Film Reviews by PD

This extraordinary piece, the second offering from Icelandic writer-director Hlynur Palmason, revolves around Ingimundur, a former police chief, who unravels after his wife dies in a strange accident and then comes to suspect that she was having an affair with a younger colleague. At times, ' White, White Day' brings to mind a cinematic version of Edvard Munch’s The Scream - there's an awful lot of barely suppressed angst you just know will explode at some point. But Palmason is in no rush at all (for those wanting 'action' look away now) and pushes his disturbing story in unexpected directions both dramatically and stylistically.

The grimly hypnotic opening at once suggests that Palmason is up to something out of the ordinary as we are advised that, “The dead can still talk to those who are still living on certain days when the white of the sky matches the white on the ground.” Even more arresting is the imaginative way the director then suggests the passage of time by repeatedly flashing a collection of the same landscape compositions in different seasons; with this and some forthright exposition, the film announces its intention to do things a bit differently.

The heart of the film is a stand-out performance from Ingvar Eggert Sigurdsson, who is absolutely terrific as Ingimundur, giving, aka Ben Affleck in 'Manchester by the Sea', a thoroughly convincing display of the demon that is grief, whether expressed inwardly by fixing up a house, or outwardly by smashing up a computer after a counsellor has driven him to distraction, whilst his relationship with his 9-year old granddaughter Salka, superbly played by Ida Mekkin Hlinsdotti, steals whole scenes.

There's some awkward moments, particularly towards the rather incongrously melodramatic final section, and the cathartic resolution is all a bit convenient, but it’s generally strong stuff and, especially early on, Palmason engages in storytelling that's worthy of some the great modern directors. Impressive.

A not-too subtle anger runs through the feature debut of Algerian director Mounia Meddour, which centers around Nedjma, a student in an Algiers girls’ university hall of residence in the 1990s, who is determined to put on a fashion show as an act of defiance against the rising Islamist tide: female self-expression being denied both by enemies and so-called friends.

Lyna Khoudriv delivers a fine, fiery performance as Nedjma, and a clever strand is the inventive, pointed way in which clothes and textiles are used as metaphors both for female constraints and female defiance - the sight of Nedjma with pins sticking out of her mouth, transforming a ’haik’ (the traditional Maghrebi women’s robe) into a seductive ball dress, is a particularly telling image. There’s plenty of warmth and good humour alongside the darker notes, but what the film power lies mostly in revealing Nedjma's fury at the way a country she loves is being hijacked by bigots.

There's some rather awkward plot twists, and the last section is all a bit forced and melodramatic, but overall an intriguing, powerful piece of filmaking.

This film from Haifaa al-Mansour centres around plucky young Saudi Arabian doctor Maryam (Mila Al Zahrani), who makes an impulsive decision to run for her local municipal council seat. In a nation where women are not even welcome to openly address a congregation of men, it’s a bold move, even if the last decade has seen a relaxing of strict laws concerning travel, driving and employment. As a doctor in an overcrowded local walk-in clinic, Maryam carries herself with admirable confidence, but she meets obstacles frequently, inevitably resenting that she can’t aspire to higher aims in the medical field or find a chance to prove her worth to her society at large.

The film's matter-of-fact, unsentimental tone is successful, and there are some really good scenes, notably one in an airport where Maryam is faced with the humiliation of not being able to travel to an outdated permit which needs renewing by her father, and a niqab fashion show, which offers a pointed and positive representation of a garment that has been fraught with negative political meaning. Much of the film focuses on the connective tissue between Maryam and her sisters, who have not long ago lost their mother and also have a close relationship with their musician father, although this theme is a tad too rose-tinted to be entirely convincing.

The film may be rather gentle to leave a lasting impression, and it's all a bit convenient the way Maryam is reconciled to the world around her so quickly, given how judgemental we keep being told it is by the characters; indeed, we are shown very little regarding the fallout of her decision: perhaps al-Mansour is working too hard to gain approval for her character’s strident feminism. Nevertheless, all in all it's a likable exploration of female optimism and democratic willpower in a deeply conservative society, and the final shot is absolutely terrific.

In this low-key piece, hard-working Inga (Arndís Hrönn Egilsdóttir) courageously sacrifices her livelihood to speak out against the corruption and injustice at work in her community. As with writer-director Grímur Hákonarson’s previous film “Rams,” it probes a deeply rooted rural culture that is closely connected to the Icelandic national spirit, while championing traditional Icelandic values over the exploitative underside of capitalism. The film is also pleasingly full of feisty female energy and imagery as Inga, in David v Goliath fashion, takes on scheming co-op boss Eyjólfur and his heavy-set enforcer Leifur.

