Right, as the countdown to My Blueberry Nights continues, I'm clearing my back-log of things to talk about. First up is something I watched over a week ago but I did it in two halves and forgot about it. A Good Year, by Ridley Scott, starring Russell Crowe. To begin with, Crowe's accent is ... well, how shall I put it? "Interesting" to say the least, he's supposed to be English but that is a new one for me. This film suffers what so many of these rom-com types do in that it just takes such an incredibly long time for them to get the plot going - a good 30-40 minutes is wasted before it even gets mildly entertaining. So after the write-off that was the opening third of the film, once in France and Marion Cotillard shows up, the film picks up too.
It gets quite funny, Russell is very unusual for him here, usually he's all brood and presence but here he has to rely on a pompous arse charm to get him through the film. It's weird for him but it works I suppose. Scott, as ever, has it absolutely beautifully shot, the thing is gorgeous to look at, he also completely wastes Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi which I was not amused by in the slightest, she deserves better. This isn't anything new or revelatory but it's a nice enough little film that gets more entertaining as it goes.
I've been a fan of Krzysztof Kieslowski ever since I first saw Three Colours White on Channel 4 at some point in the mid-90s. Gradually, through a variety of sources I've seen a lot more of his work and now having seen The Scar (his non-documentary feature debut) I've seen all of his non-documentary films. This is not very "Kieslowski" and it, in conjunction with Amator forms the bridge between his love of documentary coming out of the Lodz film school and the period in the 1980s when he really began to express himself as an artist.
This is simply told and nicely acted. It's not tremendously interesting visually, but it seems clear Kieslowski was at a point of his filmmaking where for him truth and politics were more important than more superifical artistry. It follows the mismanagement of a local factory and how a high ranking party official goes about trying to make a success of it. Sub plots involving his past with the town and his relationship with his daughter are only mildly interesting but are pretty isolated and don't gel together entirely satisfactorily. In the end it is a minor work from a true master, but fascinating to see where he came from.
Less fascinating was Elementarteilchen (Atomised), a German effort. It has quite a few familiar faces (Franka Potente, Martina Gedeck, Moritz Bleibtreu, etc.) but it's a mess. Very little going on, not much insight into the topics, lazy, relying on kink for interest, it's just flat out boring and at times extremely funny (especially Bleibtreu, who is barely competent as an actor at the best of times). Won't even bother with the plot, it's not worth your time unless you desperately want to see the woman from The Lives of Others get her breasts out while being shagged from behind by multiple people in an orgy-club. That's about as interesting as the thing gets.