'The Deep Blue Sea' review:

London, a few years after the war, and a desperate woman (Rachel Weisz) is committing suicide, filling her flat with gas after necking a bottle of pills. She is unsuccessful, saved by concerned members of the local community, but in a contrivance of the plot her lover (Tom Hiddleston) soon learns of her attempt and leaves her in a rage. The rest of Terence Davies', by all accounts faithful, adaptation of the Terence Rattigan stage-play is defined by Weisz's pained expression and melodramatic warbling as she regrets that her lover doesn't view her with reciprocal levels of passion. He loves her but, alas, not enough and she just can't take it any more. "Weren't things better during the war?" is the unspoken refrain of the piece.

It is, to put it mildly, a dated story which trivialises suicide and follows a heroine whose problems are very hard to sympathise with - not least of all because Hiddleston's drunken former RAF pilot alternates between being a tedious, war-obsessed bore when ecstatically happy and a volatile, shouty child when upset. It's very difficult to understand why she has "no power to resist him", as she tells her estranged husband - a well meaning but extremely wet judge played by Simon Russell Beale. It also suffers under the weight of its staid fifties-penned script and theatrical origins with Weisz and Hiddleston (actors I'm usually very fond of) going right over the top at every opportunity, often forced to talk in heavy handed metaphor.



Davies, the feted director of 'Of Time and the City', compounds the play's inherent problems by directing the film in an equally lugubrious style, allowing enormous pauses between lines of dialogue amid insufferably long takes. Weisz is driven to kill herself by an intense passion - perhaps too big for the time she is born into - and yet the direction is dispassionate and isolating. The film only truly works during a backflash in which we see Weisz, still with Beale's judge, visiting her bitter old mother-in-law (Barbara Jefford). Perfectly observed, immaculately paced and fizzing with a caustic sense of humour, it only serves as an infuriating reminder of the talents involved.

The biggest problem though is that, whilst 'Brief Encounter' is a brilliant film routed in a specific time and place, doing that sort of old fashioned melodrama in 2011 can't help but read as an unintentional parody - and the film often reads as funny rather than tragic or poignant. It's also hard to shake the feeling that an odd nostalgia for the war era permeates the whole thing, with frequent interludes of perfectly groomed and immaculately dressed people singing gaily together. It's as much a celebration of "the blitz spirit" as anything else, which is jarring given that it's about a suicidal woman. That she mourns the war years to this extent (it's the same grief that's turned her lover to alcoholism - "he's not been happy since the war") is even faintly offensive.

'The Deep Blue Sea' is rated '12A' by the BBFC and is out in the UK now.

'The Brothers Bloom' review: a hopelessly derivative crime caper with a game cast...

Admittedly I haven’t seen Rian Johnson’s 2005 directorial debut ‘Brick’, but from the trailer it looks dark, intense and original. In fact, at Sundance that year it won a “Special Jury Prize for Originality of Vision”. It comes as a surprise then to find that his second feature, ‘The Brother’s Bloom’, is a totally derivative work – most obviously inspired by the films of Wes Anderson and Bogdanovich’s ‘Paper Moon’. Being a fan of Wes Anderson myself, this does not necessarily make for unpleasant viewing, however it is all carried off to such an inferior standard (visually and in terms of writing) that audience goodwill quickly dissipates and you soon see why the film has taken the best part of two years to find distribution in the UK after playing Toronto in 2008.



About two big time con men - one looking for “something real” and the other for the perfect con - there is some fun to be had here with some amiable performers in the starring roles. Adrian Brody (himself an Anderson veteran), Mark Ruffalo and Rachel Weisz do their best with the material they are given. Brody, who plays the younger brother Bloom, has an improbably sad face which can’t help but register, whilst Ruffalo is good fun as the elder brother and expert con man, Stephen. However, the star of the show and certainly the most compelling reason to watch the film is Weisz, who really gets under the skin of her character and to her credit seems to have approached the whole project with the a charming conviction. Most of the (few) genuine laughs belong to her and her character is a sweet creation.



Unfortunately the Academy Award nominated Rinko Kikuchi is allowed to flounder in a self-consciously quirky, off-beat role as a Japanese accomplice of the con men. Johnson gives her precious little dialogue and she is relegated to a role as a modern day Burt Kwouk figure and junior partner in proceedings.

The irritating thing about ‘The Brothers Bloom’ is that it has some moments of promise and contains some very good ideas. The end twist is not unexpected but is signalled in a terrifically inventive fashion. However, the thirty-plus minutes prior to that are so full of unnecessary twists and turns, with Brody asking aloud “I don’t know what is a con and what is not!”, that you long since lose interest in the conclusion. There are also a great many terrible lines which often fall to Weisz, such as “a photograph is a secret about a secret” or “there is no such thing as an unwritten life, only a badly written one” which scream at you with self-congratulating smugness and mean nothing.



The opening ten minutes, which tell the tale of the boys in childhood performing their first con, are really quite fun - featuring the superb Max Records as the young Stephen. Mostly ‘The Brothers Bloom’ is hoping to be breezy and fun. The fact that it fails to achieve this goal means that it is certainly not a good film. But it is ultimately hard to really dislike a film as good-natured and kind-hearted as this. Which is not to say that I liked ‘The Brothers Bloom’ much at all.

'The Brothers Bloom' can still be seen at selected cinemas in the UK and is rated '12A' by the BBFC.