FILM REVIEW: AN EDUCATION

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Paramount Pictures

Coming-of-age films from the female perspective are seemingly not as common as their male counterparts, but rarely is either gender afforded a vehicle committed with the grace and humour of An Education.

Based on a very slim memoir by British journalist Lynn Barber, and adapted, surprisingly, by very male novelist Nick Hornby, author of Fever Pitch and About A Boy, Danish director Lone Scherfig has captured a very specific time and place – early 1960s London before it swang and just before The Beatles launched – and a star-making performance by Carey Mulligan.

Mulligan is Jenny, 16 years old and living in the London suburbs with her parents, an acquiescent mum (Cara Seymour) and a penny-pinching, infuriatingly misguided dad (a wonderful comic turn by Alfred Molina), whose insistence that Jenny achieve high grades so as to attend Oxford is the only thing they agree on; for him it is to improve their social standing, for Jenny it is a means to escape.

Like most teens, Jenny, who smokes with her friends, speaks French and dreams big dreams, believes she is smarter than the adults in her life and is going to go places and do things. And then she meets David (Peter Sarsgaard) - in a wonderful scene involving a car, a cello and some rain - an older man who has been places and done things and offers these opportunities to her. David takes her to concerts, supper clubs and auctions. He even manages to take her away for a weekend in Oxford for Jenny is not the only one seduced by this man.

Of course nothing is as it seems and anything too good to be true usually proves to be so and as Jenny’s grades slip, her eyes are opened all too late. Her education will come at a price but at film’s end we know she’ll be all the better for it.

I’ve seen An Education twice now, and loved it just as much the second time. I’m surprised how my first reaction to David changed with the second viewing. I’m also impressed with how Olivia Williams, as Jenny’s English teacher, and Emma Thompson, as the headmistress, make full-blooded people out of two small supporting roles.

But want didn’t change for me, but was merely reinforced, was the wonderful performance by Carey Mulligan. This little known (but not for much longer) British actress, 24 yet effortlessly passing for 16, seizes the opportunity afforded her and runs with it – all the way to next year’s Oscars I, and most pundits, predict. The film rests on her shoulders and she bears the burden gracefully. Jenny’s judgement may falter but Mulligan’s never does.

With an expanded list of 10 Best Picture nominees, An Education has a good chance of securing a BP nomination, and deservedly so. And in what is proving to be a good year for women directors, Lone Scherfig could also secure a nod. But don’t wait for those announcements in February 2010: An Education opens this week and you’d be the class clown not to seek it out now.

FILM REVIEW: DEPARTURES

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Madman Films

Earlier this year I sent an email to friends quoting an A.O. Scott review from the New York Times, facetiously saying how I wished I could be so wittily cutting with my reviews. That review (pub. May 29, 2009) was for the Japanese film Departures, winner of this year’s Oscar for Best Foreign Language film.

The surprise winner it must be said, and perhaps one of the reasons for Scott’s invective which included calling the film, “Overlong, predictable in its plotting and utterly banal in its blending of comic whimsy and melodramatic pathos”. Most pundits and critics had expected the Israeli animated docu-drama Waltz With Bashir to claim the prize or, at second guess, the French film The Class.

That Departures won is not its fault (nor should its makers apologise), but it perhaps places it under greater scrutiny and expectation than had it arrived in our cinemas as a mere nominee. Yojiro Takita’s film is certainly no masterpiece but it’s no dud either; there’s much to be enjoyed if you approach it on its own terms.

Daigo is a cellist with an orchestra but economic pressures (no one is coming to their performances) sees it disbanded by its backers. Daigo decides to uproot he and his surprisingly compliant young wife Mika (Ryoko Hirosue) to his childhood home in a seaside village. In the course of looking for new employment, he mistakenly applies for a job which involves preparing deceased bodies for cremation. That he is immediately employed for the position and paid a day’s wages upfront is amusing; that Daigo goes back on the second day, despite an horrific introduction to the job, even more so.

Surprising, however, is his inability to tell his wife what it is he now does. Handling the deceased is not considered an honourable job in Japan, but one which Daigo slowly begins to admire and excel at. There is the encoffinating ceremony which involves cleaning and dressing the deceased in front of their loved ones and the artist in Daigo treats it with the respect and attention it deserves.