Once again showing a keen eye for detail, Hákonarson naturalistically presents the rigours of farm work, the plainness of his solitary protagonists’ lives and their affection for their cows. Spot-on production design by Bjarni Massi Sigurbjornsson supplies comfortable, lived-in interiors for the dairy farmers that look as if they haven’t changed since the 1940s, but which present a marked contrast to the classy open rooms and art of Eyjólfur’s water-view home and his stable of expensive horses. In her first leading film role, Egilsdóttir makes Inga a sympathetic and convincing earth mother - one early shot of the film is her helping a cow to calf; but she also knows how to use a gun and operate the big rigs. Meanwhile, her antagonists are not reduced to pantomime villains, although perhaps more could have done been to present the 'case against' as it were. Highly watchable.

Mmm .......... writer-director Jennifer Kent wants to rage against historical injustice here, but unfortunately it all falls a bit flat, perhaps as a result of wanting to do too much.

Set in colonial Australia / Tasmania, it's laid on on with a trowel that the English use Irish prisoners as slaves and “civilise” the native population by exterminating them ... mmm .... and Aisling Franciosi as revenge-seeking Clare, is, I'm afraid, not very convincing (we're obviously on her side, but I wouldn't bet on her to ride a horse for 20 paces, let alone shoot anyone). And then just when you think it might build up to something important it builds up to a ridiculous (and bafflingly male-centred given the appealing 'feminist' premise) ending.

The important theme of the sordid history of English colonialism is unfortunately packed into one cartoonish character, and this has the effect of leaving us with little to think about. So, in the meandering last half hour (we're kept for over 2 hours, and it felt like it) any power that some scenes have had (and there are many) is dissipated in a truly awful melodramatic, cliched finale. So all in all a bit of a disappointment from a fine director.

Starts off vaguely promisingly, but gradually reveals itself for what it is - a terribly lame, laughably bad piece that's trying very hard to take itself seriously but seems to have been created by a bunch of university film students during a weekend consisting of too much to drink and overdosing dubious substances. It's not historically interesting in the slightest, gets progressively more moronic as it goes along, and builds up to a crudely executed ending which reminded me of those Monty Python sketches involving blood spurting everywhere. Add to all of this a truly horrible and intrusive score, embarrassingly bad and truly cringe worthy sex scenes, and some of the most cliched hammy acting I've seen for years, you do wonder what on earth Peake and Dance thought they were doing. Nice costumes, but that's about it. Absolute drivel.

This piece stars Glenda Jackson who gives a strong performance in depicting the inner life of the protagonist Maud, whose mind is being slowly devastated by dementia.

Adapted from the novel by Emma Healey in which Maud is the unreliable narrator, the heart of the plot is Maud's concern about her elderly friend, Elizabeth, who has failed to turn up at their regular meeting place, and worries she might have come to harm. But no one else seems bothered, least of all Maud’s daughter, Helen, who has enough on her plate just keeping tabs on her mother, and Elizabeth’s son, who unsurprisingly doesn’t welcome being harangued on the phone at three in the morning. In a bid to organise the chaos of her mind, Maud is forever writing messages to herself. Thus, post-it notes line her walls and pockets, through which she can make sense of the world and, it is hoped, unravel the mystery of her missing friend. “I haven’t lost my marbles though everybody seems to think I have. Nobody listens to me,” Maud grumbles to her granddaughter. Rarely off the screen, Jackson is remarkable, playing Maud not as a benign and crinkly grandma but a proud woman unmoored and rendered increasingly impatient and volatile. Sitting in a restaurant with her family, she smashes a plate and emits a silent scream, her face and body contorting with frustration, whilst later, we watch her claw at the front door, as Helen, fearing she might go wandering, locks her in her house overnight - the film is good at showing us how dementia eats away not just at memory but identity and empathy. The pain of these losses are sharply drawn here, both in Maud and her family who mourn the mother and grandmother they once knew, and the film is all the better for being totally unsentimental and (generally) free of melodrama.

Unfortunately, all this is rather undermined by a much weaker parallel narrative set in the late 1940s, in which we meet young Maud along with her glamorous older sister, Sukey. I realise the background story is there so we can build and feel a connection with Maud as a real person and that Maud's sisters disappearance played a part in Maud's later life, but for me there's way too much about Sukey, who I couldn't care less about, and the tv soap-style suburban murder mystery element (which includes a truly ridiculous 'big reveal' near the end) for me is a big, and unnecessary, distraction from the generally powerful central theme. This got me thinking why the author/director felt it necessary to include such a 'heavy' sub-plot - is the present-day material not 'entertaining' enough? Or is it that they think the audience can't bear to watch it for a sustained period? Either way, it rather defeats what I presume the main the object is - namely, to show the variety of sorrows dementia causes, and to empathise with someone suffering from it.

