The Empire Blog |
- London Film Festival: Madame Bovary, Dearest, The Keeping Room
- London Film Festival: The Drop, Décor, X+Y
- London Film Festival: Men, Women & Children; Mr Turner; The Possibilities Are Endless
| London Film Festival: Madame Bovary, Dearest, The Keeping Room Posted: Madame BovarySophia Barthes’ Madame Bovary is a beautiful period adaptation of Gustav Flaubert’s novel that deals with its complicated heroine in a way that is both understanding and honest. The cinematography truly stands out as the star, making this film into a visual delight.The story follows the new wife of village doctor, Emma Bovary (Mia Wasikowska), who finds herself bored of the limited entertainments of a 19th century French provincial town. Her disappointment in her situation soon drives her to live outside the appropriate rules of society. Wasikowska is allowed in this film to stretch her trademark understated performance, and she embraces both the initial quiet resignation and the later defiant fury that defines the character. Madame Bovary is not an easy character to empathise with, especially in comparison to her caring and well-meaning husband, but Barthes chooses to take away much of the original emphasis on Monsieur Bovary ... |
| London Film Festival: The Drop, Décor, X+Y Posted: The DropThere’s something beautiful about the way that deceased actors can live on in their films. Philip Seymour Hoffman is currently in cinemas with A Most Wanted Man and has two Hunger Games sequels still to come, despite his sudden death this year. In the same vein, James Gandolfini posthumously wowed critics with romance Enough Said and now gives us his swan song with solid noir thriller The Drop.Gandolfini is Cousin Marv, the owner of a popular Brooklyn drinking hole, staffed by Bob (Tom Hardy) and a regular “drop” for criminal cash handovers. Their business is running swimmingly under the control of some Chechen gangsters, until a suspicious robbery and Bob’s discovery of a stray dog throw several bloodied spanners into the works.The story comes from a novel by Dennis Lehane, whose work has appeared in cinematic form many times, including Gone Baby Gon... |
| London Film Festival: Men, Women & Children; Mr Turner; The Possibilities Are Endless Posted: Jason Reitman brings together an impressive cast in Men, Women & Children, a feature that has ambitious plans to tackle the impact of technology on modern relationships. It's a disappointment then that the film feels muddled in its execution despite the best efforts of the actors.The film is an ensemble drama, focusing on separate characters' individual plotlines whilst stringing them all together by the association of a single shared town. Bored married couples, tormented teens and worried parents all face the ambiguous qualities of the internet and technology. The problem first lies with the name of the film, which is itself misleading. The action revolves around a clash of cultures between adults and teenagers, not children, and the younger generation in the film are very much coming to terms with their burgeoning adulthood. Unfortunately, the sheer number of separate stories mean that the most interesting characters get very little screen time. Not only that, ... |
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