Love in the Time Of Cholera

Set in Colombia, the film opens with a man falling to his death after trying to retrieve a parrot from a tree. In the next scene, an old man is laying in bed with a girl over fifty years his junior (nice work if you can get it). The ringing of the church bells, signifying a funeral, alerts him and strangely he casts aside the young girl, impressive chest and all. The first of many chests up for comparison tonight.

The old man is Florentino Ariza and straight after the funeral, he approaches the widow Fermina Daza, ignoring her distress at her husband's death and declares his everlasting love for her. Enraged by the gall of the man, she understandably tells him where to get off. Apparently, he made the same vow many years before and so the film takes us back fifty years in time and tells us his story.

When they were young, Florentino was a mere telegraph boy, who was besotted with Fermina from the first time he saw her. He is persistent, constantly pursuing her, writing her letters and they have a short romance. Her father tries to keep them apart and one day she rejects him totally. Then when she goes down with suspected Cholera a doctor is called. The doctor is Juvenal Urbino, the man who falls out of the tree. He immediately gets one up on Florentino when he cunningly persuades her to get her chest out in the interests of a very thorough examination. Ha, writing letters doesn't get you that far does it! He deduces it isn’t Cholera and so she lives. Her father is so gratified that he asks the doctor what he can do to repay him. I expected Dr Urbino, obviously impressed with what she’d shown him, to demand his Daughter there and then but he is more subtle, with the help of her father he gradually wins her over, and marries her.

Florentino (now played by Javier Bardem and looking like No Country For Old Men meets Bleak House) is distraught but remains obsessed with her. He vows he will stay a virgin until they are together again.



His boss takes him to the whorehouse to take his mind off things but he's not interested. His chastity though, only lasts until he bizarrely gets jumped by a mystery woman on a boat trip. Some you win, some you lose, I guess.

With his vow in tatters perhaps it's time to move on, eh Florentino? They say the best way to get over heartache is to channel your energies into something new and he certainly does that. He drowns his sorrows in the arms and amongst other limbs of many women, which adds a whole new dimension to being ‘on the rebound’.

He proceeds to have his way with anything that moves, if it's female, it doesn't matter if she's available or not. In fact after seducing one particular married woman, he scrawled a declaration of his ownership on her body and when she forgot to wash if off before she cuddled up with her husband that night, her enraged husband killed her. Slight over reaction perhaps but I imagine he was a tad pissed off.

He also keeps notes and records each of his conquests in detail, probably giving marks out of ten for each one. Just think what he could have done had they had Excel in them days. He could have done graphs and all sorts of fancy things.

If all this is meant to help him get over the pain of losing Fermina, it doesn't work. Apparently absence really does seem to make the heart grow fonder in his case, even if other parts of him have long since got over it and moved on to pastures new, and then moved on again... and again... By the time her husband dies and she is up for grabs again, 51 years, 9 months and 4 days have passed and Florentino is in the arms of his 622nd conquest when the funeral bells ring. Although it's a bit unbelievable that an old man can still pull so many much young women but I suppose it happens, just not to most of us.



In the end they do get together and he finally gets to bed the woman he was saving himself for. He assures her that he's 'remained a virgin' for her. He’s a card. Not that she believes him.

The film was a brave attempt to turn what I imagine is a complex book into a film and it's far from perfect but I enjoyed it. Although you didn't really get any emotional attachment with the main characters but perhaps that was the idea.

The biggest let down was by the make up department. The characters had to age by 50 years and it's done badly. Fermina at 70 just looked like a 30 year old who'd had too many vodka's, that is until she unveiled her chest for him, which is by now around her knees. It wasn't there when she showed it Dr Urbino all those years ago. I hate to think how they achieved that effect, perhaps they got a stunt double in. Oddly, only one actress is chosen to play Fermina throughout her life while two actors share the role of Florentino. Perhaps they went over budget.

The film ends with them on a river cruise and the Captain of the ship raising the flag of cholera, so that they won't have to call at any ports.

Suppose it's not a bad gig, working your way through 622 women and still getting the girl of your dreams.

