2024 - April

03-04-2024

The life of radio host Victor Grandison (Claude Rains) has taken a turn for the tragic. First, his beloved ward Matilda (Joan Caulfield) died in a shipwreck while crossing the Atlantic and now, his secretary Roslyn Wright (Barbara Woodell) has been found dead, hanged in his office. The police rule her death a suicide but we, the audience, know better. We saw a mysterious, shadowy figure wearing a black hat and leather gloves strangle Miss Wright and place the noose around her neck.

This atmospheric, arresting opening sequence shot in strikingly beautiful chiaroscuro suggests that Michael Curtiz's "The Unsuspected" will be a fairly straightforward whodunnit. However, this is a film which continually undoes itself, a profoundly alienating experiment in confusion which, for some bizarre reason, reveals the identity of its mysterious killer in the opening sequence.

I won't say whose face is hidden beneath the black hat but the fact that the film doesn't bother to keep this fact a secret completely undermines any sense of mystery that "The Unsuspected" might have had.

From that point on, the plot starts becoming more and more convoluted. A man named Steve Howard (Ted North) shows up claiming to be the husband of the late Matilda. Is he telling the truth? Well, we'll find out soon enough because before long, it turns out that Matilda isn't dead at all. She's just been hiding for reasons that the film never properly explains and has now decided on a whim to return from the dead and... do nothing in particular.

Based on a novel by Charlotte Armstrong, unread by me, "The Unsuspected" never makes a whole lot of sense. It constantly layers subplots on top of subplots without bothering to flesh out any of the characters or resolve any of their conflicts before swiftly moving on to its next illogical twist.

Once Matilda returns to the land of the living, the film comes to a dead halt for almost an hour. Since we know who the killer is, there's no mystery for us to get involved in solving and the screenplay doesn't seem particularly interested in moving the plot along. The entirety of the second act, then, consists of characters arguing, manipulating each other to no apparent end, and dumping reams of useless exposition.

What exactly is this film about? That's the question I kept asking all the way through and I'm still not sure I know the answer. It's not a whodunnit since we know who did it. It's not a thriller since there are no apparent stakes, relatable protagonists, or thrills for that matter. And it's not really a melodrama either since the characters are hopelessly underwritten and their troubles profoundly unmoving.

The results are baffling to say the least. Here is a film which doesn't seem to be anything other than a collection of illogical conceits and torrid arguments. Its pacing is glacial since there is no sense of the plot progressing and there's little to do other than watch the beautiful images.

And, don't get me wrong, this film is absolutely gorgeous. Michael Curtiz's direction is as visually dynamic as the screenplay is narratively stagnant. Elwood Bredell's cinematography is, at times, quite stunning. I'd especially single out such moments as the opening murder scene played out in shadows, the frequent use of images reflected in crooked mirrors, and a hilariously overwrought but memorable shot of a neon sign seen through a window flashing KILL, KILL, KILL. Coupled with Franz Waxman's moody, elegiac score, "The Unsuspected" is one hell of a stylish film. Shame about the plot!

I'm also less than enthused by the performances of the cast. Claude Rains does his usual number in sinister sleaze. He's great fun to watch but this is certainly not one of his more memorable performances. Ted North, our supposed romantic lead, seems to have taken acting classes in a lumber yard. He has all the charisma of a tombstone. Not much better is his screen partner Joan Caulfield whose acting alternates between histrionic and bland. The only decent turns come from Audrey Totter whose performance as Grandison's bitchy niece may be one-note but it's at least fun to watch and Constance Bennett who adds some much-needed sense of humour to these otherwise turgid proceedings.

"The Unsuspected" was clearly inspired by the success of Otto Preminger's "Laura" but it has none of the charm, the atmosphere, or even the mystery of that film. Whereas Preminger successfully juggled his ensemble cast and complex narrative, "The Unsuspected" is a complete mess, a confused and often confusing plod through a profoundly dull potboiler plot.

2/4

03-04-2024

"Jack was up above the world, a writer looking down on his subject, a detached voyeur".

Well, at least that's what he thought...

Jack Manfred (Clive Owen) is actually a struggling novelist who, partially out of desperation for a subject and partially out of need for cash, gets a job as a croupier in a London casino.

Jack is a better croupier than he is a writer. His hands glide across the cards with ease and elegance. He manoeuvres the chips with the dexterity of a magician. His skill is so athletic I watched the end credits waiting for Ricky Jay's name to show up.

Clive Owen plays him with a kind of chilly detachment but the film is ambiguous about whether he's a cool customer or an arrogant jerk. Owen is superb at maintaining just the right amount of stoic mystery to make Jack appealing while also hinting at the desperation eating his confidence away.

He narrates the film in the third person, reading from the novel he's writing about his own life. Jack is not a terribly good writer. His prose is glib and full of fortune cookie observations. He aims to be Hemingway but comes across like a second-rate Raymond Chandler impersonator.

