The Art of Self-Defense

You are an American guy that has been mugged.

A) Do you buy a gun?
B) Do you enrol in a self-defence class?

Casey (Jesse Eisenberg) faces this decision on his voyage of self-improvement and recovery. Option A is represented by a gun shop salesman with a disturbingly honest sales pitch.

The risk of accidental death drastically increases with a gun in the home. … In a violent confrontation, an armed victim is much more likely to be killed than an unarmed victim. Suicide is more common with gun owners too.

You’re really going to love owning a gun.

Option B is a small Karate Dojo with rituals, 11 rules and students ranging from small kids to intimidating macho brown belts.

The Art of Self-Defense is a remarkably dry, dark comedy populated by everyday, normal characters who are completely over the top. For those that like their comedies to have a serious message, this is not one of those films. This is a film of absurd situations and deadpan one-liners, with the best delivered with impeccable timing and seriousness by Alessandro Nivola as Sensei of the Karate Dojo, but even Casey's answerphone gets in on the act "No one else left you a message". Eisenberg's face, mask-like one moment and quivering with emotion the next plays well against Nivola's impenetrable seriousness.

The Art of Self-Defense has been my favourite film of the 2019 film festival so far and the audience reaction in the Embassy suggests that I wasn't the only person to enjoy it.

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Ian's rating 5/5

The World Is Yours

This year's French comedy is the crime caper The World is Yours which, strangely, has two French titles Le monde est à toi and Le monde ou rien. If you want a nice, polite, politically correct French farce you should move along, there is nothing to see here.

Our protagonist longs to go straight and dreams of opening a Mr. Freeze franchise in North Africa and owning a small house with an outdoor pool. Unfortunately, his family and friends are the criminal underworld of the local Parisian housing estate and his career so far has been committing, aiding and abetting crime. Even when he thinks he has saved enough for a down payment on the franchise his mother's gambling habit intervenes. So he reluctantly accepts the job of driving to Spain to pick some drugs from a Scottish drug lord. Accompanied by his mother's dopy ex-boyfriend, 2 stoned gangsters both called Mohamed and a gold digging semi-girlfriend what could possibly go wrong? And who are you going to call when things do go wrong? Well, mummy of course (played in top scenery chewing form by Isabelle Adjani).

While not the funniest or craziest film at the festival, it has a flare that is missing in the rest of the films I saw in this year's festival. Reminiscent of both Tarantino and Sexy Beast, The World is Yours has us rooting for the underdog as he digs himself deeper and deeper into trouble.

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Ian's rating 3/5 Anne's rating 2.5/5

Mega Time Squad

Mega Time Squad is a slightly fanciful tale set in Thames. Antony Tennet plays John, the feckless employee of local crime boss Shelton. John is prevailed upon to stage a heist against the local triad, and he agrees in order to impress Shelton's sister. A Chinese bracelet stolen along with a tyre-full of money gives John the ability to duplicate himself and travel backwards in time, and this leads to many a comic moment and general silliness. There are car chases, guns, violence and swearing but this film  comes across as benign and life-affirming.

Mega Time Squad was sequestered in the incredibly strange section of the film festival programme, which seems like a potentially audience-limiting decision. While not as main-stream or high budget as, say, Sione's Wedding, it was at least on par with How To Meet Girls From a Distance and shared many qualities with both those films - especially how the characters talk, behave and interact. A more accurate description than incredibly strange would be fast-paced , off-beat comedy. Despite the film festival's categorization, it's coming out on general release later in the year.

Director/Writer Tim van Dammen says "Mega Time Squad celebrates Kiwi-ness, particularly the way Kiwis speak" and that was a very enjoyable aspect of the film. The scenario of the self-confident obnoxious individual who surrounds himself with  self-effacing conflict-averse characters is one we're all familiar with  and Jonny Brugh does an excellent job playing the obnoxious Shelton.  I liked the escapist element and the recognisable setting. We've spent a lot of time in Thames and it's always fun to see somewhere you're familiar with on screen.

