FILM REVIEW: DAMSELS IN DISTRESS

Sony Pictures
Now Showing
(Melbourne and Sydney Only)




I don't know what Whit Stillman was doing during his 14-year hiatus from filmmaking, but I'd hazard a guess that the writer-director may have picked up a copy of Jane Austen's Emma. Either that, or viewed Clueless, Amy Heckerling's 1995 modernisation of the Austen text, for there's more than a little Emma Dashwood/Cher Horowitz in his chief damsel, Violet Wister.

Violet (a wondrous Greta Gerwig) is the leader of the pack of a civic-minded group of college girls, and the heroine of Damsels In Distress, a campus-set comedy so light and loopy you'll find hard to resist even if you're not entirely sure of what's happening.

Just like Emma and Cher, Violet aims to bring happiness to the lives of those around her, in this instance, the populace of Seven Oaks College. But unlike either Austen's or Heckerling's heroines, Violet is no matchmaker: she comes to the rescue once girls' hearts are broken.

Along with plum-voiced Rose (Megalyn Echikinwoke) and ditzy Heather (Carrie MacLemore), Violet operates the campus Suicide Prevention Centre, where depressed undergrads are served coffee and donuts, and encouraged to channel their emotions into dance.

Of all Violet's theories and philosophies (that the members of the campus's Roman Houses can't be called elitist because they're morons and thus pitiable; to her preference for less attractive, less intelligent men making for more ideal romantic partners in the long run), her strongest held belief is that someone who invents a dance craze achieves a greater posterity than most.

Amused, bemused and enthralled by these bon mots as much as we, the audience, is Lily (Analeigh Tipton), a transfer student to Seven Oaks whom Violet and co. take under their wings. Not that she's depressed, far from it. Lily not-so-secretly adores Xavier (Hugo Becker), a Frenchman who belongs to an odd religious order, but has also caught the eye of Charlie (Adam Brody) (dubbed a "playboy operator" by Rose (Echikinwoke gets some comic mileage out of that term),who may not be all (or who) he seems.

The opening credits of Damsels (which sees the traditionally blue Sony Pictures Classics logo go pink) list the men in the film as The Distress, and rightly so. When Violet's not-so intelligent, average-looking beau from the Roman House, Frank (Ryan Metcalfe), breaks her heart, she's sent into a tailspin; going AWOL from campus for a few days before returning to Seven Oaks and her former self, more or less.

The rest of the plot (which description could hardly do justice) involves sweet-scented soap, conundrums with colours, further romantic complications and an inevitable (yet no less delightful) dance number.

Having never seen any of Stillman's previous three films (Metropolitan (1989), Barcelona (1994), The Last Days of Disco (1998)), I can't say if Damsels In Distress is consistent with the writer-director's style. But if it is, I'll certainly be seeking them out.

But I have a feeling Damsels In Distress, which adheres to its own internal logic, exists very much in its own world; one of bright colours, amusing yet articulate speech, and highly likeable characters, though pretentious or doufi they may be. And it's a world I was happy to spend 100 minutes in, and would happily do so again.

FILM REVIEW: MADAGASCAR 3: EUROPE'S MOST WANTED

Paramount Pictures
Now Showing



Moving at a crack-a-lackin' pace, and in defiance of the rules of logic and physics – and all the better for it – Europe's Most Wanted is the most madcap adventure thus far in DreamWorks' Madagascar franchise, and the perfect swan song for Alex the lion (Ben Stiller), Marty the zebra (Chris Rock), Gloria the hippo (Jada Pinkett Smith), and Melman the giraffe (David Schwimmer) should this indeed be the final film for the Central Park Zoo four.

Within the opening five minutes we've witnessed a nightmare and a flashback (both by Stiller's Alex), before our heroes, desperate to return to their native New York, surface off the coast of Monte Carlo, presumably having swum there from Africa.

They've come to the European principality to locate the penguins and the chimps who left them behind in Africa when they headed off in a makeshift aeroplane with the promise of returning with rescue. The penguins and chimps have been living large in one of the city's casinos (raising funds for their return to Africa), but once the gang discovers them mayhem ensues.

