burneyfan Reviews

A Summer's Tale (1996)

A fortnight by the sea in charming company.

[29 January 2001]

Gaspard, played by Melvil Poupaud, is a song writer, a good-looking but

dull young man, a gauche loner with a flat voice and an inexpressive

face who comes to this delightful holiday island of Dinard off the

Brittany coast to await the arrival of his `sort-of' girl friend, who

demonstrates how much she loves him by keeping him waiting for two

weeks. During those two weeks, however, he finds two other girl friends

• or rather they find him. It must be his good-looks, it can't be

anything else. First he is picked up in a restaurant by Margot, a

waitress, who turns out not to be a waitress but an Ethnologist, just

helping out her aunt who owns the restaurant. Obviously such a bright

and intelligent girl could not be merely working-class!

Amanda Langlet, who plays Margot and who appeared ten years earlier in

Rohmer's `Pauline at the Beach.' is clearly the star of this film. Much

of the enjoyment of the film is derived from being in the company of

this vivacious girl and being allowed to eavesdrop on her talk with

Gaspard about love and relationships as they roam in the bright sunlight

around this lovely French sea-side resort and the countryside beyond.

She is such a very warm and sympathetic listener that it is difficult to

understand why he doesn't fall in love with her. Why she doesn't fall in

love with him is easier to understand. (you ask yourself; is this man a

very good actor or a very bad one?) He makes a couple of inept attempts

to move the relationship forward but is repulsed; she wants only

friendship - and you feel he is lucky to get that - while she awaits the

return of her Anthropologist boy-friend who is away in South America.

Gaspard's dullness is made obvious when she takes him to hear an old

sailor sing sea-shanties; her face so eager and enrapt as she listens

intently; his face, alongside, so lifeless.

She encourages him to take up with Solene, played by Gwenaelle Simon in

her first film, a friend of her's who they meet at a dance, but when he

does, she is jealous, jealous of their friendship she says but secretly

hurt that he now thinks of her as only a friend.

His relationship with Solene seems idyllic at first, they seem

marvelously happy and well suited to each other. He is accepted warmly

into her family, they all go sailing together and have a merry

sing-a-long to one of his songs. But then, sadly, her true nature shows;

she becomes aggressive and demanding, insisting that he take her to the

island of Quessant or their relationship is at an end. And now Lena, his

`sort-of' girl friend, played by Aurelia Nolin, appears and insists that

he take her instead. He must now choose.

Rohmer's films are never plot-dependent; he prefers to dwell on the

characters, to bring us into a close, intimate relation with them, while

they reveal themselves in talk. And when the characters are as

attractive as Margot

Family Resemblances (1996)

A birthday celebration."

[21 January 2001]

If like me you like French films, you will like this one. There is no

plot to speak of and no time wasted in car-chases and violent action

sequences. There is just fascinating dialogue and the interaction of

intereresting characters, plus the expression of real emotion and

nuances of feeling. There is an intimacy with the characters that is

typically French and which the Americans rarely achieve. At the end of

the film you feel you know and understand these people and are wiser for

having known them.

I loved the performance of Catherine Frot in the film, She was delicious

and made the character of Yolande incredibly appealing and lovable.

What a crying shame she should have shackled herself to such a

self-centred, unappreciative husband. He was the luckiest man alive and

yet too obtuse to realize it. Hows appallingly sad.

The high-light of the film for me was the little dance Yolande had with

the quiet, philosophic bar-man Denis, played by Jean-Pierre Darroussin,

who, revealing his kind heart, offered to dance with her when her

insensitive husband refused - despite the fact that it was supposed to

be her birthday celebration. Denis's skillful dancing surprised them all, and disclosed a whole new

aspect of his personality. There is a touching moment at the bar when

Yolande, suspecting Betty's romantic interest and trying to encourage

it, says to her with a lovely winsome expression; `He's a good dancer.' And at the end of the film when Betty and Denis are seen to declare

their love for each other, she says delightedly, to the chagrin of her

snobbish and spiteful mother-in-law; `You know what this means? It means

he's going to be

French Twist (1995)

A witty and observant comedy.

