This is my review of Nocturnal Animals (DVD + Digital Download) [2016].

The wealthy and successful owner of an avant garde New York art gallery, Susan Morrow is taking stock of her glamorous life and finding it hollow. She is drifting apart from her husband, who resents the humiliation of her casual offer to buy some new artworks to mask his financial problems. Is he having an affair and does she regret walking out years ago on Edward, the first husband she loved, but who disappointed her by his failure to write a successful novel together with his lack of ambition.

She is in a vulnerable state when, perhaps improbably after a gap of almost twenty years, Edward sends her a proof copy of the novel he has finally produced, perhaps ominously entitled “Nocturnal Animals”, a reference to his old nickname for her habits. As she reads it, at night, of course, her thoughts continually turn to memories of her life with Edward, her belief in his creativity as a kind of substitute for her lack of it, her cynical, materialistic mother’s belief that Susan will end up like her, and Edward’s frustration that Susan seems unable simply to trust in their mutual love. In his novel, Edward has stuck to his belief that all writing is ultimately about oneself, but has taken aspects of their relationship to construct a very different world from their own, in which a family’s road trip to rural Texas leads to a shocking chain of events.

The film employs the device of “a story within a story”, requiring intense concentration to avoid confusion as it flits between the two, with Jake Gyllenhaal playing both Edward the sensitive would-be writer and Tony, his fictional hero who is powerless to protect and perhaps too feeble to avenge his wife and daughter against Texan “white trailer trash”.

This psychological thriller interweaves two tales of revenge: the “fictional”, physically very violent, the other “real life”, providing more subtle forms of emotional pain. Both threads are often humorous, the characters well-observed, and scenes visually striking, be they carefully constructed shots with fashion designer turned film director Tom Ford’s obsessive eye for detail in Susan’s gallery and her ultra-modern glass-walled mansion, or on the other hand, beneath dramatic blood-red clouds at sunset, the stark, arid scrubland of Texas, sparsely inhabited by the decaying shacks of the disaffected Trump-voting poor.

Stylish and quite original, the film holds one’s attention until the abrupt, somewhat ambiguous ending leaves a sense of anti-climax, bringing the first opportunity to take stock as to exactly what the film is about. I have read that Tom Ford wants us to be forced to think, but cannot help feeling that much of the film’s impact is visual, such as the geometric pattern of flights of stairs on which Susan continually fades from view only to reappear as she makes her ascent. I find it hard to believe that such a gentle and perceptive soul as Edward would harbour destructive feelings of revenge for nineteen years, nor that either his book, inspired by but far removed from his relationship with Susan, or his ultimate behaviour towards her in any way amount to devastating retribution. So, perhaps I missed something, but I would describe this film as entertaining, visually striking, but not very moving in Susan’s unreal “real life” although Edward’s fiction is more disturbing.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

This is my review of The Light Between Oceans [DVD].

Traumatised by his experiences of World War 1, guilty to have survived, too repressed by a strict upbringing to express his emotions, Australian Tom Sherbourne escapes to the solitary role of lighthouse keeper on Janus Island. His loneliness heightened by the isolation of its bleak beauty, he decides to accept the bold suggestion of marriage made during a very brief acquaintance by the warm, impulsive Isabel Graysmith, carried away by a romanticised view of life as a lighthouse keeper’s wife. Beneath her vibrant exterior, she is very vulnerable, fragile and immature. Already suffering the loss of her two brothers in the war, the blow of two pregnancies ending in miscarriage brings her to the point of mental break-down. At this point, an unexpected event brings an opportunity for happiness, but raises an intense moral dilemma, and considerable possible long-term costs.

Michael Fassbender and Alician Vikander play powerful, intense leading roles, with a strong supporting cast. The photography of the sea and rocky shoreline in different lights and weather conditions – rarely without wind – is very striking. The screenplay retains the impression of having been created from a novel (Australian best-seller of the same title), which may have led the film to seem too long, with a few scenes which might have been better omitted. It is consistently and unashamedly a tear-jerker. There are some implausible aspects to the plot. Despite all this, it explores quite sensitively the complexity of the human problems of handling guilt, coming to terms with grief, taking responsibility for one’s actions, casting blame and demonstrates the power, both positive and negative, of love.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

This is my review of I, Daniel Blake [DVD] [2016].

When joiner Daniel Blake suffers a heart attack, he becomes trapped in a surreal world in which medical staff deem him unfit for work, but his Employment and Support Allowance is withheld because he scores just three points too few in a ludicrous Work Capability Assessment questionnaire delivered by a robotic “healthcare professional” employed by the private company to which the DWP has outsourced the task of reducing benefit payments. The Catch-22 nightmare deepens as Daniel struggles to deal with the hurdles of qualifying for Job Seeker’s Allowance, his only other means of obtaining benefits, forced to demonstrate that he is spending 35 hours a week job-hunting when he is not supposed to be working for health reasons, so cannot in good conscience accept a job in the unlikely event of an offer.