Lars And The Real Girl

The film is set in a small snowy, presumably Canadian, town and stars a chap called Lars who is a bit of an introvert. Despite having a job in an office, he lives mainly the life of a recluse in the modified garage of his deceased parents' home where his brother Gus and his pregnant wife, Karin live. They both want Lars to be more sociable and keep trying to get him to come to dinner with them.

Lars though, struggles with social interaction and is troubled by his past, in particular the loss of his parents. Lars doesn't want to be involved with people and is even too frightened to act upon the advances of a female work colleague.

Then suddenly to the surprise of Gus and Karin he announces that he has a girlfriend. She's an orphaned registered nurse come missionary from Brazil or something like that. She's called Bianca and she's confined to a wheelchair. They are delighted until they found out that Bianca is a plastic sex doll, an anatomically correct one at that.

From this point onwards it would have been very easy to travel down the tired old slapstick comedy path but the film doesn't. In fact to our surprise the film is not a comedy at all, there is subtle humour in it but the film doesn't try to be funny. In fact at times it becomes inappropriate to even think of laughing.

Sex with the doll isn't on the cards either, in fact Lars asks his brother if Bianca can sleep in their spare room until they get to know each other better.



Instead of being funny the film becomes thought-provoking and moving. Gus and Karin take Lars to the local psychologist who suggests that they go along with his delusion until Lars himself deals with whatever is causing it. Then the film gets even more surreal as the whole town play along and Lars's new girlfriend gets taken to parties, to church, gets a job, and even gets elected to the school board. Through all this Lars grows in confidence as if this was his way of developing social skills. As his self-belief grows Bianca loses her appeal to him. Through all this, the girl at work, still despite the fact that Lars has been going out with a sex toy in preference to her, is still interested in him. So when Bianca goes on a girl's night, Lars is a little put out and accepts a date with her.

After their night out bowling with some other friends, Lars comes home to discover that Bianca is dying. Bizarrely an ambulance arrives to transport her to hospital. It gets even freakier after she dies because a funeral is held for her.

Bianca dies because her job is done, the local community have helped Lars's heal his psychological problems, and through Bianca he has discovered how to deal with human situations.



It's a highly original film that at times is too weird for words. Despite that, or perhaps because of that, it's excellent with outstanding acting performances all round. It did plod a bit in the middle and Bianca took an age to 'die' but it was still a great film.

If L was reviewing it she would dwell more on the psychological side of it, but I feel it's more of a film about someone failing to develop their social skills. There is even a dig about one of the office workers being unable to afford his own doll because he spent the money on an Xbox. Sure the film is far fetched but a lot of people have imaginary friends and 'friendships' with dolls and teddy bears when they are younger. This film just takes this all to the extremes. Lars just took a little longer growing up but he got there in the end.

Juno

Tonight four-time Oscar nominated Juno. Nominated for best film, best original screenplay, best actress (Ellen Page who plays Juno) and best director (Jason Reitman, his second film, following ‘Thank You For Smoking’).

Juno MacGuff tells us ‘it all started with a chair’. This the chair that the sixteen year-old manoeuvred her best friend Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera) on to. The chair where she had sex with him and ended up pregnant. To her credit she then refuses to become a victim of her circumstances and explores her options, although without seeking anyone else's advice. In the end, she bottles out of an abortion and instead finds adoptive parents in the local freebie ‘Penny Saver’ newspaper, which is a bit like ‘Loot’ I suppose.



I'm afraid this really isn’t my sort of film at all and I don't really want to criticise it but it's been 'nominated' so I feel I ought to. I find the first half a real drag and what makes it worse is that everyone talks in a pretentious American teenage slang which is extremely annoying and that’s just the adults. The jokes aren't very funny and the ticking off of an ultrasound engineer is just embarrassing.

Juno herself is portrayed as a cocky, clued up individual. A pretty smart one at that, which makes it a bit unbelievable that she was stupid enough to get herself knocked up in the first place, particularly as it was her who planned the seduction. A broken condom excuse would have been more believable and a better message to send out.

From this point onwards everything actually goes swimmingly for Juno. Her parents are supportive, she doesn't get kicked out of school, it's hinted that her classmates shun her but they don't really seem to, and her boyfriend doesn't disappear over the horizon. That's despite the fact that she treats him like dirt, which he doesn’t deserve because he clearly adores her. She's a selfish girl who really needs a good hard slap to knock some sense into her.

