Elle

‘Elle’ opens with a violent rape. The victim of which is Michèle (Isabelle Huppert), the co-owner of a video game company which seem to specialize in particularly violent video games and she gets an unwanted dose of her own genre. Her assailant is dressed all in black and wearing a mask. After doing the deed, he is quickly gone.

After a few moments, Michèle gets up, blames the cat and then cleans up the crime scene before getting in the bath with a glass of wine in her hand. She doesn't call the police but instead orders a takeaway. It isn't until much later, when she is out with a group of friends that she tells anyone.

It's safe to say, that this isn't your typical film about rape. The film asks you to figure out Michèle and while you’re at it, her oddball collection of friends, relatives and work colleagues.

These include her ex-husband Richard (Charles Berling), whom she still seems to fancy although he is now seeing a young student of whom Michèle is very jealous. Then there’s her mother Irène (Judith Magre) who has hired a gigolo called Ralph and her son Vincent (Jonas Bloquet) who is moving into a new apartment, that Michèle is expected to pay for, with his domineering girlfriend Josie (Alice Isaaz). Josie is pregnant by another man but Vincent claims it is his, even after it is born and is of mixed race.

Oh, and her father is a convicted serial killer, which caused her to have a somewhat difficult childhood and this is given as the reason she doesn’t trust the police as well as perhaps an explanation for her chosen profession in violent video games. It could also explain why she is fantasizing about a return visit from her attacker who has been sending her text messages.

She does at least change the locks and arm herself with pepper spray before getting back to work on the latest release from her company. Where she finds that one of her employees has made her a feature of the new game. She incorrectly links this to her attack and gets another employer to investigate his colleagues as well as getting him to drop his trousers to rule him out as a suspect. 

Meanwhile Michèle is having an affair with her best friend and business partner Anna’s (Anne Consigny) husband Robert (Christian Berkel) but who she really has the hots for is her neighbour Patrick (Laurent Lafitte), whom she watches through binoculars with her hand down her knickers pleasuring herself.

She’s a bit mixed up perhaps and when the identity of the rapist is revealed it gives this cocktail another stir. Is it all a consensual S&M relationship? Whatever, she still seems to want revenge on her assailant for igniting such traits in her.

Director Paul Verhoeven has created a dark satire on relationships and I rather liked it. There is plenty here to get you thinking, if you can see through the un-PC-ness of it all. It's rumoured that no major American actress would take on the role of Michèle, which was good news of course because Isabelle Huppert is terrific and well backed by her supporting cast.

Moonlight

Moonlight takes place in Liberty City, Miami and shows three snippets of a young man’s life as he grows up black and gay in what is a  tough neighbourhood.

First we meet a young Chiron (Alex Hibbert) nicknamed Little. His lone parent is his crack-addicted mother Paula (Naomie Harris). Basically he is fending for himself and eventually he runs away from home. Typically, it is a crack dealer named Juan (Mahershala Ali) who finds him inside an abandoned house and takes him home to the place he shares with his girlfriend, Theresa (Janelle Monáe). Both Juan and Theresa form a bond with him despite hostility from his mother.

Then we meet Chiron as a teenager (Ashton Sanders), withdrawn and just about coping with his still addicted mother but he is bullied by his peers who regard him as a ‘faggot’ but it isn’t until he hooks up with an old friend, Kevin (Jharrel Jerome), on a beach that he has his first sexual encounter.

In the end though, Chiron cracks under the weight of the bullying when Kevin is put up to attacking him and he smashes a chair over the ringleader Terrel (Patrick Decile), which means he ends up in a juvenile detention centre.

Finally, we see Chiron (Trevante Rhodes) ten years on, now known as Black. He's now a drug dealer himself living in Atlanta and has basically turned in to Juan, showing what a big influence he had on him. Although, Juan himself is no longer alive. Chiron’s mother is now in a home. After getting a phone call from Kevin (André Holland), who is now a cook in Miami, he goes to visit him. Kevin is still his only sexual encounter and he still has feelings for Chiron despite now having a child of his own.

'Moonlight' is one of those films that just drifts along, following a life, but in a mesmerizing way. It's not the sort of film that gives you answers, it just shows you the way things are and lets you draw your own conclusions. A bit of thinker’s film if you like. Ultimately it chronicles how much a part drugs can play in the lives of some people.

The film is full of strong performances from the likes of Mahershala Ali and Naomie Harris as well as others, which is why it has been heavily nominated for awards this year. It also has three actors playing the lead character, as well as for the likes of Kevin, which is a bold move.

Is it the best film of the year as decided by the Academy? Probably not but it's still pretty good.

