Before Midnight

This is the third film in a series about the romance of a couple, Jesse and Celine, who have now known each other for twenty years and now are living together in Greece. Jesse, played by Ethan Hawke, was previously married and the film starts at the airport as he says goodbye to his son from the earlier marriage. There follows a long conversation between the couple in the car as they drive back from the airport. Then there is a scene with Jesse and his mates, when Jesse talks about his ideas for a possible future book. This is followed by long eating-around-the-table scene, with a many of their friends present. After that the couple go for a long walk, talking all the time. Then they go to an hotel room, where they have a row. Jesse seems slightly more the supplicant; he loves Celine, played by Julie Delpy, and is charming and eager to please her, she seems to express a little more autonomy, and it is not so surprising when it is she who speaks decisively. He is some sort of author, but that doesn't seem to add much weight or sagacity to his character.

For my taste these early scenes tend to be too long and to have too little significant content to be particularly interesting. Throughout the conversations there is a nicely controlled sense that either one or the other will say something that sends a conversation into a spin, leading to disaster and a row, and this is what happens at the end. I am sure many people will find these scenes horribly plausible. The final scene was for me quite painful and hard to watch. The film passes the time quite pleasantly, and leads to a satisfactory dramatic conclusion, although I did find my eyelids flickering downward in the earlier, long scenes. It is difficult to refer to these scenes without using the word 'long', and the question of dramatic economy does arise. More significantly, for me, is the question of what qualities may a good drama embody? My notion is that a good drama is a bit like a Chinese puzzle - that it should be elegant and fit together well, with balance, harmony and, in the case of drama, good rhythm. Information should not be sown and then, unused, left blowing in the wind, which I think does happen here on occasions. This film is more of the Mike Leigh school, where scenes seem to have been grown organically and naturally to embody certain essences and situations, but where the dramatic arc is less important. The dramatic thrust in this film is generated by the possibility that their conversations will at any time go in a bad direction.

Another reservation I have about these films is: are they not the wet dreams of a Texan in love with the tourist idea of Europe? We have had Paris, now we get Greece, or is this too flippant? Jesse and Celine are, to some extent, tourists and it is unarguable that we are shown in these films tourist-eye views of France and Greece. There is no sign in Before Midnight that Greece is crashing and burning as the Euro disintegrates.

Was their row something they would get over after a good night's sleep? Is there an opening for a sequel? To both of these questions I answer 'yes'. She said she doesn't love him any more, but tomorrow morning she can roll her eyes at him and backtrack. Maybe in nine years time we shall find out. It would be terrible for them to split up now because there is so much that is good (including twins!) in their relationship.

Richard Linklater is a very interesting film-maker, who now has a back-catalogue of good and diverse films. This series of films: Before Sunrise/Sunset/Midnight constitute alone an interesting and worthwhile body of work, improving, I think, as the series progressed. In working with Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke (a Texan like Linklater) he has chosen to work with two actors who don't hesitate to take challenging parts (Delpy worked with Godard when she was 14!). I learnt to respect Hawke when I saw him in Sidney Lumet's Before The Devil Knows You're Dead.

In Another Country

This is a South Korean film made by Sang-soo Hong, who wrote the screenplay and directed the film. It consists of three consecutive short films, each starring Isabelle Huppert. There are some similarities between the three stories. All the films are set in a tiny coastal resort and are populated by the same characters, particularly a young life guard and the manageress of the only hotel. In addition each story stars Huppert playing a different role. In one she is a film maker staying in the hotel and planning to make a film, in the next she is the wife of a businessman meeting her Korean lover in the hotel, and in the last she is accompanying a friend who is getting over a divorce.

Each of these stories is light and amusing, but interestingly there are minor incidents which spread across the three stories. A detail may be motivated in one story and resolved in another. For example in the first film the Huppert character is walking on the beach and disapprovingly notices a piece of broken glass, and in the last story she is drunk on the beach and carelessly discards a beer bottle. The young life guard, who lives in a tent behind the beach, is a significant character in each story, usually doing his best to ingratiate himself with the Huppert character, and we may speculate on whether she is appreciating his nice body, and in the last story she yields to the temptation.

