Enemy.

This is probable one of the best example’s of a film made more interesting by a discussion that followed its screening. The film in question was Enemy (2013) showing as part of the Robert Burns Centre Film Theatre Film Club Season. Introduced by our host for the evening Julie McMorran, but as she admitted it was more of what was not said rather than what was said because of giving to much away that she feared would spoil the enjoyment, if that’s the right word to use! But she did inform us that the film split both critics and its audience with its ‘non signposted’ narrative. She went on to say that the films screenplay, written by Javier Gullon, was based on the novel The Double by Jose Saramago, which was first published, in Portuguese, in 2002. The French-Canadian Denis Villeneuve directed the movie whose best known films to date have probably been Incendies (2010), where twin brother and sister go on a journey of discovery to unravel the mystery of their mothers life, and Prisoners (2013) a thriller about the search for two girls after they have been abducted. This last film also stared Jake Gyllenhaal who in this latest movie plays both main parts. The film club recently screened one of the actor’s best works in the form of Nightcrawler (2014). His role of Lou Bloom gained him a well-deserved selection of Best Actor nominations. Julie told us that this popular actor already had four more films in the pipeline. 

 

Adam and Mary.

Enemy is an extremely confounding psychological drama about a sexually repressed college professor, Adam Bell (Gyllenhaal), who quite by chance discovers that he has a doppelganger in the form of an actor called Anthony Claire (Gyllenhaal again) who like himself lives in Toronto. Although the two men are physically identical they couldn’t be more different in personality! Other than to say this strange discovery leads both men into some very dark places I will not say any more to avoid any chance of a spoiler. The film also stars Melanie Laurent as Adams girlfriend Mary, Sarah Gadon as Helen, the pregnant wife of Anthony and Isabella Rossellini in a ‘blink and your miss her role’ as mother.

 

Anthony and Helen. 

When this film was premiered at the 2013 Toronto Film Festival it mysterious ending left its audience in a stunned silence and I for one am not surprised. Its obscure story is rather ponderous and I’m afraid did not draw me in, it has been alleged that its source novel is just as difficult to comprehend. Our discussion that followed the movie led to all sorts of assumptions as to what the film was really about and who exactly Adam and Anthony were. Were they two different people; are they really one person or maybe identical twins separated at birth and is Rossellini the mother of both?  Perhaps when you go to see this film, or if you have already have seen it, perhaps you could let me know your theory and I’ll pass it on to the RBCFT Film Club?

 

The End.

Now You See Me.

Thanks to an unknown benefactor, four down on their luck street magicians form a collective called ‘The Four Horseman’, although incidentally one’s a woman, with the sole aim of pulling off robbery’s during their high concept magic show performances and with an added touch of Robin Hood they give the money away to their audiences. In the first show in Las Vegas they pull off an ingenious bank robbery in a different country. In the second show in New Orleans, they manage to steal $140 million dollars from a wealthy insurance broker. By this time FBI agent Dylan Rhodes and his French Interpol assistant Alma Day realise that they should track down and make an attempt to arrest the these ‘magical’ criminals.

The synopsis for this ‘big’ movie is actually far better than the finished article, “The more you think you see, the easier it will be to fool you” a statement made by one of the illusionists aptly describes French director Louis Leterrier’s latest outing. Like his previous films, including 2008 The Incredible Hulk, there are some great set pieces in a heist movie that involves deception and illusion to steal rather than the normal gunplay. It does its best to make the narrative interesting by constantly jumping from one plot twist to another without a lot of success. A slight of hand movie where you’re never sure who are supposed to be the bad guys and who are the good guys?  It does have a grand ensemble cast that includes Mark Ruffalo, Jesse Eisenberg, Morgan Freeman, and Michael Caine, Isla fisher, Woody Harrelson and French actress Melanie Laurent. But even the high profile of these involved can’t seem to lift this movie beyond its rather dull predictability.

Requiem for a Killer.

