Film review: REPEAT PERFORMANCE (Alfred L. Werker, 1947)

Just before the turn of the New Year of 1947, renowned stage actress Sheila Page (Joan Leslie) shoots her emotionally abusive husband Barney, having reached her limit regarding his philandering and alcoholism. She regrets it immediately, wishing for the opportunity to go back in time to avoid making this mistake. Miraculously, as the clock chimes midnight, her wish is granted, and she finds she has been transported back to the beginning of 1946.

Alfred L. Werker’s drama plays like a blend of It’s a Wonderful Life with Groundhog Day, via the well-known trope of errant husbands. There is no doubt of the protagonist’s devotion to her cheating husband, even if, like Bette Davis’ character in Of Human Bondage, he doesn’t display any qualities that merit such love.

Despite Barney being a total cad, it is revealed that he, a playwright, gave Sheila her first big break as an actress, and thus, her patience towards him is heavily inflected with gratitude. But as her close friend William notes, ‘You can’t feel grateful to him forever. That’s going to wear thin at some point’.

Whilst Sheila’s success as an actress is part of the reason why she loves him so much, it’s precisely this why Barney’s so embittered towards her. Just as his play was the springboard for Sheila’s career, it was also the last good thing he produced, and watching his wife thrive whilst his own career stagnates fomented increasing feelings of bitterness towards her.

Film review: THE THIRD ALIBI (Montgomery Tully, 1961)

Composer Norman Martell (Laurence Payne) is the very definition of would pass in 2017 parlance as 'fuckboy'. Married to a devoted wife Helen (Patricia Dainton), he nonetheless carries on with her sister Peggy, which leads her to getting knocked up.

Out of betrayal and spite, his wife refuses to grant him the divorce he needs and being the nefarious individual that he is, Norma devises a plan to dispose of her, with the help of his mistress and a piece of recording equipment so that he has a watertight alibi.

Film review: SOMEONE TO TALK TO [一句顶一万句] (Liu Yulin, 2016)

A couple get married, full of love and hope for their future together. Several years down the line, they barely speak a word to each other. Around their anniversary, one discovers the other has been cheating on them and filled with murderous rage, revenge becomes their raison d'être as they do everything they can to ruin their spouse's life.

Actually, I'm not retelling the plot for Gone Girl, but Liu Yulin's debut movie Someone to Talk to. Adapted from the 2011 Mao Dun Literature Prize, 一句顶一万句is an economical yet intimate look at what happens after the love has gone out of a marriage and feelings of resentment at having one's heart broken fester.

Niu Aigo (Hai Mao) is the jilted husband, who tries his best as the patriarch of the family, but unfortunately his modest earnings as a cobbler and simple vision for their future aren't to the pleasure of his wife, who has outgrown him, and has an affair with the wealthier local wedding planning magnate. The film is considerably less kind to her, and rightly so, given she makes comments that make her seem like a  right gold-digging shrew. Woman knew her husband was poor when he married her; she doesn't get to screw everything up when that slowly sinks in.

In only his second film role, Hai Mao is just wonderful as a man who, after being wronged, is all affront and sharp edges, until self-realisation (and a few convenient plot machinations) give him the self-realisation to let go and become a stronger person for it.

His character essentially goes through all five stages of grief through the course of the film, and in doing so, exhibits some spiteful colours. But it's a testament to Mao's humane, heartfelt performance that even at his lowest points, you're rooting for this guy to pull through. His character was reminiscent of John C. Reilly in Chicago, another pitiable cuckold, and it's rare that cinema not only focuses on the person who's been left behind, but the person who was left behind happens to be male.

Someone to Talk to also features a subplot about Aigo's older sister's ill-fated online dating adventures and how she eventually settles, because, as she matter-of-factly states, 'I'm 39. I couldn't get anyone younger'. This kind of pragmatic, frank dialogue makes Someone to Talk to by far the most honest Chinese film I've seen this year (although there's not much in the way of competition).