He also loves outlining his principles only to then break them instantly. "I don't like cheaters," he tells us as he cheats on his loving girlfriend Marion (Gina McKee) who works double shifts so that he can concentrate on his writing.

I am usually not a fan of narration in films but writer Paul Mayersberg uses it for more than cheap exposition. Narration is the key to understanding Jack's character and without it, the film would have no center, no point.

I've heard Mike Hodges' "Croupier" described as a heist film but this is no thriller. It's more accurately described as a treatise on the authorial voice and the dangers of assuming your POV to be that of the protagonist.

You see, Jack sees himself as the author of his own story. He takes his narration as the authorial voice capable of manipulating the plot to the advantage of his novel. What Jack doesn't realize, however, is that his story is being authored by the people around him. He decides to make one of his colleagues the protagonist of the novel only to see that colleague get summarily fired three chapters in. He seduces another croupier with the aim of making her his love interest only for her to disappear from the story altogether.

"You have to make a choice in life," Jack informs us in one of his voice-overs, "Be a croupier, or be a gambler". He, of course, is determined to be a croupier, the dealer of fortune and misfortune, the one controlling the game. However, this film has already been cast and Jack has been given the role of the gambler, the patsy, the loser.

No, this is not a thriller. It doesn't follow a set pattern of suspense and relief nor does it have a taut plot to hold it together. However, like every good film noir, it's all about mood and detail, place and character, authenticity and artificiality.

I have no idea if this is what casinos are really like. I've never been in one nor do I have much of a desire to go. But "Croupier" feels authentic. I loved getting a sneak peek into the way this particular casino operates. The way the croupiers talk to each other behind the backs of the customers, the way the eagle-eyed boss (Alexander Morton) prowls the floor, and the way the gamblers are so clearly delineated by the way they behave at a roulette table.

The casino itself is a fascinating place. Far from the luxuriousness of "Ocean's Eleven", the place Jack works at is a seedy, cramped basement with ill-fitting velour decorations and crooked mirrors on the walls. You can almost smell it.

"Croupier" has that engaging sparseness of a David Mamet film. A handful of characters, very few locations, and a single long con played on the character most confident that he could never get conned. In many ways, it reminded me of "House of Games" in which the main character similarly assumed she was playing a different role than the one she'd actually been cast in.

But "Croupier" is not the kind of film to pull a big twist. It's more intimate than flashy, more moody than thrilling, and more of a character study than a narrative experiment in the use of thriller tropes. I enjoyed it immensely because halfway through I found myself becoming immersed in its world, counting the cards, keeping my eye on the chips, and watching for the cheaters.

4/4

04-04-2024

Psychics foreseeing death on stage have been a common trope in movies for a very long time indeed. Off the top of my head I can think of several examples including "Charlie Chan at Treasure Island", "Night Has a Thousand Eyes", and, of course, most famously Dario Argento's "Deep Red".

A less well-known but startlingly effective example can be found in Mike Hodges' largely forgotten 1989 thriller "Black Rainbow". I had heard of the film some years ago but wasn't particularly interested in seeing it until I saw an interview with Hodges at the BFI. During the Q&A, the interviewer showed a clip of a scene in which Martha Travis (Rosanna Arquette), a cheesy travelling medium, has a vision showing a brutal murder about to be committed in the small North Carolina town she's visiting.

The scene was so engrossing and so profoundly disturbing that I was immediately compelled to seek the film out. Indeed, as I suspected, it is by far the best scene in the film, one of those scenes in which a bravura performance is beautifully supported by some clever yet unobtrusive filmmaking from a master director. Hodges is smart enough not to drown the scene in extraneous effects. There is a small fan in front of Martha meant to relieve the summer heat which intermittently makes her hair flow in a rather eery manner. Otherwise, the scene feels disturbingly real, shot in the kind of documentarian visual style which is a trademark of Hodges' career. Like his best films, "Black Rainbow" is all about the little, almost imperceptible details adding texture. In this case, I just love the way Martha describes the upcoming murder pointing out how the victim's blood and bone will spray upon the wall.

We see two more psychic demonstrations from Martha both of which achieve the same kind of creepy intensity. Hodges masterfully blends a supernatural eeriness with his documentarian visuals to show us how Martha's dubious gifts impact the impoverished working-class communities she visits. Her audience members are factory foremen, industrial workers, and their wives dressed in their Sunday best looking for a little of that supernatural comfort to ease their daily grind. Instead, Martha delivers news of death and despair. "It's just not entertainment," complains her father/manager Walter (Jason Robards). "Why does everything serious have to be turned into entertainment," protests Martha.

It's a valid question and one which I kept thinking about while watching "Black Rainbow", a film which clearly has a great deal on its mind. Hodges weaves all kinds of great and weighty topics like faith, comfort, death, the afterlife, as well as industrial politics into his film. Unfortunately, "Black Rainbow" stumbles precisely when Hodges tries to turn these serious matters into entertainment.