Of course Daigo’s wife will discover his secret and not be so understanding. Daigo will also have to come to terms with the emotional baggage he carries concerning his father, who abandoned him and his now-deceased mother when he was just a boy. Yes there will be tears, and not just on screen (I admit, I did get a little misty eyed), before an inevitably uplifting ending.

At just over two hours, Departures does outstay its welcome and one too many classical music interludes, where Daigo recalls his childhood but not the face of the man who left him, feels as though Takita is pushing for effect when he doesn’t really need to; the emotions come through unassisted. But there is much to enjoy in this film before rigor mortis sets in.

In his review, Scott called Departures “perfectly mediocre” and as much as I admire his command of the put-down, I think he is perhaps being unfairly harsh. For what it is - a quasi-profound human drama and comedy of manners - Departures is perfectly fine.

FILM REVIEW: MOON

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Sony Pictures

It is difficult to review a film, especially a good film, when it requires that you not reveal any of the major plot points. And Moon, the directorial debut of Duncan Jones, turns on one major plot point.

It also rests on the shoulders of Sam Rockwell, essentially the only actor in the film. He plays Sam Bell, the sole occupant of a lunar mining station where Earth in the not-too-distant future now obtains its energy resources. Bell is about to reach the end of his contract after three years where his only company has been delayed messages from his wife and young daughter back on Earth, and Gerty, the station's artificial intelligence system, voiced by Kevin Spacey.

That gives the film a 2001: A Space Odyssey feel, as does the sterile white production design of the station interiors, but Jones is concerned with more than homage. Like the best sci-fi, he is concerned with questions of humanity: what does it mean to be human? And that's where the major plot point comes in to play.

When Bell goes outside the station to check on a malfunctioning machine an accident occurs and – and to say anymore would spoil the surprise. Less of a surprise is Sam Rockwell's performance. Considered more of a character actor, and mostly playing manic characters at that, Rockwell got his best leading man role in the George Clooney-directed Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. Here, Jones gives him another and he runs with it and in a perfect world, an Oscar nomination would be his.

Made on a budget of $5million, which is noticeable at times but never distracting, Moon is a small film but no less worthy for that. It has ambition which is far more than a lot of films, with bigger budgets and much less to say, have in their favour.

FILM REVIEW: JULIE and JULIA

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Sony Pictures

If like me you had never heard of Julia Child before the arrival of this film, then you will likely associate her forever more with Meryl Streep. Child, the woman hailed for bringing French cooking into the kitchens of America with her book and TV show, is so specifically rendered in the extremely talented actor's portrayal - is there nothing Ms Streep cannot do? - that if Julia Child is nothing like her on-screen version (and you could probably find out for yourself on YouTube) then I don't want to know about it.

Writer-director Nora Ephron's film unfortunately is not devoted entirely to Streep's Julia Child but rather attempts to tell parallel stories: the writing of Child's infamous Mastering The Art of French Cooking in post-World War II Paris, and that of Julie Powell (Amy Adams), a civil servant in post-911 New York who set herself the challenge of cooking all 500-plus recipes in Child's tome in one year and recording her successes and failures in a blog.

Bored with her domestic life after serving for US intelligence during the war, Julia Child looks for projects to fill her days. With the encouragement of her husband (Stanley Tucci, who gave Streep solid support in The Devil Wears Prada and does so once again), she decides on learning to cook French cuisine, after all she loves to eat, and she takes to it like a duck to a l'orange. It is these scenes of the film which are full of life and vigour; when Streep is on screen the film soars.

That Adams' scenes are less engaging is no fault of her own. This talented young actress, star of such wonderful fare as Enchanted and Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day, and Oscar-nominated for Junebug and Doubt, where she first played opposite Streep, brings her comic sensibility and her natural likability to the role of Powell. But whenever we cut back to her, in her huddled apartment with her more-than-accommodating husband (Chris Messina), having spent time with Meryl in Paris, you can't help but feel like a guest at a dinner party who knows there's another, more vibrant dinner party with a richer menu happening across town.

Meryl Streep is the guest of honour and main course in the dinner party that is Julie & Julia. When she's not on screen you can't wait for her to come back, with her hors d'oeuvre and her sparkle.