Chloe "This lush, insinuating remake of the rather muted French film NATHALIE benefits from a much more emotionally charged script and lively, layered performances. It also has director Atom Egoyan's (THE SWEET HEREAFTER, ADORATION) playful skill at exploring images and perceptions. Catherine (Julianne Moore) puts up with the flirtatious personality of her husband David (Liam Neeson) until she gets evidence that he's had an affair. And now she wants details. So she hires high-class hooker Chloe (Big Love’s Amanda Seyfried) to seduce him and tell her what happens. 'He's not the client, ' she reminds Chloe, and indeed it's the relationship between the women that turns strangely obsessive. Lines are blurred between who's falling in love with whom, and by the time each person starts to realize what's happening, they're in trouble. Yes, there's a whiff of FATAL ATTRACTION in the way Wilson has adapted the screenplay. And Egoyan tells the story like a Hitckcock thriller, with a constantly surging underscore by Mychael Danna and sleekly linear production design that's heavy on glass and mirrors. Paul Sarossy's camerawork prowls the sets seductively, developing erotic tension between all of the characters, including Catherine and David's late-teen son. But this isn't style over substance. It's an astute exploration of a mature marriage that has changed from passionate romance into a close friendship. Moore and Neeson beautifully get under their characters' skins, and we can really feel how each one is struggling with growing older. Seyfriend is excellent as well, playing a woman who knows exactly how to hit the right buttons yet isn't quite in control of her power to arouse others. Watching the events unfurl through Catherine's eyes gives the film a subtle electric charge because, like her, we're unsure what's really going on. We don't understand why their son is so surly toward her, and we are drawn to this sexy stranger who seems to offer something intriguing that might actually reinvigorate the marriage. It's rare to find a movie that recognizes that even in relationships we're all human, we still find other people attractive and we need to be pursued. " - Rich Cline, Shadows on the Wall Fish Tank "Mia, the 15-year-old protagonist of FISH TANK, Andrea Arnold's tough and brilliant second feature (her first, RED ROAD [Salem Film Festival 2007] was a tour de force of psychological insight), moves with such speed and fury that she seems to be trying to flee not only from her bleak surroundings but also from the movie itself. The narrow, nearly square frame boxes Mia in, and Ms. Arnold's on-the-run hand-held tracking shots increase the sense of panicky claustrophobia. Living in a cramped apartment in a British housing project that stands like a cluster of megaliths in the middle of nowhere, Mia is at once trapped and adrift, unable to contain or to express the feelings seething beneath the blank, sullen mien she usually presents to the world. She swerves from rage to tenderness, and may not even know which is which. What does Mia want? To be free, to be safe, to be left alone, to be loved. The contradictions of adolescence have rarely been conveyed with such authenticity and force. Though Mia is poor, unruly and obviously, in social-work parlance, 'at risk'-- her mother (Kierston Wareing) and younger sister, with whom she lives, are equally volatile, or even more so – FISH TANK is not drawn from the case files, and does not solicit pity. Rather, thanks to Ms. Arnold's fine-grained realism and the astonishing performance of Katie Jarvis, the nonprofessional actress who plays Mia, it is a diamond-hard reflection on the peril and progress of a fragile soul in a bad situation. Although she prefers to be alone, Mia craves connection. She develops a tentative relationship with Connor (Michael Fassbender), her mother's new boyfriend. Mom, slightly less miserable and abusive when drunk -- and therefore, perhaps luckily for Mia, rarely sober -- has brought home a bit of decency as well as fun. Or so it appears. Connor is friendly, generous and easy in the company of Mia and Sophie, her prickly, foulmouthed little sister. Arnold is absorbed in the details of her film's setting -- the graffiti in the corridors, the litter on the sidewalks, the trash on television -- her harsh brand of realis. We find ourselves in a world made familiar by the films of Ken Loach, Mike Leigh and other socially conscious anatomists of British misery. But the movie is Mia's, whose life is too much for her to handle but who must learn to manage it anyway. Whether she will succeed is a big question, of course, but Jarvis's triumph, and Arnold's, are hardly in doubt." - A.O. Scott, New York Times The Ghost Writer "In the month of February, when Hollywood typically drowns us in all-star drool like VALENTINE'S DAY, it's indecent luck having two films in play directed by indisputable masters. First Scorsese's SHUTTER ISLAND, and now Roman Polanski's