The third psychic demonstration scene is a great example of this. The atmosphere of eery intensity as Martha comes to a great and shattering realization about her own father is completely broken when a policeman jumps onto the stage shooting a gun.

Instead of focusing on Martha, Walter and the horrific implications of her visions, Hodges tries to turn "Black Rainbow" into a bizarre gangster film in which our clairvoyant is pursued by a former CIA agent turned hitman. You see, the deaths she is foretelling are all a part of a great conspiracy involving some rich factory owners... or something like that. Hodges is never particularly clear on the ins and outs of his disastrously thin plotting as he rushes to get to the shootouts and psychic demonstrations.

The problem is precisely that the plot is so overwrought and unconvincing that the film is robbed of any true tension. Hodges somehow manages to make the psychic a more realistic and believable character than the scheming millionaires trying to kill her.

He raises a great deal of complex subjects but tackles none of them. We find out, for example, that the victims are whistleblowers but what are they blowing the whistle on? We don't really learn anything about them or the people who killed them or about the working conditions in North Carolina factories. "Black Rainbow" is the kind of political film which uses politics as a McGuffin rather than a serious point of consideration.

The real meat of the film is its two leads - Martha and Walter whose complex and somewhat perverse relationship remains frustratingly unexplored. Every scene shared by Arquette and Robards is pure gold and brims with the kind of tension and depth that the rest of the film lacks.

Rosanna Arquette, one of America's most underrated actresses, is absolutely superb as Martha. In lesser hands, she could have wound up being a pure victim, a put-upon sideshow. Arquette, however, gives her an unexpectedly nasty edge, the kind of fierce defiance which develops from years of exploitation.

Jason Robards is every bit as good as her drunken father, once a scheming manipulator now reduced to a hollow wreck of his former self. Interestingly, it seems that it's now Martha who is pulling his strings as he sinks deeper and deeper into an alcoholic daze.

Far less interesting is Tom Hulce as an itinerant journalist who becomes intrigued by Martha. Hulce gives an unusually subdued and charmless performance but it's not really his fault. The character as written is flat and hollow reduced to a mere function in an unconvincing plot.

"Black Rainbow" is a film with three brilliant, startling, genuinely frightening scenes and a whole lot of filler. I blame Hodges' screenplay which never finds a confident tone or a plotline interesting enough to tie together all of its disparate themes. The film is only worth seeing for Arquette and Robards, as well as John Scott's spooky score, and some striking visuals from cinematographer Gerry Fisher. I love the murder scene which ends with feathers filling the air like snow on Christmas Day. Unfortunately, the rest of the film doesn't rise to their level condemning "Black Rainbow" to obscurity along with all the other promising films which didn't quite deliver the goods.

2.5/4

04-04-2024

36 Quai des Orfèvres is the address of the Paris Police headquarters. The first time we see this formidable 19th-century building in Olivier Marchal's film "36th Precinct" is when a pair of masked hoodlums ride up to it on a motorbike in order to steal the sign attached to its facade. It turns out, however, that the two masked hoodlums are actually cops and that the stolen sign is meant as a retirement present for a cherished colleague.

This opening sequence sets the perfect pitch for a story about cops who don't play according to the book. Everyone bends the rules in "36th Precinct" and the only thing that separates the good guys from the bad guys is the end which justifies the means.

Take for example Leo Vrinks (Daniel Auteuil), a beloved and respected officer who leads a team for battling organised crime. On the surface, he appears like an even-handed family man, a warm and gregarious colleague, and a dedicated investigator. We get to see his feral side very quickly, however, when his best friend, a former prostitute turned bar owner, is roughed up by a pair of thugs. He kidnaps one of the ruffians, strips him naked, and performs a mock execution in the forest stealing 10,000 Euros in the process. All in a day's work.

And then there's Denis Klein (Gerard Depardieu), the commander of the banditry repression brigade and Vrinks' polar opposite. Whereas Vrinks is respected and loved by his man, Klein is shunned and mocked. Whereas Vrinks is a family man, Klein is a serial cheat and creep. Whereas Vrinks is a dedicated investigator, Klein is an alcoholic who nurtures good relations with the scum he should be arresting. Klein's only goal in life is to get ahead and seize the power which has eluded him his entire life.

These two vastly different cops will come head to head when their direct superior, Chief of Police Mancini (Andre Dussollier) announces that he will be leaving the department and that his successor will be the man who arrests a dangerous and highly elusive gang of bank robbers. Competing for the top job brings out the worst in both Vrinks and Klein but things get especially dirty when Klein gets wind that Vrinks helped one of his snitches cover up a murder.

"36th Precinct" is a ludicrously complex and wildly overwrought film which juggles enough plots, subplots, murders, robberies, and shootouts to last an entire season of "The Shield". At one point in the film, all the pieces finally seemed to converge and I assumed I was at the midpoint where the second act would finally begin to unravel. I checked the runtime and realized there were only 25 minutes of the film left! And, boy, was that a hell of a loaded third act!

