Heartbreaker

One of the more depressing laws of cinema is that any successful foreign-language film will immediately be snapped up for an American remake. Invariably everything that made the films distinctive and interesting in the first place mysteriously vanishes during the Hollywoodization. Such a fate probably awaits Heartbreaker, a huge hit in France. I suspect it will remerge as a cliched American romcom - probably with someone like Seth Rogen as the oddball brother-in-law and a pretty-but-blan leading man - all those sharp corners surgically removed. The other possibility, an R-rated raunchfest, is actually even more depressing as it would miss the whole point.
Alex has a most unusual job. He, with the help of his bolshy sister and her husband, specialize in breaking up couples. Not just any couples, mind. Happy couples are off limits. They only accept assignments where unhappiness is already lurking in the wings, ready to make an entrance. A montage shows an array of friends and relatives giving their reasons for hiring Alex to extricate a woman from her current relationship. It's the sort of premise that could lead to a catastrophically tacky, ill-judged film but luckily, the French version breezes along on the charm and charisma of Romain Duris (a man who manages to look endearingly rumpled even when wearing expensive suits), who has an unpredictable presence even in a romantic comedy. The supporting cast is agreeably spiky and there's the refreshing sight of a leading lady who is beautiful even with that gap between her front teeth. OK, the result is never in doubt (it *is* a romcom after all) but it takes an enjoyably offbeat route, with both Wham! and Dirty Dancing having unexpectedly important roles to play ...

Rashomon

Nobody does rain like Kurosawa. Think of the downpour that drenches the combatants towards the end of Seven Samurai. Rashomon too features a spectacular example, as rain lashes down around the three men sheltering under the eponymous gate. It's the sort of rain one can imagine causing cataclysmic floods, yet it also acts as a catalyst, bringing those 3 characters together and setting the story in motion. The rain of the framing story also provides a sharp contrast with the sunlight and palpable heat (the shifting shadows of the forest; the sweat glistening on Mifune's skin) of the flashbacks. In a similar manner the three main settings contrast with each other: the derelict gate, the almost-otherworldly forest and the dry, dusty yard of the trail. The viewer is intensely aware of both place and the elements, a rich backdrop for the main story.
The film of course is famous for the contradictory testimonies about what transpired in that forest. The only fixed points are the rape of a woman and the death of a man. Everything else is constantly in flux depending on whose viewpoint we see. The complexity only begins to emerge with the second testimony, the wife's. The bandit's version has been entirely plausible, but the next narration overturns that interpretation. The husband's death now no longer happens during a duel, but mysteriously after the bandit leaves, the suggestion being it was suicide. Nor is he any longer sympathetic and noble, but a man who immediately turns on his wife with loathing after her rape. And what of his version? Doubly unreliable, it's filtered through a medium (an oddly creepy sequence) and this time it's the wife who's portrayed as unsympathetic, driving her husband to suicide and eternal darkness. Truth it appears is as elusive as the light and shadows playing across the forest, making everything appear in motion. With truth such a slippery concerpt, can we even believe the woodcutter's version of events where everyone is seriously flawed and the death is more farce than tragedy. Certainly the commoner doesn't think so. He shows the woodcutter to be a thief and would say it's merely the way of the world - people lie for their own advantage. Yet, it's the desperately poor woodcutter who offers hope. He's willing to take the abandoned baby, reasoning that with six children already one more won't make a difference, whereas the commoner only steals the items left with it. As the priest rediscovers faith in mankind, the rain finally relents ...

The Time That Remains

Elia Suleiman's latest excursion into the tragicomic life of Palestinians in Israel centres on his own family history. Jumping from 1948 through the 1970s and up to the present, it makes amusing and insightful use of repetition and variation: during each stage we see a group of men sitting outside a cafe (a group of Arab fighters, a trio of young friends and then those friends when they are middle aged); Fuad and his friend's nightly fishing trip forever interupted by an Israeli patrol (the encounters move towards bonhomie before finally taking a suitably paranoid turn in the 1970s); Fuad's neighbour repeatedly trying to set himself alight in his despair (being foiled each time by the honed response of the neighbours). Frames within frames suggest an inherent lack of freedom, ultimately represented by the wall that divides Paestinians from Israelis. The basic absurdities of day to day life under occupation, meanwhile, are hilariously encapsulated by the sequence of a tank's gun methodically tracking every movement of a young man taking out rubbish and then making a phone call (seemingly oblivious), or the patrol ineffectively proclaiming a curfew in Ramallah outside a club where everyone is dancing to loud music. Yet there's also an aching sadness at lives unfulfilled and families torn apart, much of which comes across through the silence between characters, as if the ability to speak has also been oppressed.