This first feature from director Claire Oakley is a highly watchable, original piece, being a tense, psychological drama with coming-of-age elements and a sprinkling of sinister surrealism. It's very successful in creating a tangible sense of atmosphere and discomfort through clever filmmaking and a subtle but highly absorbing lead performance by Molly Windsor as 18-year-old Ruth. The off-season Cornish caravan site setting is truly inspired, with Oakley, along with cinematographer Nick Cooke, turning a campsite into a nightmare (fumigated caravans covered in polythene feel like crime scenes) as Ruth tries to come to terms with new desires and who she really is. Though the film is quite short you don't get the feeling of anything particularly rushed or contrived for effect, the director taking her time to explore Ruth's repressions and desires via her relationships with boyfriend Tom and, especially, her new friend, the vivacious Jade, who, on the surface, is everything that Ruth isn’t, i.e. confident and liberated. By turns, Jade brings out something of herself in Ruth, much the chagrin of Tom and his gross workmate, Kai.

Fantasy and reality become increasingly indistinguishable as Ruth’s friendship with Jade develops, the film becoming increasingly impressionistic, and whilst the ending may well be a tad cliched, the build up to it is beautifully done. Impressive stuff.

This very subtle but extremely powerful film shows us a day in the life of Jane, a young graduate who has started working at a film production company with the goal of ultimately becoming a producer. The film starts as it means to go on, with Jane walking into the office first thing in the morning, director Kitty Green spending the first 20 minutes showing Jane's many mundane duties (taking calls, booking cars, cleaning floors, stacking bottles, washing dishes etc) in real time. But for whom is she doing all this? All we get is an important “he” who everyone knows, everyone wants to impress and everyone talks about - the fact that we don’t get his name or his face is a clever touch.

There's not much in the way of 'plot' which might frustrate many (and clearly has some press reviewers!), but the film is strongest in its silences, entirely in control of a subtext that screams without making a sound; it's clearly inspired by stories of Harvey Weinstein’s years of criminal behaviour with women in the film industry, but there's little direct reference to this, or in fact to any names that might seem too familiar other than a film festival (Cannes) or a crime scene (Beverly Hills’ Peninsula hotel). This approach works brilliantly, as it treats the viewer as intelligent enough to read between the lines and shout back at the screen with every micro-aggression thrown at Julia, even when she won’t let herself say anything. The most compelling scene sees her come close to breaking, as she sits across the desk of HR manager Wilcock, whose low-key but terrifying dismissal of Jane's complaints are compounded by his attempt to turn the tables on her and make her seem like the one in the wrong. Back in the office, meanwhile, her co-workers treat it all as a joke - the complicity of everyone in the company being obviously one of the main issues the film explicitly criticises.

Julia Garner is wonderful in the role, her facial expressions always speak volumes; her eyes seeming to remain dry through arduous effort. She makes it easy for us to draw parallels with so many real-life stories of distrusted women staying silent in unfair situations for too long. Without cliche, without melodrama, the film portrays an ongoing cultural evil with intelligence and some sophistication.

Leigh Whannell’s new, loose adaptation of H. G. Wells’s 1897 novel begins with a backstory of abuse. Elisabeth Moss plays Cecilia Kass, an architect who, in the first scene, stealthily and fearfully escapes from a gated and electronically guarded oceanfront compound, in Northern California, where she lives with her boyfriend, Adrian, a fabulously wealthy inventor who specialises in optics. Adrian’s abusive violence is quickly in evidence when he punches his fist through the window of the escape vehicle—driven by Cecilia’s sister Emily. Cecilia takes refuge in the home of her friend James, a police officer, and his teenage daughter, and stays there in a state of panic, unwilling even to set foot outside for fear that Adrian is spying on her and planning to harm her. Adrian’s house is decked out with a panoply of security cameras and other devices, and she left him because of the devastating methods of surveillance and control—of psychological manipulation—to which he subjected her. Adrian “controlled how I looked,” she tells James and Emily, and also what she wore and ate, and when she went out; then, she adds, he controlled what she said and was trying to control what she thought. What’s more, she says that he wanted her to have his child—and, knowing that, with a child, she’d be essentially tied to him for life, she secretly took birth-control pills.

