'Breathless' re-issue review: Back in cinemas and looking good...

Jean-Luc Godard's 'À Bout de Souffle' ('Breathless') may not have been the inaugural film of the French New Wave, coming as it did a year after Truffaut's 'The 400 Blows', but in many ways it has become the most iconic, the image of Jean Seberg and Jean-Paul Belmondo walking down the Champs-Élysées now synonymous with the influential movement. Boasting a script co-written by Truffaut and Godard it is perhaps an appropriate signifier. Now in its 50th year, the film has been the subject of a restoration and remastering effort and has now been re-released in selected cinemas.

As with the re-releases of 'The Godfather' and 'The Red Shoes' last year, the primary benefit of the restoration is that these old and "important" films are once again available to see as they should be seen: projected on a big screen in a dark room. The new print of 'Breathless' is beautiful and sharp, but as with those other two films (and Kurosawa's 'Rashomon' last month) I was most taken aback by the atmosphere and power the film gained when set back into its original context.



Up on the screen the film can hold your complete attention better than a television can, and this isn't just down to the size of the screen and the darkness of the room. For the most part it is the social experience - more specifically the rules we must follow in a public cinema. You can not (or at least ought not) talk to the person next to or look at your mobile phone. You can not pause to make a cup of tea and you hesitate to leave for the toilet. In the cinema these norms of social behaviour work in favour of the art form: you are there to watch the movie and you watch the movie properly.

Watching it this way you can notice more than you might at home on a DVD. I was able to better appreciate the ingenious and ground-breaking camera techniques, such as the jump-cuts and the long continuous takes. Likewise themes, such as Michel's (Belmondo) obsession with American popular culture and Patricia's (Seberg) obsession with being loved, were more apparent. The characters are not in love with each other, but with images and cultural symbols. "When we talked, I talked about me, you talked about you, when we should have talked about each other", says Michel near the films climax and he seems to sum up the relationship as it has been. All of it was clearer and better defined in a theatre.



The most extraordinary thing about 'Breathless' is that it opens with a car theft and subsequent murder of a policeman and follows a man on the run, but that this story seems to take a back seat - at times seeming unimportant. Indeed the murder itself is afforded little screen time and is boiled down to the most crucial elements: the trigger being pulled and the body falling dead. Instead, the film is about the central relationship between Patricia and Michel, with elements of crime thriller and Film Noir on the side. For the most part Michel seems relaxed. He walks the streets openly and feels under such limited threat that he even tails a policemen who is looking for him. He continues to steal cars. Late in the film when he learns the police know his whereabouts he makes no sudden movements. He does not run or hide.

Written by two film critics it does not seem like too big a stretch to say that Michel behaves as though he is the self-conscious star of his own film, taking his Boggart obsession to the extreme and living that persona to the last. He is an empty vessel for popular culture. Patricia is no better, she is shown to be vain and disloyal. But if the movie seems cynical about people, it is perhaps more cynical about movies. After all, Godard once said "all you need for a movie is a gun and a girl".

In 'Breathless' there are tons of self-referential in-jokes about film itself: two scenes take place at the cinema, Jean-Pierre Melville makes an appearance and Michel declines to buy an issue of Cahiers Du Cinema (saying he objects to youth). There are also running jokes about language (with Patricia constantly asking Michel what various words mean) and there is even a lot of snappy, pseudo-intellectual, cod philosophy ("Informers inform, burglars burgle, murderers murder, lovers love").

There is a dubious sexual politics here too, as Michel, like the film's other male characters, is an unapologetic misogynist. Add all of this to the raw beauty of the images and 'Breathless' is certainly a film worthy of discussion and its place in film history. Godard said that he was "destroying all the old principles rather than creating something new" with 'Breathless'. But far from an iconoclast, 'Breathless' is a genuine movie icon. And there is no better place to see it than at the cinema. So catch it whilst you can.

'Breathless' is rated '15' by the BBFC and is on very limited release in selected cinemas across the UK.