It's fair to say I loved Mega Time Squad. I really can't think about it without smiling

Anne's rating 4.5/5. Ian's rating 3/5

Woman at War

Hella is a much-loved choirmaster and secret eco-warrior. She also has a 3 piece band that appears wherever she is to provide a soundtrack for her life and when they aren't available there are 3 Ukranian women in national costume to sing instead. These are slightly surreal aspects to Woman at War, this year's Icelandic comedy. Hella's eco-warrior activities mostly revolve around shorting out high-voltage powerlines feeding a steel (or aluminium) plant. Her life is complicated when an application to adopt a Ukranian orphan four years earlier is suddenly accepted. Our quixotic heroine is undaunted by the forces of the government and nature.

This is a laid back, light hearted shaggy dog story, which will teach you a couple of new uses for dead sheep and how to shoplift a typewriter. There is also an unfortunate Spanish speaking cycle tourist who is always in the wrong place at the wrong time and you will see and hear a Helicon.

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Ian's rating 3.5/5

Shoplifters

Shoplifters is the most popular film in Japan so far this year. It also won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival this year.

The Shoplifters are a family that supplements their menial jobs with petty crime. One night they come across a little girl who is cold, hungry and apparently abandoned. They notice her bruises and decide to informally adopt her without involving the authorities who might ask awkward questions about their criminal activities. For a while things work. Summer arrives, the family goes to the beach. Everything looks good until the wheels fall off and the police get involved.

Shoplifters is a gentle comedy that humanises a bunch of people at the margin of society. It helps that it stars two very cute little children. It also raises an awkward question about what should authorities do with a child that has been illegally adopted or stolen but brought up very well by parents who acquired the child illicitly. What is the best for that child?

I noticed that the Society to Prevent Shoplifting is mentioned in the credits.

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Ian's rating 4/5 Anne's rating 3/5

The Party

The opening credits roll to the slowest and most laid back rendition of Jerusalem I've heard, played on an electric guitar. We are ushered into the preparations for a small cocktail party to celebrate Janet's promotion to health minister in a fictional British Labour Government. While Janet (Kristin Scott Thomas) is joyfully juggling canapés and her cellphone in the kitchen, her unshaven husband Bill (Timothy Spall) is morosely drinking red wine in the lounge and changing LPs on the record player. Gradually the other guests (two and half other mismatched couples) arrive: her cynical best friend and some time adviser, April (Patricia Clarkson) and partner Gottfried (a German new-age life coach), another friend Martha (followed later by her younger partner Jinny) and young banker Tom (who is +1 to his delayed wife).

Filmed in black and white, The Party is a film from the dinner-party-from-hell genre. Where verbal jousting forms the bulk of the action. It's main departure from the genre is the lack of dinning room. The action taking place in the kitchen, lounge, bathroom and tiny garden of a London terrace house.

Beneath an all too easily shredded veneer of friendship, respectability, fidelity and good manners, lies contempt, insecurity, hypocrisy etc. The celebration of Janet's promotion descends rapidly into back biting and farce. The political and religious beliefs of the hosts and their guests seem barely skin deep.

The four female characters are all reasonably believable as four women who live in and around politics. Less believable are the three male characters, especially Bill who we are told is an atheist and an academic who has been offered a professorship at Yale but who comes across like someone with no beliefs, no life experience and an incomplete high school education. Tom, who arrives having just found out that his wife has been having an affair, is highly agitated but not angry at either her or her lover. Gottfried is a man without self awareness and whose education and outlook on life seems to have been gained from the lunatic fringe of Facebook, is not entirely unbelievable but it is unbelievable that he and Alice could have ever met let alone formed a relationship.

