Chinese Puzzle (Casse-tete chinos).

This Woody Allen style romantic comedy about Parisians in New York forms the final part of a trilogy written and directed by Cedric Klapisch. The first was 2002’s The Spanish Apartment, the second The Russian Doll in 2005 and now we have the concluding part. Chinese Puzzle (2013) features the same main characters and actors, Xavier (Romain Duris, more Heartbreaker (2010) than 2005’s The Beat That My Heart Skipped), Martine (Audrey Tautou), Wendy (Kelly Reilly) and Isabelle (Cecile de France).

 

Moving New York style.

Not quite the luxury apartment!

Xavier, a forty something novelist, is now divorced from his wife Wendy and see’s his two children on pre-arranged visits. But when his ex announces that she intends moving the family from Paris to New York City he decides to move to be near his children. Moving into the flat of his old friend Isabelle and her girlfriend Ju he agrees to help the couple have a child. Two’s company and three’s a crowd so Ju helps him find him a flat in China Town where the rents are cheaper than Brooklyn or Manhattan. He gets a job as a bike messenger, participates in a marriage of convenience to allow him to work legally in America and settles to his new life, that is until his ex-lover and her two children arrive in New York.

 

The family gets bigger.

The women in Xavier life.  

Not having seen the first two movies did not spoil my enjoyment of this French comedy.  A clever and polished lightweight fantasy, with a heavyweight cast list, that’s both funny and entertaining.

Set Fire to the Stars.

Director:	Andy Goddard
Country:	UK
Year:	2014
Running Time:	90mins
Principle Cast:	Elijah Wood	John M Brinnin
	Celyn Jones	Dylan Thomas
	Kelly Reilly	Caitlin Thomas
	Steven Mackintosh	Jack
	Shirley Henderson	Shirley
	Kevin Eldon	Stanley

Apparently only completed 17 days before it was shown at the 2014 EIFF Andy Goddard’s debut feature film Set Fire to the Stars (2014) is the story of Dylan Thomas’s first visit to the United States of America.

Dylan Thomas and John M Brinnin in Swansea?

It was the American poet, literary critic and lecturer John Malcolm Brinnin (Elijah Woods) who invited Thomas (Celyn Jones) to New York in 1950 for the first time to embark on a three-month tour of art centres and university’s, which eventually took in about 40 venues. The movie deals with the problems that Brinnin had with Dylan Thomas’s erratic and drunken behaviour and how he befriended and tried to help the Welsh poet battle his demons, taking him to his family’s isolated summerhouse for a weeklong retreat.

Filmed in black and white at Swansea Bay in Wales in just 18 days, it’s hard to believe we are not in 1950’s America, which owes a lot the DOP Chris Seager and the production designer Edward Thomas. It was Celyn Jones (Castles in the Sky 2014) who told a very full house that he had always wanted to tell this story and portray Thomas, he does in fact look uncannily like him, and it was when he met Andy Goddard that the pair co-wrote the screenplay and the idea for the film began to take shape. They both agreed that the only actor that they felt was right for the part of John Brinnin was Woods, who after reading the script agreed to join the project.  From then on it became a true labour of love and it shows in the final product.

Director Andy Goddard with Celyn Jones and Elijah Wood.

A wordy two-handed character piece that highlights what I feel to be a non-sexual love affair between two world-renowned academics. But a film that has what Elijah Wood so eloquently described as ‘movement, energy and life’, and I would add humour ‘only the truth is funny’[3].  Which in turn is due to some great writing, and superb performances from our two lead actors. This low budget film, which is hard to believe when you watch it, has a great soundtrack scored by one of Celyn Jones musical hero’s Gruff Rhys from the Welsh rock band Super Furry Animals – which we were told would be released in one form or another.  Well worth seeing for Jones uncanny performance, which, given the right exposure, could see an acting nomination come the award season?

Calvary.

“Killing a priest on a Sunday, that would be a good one know.” During a confessional, Sligo priest Father James is told that he will be killed on the next Sabbath, not because he is a bad priest, in fact quite the reverse, but because he is a well-respected man of God and well thought of by his congregation. He has been subjected to this death threat to atone for the sins of the Catholic Church and a paedophilic priest that was never brought to justice and has since passed away. The confessionee tells of systematic abuse where sexual acts were performed on him as a young lad over a period of many years leaving him in a disturbed state. We spend the following week in the company of Father James who knows who has threatened him, but we are left to guess which of his rather unsavoury parishioners will or will not carry out the death threat.

 

The beautiful Sligo countryside. 

We get to meet the human flotsam that are continually challenging James Lavelle’s commitment to his faith. There’s the rich local tycoon (Dylan Moran) whose wealth had not stopped his wife and children from leaving him, the cuckolded local butcher (Chris O’Dowd) whose promiscuous wife Veronica (Orla O’Rourke) seems to be up for sex with any one except her husband and her latest conquest Simon (Isaach de Blankole) an African motor mechanic and there’s a very cynical doctor (Aidan Gillen) who seems to be obsessed with suffering and we must not forget the sexually frustrated Milo (Killian Scott). As one of our audience remarked during the discussion that followed the screening, “more a whose-gonna-do-it than a whodunit.”[1] Like John Michael McDonagh’s first feature film The Guard (2011) Calvary (2014), which is the penultimate film of this seasons Robert Burns Centre Film Theatre Film Club programme, has little to do with social realism and is far darker than his debut movie and is not a comedy, black or otherwise!   

 

Some of the most tender scenes are between the priest and his daughter. 

Introduced by Julie McMorran who informed us that McDonagh, who was born in England of Irish decent, also wrote the screenplay for tonight’s film and was the brother of writer and director Martin McDonagh who was responsible for Six Shooter (2004), In Bruges (2008) and Seven Psychopaths (2012).  Both of the brothers have a slightly different approach to presenting a story, which normally allows a sense of compassion for the main protagonist and both tend to use Irish actors including Brendon Gleeson who played Donnelly in Six Shooter, Ken in In Bruges, Gerry Boyle in The Guard and Father James in John Michaels latest film.

 

Will the church come to Father James aid?

Unlike the young priest in his church Father James is not naive man but one who has lived and loved in the non-secular world. He has been an alcoholic, was widowed and has a daughter who comes to visit him from her home in London. In fact some of the most tender and emotional scenes in the film are between the priest and his daughter Fiona (Kelly Reilly) who has recently attempted suicide.  It was generally agreed by the RBCFT audience that this well written film got very much darker as the story went on and did not have the humour that the directors debut film contained. However it did set out some very interesting questions mainly involving people’s faith and their belief in a superior being. Described as a ‘terminal illness melodrama’[2] a powerful, and at times moving story, about a man who is deemed guilty by association and like Christ is punished for the sins of others.

Will it be the end for James Lavelle?

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[1] Alec Barclay

[2] Connor McMorran