The mano-a-mano between Vrinks and Klein takes highly contrived and improbable turns but "36th Precinct" is not the kind of thriller which goes for realism. This is high melodrama, an operatic tale of honour among thieves, betrayal among cops, and revenge worthy of Monte Cristo himself. If I were inclined to do so I could poke holes in this plot large enough to drive an armoured van through but I won't. Despite its faulty plotting, gleeful lack of logic, and penchant for coincidence, I had a lot of fun watching this film.

Most of its success is thanks to its fantastic cast. Auteuil and Depardieu are always a great team and they're clearly having a whale of a time. Auteuil is simply terrific as the stoic Vrinks who remains steadfast in his moral convictions as he watches his entire life crumble to dust.

However, it's Depardieu who steals the show as the shambling, drunken Klein, an embodiment of pure evil. This is an unusual part for Depardieu who is usually so bear-like and loveable. Here, he portrays a character whose very core is rotten to the bone. His Klein is immoral, arrogant, wildly ambitious, and totally self-destructive. And yet, Depardieu also makes him pitiable. There's a great sadness palpable until his tough-guy exterior. His mouth smiles but his eyes are haunted by his bleeding conscience.

They are supported by an all-star cast including the charming Valeria Golino as Mrs Vrinks, the stately Andre Dussollier as the fatherly yet bureaucratic chief, and a chilling Alain Figlarz as a psychopathic bank robber. Vrinks' team is made up of some great actors as well including Francis Renaud as the hotheaded young cop and Daniel Duval as the cop nearing retirement. The fates of their characters were determined long before "36th Precinct" was ever written but Renaud and Duval find new depths in the old cliches.

"36th Precinct" is far from a great thriller but it's undeniably an entertaining one taking on a larger-than-life scope as it moves breathlessly from one plot twist to the next. The great joy of the film, though, is simply watching Auteuil and Depardieu duke it out, playing a pair of complex and well-rounded characters in a story designed to take them to their extremes.

3/4

05-04-2024

"An hour of television can change everything."

Ain't that the truth?

In this decade of Twitter, TikTok, and YouTube, I can't think of an hour of television which has had more of a widespread, international impact than the 2019 Prince Andrew interview in which he finally addressed his years-long friendship with Jeffrey Epstein. The Prince's tone-deaf, entitled, sarcastic responses to the allegations have been memed, quoted, and commented upon over the past five years so much that I didn't even realize until today that I never actually sat down and watched the complete 60-minute interview.

It's no surprise that such a momentous occasion in television history has been dramatized but I am a tad surprised that it's happened so soon and in the form of a Netflix feature film rather than, for example, a BBC mini-series or one of those ITV docudramas.

Of course, the past few years have seen something of a rebirth of the journalist thriller genre with films such as "She Said" and "The Boston Strangler". "Scoop" fits neatly into that category which becomes evident after the silly but entertaining opening sequence in which a paparazzi hiding in the bushes like a hitman in a James Bond film takes photos of Epstein and Andrew hanging out in a New York park while his editor gives him harried instructions through an earpiece.

The film then moves to the familiar yet somehow still energizing environments of newsrooms, rehearsal halls, and TV studios. The interesting thing about "Scoop" is that, unlike those recent films which told the stories of crusading journalists investigating dangerous stories, it focuses more on the staff behind the cameras. The spotlight, for once, is shined more on producers, bookers, press agents, and royal aides who prove to be just as colourful and interesting as the on-camera personalities.

One such character is the Newsnight booker Sam McAlister (Billie Piper) who with her bleached blonde hair and leopard-print shoes doesn't quite fit in with the Oxbridge nerds who stalk the hallowed halls of the BBC. And yet, it's Sam, with her folksy charm, boundless energy, and no-nonsense charisma who is instrumental in getting Prince Andrew to agree to the interview.

She does so by befriending the Prince's personal aide, a quirky lady named Amanda Thirsk played by the always wonderful Keeley Hawes. Hawes makes no qualms about showing Thirsk's infatuation with the powerful Prince. Whenever she's around him she gives him loving, whistful looks. You can almost see her fantasies involving white horses and lily-covered meadows in her big brown eyes.

The stand-out performance, however, comes from Gillian Anderson as the BBC newsreader Emily Maitlis, a fierce, imperious journalist who is the undisputed queen of the production office. Anderson is simply terrific as Maitlis nailing her cutglass, raspy voice and her dominating screen presence while also suggesting the profound discomfort and anxiety she feels in the presence of Prince Andrew.

The embattled prince is played by Rufus Sewell who does an adequate if not commanding job. He does a fine impression of the man but doesn't quite convey his power. His Prince Andrew is a snivelling, oblivious man-child who plays with his teddy bears while his reputation falls apart around him but I suspect Andrew is a far more devious and clever man than Sewell portrays. Ultimately, he's no match for Gillian Anderson's scene-stealing Emily Maitlis and, consequently, their climactic showdown on the BBC is not quite as fiery and exciting as it could have been.