This brings Alex and the gang (including lemur King Julian (Sacha Baron Cohen) and his cohorts) to the attention of Animal Control Captain, Chantel DuBois (Frances McDormand), a woman who once she has the scent is like a dog with a bone. Or more accurately, like Robert Patrick's T-1000 cyborg in Terminator 2: unstoppable, unflappable (and as defiant of physics as the animals) and with one goal in mind – to mount Alex the lion's head on her trophy wall.

The gang manage to elude capture by DuBois, if not her pursuit, jumping a circus train headed for Rome. They buy out the human owners and plan to win the attention of a visiting American promoter who will whisk them all back to New York, but first Alex has to convince the circus – a one-time success but now a down-on-its-luck operation – that they can recapture their former glory.

Gia (Jessica Chastain), the acrobatic jaguar, and Stefano, the sea lion cannonball (a wonderful Martin Short channelling Roberto Benigni), are ready to embrace the ways of Circus Americano but Vitaly, the Russian tiger (a surly Bryan Cranston), haunted by his own failures involving a flaming ring and olive oil, isn't so easily convinced.

In a time where animated films have become serious business, both at the box office and with critics and awards bodies (no longer assigned to the kids' table and allowed to compete for Best Picture at the Oscars), Madagascar 3 is a reminder that they can also be pure, unadulterated fun.

Directors Tom McGrath, Conrad Vernon, and Eric Darnell, who penned the screenplay with Noah Baumbach (writer-director of such indie fare as The Squid and the Whale (2005), and Margot at the Wedding (2007), but who also co-penned 2009's Fantastic Mr. Fox), seem to have not only remembered that animation is merely a grown-up term for cartoon, but have embraced the freedom and lunacy that comes with that realisation.

Thematically, Madagascar 3, like its predecessors, is about family being what you make of it and home being where the heart is but not in a sickly sentimental way. Besides there's no time for saccharine, what with car chases, fireworks, jet packs and "balloons for the children of the world", there's barely time to catch one's breath let alone to shed a tear.

And if this is to be the last Madagascar film (there has been no official word on that), then it's a solid, highly entertaining third act for the franchise. Roll up, roll up, come one and all. Leave logic at the big top entrance and enjoy Europe's Most Wanted, Americano-style.

FILM REVIEW: BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD

Icon Films
Now Showing




In a region of Louisiana known as The Bathtub, lives six-year-old Hushpuppy and her father, Wink. But don't let the cutesy-pie names fool you, for Behn Zeitlin's Beasts of the Southern Wild, however fablesque, doesn't deal in sunshine, lollipops and happy ever afters.

Wink (Dwight Henry) practises a form of tough love on his little charge. With her mother leaving not long after her birth, Hushpuppy (Quvenzhane Wallis) has only Wink to provide for her, and Wink, who has a serious medical condition, knows that when he's no longer around to take care of her, the world won't go easy on his daughter just because she's a little girl.

But the pint-sized Hushpuppy is as defiant of her father as her hair is of gravity, and when her world starts falling down around her -- with Wink's ailing health, and quite literally when The Bathtub floods and the government moves in to relocate the residents -- the little girl heads off in search of her long-gone mother.

Adapting Lucy Alibar's Juicy and Delicious stageplay with the playwright, Zeitlin has opened up the universe of Hushpuppy (originally written as a boy) by grounding the story in reality, albeit one as unfamiliar to mainstream American audiences as the rest of the world; Hushpuppy, Wink and their rabble of friends and neighbours, black and white, are the people that the Bush administration "forgot" in the immediate wake of Hurricane Katrina.

And it would be easy to view Beasts of the Southern Wild as a post-Katrina parable, or even as a warning on climate change. When Hushpuppy realises her father is not well, there are rumblings in the ice caps and mythological beasts known as aurochs are unleashed. (Are they real, or manifestations of a little girl's fears and anxieties of a world in which she has no control?)

But Zeitlin is never heavy-handed nor the film overly heavy: Hushpuppy's observation that the universe depends on everything fitting together just right (respect the food chain; honour they father; love thy neighbour) is about as didactic as the film gets.

