La Grain et le Mullet (The secret of the grain)
How She Move
Apre Lui
10,000BC
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
Each of these films is reviewed by Fr Peter Malone MSC who directs the film desk of SIGNIS:
the World Association of Catholic Communicators
and is an associate of the Australian Catholic Office for Film & Broadcasting.
La Grain et le mullet (The secret of the grain)
starring Habib Boufares, Hafsia Herzi, Faridah Benkhetache and Abdelhamid Aktouche
directed by Abdel Kechiche
148 mins
rated M (moderate coarse language, sexual references)
French and Arabic with English subtitles.
This is an intriguing film; very long and with a strong portrayal of an extended family.
The film is set on the Mediterranean coast amongst the French-Arabic community. It focuses on an older man, a worker on the docks for thirty-five years. It highlights his work, his skills. It also highlights his difficulties with the changing work patterns of the 21st century, the role of Arabic workers, and the role of the French.
The central focus of the film is the older man's decision to turn a wrecked and dilapidated boat into a restaurant. For the inaugural dinner for 100 guests, his ex-wife helps by making the couscous which is her specialty because she knows the secret of the grain.
The film uses handheld camera quite a deal, with great fluidity in conversations and, especially, the family meal. With the close ups, there is an intimacy and an intensity in the characters' expressing themselves both seriously and comically.
To this extent, the film is quite a detailed and intense exploration of characters and their interrelationships, in the context of contemporary France and the issues about migrants, especially from North Africa.
Winner of the Jury Prize at Venice, the FIPRESCI prize and a SIGNIS commendation.
How She Move
starring Tracey Armstrong and Cle Bennett
directed by Ian Iqbar Rashid
94 mins
rated M (moderate coarse language)
Sometimes film reviewers become more expert in areas that they don't necessarily aspire to. It's just that they see so many films.
How She Move is a case in point. In recent years we have seen Step Up, Step Up 2: the Streets and Stomp the Yard. We know something about 'stepping', a kind of stomping, athletic style of dance movement that has become something of a visual version of rap, with 'crews' and 'teams' from the streets vying with each other. It can sometimes be a new type of artistic gang competitiveness, if not warfare.
Set in Toronto , this variation on the theme focuses on a young woman who has high hopes and good results for going to medical school. She has been able to get out of the neighbourhood.
However, her older sister dies of an overdose and the family money for her course is used up. She tries for a supplementary exam for a scholarship but, in the meantime, gets caught up in 'stepping' with the possibility of winning the $50,000 competition prize money.
Along the way, there are plenty of dramatics, hostility from friends, rivalries in the crews, pressure from her mother.
Rutina Wesley gives it all she's got for another morale-boosting story for people to have more self-confidence and benefit by their talents.
Apres Lui
starring Catherine Deneuve, Thomas Dumerchez, Guy Marchand and Elodie Bouchez
directed by Gael Morel
Gael Morel has made a number of interesting films about French young men and their relationships amongst themselves and with their families. A frequent collaborator has been Christophe Honore (Ma Mere, Dans Paris, Chansons d'Amour) whose films tend to have a great deal of dialogue with lots of abstract reflections on life and love.
When he collaborates with Morel, the characters and plot drive the film rather than the reflections. This makes them more interesting and accessible.
The plot of Apres Lui is quite straightforward. We are introduced to a young man and his best friend. They go to a party and one is killed in a car accident while the other is driving. The mother of the dead man is distraught but is outwardly controlled while the grief affects her heart and her mind. She becomes more and more obsessed by his death and tries to keep his memory alive by focusing her attention on the driver, keeping alive the memories through him.
Catherine Deneuve (in her 99th film) gives a powerful performance as the mother, on screen for most of the film.
One can appreciate her grief and how it has taken possession of her but we, like her family and friends, become more and more exasperated with her behaviour.
In a sense, the film suddenly stops - but it leaves the audience thinking about what could possibly happen after this.
10,000 BC
starring Steven Strait, Camilla Belle, Cliff Curtis, Omar Sharif
directed by Roland Emmerich
rated M (moderate violence)
109 mins
The trouble with prehistoric stories is that we know they have to be made up. This is the kind of film that 'sophisticated' types look down their noses at. And they will do so with this one.
Risking lack of sophistication, I found myself enjoying 10,000 BC much more than expected.
Omar Sharif, with his characteristic accent and tone, is the narrator. He takes us back into unsophisticated times of hunters who relied on the mammoths for food and hides.
Reality intrudes after a rousing computer graphics mammoth hunt and stampede (well worth seeing) and a group of slavers capture the hunters. The hero, not always heroic but learning to mature (Steven Strait ), pursues the captives, especially the special woman (Camilla Belle) who is a focus of prophecy. Cliff Curtis is the wise mentor and Nat Baring the adolescent runaway.
All this happens in the snow clad mountains of New Zealand's south island which look quite majestic. The transition is to the jungle (filmed in South Africa) where computer graphics produce monstrous ravenous birds and a giant sabre-toothed tiger. Later (in the dunes of Namibia), they encounter a tribe of hunter-gatherers and together they find the captives working as slaves (along with the mammoths again).
Battle ensues with a cast of computer thousands, all spectacular (along with the mammoths which are a real attraction) and, finally, the hunters return home with seeds for crops and the next era is under way.
It was directed by Roland Emmerich who has been into spectacles in all eras with Stargate, Independence Day, Godzilla and The Day After Tomorrow as well as having Mel Gibson beat the British as The Patriot in War of Independence.
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ethan Hawke and Marisa Tomei
directed by Sidney Lumet
116 mins
MA 15+ (strong sex scene and drug use, some violence)
After working some years in live television drama, Sidney Lumet made his feature film debut in 1957 with Twelve Angry Men. He had made his mark with his first film, a director with a skill in storytelling, dramatic tension and characterisation. During the 50 years that have followed, he has made a number of outstanding films which range from classic dramas like O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night and Miller's A View from the Bridge (from the 1960s) to Serpico and Dog Day Afternoon in the 1970s, as well as his
Oscar-nominated Network, Q and A and Prince of the City from the 1980s, Night Falls on Manhattan from the 1990s. At age 83, he has released Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. Lumet is a master screen storyteller.
This one is tough stuff.
It boasts a strong cast with Albert Finney and Rosemary Harris as parents who own a jeweller's shop in a mall in Westchester.
They have two sons, Andy (Philip Seymour Hoffman in yet another excellent and different performance) who works in real estate in Manhattan and Hank (a gaunt Ethan Hawke) as the spoilt son who has become one of life's losers. Marisa Tomei is Andy's wife.
The structure of the screenplay plays with time. We are introduced to the two brothers and then we are told it is the day of the heist. A masked man robs the jeweller's shop and fatal shots are fired. We then go back several days in time and the screenplay develops the characters of the brothers and explains the set up for the heist. Just as we seem to be advancing chronologically, we take more steps back and fill in the background, being offered more and more clues to explain what has happened and why.
No good comes of this heist. The consequences are lethal and lead to downward moral spirals of most of the central characters. The ending is tragic.
The film is a fable about the moral crisis in contemporary society, the moral vacuum in so many people's lives. It is a story about appearances and reality, about greed and unscrupulous manipulation of people. And it also highlights American gun violence.
With most films, there is some hope for redemption.
This seems to elude most of the characters here. The devil has made the acquaintance of the two brothers long before they are dead.
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