Luckily the film does settle down and the second half is better. The film even manages to deliver some more natural humour and emotion. This is mainly due to the focus switching to the couple who decide to adopt her baby. The wife, Vanessa is the desperate for a baby type. The husband, Mark is clearly not, he's a typical bloke, and he'd rather be a rock star. Juno and Mark find common ground in music and splatter movies. Although for no explained reason she's into 70's punk while his era is more the 80's. All the same they have more in common that Mark and his wife do. It seems at one point that they were destined to get it on together, despite the twenty odd years between them, but the film ducked that potential issue, which was a shame. He does eventually leave his wife and I almost stand up and cheer, because Vanessa is awful.



L says it was a nice romance but there wasn’t really any romance in it until the last ten minutes. Juno’s Dad, who is excellently played throughout, gives a good description of whom you should love and Juno decides that she does love her poor on-off boyfriend, who she's pretty much ignored throughout, after all. Her father should have told her this earlier, preferably right after he'd administered the previously mentioned 'good hard slap'. Had he done both early enough it might have saved her a lot of bother.



Now I think oh God she’s going to ruin it all and keep the blessed baby but thankfully she doesn’t. Juno and Paulie get all romantic while Vanessa goes it alone as a mother. So in the end, we end up more or less where we started with another single parent on the block.

It's an ok movie but nothing special and pretty lightweight. It's an ideal Sunday night sort of film. You just know everyone is going to live happily ever after and they do. Which for a film which raises a lot of ‘issues’ is odd but it just can't seem to be bothered to deal with them.

It's certainly not worthy of any awards. Please. Ellen Page is good in the role without being totally convincingly. The script is ok but is full of holes. Hardly in the same league as the Coen Brothers.

No Country For Old Men

The new film from the Coen Brothers 'No Country For Old Men', is an adaptation of the novel by Cormac McCarthy. It is a perfect choice for them. I am sure they must have chosen his novel because it is so close to their usual style.

Llewellyn Moss (Josh Brolin) is out hunting somewhere near the Mexican border when he stumbles across a host of dead bodies. Further investigation reveals a drug deal gone wrong complete with a truck full of drugs and bag containing $2M in cash.

His mistake is to make off with the cash and so from originally being the hunter, he suddenly becomes the hunted, as he is pursued by several interested parties. Chief among these is a unconventional hit man with pageboy haircut, who has been hired to find him. This man, Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), has two weapons, a silenced shotgun, and pneumatic air gun normally used on cattle. He leaves a trail of bodies in his wake as he relentlessly pursues Moss.



For some time Moss evades him but you just know it’s going to end in tears, or rather blood, at the hands of the clearly unstoppable and psychopathic Anton. He is a killer without any humanity, no one gets in his way. Even being involved in a car crash fails to stop him. When he is shot by Moss we get a great scene of him fixing the bullet wound in a leg, which reminds me of Terminator but with extra blood.

Meanwhile the local ageing sheriff (Tommy Lee Jones) is supposed to be chasing them but doesn't really want to. This is ‘no country for old men’ and he doesn’t really want to get involved.

The drugs people also send another hit-man, the cocky Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson) who Anton doesn’t want on his patch, so he gets rid of him too.

If there’s a moral to this film, I guess it’s just that the money isn't worth it but Moss quickly goes beyond the point where Anton would let him return the money and live. Anton offers to spare his wife if he returns it, but not him, and there is no chance of negotiation. Moss chooses to have one last try to keep his life and the money. Although Moss’s motives are mainly greed, you still feel yourself rooting for him.



The film builds the suspense but then just as you're gripped by the two main characters and their riveting duel, things change. In true Coen’s style, events you would think to be crucial to see, are not shown and Moss winds up dead but you don’t see it happen. Later when Anton finds his wife and tells her he’s going to kill her because he's promised her husband, you presume she winds up death but again you don’t see it.

The film is a very well-crafted thriller, tense with moments of humour but also brutally violent. Far gorier than Sweeney Todd. While the plot itself isn't too complicated, the characters are. I was gripped for every moment of it, every time the truly frightening Anton is on screen you feel nervous of what he's going to do next. My only criticism would be that after the breakneck pace of the first hour and a half the last bit plodded a little.

