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Berlin 2019: Nadav Lapid’s Synonyms wins Golden Bear
With Berlinale director Dieter Kosslick passing on the baton to former Locarno artistic director Carlo Chatrian from next year, no one knew quite what to expect from this year’s competition strand. In the end, it was very much business as usual, with the Golden Bear for Best Film eventually going to Nadav Lapid’s autobiographical study…
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Berlin 2019: So Long, My Son review
★★★★☆ Sixth generation director Wang Xiaoshuai returns to Berlin with a decade-spanning family drama set against some of the most turbulent events in recent Chinese history. At just over three-hours, So Long, My Son is an emotionally wrenching film that’s epic in scope but intimate in feeling. Depicting China’s difficult transition from state-controlled communism to state-sanctioned…
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Berlin 2019: Hellhole review
★★★★☆ In Michael Haneke’s Code Unknown, Juliette Binoche’s character Anne rides the Paris metro and is spat at by a young man with darker skin. In Bas Devos’ Hellhole, Alba Rohrwacher’s character rides the underground in Brussels and looks on as armed police survey her fellow passengers, who also have darker skin. In Haneke’s pre-9/11 film…
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Film Review: The Lady Eve
★★★★★ To modern audiences, screwball comedies serve as slapstick forms of the moving image. Yet, behind this, they unbalance gender politics in placing the dim-witted male against an intellectually superior female protagonist. No exception to this is Preston Sturges’ The Lady Eve starring Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda. Fighting his way into the director’s chair…
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Film Review: Happy Death Day 2U
★★★☆☆ The day after the events of Happy Death Day – in which Tree Gelbman (Jessica Rothe) must relive her murder over and over until she her killer – finds supporting player Ryan (Phi Vu) in similarly dire time-looping straits. Playing fast and loose with multiple genres, writer-director Christopher Landon’s sequel is a slightly different beast to…
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Berlin 2019: Varda by Agnès review
★★★★☆ Varda by Agnès contains the best parts of Agnès Varda: work, wit and wisdom. Though it does not reach the heights of her gloriously charming last film, Faces Places, it is still a cathartic, bittersweet swansong from one of cinema’s most endearing and adored auteurs. The film begins most unusually. The title appears, and…
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Film Review: Jellyfish
★★★☆☆ Jellyfish delivers a thoughtful commentary on theatre and art through a bleak narrative of broken family life. It’s anchored by a strong performance from BIFA-nominated Liv Hill and a few downright hilarious punchlines, though the film suffers from an underdeveloped cast of supporting characters and some over-the-top dialogue. Against the backdrop of blaring game…
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Berlin 2019: The Souvenir review
★★★★☆ At an early point in The Souvenir, the protagonist explains that filmmaking is, for her, a form of therapy. The Souvenir itself might be a form of therapy for Joanna Hogg, who wrote and directed it and has since said that she based her script directly on her own experiences. The woman’s name is…
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Berlin 2019: I Was at Home, But review
★★★★☆ Angela Schanelec’s latest film I Was at Home, But opens on some reassuring farmyard animals. A dog chases a rabbit. Another dog lies sleeping. A donkey looks out the window of a weathered old house. Life is simple and time is slow. More than you can say, however, for the film’s protagonist, a woman…
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Berlin 2019: Bait review
★★★★☆ Bait joins a recent spate of British films that have abandoned the cities to depict a countryside in crisis. But, unlike social-realist dramas like The Levelling, Dark River and God’s Own Country, Mark Jenkin’s wonderfully weird debut subverts the kitchen sink template to create one of Berlin’s most original and satisfying films. The Cornish…
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