[7 January 2001]

Loli, played by Victoria Abril, has given up a promising career as a dancer to become the wife of a womanising estate agent; and though she knows of one woman he has had an affair with and has forgiven him, she knows nothing about any of the others - not even her own baby-sitter! No. Her main complaint against him is not his promiscuity but that he takes her for granted and shows her little affection. So, when a butch lesbian, played by Josiane Balasko, appears on the scene, stopping at the house to ask for water for her van's radiator, she is a ripe fruit waiting to be picked. And this kind, mature, worldly-wise lesbian is an expert in the art of seduction.

On an evening out together, the husband, played by Alain Chabat, already annoyed at the lesbian's intrusion into his home with his wife's encouragement, is driven into a blind fury when he discovers the lesbian's hand half way up his wife's thigh and sees them dancing together in a way that is very intimate. From this follow many scenes of shouting and screaming, jealousy and rage. You feel for the husband's usurpation and his humiliation at being rejected for a lesbian - though you rejoice at his come-uppance - and you feel for the wife who deserves the affection she has been so long denied, and you feel for the lesbian with a loving heart who wants only to make the wife happy - though others may condemn her for destroying a relatively happy marriage. The husband hates her so much and is so desperate to get rid of her that he is willing to do anything to get her to leave.

But despite all the passion and jealousy this is a light comedy and not a heavy drama, and you have the feeling all along that everything will work out well in the end. And it does. The moral of the story, affirmed at the end, is that the only things that matter are love, tenderness and affection and if we get those the source's sexual gender is immaterial; we are all bisexual.

This is a bright, witty and observant comedy, well-acted, particularly by Victoria Abril,

Waking Ned Devine (1998)

A warm, humane Irish comedy.

[6 January 2001]

The lush, rolling green fields of Ireland and its lovely villages

provide the idyllic setting for this warm, humane little comedy, which

is about what happens when an old man wins nearly eight million pounds

on the Lottery and then dies from the excitement with the winning ticket

still in his hand.

Two old villagers, Jackie O'shea (Ian Bannen) and Michael O'Sullivan

(David Keller) learn from the papers that someone in their small village

of only 52 inhabitants has won the Lottery; and their efforts to find

the winner occupies the first part of the film. When they eventually do

so and call on Ned and find his dead hand still clutching the winning

ticket, they have to decided what to do; to be honest and hand the

ticket back or to take advantage of the situation and pretend one of

them is Ned. The temptation is irresistible.

But, not being selfish, they want the whole village to share in Ned's

good fortune. And so they hold a village meeting and put forward their

plan; provided that each villager will sign a form committing them to

secrecy, the money will be shared out and each will receive £150,000.

But some quick thinking is required and many lies and evasions follow

when a representative of the Lottery comes to the village to verify the

claim and the claimant's identity and arrives in the middle of Ned's

funeral service and Jackie O'shea's funeral oration. And their plan is

under threat from another quarter; the evil-minded witch of the village

demands £1000,000 in hush money!

There is a nice little love interest in which James Nesbitt as Pig Finn

is excellent as as pig-man, too poor and smelling too much of pig to be

thought at all desirable by his beloved. £150,000 would see them both

right.

But it is Ian Bannen as Jackie O'Shea, still full of his usual energy

and Joie de vivre, who is central to the film and raises it so well

above the average. How sad that he should die so soon after the film's

completion. At least he went out on a high note and left us with a

Pride and Prejudice (1995)

Absolutely unsurpassable.

[24 December 2000]

This is a drama to rave about. I've not seen its like on television

before; nor do I expect to see its like again. It was superb. It was

almost perfect - though not quite.