It is easy to see The Party as lampooning the post-Blair, pre-Corbyn Labour Party and others in the left leaning upper middle class around the world. But the political overtones are fairly light and it is essentially a film where four women get to be bitchy, in a classy way, about each other (and sometimes their menfolk) over a glass of champagne. At 71 minutes it doesn't outstay its welcome.

Ian's rating 2.5/5

A Date for Mad Mary

Mary is getting out of jail just in time to be maid of honour at her best friend's wedding. Mary has a take-no-nonsense, never-back-down, have-a-good-time attitude to life and she really misses her best friend Charlene. But while Charlene has organised a fast food job for Mary, she is super busy organising her wedding and has no time to go drinking with her buddy. Everyone also assumes that because Mary has been in jail and has never had time for boyfriends, that she won't be bringing a +1. Mary is of course outraged that people including her best friend assume she won't have a +1 in time for the wedding.

A Date for Mad Mary is an Irish romcom set on the wrong side of the bus shelter. Mary (known from a safe distance as Mad Mary) lives with her mother and grandmother. The latter giving us a clue to the origin of Mary's personality by dropping the line "even a sniper wouldn't take you out" into casual conversation.

The film is punctuated by Mary writing and rehearsing her maid of honour speech about Charlene which provides the only clues to what their relationship was like before Mary went to jail. Which is necessary as there are no signs of the inseparable good-time-girls now, with most communication done by text message and voice mail.

If A Date for Mad Mary was only about the ever more desperate attempts to find a man to go to the wedding with her and pretend to be her boyfriend, or her attempts to get past the bouncers at her favourite night club it would be funny but there wouldn't be any character development. Though Mary is happiest dancing to loud music while drunk she has also been tasked with wrangling the somewhat unreliable wedding photographer, who unwittingly sets Mary on a path of self discovery.

Ian's rating 4/5 Anne's rating 4/5

Kiki, Love to Love

Some people are turned on by the oddest things. Other people prefer to come up with fancy names for such paraphilia. Kiki, Love to Love is a Spanish comedy composed of a number of short stories about people coming to terms with their or their partner's kinky quirks.

Of course sexual hangups are a staple of comedy and it seems that the Spanish are as reticent as English speakers when it comes to talking about sex. Some of the characters know what their kink is and just need to find some way of indulging it, others find out that they are kinky during the film. For instance, only when someone dies does one woman find out how much she is turned on by seeing her husband crying (Dacryphilia). She spends the rest of the film trying to make him cry again.

Despite the subject matter, the choice of kinks is unlikely to make most people squeamish and the body exposure doesn't go beyond young firm breasts and implied nudity. Overall the message is it is OK to be kinky and the final fiesta scene emphasises this.

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Ian's rating 3.5/5

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

Thithi

Century Gowda's death is the first event in Thithi and is preceded by a brief snippet of his life. This seems to consist of haranguing and insulting everyone he comes across. Century Gowda is described as a cantankerous centenarian but I'd call him a miserable old git. I think I was supposed to find him (and many of the characters) endearing, but I didn't. Century's main relevance to the plot is the five acres of farm land that he owned.

Century is survived by three generations - his son Gadappa, his grandson Thamanna and his great-grandson Abhi. The five acres technically belong to Gadappa but he's a bit of a free spirit whose favourite hobbies are drinking, smoking and playing games and he's not interested in the land. Nor is he interested in signing the land over to his son, who is chiefly interested in selling it. Abhi  leans more towards the free spirit side of the family - his hobbies appear to be playing cards and pursuing the girl of his dreams.

A thithi is a kind of post-funeral ceremomy which takes place 11 days after the death and cremation. The local astrologer says five hundred people must be invited. and and it's expected that they are fed very well. The film covers the eleven days leading up to the thithi and the family machinations that take place. Thamanna decides to fake Gadappa's death so he can sell the land. He borrows money in anticipation of the sale and pays Gadappa to disappear. He gives Abhi some of the money to buy three sheep for the thithi feast. Gadappa does a poor job of disappearing and Abhi loses the sheep money gambling on cards. I struggled to care. In the right circumstances this would be a comedy of errors but it just seemed like a bunch of mean-spirited people (nearly all the characters spent the whole movie complaining) got what they deserved. Avoid.