Liu Yulin directs the story in such an unfussy, natural manner, with a working class Chinese town as the backdrop, I was invested in the plot in a way other films with more frills have failed to achieve. One scene, where Aigo angrily takes his frustration at his wife gallivanting out on his young daughter, carried genuine pathos and was far more powerful than anything I watched in yesterday's manufactured, sappy, The Shite Between Oceans.

I like a good revenge flick a hell of a lot more thanas much as the next person. Films like Gone Girl and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo contain scenes which imbue me with sadistic wish fulfilment at various men who have wronged me. I myself can nurse a grudge for quite a while, although my modus operandi is significantly less bloody and a tad pettier than anything Amy Dunne or Lisbeth Salander confect; that bellend Stefan who racially abused me over a year ago is immortalised in my Fantasy Football team name, 'Stefan is a Kuntz'.

But there's a lot to be said for Someone to Talk To's more forgiving approach. 

Someone to Talk to is a sincere and profound look at loneliness and the multifaceted nature of marriage, elevated by the magnanimous treatment it gives its protagonist. It illustrates how toxic holding onto past transgressions can be, not just to oneself, but to those that we love. Ultimately, it encourages the protagonist and the audience to look beyond, not behind.

Perhaps it's time I, like Aigo, made like Elsa from Frozen, and Let It Go. Good news for Wasteman, Watford fan and The Wolf of Fleet Street, then.

8/10

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If you enjoyed this review, do check out my other ones, which include a fair few Chinese movies.

The Girl on the Bus

I’m a huge Emmy Blunt fan. She’s gorgeous, talented, and that West London accent does funny things to me. I even stood outside in the rain last year during the Sicario premiere just to get a glimpse of her, which resulted in me having a cold for a week just as I was beginning my thesis, so that was a bit foolish. (To add to the nonsensicalness of that exercise, I still haven’t gotten round to seeing Sicario . It’s just not my genre).

Anyway, I was really excited by The Girl on the Train trailer when I first saw it. The content looked extremely intriguing and dark, invariably evoking memories of Gone Girl. After all, both are big-screen adaptations of best-selling thrillers with a beautiful British actress playing the lead, unreliable narrators and the word ‘Girl’ in the title.

Furthermore, the employment of a remix of Kanye West’s Heartless was dope; it rivalled War Dogs’ using a cover of No Church in the Wild in terms of ‘using a Kanye song to entice the audience’ stakes (although the best use of Kanye West in a film trailer is still, IMO, Power in The Social Network trailer. The conflation of the lyrics [‘No one man should have all that power’] and the plot of that film, especially Jesse Eisenberg’s superb performance as a hubristic megalomaniac, is just so astute).

However, my interest in The Girl on the Train dwindled slightly when I saw it only got rated 15. I was hoping it was going to be the second 2016 film that I’d seen that was 18-rated, the other being the rather unremarkable The Neon Demon. I saw 5 2015 releases that were an 18 (Diary of a Teenage Girl, Fifty Shades of Grey, The Hateful Eight, Legend, Knock Knock), so I’d really be hoping to match that amount of 18s watched this year. But nah, The Girl on the Train is only a 15.

Not only that, it got a 15A in Ireland, who unlike the BBFC, have the 16 rating that they slap on movies that sit in that awkward 15/18 hinterland. But the fact that the Irish film board didn’t even need to get a 16 out tells me it’s not even gonna be a hard 15!

Boring.

So there goes my hopes of this film being 2016’s Gone Girl.

How could they be so heartless?

Film review: KNOCK KNOCK (Eli Roth, 2015)

Even though I turned 25 over two months ago, and thus am now no stranger to watching 18-rated movies in the cinema, for me, it’s something which the novelty of doing doesn’t seem to wear off. Perhaps it evokes nostalgia-filled memories of the first 18-rated film I sneaked into – Martin Scorsese’s The Departed, when I was 16 (under the guise of wanting to watch The Devil Wears Prada, no less), perhaps it’s the feeling of #sophistication it imbues me with, and perhaps it’s the enjoyment of sharing a cinema-going experience with fellow fans without having to deal with bratty teenagers taking Snapchats of the screen throughout the film, but for this seasoned movie geek, watching an 18-rated film at the cinema is something that still makes me feel giddy.