Viceroy's House

It is 1947 and Lord Mountbatten (Hugh Bonneville) has been sent to Delhi as the last Viceroy of India with the task of handing India back to its people within twelve months. After 300 years, British rule is coming to a close.

The story takes place mainly inside the walls of the Viceroy's House where ‘Dickie’ Mountbatten resides with his wife Edwina (Gillian Anderson) and daughter Lady Pamela (Lily Travers) along with their many many Hindu, Muslim and Sikh servants.

The political elite, namely Nehru (Tanveer Ghani) of the Indian Congress, Jinnah (Denzil Smith) of the Muslim League, Mahatma Gandhi (Neeraj Kabi) the revered leader of the independence movement and others, all visit the House for meetings as they wrangle over the terms of independence whilst in the country as a whole riots erupt.

Gandhi, Nehru and Mountbatten (initially) all wanted a single nation of two faiths but the London Government, for its own political reasons, preferred to partition the country along religious lines. Namely to create a new Muslim nation of Pakistan with a downsized India populated mostly by Hindus. It was this ‘Mountbatten Plan’ that was eventually agreed and with the British army too war weary to cope with the continued rioting, Mountbatten advanced the date for the transfer of power by six months.

The actual border for partition was decided by a London barrister called Cyril Radcliffe (Simon Callow) but what Mountbatten didn't know, was that he had been well and truly stitched up by London. The whole partition plan had already been put together years ago by Winston Churchill and he was simply sent there as the fall guy to deliver it.

Partition led to the uprooting of 14 million people and millions more were killed in the resulting turmoil. Real newspaper headlines and archive footage give weight to the story creating an educating docu-drama. 

The Mountbattens to their credit stay on in India to try to help in any way they could while the consequences of partition still reverberate to this day, seven decades later.

Sadly, to give the film a bit more general appeal, there is also a love story between a Hindu servant Jeet (Manish Dayal) and his intended Muslim bride Aalia (Huma Qureshi). They quickly find themselves in conflict with their own communities. This diversion is a shame, as it takes screen time away from the main story and leaves the film perhaps not as punchy as it could have been.

That said, the film is still a fascinating watch about an important piece of post-war history albeit mainly from the British perspective.

The film is directed by Gurinder Chadha whose own family were caught up in the events that unfolded.

Hidden Figures

Hidden Figures follows three black women who worked in NASA's computing section in 1961 where they performed the calculations for the space program by hand. They were basically the computers of the day as real computers were only just being rolled out to such places as NASA. Being coloured they had their own separate toilets and dining facilities.

Dorothy Vaughn (Octavia Spencer) had been managing her section for some time but is repeatedly denied a supervisory position and is instead overseen by her own supervisor Vivian Mitchell (Kirsten Dunst).

Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe) meanwhile is an aspiring engineer but she cannot progress further because she doesn’t have the right qualifications, which she is barred from getting because of her colour. She goes to court to try to get this changed.

Then there is Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), who is the main focus of the film. Johnson is the most talented mathematician at NASA and once they realise this she is called upon to work in the Space Task Group under Paul Stafford (Jim Parsons) and his boss Al Harrison (Kevin Costner). Their aim is to put a man in space before the Soviet Union.

It’s not easy for her working in her new environment and not only because she had to climb a high ladder every day to write on a huge blackboard. She has to drink coffee from a pot labelled ‘Coloured’ and has to run half a mile back to her old building where the nearest toilet for coloured females is. While at home, she has three young daughters to raise.

Despite all this, through her excellent work, she earns the respect of everybody on the project including astronaut John Glenn (Glen Powell). Glenn trusts her calculations above those of anyone else’s including those produced by their new IBM computer.

The aim of the film is clearly to raise the struggles that the coloured minority had to be recognised at that time. However, personally I found learning about the space race with the Soviet Union, the difficulties of getting a man into space, keeping him there and then getting him back again in one piece the most fascinating part. 

As it is ‘based on true events’, you of course rush home and immediately ‘google’ the plot. If only to check whether Katherine really need to run half a mile just to use the toilet? And... no, of course she didn't. That, and a whole lot of other things, were manufactured or overstated for dramatic effect. Sadly, that ruined the film for me.

Katherine Johnson herself states that she didn’t experience any segregation and that everyone worked brilliantly together as a team. In fact, the film seems to totally undersell what Johnson achieved. As for NASA, who are practically painted as racists, they didn’t even exist until after the types of issues raised in the film were resolved.

The real story is fascinating enough, so it’s really annoying that the filmmakers were not impressed by the quiet and efficient way these women actually conducted themselves and achieved so much.

Therefore, it’s really just an enjoyable piece of (part) fiction that is also quite informative about the space race, which I don’t think they tampered with too much.