The damaging effect of incoherent policies is further illustrated by the plight of the young single mother of two Katie whom Daniel befriends in righteous indignation over the way she has been sent hundreds of miles from London to Newcastle where housing is cheaper, but is denied access to the money she needs to feed and clothe her children.

Leavened with wry humour and often unbearably moving, this is a hard-hitting attack on the lack of “joined up thinking” in the provision of welfare in C21 Britain, and the way in which Jobcentre Plus staff have too often become dehumanised by jargon-ridden and misapplied procedures culled from the private sector, as if they will miraculously improve the situation. Their bureaucratic rules seem designed to drive benefits claimants to give up, despite genuine need. The social costs of these crude, short-sighted and counterproductive attempts to deal with the fundamental problem of scarce resources are made all too apparent.

In a step-chain of logic, Ken Loach shows us how sick people are made even more unwell, mothers driven to desperate measures and children damaged by “the system”. The simple dignity, humanity and support which people in need often show each other are in sharp contrast to the casual contempt of those paid to help them.

Skilful in arousing our sense of injustice, Ken Loach even manages to make shoplifting and graffiti seem justifiable, and to make me realise that sanitary towels might be a more useful donation to a food bank than biscuits.

The film may gloss over obvious ways in which Daniel Blake could have helped himself more, it may caricaturise and exaggerate the crassness of the Jobcentre Plus staff but it is a powerful indictment of “austerity Britain”, and is a sobering reminder of the fickle fate that gives some of us too much while others have too little. There is of course an irony in middle-class people paying to be reduced to tears over the plight of the poor, when they could simply have used their imagination and given the money directly, although charity is a sticking plaster response to a fundamental problem.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 Stars

This is my review of Captain Fantastic [DVD].

This is an entertaining, by turns funny, and moving, bittersweet yarn about an anarchic, left-wing, “hippy” bringing up his six children in a remote, beautiful Rocky Mountain setting. Although the endurance programmes and survival skills training designed to develop self-sufficiency in the wild at times seem close to the child abuse of which his father-in-law accuses him, home schooling has made his offspring remarkably well-read, perceptive and questioning. Their annual celebration of “Noam Chomsky” Day, as no more ludicrous than Christmas, the bracketing together of Christianity and capitalism as the root evils of Western society, smack of brainwashing – although when one sees American consumerism through their eyes, they have a point. The nagging question is of course how they will fare if and when they have to re-enter a world in which they will often appear naïve, ignorant of basic norms and, as the eldest son at one point observes, freakish.

Matters come to a head when they receive news that their mentally sick mother who has been forced to return to the outside world for medical treatment has committed suicide.

Despite suffering from the director’s inability to resist somewhat contrived, exaggerated and extreme situations, the film causes us to question our conventional values and ways of living, and to ask how far one can and should go in forging an “alternative life style” for one’s children? To what extent is it “abuse”, even permanently damaging, to make one’s children “too different”? On the other hand, the film exposes the hollowness of our materialistic society. Why is it acceptable for children to play violent computer games, but not work as a team to kill, dismember and cook a deer for food? How can one put one’s own desire for conventional respectability above a daughter’s wish for a Buddhist cremation and ironical flushing of ashes down the toilet?

The photography is beautiful, the storyline compelling, but I was frustrated that my ear was not sufficiently attuned to quick-fire American drawl to catch all the dialogue.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

This is my review of Julieta [DVD] [2016].

Middle-aged Julieta is preparing to leave her stylish, if clinical Madrid flat for a move to Portugal with her lover, when a chance meeting brings news of the daughter Antía from whom she has been estranged for years. Immediately changing her plans, Julieta sits down to write the explanatory account of past events which she has concealed but feels Antía is now old enough to understand, if she can be persuaded to open her mind to them. This device of course takes us into a chain of flashbacks, often moving or evocative.

Based on three short stories by the celebrated writer Alice Munro, the Spanish director Almodóvar has produced an excellent film which succeeds through the combination of a well-constructed plot, with hints of Hitchcock, strong dialogue even evident in the subtitles, and skilful, sensitive acting where shifting expressions and body language often reveal more than words.

