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Paradise: Love
14 Jun 2013
An unsettling romantic drama of moods and moments that doesn't quite gel into a compelling whole
The pursuit of happiness leads to inevitable disappointment in Paradise: Love, the first in a trilogy from Austrian director Ulrich Seidl that focuses on three women from the same family. In Love, plump, fifty-something mother Teresa (Margarete Tiesel…
Populaire
15 Feb 2013
Immaculately styled French period romcom starring Déborah Francois and Romain Duris
This immaculately styled French period romantic comedy signals its pedigree with a colourful cartoon credit sequence reminiscent of cute and kookie Hollywood comedies circa the 1950s and 60s. And in fact, co-writer and director Régis Roinsard’s feature…
Baise-Moi
22 Mar 2013
The low budget, sex and violence-filled movie is available uncut in the UK for the first time
When it comes to splitting opinion straight down the midriff, few films from the last couple of decades have been quite so marmite as Baise-Moi. For some, this low-budget French movie from 2000 was simply a porno with a bit more story than usual. For…
I’m So Excited
18 Apr 2013
Pedro Almodóvar returns to the brassy style of his earlier films
The new comedy from beloved Spanish auteur Pedro Almodóvar begins with a message assuring us that the film ‘is fiction and fantasy, and has no connection to reality’; a provocation to assume the opposite is true if ever there was one. But while there…
The Stoker (Kochegar)
17 May 2013
A strange, dark and clever Russian black comedy with an unexpectedly forceful moral message
Edinburgh’s beloved Filmhouse cinema has chosen an unusual and intriguing curio for its first release as a distributor. Directed by the prolific Alexey Balabanov - known for his unflinching but darkly comic fables of the Russian criminal underworld…
Gangs of Wasseypur (Part 2)
26 Feb 2013
Highly entertaining second part of the vibrant Bollywood gangster drama
The second half of Anurag Kashyap’s Hindi gangster epic picks up immediately where its predecessor ended; with the marketplace murder of Sardar Khan (Manoj Bajpayee) by a gang of masked motorcyclists. Despite his initial reluctance, Sardar’s son Faizal…
Neighbouring Sounds
26 Feb 2013
A clever and original social drama from Brazil directed by Kleber Mendonca Filho
The current resurgence in Brazilian cinema throws up a major work in Kleber Mendonça Filho's Neighbouring Sounds, an allegorical tale of class conflict set in a Recife condominium. From the opening scene, in which young mother Bia (Maeve Jinkings) hides…
Dragon
30 Apr 2013
Fast-moving martial arts flick with dazzling action scenes
A welcome entry to the martial arts genre, Peter Chan's Dragon is a fast-moving action thriller that has the brains to match its brawn. Set in the Yunnan province in China in 1917, the film picks up as peaceful handyman Liu Jinxi (Donnie Yen) is forced…
Me and You (Io e te)
16 Apr 2013
Bernardo Bertolucci's family drama is a minor triumph, starring Jacopo Olmo Antinori and Tea Falco
Bernardo Bertolucci probably never expected to direct another feature film which is why the mere existence of Me and You is a minor triumph. Plagued by ill health over the past decade and now confined to a wheelchair, the director of Last Tango In Paris…
Hi-So
26 Feb 2013
Inert Thai drama about a directionless twenty-something in Bangkok
Form follows content in this tediously inert Thai drama about a young man caught between eastern and western cultures and suffering from emotional paralysis. Emotional paralysis is quite possibly the state writer-director Aditya Assarat’s film will…
Thérèse Desqueyroux
26 Feb 2013
Claude Miller's final film is an adaptation of Francois Mauriac's book starring Audrey Tautou
François Mauriac’s 1927 novel is one of the cornerstones of French literature, but is less familiar to non-Gallic audiences. Casting comely Amelie star Audrey Tautou as the repressed wife who impulsively seeks revenge on her domineering husband suggests…
White Elephant
22 Feb 2013
Contemplative Argentinian drama about a team of Catholic priests working in Buenos Aires' slums
In this unique and impressive drama Argentinian filmmaker Pablo Trapero (Carancho) invites us into the lives of a team of dedicated Catholic priests, led by Father Julian (Ricardo Darin), who work with and live amongst gang members, drug addicts and…
Thursday Till Sunday
28 Mar 2013
A beautifully-crafted but directionless Chilean drama about marital strife
This South American drama depicts a four-day cross-country car journey taken by a family, for reasons kept intentionally vague, from the perspective of 12-year old Lucia (newcomer Santi Ahumada), travelling with her parents and little brother Manuel.