So these three separate stories are not quite separate. It is a sort of hybrid. This film is an example of the innovation attributed to Asian cinema and it was well received in the London Film Festival showing when I saw it.

The Master

This film is an account of a fictional cult leader, Lancaster Dodd, and his acolyte, Freddie Quell. Quell is an emotionally damaged and alcoholic war veteran who meets Dodd when he stows away on a ship. There is some empathy between them and Quell joins Dodd's cult and becomes his eager fixer.

At the beginning of the film we meet quell as he returns to civilian life after the war. There is a long scene of Quelle and his sailor friends making a sandcastle in the shape of a woman so that they can feign copulation with it. The scene suggests that Quelle is more than averagely preoccupied by sex. There is a later scene where Quell is watching a group of people dancing in a room, then there is a close-up of his eyes and, when we cut back to the dancing group, all the women are naked. This scene seems to making roughly the same point as the sandcastle copulation scene. The dancing scene is held for an embarrassingly long time, causing me to reflect on the humiliations actors must endure to receive their fee. After all this emphasis on Quell's interest in sex he does nothing in the film that is sexually untoward. So what was all that about?

Quell Is played by Joaquim Phoenix, an actor I admire, and Dodd is played by Philip Seymour Hoffman. I have always thought of Phoenix as being quite well built but here he looks very thin and cadaverous. He gives an amazing performance, maybe slightly overdoing the talking-out-of-the-side-of-his-mouth schtick.

In civilian life Quelle tries a few jobs including photographer and making illicit hooch, but nothing works out. While stowing away on a ship he meets Dodd, and they seem to have an unlikely affinity for each other. Dodd is already embarked on his career as proselytiser and conman or,  as he puts it, 'I am a writer, a doctor, a nuclear physicist, a theoretical philosopher... but above all I am a man'. Quell joins Dodd's coterie and things jog along as Dodd finds wealthy sponsors and his enterprise grows. There is a disagreement between Quelle and Dodd and Quell goes his own way for several years. He returns to Dodd, finding him quite a lot more successful than he was when he left him.

This film has very little dramatic impulse. As one over-long scene meanders into another over-long scene I sat watching and wondering where it was leading. I thought of Dorothy Parker's description of Los Angeles as 'seventy-two suburbs in search of a city' because this film is seventy-two scenes in search of a story. This film is very well made and looks expensive, but the narrative arc is incoherent and lacks impulse, There are several unexpected scenes, such as one where Quell is made to blunder back and forwards, blindfolded, between the walls of a room, or one where suddenly they are in the desert playing with a motor bike, when I had no choice but to wonder where the scene was leading, whether it was entertaining, or what it was telling us of relevance to the story. The film is very much less than the sum of its parts. Maybe Anderson should try a little more delegation, particularly with screen writing. I liked Anderson's first three films but I did not share in the admiration for There Will Be Blood. This is Anderson's Heaven's Gate. As I watched Dodd's character - motivated by self-importance, vapid ideas and cliches - I wondered to what extent these qualities apply to this film.

It did not help this film's case that the film I saw after it was Michael Haneke's Amour, which cast into a horrible perspective the sheer banality of the points this film tries so expensively and incompetently to make. Those who like the idea of this film should give it a miss and obtain a DVD of Elmer Gantry instead.

Everyday

This is the film I preferred of those that I saw in the film festival in Dinard. It was introduced by its director, Michael Winterbottom, looking alarmingly young for a man who has directed 37 films. The film was made over a period of five years and it is about a family with four children. It shows in detail the day-to-day routine of the family's life, particularly as the children are got up, given breakfast and got off to school in the morning and collected in the afternoon. There are several scenes shot in the school showing the children during their classes. There are amazingly touching scenes of the children, who are real-life siblings and are too young to 'act', but are caught by Winterbottom in authentic moments of emotion and vulnerability.

The anomaly is that the father, Ian, is in prison so, very often, the children must be rounded up by their mother, Karen, put on a bus, then on a train, then into a taxi, to take them to visit their father in prison.

This film has not had a cinema release yet in the UK, although it has been shown on television. In Googling for reviews I did not find many, and some of those that I did find expressed disappointment that the film is boring because nothing happens. This is true, nothing happens, except Life. Those who make this complaint are those who have overdosed on Hollywood entertainment taken neat.