Cecilia’s fears are, she thinks, finally put to rest, soon thereafter, when Adrian turns up dead at his home; but of course things get progressively creepy from this point, with the effect that makes Cecilia begin to doubt her sanity (and making those around her doubt it, too). Whannell concocts these schemes with clever attentiveness to the role of current technology; mobile phones, laptops, passwords, and various security devices all play crucial and natural roles in the action. At the same time, there are other tricks that are powerfully imaginative if yet left undeveloped visually and thematically.

The plot-centred nature of the film is undoubtedly its strength but also its basic trouble. Whannall comes up with some neat, clever twists that give rise to both great suspense and some keenly defined moral themes, notably when Cecilia plans to turn the tables and exact revenge, whilst several sequences make clever use of the edges of the frame in relation to surveillance devices. For all this, however, the characters are given little identity, little personality. Though the film rests heavily on its backstory, its protagonist has virtually no substance: though it almost entirely takes Cecilia’s point of view, what she knows, remembers, what her insights are, are unknown to us. So all in all, watchable enough with many good moments (although a big suspension of disbelief is often required!), but for me an intriguing idea that hasn't been fully realised.

This film tells the little-known but important tale of Norwegian-born Sonja Wigert. She established herself as one of Scandinavia’s most famous actresses, but her visible success during the Nazi occupation of her home country blighted the rest of her career, and it was only 25 years after her death in 1980 that the other side of her wartime life, working as an 'agent' for the Swedish intelligence service, was revealed. Much of the narrative revolves around her relationship with Terboven (Alexander Scheer), the most senior Nazi in occupied Norway, who she's been recruited to spy on and discover the true identity of Germany’s most important secret agent in Oslo. After starting an affair with the officer, she’s recruited by the Germans as well, agreeing to spy on their behalf so that they will release her elderly father from prison. What they don’t realise, of course, is that she’s a double agent.

Although the context of her story is unfamiliar, the actual narrative bears all the hallmarks of a conventional spy yarn, even if it is based on a true story. Jonsson adopts a suitably respectful tone but, ultimately, this doesn’t save the film from the feeling that we’ve been here before and the overall effect is of something rather conventional. All the elements are there for suspense, tension and heroism, but none of them are sufficiently developed, with a romantic sub-plot that feels like it’s been bolted on to pad things out. Jonsson tries to mix things up with the narrative, opening the film at what is essentially the mid-point, then filling in the back story and moving it forward to its conclusion, and this works up to a point, but you get the feeling that the director hasn't been nearly daring enough here, opting instead for a rather safe, tv-style which doesn't do the intriguing subject matter nearly enough justice.

Bolso Berdal makes a brave attempt to make her character one of flesh and blood, but she’s hampered by a rather weak script, plus the fact that Wigert was an actress makes us continually question the sincerity of the emotions on display. So what was clearly intended as a tribute to an unsung – and misjudged – war hero ends up being watchable enough but something of a missed opportunity, sadly.

This highly original, clever piece by writer-director Safy Nebbou is a highly watchable film, with Binoche, as ever, quite superb as divorced academic Claire. At times there is a touch of Woody Allen comedy of manners, at other times more than a touch of Michael Haneke creepiness: the script frank and perceptive about the cloak of invisibility that, past a certain age, even the most charismatic women take on in the eyes of many men. Already insecure about ageing, Claire remains principally attracted to younger guys; after all, if her ex-husband could leave her for a woman young enough to be her daughter, why can’t she play the same field? Claire confesses this and more to her quietly quizzical psychoanalyst Dr. Bormans (Nicole Garcia) in what turns out to be a crucial framing device, dipping the story into shifty realms of potentially unreliable narration and outright fantasy.

After a dalliance with 'Ludo' fades into unanswered phone calls, Claire nurses her wounded confidence by turning to social media — inventing a fake profile for imaginary 25-year-old fashion intern “Clara” in order to cyber-stalk Ludo and his attractive bro circle. What starts as a mildly vengeful mind game gets progressively more sinister, whilst Claire’s repeated therapy sessions with Dr. Bormans, meanwhile, are more than a mere device enabling a secret-bearing protagonist to speak her mind: the two women’s long verbal volleys are laced with perceptive, lightly caustic commentary about the disproportionate degree to which women’s social and sexual behaviour is scrutinised and judged by society, themselves included.

The central construct takes a huge suspension of disbelief (the impossibly gorgeous Binoche seems to me far more beautiful and interesting than her adopted younger self), and the last half hour is a bit silly (the 'plot twist' you can see coming a mile off), but Binoche somehow makes it all credible, and for anyone who’s ever been ghosted on the dating trail — or been an offender themselves — her evocation of the desire for human connection and terrified self-sabotage is uncomfortably easy to empathise with.