First Pictures of Coen's 'True Grit'

As a huge fan of the Coen Brothers, I am hugely excited about their adaptation of the Charles Portis novel True Grit. Being a Western and an adaptation of a book, 'True Grit' could be a good fit for Joel and Ethan, who have already remarked that the film will be a more faithful and (appropriately) grittier version than Henry Hathaway's 1969 film.

The picture above shows Jeff Bridges dressed up as anti-hero Rooster Cogburn, a pot-bellied, one-eyed US Marshall - a role which won John Wayne an Academy Award. Hailee Steinfeld is also pictured, in the role of Mattie Ross (originally played by Kim Darby). Josh Brolin, Barry Pepper and Matt Damon are also in the film which is due out on December 25th (in time for award season). Roger Deakins is the cinematographer and Carter Burwell is scoring the film, as per usual. Scott Rudin and Steven Speilberg are on board as producers.

There are more on-set pictures from the film here and even a pointless and rather hazy piece of amateur video here, if you're thirsty for more.

Thanks go to Aaron Massie who told me about this stuff via his twitter.



I recently watched the 1969 film to get myself in the mood for the new one and was pleasantly surprised by how much fun it was. There are some cracking one-liners, which I assume are taken directly from the source novel (and therefore may also be in the Coen film), and the performances of Wayne and Darby are really good fun too. It's definite Sunday afternoon stuff, but well worth a look when it's on TV (apparently it is showing on More4 later this month).

'Heartbreaker' review: More fun than you'd think...

'Heartbreaker' doesn't seen to offer a lot at a first glance. Watching the trailer you see what looks like a by-the-numbers romantic comedy, with broad jokes and a sumptuous, Glamour Magazine friendly mise en scène. Added to that is the fact that its director, Pascal Chaumeil, has previously only worked on French television. And whilst its male lead, Romain Duris, is known for Jacques Audiard's acclaimed 'The Beat That My Heart Skipped', his female co-star Vanessa Paradis is more famous as a pop star than an actress.

The set-up is high concept stuff: Alex (Duris) is a man with a gift for seduction so great that he works professionally as a seducer of unhappy women. Friends and family of women in bad relationships call upon Alex to show the women that she is not with the right guy and that she deserves more. He has ground rules, chief among them is that he will not knowingly separate a happy couple. However, this is tested when a wealthy father offers Alex $50,000 to break-up his daughter Juliette's (Paradis) impending engagement, with ten days before the wedding. Alex refuses, as she seems happy, but crippling debts owed to threatening mobsters soon forces his hand and he poses as Juliette's bodyguard. Hilarity ensues.



On the surface it looks like a light and frothy, low-carb, calorie-free piece of cinema and the film's 105 minutes certainly do nothing to challenge this preconception. But it would take a hard hearted and cynical individual not to admit that there are a few genuine laughs to be had it what is probably the most fun, least cliché-ridden romantic comedy I was seen in a couple of years.

One of the main factors in my enjoyment was Romain Duris who is an extremely gifted and charismatic comic actor. I found myself laughing at his every movement and facial expression. There is a scene where he nervously and half-heartedly sings along to the Wham! song 'Wake Me Up Before you Go-Go' whilst driving. He mumbles his way through it, missing out lyrics and emphasising the odd line. Embarrassing, out-of-tune singing is not new to film comedy, but here Duris takes quite an ordinary bit of comic business and runs with it in a way that is genuinely amusing. Like the Mexican actor Gael García Bernal, Duris is able to be genuinely charming and attractive, yet he isn't afraid to be self-deprecating either and that combination is winsome. He is also (as he proves in the third act) a damn fine dancer!



Paradis is less interesting a presence, not helped by the fact her character spends a fair portion of the film being a bit unlikeable, giving our hero a hard time. But she isn't bad by any stretch of the imagination. There are also nice performances from Julie Ferrier ('Micmacs') and Belgian actor François Damiens ('JCVD'), who play a husband and wife duo working for Alex. The couple do the surveillance and research work for Alex, pinning down the strength and weaknesses, the likes and dislikes, of his targets. Ferrier in particular is quite funny, as her character constantly adopts new disguises wherever the group go.