THE GHOST WRITER, based on the Robert Harris bestseller. It shows Polanski in brilliant command of a political thriller that ties you up in knots of tension while zinging politics and showbiz like two sides of the same toxic coin. Polanski, who won a 2002 Oscar for the Holocaust-themed THE PIANIST, is in a playful, prickly mood here that recalls his early work on ROSEMARY'S BABY and CHINATOWN. Ewan McGregor grabs and runs with his juiciest role in years as the Ghost, a writer hired to pen the memoirs of Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan), the unseated British prime minister now taking refuge in America after being accused of war crimes back home. Any resemblance between Lang and Tony Blair seems purely intentional, since Harris, who wrote the script with Polanski, is on the record as becoming disillusioned with Blair after the PM allegedly teamed up with President Bush to hand over suspected terrorists for torture by the CIA. Like Polanski, Lang is in exile. The former PM is holed up in a Cape Cod beach house with his manipulative wife (Olivia Williams) and an executive assistant (Kim Cattrall) who doubles as his mistress. Don't be thrown by the Sex and the City star's Brit accent — she was born in Liverpool. And it's fun to see Cattrall play covert sexuality for a change of Samantha pace. The Ghost knows he's in over his head. His specialty is ghosting for rock stars and other celebs du trash. There's another chilling detail: The writer who started the book with Lang has been found dead under mysterious circumstances. Since Polanski couldn't travel outside certain legal jurisdictions, he used Berlin for London and the island of Sylt in the North Sea to fill in for Martha's Vineyard. But the kick in this sexy, addictive thriller comes in the telling. As the media swarm outside Lang's beach house, everyone inside feels a trap closing in. No one but Polanski could find the adrenaline rush in such maddening claustrophobia. There are moments when you damn near jump out of your seat as the Ghost snoops around looking for incriminating truth and a chance to have it off with the wife of his subject. All credit to a finely tuned Brosnan for packing so much intensity and wayward wit into his scenes with McGregor. Their verbal duels make for a dazzling game of cat-and-mouse. Polanski's skill with actors hasn't waned. Even the smallest roles are expertly played. Timothy Hutton scores as Lang's American lawyer, and Jim Belushi nails the role of the Ghost's scandal-hungry publisher. Best of all is Tom Wilkinson as Paul Emmet, a Harvard law professor whom the Ghost believes holds the key to Lang's links with the CIA. After an action-packed pursuit of the Ghost on a ferry, the movie ends on a note of shocking challenge. You can feel Polanski's excitement to be working on a film that echoes 1970s classics such as THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR and THE PARALLAX VIEW. Whatever happens to Polanski in real life, his reel life is in excellent shape. THE GHOST WRITER is one of his diabolical best." - Peter Travers, Rolling Stone The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo An international crime thriller involving corporate intrigue, serial murder, and powerful Old World dynasties, Oplev's taut film is based on the international best-selling novel by Stieg Larsson and will have you on the edge of your seat. Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) is a disgraced reporter about to go to prison. Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) is the mysterious girl of the title with a checkered past and a sideline in computer hacking. Together they are hired to investigate a 40-year-old disappearance at the request of eccentric, 82-year-old industralist Henrik Vanger. As they dig deep into the secrets of the Vanger family they begin to uncover a dark and bloody history that someone wants to keep hidden at any cost. PIFF Notes In Swedish with English Subtitles The Horse Boy "Most parents of autistic children will go to enormous lengths to relieve the anguish that the condition causes for the kids themselves and for the rest of their families. Nevertheless, few would even entertain the notion of taking a profoundly troubled 6-year-old boy across Mongolia by horseback to visit a series of shamanic healers. A film companion to the recent best-seller by Rupert Isaacson, THE HORSE BOY depicts the potentially foolhardy journey that Isaacson -- an aid worker, journalist and former horse trainer -- and his psychology-prof wife Kristin Neff took with their son Rowan in the summer of 2007. Having seen the calming effect of horses on Rowan whenever he visited the farm next door to their house in Texas, Isaacson wondered whether there was a country with a healing tradition that involved animals. Mongolia was the only one that fit the bill. 