Revanche
Dir: Götz Spielmann
I loved the opening forty minutes of this film; the slow grind of Alex and Tamara’s day to day life is brilliantly drawn by Spielmann, and the characters are intricate and, despite their obvious flaws, sympathetic. Kirsch and Potapenko give fantastic performances, and create a genuinely interesting relationship. It’s also worth noting an interesting choice with the subtitles here; as the Ukrainian Tamara speaks rather broken German the English subtitles reflect that; “I go car” for example, which really, along with Potapenko’s affecting work, helps paint a full picture of the character for an English speaking audience. I was genuinely saddened by the loss of her character, which does cast a melancholy over the whole of the rest of the film.
It’s not that the second half of the film is bad (though the character of Robert is frustratingly sketchily drawn). Kirsch continues to be excellent, while Ursula Strauss is equally good as Robert’s wife. However, for a long time very little happens besides Alex sawing very large piles of wood for his grandfather and while you’ve got a very real sense that film is building to something you do begin to wish it would get there. And then there’s what I call the Last House on the Left problem. This problem arises when the entire plot of a film turns on you buying into a coincidence so outlandish that it is self defeating. Believing that Alex would find himself next door to the very man who shot his girlfriend is just that coincidence.
I appreciated the glacial visual style, redolent of Spielmann’s countryman Michael Haneke. I thought most of the performances were excellent and I was very pleased that the film didn’t go uncharacteristically over the top with its ending, but the pacing issue and that huge coincidence were just a bit much for me.
★★½
Helen
Dir: Joe Lawlor / Christine Molloy
That’s pretty much all that happens in Helen, and despite a running time of just 72 minutes it often happens very slowly and very quietly. Shots are often held for an inordinately long time, silences often seem to go on forever and yet every frame of the film speaks volumes. This is a remarkable piece of work from first time feature directors Lawlor and Molloy. If they aren’t always best served by some of their supporting cast (all their actors are amateurs) that still doesn’t detract from the simple stark power of their story and images. Helen is obviously a quite carefully designed film, from the composition of individual shots (especially one that has Helen lying in the forest from which Joy disappeared) right down to the selection of a canary yellow jacket for Helen to wear, making her stand out in a way that we see clearly when we first meet her, is unusual for her.
Lawlor and Molloy are also brilliantly served by Annie Townsend, who gives an extraordinary, completely real, completely raw, performance as Helen. She’s so available to the camera, so easy to read, and yet she’s convincingly closed off emotionally to the other characters. I can find n evidence that she’d acted before, and at least on film she hasn’t acted since, in a world where someone as bland as Kristen Stewart is a movie star it would really be terrible if someone so clearly talented as Townsend didn’t act again.
Helen is one of the best character studies I’ve seen in a long time. It’s a genuinely fascinating look at a troubled young woman, and at a troubling event and how it effects the community and the individuals surrounding its happening. I suspect that a lot of people will hate it, many of them for many of the reasons I loved it, but I implore you to give this film 72 minutes of your time, because it will resonate much longer than that.
★★★★
Wild Target
Dir: Jonathan Lynn
From the sound of the imdb reviews, this film is an incredibly close remake of the 1993 French film Cible Émouvante in all but one respect. The plot has translated exactly, the character names are almost the same, but the British appear to have forgotten to bring the funny. I understand that on any journey, say a cross channel one, you’re liable to lose a couple of things but mislaying the comedy in a remake of a farce seems somewhat beyond careless.
Bill Nighy plays professional killer Victor Maynard, whose latest contract requires him to kill Emily Blunt (according to imdb her character’s name is Rose, but I don’t recall getting that information from the film). Predictably he gets an attack of conscience and so he, Rose and a young man named Tony (Rupert Grint), who accidentally gets caught up in the incident have to hide out from Victor’s employer (Rupert Everett) and the new hitman he’s hired (Martin Freeman).
Wild Target is shockingly unfunny. It’s not as if the people involved in it aren’t funny. Director Jonathan Lynn was one of the creators of Yes Minister, Bill Nighy has been funny even in some pretty dire films and Rupert Grint is reliable comic relief in the Harry Potter series. So what happened? Why when so many jokes are being thrown at the wall do absolutely none stick? One of the major reasons is that Emily Blunt just isn’t a comedienne, she’s certainly very alluring as Rose, but she's more irritating than she is funny (half the time I just wanted Nighy to shoot her in the head so we could all go home).
That said, as noted before, everyone’s comic metronome is here hopelessly off the beat. Nighy just doesn’t seem interested, Grint flails around, desperately searching for either a character or a reason he’s in this movie (it’s lost on me). Martin Freeman underplays to almost the point of invisibility and Rupert Everett has so little screen time and so little to do that he may as well not exist. This film would have been equally amusing had it actually, rather than just figuratively, consisted of 98 minutes of tumbleweed blowing across the screen.
★
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