands – playing the title part, making Swinton the latest in a line of highly sexualised, forceful actresses to play this troubled woman, a desperate alcoholic who kidnaps a millionaire’s grandson. After discovering that Elena (Kate del Castillo), a fellow member of her local AA group, wants to abduct her own son from his unyielding grandfather, Julia agrees to carry out the kidnapping but plans her own heartless leveraging of the child. Shot in the dusty deserts of California and northern Mexico, the film’s principal draw its lead character. Julia/Gloria is an absolute whirlwind: embittered, chaotic and unpredictable; a creation only a performer with Swinton’s gravitas could humanise.
15
France/UK/Mexico/Belgium Dir: Erick Zonca, 2008, 143mins Showing at Trinity Theatre 1, 3 & 4 March
THE MAN FROM LONDON One of the last great auteurs still working, Hungarian director Béla Tarr applies his signature technique (eerie black and white photography, relentlessly unbroken – sometimes 11 minute long – shots) to the bleak tale of railway switchman Maloin (Miroslav Krobot) who becomes embroiled in shadowy criminal activity when he witnesses a dockside murder. Featuring a stark, ominous score from long-time Tarr collaborator Mihály Vig, The Man from London is a difficult, foreboding work, in which a largely Hungarian cast is joined by Tilda Swinton (is it Swinton season at the Trinity Theatre?!). The production itself was as fraught and mysterious as the resulting film: a producer’s death, financial bitterness between different supporters, bankruptcy, legal confusion and erroneous press reports all contributed to a shoot that could only be described as “difficult”. A rare chance to see anything by this legendary director on a big screen, it is also a comparatively manageable introduction to his work: Tarr’s defining film Satantango lasts for a tiring 7 and a half hours...
JARDINS EN AUTOMNE Vincent (Séverin Blanchet) is a French minister, living in Paris, who has become disillusioned with the stuffy world of politics. Upon his official retirement, he embarks on an increasingly amiable adventure to rediscover a more relaxed, trifling style of life. He casually informs his mother (Michel Piccoli, in ridiculous drag) that his wife has left him, stages an all-night party and generally behaves like a not particularly disgraceful middle-aged man. Writer/director Otar Iosseliana is a Georgian (the Eurasian nation, not the American state) who abandoned his native country for France in 1982 after nearly 25 years of rigorous Soviet censorship. Iosseliana’s time in Europe seems to have mellowed his revolutionary fervour as Jardins... is assuredly a film about treasuring the bourgeois simplicities of life. An amusing, light parable for complicated times.
PG
Italy/France/Russia Dir: Otar Iosseliani, 2006, 121mins, French with subtitles Showing at Trinity Theatre 11 & 15 March
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12A
France/Germany/Hungary Dir: Béla Tarr, 2008, 139mins, French and Hungarian with subtitles, Showing at Trinity Theatre 8 & 10 March
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MARLEY & ME
F
ilms that revolve around pooches often make the grave error of putting words into the slobbering mouths of man’s best friend. Disney is a big offender here: countless animated sidekicks have gone through their anthropomorphic cute-ifying process; even some real-life dogs have mysteriously developed vocal cords (see Homeward Bound). One only needs to compare the performances of Keanu Reeves with those of any normal, on-screen dog to realise that most canines are fine without voices. David Frankel’s Marley & Me is the first major film since Beethoven – notwithstanding its hugely unnecessary sequels – to allow a real, non-speaking dog (doing familiar, dog-type things) to be the star of a wholesome, uncomplicated family film. Based on the bestselling memoir of John Grogan (full title: Marley & Me: Life and Love with the World’s Worst Dog), the film stars a reinvigorated Owen Wilson as Grogan, and Jennifer Aniston as his young wife, Jenny. Both are aspiring journalists newly relocated to sunny Florida, both steadily rising in positions in local newspapers and both regularly smiling and giggling in the knowledge that they’re both young, well-off and stupidly beautiful. When Jenny begins to get broody, John’s lothario workmate Sebastian (Eric Dane, shamelessly playing a carboncopy of his role in Grey’s Anatomy) suggests that he distract these maternal urges by getting a puppy. When taken to a newborn litter of Labrador retrievers, Jenny predictably picks the runt, and Wilson names the little bundle of joy. The trials of their (slightly yuppie-ish) lifestyles begin to mount: despite Sebastian’s ploy, children arrive (two sons, then a daughter), and jobs become more stressful. Marley proves to be an untrainable dog – terrified of storms, fond of jumping on tables etc. – and the tension of modern married and family life makes his misbehaviour even harder to cope with. Meanwhile, at the behest of his editor (the ever amusing Alan Arkin), John begins chronicling a dog-owner’s life as a columnist, and – in spite of his
initial misgivings about the fluffy world of column-writing – his irreverent musings become a popular hit. A huge success in the States (it broke the Christmas Day box office record), British audiences may find some of the sunny smiles and opulent lifestyles (this reviewer is sad to report not all regional journalists live in such plush houses!) a little cloying, but there are some well-realised moments of drama. Owning a dog and running a family are both rewarding endeavours but both carry their respective heartbreaks and problems, and the film’s languid, realistic pace accommodates these moments as easily as the lighter, comic episodes. Of the latter, Kathleen Turner’s (looking ropey, to say the least) scene as a belligerent dog-trainer is the most memorable. Aniston is, on the whole, fairly convincing as a career-driven yet caring mother and Wilson comfortably walks the line between knockabout lad and responsible father. The real star, of course, is Marley (he was played by twenty-two different dogs!) and it is the depiction of how a pet can unite and bind a family that is the film’s most virtuous characteristic. Go for the likeable lead couple, stay for the barking, slobbery star.
PG
USA Dir: David Frankel, 2008, 120mins Showing at Odeon from 13 March; also showing at Kino from 3 April
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