'Absurd' is Neff's reasonable assessment of the idea of heading off to Genghis Khan's old stomping grounds. Yet like so many other parents in their situation, the couple is aware of just how potent the illusion of a miracle cure can be, especially if there's any chance of minimizing Rowan's horrendous tantrums or finally getting him toilet-trained. Co-directed by Michel Orion Scott and Isaacson, THE HORSE BOY succeeds both as a provocative inquiry into the mysteries of autism and as a true-life adventure tale. Though experts such as Simon Baron Cohen (cousin to comedian Sacha) contribute valuable comments on the subject of autism, they also admit how poorly understood the condition is. Even they concede that seeking out the help of shamans isn't so absurd. As for the Mongolians encountered by the family on their quest, their generosity and openness are so striking, it's not surprising to see Rowan respond in kind. Developments indicate the journey's powerful effects. Near the beginning of THE HORSE BOY, Isaacson promises that this will not be another story of 'the tragedy of autism.' Instead, he suggests that there could be a whole other way of thinking about the subject. 'Why couldn't it be a gateway to adventure,' he wonders, 'even to healing?' While the trek's events may be difficult to replicate by any other family in need, the film demonstrates the value of taking a fresh approach to a stubbornly mysterious condition." - Jason Anderson, Toronto Star The Hurt Locker "The Army bomb-disposal specialist so memorably played by Jeremy Renner in the extraordinary battlefield drama THE HURT LOCKER operates with the swagger of a hothead in a job that depends on cool. That cowboy attitude exasperates one combat-weary member (Anthony Mackie) of his Baghdad-based Bravo Company team and frightens another (Brian Geraghty) to furious tears. What's the source of this grim bravado? Is this decent man's addiction to adrenaline the cost to today's American soldier of volunteering for such a crazy assignment, one that requires a husband with a family thousands of miles away to lie down in the road in the hot sun next to a live bomb to disarm a deadly device while locals whose language he can't understand stare impassively? It so happens that THE HURT LOCKER takes place in Iraq. But geography is almost beside the point. What makes the film so essential is its pinpoint accuracy in mapping the disorienting roads a man can walk down when his job keeps him so close to death, working for what sometimes feels like a distant principle. Director Kathryn Bigelow and journalist-screenwriter Mark Boal (whose blunt, vivid script is based on reports from his 2004 stint in Baghdad embedded with an Army bomb squad) probe the intersection of bravery and obsession, of risk and responsibility. (Guy Pearce and Ralph Fiennes make brief, jolting cameo appearances as similar risk-takers.) The result is an intense, action-driven war pic, a muscular, efficient standout that simultaneously conveys the feeling of combat from within as well as what it looks like on the ground. This ain't no war videogame, no flashy, cinematic art piece; there's nothing virtual about this reality."– Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus "In THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS, a carnival wagon rumbles through the night-time streets of modern-day London, inviting the curious and the wayward to step inside. The proprietor is the good doctor of the title, a careworn sage a thousand years old and played under all the pancake and whiskers by Christopher Plummer. He has a moon-faced daughter, Valentina (Lily Cole), nominally 16 and bursting into flower, a young assistant named Anton (Andrew Garfield) who loves the daughter, and a testy jack-of-all-trades dwarf named Percy (Verne Troyer). Inside the wagon is an alternate dimension of surreal digital landscapes and, for each customer, a nasty moral choice. In short, IMAGINARIUM is a Terry Gilliam movie and it's a masterful mess; this critic was won over by its ramshackle whimsies. When we first see the late Heath Ledger in IMAGINARIUM, his character, Tony, is apparently dead but not really; he's apparently a well-known philanthropist but not really. He may be a charlatan. He definitely has amnesia. And he's played with wit and fickle inventiveness by an actor who surely wasn't planning to leave us so soon. I'd like to imagine that Ledger would have a good chuckle over the hall-of-mirrors ironies this movie conjures up. Tony falls in with Doctor Parnassus's ragtag troupe just as things are beginning to heat up for the first time in centuries. The Doctor has revived his longstanding rivalry with Mr. Nick, a.k.a. the Devil himself, a natty fellow played with extra relish by singer Tom Waits. Whoever can win over five human souls to his side of the fence gets the soul of the Doctor's prized possession: Valentina. Tony turns out to be surprisingly adept at luring people into the Imaginarium, where Gilliam's own imagination runs riot. The wagon's inner universe betrays the film's small budget; the