Eli Roth’s Knock Knock is rated 18 for ‘strong sustained and sadistic threat, sex, sex references, nudity’, which is as pithy a summary of the plot as you’re likely to find. Keanu Reeves is Evan Webber, a happily married family man with the quintessential Hollywood family (blonde wife, a son, a daughter and a cute dog), quintessential Hollywood job (high-flying architect who’s CAD-skills are in high demand, meaning he can’t go to the beach with said family one weekend) and quintessential Hollywood house (an urbane bungalow just a few miles from central LA).

When he’s staying at home said weekend, hard at work, he gets a knock on the door. Standing in the pouring rain are two attractive young women, one flaxen, one brunette. They claim to be lost finding a house party they’re meant to attend, and could they dry themselves off whilst he gets an Uber. However, their salacious discussions, casual bending over and stroking of Evan hint at something much more calculated under the randy air stewardess veneer. Evan succumbs to their obvious allure and sleeps with them. And that’s when his problems take a deadly turn.

I’m yet to watch Eli Roth’s Hostel series, and, being one with an aversion for needless torture porn, I doubt I ever will. But I must admit, I was intrigued when I heard the premise of Knock Knock. The idea that the most dangerous thing to us is something that we let into our own house, and that we are the architects of our own downfall, are all themes that pique my interest. Knock Knock is, as expected, not a particularly pleasant viewing experience.

Every scene reeks with amorality and the two girls, Genesis and Bel (played by relative unknowns Lorenza Izzo and Ana de Armas) are on a level of batshit crazy that would make Gone Girl’s Amy seem like the picture of sanity. Watching them torture an affable but hapless guy for one mistake which they essentially entrapped him into, is troubling, to say the least.

But what elevates it from standard exploitation-fare is the sharp script, which balances bathos with the darkest of humour. On more than one occasion in the film, I chuckled (whether that be from being tickled by the writing or nerves, who knows). Despite what some reviews have said about Reeves being miscast, I actually completely bought him in this role, and Izzo and Armas were psychotic in their performances, yet magnetically so.

There were moments towards the end of the film as plot twist upon plot twist just got increasingly more ludicrous, but for a 100 minutes of edge-of-your-seat erotic thriller-meets-sarcastic morality tale, Knock Knock just about suffices. I certainly won't be opening the door of my house in a hurry.

6.5/10

Book review: THE BIRTHDAY (Julie Highmore)

The Birthday follows a family consisting of Emily, the daughter, Ben, the son, and mother Fran and father Duncan as they gather for Fran’s 60th birthday. Each family member has skeletons in their closest: from Emily’s clandestine affair with the urbane Iranian Hadi, to Ben battling depression after the recession leaves him jobless, and his coping with it by popping pills, to Duncan’s life-long paramour, who also happens to have born him two other children. 

Film review: THE GREAT GATSBY (Baz Luhrmann, 2013)

Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire), a recent Yale graduate, moves into a small cottage on the west Egg of Long Island, next to the luxurious mansion of the enigmatic Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio), a man whom everyone seems to be talking about. He visits his cousin, Daisy Buchanan (Carey Mulligan), and her husband Tom (Joel Edgerton), wherein he discovers that Tom is having an affair. 

Soon, he is acting as go-between for Daisy to have an affair as well when he sets up a re-acquaintance between Daisy and Gatsby, who, it turns out, were lost loves, a lost love that Gatsby will do anything to reclaim.

Based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel, Luhrmann plays true to the story, but adds many of his signature flourishes. The parties Gatsby throws are more vivid and opulent than anything the book rendered, and the Jay-Z produced soundtrack contributes to the bombastic vibe of the film. Music features prominently in painting the tone of the film, and there are some inspired touches – Lana del Rey’s melancholy elegy “Will you still love me” captures the essence of Fitzgerald’s book, and I particularly liked the way the tune was played throughout at the key dramatic moments. “100$ bills”, a song by Jay-Z himself, is another good one, which features when Gatsby and Nick visit a clandestine club hidden behind a barbers, and it definitely adds to the MTV-style cool that Luhrmann does so well. 