It is rare to find a Jane Austen dramatisation that comes so near to

being perfect on every level and that stays so true to the original

novel. The greater part of the dialogue in the series is Jane Austen's

own and every scene is included and follows the same chronological

order. The drama departs from the novel in only two instances. In order

to extend our knowledge of the characters of Darcy(Colin Firth), and Mr

Collins(David Bamber), two scenes are added; to demonstrate that Darcy

is not just an effete aristocrat but a real man worthy of Elizabeth's

love we are shown him indulging in manly pursuits; fencing, and swimming

in his private lake (it puzzles me why so many women seem to drool over

his wet-shirt scene); and to demonstrate that Mr Collins is an idiotic,

narrow-minded prude we are shown him trembling with embarrassment and

horror when he happens to come across Lydia (Julia Sawalha) in a state

of dishabille. David Bamber makes Mr Collins deliciously toadying and

obsequious. A remarkable piece of acting.

It is its faithfulness to the original that makes this drama so good. No

one has ever written a more tightly plotted novel. Its series of

climaxes make the novel difficult to put down; just as one plot-line

reaches its climactic conclusion, another is building. And the duel of

wits and sharp dialogue between Darcy and Elizabeth (Jennifer Ehle) as

they get to know each other is entrancing. And then comes that moment.

She is at the piano befriending Darcy's sister, Georgiana (Emilia Fox),

when, from across the room, he holds her gaze with a silent declaration

of his love and admiration. This involved a fine piece of editor-timing;

a split second either way, either too long or too short, and the

poignancy of that moment would have been lost. It is interesting to compare Colin Firth's Darcy with that of Lawrence

Olivier's Darcy in the Hollywood film. Olivier falsely portrays him as appealingly

shy and self-conscious. But Darcy was in no way shy, he was just proud,

with every reason to have a good opinion of himself. He found it

impossible to imagine that anyone in a lower strata of society, living

in a small provincial town, could be his equal - until he met

Elizabeth!

However, I felt there was one weak link in the chain of superb acting;

Alison steadman. Many will disagree but I think she over-acted, turning

her Mrs Bennet into a nerve-grating, neurasthenic caricature. But apart from that, I

heartily recommend this video. Don't miss it. You'll not see its like

again. I must just mention the charming piano music by Carl Davis, so

beautifully evocative of a beautifu

Beyond the Clouds (1995)

Beyond reality

[17 December 2000]

SPOILER: After the ecstatic reviews it received in the press, I found this film

disappointing. I can only imagine that the critics were being kind to an

ill, old man of 82 and overly respectful of the reputation of a once

great film director. Visually it is very attractive with beautiful shots of a lakeside

village and very atmospheric and poetic shots of alleyways and streets

in rain and mist. But when it comes to the actions and motivations of

the people in the film it is a let-down. I like to be able to believe in

and identify with the characters in a film and I couldn't do that here.

There are four stories in the film and I will mention only two - the two

that seem to me the most trite and pointless.

The first story stars two extremely good-looking newcomers to the screen

(Kim Rossi Stuart & Ines Sastre.) He stops his car to ask her the way to the nearest hotel, and because he

is so good-looking she gives him the name of her hotel. They see each

other during the day and when they retire to their rooms at night across

the landing from each other, she lies awake waiting for the knock on the

door that never comes. In the morning she leaves early without seeing

him. It is two years before they see each other again and this time

their relationship progresses a little further - they get to be naked on

the bed together. But he behaves in a very odd way indeed; for some five

minutes he runs his hands over her body within a millimetre of her skin

but without actually touching her. What she thinks is going on as she

lies there passively, feeling nothing, is anybody's guess. Then after

five minutes, still without having touched her, he gets up abruptly and

without speaking a word leaves. Is that the action of a sane man? You

wonder why he bothered to take his clothes off if he intended to do so

little. She, presumably feeling hurt and frustrated, rushes to the

window to see him walking off into the distance. They give each other a

feeble wave. End of story. John Malkovich's deep lugubrious voice-over

tells us that he behaved in this way either because of folly or pride.