director's visual ideas pile at us pell-mell but for the first time in a long time they have the strapped, patchwork feel of his Monty Python animations. Because Ledger died before filming any of his Imaginarium sequences, Gilliam was forced into a novel rewrite: Each of the three times Tony steps into Parnassus's wonderland, he changes appearance. An early sequence involving a minor character establishes that such things do happen, and the three actors who ultimately play the Imaginarium Tonys -- Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell -- bring a respectful enthusiasm to the game. They could have been this film's pallbearers; instead, they turn their sections of IMAGINARIUM into a fine Irish wake. Mostly, though, IMAGINARIUM is about the possibility of magic in the modern world, a topic near to Gilliam's own big, fitful heart. In a way the director never intended, his movie now stands as evidence of the magic we're lucky to capture on film and the magic we have to make for ourselves. See it for both kinds." – Ty Burr, The Boston Globe The Last Station "The challenge and (let's face it) the hoot of playing formidable ladies with iron wills suit Helen Mirren splendidly these days; she's making the most of her uniquely poised, feminine bearing, her mature sensuality, and her own status as a Dame of the British Empire -- one who doesn't give a toss about titles. Three years after her triumphant, Oscar-winning performance as a modern British monarch in The Queen, Mirren is magnificent as Countess Sofya -- better known as Mrs. Leo Tolstoy -- in THE LAST STATION, a grandly entertaining historical drama about the final year of the great Russian writer's life. Based on the equally entertaining, erudite novel by Jay Parini and adapted and directed by Michael Hoffman (THE EMPEROR'S CLUB), the movie is at once a hot marital showdown and a cool political debate, a domestic War and Peace. While Count Leo (Christopher Plummer, a boffo choice), living under the sway of a rigid Tolstoyan acolyte named Chertkov (Paul Giamatti), supports anarchy, pacifism, and the abolishment of property rights, Countess Sofya fights, tigress-style, for the security of well-ordered laws regarding copyrights and inheritance -- specifically her inheritance from her husband's estate, which she would lose if Chertkov and his ilk got their way. (The biographical fact is that at the end of his life, 82-year-old Tolstoy fled his family and their demands, making it only as far as the local train station before falling mortally ill.) The war between Leo and Sofya is filtered through the perceptions of an eager, chaste young man (James McAvoy) who arrives at Tolstoy's country home to work as the writer's secretary. He stays to be initiated into lusty manhood by Rome's Kerry Condon, playing an attractive young believer in Tolstoyan utopia -- a sweet, sexy scene shot, as is the whole refined movie, with an aim to please and a love of sunlight. But as fetching as the young lovers are (McAvoy specializes in playing inexperienced young men who are quick studies), the pair could learn a thing or two about passion from Mirren; at this point the actress can convey fury, tenderness, or voracious will with a mere raise of an eyebrow."– Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly Precious: based on the novel Push by Sapphire "PRECIOUS opens with a poetic image -- a floaty red scarf on a lamp post -- and a quotation to match. It's credited to Ken Keyes, the germinal self-help guru who founded the Science of Happiness: ‘Everything is a gift from the universe.' Well, hmmm. Isn't this the movie about the obese Harlem teenager, the one who's raped by her dad and abused by her mom? Shouldn't it be depressing, devastating, harrowing, repulsive? Where's the room for chiffon neckwear and cosmic uplift in a story like that? All I can say is: It is. It should. And you'd be amazed. Directed by Lee Daniels (SHADOWBOXER) and adapted by Geoffrey Fletcher from the novel Push by Sapphire, PRECIOUS is arguably the hardest-hitting depiction of childhood incest ever to find widespread mainstream distribution. From its first reel to its last, the film looks squarely at the graphic emotional contours of sexual abuse, whether it's the sweaty face of the man who impregnates his daughter or the twisted psychological battery of the woman who enables him. It's about as raw as a movie can get and about as tough to watch. Yet that naturalism is streaked with lyric flights. Daniels mixes up the harsh urban drama with episodes of magical realism, moments when the title character cuts away from the horrors of abuse into a fantasy world of glamorous photo shoots and red-carpet schmoozing. In that realm, she's adored. In this one, she's reviled. The contrast between idealized and real emphasizes the unforgiving grittiness of Precious' life, but it also plays up the resilience of a girl who hasn't yet given up on loving, or being loved. At one point, Precious looks in