Luhrmann has commandeered some movies with sensational soundtracks – Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge! come to mind, but featuring beautiful songs from Florence and the Machine, Beyonce (who collaborates with Andre 3000 on a chilling cover of Amy Winehouse's Back to Black), and The White Stripes, The Great Gatsby could just be his magnum opus in the aural stakes.

When F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby in 1925, it was his personal indictment of the American dream and the corruption and hedonism it evoked. Much of this is epitomised in the lead female, Daisy Buchanan, who stays with her rich husband despite him having multiple “sprees” which she knows about, having an affair of her own, and forgoing the love of her life when he was penniless. 

Carey Mulligan isn’t an actress I’m particularly fond of, but she does a solid job in one of the most thankless of female roles, albeit injecting Daisy with more depth than she perhaps merits. Apparently, Daisy Buchanan was partially modelled on Fitzgerald’s own wife, Zelda, so I think the idea is that for all her many flaws, we’re not supposed to see Daisy as the complete goldigger that she is. It is thanks to the gravitas of Mulligan’s performance that she halfway manages to convey that, albeit being a tad too serene.

As Nick, Tobey Maguire is the embodiment of an active narrator. In the novel, more actually happens to him; he dates Jordan Baker, the attractive celebrity golfer and Daisy’s confidante, but such is the time constriction of the film that that is more of a plot device than an actual plot development here. Maguire is admirable, and features some of that amicable goofy smile that he sported in his early stages of Peter Parker when he was learning the ropes as Spiderman. But the MVP of the performers in the film is, as with Django Unchained, Inception and various other films which I was disappointed with overall, Leonardo DiCaprio.

Robert Redford also tackled the famous Jay Gatsby role, but he seemed too mature for the role, and lacked one crucial element, optimism, in his performance. DiCaprio has that in spades, to the point where it exasperates the audience, and paints his character as a deluded sap, who would do anything for his lost love, even when she doesn’t deserve him. 

We, as the audience, share Nick’s frustration when, late on in the film, Gatsby accepts the blame for a pretty big error committed by Daisy, just because he doesn’t want her to get into trouble. It seemed pretty inconceivable when I read it in the book, but somehow, DiCaprio manages to make his hapless hopefulness seem believable.

The supporting cast are also good, with particular commendations having to go to Jason Clarke, who plays the perennial deadbeat, George Wilson with so much conviction that you really do feel for the fella. I also liked stage actress Elizabeth Debicki as Jordan, who featured the kind of languid poise that I pictured from her when reading the book. I was very surprised to discover after watching the film that Debicki was only 22 years old, as in the film she more than holds her own against the more seasoned auteurs.

I feel that the screenplay, whilst delivering pretty much all the action the novel had, scrimps on the message Fitzgerald was trying to convey. He meant it as a damning condemnation of the roaring 20s and particularly the “carelessness” that Tom and Daisy exhibit. Whilst this is still present in parts of Maguire’s voice-over, I feel that Luhrmann forgoes the deepness for storytelling. Which I can’t altogether fault him for, as storytelling is definitely his forte, but I just feel that perhaps there was so much style in The Great Gatsby that he forgot about the substance of his source material altogether.

For all the luscious cinematography, inspired costume design (loved the flapper dresses) and fantastic soundtrack, there was something lacking about Baz Luhrmann’s colouring of Fitzgerald’s novel. Despite the actors’ best efforts, the central romance simply wasn’t convincing enough for us to believe in it, meaning that, whilst The Great Gatsby was a wonderful cinematic experience, emotionally, it left me feeling as empty as one of Jay Gatsby’s parties.

5/10

 For more of my film reviews, click here.

Emsy's November Playlist.