“Julieta” words on several levels as entertainment, as a study of the often devastating effects of chance, grief and guilt and as pure visual art. Almodóvar is not afraid to spin an essentially straightforward yarn, rendered remarkable with visual effects and a sustained, meticulous attention to detail. The filming draws on contrasting aspects of Spanish life: an old Madrid apartment with overpowering floral wallpaper redeemed by romantic wrought iron balconies overlooking the street; roads winding in hairpin bends to mountain views of great beauty which can also be the backdrop to moments of acute misery; the striking profile of a censorious, perhaps malevolent housekeeper who knows too much about her employer.

The folds of vivid blood-red material in the opening shots made me fear that Almodóvar would slip into the melodramatic excess which is often his trademark, but in this film at least, his continual harnessing of striking images manages to stop short of hammy overkill.

My reservations are few. Antía’s abrupt change in behaviour at one point seems unconvincing, but this does not prevent the film from being very moving. The switch in casting from the young to the older Julieta and Antía is done quite cleverly, although it takes a few moments to adjust to the distraction this creates. Perhaps the understandably mournful lover Lorenzo is a little too long-suffering, but as other reviewers have noted, the men in this film are as ever mainly foils for the female characters who are Almodóvar’s main focus of interest.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 5 Stars

This is my review of Tale of Tales [DVD].

This is Italian director Matteo Garrone’s English language (to reach a wider audience) interweaving of three fables drawn from the Pentamerone, a 17th-century book of Neapolitan folk stories compiled by the Italian poet Giambattista Basile. He provided fodder for writers like the Brothers Grimm, to give a flavour of the macabre streak running through these bizarre tales.

Apart from the quality of the acting, casting of some remarkable faces, and fabulous costumes, the film is worth watching for the superb scenery from remote parts of Italy. There is no need for Jungle Book CGI with the potential to use striking settings like the Alcantra Gorge in Sicily, or the octagonal Castel del Monte in Puglia.

Despite the fairytale characters and magic mixed with implausibility of many scenes, one can still relate to the human emotions, clearly relevant to us now: the dangers of obsession, when a barren queen will pay any price to get a child, or a bored, self-indulgent king puts his fascination for the giant flea he has created before looking after his daughter. Two sisters desire for youth and beauty gets caught up with a sexually rapacious king’s infatuation with the idea of a woman he has only heard singing, glimpsed from a distance.

Classified as “15”, this visually powerful and entertaining (if sometimes gory or violent) film is available to those of an age to appreciate the deeper ethical points beneath the superficially childish storylines.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

This is my review of Love & Friendship [DVD] [2016].

This film is based closely on “Lady Susan” the lesser known short, unfinished novel written by Jane Austen when she was only nineteen, and never published in her lifetime. Judging by the film, this differed from her more famous works in its focus on a blatantly outrageous and manipulative anti-heroine who uses her sex appeal and wit to bamboozle men, and to a large extent gets away with it. In today’s world, she could have employed her intelligence, charm and grasp of psychology as an independent, successful career woman, but in Jane Austen’s day an impoverished (it is never explained quite why although it may have been because Lady Susan is clearly a spendthrift) widow with a teenage daughter had little option but to sponge off relatives and seek husbands for them both. Too poor to pay a servant or her daughter Frederica’s school bills, forced to hand over her jewels when unpaid tradesmen shrewdly gang up on her, Lady Susan is obliged to use her wits to find a practical solution, hopefully having her cake and eating it by hanging on to her married lover in the process.

This production reminded me of “Dangerous Liaisons”, with the same kind of cynical amorality. Towards the end, Lady Susan pays the sweet and long-suffering Frederica a rare , inevitably backhanded compliment: “My daughter has shown herself to be cunning and manipulative – I couldn’t be more pleased.” In fact, this self-absorbed woman, unable to admit to any personal faults except as some kind of virtue or wholly reasonable behaviour, is trying to make the best of a situation she has for once failed to submit to her total control.

The dialogue is wordy, but quick-fire and funny, often more explicitly acid and less subtle than I recall Austen as being, perhaps because she did not write much actual speech in what was in fact an “episotolary” novel, consisting of an exchange of letters. Yet some of the best barbed comments have been culled word-for-word from the original: “My dear Alicia, of what a mistake were you guilty in marrying a man of his age! Just old enough to be formal, ungovernable, and to have the gout; too old to be agreeable, too young to die.” Or, “where there is a disposition to dislike, a motive will never be wanting.”

Leaping from one scene to the next, and leaving a certain amount implied and left to the viewer’s imagination, the production often feels disjointed, but at least this gives it some pace. Skilfully acted and visually beautiful, the film is highly entertaining, but did not impel me to do more than download free the original novel which I suspect will remain unread while the well-dramatised plot is still fresh in my mind.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars

This is my review of Our Kind Of Traitor [DVD] [2016].