the mirror and imagines a skinny blonde, a glimpse of self-loathing that might have been torn from Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. That's but one of many shocking images. But this is more, far more, than some mere drain on our tear ducts. Bit by bit, in a messy progression of choices, confrontations and setbacks, hope insinuates itself into the plot. And the cast is perfection: Gabourey Sidibe as the heroic Precious; Mo'Nique in her Golden Globe winning role as her contemptible, pathetic mother; Paula Patton as a kind teacher in a new school; Mariah Carey, incognito in drab bangs, as a no-guff welfare caseworker. Even Lenny Kravitz impresses as a charming maternity nurse. PRECIOUS counts among its producers Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry -- and cynics may be tempted to dismiss it as pop exploitation of a sensitive topic. It isn't. It is, first and foremost, a compassionate, closely observed study of a traumatized adolescent. Yet this isn't just any portrait of a pregnant teen. With innocence, force of will and a welling largeness of heart, Sidibe conveys both the child Precious was and the adult she wants to be. What a quiet feat of acting. What a triumph of a film." – Amy Biancolli, Houston Chronicle A Prophet "Much has been said and written about the Barack Obama phenomenon -- how a political figure virtually unknown at the time of the Bush-Bore campaign of 2000 came out of nowhere, battled the nominees from his own party, then went on to become a national hero in defeating long-term politician John McCain. Maybe it's a stretch, but something similar goes down in Jacques Audiard's A PROPHET, a prison drama that opens with the usual jailhouse conventions but then moves to a more imaginative conceit, more creative than a standard jailbird genre picture. A PROPHET is the story of a man who is part Corsican-French, part Arab (perhaps tracing his line to Tunisia), an illiterate who came out of nowhere to play off one organized crime group against another ultimately to emerge as a tragic hero who goes off with the spoils. The film features an intensely powerful role from Tahar Rahim, for most purposes a newbie to the acting profession, who emerged from a competition seeking the role of Malik El Djebena. A 19-year-old repeat offender given a six-year sentence for a relatively minor offense, is strip-searched, Djebena is shown to his cell, beaten: a fish out of water. When Cesar Luchiani (Niels Arestrup), the head of the jail's Corsican gang, recruits the young man, warning that the new prisoner must kill another Arab, Reyeb (Hichem Yacoubi) or be killed himself, Djebena is at first horrified but his transformation from a shy, confused, friendless prisoner to a position of leadership begins here with his realization that he must ultimately follow the law of survival. Director and co-writer Jacques Audiard positions El Djebena to evoke our sympathies, despite his past criminal behavior. Bold and authentic." – Harvey Karten, CompuServe In French, Corsican and Arabic with English Subtitles. The Secret In Their Eyes "A deeply rewarding throwback to the unself-conscious days when cinema still strove to be magical, THE SECRET IN THEIR EYES is simply mesmerizing. While it packs two generation-spanning love stories, a noirish thriller, some delicious comedy, a pointed political critique and much food for thought into more than two hours' compelling, grown-up entertainment, the film is still more than the sum of its parts. Repping a change of direction for Juan Jose Campanella, whose THE SON OF THE BRIDE also starred Ricardo Darin, this is an altogether darker, more complex piece of work, as well as Campanella's finest film. Recently retired Benjamin (Darin), a former criminal-court employee, has decided to write a novel based on a rape and murder that occurred 20 years ago -- a crime he believes has never been solved. He shares his intentions with judge Irene (Soledad Villamil), for whom he has long carried a secret torch and who -- for reasons which soon become clear -- is unsure about the idea. Flashbacks set just before the late '70s arrival of the military junta show an Argentina already in the grip of judicial corruption. The dead woman was the young wife of Morales (Pablo Rago); the two immigrant workers arrested for the crime have clearly been beaten into confessing. Roused to action, and aided by his drunken barfly colleague Sandoval (Argentinean comedian Guillermo Francella), Benjamin sets about identifying the real perp, their clumsiness generating some wonderful comic business along the way. It's typical of the picture's striking fusion of thriller and romance that Benjamin is alerted to the possibility that Gomez (Javier Godino) might be the killer. ‘Eyes talk,' one character says, and indeed, eyes function beautifully in the film as both vehicles of passion and instruments of observation. Tracking down Godino is fraught with difficulties. Benjamin becomes