Otis (Kanye West ft Jay-Z)

Something that both Kanye and Jay-Z do very well indeed is big themselves up. It’s for this reason that they rub quite a few people up the wrong way, but as I’m someone whose head is so massively over-inflated that it’s a surprise I can fit it through corridors, I love how much they love themselves. And when you have this much swag, why shouldn’t you rate yourself a little bit? 

This song is a massive backpat; Kanye bigging himself up (“I made Jesus Walks so I’m never going to hell”), Jay-Z bigging himself up (“Or the big face Rollie I got two of those”) and both stroking each other’s egos as well. It would irk a lot of people, but the sampling of Otis Redding's Try a little Tenderness is probably one of the finest usages of sampling another song Kanye West has done, second only to the usage of Ray Charles’ I Got a Woman in Goldigga. 

Some of the wordplay really clicks, “Sophisticated ignorance, write my curses in cursive” and my favourite big-headed line of them all: “Photoshoot fresh, looking like wealth, I’m about to pull the paparazzi on myself”. Ah, how the other half do live.

Film review: ANNA KARENINA (Joe Wright, 2012)

Adultery. It’s always made for some of the most delicious film, TV and book storylines. Indeed, between 1873 to 1877, Leo Tolstoy used it as the basis of his novel, which he published in eight parts. Joe Wright, always one for a literary classic (Pride & Prejudice, and to a lesser extent depending on how much you rate McEwan, Atonement), adapted this 19th century Russian lit classic to the big-screen. 

After scouting across the continent for filming locations, he finally settled for the unusual, somewhat Dogville-esque of having the vast majority of the film filmed on a stage. 

The big difference between Anna Karenina and Dogville however, though, is where the latter barely had any set at all, with the locations and props chalked into the wooden floorboard, the set of Anna Karenina, whilst discernibly all a stage, is vast and opulent, with moving backdrops and richly designed interiors aplenty. 

The purpose of Wright choosing to having the movie filmed on a stage was because he said that Anna felt like her entire life was “on a stage”, and, indeed, the scenes where she faces society and stylistic touches are added (such as dancing couples freezing into a tableau whilst she dances with Count Vronsky) are certainly very effective indeed.

Lolita, was a meaneater, clocked him like a taximeter.

I know it's somewhat perverse considering the news coming out this week of Kristen Stewart's indiscretion, and I am in no way condoning infidelity (the man she cheated with, the director of the snoozefest that was Snow White and the Huntsman, was married with two kids, oh dear). But homewrecking aside, the news of Kristen's little transgression has made me like her more. 

I'd always regarded her as a pretty, but very bland actress, who I wasn't even sure had a pulse, judging from her awkward public appearances. But evidently, she not only has a pulse, but is a dark horse to be reckoned with, one capable of breaking British heart-throb Robert Pattinson (an equally poor actor)'s heart. And so, I decided to take a closer look at some pictures/gifs of her, and realised that the girl really is stunning.

(what colour are her eyes? Grey? Blue? Green? idk, I love them.)

Rocking the ponytail here!

Aww, poor heartbroken R-Prattz.

I still abhor Twilight, though

Film review: CHLOE (Atom Egoyan, 2009)

A remake of Anne Fontaine’s 2003 film Nathalie…, Chloe is a film about obsession, sex, and the tangled web that lies weave. Julianne Moore is a successful gynaecologist, who’s accomplishments in her job sadly do not translate to that in her married life. Her son’s a semi-manic depressive teenager who shuts her out and her husband (played by Liam Neeson), misses his own surprise birthday party, under suspicious circumstances.

Her mistrust is further fuelled when she spies a picture message on his iPhone (there’s your product placement). Deciding to take matters into her own hands, she enlists upscale hooker Amanda Seyfried to initially talk to him, see what happens, but soon their encounters become more-than-just-talking as relations between the three become increasingly convoluted and messy.

Julianne Moore is one of my favourite actresses, and her performance in Chloe is the epitome of nuance and quiet heartbreak. The writing in the film is less than stellar, and she is the glue that cements the entire film together. 

Amanda Seyfried, with her huge doll eyes is nice to look at and everything, but her acting is a bit off here because one minute she’s sexy and smouldering, and next she exudes a childish air which does not gel at all with the character she’s playing.