Obviously there is no happy ending. Well there really wasn’t an ending at all but then again, how do you expect a Coen brother's film to end. They leave you with a load of dangled threads that you expect to be neatly tied up but as is often the case with their films, it never quite works out that way.

We collect my parents, in far easier traffic this time, and head home, for a small drop of white wine and a slightly larger drop of red.

Sweeney Todd

Tonight it's 'Sweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street', which, half an hour before the start, they are queuing down the stairs to get into see. We go in the bar and wait for the commotion to die down and enjoy a pint of Legend.

Oddly Daughter has been against us going to see Sweeney Todd, although we've been struggling to understand why. I think it's something to do with her being a big Johnny Depp fan and this, because it's very violent, has been classified as '18' so she can't see it. So I think she expects us to wait four years until she is allowed to see it. With hindsight, it appears she's probably been tipped off about how dull this film is and was just trying to save us from it. We should have listened.

The story itself is pretty interesting. After being sent away for fifteen years for a crime he claims he didn't commit, Benjamin Barker returns to London with the help of a young sailor. Now calling himself Sweeney Todd he wants revenge on the judge who sent him away. He returns to his old barber shop where Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter) now runs a shop selling 'the worst pies in London'. Todd believes his wife is dead and the judge now has his Daughter, Johanna as his ward. To complicate matters the young sailor he came home with, is trying to seduce Johanna, and wants Sweeney to help him in this quest.

Mrs. Lovett convinces Todd to resurrect his old barber shop and after a 'shave-off' with a chap called Pirelli, played eccentrically by Sasha Baron Cohen, he establishes himself as the best barber in London. This is one of the better moments of the film. Depp's shaving blade is a whir, almost as if reprising his role as Edward Scissorshands, as he wins the contest. I think there was supposed to be humour in the film but the only titter from the audience came at the hands of Baron Cohen during this screen.

His reputation established, Todd gets some customers but instead of give them a close shave, he slits their throats and Lovett uses their bodies to make her meat pies, which she then sells to her unsuspecting customers. The gratuitous throat slitting, and there is an awful lot of it, is overdone, there's too much ketchup and it's not very scary. We've seen it all before but the main problem with the film is that it's a musical but without any tunes or singers. The songs are all mundane, unremarkable ballads and everything is sung in monotone, so much so that a lot of it is unintelligible. Depp is clearly no singer and nor is Bonham Carter. The 'singing' ruined what could have been a good film because the film's 'look' was amazing. The sets of a grim London were very good, complete with rats. Which reminded me of something funny L read out in the paper this morning, that in London you are never more than five minutes from a Starbucks, or a rat.



So, perhaps if the music had been totally done away with it might have worked, but in this format, for me, it just didn't. The script was padded out with songs rather than with storyline. Right from the start the film was a long slog with little or no tempo to it. L was looking at her watch early on and I didn't blame her.

The best acting came from the ever excellent Alan Rickman as Judge Turpin. Although he appeared to be simply reprising his role as Severus Snape from Harry Potter, which I'm not sure was the intention. Then even he spoiled it by showing his lack of singing skills.

The most chilling scene was at the end, when Bonham Carter gets incinerated in her own oven, that bit was priceless.



Once it was over, the audience just got up and left in silence, hardly anyone commented on it, such was its lack of effect. All rather boring I'm afraid.

Killing Of John Lennon

The film is the story of the events surrounding the murder of John Lennon by Mark Chapman (Jonas Ball). The film uses Chapman's own words and the actual locations, as it takes us through the lead up to the killing. The film gives you an insight into his background in Honolulu, a place Chapman is desperate to escape and to go and achieve 'something'. He comes over as a man constantly on the edge of madness and it is no surprise that he chooses to do something stupid. Rather than do the sensible thing and top himself, he chooses to kill Lennon for no reason other than that he feels Lennon was a bit of phoney. This chain of though is inspired, somehow, by J.D. Salinger's 'A Catcher in the Rye'. Chapman travels to New York to carry out his task where he even uses the identity of the book's central character, Holden Caulfield. If Lennon was a phoney then what does that make Chapman. He rings an 'escort' to spend his final night of freedom with, as Caulfield does in the book. He assumes he'll manage to meet and kill Lennon the next day, which he duly does when he eventually encounters him at his apartment.



