Lucy Popescu

★★★★☆ Italian documentarian Andrea Segre’s debut feature about the exploitation of immigrant workers in his native country, Shun Li and the Poet (2011), packs an undeniably powerful punch. A young, unmarried Chinese woman, Shun Li (Tao Zhao), is in debt to the men who arranged and paid for her travel to Rome. Li is effectively…

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★★★★☆ Régis Roinsard scores a palpable hit with debut feature Populaire (2012), a romantic comedy about speed-typing, starring Déborah Francois, Romain Duris and The Artist’s Bérénice Bejo. Set in France at the tail end of the 1950s, Rose (Francois) a shopkeeper’s daughter dreams of escaping provincial life and making something of herself. She travels to…

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★★★★☆ New York-based Indian director Mira Nair was well-placed to helm a big-screen adaptation of Mohsin Hamid’s novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist – and thankfully hasn’t disappointed. In this post-9/11 drama, the world of business and the unremitting pursuit of wealth are juxtaposed with religious extremism. The story’s main focus is the mutual distrust between East…

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★★★★☆ Travis Fine’s poignant second feature about a gay couple’s attempts to adopt a Down’s syndrome child is a well-crafted drama with a powerful message and stellar performances from Alan Cumming and Garret Dillahunt. Based on true events, scripted by George Arthur Bloom and then reworked by Fine, Any Day Now (2012) deals with weighty…

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★★★★☆ This Park Circus rerelease of Otto Preminger’s 1958 classic Bonjour Tristesse, based on the Françoise Saigon novella and starring Deborah Kerr, David Niven and Jean Seberg, feels particularly timely. The frivolity of rich Europeans who party all night, drink champagne for breakfast and swap partners with the changing seasons is laid bare, their pampered…

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★★★★☆ Scott McGehee and David Siegel’s What Maisie Knew (2012) is a contemporary adaptation of the classic Henry James novel. The duo have chosen to transplant the story to present-day New York, allowing them to explore the lifestyles of the once well-off, now struggling to regain their equilibrium in the midst of a global recession.…

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★★★☆☆ Pascal Bonitzer’s domestic dramedy Looking for Hortense (2012), starring Kristin Scott Thomas, Jean-Pierre Bacri and Isabelle Carré, has a topical slant that lifts the film out of mediocrity. Iva (Scott Thomas), a successful theatre director, asks her partner Damien (Bacri), a lecturer in Chinese Studies, to try and prevent the deportation of her sister’s…

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★★★★☆ Yaron Zilberman’s feature debut A Late Quartet (2012), starring Catherine Keener, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Christopher Walken, follows the fortunes of an acclaimed New York string quartet who find its future threatened by petty rivalries and inner discord. When Peter (Walken) the cellist and founder of ‘The Fugue Quartet’, discovers that he has Parkinson’s…

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★★★★☆ Niels Arden Oplev’s (director of the first in the original Swedish The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy and the recent Deadfall) partly autobiographical film We Shall Overcome (Drømmen, 2006) is a tender portrait of a young boy growing up in 1960s Denmark who, inspired by the speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. takes…

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★★★☆☆ Katarzyna Klimkiewicz’s assured debut feature Flying Blind (2012), starring Helen McCrory, Najib Oudghiri and Kenneth Cranham, is a political thriller with a sting in its tail. Frankie (McCrory), an attractive middle-aged woman, is a successful aerospace engineer designing drones for the British military. She also lectures at Bristol University where she meets Kahil (Oudghiri),…

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