I very much admired recently the films of Asghar Farhadi, About Elly and A Separation. One thing I admired about these films was how, from very simple beginnings, the plot thickened, and how simple situations led to unexpected sequences. Everyday is the opposite. Little situations that may have made us tense because they may have led to trouble, didn't. This is just the same as how, usually, when one maybe forgot to lock the front door, one returns home to find that a no burglar has been in. These little anxieties occur but usually they are okay, and that is how it is in this film. The film is set in rural Norfolk and when one of the children, aged about seven, takes a hunting rifle and goes off into the woods looking for rabbits, nothing goes wrong and he is finally found by by his mother, given a smack, and sent to bed. I admired this film because it does not have acting shtick and it does not have dramatic shtick, which was so refreshing after so many films I have seen err in the other direction.
 
I course the mother does not need any more drama then she already has, with four children, an absent father, just a little occasional help from her mother in law, a job in B&Q during the day and a job serving in a pub in the evening. She is played very well by Shirley Henderson and her husband is played very charmingly by John Simm. The scenes of prison visits were shot in real prisons and the scenes in the classroom was shot in a real school.

The film is intercut with occasional scenes of the rural environment - fields, rolling hils, sheep and woods. The soundtrack has lovely music by Michael Nyman.

There are some scenes of family outings - trips to the seaside - showing that another man has seeped into her life, although we see no details other than that he occasionally joins them on outings and has tea with them. When, towards the end of the film, Ian is out of prison, there is a scene where they are in bed, him asleep and her, eyes wide, staring at the ceiling, and suddenly her eyes fill with tears and she says "You know, it was really hard, while you were away." He half wakes up

    "what...?"
    "I was seeing someone."
    "You were seeing someone while I was inside??"
    "Yes."
    "Who was it, who were you seeing??"
    "Eddy"
    "I don't believe it. You were seeing fuckin' Eddy??

So it goes on. There are shots of the children in their rooms hearing their parents' raised voices.The next morning Ian is at the breakfast table not looking as though he had a particularly good night but over it.

I think that with this film Michael Winterbottom has made a quiet masterpiece.

Argo

This is a very good film in many departments. It is gripping, entertaining, humorous, witty, well directed and well acted. It is a pity it has such a fatal flaw.

The film starts with a pre-credit sequence giving a decent summary of the United States' shameful diplomacy towards Iran. It recounts how, in 1953, United States destabilised and brought down a democratically elected government. Then it installed a puppet Shah and during 25 years provided him with money, arms and equipment so that he could terrorise, murder, torture and imprison its population, and humiliate them with enforced westernisation. All this was to enable American corporations to prosper and to ensure that the United States would have reliable supply of oil.

The film is based on true events centring on the siege of the United States Embassy in Tehran in 1979. As the embassy was being overrun six employees escaped out of the back door, ran through the streets, and found shelter in the Official residence of the Canadian Ambassador. The CIA sought to rescue these people, and that is what this film is about.

The film is directed by, and stars, Ben Affleck. Affleck has acted in more than 50 films and this is the third feature that he has directed. The previous two films that he directed, Gone, Baby, Gone and The Town Were solid, good quality films. With Argo I am sure that he will have a place at the high table of American filmmaking. The first time I saw this film, in the London film Festival in 2012, There was a round of applause in the cinema at a pivotal point in the story. The only previous occasions when I have experienced applause in the cinema have been during festival screenings when someone involved in the making of the film was present, not as a response to some development in the narrative. This, I think, is testimony to Argo's effectiveness as a gripping drama.

The film has good, juicy parts for John Goodman and Alan Arkin. Arkin is best known for his part Catch-22 and has acted in over 100 films. He was also a singer and has written several books. Goodman made his name in the television series Roseanne and subsequently established his reputation in films such as The Big Lebowski. Argo has a witty script, written by first-time writer Chris Terrio. Set in 1979, the film does a good job of reflecting the fashions and manners of that time without fetishising them.

Argo's problem arises from its internal contradiction. Its pre-credit sequence shows America's dreadful history colluding in the oppression of Iran for its own venal advantage; a history demanding justice. The bulk of the film, however, shows the United States cocking yet another snook at this unfortunate country, and emerging with the smirk on its face. Justice will not be done and might is right.