Bored with his job as a lecturer in poetry and perhaps too easily led in his desire for a fresh challenge, Perry holidays in Marrakesh with his high-flying barrister wife Gail, in an attempt to repair their relationship which has been damaged for reasons revealed in due course.

Perry allows himself to fall for the persuasive charms of Dima, a larger-than-life Russian who proves, somewhat improbably, to be a financial wizard who has made himself wealthy yet vulnerable money-laundering for the Moscow mafia. Beneath his hearty exterior, Dima is running scared, aware that he is about to be liquidated, regarded as no longer required but knowing too much by his ruthless Russian boss. In desperation, Dima tries to use Perry to pass to M16 information which will gain him asylum in the UK along with his family. The drama becomes tense as it becomes clear that the only member of British intelligence seriously interested in working with Dima is the maverick Hector, obsessed with the desire to expose high-ranking UK politicians who are colluding with Russian criminals.

The John Le Carré novel from 2010 on which all this is based has proved quite prescient as regards the course events have taken in the post Cold War world. Hence the shots of a London skyline disfigured by excrescences of high-rise property development financed with ill-gotten Russian investment.

The film contains striking photography, excellent acting and some tense scenes with sharp dialogue. It combines nerve-racking drama with the raising of serious issues. Yet it ultimately falls short because in an attempt to spice up what sounds like a plausible book plot, the film script introduces too many unbelievable situations. I was left feeling somewhat irritated: if this film is meant to be taken seriously, it stretches credulity too far.

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars

This is my review of Dheepan [Blu-ray] [2016].

Three Sri Lankans anxious to escape the horror of the failed Tamil Tiger movement for the safety of Europe masquerade as a family unit to gain asylum in France. In what appears to be a shady arrangement, the ex-fighter who has assumed the identity of the deceased Dheepan takes the job of caretaker on an estate of the giant, grim blocks of flats which blight the suburbs of too many French cities, in this case Paris. “Daughter” Illayaal is young enough to grasp French quickly and integrate into school after some initial problems. It is harder for wife “Yalini” who has no idea how to act the part of a mother, and is clearly more drawn to the young gang leader whose disabled relative she cares for, rather than the often moody and humourless Dheepan. A hard worker, he suffers in silence over the murder of his real family, and memories of his lost homeland, symbolised by blurred images of an elephant emerging from a dense mass of quivering leaves.

Apart from showing how the threesome relate to each other and the alien culture into which they are thrown, the film draws a parallel between the unexpected violence and gang warfare of the estate, and the fighting and insecurity from which they have tried to escape.

The acting by genuine Sri Lankans is good, even remarkable in view of the main players’ lack of experience. This, together with the tackling of the fraught topic of immigration may account for the winning of the 2015 Palme d’Or prize. The plot is thought-provoking, there are some moments of subtle direction and I was prepared to tolerate a slow pace and perhaps deliberately unclear “fly-on-the-wall” delivery style provided it built up to some climax. However, this proved to be quite implausible and confusing. It may seem trivial, but I was also distracted by such practical questions as how the “mother” and “daughter” so quickly obtained a variety of good quality western and traditional clothes. How did they get to know the Tamil (?) Sri Lankans with whom they celebrated in a Hindu (?) temple with a communal picnic afterwards, and why didn’t they leave the dangerous estate to live with them? The trite final scene also appears to be quite a grave artistic error, detracting from the work.

⭐⭐⭐ 3 Stars

This is my review of Eye In The Sky [DVD] [2016].

British and American forces combine in the use of cutting-edge technology to locate a band of fundamentalist terrorists, with the aim of capturing them alive to stand trial in their countries of origin, making an example of those with UK or US passports. When this proves impossible, single-minded British Colonel played by Helen Mirren is determined not to let them escape, but what are the moral issues stirred up if they are to be wiped out in a drone attack by a “pilot” activating Hellfire missiles from his base thousands of miles away in the States?

Relying on moments of black humour or poignancy rather than gratuitous violence and mindless action, this at times almost unbearably tense drama presents the arguments on both sides, continually dragging the rug of certainty from under our feet, causing us to vacillate as much as the politicians and lawyers one despises for trying to pass the buck. Although it may not be technically accurate, the film highlights a troubling new aspect of war, in which one side can wreak havoc from an office desk with no personal physical risk, as if playing a computer game set in an alien environment with which one feels no connection, yet may at the same time be confronted by the image of an innocent bystander which one might not encounter as a solder in the adrenalin rush of real action on the ground. My only reservation is whether soldiers trained to be tough killers would be quite as sensitive as some of the characters.

Scoring highly on acting, direction and sets, this film is not only gripping but also provides the basis for in-depth discussion on the most effective and “ethical” use of force against extreme terrorism.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 4 Stars