Anne's rating 1.5/5 Ian's rating 3/5

Chronesthesia

The urge to support the underdog and the home product can lend a rose tint to reviewing a Wellington zero budget film. Hayden Weal worked with a small cast (taking the lead role himself) and smaller crew; and makes his audience work a little harder than most directors to follow half a dozen story threads and some time travelling. But it is worth the effort as he brings all the story threads together and binds them into a satisfactory conclusion.

Initially the story feels like a directionless mess, rather like its slacker protagonist's life. But gradually the various story elements come together as Dan starts to take control. The supporting cast is divided into those that act like they exist to further the plot and those that act like bystanders that Dan has some how irritated. This adds a degree of realism often missing from other films.

Dan lives a quiet life. He works making coffee in a cafe and spends the rest of the day alone at home or running the streets of Wellington while listening to music on his headphones. Then one morning he wakes to find a confusing message written on the inside of his bedroom window. This leads him out of the rut his life has become and he discovers other people who are living lives that resemble his in one way or another. He sets out on a mission of sorts and he learns that messing with other people's lives has good and bad consequences.

Chronesthesia is, more or less, the idea that some people can remember the future (a sort of mental time travel).

Compared with other Wellington made films this one is well acted, tells a slightly unusual but simple story in an interesting way with (mostly) believable characters.  Wellingtonians can try to identify all the locations in this almost entirely outdoor film.  I hope to see it come back after the Film Festival as it deserves a similar audience to What We Do In the Shadows.

Ian's rating 4/5 Anne's rating 4/5

Toni Erdmann

The Germans are not famous for their sense of humour or, as far as I'm aware their comedy films. Go for Zucker is the only German Comedy I can remember seeing so I didn't know what I was going to get with Toni Erdmann. There was also the slight concern that it was two hours and forty-two minutes long which is a pretty long time if it wasn't funny.

I think you'd call Toni Erdmann a father-daughter comedy, or perhaps an embarrassing parent comedy. Winfried (the embarrassing parent) decides his only daughter Ines is too career-oriented to be a satisfactory child and that he will go to Romania ( where she lives and works)  to sort her out. Winfried is a practical joker from way back and never goes anywhere without his joke false teeth and so a visit from him should be viewed with trepidation. He dons a wig and the aforementioned false teeth and gatecrashes a number of Ines' work functions pretending to be a life coach. Not all her colleagues are convinced , but they do play along.

Gradually Winfried does get Ines to loosen up and the film's best comedic moments ensue. Watching Ines' nude birthday brunch is a thing I will always treasure and it's worth waiting for. The delivery was mostly deadpan (unlike your average French comedy) and as its length suggests, it wasn't fast-paced. There was plenty of silliness and plenty of physical comedy to make up for the lack of speed and the film has more heart than many comedies. There are fart cushions and fake handcuffs and silly outfits and Ines' and Winfried's relationship is cemented as a result. My second German comedy was definitely a rewarding watch

Anne's rating 3.5/5

The Brand New Testament

The Brand New Testament is billed as a surrealist film, which should have put me off it. I have found surrealist films polarising, I love them or am very bored and confused by them. Mostly the latter.

God is alive and well and living in an apartment in Brussels with his wife and daughter, Éa. He controls events that happen (those events outside human control) with his PC from a filing cabinet lined room. To his daughter's frustration there is no door between the apartment and the world outside. Éa is keen to escape the apartment and her father's corporal punishment like her her better known older brother JC. Once she does escape she sets out to recruit six disciples and leave behind a written account of their adventures together, hence the name of the film.