I was really looking forward to this one - having liked director Justin Kurzel’s take on MacBeth, I was anticipating a unique take with a fresh delivery. The first section (Kelly as boy, played brilliantly by Orlando Schwerdt, with a nice turn from Russell Crowe) certainly delivers; it's thoroughly gripping and convincing, with some great camerawork and lighting, top notch acting and a great buildup, but all is undone by a terribly disappointing second part (Kelly as man played by George Mackay). It's like someone trying too hard to be edgy/quirky/unique, and not coming close to any of them, and it’s so cliche-ridden that's it's difficult to suspend disbelief and take seriously at times. And it's never a good sign when both myself and my sister (a self-confessed Ned Kelly geek from Melbourne) start double screening during the final shootout. Peter Carey's novel deserves better treatment than this, I'm afraid.

Rather disappointing viewing in the end. The premise is an intriguing one, with young couple Tom and Gemma (Jesse Eisenberg and Imogen Poots) being imprisoned in suburban hellhole 'Yonder' with its identical Monopoly-houses and superficial perfection, and forced to raise a child (the admirably creepy Senan Jennings). Unfortunately however, the film's script simply isn't strong enough to sustain it, and the film, as with the couple, quickly ends up going nowhere, whilst most scenes are too brisk and un-nuanced to flesh out Yonder’s ostensibly forbidding world of plastic, consumer-friendly domesticity. Occasionally the one-dimensional nature of the characters is challenged, as with a suggestion of Gemma's maternal instinct counteracting Tom's ever more menacing frustration, but the film shies away from any depth or difficulty, with the result that the presumed intention of giving us a Kafka-style nightmare falls rather flat, sadly.

This one probably isn’t for you if you’re after a ‘conventional’ drama / horror / gothic (insert genre of choice) film, but I found it totally gripping, largely due to Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson’s mesmerising and deliberately unnerving performances. Director Robert Eggers’ stark black-and-white cinematography emphasises every bony plane, every facial crease, hollow and pinprick of stubble to great effect.

At its heart is a psychological study of two lighthouse workers, Wake (Dafoe) and Winslow (Pattinson), who, over many solitary days and nights, work, eat, drink and dig at each other, establishing a bristling antagonism. In time, their minds and tongues are loosened by alcohol and, perhaps, a simple human need for companionship. The wind howls, the camera prowls, the sea roars and Eggers flexes his estimable filmmaking technique as an air of mystery rapidly thickens. Much as he did in the distinctly creepy ‘The Witch’ with its isolated family of fundamentalists coming unglued in early 17th-century America, Eggers makes the secluded world in “The Lighthouse” at once recognisable and eerily surreal. Wake is the veteran keeper of the lighthouse flame, the guardian of its traditions, language and superstitions (‘never, ever, kill a seagull’, he instructs). He barks orders, sings a shanty, indulges in sentimentality, and is, depending on the mood / time of day, either (seemingly) friendly or (more usually) distinctly threatening. To Winslow’s mounting irritation, Wake also guards the key to the lantern room, and it’s this obsession (Moby Dick style), driven by the demon drink (and eventually kerosene), that becomes what gradually poisons Winslow’s mind, although what ultimately is the source of the madness is deliberately ambiguous. Getting stuck in this place with the company is enough in itself to drive anyone to distraction of course, but the film also hints that our unreliable narrator was never of sound mind even before arriving on the island. The past clearly weighs on Ephraim from the start, with his dreams about drowning under logs at the beginning of the film, whilst later, during his most unhinged moments, he sees flashes of a man killed; as Wake guesses, Ephraim definitely took this awful and secluded job because he's on the run, but as he soon discovers, he can't outrun the prison of his own guilty conscience.

It's also possible of course that both Thomas and Ephraim are having a shared delusion, or we can see Thomas and Ephraim as representing two parts of the same person. There are also subtle and not-so-subtle hints that Wake is deliberately pushing Ephraim into insanity after hearing of how his last wickie died - Thomas could've murdered him or driven him to take his own life. All readings (and more) are possible.

There’s some weaknesses – the Freudian/Jungian symbolism is laid on with a trowel, with endless vaginal keyholes and phallic tools and logs and whatnot, whilst I found the ending, with its blindingly obvious (no pun intended) allusions to the Proteus/Prometheus myth all a bit heavy-handed (I’d got that already; surely it didn’t need to be hammered home in this way?), and for me rather detracted from what had gone before. Nevertheless, taken as a whole, an engaging and original piece.