Even though I thoroughly enjoyed "Scoop", I am still a tad baffled by its status as a feature film. In truth, it feels a lot more like a TV docudrama in the vein of ITV's excellent "Quiz", for example, which dramatised the infamous "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" cheating scandal.

Similar to "Quiz", "Scoop" is informative, entertaining, and a breezy watch but it doesn't have a strong authorial voice to make it feel like a worthy feature film. Philip Martin's direction is pacy but unremarkable while the screenplay by Peter Moffat and Geoff Bussetil is more concerned with retelling the facts than exploring the complexities of the story at hand.

The film doesn't really have much new to say about the Prince Andrew scandal nor does it bother getting into weightier topics such as the relationship between the Royals and the BBC or the nature of investigative journalism. Unfortunately, it doesn't even bother exploring its main characters all that deeply and some rather interesting people remain merely sketched out. For example, we never really come to understand why Amanda Thirsk trusted Sam McAllister as much as she did nor do we really get any insight into her curious relationship with Prince Andrew.

Most annoyingly, the film only touches on the broadest possible details of Andrew's relationship with Epstein, telling a distinctly lawyer-friendly version of this seedy tale. As such, "Scoop" is a nicely-produced but instantly forgettable piece of sensationalism despite firebrand performances from Anderson, Piper, and Hawes.

3/4

11-04-2024

Here's your starter for 10: name the 1970s film shot in Venice in which a sweater-wearing moustachioed man and his wife attempt to get over the tragic death of their young daughter while a serial killer stalks the city. What did you say? "Don't Look Now"? Well, you'd be wrong. The film I was thinking of is Aldo Lado's "Who Saw Her Die" which, funnily enough, came out in 1972, a full year before Nicolas Roeg's masterpiece. I guess this is the one time the Italian rip-off came out before the original.

The moustachioed man is sculptor Franco Serpieri (George Lazenby) who is staying in Venice with his 8-year-old daughter Roberta (Nicoletta Elmi). Lado wastes no time establishing a disturbingly sleazy atmosphere as Franco's artist friends ogle his young daughter remarking how beautiful she is and how much she looks like her sexy mother. In a particularly seedy scene, Franco's best friend runs his grubby hands all over Roberta's face while her father is in the other room.

Before long, Roberta's corpse is found floating in a canal in one of the film's most effective scenes. As her small lifeless body bobs up and down in the wavy sea, market vendors and fishermen go about their business loading and unloading boats, sorting fruit and veg stands, and haggling over prices. The scene is underscored by Ennio Morricone's dirge sung by a children's choir.

Shot by Franco Di Giacomo, "Who Saw Her Die" is full of beautiful yet disturbing sights most of which appear to be documentary footage from the streets of Venice. A repeated motif is the image of a man feeding pigeons being swarmed by hundreds of birds overwhelming him until he disappears in the middle of the flock resembling an amorphous, man-eating blob of pure darkness.

Venice really should be used more often in thrillers as it provides instant atmosphere. I've never seen a film shot in Venice which didn't at least look beautiful and have a curiously mournful atmosphere. "Who Saw Her Die" is no exception and indeed the film's locations are one of its key elements.

So, who killed little Roberta? We, the audience, know it was a figure clad in a conservative black dress, a dark veil, and the obligatory black gloves. This is our elusive serial killer whom we see kill another girl in the film's prologue and who will kill again unless Franco can stop her. Much like Donald Sutherland in "Don't Look Now", he becomes obsessed with hunting down oblique clues despite the warnings of his friends and enemies to mind his own business.

After a wonderfully effective and creepy first act, "Who Saw Her Die" disappointingly morphs into a rather conventional and dreadfully boring whodunnit in which we follow Franco as he goes from one suspect to another, asking the same questions and getting the same evasive answers.

The switch happens quite unexpectedly. In one moment, Aldo Lado seems to be giving us a visually stunning portrayal of the way Franco and his wife Elizabeth (Anita Strindberg) deal with the loss of their daughter. In the very next scene, however, Franco, now exhibiting no particular emotional turmoil, turns into an Italian Philip Marlowe as he battles his way through a mysterious paedophile ring.

The screenplay by Francesco Barilli and Massimo D'Avack gives us a shockingly dull mystery populated with grotesquely caricatured suspects and no real clues as to the killer's identity. Franco eventually stumbles upon the villain but he seems to do so more out of luck than any kind of detection. Furthermore, the killer's identity proves to be something of an anticlimax especially due to a massive cop-out in the last 30 seconds which resembles the kind of nonsense Hollywood filmmakers had to put into their films to satisfy the Hays Code.

The film's visuals also become more conventional and less eye-catching as the film trudges along. The first act truly is captivatingly shot but the remaining hour looks and feels more like an upmarket TV movie than a Giallo film.

