On the face of it, THE LADY has a lot going for it. Filmed mostly in Thailand, it tells the story of Aung San Suu Kyi's (Michelle Yeoh's) progress from happily married homemaker in Oxford, England, to the leader of the democracy movement in Burma (Myanmar) imprisoned by the military for fifteen years. The transition is not an easy one: the authorities try to make Suu's life as difficult as possible, by denying her freedom of movement and preventing her husband Michael (David Thewlis) from visiting her in Burman, even when he is dying with prostate cancer. Yeoh delivers a first-rate performance; her face remains expressionless in public, especially while confronting the generals and their lackeys who try every single strategy they can think of to break her down. Luc Besson's direction is both taut yet hard- edged; his handling of the crowd-scenes is especially good, particularly in the sequence where Suu addresses a band of pro-democracy demonstrators, but does not see the authorities taking off some of the demonstrators to prison at the back of the gathering. The scene where Suu wins the election, and her supporters gather at the gates of her house, only to be repelled by gun-toting soldiers, is also memorable. Yet the film as a whole is let down by Rebecca Frayn's clunky script, which is notable for its clichéd scenes - as, for example, when younger son Kim Aris (Jonathan Raggett) crawls into his father's arms at their Oxford home and says "I miss mum." Frayn's characterization of Suu is perfunctory: we get little sense of why she became such a celebrated figure resisting the military dictatorship, or what her politics actually were. The script is far more concerned with revealing her enduring love for her husband. As a result the film tends to focus on the minutiae of their domestic life rather than explaining the niceties of Burmese politics. Maybe that was not Besson's intention, but it might have made for a more intriguing film.
Review of The Lady
