Film Reviews by JG

A strange movie. The leading critics have hailed it as one of the most important movies of our time, a brilliant film. If you haven't read the reviews you'd be tempted to make assumptions about it - a young couple, he dies suddenly, his ghost lingers around the house, maybe you'd expect it to play out in a predictable way with the ghost influencing what the girl does, exerting a beneficial influence, maybe some message about how love is invincible and eternal. Well, it's nothing like that! It's a very original movie. To my mind, it may offend those with spiritual leanings, or religious beliefs. The ghost is not really the spirit of a human being, it's a symbol of the futility of human existence. We're born, we try to make our impact on the world, we die and are eventually forgotten. No afterlife or reincarnation. A humanist film. And that's good, and very thought provoking but you might feel disappointed that there's no feelgood factor, no plot twist that makes sense of what's gone before. The movie is a slow-burner. Every bit of dialogue is important and if you miss it, you should watch the movie a second time. When you've watched it, be sure to watch the extras on the disk. The director and cast explaining what they were aiming to do. It may sound pretentious. It might even be pretentious. But it gives an insight into what the movie is about. For good measure you could watch the movie again with the director's commentary playing. If you decide that the movie isn't to your taste, that's fine. I don't think you should regard it as a waste of your time, though.

And I don't enjoy movies about the supernatural, with a very few exceptions such as The Sixth Sense. For me, any director who thinks he has the skill to create real suspense and say something original about our lives by making use of supernatural themes is likely to fall far short of expectations. I enjoyed The Clouds of Sils Maria. It was atmospheric, the characters were interesting and it had a strange mystery whereby a key character suddenly disappears without explanation. Here, director Assayas is offering a dreamy ambiguous mystery with a few implausible and irritating props - the cross on the wall, the interminable exchange of text messages with someone who could be a ghost or a stalker (but either way, if you display your fear you only encourage them) and the floating glass tumblers that suddenly fall. I think Kristen Stewart is a superb actor, but this isn't a good use of her talent. At the end of a movie like this, you'd want to be left with the feeling that you have learned something new or interesting about people or about the human psyche. I didn't think this movie supplies that.