Of course, we're viewing this world through the eyes of Hushpuppy, a world where politics has no place amongst the beauty and danger of the natural and man-made environs. Often only dressed in a singlet and underpants, Hushpuppy is at home among the long grass, and the handful of animals she keeps; animals she knows she'd have to eat if circumstances dictate.

Used to spending long periods of time on her own, Hushpuppy even lives in separate quarters to Wink. Accustomed to the tough love of her father, but not above daydreaming of her mother, Hushpuppy converses with the clothes which once belonged to her; strewn about the house we suspect Wink never enters.

And if there is one truly great marvel in this small marvel of a film -- by a first-time director, made on a shoe-string budget, with an original vision -- it is the performance of Quvenzhane Wallis. A first-time actor and just six years old when cast, Wallis imbues Beasts' little heroine with mix of bravado and innocence that simply can't be faked. "I'm the man!" she screams at one point, and you'd better believe it.

Even if, ultimately, the film didn't affect me emotionally in the way I had hoped (too high expectations and my own fault entirely), Wallis's Hushpuppy leaves an indelible mark. In the pantheon of young female heroines traversing worlds real and imagined - Alice, Dorothy, even Coraline - Hushpuppy rings true: a 'beast' who captures your heart completely.

FILM REVIEW: YOUR SISTER'S SISTER

Madman Films
Now Showing




Lynn Shelton's previous film, Humpday, was a funny and smart take on the bromance genre: a look at male machismo, the inherent homoeroticism and the lengths men will go to to save face. In Your Sister's Sister, Shelton focusses her gaze on the female of the species, more specifically, the relationship between sisters Hannah (Rosemarie DeWitt) and Iris (Emily Blunt), and the man who comes between them.

That would be Jack (Mark Duplass), who is still mourning the death of his brother, Tom, 12 months ago. Iris, Tom's former girlfriend, thinks his getting away from it all – precipitated by an outburst at a memorial for Tom by the dead brother's friends – will be the best thing for Jack. And he agrees, taking up her invitation to spend a week at her family's island cottage off the coast of Washington State.

Jack isn't expecting company during his retreat, but is happy for it when he discovers Hannah (in her underwear) also occupying the cottage. The pair have never met but know of each other through Iris, and any wariness is soon dissipated as the pair indulge in a lot of whiskey and some midnight confessionals: he's grieving; she's just ended a seven-year relationship with a woman.

It also leads to some awkward bedroom antics, made even more awkward when Iris arrives unannounced early the next day. Iris is ecstatic to see her big sister, and happy that the two most important people in her life have finally met; Jack, however, is not-so happy for Iris to find out what happened last night, given that he is secretly in love with her.

This places Hannah uncomfortably in the middle, a position made even more uncomfortable when her own secret is revealed.

Rosemarie DeWitt has seemingly made a career out of playing the sister – from the titular bride in Rachel Getting Married, opposite Anne Hathaway, to the arguably sane sibling of Toni Collette's Tara in TV's The United States Of – and by making an impression in supporting roles; second-in-command but never second best.

And in Your Sister's Sister, DeWitt is again the sister but finally lands a lead role: equal billing (and footing) with her co-stars, Blunt and Duplass. Her Hannah is the most complex of the three characters, and DeWitt makes her nuanced, by turns prickly and empathetic.

Blunt, always a welcome presence, is good, too, as is Mark Duplass who has, by some strange turn of events become the most unlikely romantic lead of cinema 2012. With Sister, and the soon-to-be-released Safety Not Guaranteed, the affably charming but by no means “Hollywood handsome” actor (who also directs his own films with his brother, Jay), gives a wonderfully comic turn.

Depending on your take, Your Sister's Sister is either a drama with laughs or vice versa. Shelton isn't heavy handed with either – there's no hand wringing when things come to a head, and the closest thing to a comic set piece involves vegan pancakes – but what she and her actors achieve (no doubt partly as a result of their improvising) is an authenticity in the relationships.

Not only do we like Hannah, Iris and Jack (in spite of their obvious faults), but we care about them and what happens to them. And even if their ultimate fate is left up in the air thanks to a cliffhanger ending of sorts, one gets the feeling that the kids will be alright.