Film and Romance

The Other Boleyn Girl

28 Feb 2008

ADAPTATION/ROMANCE (12A) 114min This clumsily abridged adaptation of Philippa Gregory’s bestselling historical novel fills in the ‘hidden history’ of Mary Boleyn, sister of Anne, the second of Henry VIII’s six wives. According to this take on the 16th…

Don't Touch The Axe

28 Feb 2008

DRAMA/ROMANCE (PG) 138min Adapted from Balzac’s The Duchess of Langeais, Jacques Rivette’s latest film tells the tragic story of a French general Armand de Montriveau (Guillaume Depardieu), back from a difficult trip in Africa, who falls for married…

My Blueberry Nights

14 Feb 2008

DRAMA/ROMANCE (12A) 95min Wong Kar-wai’s compelling 1997 Buenos Aries-set Happy Together demonstrated that he can successfully transplant his inimitable style away from Asia, but here the director of Chungking Express and In The Mood for Love has made…

The Singer

14 Feb 2008

ROMANCE (12) 110min (Artificial Eye DVD retail/rental) Forget all the ‘merde’ that Gérard Depardieu’s done in recent years — his performance in this exquisite film makes up for everything. He plays Alain Moreau, a middle-aged, overweight crooner who…

The Good Night

17 Jan 2008

COMEDY/DRAMA/ROMANCE (15) 93min Not above cashing-in on family connections, writer/director Jake Paltrow’s romantic comedy casts his older sister Gwyneth as the dowdy, disaffected partner of commercial jingle writer Gary (Martin Freeman). A kind…

Lady Godiva

17 Jan 2008

ROMANCE (12A) 95min According to legend, Lady Godiva was the wife of an 11th century nobleman, who rode naked through the streets of Coventry in a successful act of protest against her husband’s taxation of his subjects. Here, in her debut…

Sydney White

17 Jan 2008

Ever since Amy Heckerling’s Clueless loosely adapted Jane Austen’s Emma to a modern High School setting it’s been the done thing to drop classic texts into a contemporary teenage setting. Joe Nussbaum’s Sydney White, which was released in the US shortly…

Lust, Caution

4 Jan 2008

THRILLER/WAR/ROMANCE (18) 158min Just as he did with his Oscar-winning Brokeback Mountain, Ang Lee has plundered a novella to make his first film in Mandarin since Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in 2000. Eileen Chan’s largely autobiographical…

PS I Love You

4 Jan 2008

COMEDY/ROMANCE (12A) 126min As the well-connected daughter of the current Taoiseach, author Cecilia Ahern could surely have pulled a few strings to ensure her novel PS I Love You avoided the abhorrent adaptation offered here by…

Les Chansons d’Amour - review

Musical/comedy

13 Dec 2007

MUSICAL/ROMANCE LES CHANSONS D’AMOUR (LOVE SONGS) (15) 100min In Les Chansons d’amour Christophe Honoré uses the great French filmmaker Jacques Demy’s 1964 film The Umbrellas of Cherbourg as a template, splitting his musical romance into three…