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‘Testament of Youth’: Women at War

June 6, 2015 in Book Matters, Feminist Matters, Film Matters, Reviews

Cinema may forever be reminding us that war is hell but rarely does it offer us female experiences of that hell. “Testament of Youth,” a sweeping adaptation of Vera Brittain’s memoir of World War I, goes a long way toward correcting that inequity, even if its Masterpiece Theater sensibilities don’t quite measure up to the sparkling acuity of its source material.

The film opens on Armistice Day, 1918, as Vera (Alicia Vikander), drawn and bleak, staggers among the celebrating throngs. Flashback four years, when she’s a bourgeoisie bluestocking angling to attend university against the wishes of her regressive parents (Emily Watson and Dominic West; wherefore art thou, McCuddy?), and playing one of the boys with her brother, sensitive musician Edward (Taron Egerton), and his school chums Roland (Kit Harington, showing 100 percent more range than he does in “Game of Thrones”) and Victor (Colin Morgan). With his brooding good looks, realms of poetry, and suffragette mommy, Roland’s got the makings of more of a pal, and the first bit of this story dwells on their burgeoning romance as she makes her arduous way through Oxford’s gates. It all changes just before she begins her studies, when Britain declares war on Germany, and a concern that has only faintly shadowed Brittain’s upper-class life becomes critical. All three boys enlist, and Vera finds the collegiate life she’d craved so trivial that she enrolls as a military nurse, working domestically and then on the French frontlines as she grapples with tragedy after tragedy. Continue Reading →

Pretty Trifles: ‘Aloha’ and ‘Gemma Bovery’

May 30, 2015 in Book Matters, Film Matters, Reviews

Perhaps to compete with the bounty of the season, movie theaters are full of good-looking trifles this time of year. Some films aren’t just good to look at (witness the feminist revolution lurking in the brilliantly shot fever dream of “Mad Max: Fury Road”); some are so good looking we can scarcely remember anything else about them. That’s certainly the case with “Gemma Bovery,” the latest from director Anne Fontaine (“Chloe,” “Coco Before Chanel”).

It’s just as well. Instead of being an adaptation of Gustav Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, “Gemma Bovery” is a French-language adaptation of Posy Simmonds’ eponymous graphic novel loosely based on the 1856 classic; on every level, this film is about the idea of something rather than the thing itself. Fabrice Luchini stars as middle-aged Martin, a former Parisian publisher who’s taken over his father’s bakery in Normandy and now experiences everything, from his dough-kneading to his lightly mocking wife to his dog walks, with the same degree of ennui-inflected pleasure. When English couple Gemma and Charlie Bovery (Gemma Arterton and Jason Flemyng) move in next door, though, literature-obsessed Martin perks up. Upon spying Madame, cheeks and bosom abloom, tromping through the gardens in good Englishwoman boots, his nose quivers like a mole experiencing sunlight for the first time. “It’s the end,” he exclaims in a happily resigned voiceover, “of ten years of sexual tranquility.” Continue Reading →

‘Aloft’ and Jennifer Connelly’s Sainthood

May 24, 2015 in Film Matters, Reviews

There may be no American actor who suffers as exquisitely as Jennifer Connelly does. From her turn as a rich-girl addict in “Requiem for a Dream” (2000) to her spate of tortured-wife roles (most recently in last year’s “Noah”), she’s Hollywood’s reigning queen of the Set Jaw, the Palpable Gulp, and, oh yes, the Evocative Single Tear. Heck, she’s even won an Academy Award for this. So it’s compelling to watch her turn her skill on its head in “Aloft,” in which she plays a healer who sorely lacks a bedside manner. Alas, it’s not compelling enough to sustain our interest for the full ninety-five minutes of this unredemptively grim drama. Put bluntly, I’m not sure anything is.

Connelly stars as Nana, the working-class single mother of falcon-loving little toughie Ivan (Zen McGrath) and sweet-tempered Gully (Winta McGrath; yes, they’re brothers in real life), who’s dying of an unnamed illness. In an effort to save his life, the three, along with Ivan’s pet falcon, trek to mysterious faith healer Newman (opera singer William Shimell) – though Nana suspects he’s a charlatan. As it turns out, he’s a boozing lecher and the real deal, and he teaches her that she channels “the gift” as well. But due to an unfortunate accident for which Nana blames Ivan but could just as easily blame herself, the family fractures anyway. Fast-forward two decades, and a grown Ivan (Cillian Murphy) is a professional falconer and certifiably grim husband and father now completely estranged from his mother, a world-renowned mystic. When a French documentarian (Mélanie Laurent) with ambiguous motives pays him a surprise visit, he joins her quest to track down his notoriously elusive mum in the Arctic Circle. Continue Reading →

"All, everything I understand, I understand only because I love."
― Leo Tolstoy