Knowledge of Christianity is probably a disadvantage when it comes to watching this film. Apart from the concept that a child could confuse an overbearing parent with an adult's explanation of an omnipotent God, plus some pop culture ideas on God's responsibility for what is wrong with the world, it doesn't pay to try and dig too deeply into the premise behind this film. Just enjoy this quirky film about a girl's rebellion against her dad and her surreal adventure with a bunch of more or less abnormal people and a gorilla.

Ian's rating 3.5/5

Turbo Kid

While Turbo Kid is a Canadian film it is set in an anonymous semi-industrial, post-apocalyptic wasteland. A world were people live off the refuse of the the twentieth century, water is scarce and control of the water supply is the source of power.

Turbo Kid has its roots in an era when BMX bikes were cool and comics were read by kids, and not by middle aged men. Our hero is a young scavenger. An orphan who dreams of rescuing a girl in the manner of his favourite comic book hero. When he finally meets a girl (overly friendly and enthusiastic, pink haired Apple) he is nonplussed, but Apple's kidnap by Zeus's henchmen spurs him into action. He is reluctantly assisted by an itinerant arm-wrestling champion.

The action in this film is accompanied by BMX chases, fantastic improvised weapons, gore and fountains of blood. Some of the violence is not for the squeamish, even though it is intended to be funny.

Michael Ironside plays evil Zeus with relish, channeling the best of B-movie and James Bond villain sadism, revenge and gloating, surrounded by his BMX riding henchmen (and woman). As the man with his hand on the tap, he supplies water and sadistic entertainment to the local population. As each of his henchmen are bumped off Zeus and The Kid are brought closer and closer to face each other in the final denouement.

Turbo Kid doesn't take itself seriously. It is out to entertain us as if it were the love child of Spielberg and Tarantino.


Ian's rating 4/5 Anne's rating 3.5/5

The Noble Family

Javi, Cha and Bárbara

A super rich father realises that his live-at-home adult kids are spoiled. To teach them a lesson he stages financial ruin and convinces them to join him on the run from angry creditors. The Noble Family (also known by the direct translation We Are The Nobles) is a Mexican farce that makes fun of the super rich with broad humour. The premise is not particularly fresh (based on a 1949 Mexican film The Great Madcap). Off the top of my head I can't think of what film it reminds me of most closely, but many movies such as The Valet and Welcome to the Sticks involve ridiculous conspiracies. It pays not to think about such plots too closely and go with the flow. Fortunately film is fast paced and the characters in particular Germán the father and Bárbara his daughter are engaging.

Germán takes the kids to his father's derelict house in the sort of Mexico City suburb they would normally be too frightened to go near. He wants them to find jobs while he gets on with the DIY. The film has a soft heart and the kids find ways of coping with life on the other side of the tracks. Living in such close proximity to his kids for the first time in years leads Germán to learn surprising things about them.

As this is a comedy everything gets nicely wrapped up at the end. But I felt all through the film that problems got solved rather too quickly and neatly, as if the director was always in too much of a hurry to get on with the next scene.

If you are a native Spanish speaker there is a running gag about Spanish versus Mexican accents that gets lost in translation.

Watch through the credits for the final scene.

Ian's rating 3/5 Anne's rating 2.5/5

Club Sándwich

Club Sándwich is a Mexican homage to the indolence and inarticulateness of teenagers. Chubby 15 year old Hector and his 30 something solo mum Paloma are having a cheap off season holiday at an otherwise empty holiday resort. They are both completely comfortable in each others company and Hector is only slightly bored with lying about. Director Fernando Eimbcke gives us more than a taste of Hector's boredom before introducing the almost equally well padded Jazmín.

Hector is just old enough to lust without knowing what to do next. Jazmín turns out to be Hector's equal as a conversationalist but has a sly line in glacially slow seduction moves. Meanwhile Paloma is figuring out how to deal with this new development in the life of her "honey bun". While Paloma blunders a little bit she admirably figures out when to withdraw from the battle for her son's affection, hence maintaining the balance between protection of the innocent (or is it her preservation of a little boy who no longer is?) and loosening the apron strings without loosing her place as mother and best friend.

