Film, Foreign, Tom Dawson

Mes amis, mes amours

3 Jul 2008

COMEDY/ROMANCE (15) 106min Mes Amis, Mes Amours resembles a Gallic version of a Richard Curtis movie, set in an affluent, quarter of London and peopled by French expats: it’s less a romantic comedy than a sentimental fantasy of city living among an…

Un Secret

5 Jun 2008

DRAMA (15) 106min Veteran French writer-director Claude Miller (Garde à Vue, La Petite Voleuse) revisits France’s traumatic experiences under German Occupation during World War II in this polished and suspenseful melodrama. Adapted from Philippe…

California Dreamin’ (Endless)

22 May 2008

DRAMA/COMEDY (15) 154min Tragically Cristian Nemescu, the 27 year-old writer-director of California Dreamin’ died in a car crash whilst working on the post-production of this richly ambitious film (together with his sound designer Andrei Toncu), hence…

Caramel

8 May 2008

DRAMA (PG) 95min Dedicated ‘to my Beirut’, the charming, bitter-sweet debut feature of writer-director Nadine Labaki centres upon the ‘Si Belle’ beauty parlour in the Lebanese capital. The 30-year-old proprietor Layale (Labaki herself) is guiltily…

The Last Mistress

8 May 2008

DRAMA (15) 114min Despite suffering a cerebral haemorrhage in 2004, the French filmmaker Catherine Breillat has returned with her most entertaining and accessible work to date. Based on the 19th century novel by the controversial writer Jules-Amédée…

Under the Bombs

8 May 2008

DRAMA/ROMANCE (15) 98min This heartfelt road movie from Lebanese writer-director Philippe Aractingi was filmed during Israel’s 33-day bombardment of Lebanon in the summer of 2006. It follows a wealthy Shiite woman Zeina (Nada Abou Farhat) and a…

Beaufort

24 Apr 2008

WAR/ACTION/DRAMA (15) 125min The Beaufort of the title refers to a castle built by the Crusaders during the 12th century in southern Lebanon. In 2000 this mountaintop fortress is occupied by IDF (Israeli Defence Force) troops, who are preparing to…

You, the Living

27 Mar 2008

COMEDY/DRAMA (15) 93min In an unnamed Nordic city a moustachioed tuba-player starts talking about savings and pensions, while making love to his wife who is wearing a military helmet. A dog is dragged along a pavement, attached to the walker of its…

Back To Normandy

13 Mar 2008

DOCUMENTARY (12A) 113min For this quietly compelling, multilayered documentary, French filmmaker Nicholas Philibert (Etre et Avoir) returned to the same Normandy agricultural community where, some 30 years earlier, he had served as an assistant…

Copying the past

4 Oct 2007

When the Austrian actor Karl Markovics was first sent the screenplay for the Holocaust thriller The Counterfeiters by his friend the director Stefan Ruzowitzky, he spent a week pondering whether or not to accept the central role of Salomon ‘Sally…

Reprise

4 Oct 2007

A relative of Lars von Trier, Norwegian writer-director Joachim Trier makes his feature debut with this breezily ambitious contemporary melodrama, which chronicles the highs and lows experienced by a pair of 20something middle-class best friends, Erik…

The Lives Of Others

(12A) 138 mins

11 Apr 2007

COLD WAR DRAMA The masterful debut feature of writer-director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, The Lives of Others is the first major German film to examine the activities of the Stasi in the former East Germany. Where the likes of Wolfgang Becker’s…