The only consistently excellent aspect of "Who Saw Her Die" is Ennio Morricone's haunting, creepy score made up of nursery rhymes sung by a children's choir which have been put through a reverb machine and then arrhythmically looped so that they form a broken, stuttering melody. It's one of his finest horror scores.

As good as the first act of "Who Saw Her Die" is, I just can't bring myself to recommend this film due to its punishingly boring and slow-as-molasses second act. George Lazenby, looking thinner and more emasculated than ever, gives what is easily his finest performance but the story that Barilli and Avak put him through is just never captivating in the least. Even Aldo Lado's competent direction cannot squeeze any suspense or interest out of their turgid whodunnit tale. By the end of the film I didn't care in the least who the killer was, I just wanted the credits to roll.

2/4

11-04-2024

If any film director should know his Georges Simenon it's Claude Chabrol. Not only has he adapted his novels for the screen twice - first "The Hatter's Ghost" and then "Betty" - but the two have been ploughing the same creative field, so to speak, for the better part of a century. And yet, in one of those promotional featurettes you find among DVD extras, Chabrol claims that his 50th film "Bellamy" was meant to be like a novel Simoneon never wrote - a kind of Maigret on holiday.

The problem with that statement is that Simenon has written Maigret on holiday a number of times, not the least in his brilliant novel called "Maigret on Holiday". In one of my favourite Maigret novels, "Maigret's Little Joke", the indefatigable inspector is on medical leave nursing an injury. And yet, even wounded, he is unable to keep his nose out of a murder inquiry. Unwilling to interrupt his rest, he voraciously reads all the news reports about the case while sending anonymous tips to his colleagues at the Quai des Orfevres.

Back to Chabrol. "Bellamy", which would prove to be the great director's last film, is quite similar to those Simenon novels. It's also about an indefatigable policeman who's been forced to go on holiday by his long-suffering wife but is unable to quite comprehend the charms of doing nothing, tanning in the sun, and fishing all day.

The policeman's name is indeed Bellamy (Gerard Depardieu) and, like Maigret, he is a great hulking beast of a man with a surprisingly gentle, even temper. When a mysterious man claiming his name is Noel Gentil (Jacques Gamblin) knocks on the door of his holiday home and confesses to having killed a man, Bellamy is physically unable to stop himself from leaping into action.

Well, maybe action is not the right word. Bellamy's methods are slow and meticulous and involve long conversations with witnesses during which he gently pries into their lives. One of the chief pleasures of reading a great Simenon novel are exactly those glimpses into the lives of others and much like the great Belgian author, I suspect Bellamy is something of a voyeur himself.

He takes great pleasure in snooping around other people's homes, sneaking peeks into their cupboards, asking about their intimate lives and so do I. The supporting cast of "Bellamy" is one of its many joys and Chabrol has a great deal of fun giving us brief looks into their colourful, bizarre, yet quite pedestrian lives. One of the film's funniest scenes sees a woman describing her desperate attempts to stop her cheating husband from leaving every night to meet his mistress. First, she steals his car keys but he takes a taxi instead. Then, she steals all of his shoes. But the husband's lust is overwhelming and he ends up going to his mistress wearing his wife's pink slippers.

I have seen every single Maigret adaptation so I feel that I can confidently claim that while "Bellamy" is not directly based on any Simenon novel, it's still the truest cinematic translation of his work. Chabrol absolutely nails not only the laidback atmosphere and the voyeuristic nature of the novels but also the low-key way in which Simenon delivers his revelations. There are no earth-shattering twists in Maigret books, only inevitable conclusions, harsh truths, and fascinating everyday banality.

However, "Bellamy" is not so much a pastiche as it is a careful, clever, loving deconstruction. There are sinister undercurrents beneath the picture-postcard perfection of Bellamy's life. They never quite reach boiling point but every once in a while we hear them bubbling away. One such undercurrent is Bellamy's brother Jacques (Clovis Cornillac), a habitual gambler, irreparable alcoholic, and degenerate thief with a bitter attitude who comes to stay with the Bellamys for the weekend or maybe even longer.

Another undercurrent is Bellamy's marriage to the angelic Francoise (Marie Bunel) who has the patience of a saint for her husband's late-night excursions, his obsessive work habits, and his hatred for holidays. But is she really as understanding as she seems or is she airing her frustrations elsewhere? A running gag involves Bellamy returning home time after time and catching Francoise and Jacques in... shall we say, questionable situations. They always have a logical explanation but Bellamy's suspicions threaten to turn this motif from a comedic gag into a tragic conclusion.

Bellamy himself is not quite the rock of ages he appears to be. He wakes up at night screaming that he's a bastard, he sympathises with murderers while despising his colleagues, and at one point muses that he finds a certain dignity in hating himself. Depardieu is wonderful in the part lending it his effortless likeability of a gentle giant. He is also superb at portraying self-destructive slobs which Bellamy is even though he dresses in tailored suits and drives a Mercedes.