It is also to the film's great credit that the inevitable scene of realisation (where Paradis learns Duris' identity) is not followed by a scene of conflict or misunderstanding as is so often the case in lazier films of this kind. It is for reasons such as this that 'Heartbreaker' stands out amongst its similarly glossy peers.



With its classy, chic Monaco setting and high-fashion characters, 'Heartbreaker' also offers a less tacky, genuinely classy alternative to the horrifying likes of 'Sex & the City 2'. There is really nothing to strongly object to here. Perhaps the scenes involving a silent Algerian strongman are ill-conceived and could easily be excised without doing the plot any harm, along with the entire "owing the gangsters money" sub-plot. But the film is fun enough and is knowing enough (subverting genre clichés more often that it conforms to them) that its flaws are easy to forgive and its joys easy to appreciate.

By no means a candidate for 'Film of the Year', like I said from the start this is throwaway, disposable stuff. It's the sort of film you'll forget you ever saw a week after you saw it. But for the time you are in the cinema it is more fun, more charming and more entertaining than it seemed to have any right to be. Rumoured to be subject of an American remake in the near future, it is doubtful whether the film will work without Romain Duris.

'Heartbreaker' is rated '15' by the BBFC and can be seen all week at Brighton's Duke of York's cinema.

'Inception' review and press conference!

There are two reasons why I didn't update yesterday. The first was rather unorthodox: I was out in the sun playing tennis for a large part of the day. The second was rather more typical.

On Wednesday I went up to London and saw a press screening of Christopher Nolan's 'Inception' - probably the film I have been most excited about all year. After the screening, which took place at Warner Brother's London base, I rushed over to the super lavish Mayfair hotel, The Dorchester, for a press conference with six of the film's stars. In attendance were Leonardo DiCaprio, Ellen Page, Ken Watanabe, Cillian Murphy, Tom Hardy and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, as well as Nolan and his producer/wife Emma Thomas (seen below in a crappy mobile phone picture).



As cool as this was, my favourite aspect was probably the sandwiches laid on for the press by the hotel, which were out of this world - appropriately (given the nature of the film) the stuff of dreams.

Anyway, I was sent up to attend these two events by Obsessed with Film and as such the review and the press conference are up there now for your reading pleasure.

'Inception' is rated '12A' by the BBFC (isn't everything these days?) and is released on the 16th of July (next Friday).

'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.

'Sons of Cuba' review: a brilliant and moving documentary on sporting life under Castro...

Set in 2006 'Sons of Cuba' sets the lives of three "Under-12" athletes at Havana's Boxing Academy against a backdrop of political uncertainty and change in Cuba, as an unwell Castro allows his younger brother Raúl to take over power. There is genuine concern and sadness on the faces of the youngsters as they gather around a television to hear the special news bulletin explaining events. With genuine affection the children refer to him as the "Comandante" and they read stories about his past exploits in colourful picture books as part of school.

There is a refreshing lack of cynicism amongst the young boxers as they refer to each other as "comrade athlete" and hug after bouts. When three champion boxers defect for the United States (where they stand to make more money by going professional) there is very real sadness and betrayal on the faces of every Cuban interviewed. A father tells us that one of the men lived on his street and was a role-model for his son, speaking of him in a tone and manner usually reserved for sex offenders or child murderers. When Castro fails to make a public appearance due to his poor health, the concerned children declare that they will fight the US if they dare attack now.



But if the US are for many Cubans something of a pantomime villain there are small signs that the island has not entirely escape cultural imperialism. One of the boxers wears a Nike jacket, whilst other T-shirts carry familiar slogans and images like "NYC". When the children exercise by pretending to row a boat, one of them shouts "lets row all the way to Florida!" British film-maker Andrew Lang's documentary may be understandably light on actual overt political dissent, but there is something bubbling under the surface.

