Lucy Popescu
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Film Review: ‘Hinterland’
★★★★☆ Harry Macqueen’s impressive directorial debut, Hinterland (2014), which he also scripts and stars in together with folk singer Lori Campbell follows two childhood friends who reconnect in their late twenties and go on a road trip to Cornwall. Lola (Campbell) is back in London after working for some years in America as a singer-…
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Berlin 2015: ‘As We Were Dreaming’ review
★★★☆☆ As We Were Dreaming (2015), a coming of age tale about a group of friends growing up in Leipzig, is German director Andreas Dresen’s competition entry for the Golden Bear adapted by Wolfgang Kohlhaase from Clemens Meyer’s award-winning novel of the same name. As the film opens, Dani (Merlin Rose) is looking for his…
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Berlin 2015: ‘Ben Zaken’ review
★★☆☆☆ Israeli director Efrat Corem’s debut feature Ben Zaken (2014) is set in a cramped apartment in a poor suburb of Ashkelon, a coastal city in the Southern District of Israel. Two adult brothers Leon (Mekikes Amar) and Shlomi (Eliraz Sade) live with their mother Dina (Chani Elemich) and Shlomi’s troubled daughter eleven-year-old Ruhi (Rom…
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Berlin 2015: ‘Diary of a Chambermaid’ review
★★★☆☆ Benoît Jacquot’s adaptation of Diary of a Chambermaid, based on Octave Mirbeau’s 1900 novel, is engaging and visually stylish but loses momentum towards its end. Léa Seydoux plays the eponymous heroine who is desperate to escape domestic servitude and carve out a new life for herself. Célestine has had plenty of positions as a…
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Berlin 2015: ‘Breathe Umphefumlo’ review
★★★★☆ Mark Dornford-May won Berlin’s Golden Bear in 2005 for U-Carmen, his adaptation of Bizet’s opera. He obviously hopes for similar success with his latest venture, Breathe Umphefumlo (2015), which transports Puccini’s opera La Boheme from 19th century Paris to a modern-day township in South Africa. Lungelo (Mhlekazi Mosiea) meets Mimi (Busisiwe Ngejane) at university.…
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Film Review: ‘Trash’
★★★★☆ Stephen Daldry‘s latest feature film, set among the garbage heaps of Rio de Janeiro, belongs to its youthful, non-professional cast. Trash (2014) opens with Jose Angelo (Wagner Moura) hurriedly packing. As he attempts to flee his apartment he is cornered by cops. Before his arrest, he throws a large wallet into a passing rubbish…
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DVD Review: ‘1915: The Battle for the Alps’
★★★☆☆ Ernst Grossner’s war drama, 1915: The Battle for the Alps (released as The Silent Mountain in 2014), is set in the Dolomite Mountains during World War One. A classy European cast includes William Moseley, of The Chronicles of Narnia fame. The dramatic backdrop is the fight between Austro-Hungary and Italy for control over territory…
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DVD Review: ‘Wakolda’
★★★☆☆ Lucia Puenzo’s chilling drama, Wakolda (2013), based on her novel, German Doctor, follows the unlikely friendship of 12-year old Lilith (Florencia Bado) and Josef Mengele (Alex Brendemühl), Auschwitz’s ‘Angel of Death’ on the run for his war crimes. A doctor, Mengele had conducted genetic research on human subjects in Auschwitz. After the Second World…
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DVD Review: ‘Grace of Monaco’
★★★☆☆ Olivier Dahan’s Grace of Monaco (2014), about the marriage of Hollywood film star Grace Kelly (Nicole Kidman) and Prince Rainier (Tim Roth) is beautifully shot but lacks depth and tension. When Grace married Prince Rainer III of Monaco in 1956 it was like a fairy tale come true: iconic beauty gets her prince. But…
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DVD Review: ‘Omar’
★★★★★ Hany Abu-Assad’s Oscar-nominated Omar (2013) is a gripping political drama about a young Palestinian baker and freedom fighter (Adam Bakri), who’s forced to become an informant. Set in occupied Palestinian territories, we first see Omar successfully scaling the impossibly high separation wall, a forbidding construct covered in graffiti, only to be shot at as…