Chabrol always deals with weighty, dark themes but he frequently does it with a surprisingly light touch. "Bellamy" is no different. In fact, the generous dollops of humour peppered throughout the film are what make it such a joy to watch. The humour is self-effacing, droll, and wondrously witty. It's no surprise that the film bears a dedication to Georges Brassens, the great French singer whose lyrics are full of satirical wordplay.

It's a great shame that Claude Chabrol didn't get a chance to make another 50 films but "Bellamy" feels like a fitting conclusion to a great career. It does two things which French cinema should have done decades before: it finally pairs Depardieu with Chabrol and it allows Depardieu a chance to play Maigret, a role he was born to play even under a different name.

3.5/4

14-04-2024

The premise with which "Working Class Goes to Hell" is being sold is absolutely brilliant. According to the film's hilarious trailer and its clever title (both of which, unfortunately, turn out to have more wit than the film itself), it is the story of a group of exploited working men and women living in some Serbian hellhole town whose lives become so unlivable that they turn to the only entity who could possibly help them - Satan himself.

As it turns out, this is only one of a whole host of good ideas which director Mladen Djordjevic has ground up into this hodgepodge of a movie. It's been almost 15 years since his quirky feature film debut "The Life and Death of a Porno Gang" and it seems that he's come up with at least ten feature film ideas in the intervening years. Unfortunately, he's decided to combine them all and make "Working Class Goes to Hell".

It takes a very long time indeed for any semblance of a narrative to emerge in this movie. Djordjevic spends an inordinate amount of time introducing his large ensemble cast, photographing abandoned factories, and establishing an overwhelming atmosphere of dread and decay.

Dusan Grubin's washed-out photography and Kalin Nikolov's droning score do a great deal of heavy lifting in giving the film a horrorish mood but to what end? Despite its supposed premise, "Working Class Goes to Hell" is not actually a horror film. Sure, it plays around with horror imagery and there are some (quite clumsy) attempts at mysticism but the film never even comes close to embracing the horror genre.

Normally, I'd attribute this to false advertising and try to enjoy the film for what it is but I'm still not sure what kind of a movie Mladen Djordjevic was trying to make here. His screenplay is fatally unfocused and his approach to the material is disappointingly indecisive.

The first act suggests a rather conventional social-realism drama about a group of former factory employees who have fallen on hard times after their factory "mysteriously" burned down. They try to fight the system and get justice but their protests bear no fruit and eventually, the corrupt factory owner is found innocent of any wrongdoing.

However, the social realism of the film is constantly undercut by Djordjevic's indecisiveness.

For one, he cannot seem to decide how he feels about his own characters. In some scenes, he is asking us to sympathise with them. He shows us quite effectively their impoverished lives and the extent to which they have to go in order to survive. One woman is forced into becoming a prostitute by her shady, exploitative boyfriend, another is a victim of domestic abuse. One of the men is trying to start a business selling chinchilla fur but his animals are poisoned by his malicious neighbours.

In other scenes, however, he appears to be mocking these poor people and turning them into caricatures. He shows them blankly staring at TV screens like zombies, he frequently makes fun of their illiteracy and their way of speaking, and, in the end, turns them into superstitious idiots.

Problematically, the ensemble cast is so large that we never get to really meet any of these people as anything other than strawmen and, as we all know so well, it's downright impossible to relate to characters if we don't know anything about them. Despite some very good performances from actors like Tamara Krcunovic, Leon Lucev, Lidija Kordic, and especially Mirsad Tuka, none of the supposed protagonists of "Working Class Goes to Hell" are ever anything more than distant cyphers whose motivations we struggle to understand, whose decisions become more and more incomprehensible as the film goes on and whose psyche Djordjevic never convincingly penetrates.

Around the second act, Djordjevic begins tentatively introducing some horror elements. There are mysterious, shadowy figures stalking the unlit streets of the town, the factory workers begin trying to summon the spirits of their deceased comrades, and birds begin falling from the sky. However, these horror elements are themselves immediately undercut by the fact that our protagonists' lives are far more horrifying than any ghosts or demons ever could be.

Furthermore, none of these horror elements serve any discernable narrative purpose. The factory workers never actually manage to contact the dead, the dying birds are quickly forgotten and never addressed, and the shadowy figures are given a ludicrously anticlimactic explanation which wouldn't work in a subpar episode of "Scooby-Doo".

The third act of the film promises to turn into something like a Serbian version of "Falling Down" as the enraged factory workers finally decide to get their revenge and storm the fancy villas inhabited by their oppressors. This comes about 100 minutes into the film and presents the first genuine action undertaken by any single character.

Remembering the brutal climax of Djordjevic's previous film, I was quite excited to see how he would stage and "execute" this sequence but, disappointingly, it too turns out to be a whimper. I won't spoil what happens at the end not because I am wary of revealing some major twist but because nothing happens at all. After two hours of meandering through other people's misery, "Working Class Goes to Hell" ends up going nowhere.