determined to have the case formally reopened, and his struggles to do so reap a barbed attack on the way power employs bureaucracy to obfuscate the path to justice Aided by Campanella's fluid editing, SECRET shuttles smoothly between the busy past and a present replete with satisfyingly extended takes, such as when Benjamin and Irene flirtatiously debate the transforming power of memory, a key theme in terms of 20th-century Argentinian history. Pacing here is expertly judged, moving between suspenseful scenes and delicate, pin-drop dialogue, and the outstanding actors generate real chemistry by taking all the time they need -- which is never a second too long. Powerfully understated, Darin explores every psychological shade of a moral man who, having been beaten down by the system, now seeks the fulfillment life has denied him; richness of the performance, which encompasses both younger and older versions, suggests that we are witnessing the arc of an entire life. Villamil plays the beautiful, statuesque Irene as insecure beneath her veneer of professional power, while Francella, though responsible for many of the laughs, movingly brings out the loneliness beneath the comedy and Rago's Morales is allowed to blossom in a hauntingly intense scene. Visually, the film is straightforward, with repeated tight close-ups of faces, per title, providing the only stylistic idiosyncrasies (these shots also reveal the fine makeup work in aging the characters). But room is found for one memorable tour-de-force sequence set in a packed soccer stadium, the camera swinging and swooping as it goes in search of a single figure among the thousands. Federico Jusid's score aptly tends toward the intimate and lyrical, though with occasional bursts of the stately."– Jonathan Holland, Variety In Spanish with English Subtitles. That Evening Sun "In THAT EVENING SUN, the story of a feisty Tennessee farmer who flees a nursing home to return to his rural homestead, where he discovers that another family has taken up residence, Hal Holbrook strips the stereotype of the grumpy old man of sentimental shtick and cutesy old-codger mannerisms. His hard, steady glare conveys a bone-deep understanding of his thorny character, Abner Meecham, a lonely widower and self-described '80-year-old man with a bum hip and a weak heart.' Mr. Holbrook's fierce, contained performance matches in depth and truthfulness his portrayal of a weary Army retiree who briefly becomes a surrogate father to Emile Hirsch's survivalist in INTO THE WILD. Abner's life at his age revolves around the struggle between decrepitude and the determination of someone who feels free to shoot off his mouth because he has nothing left to lose; his quarrel with the world may in fact be his best survival strategy. Foolishly or not, Abner intends to spend his remaining days on the farm, which his son, Paul (Walton Goggins), a harried trial lawyer, leased to Lonzo Choat (Raymond McKinnon), a no-account 30-something local, after dispatching Abner to the nursing home. Hard-bitten and judgmental, Abner isn't especially likable. He has always loathed the Choat clan, which he denounces to Lonzo's face as 'white trash,' once he arrives to find his farm occupied. During Abner's confrontations with his son, who urges him to return to the nursing home, we learn that Abner was a stern, withholding father and a difficult husband to his wife, Ellen (Mr. Holbrook's real-life wife, Dixie Carter, shown in flashback sharing loving glances with him). Even though Abner is too enfeebled to manage the farm, he takes up residence in a sharecropper shack on the property, hoping that Lonzo, who subsists on disability payments from an accident involving falling lumber, won't make enough money from the farm to exercise the purchase option in the lease agreement. If the film, based on William Gay's short story I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down, has many of the earmarks of Southern Gothic melodrama, its writer and director, Scott Teems, making his feature-film debut, uses the story to explore character, and as the venomous confrontations and threats between Abner and Lonzo build to a conflagration, you see every side of the story. Steeped in Southern atmosphere, the movie, filmed in East Tennessee, conveys the sense of rootedness and contentment felt by farm people who have not much else to show for their labors besides their land and their houses. It is enough to sit on the porch and bask in the comfort and security of this little kingdom, otherwise known as home sweet home." – Stephen Holden, New York Times The Wedding Song "Karin Albou's sophomore feature is a powerful and intimate portrayal of two young women in a part of the world where female roles are still most often secondary. It also approaches an oft-covered subject -- Jewish persecution during the Holocaust -- from an original perspective. Set in Tunis on the cusp of World War II, THE WEDDING SONG follows 16-year-olds