The pacing is slow, the non-panning camera keeps us distant (even in close up). The humour is mostly observational and more than balances out the sad spot or two. Club Sándwich is definitely a nostalgic film for adults rather than a teen movie.

Ian's rating 2.5/5

In Order of Disappearance

Nils Dickman (and yes, you are supposed to find his name amusing) is a dour fifty-ish snow plough driver whose only son is murdered by a local drug syndicate at the beginning of the movie. His marriage is unable to withstand the loss and Nils' wife moves out, leaving a particularly expressive note. Nils applies himself to avenging his son's death and works his way systematically up the syndicate, starting with killing the heavy who committed the murder and moving all the way to the top.

You may think this doesn't sound wholesome or amusing and you'd be both right and wrong. This is certainly not a wholesome film but it is funny. There's the dedication with which Nils applies himself to the task at hand. Other comedic aspects the disposal of the corpses (wrapping them in chicken wire and chucking them over a spectacular waterfall) and Nils getting tired during the third killing and having to take a breather before finishing the job.The head of the drug syndicate is called the Count, and he is pretty funny - a long haired immaculately dressed vegan who fights with his wife over child custody arrangements.

The Count, bringing coffee for the team.

The Norwegian winter landscape is spectacular and the snow plough adds a certain je ne sais quoi to car chase scenes. The contrast between The Count and the head of the opposing drug syndicate (an avuncular older Serbian who wears a fur hat) is enjoyable. The plot has certain similarities to the French film The Ax but the execution (pun intended) is different. Watch the Trailer - this is an action flick with droll Nordic flavour, and it's fun.

Anne's rating 4/5 Ian's rating 4/5

The Trip to Italy

The Trip to Italy  (TTTI)  reunites the stars of, The Trip and takes them to (yes, you guessed it) Italy. The premise is essentially the same (go on a scenic gastronomic tour) but this time the stars go together on purpose because of the success of the newspaper articles about the previous trip.

I think I should say first up that I did really enjoy this film and it is very funny and there is no reason not to go to it. However, it is a bit lazy and it could have been even better. If we look at the five layers of entertainment potential I discussed in my blog about The Trip you can see why that is. The first layer is the scenery and of course Italy is lovely to look at. Their accommodation is a level up from the British version and is generally beautiful and historic. There's a bit of a theme of visiting the haunts of ex-pat English poets which adds a bit of interest.

The second layer is that of putting two funny people together to amuse us. This is TTTI's big strength. The jokes are good. There are more impressions (Hugh Grant, Batman, Marlon Brando, Al Pacino,  more Michael Caine, and the little man in a box) and there are amusing monologues.The third layer, the investigation of Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon's relationship and of them as people is where the film starts to fall down. If you want to be blunt, you could call this aspect the plot and the film's downfall is the lack of it. There's an inference that Steve Coogan has tidied up his act (hasn't been drinking for about six months) and he doesn't bonk the first attractive woman they meet), but we don't get any detail about that. And then its seems as if  someone said , "tell you what, let's make Rob Brydon's character the one who has casual sex" without really considering what that would add to the film or the dynamic, or if they considered it, didn't actually write it into the script.. Having done that, then Yolanda, the photographer from the first film is brought back which you'd think would make things interesting, but nothing happens and nothing is added to the plot. And Steve Coogan's son arrives from Spain (which is used to explain why they don't go to Sicily) and you think THAT might be a plot development, but no, the credits roll and you wonder why that happened.

(After I wrote the last paragraph I watched Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon in an interview about The Trip to Italy on Youtube and apparently there was no script - Michael Winterbottom just outlined the premise and the actors had to improvise. This does explain the lack of plot.)