Liam Neeson is good as the possibly philandering husband who simply gets sexier and more attractive to women with age, and the relationship between him and Moore is portrayed well. The relationship between Seyfried and Moore (which enters sapphic territory), not so much. The two women have no chemistry whatsoever and whilst men watching wouldn’t really mind, I just found myself embarrassed for both women in their cringey “sex” scene.

This claustrophobic three-hander boils and bubbles up nicely to its ultimately shattering denouement, and there are a fair few thrills along the way.  Perhaps because I'd seen the original, I knew what was coming, and thus the "twist" didn't surprise me at all, though to be fair, I think most of the uninitiated will see it a mile coming too.

For all the talent involved (Egoyan himself has covered sexual obsession so much better), I couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed.

5/10

Film review: THE DIARY OF A CHAMBERMAID (Luis Buñuel, 1964)

"She's more than just a servant, she's a rarity among women" is noted of Jeanne Moreau's Céléstine, a Parisian maid who comes to work for the eccentric Normandy family conprising of Monsieur Rabour, his daughter Madame Monteil and her husband Monsieur Rabour. 

She soon discovers the traits of each family member, from Monsieur Rabour's predilection for women in boots (and seeing them walk in said boots), to Monsier Monteil's womanizing with the maids, resulting from his wife finding sex too painful, and thus not enjoying it.

I'm halfway through my Luis Buñuel marathon and so far, not one of his films haven't revolved around, or at least had as an integral factor of it, sex. Le journal d'une femme de chambre is no different. Adapted from Jean Renoir's 1946 version, Buñuel and long time writing partner Jean-Claude Carrière clearly have a great time writing the dialogue for this film. 

Monsieur Rabour, in trying to deny his feelings of attractions for Céléstine, reasons more himself, than his wife, "She's from Paris. Who knows what diseases she has?". Ironically, when he later throws himself at her, she gets out of sleeping him by dodging him and exclaiming "I've got symphilis!". It's this combination of crude sex jokes and laugh-out-loud visual comedy (including a clumsy priest trying to kick a door down) that really brings out the humour as well as sexual politics in 30s French society.

However, Le journal d'une femme de chambre isn't principally a comedy. It's rather difficult to pinpoint exactly what genre it is, for, half way through the film, after 45 or so minutes of amusing vignettes, things turn sour when, just after she has quit her job due to the master of the house dying, it is revealed that someone else has died - Little Claire, the girl that Céléstine grew to care for. And not only that, she was raped and murdered. 

Céléstine, suspecting her fellow servant Joseph, an unrefined and fascist so-and-so of being the perpetrator, regains her post and seduces him in an attempt to get a confession out of him. And, once again, we re-enter a world where, as with Belle de jour and That Obscure Object of Affection, women must rely on their "other gifts" to get through in life.

As Céléstine Jeanne Moreau is a revelation. She was 36 when the film was made and, despite her skin looking a bit craggy, she is still very beautiful, her brunette hair tidy and stylish and her wide eyes watching carefully as she enters the microcosm of the French bourgeoisie, taking everything in unflinchingly. She's a strong, brave lady who believes that the ends justifies the means and isn't afraid to stick up for herself, no matter what the class/gender/wealth of the person who challenges her, and Moreau embodies the brave, ahead of her time character of Céléstine perfectly. 

As is now standard of Mr. Buñuel's films, the women come out a lot better than the men do - the man on the house, out of frustation of "only" being able to shag his supposedly frigid wife twice a week, fooled about with one of his ex-maids, and as such, had to pay her off 1500 Francs once she's knocked up. 

Céléstine refuses to give it up quite as easily.

Four out of the eight Luis Buñuel DVDs watched, and I'm still yet to find a stinker. Le journal d'une femme de chambre is far, far away from being a stinker - it's a deliciously witty attack on Western society that is as post-modern as it gets, and centres around one of the sassiest and most intriguing women in cinema. An absolute must.

8.5/10