I am told that Djordjevic shot an inordinate amount of material for this film, enough to make a TV series, in fact. This could go a long way in explaining why this two-hour version is such an unfocused, meandering mess. However, no amount of re-editing can solve the biggest problem I had with this film which is its utter toothlessness.

Despite pretending to be a slice of social realism, "Working Class Goes to Hell" is infuriatingly bashful when it comes to politics. Djordjevic never shows us the systemic oppression which has turned its protagonists into the paupers they are. The film's oppressors are not politicians but some random mobsters whose provenance remains unexplained and whose political affiliation is never mentioned.

Our heroes protest against "a government" but which government? They are zombified by television but which television? They all watch some fictional TV station but why? Why not have them protest the current Serbian dictatorship? Why not have them watch the current TV Pink which is frequently criticised for airing "zombifying" content? Why is Djordjevic pulling his punches?

In the end, "The Working Class Goes to Hell" is not merely unfocused and unsatisfying it is also utterly devoid of any potent political criticism. It purports to be a film about the working class but instead of supporting them, it turns them into comedic figures. Instead of exposing the corrupt political system which is oppressing them, it gives us some fictional mobsters as villains. What then is the purpose of Djordjevic's film? What is it about? In fact, what even is this film?

2/4

14-04-2024

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16-04-2024

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17-04-2024

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18-04-2024

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19-04-2024

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23-04-2024

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23-04-2024

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24-04-2024

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25-04-2024

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26-04-2024

It is a cinematic rule at this point that there is an undeniable pleasure in watching a pair of unnaturaly beautiful people get themselves into improbable situations, verbally spar with each other, and generally woo one another for 90 or so minutes. Hundreds of modern classics, cult classics, and classic classics revolve around this simple premise as well as a whole host of middling romantic comedies from the late 90s and early 00s which, for some reason, a fair amount of people remember with nostalgia.

Will Gluck's "Anyone But You" is not so much a homage to those mediocre rom-coms from the turn of the century as a carbon copy - an identical reproduction so faithful in its initiation that it could easily be mistaken for a 1999 Freddie Prince Jr. vehicle.

The above-cited rule also states that the more charismatic and attractive the stars of a rom-com, the more successful the film will be. Thankfully, the two stars of "Anyone But You" are deliriously magnetic because the film which Gluck has spun around them is fairly forgettable at best.

The stars are Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell, both rare mixtures of wit, intelligence, charisma, and inhuman good looks. With their fair hair, chiselled bodies, and oodles of charm, they are the embodiment of the perfect screen couple if ever such a thing existed. From the very first time we see them together, we know they will end up madly in love. It's meant to be, it's destiny, it's natural. I mean - just look at them!

Of course, following another rule of the rom-com, their characters cannot stand each other at first. They spend most of the film engaging in verbal sparring and I can't say which of them is funnier or cleverer. What I can say is that I really appreciate that both Sweeney and Powell have their own unique approaches to comedy. Sweeney delivers her lines in the manner of a fast-talking dead-pan screwball comedy protagonist while Powell is on the more sincere side imbuing his wisecracking charmer with a delightful vulnerability.

If "Anyone But You" works at all, it is entirely down to its two stars because the screenplay by Will Gluck and Ilana Wolpert couldn't sustain an amoeba let alone a feature film. The plot is thin and predictable, the characters are completely undeveloped and one-joke, and the witty lines more often land with a thud than with a zing.

The story is lifted wholesale from Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing" which was about a pair of bickering youths named Beatrice and Benedick who are tricked by their friends Claudio, Hero and Pedro into believing that one is in love with the other and vice versa.

"Anyone But You", on the other hand, is about a pair of bickering youths named Bea (Sydney Sweeney) and Ben (Glen Powell) who are tricked by their friends Claudia (Alexandra Shipp), Halle (Hadley Robinson), and Pete (Gata) into believing that one is in love with the other and vice versa.

However, in a rare twist on the source material, Bea and Ben realize the deception and turn the tables on their friends by pretending they have actually fallen in love. This, of course, leads to confusion even though "Anyone But You" never reaches any kind of fever pitch. Instead of farcical misunderstandings and a gaggle of gags leading to an explosive comedic climax, the film revolves around lame jokes, pop culture references, and an occasional slapstick gag.

I can't say I laughed much during this film but I did smile an awful lot. Why? Well, again, because of Sweeney and Powell who are so wonderfully well-suited to this kind of film that their very appearance on screen sparked joy for me. I spent most of the runtime happily imagining them in funnier situations, delivering funnier lines in a faster-paced film.

Alas, I was watching "Anyone But You" so I have to come up with some sort of conclusion about it. The film itself is utterly forgettable and not particularly worth seeing, however, the pairing of Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell is so potent and effective that it would be a shame if it wasn't repeated.

In such a future, where we have six rom-coms starring Sweeney and Powell, I expect "Anyone But You" to be considered the weakest of the bunch. However, right now, when it is their first and only film together, perhaps it's worth sitting through some dud jokes just to see the sparks between them.

2.5/4