La Piscine

La Piscine was made in 1968 and it was directed by Jacques Deray. There are four glorious European stars in their prime: Alain Delon in a dark and complex role, Maurice Ronet delivering the superficial charm he does so well, Romy Schneider looking impossibly beautiful and Jane Birkin just out of nappies.

I have read several online reviews of this film and none of them understood it, most commenting that it is a bit too long and a bit too slow, and it takes too long for anything to happen. Thank God there was someone at the BFI who knew better!

I am a person who instinctively looks below the surface of things and for me this film is a feast.

It is set in a borrowed holiday villa in the south of France, where Jean-Paul (Delon) and Marianne (Schneider) are on holiday together and spend their days fooling around by the swimming pool. Suddenly a mutual friend, Harry (Ronet) telephones and invites himself with his daughter, Penelope (Birkin), and they arrive in an expensive and throaty sports car. They join in the fun by the swimming pool, prepare meals together and do a bit of shopping. Harry is a playboy type and an old friend of Jean-Paul, also a possible ex-lover of Marianne - it's for us and Jean-Paul to find out. As they play together there is a storm of undercurrents and one of the main pleasures of the film is enjoying the difference between their polite exchanges and what they are thinking. It has very often been commented that the cinema must accept the limitation that it can work with only surface appearances. This film is proof of the contrary.

Rendering the film more evocative is one's knowledge of Romy Schneider's tragic life (she had a son who died in an awful accident when he was fourteen years old, and subsequently Romy Schneider killed herself with alcohol and pills). Delon and Schneider had been lovers and after her death Delon arranged for her son's remains to be put in the same grave as her. Ronet, who as a painter exhibited alongside Dubuffet and played piano and organ, died of cancer a month before his 56th birthday; Alain Delon, now in his mid-seventies, is still a kingpin of the jet set life in Geneva, his adopted home, and we all know how Jane Birkin is!

This film reminds me of the work of Claude Chabrol and if this were a Chabrol film it would be one of his best. The restauration is marvellous and the image, the place, the Sun and the stars look wonderful up on the screen.

Skyfall

This is a hugely enjoyable film that should give the Bond franchise a new lease of life. It starts with a pre-credit chase sequence in which one has no idea what is going on, other than that Bond is being chased, if one recognises Daniel Craig. The film continues with this knowingness, riffing frequently and often humorously on previous bond films.

After the chase there is the most glorious credit sequence I can remember seeing for a long time, accompanied by the excellent theme song written and performed by Adele (known to her mother as Adele Laurie Blue Adkins).

Bond's adversary, Silva, is played by Javier Bardem and his boss, M, by the ever-present Judy Dench. In this film M is not just a remote presence, but she plays an active role in the proceedings. As I watched the film I was tempted by the idea that this, along with Live Flesh,  could be one of Bardem's best films. He has a lot to do and he throws himself imaginatively into his nicely characterised role.

I have much respect for Daniel Craig since I saw him in Our Friends In The North. I recently managed to see him in Layer Cake which, I have heard, got him the Bond role. Here, I thought, he was quite interestingly on the cusp of being too old for the part, although we see that his body is in magnificent condition.

One of the qualities of the film is its humorous riffing on other other films. There is a scene reminding us of Apocalypse Now, with a helicopter approaching blaring music from Tannoys. An old Aston Martin car from the previous bond film is dusted off and used here in tongue-in-cheek way. Although the film has plenty of scenes abroad, particularly in Turkey and Macao, it is not a rootless international mess, but is firmly rooted in a plausible London that would not offend Londoners. There is an excellent British cast, including Ralph Fiennes, Ben Whishaw excellent as a computer geek, Rory Kinnear as a bureaucratic flunky and Albert Finney humiliating hidden behind a huge beard. Female interest is provided by Naomie Harris and Berenice Marlohe. My only slight disappointment with the film was the lack of wit and spark in the exchanges between Bond and these desirable females. These occasionally fell flat for me. I was recently reminded of what wit can do for a script while watching Argo.

This is Sam Mendes' eighth film as director and he has entered very well into the spirit of how a Bond film should be.