Not least of all when we meet one junior athlete's father, a former Olympic and World Champion boxer who now lives in a run-down, one-room shack in quiet anonymity. He speaks well of Castro and fondly remembers the time the leader gave him a medal to honour his achievements. But there is more than a twinge of regret in his eyes. "They gave me a car and a house, but the car stopped working long ago and now I live here", he says before thinking and asking "it's not right me living like this is it?" Who is to say what is right and wrong here. How should a retired athlete live? But we imagine that he would be living more comfortably in the US and we are left to wonder if this is the fate that awaits the next generation of champions. At any rate, it contextualises the actions of those who defect.



Cuba has supplied more Olympic champion boxers than any other country and, beyond all the politics, this is chiefly what the documentary explores. How has this relatively small, poor and isolated nation bested the biggest and the wealthiest time and time again? 'Sons of Cuba' does a great job of explaining this. We see the children's daily routine as they get up at 4am to begin training. We see how, even at such a young age, they have their diets strictly monitored and controlled. We are shown the national championships they compete in with students from boxing academies throughout Cuba, which are hugely competitive. And whilst boxing is an individualistic sport, we see how the Cubans are encouraged to see it as a team game, playing in groups for their school. They are instilled with a fiery will to win, but also a huge amount of respect for their fellow fighters.

I am not a fan of boxing and know almost nothing about it, but this human drama, so full of poignant moments and extraordinary characters. The young boxers are so wise beyond their years that you forget they are the "under-12s". There are many scenes of tears, but these are shared with the mothers, the fathers and the coach. They are all on an emotional roller-coaster, hopeful that these young children will someday be able to compete at the Olympics. But, as the former champion tells us in his shack, "sport is a flickering moment". What the future holds for these young stars we do not yet know. But whatever happens, 'Sons of Cuba' is a moving and beautiful documentary that works on many levels. Equally good as a sporting story or as a socio-political document from an interesting time in Cuban history.




'Sons of Cuba' is rated '12A' by the BBFC and can be seen at Brighton's Duke of York's Picturehouse on 13th and 15th of July. Listen out for an upcoming Splendor Podcast on the subject and read Jon's review here.

'White Material' review: A handsomely made, but oddly unfulfilling post-colonial drama...

Claire Denis’ ‘White Material’ comes with many a high recommendation. It placed (joint) 6th in Sight and Sound magazine’s 2009 poll of critics and it was not the only Denis directed film on the list as ‘35 Shots of Rum’ (also released in France last year) was joint 2nd. Jonathan Romney wrote that having two films in the list served to “reassert her position as one of the most avidly followed auteurs in art cinema” and, in the pages of the same publication, Nick James has reserved even higher praise for Denis writing that “there’s no better film-maker working in the world right now.” Given all this praise it is hardly surprising that ‘White Material’ was heralded as the July issue’s Film of the Month. Elsewhere, Peter Bradshaw’s four star review of the film in The Guardian saw him label it her best since ‘Beau Travail’ and called Denis “a poet of mood and moment”.

This puts me in an awkward position as a reviewer - one I found myself in earlier this year with ‘A Prophet’ – in that I am left wondering whether I have the courage to be like the little boy in the story of the Emperor’s new clothes and declare publicly that I can’t see what they are talking about. ‘White Material’ (and to a lesser extent ’35 Shots of Rum’) is a movie I almost hesitate to criticise as I start to doubt whether I understood it at all. “What did I miss?” I ask. I’m sure it’s in there and I scratch my head whilst fighting against my heart in a vain attempt to locate what I am missing.



I start to try I identify what other critics may be seeing: Claire Denis makes films of undeniable beauty and yet they are also always gritty enough so as to escape being called glossy or shallow. They take no particular viewpoint or political stance (at least none that I can identify) and so they can be lauded as non-judgemental and held up as a sort of objective “truth”. They are slow and subtle works, at their finest capable of evoking great joy and sorrow and of being tense and even frightening whilst still being poignant and tender. But time and time again they leave me cold, unengaged and even a little bored.