Nour (Olympe Borval), a Muslim, and Myriam (Lizzie Brochere), a Jew. They struggle to maintain their friendship as politics and families threaten to undermine it. They also envy one another, for Nour is engaged to her true love, whom Myriam dreams of finding for herself; Myriam, on the other hand, is allowed an education, something that Muslim girls were not at the time. Once the Nazi army enters Tunisia and the racial laws are enacted, Myriam's mother, Titi (director Albou), in an attempt to save them from being deported, marries off her unwilling daughter to rich, older doctor Raoul (Simon Abkarian), thereby crushing the girl's hopes of love. Albou shies away from very little in portraying the intimacy between the two girls. Time and again the girls seek and find solace from one another in a relationship that has strong sensual overtones. More than just a look at female sexuality in a repressive culture, THE WEDDING SONG is a story about how destiny often breaks even the strongest and most essential of bonds. Albou is a natural on camera, and Borval and Brochere both have great chemistry and talent. They convincingly capture the nuances of adolescent diffidence, curiosity and love, though the latter steals most of her scenes with a defiance that equals her striking beauty." – Natasha Senjanovic, The Hollywood Reporter In French and Arabic with English Subtitles The White Ribbon "Immaculately crafted in beautiful black-and-white and entirely absorbing through its longish running time, Michael Haneke's THE WHITE RIBBON spins a mysterious story about a series of untoward events in a rural village in pre-World War I Germany to advance the notion that malice is arguably the dominant human trait. Perhaps closest to his two-part 1979 TV film Lemmings that scrutinizes the ills passed down from generation to generation, but similar as well to a number of his other pictures, including his 2004 international hit CACHE, in its refusal to clearly solve the deadly central mystery, this ironically titled film goes beyond its general analysis of humanity to implicitly suggest some tendencies in the German character and culture that could point to certain developments in the subsequent three decades. THE WHITE RIBBON is structured around a string of misfortunes that befall citizens of Eichwald, an agricultural community where half the population works for the Baron (Ulrich Tukur) and where the stern Protestant pastor (Burghart Klaussner) wields a strong influence, especially on the children. Marbled in between such occurrences are slashing glimpses of village life where the rare expression of genuine childhood innocence and good will is occasionally tolerated, but more often squashed, by the grown-ups. But even children's own true nature comes increasingly under a cloud, to the point THE WHITE RIBBON feels like a thematic companion piece to Lord of the Flies. There is warmth, too, however, in an endearingly bashful courtship between the pudding-faced young school teacher (Christian Friedel) and 17-year-old Eva (Leonie Benesch), who works as a nanny at the Baron's estate. The ever-so-gradual blossoming of their romance is a tickling delight, even though one suspects Haneke may throw a monkeywrench into it. As the harvest season passes into winter and then toward what one eventually realizes will be the start of World War I in the summer of 1914, the village's misdeeds morph into genuine atrocities, resulting in mutual distrust among longtime neighbors and the arrival of outside police. The villagers here live a mostly isolated existence far more redolent of 19th century life than of the mechanized 20th century that will soon engulf them, and the film meticulously conveys both the physical realities of the times and of the moral strictures under which almost no family is a stranger to child abuse, malicious behavior, adultery and premature death."– Todd McCarthy, Variety In German, Polish, Italian and Latin with English Subtitles.
TIMES & DATES SUBJECT TO CHANGE Please call 503-378-7676 to confirm. |
Canada. 2010. Directed by Atom Egoyan. (96 mins.) Rated R.
UK. 2009. Directed by Andrea Arnold. (123 mins.) Rated R.
UK. 2010. Directed by Roman Polanski. (128 mins.) Rated PG-13.
Sweden. 2010. Directed by Niels Arden Oplev. (152 mins.) Rated R. 
United States. 2009. Directed by Michel O. Scott. (93 mins.) Rated PG.
United States. 2009. Directed by Kathryn Bigelow. (131 mins.) Rated R.
UK. 2009. Directed by Terry Gilliam. (122 mins.) Rated PG-13.
UK. 2009. Directed by Michael Hoffman. (112 mins.) Rated R.
United States. 2009. Directed by Lee Daniels. (110 mins.) Rated R.
France/Italy. 2009. Directed by Jacques Audiard. (155 mins.) Rated R.
Argentina. 2009. Directed by Juan Jose Campanella. (127 mins.) Rated R.
United States. 2009. Directed by Scott Teems. (110 mins.) Rated PG-13.
France. 2009. Directed by Karin Albou. (100 mins.) Not Rated.
Germany. 2009. Directed by Michael Haneke. (144 mins.) Rated R.
©Salem Cinema 2009