Well it was certainly folly - and certainly unbelievable. Or could it

have been impotence? Could this story be saying something about the

impotence of an old man?

In another segment of the film, Malkovich's character is attracted to a

young woman (Sophia Marceau) he sees in a shop window. He can't take his

eyes off her and just stands there entranced. She reacts in the same

way. He goes into the shop and their silent fascination continues. I

felt uncomfortable for both of them. Was something momentous about to

happen? It would seem so and our interest is awakened, our expectations

aroused. But no; we are just being lead up the garden path to nowhere.

He sits outside and eventually she joins him. She tells him only one

thing about herself, that she has murdered her father by stabbing him

twelve times. Malkovich shows no surprise and the fact seems irrelevant.

They then go to her place and they have sex. But this is not the

beginning of some deep, meaningful relationship as the earlier

enchantment would lead us to suppose. Oh no. When he's had his sex he's

had enough and like the previous male protagonist, he just walks away.

Another wretched piece of behaviour and

The Hanging Garden (1997)

A film difficult to appreciate.

[9 September 2000]

The main obstacle in the way of my enjoying this film is the disconcerting elements of surrealism and irrationality inserted into a film that is in every other way naturalistic. I must say I had some difficulty coming to terms with this aspect of the film which at first glance made no sense at all. I was irritated by it. Taken at face value this aspect of the film was ludicrous. It goes like this:

We have a grotesquely obese teenager who has a homosexual encounter. He is caught in the act by his grandmother and, as a result, is taken by his mother to see a young woman who's forte is sexual initiation. Either this, his previous experience or his obesity, depresses him so much that he commits suicide. And we know he succeeds because all the flowers in the garden die with him. But, and this is where the madness and contradictions start, he comes back from the dead ten years later metamorphosed into a handsome, slim young man! And he finds his doppelganger still hanging from the tree in the garden!

Now a doppelganger is a figment of someone's imagination, a wraith that doesn't really exist; and if it had remained as such, say a symbolic representation of his earlier life, I would have had little difficulty in going along with it. But no. He touches it and his dad hugs it and he then buries it and his dad tries to dig it up. Well, you can't bury a doppelganger, so it must be a real body, a body that's been hanging from a tree for ten years without showing any signs of decomposition. And if it is a real dead body and it's his real dead body, how come he's still alive?

Now if you can accept all this as not being real behaviour but as some elaborate metaphor for his wish to be free of his past and his dad's wish to cling onto it, then you might just enjoy the film. It has a lot of good things going for it.

Emma (1996)

Poor miscasting.

[29 June 2000]

The only way in which this film is better than the TV version is in the casting of Gwyneth Paltrow as Emma. She is better in the role than Kate Beckinsale. But the film suffers from a whole series of poor miscastings and whoever was responsible for the casting can surely not have read the novel. Mark Strong as Mr Knightley in the TV version is infinitely to be preferred to Jeremy Northam. Mr Knightley is a responsible, serious-minded, authoritative figure and is described by Jane Austen as having a `downright, decided, commanding sort of manner.', a world away from the light-weight charmer as portrayed by Jeremy Northam, who apart from anything else has not the height or physical presence the role calls for. Ewan MacGregor is also badly miscast in the role of Frank Churchill. He is not only too short for the role but lacks the necessary poise and sophistication.

However, the worst piece of miscasting by far is that of Toni Collette in the role of Harriet; she is too physically large for the role. Jane Austen refers to her as `little Harriet' and describes her as a `humble, grateful little girl'. And I must say Samanthe Morton who took the role in the TV adaption was absolutely perfect in the part. But the film as a whole was too romanticised and idealistic. I am not willing to believe that people ever lived like that. Whereas the authenticity of the TV adaption was remarkable. It was like looking through a window into the 19th century. I felt - this is the way it must have been.