Why should I be bored? ‘White Material’ is set in post-colonial Africa in the midst of a civil war. There is barbarity and intimidation throughout. There are scenes of graphic violence, which should be all the more shocking by their close resemblance to reality: Isabelle Huppert portrays a woman whose family coffee plantation is under threat in a changing political climate – one which will see her become the victim of a racially motivated attack not too dissimilar from the kind seen in Zimbabwe in recent years (as shown in the documentary ‘Mugabe and the White African’). There are also child soldiers, reminiscent of those in another recent feature: ‘Johnny Mad Dog’. The political relevance of this story and the potential for something more polemical about racism, colonialism and modern Africa are at the route of my frustration with ‘White Material’. It could say so much and yet seems proud to say nothing at all.



Making overtly political films is very much against current critical favour. To confirm this you only need to watch a few interviews with Kathryn Bigelow as she marched towards her 'Best Director' Oscar earlier this year for ‘The Hurt Locker’. In almost every one she declared proudly that the film was A-political and in no way a comment on rights and wrongs of the Iraq war itself. Ever since Michael Moore popularised left-wing political activism in the early part of the last decade (to some making it seem crass), it has been accepted that the best films are not ideological but simply observe an event impartially.

But one of the best articles from the Cahiers Du Cinema that I ever read at university (and to my shame I can not remember its author) discussed how film is always ideological and can not help but be so. In fact when a filmmaker claims that their work is not ideological, instead suggesting that it is a reflection of how the world actually is, what we see is “truth” as they see it: the “real” world artificially constructed by them and shown through their lens. This sort of filmmaking is somehow more insidious and, even, more dangerous. The people who admit they are making a point are at least flagging up that their film is an idea, whereas when Michael Bay makes a sexist, racist, neo-conservative 'Transformers' movie he can call it entertainment and dismiss any political readings of the movie altogether.

I am not for a moment suggesting every filmmaker needs to be Jean-Luc Godard. In fact on this very blog I have lauded several films in the past for their honesty or objectivity ('The Hurt Locker' among them). But to set a film in post-colonial Africa and say nothing about race or politics whilst you are there is not, for me at least, a fulfilling exercise. Perhaps this could be forgiven if Isabelle Huppert did not cut such an unsympathetic and slightly annoying figure as the protagonist. Nicolas Duvauchelle ('The Girl on the Train')is slightly better as her son who, after one encounter with child soldiers, shaves his head begins carrying a gun, clearly now insane. His unsettling presence suggests a threat which never materializes and he is decidedly underused, his motivations never investigated. Christophe ('Highlander') Lambert is the husband and father and is a solid if unspectacular performer, but again has little to do in a film which is content to follow Huppert around as she consistently ignores warnings from workers, family members and the army about the inevitable violence and disaster to come.



The full extent of her ignorance of the situation is apparent when she visits a pharmacy and comments that they have perhaps gone over the top with security, having an armed guard outside. They respond by saying that they fear it is not enough and later we see that they have been murdered in their shop. If the film creates anxiety it is at the realisation that you are following the only character who has no idea what is taking place, or at least a character who is deluding themselves in an attempt to cling to the past. Unlike the real-life Mike Campbell in 'Mugabe and the White African', Huppert does not come across as strong or brave: just stupid.

Her stupidity is not a compelling enough reason to watch what is happening or to care much about it. I can't help but feel that someone like Werner Herzog would have gotten more out of the extremes of this situation and the insanity of these characters and in doing so he would have said something about human absurdity. In Denis' hands I was left to appreciate the stunning photography and feel nothing, emotionally or intellectually. We are not shown the causes of the trouble which is taking place, instead we are just left to watch a piece of apathetic "oh dearism". And that is a tragedy. I am yet to be convinced that Denis is wearing any clothes.

'White Material' is out now in the UK and is showing at the Duke of York's Picturehouse until Thursday the 8th of July. It is rated '15' by the BBFC.