I thought the film dragged a little because Chapman wasn't that interesting and nor was his life. I thought the story lacked depth. There didn’t seem to be much to tell about his background and we find out little about his relationship with his wife. He was just mad but not even interestingly mad. The film carries on after the shooting and actually gets better after the killing.

The film was interesting but not enthralling because it was not easy to identify with Chapman but that may have been because the film kept a good emotional distance from its subject and therefore did not glorify him.

In the end, Chapman just wanted to be famous. At this he succeeds and becomes the world's first celebrity stalker. The movie was made without the cooperation of Chapman or Yoko Ono. However I'm sure Chapman would be happy about this film because he wanted fame and this gives him more of it.



'I was nobody, until I killed the biggest somebody on earth'

Lust Caution

I've only seen one of Ang Lee's famous 'masterpieces', that being 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Danger' and that never really thrilled me that much. I've often just not fancied his subject matter but it appears I may have been missing out.

Tonight we see his new film, 'Lust, Caution'. Set in Hong Kong and Shanghai during World War Two at the time of the Japanese occupation. The story follows a young girl called Wang Jiazhi who has been left behind by her father, who has escaped to England. She gets asked to take a part in a patriotic play. A symbolic moment as she ends up working for the resistance and lands herself an 'acting job' for life.

The resistance group she gets involved with are not only amateur dramatics but also turn out to be a right bunch of amateurs in the resistance stakes too. They devise an audacious plan to assassinate the powerful Mr. Yee, a Chinese traitor who is working for the Japanese. They wish to remove him but they know little about him, he is very much an enigma, always cautious and always very well protected.

Masquerading as Mrs. Mak, Wang Jiazhi is chosen to infiltrate the social circle of Yee's wife and thereby catch the eye of Mr. Yee. The resistance's plan is to use her as bait to lure him out into the open where he can be assassinated by the others. He however is so cautious, they realise that it is not going to be that simple and Wang has to be prepared to have a full-blown affair with him. To 'train' for this eventuality she gives up her virginity for the good of the cause, practising with a very unappetising fellow resistance member. In the end though the plot goes awry, a botched murder follows, and Wang flees.

Time moves on and in Shanghai three years later she again encounters the same resistance fighters, this time they are better organised, and the plan is revived. Yee is now the head of the secret police in charge of hunting down and interrogating resistance agents.

She has no problem catching his eye and attempts to seduce him but he is already one-step ahead of her. He is not a man to be seduced and instead rips her clothes off her and forces himself on her. Wang's 'training' would not have prepared her for that. It is scenes like this that have already made the film notorious. At first to him, she is just an outlet to release his repressed lust and the pent up anger and frustration of his job and his life. In order to keep his trust, Wang has to go along with these rough fantasies and fulfil her patriotic duty.



The scenes do calm down and don’t to me feel gratuitous or out of place. They enable you get to see inside Yee's character, the bedroom is the only place he relaxes his caution, revels in his lust, and occasionally appears human. These scenes reveal a lot about both of them as their liaison gradually exposes their joint weakness. The same weakness. That they have fallen for each other.



We were very worried that at two and a half hours, the film would be too long and drawn out but no, it did not feel long at all. The story was well paced and used the time well. Also I usually find subtitles hard work. I often find the dialogue too quick and I don't keep up or I forget to read them. This was the case here too for a while but half an hour into the movie the plot became so gripping and the film so mesmerizing, that I forgot about the subtitles because they had become part of the film. Another reason the subtitles got easier was later in the film there were less of them, as less needed to be spoken. The actions were enough. The scenes of the two of them together were fraught with a psychological tension and I found myself holding my breath.



This is a great film with so much to it and huge emotional complexity. It builds to an ending when Yee finally relaxes his caution too much. The end was slightly surprising but all the better for not having a predictable Hollywood ending. I'm sure people who don’t like ‘art’ films will slag off the whole movie and people who don’t have sex will criticise the sex scenes but the first words L spoke after the film were ‘absolutely brilliant’ and she is right.

I have possibly seen the best film of 2008 already and we're only six days into the New Year. If this isn't it then it's going to be one hell of a good year at the movies. Two and a half hours very well spent.