French director Jerome Le Gris’s debut film puts forward the ridicules premise that to be a successful assassin you have to be an accomplished musician! Lucrece, (Melanie Laurent) an opera singer turned assassin gets one final contract to carry out before she retires to take up a motherly role with her eight year old daughter. Employed indirectly by a British Oil company to bump off Alexandra Child (Christopher Stills), a professional opera singer, because of his refusal to sell them a large piece of real estate in the Highlands of Scotland that stand’s in the way of the completion of an oil pipeline worth fortunes to the corporation. Also involved is special agent Rico (Clovis Cornillac) an orchestral guitarist whose job it is to track down and kill Child’s killer. All the action takes place at a music festival at a Swiss chateau where a performance of Handel’s Messiah is to take place.  

Normally I quite enjoy a ‘cold-blooded’ female assassin but Nikita (1990) it isn’t although Tcheky Karyo plays a similar role in Requiem for a Killer (2011) but without the intrigue.  Melanie Laurent has also been used too much better effect in films like Days of Glory (2006), Le Concert (2009), Inglourious Basterds (2009) and the award winning Beginners (2011). It’s all very pretty and polished to look at, but it lacks even a glimmer of real excitement. Dull, silly, implausible and lacking in depth.

Beginners.

Movie wise we’ve come along way since Basil Dearden’s 1961 film Victim the first British film to use the word homosexual which got it banned in the USA. Many people are of the opinion that it played an influential role in both liberalising attitudes and the laws in Britain regarding same sex relationships.

Now, what was a controversial subject is now dealt with in lightweight romantic American comedies like 2010’s Beginners. Written and directed by Mike Mills and based on the true life coming out of his father at the grand age of 75, just five years before he passed away and at a time when he was supposed to be watching diluted age related films at the cinema! Basically a love story that centers around Oliver, a graphic designer, his deceased parents Hal and Georgina, his fathers much younger lover Andy, a French actress Anna with whom Oliver begins a love affair and a rather annoying Jack Russell called Arthur.   The film starts with the death of Hal and is told in flashbacks going back to when Oliver was a boy and from the time that his quirky repressed part Jewish mother died and his father declares his true sexuality after 45 years of ‘happy married life’ and spends the last years of his life finding himself.

Plummer's probably the best thing about this film.

Ewan McGregor plays the emotionally retarded Oliver, Christopher Plummer, who has been appearing in feature films since Sidney Lumet’s 1958 Stage Struck is Hal, a role that won him Best Supporting Actor in the Golden Globes and the Academy Awards. French actress Melanie Laurent who will be familiar for appearances in such films as Days of Glory (2006), Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds (2009) and the wonderful Le Concert (2009) is Anna.  A meaningful, rather sad love story with some subtle and gentle humour but a film that’s extremely slow at times. The younger members of my family thought it tedious and barely lasted halfway! Oh well can’t win them all.

The Concert

Melanie Laurent as Anne-Marie Jacquet

Thirty years ago Andrei Simoniovich Filipov the renowned conductor of Russia’s Bolshoi orchestra was fired for hiring Jewish musicians. Now relegated to a cleaning job at the Bolshoi he learns by accident that the Theatre du Chatelet in Paris has invited the Bolshoi orchestra to play there. Filipov decides ‘to reform the band’ and to perform in Paris in place of the current orchestra. He chooses a young virtuoso Anne-Marie Jacquet to play solo violin to accompany his old Jewish and Gypsy musicians who incidentally have not played together for 30 years!

Will Filipov and the other 53 members of the orchestra pull of the deception; will Anne-Marie unravel the secrets of her past? Ok The Concert (2009) is not the mystery drama of the year, and the answers will be come apparent well before the end credits. This totally unbelievable French farce is directed by Romanian born Radu Mihaileanu and features Alexei Giskov as Andrei with Melanie Laurent (Inglourious Bastards 2009) as the young violinist but this is very funny movie and just the thing to warm the cockles of your heart and allows you to forget this dreadful weather for a couple of hours.