As in the first film, the food is merely background interest, although a wine called furore does provide fodder for some jokes. Unlike the first film, any celebration of englishness is only cursory, but there is some examination of aging which is amusing and well-done. So there we are - a very funny film, but only thought provoking in the sense that you think about how it could have been better. And now that I know it was improvised, to reflect that it's perhaps surprisingly cohesive.


Anne's rating 3/5 Ian's rating 3/5.

The Gilded Cage

It's hard to write a review of The Gilded Cage without damning it with faint praise. While it was a perfectly satisfactory entertainment experience I can't help comparing it unfavourably with other more compelling French comedies.

Maria and Jose are well-assimilated Portuguese immigrants who have lived in Paris for the last thirty years. and their children were born in France.They're the caretakers of an apartment building and they live on site. Caretaking is Maria's full-time job whereas Jose is the foreman for a construction firm. Jose's estranged brother dies and leaves them the family home and business in Portugal on the proviso that they reside there. The dilemma they face is that having spent the last thirty years working hard and looking after other people they're not sure they'll be comfortable just looking after themselves. And having grown up in France, their children are not that keen to come.

Initially, Jose and Maria keep the news of their inheritance to themselves but Maria's sister reads the solicitor's letter when she's visiting and tells everyone she can think of  - in strict confidence, of course. So the residents of the apartment building and Jose's boss exert themselves to try and make Jose and Maria stay in Paris, which is all very self-centred of them. The other major plot strand is that Jose and Maria's daughter is dating/bonking  Jose's bosses son. In seems that the daughter of a Portuguese immigrant should not be consorting with a businessman's son ( read have a relationship outside their own social class and possibly also ethnic group) and they've gone to great lengths to keep the relationship secret.

The plot is really the downfall of the movie. To a New Zealand audience at least, the class difference aspect seems desperately old-fashioned and Jose and Maria's dilemma seems a bit of a no-brainer, so the drama is not that gripping. On the other hand, the plot isn't silly enough and the conspiracy of the friends and residents not funny enough for it to be one of the splendid farces that the French are so good at. That said the main characters are quite likeable, the film is amusing and there's a most satisfactory happy ending. It's a kind of celebration of the people in everyday life - family, friends, neighbours and co-workers and how they contribute to quality of your existence.

Anne's rating 2.5/5, Ian's rating 3/5.

Much Ado About Nothing

Last year I complained that Joss Whedon had short changed Amy Acker in The Cabin in the Woods. This year he has made it up to her by giving her the role of Beatrice in his Much Ado About Nothing. She is more convincing with her jibes about love and about Benedick than he is in return. But Alexis Denisof (Wesley Wyndam-Pryce from Buffy and Angel) has the edge over her when it comes to being silly, especially the physically comedy in the hiding scene.

Shakespeare often puts in pantomime comedy scenes with buffoon characters. Chief buffoon in Much Ado About Nothing is Nathan Fillion as Dogberry (head of the night watch) who steals all the scenes he's in. It is a pity Shakespeare made the part of Don John (the Bastard Prince) is so small because cupcake thieving Sean Maher looks perfect as the evil schemer with Riki Lindhome, showing plenty of leg, as Conrade his sulky girlfriend.

The story goes that Joss Whedon likes to host play reading evenings for his actor friends. So as a wedding anniversary gift to himself he decided to one step further and film Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing in his house, using his actor friends on the cheap. While the script is straight up Shakespeare, the setting is a Californian house party with the men in suits and the music provided by Ipods.


Initially the modern setting makes Shakespeare's language sound alien, but you quickly get used to it and find the familiar setting make it easier to understand what he was trying to say. I can see this film being used to make Much Ado About Nothing more understandable to today's school kids. Though Dogberry and his fellow watchmen seem over the top in a modern setting. There are minor changes to Shakespeare's original script, Antonio has been dropped and Conrad is now a woman.

On the other hand I don't understand the reasons for filming in black and white.

Trailer

Ian's rating 3.5/5