The Killer Inside Me

The Killer Inside Me places the viewer totally inside the viewpoint of psychopathic deputy Lou Ford. In the novel, this was done via first person narration. The film makes use of sporadic voiceover but mainly achieves the effect through Ford's presence in almost every scene. The viewer sees and knows what he sees and knows (the handful of scenes where he's absent arguably show actions that he can imagine: Conway asking his driver to take him to the hospital; Amywalking to his house; the lawyer bulldozing his way down the asylum corridor) There is no other POV, only Ford's interpretation of the world around him. We never see the point at which Bob realizes the extent of his deputy's crimes, nor any of the machinations conducted by Conway or the DA. Most importantly, we *never* see how Joyce and Amy truly feel about him, only his projection of their pathetic devotion to the man who brutalizes them. The only occasion the film shifts perspective is near the start (in Joe's office and later on the night of the first crime) and it's done subtly, via a change in framing and a bit of handheld camerawork. It's also a crucial bit of information for the viewer to file away for later use.
As for the already notorious violence - especially the attack on Joyce - it's mostly done through blocking, editing and judicious makeup. We hear the blows slamming into Joyce but don't see them (although we think we do). It's a deeply distressing scene: for the violence and for the revelation of Ford's shocking coldness. He plans his murders calmly and commits them without the slightest shred of mercy or conscience. He willingly sacrifices others for his own ends, though bizarrely, he never seems to contemplate killing Joe who represents the biggest threat, while Joe himself never seems to fear for his own safety. In fact he even provides the lawyer who gets Ford released from the asylum. Perhaps they recognize oddly kindred souls, though with Ford's slippage between sanity and madness that's not a comforting thought.

The Losers

The best way to approach this comic book adaptation is to not take it remotely seriously. The film has zero pretensions to any kind of depth (something of a relief), but accept it on its own terms and it's an enjoyable 90 minutes (see, short too!) There's lots of guns (large and small); things get blown up (cars, planes, haciendas); comic book panels are recreated; and there's lots of sarcastic dialogue (not least from Max, the villain) We're not exactly talking chcracter development, but the interplay among the Losers is wildly entertaining. At opposite ends of the scale there's Cougar, the sniper who rarely talks, and Jensen, the techie who never stops (when Roque threatens to break his neck if he doesn't shut up you feel it's a threat that's been used before); there's Pooch, the family man, and Clay, the leader continually derailed by his involvement with women (enter Aisha, immediately distrusted by Roque possibly for that very reason). Roque is the most enigmatic, the large knives he carries pointing to just how dangeous he can be but he's also the most pragmatic, ready to cut his losses and reclaim his life after the Bolivian debacle that starts the film - which immediately puts him at odds with both Clay and Aisha. The latter turns out to be smarter and more devious than everybody, though Roque runs her close, pursuing her own agenda of revenge.
There's a lot of fun to be had from the incidental details (don't worry about the plot): Cougar and Jensen reduced to working side by side in a Bolivian doll factory; Pooch's lucky mascot nodding away on the dashboards of various vehicles; Jensen's hopeless attempts at wooing, including a hilariously deflating one-sided flirtation with Aisha; the alarmingly conspicuous vehicles stolen by Pooch (often yellow it seems); and the wondrous array of T-shirts worn by Jensen (I deeply covet the bright pink Go Petunias one that provokes such ire from Roque) Clearly none of this is Oscar material but everyone seems to be having a whale of a time -Jeffrey Dean Morgan looks increasingly rumpled as the film progresses (a neat contrast to the besuited Max), Idris Elba glowers forbiddingly (really, you wouldn't mess with this man), and Chris Evans walks off with the film, especially in the sequence where he infiltrates a building dressed as a bicycle courier (if you want the lift to yourself sing loudly and appallingly), which also has a great payoff involving the incomparable Cougar.

Kingdom of Ife

It says a lot about the racism of colonial attitudes that many refused to believe that the incredible sculptures uncovered in Ife could possibly be the work of medieval Africans. All kinds of wild theories were thrown up in order to show that it was actually Europeans (any group would do) who actually created them. The British Museum displays a selection a stone, terracotta, brass and copper sculptures, exquisitely carved or cast, and very definitely African. Many of the heads seem to show scarification, while some, presumably of foreigners, have a distinctive cat's whiskers marking. I was particularly taken with an equestrian statue with a very endearing horse. In fact the sculptures aren't just of the human form. There are crocodiles, mudfish, apes, rams and other animals, often stylised but immediately recognisable. The sculpted heads often show traces of paint so would have looked rather different than they do today, especially if crowns or veils were fixed via the holes in many of them. It shows that it wasn't just the Renaissance Europeans who were creating exquisite objects.