Post Tenebras Lux
18 Mar 2013
A probing, ambitious and frequently exasperating work from Mexican visionary Carlos Reygadas
The marvellous Mexican director Carlos Reygadas (Japon, Battle in Heaven, Silent Light) is a filmmaker given to making films that jar. Whether it is a suicidal solitary having sex with a woman in her mid-seventies or the aloof sex club where the central…
Profile: Francois Ozon, director of In the House
8 Mar 2013
The former enfant terrible of French cinema on his dislike of writing and admiration for Hitchcock
Born 15 November, 1967, Paris Background On the basis of his early shorts See the Sea and A Summer’s Dress and his debut feature Sitcom, writer-director Francois Ozon was labelled in the late 1990s as an enfant terrible of French cinema. He has…
Blancanieves
26 Feb 2013
1920s set silent take on the Snow White story, with seven bullfighting dwarves
It’s going to be difficult to get through a review of Blancanieves without mentioning The Artist, so let’s get it out of the way now. Both films are European, black and white, reduced format silent films in romanticised 20th century period settings.
Gangs of Wasseypur (Part 1)
26 Feb 2013
Epic Bollywood gangster saga influenced by The Godfather
Anurag Kashyap’s Hindi gangster saga is a considerable undertaking; split into two parts of over 160 minutes each, it follows the fortunes of a criminal dynasty with exhaustive attention to detail. The model is clearly Francis Ford Coppola’s study of…
Five reasons to go to the Italian Film Festival in Scotland 2013
17 Apr 2013
Every Blessed Day, The Commander and the Stork and Piazza Fontana among the festival highlights
The Commander and the Stork 'This is by director Silvio Soldini, who has been to the festival a couple of times in the past. He also made Bread and Tulips, which was very popular when we showed it. We’ve been very supportive of him. It’s a magic…
Everybody Has a Plan
16 Apr 2013
Viggo Mortensen stars in this schlocky-but-solemn, slow-paced Argentine noir
Not necessarily a good plan, though, eh? Viggo Mortensen here plays Agustin, a classy Argentinian paediatrician who, frustrated by his bourgeois life and his wife’s attempts to further pin him down by adopting a child, takes advantage of an unexpected…
In the Fog
16 Apr 2013
A stately, austere and richly atmospheric war film from director Sergei Loznitsa
‘I have done nothing wrong,’ insists railway worker Sushenya (Vladimir Svirskiy), when two local partisans Burov (Vladislav Abashin) and Voitik (Sergei Kolesov) call on his modest family home. We’re in occupied Belarus in 1942, and a group of saboteurs…
Rebellion
16 Apr 2013
A deft portrayal of the French Pacific 1988 Ouvea conflict from actor/director Mathieu Kassovitz
In Rebellion (L'Ordre Et La Morale), Mathieu Kassovitz revisits events on the French Pacific territory of Ouvea in New Caledonia in 1988 when a small local uprising was met by the full force of the French army. Kassovitz's hard-hitting reconstruction…
Matteo Garrone, director of satirical drama Reality - interview
19 Mar 2013
The filmmaker behind astounding Mafia portrait Gomorrah turns his eye to reality TV
It was thanks to his theatre critic father that Italian film director Matteo Garrone first came across the work of the Fortezza theatre company, based at a maximum-security prison in Tuscany. ‘I used to go with my dad to see lots of plays,’ recalls the…
The Gatekeepers
22 Feb 2013
Oscar-nominated documentary about the heads of internal Israeli intelligence agency Shin Bet
Shin Bet is the name of Israel's internal anti-terrorist intelligence agency, the identities of its personnel are all top-secret, with the exception of the man in charge. In this remarkable, vital documentary Israeli director Dror Moreh interviews the…
The Thieves
13 Feb 2013
Patchy Korean heist flick with an overly large cast but some impressive action set-pieces
Korean writer/director Choi Dong-Hoon follows up previous efforts The Big Swindle and Tazza: The High Rollers with another crime caper aiming to be the Eastern equivalent of Ocean’s Eleven. Unfortunately, The Thieves comes in rather below those slick…
Beyond the Hills
12 Feb 2013
A drama about female conflict in post-Ceaușescu Romania, from director Cristian Mungiu
‘Nothing signifies anything’, director Cristian Mungiu (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days) says in an interview in Cineaste magazine, warding off symbolic interpretation of his new film about two friends brought up in an orphanage. One, Alina (Cristina…
