Perfect Strangers

Perfect Strangers is a dinner party movie. In case you haven't seen one, the idea is that at the dinner party some slightly outrageous thing happens, everyone gets stirred up and some dramatic revelations are made about the attendees. What's in a name (which we saw at the film festival in 2012) is a classic example. In that movie, the outrageous thing was a couple announcing that they were going to call their unborn baby Adolphe .

So, in Perfect Strangers we have a group of 30- 40-somethings ( 3 couples and a single guy) meeting for for dinner at the apartment of one of the couples.The men have known each other since they were teenagers so they're old friends. In this case, the outrageous suggestion is that everyone has to disclose to the group any activity on their mobile phone. Texts must be read out, photos must be displayed and calls must be on speaker phone. And to complicate matters slightly, two of the guys swap phones (since they have the same model) so that the unmarried one gets the nude photo on What's App at 10 pm rather than the married one.

There are some laugh-out-loud moments, but probably not enough for what should have been light entertainment. We get to know the characters slightly too well, and they are a little bit too likeable so we can't just rejoice in them getting their come-uppances, we wince at their potential suffering instead. Ultimately, the revelation of too many secrets just made me sad.

Anne's rating 2.5/5

The Wonders

A film about a poor, idiosyncratic bee keeping German-Italian family in rural Italy that centres on the eldest daughter and an odd Italian reality TV show that comes to town; sounds promising. Plenty opportunity for humour and possibly satire of urban life or commercialism (as represented by the TV show) but that is not what we get with The Wonders. Certainly the relationship between 12-year-old Gelsomina and her irascible father Wolfgang is well represented and the three younger sisters attempt to steal the show at times.

But where The Wonders fails is that it has too many plot lines and characters and doesn't do them all justice. For instance Angelica the mother is pretty much a bystander. On the other hand Cocò would not be missed and the mystery of her role within the family is a distraction. The reality TV show plot line doesn't really deliver on any level and is just confusing. The plot line about Martin, the foster child, adds tension to the relationship between Gelsomina and her father, but it is begging to go further.

On the whole this is a film with promise that ends up being a muddle.

Ian's rating 2.5/5 Anne's rating 1/5

The Best Offer

Perfect clothes, perfect furnishings, perfect make-up, perfect looking extras, in other words perfect mise-en-scène. Populated by bunch of off-beat to downright weird characters. Virgil Oldman (Geoffrey Rush) is Italy's premier art auctioneer, always dines at the same restaurant, sitting alone facing the wall while wearing gloves. He is completely confident of his superior knowledge of art, and is not above exploiting that fact to his financial advantage from time to time. One of his two friends is an electro-mechanical genius who can repair or rebuild anything and is a babe magnet. The woman at the centre of the film, Claire Ibbetson, is an agoraphobic who no-one has seen for 10 years. She draws Oldman out of his routine with a bizarre series of phone calls and outrageous requests that no-one else would tolerate. Even some of the minor characters are outlandish.

Actually none of these characters or their situation would be possible in real world and that should cause the penny to start dropping. If they were more realistic I would class The Best Offer as a rom-com, mystery thriller. But given the combination of a magically perfect setting with larger-than-life characters I'm going out on a limb and classifying this as a modern fairytale. It is pity that there isn't a bit more humour.

Even though the film is set in Italy the cast is all English speaking. It is as if the population of Italy has been replaced by British people, though with Italian tastes and Italian clothes! Like art itself there is more style than substance here.

Ian's rating 3/5

The Salt of Life

In Mid-August Lunch Gianni Di Gregorio looked at old women and their demands on the younger generation, as represented by eager-to-please middle aged Gianni (this writer-director doesn't have a lot of imagination with naming his characters).

This time he starts with a similar character (also played by himself and also called Gianni) and takes on the more challenging assignment of exploring a middle-aged man's relationship with women of all ages. Gianni complains to his friend that his is invisible to women. This is not strictly true. He has been forced into early retirement. His wife goes to work leaving him a to-do list. His daughter goes to university leaving him to feed her boyfriend. His cute neighbour is happy to have him walk her dog and do her shopping. While his mother rings him incessantly for various trivial "emergencies". He longs to be taken seriously as a male, rather than taken advantage of as an eager-to-please person. His attempts to make even slightly romantic contact with either younger women or those his own age fail ignominiously. It is not that the women swat him down, they just don't seem to notice that he is trying.

In British or American hands such a comic premise is likely to end up taking a crueller view of either men or women. But this Italian comedy is much gentler on both women and middle age male fantasies.

Ian's rating 4/5

Mid-August Lunch

Italian films (like their French and American counter parts) are noted for their beautiful actresses. But Mid-August Lunch breaks that mould. The average age of the four actresses is 88.

The concept of a guy living with his mother into his middle age or later is a distinctly Italian one. Gianni is leaving middle age behind but certainly not leaving home. He has money worries but otherwise tries to lead a simple life. So he is not prepared for the series of events which lead him and his mother to house and feed three other old women for the August holiday of Ferragosto (an Italian holiday that dates back to the Roman Empire). These four old women are no more happy with the situation and each other than Gianni is. They employ all their skills at bitchiness, hautiness, forgetfulness in trying to get their own way, but it is Gianni's eager-to-please attitude and unexpected help from a drinking buddy that smooths the feathers and unexpectedly turns the awkward situation into a happy feast in a hot and almost deserted Rome.

This is a sweet gentle and very watchable comedy. The only nod to more traditional Italian films is a shot of Gianni on his balcony watching a sweet young thing in a summer dress get into a convertable in the street below.

Ian's rating 3.5/5