Film and Romance

GFF 2012 - Day planner

Our highlights for each day of the Glasgow Film Festival

6 Feb 2012

It can be difficult, when any festival rolls around, to decide which events to skip in favour of others. Searching rigorously through the programme, referring back to the calendar, trying to fit in as much as possible - it's a painstaking piece of work…

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…

Film You Instead shot at music festival - David Mackenzie interview

Hallam Foe and Young Adam director on making a film at T in the Park

18 Feb 2011

David Mackenzie, director of Hallam Foe and Young Adam, discusses his new movie You Instead, a rock'n'roll romcom that aims to capture the excitement of T in the Park.

Like Crazy

Sundance-wowing romance starring Anton Yelchin and Felicity Jones

24 Jan 2012

(12A) 89mins Winner of 2011’s Sundance Grand Jury prize, Like Crazy is a long-distance love story mired in the complications of modern-day living. Anna (Felicity Jones) is a British student living in Los Angeles who spends the perfect summer with…

Emily Blunt - Yo majesty!

5 Mar 2009

When people got an eyeful of Emily Blunt’s striking good looks and acting ability in My Summer of Love, winner of the Best New British Feature award following its world premiere at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in 2004, the general consensus…

Two Days in Paris

(15) 100min

23 Aug 2007

French actress Julie Delpy jumps behind the camera for the second time with a film that pays a heavy debt to her most famous screen role, that of Céline in Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise and Before Sunset. Two Days in Paris is an investigation…

Interview: Felicity Jones, star of Like Crazy

Young actress set to follow Sundance hit with films by Warren Beatty and Ralph Fiennes

17 Jan 2012

A year ago, Felicity Jones was asleep when she got a call from America. ‘I thought there’d been a terrible accident,’ she laughs. But this was no accident. On the line was the producer of her new film Like Crazy: the Sundance Film Festival had just…

The Passion Within

Period detail and good-looking actors in an unremarkable film

17 Aug 2010

‘You f**k like a boy’, reads the message that an actress leaves smeared in red lipstick across the bedroom mirror of a famous bullfighter in this 1940s Spain-set biopic that focuses on the tempestuous romance between Lupe Sino (Penelope Cruz) and…

Hitlist: Films

17 Sep 2009

Army of Crime, The Beaches of Agnes, White Lightnin', The Godfather, Nagisa Oshima, Fish Tank, Adventureland, Three Miles North of Molkom, Inglourious Basterds, The Big Knife, The Stranger

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

5 Feb 2009

MYSTERY/ROMANCE What would it be like to live in reverse? Born as an old man only to die as an infant, the Benjamin Button character created by F Scott Fitzgerald in his 1922 short-story gets the full ‘prestige picture’ treatment in David Fincher’s…

Death Defying Acts

7 Aug 2008

ROMANCE/THRILLER (12A) 97min Freely mixing historical fact with fictionalised biography, this Brit-Aussie co-production turns on a fascinating premise: a battle of wits and wills between world-famous escapist and sceptic of all things supernatural…

The Go-Between

Film adaptation of LP Hartley’s tale of illicit passion and snobbery

4 Aug 2009

Director Joseph Losey and writer Harold Pinter’s immaculate 1971 adaptation of LP Hartley’s tale of illicit passion and snobbery in Edwardian Norfolk enjoys a slight return on new digital print.

Wild Child

14 Aug 2008

ROMANCE/COMEDY (12A) 98min ‘What is this, Hogwarts?’ exclaims bratty Californian kid Poppy (Emma Roberts, niece of Julia) on her arrival at a genteel girls boarding school in England, ruled over by tough-but-fair headmistress (Natasha Richardson).

Elegy

7 Aug 2008

DRAMA/ROMANCE (15) 112min Philip Roth, arguably America’s greatest living writers (and certainly one of the major chroniclers of middle class ennui), hasn’t been well served by adaptations. Goodbye, Columbus (1969), Portnoy’s Complaint (1972) and The…

In Which They Serve

17 Jul 2008

The British Film Institute’s re-release of the rarely seen and now beautifully restored David Lean film The Passionate Friends is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the celebration of the centenary of the great British filmmaker’s birth. In…

Sex and the City

5 Jun 2008

DRAMA/ROMANCE/COMEDY (15) 145min As Carrie Bradshaw might say – ‘I couldn’t help but wonder how four ageing divas were going to resurrect Sex and the City: The Brand’. Is it possible that Charlotte, Samantha, Carrie and Miranda could pull off the same…

Priceless

5 Jun 2008

COMEDY/ROMANCE (12A) 104min The best things in life are free, but all seasoned Riviera gold digger Irène (Audrey Tautou) wants is her own credit card from an ageing sugar daddy. Meanwhile, luckless, impoverished bar tender and dog walker Jean (Gad…

27 Dresses

27 Mar 2008

COMEDY/ROMANCE (12A) 110min During an interview to promote Knocked Up, actress Katherine Heigl said of the Judd Apatow comedy that brought her worldwide fame (after her years lighting up Grey’s Anatomy): ‘It paints women as shrews, as humourless and…

No Reservations

(PG) 104min

23 Aug 2007

There are plenty of reasons to feel reserved about this maudlin romance between chefs, carelessly reheated from the rather airier 2001 Italian foodie-flick Mostly Martha. Catherine Zeta-Jones plays Kate, a temperamental Nigella Lawson-type cook whose…

Weekend

Poignant and captivating story of unexpected love cut short

20 Oct 2011

(18) 96min A casual one night stand unexpectedly blossoms into a much more meaningful connection in Weekend, a tender heartbreaker from writer/director Andrew Haigh that is easily one of the most impressive British independent features of the…

Perfect Sense

Dark yet sentimental romance set in an apocalyptic world

14 Sep 2011

(15) 92min David Mackenzie’s seventh feature is, superficially, his most disturbing yet. That’s saying something given the Scottish filmmaker introduced himself and his penchant for dark psychosexual drama with his grim and gritty adaptation of…

Friends with Benefits

Sappy rom-com fails to deflate clichés of the genre

19 Aug 2011

(15) 109min The rom-com has been a moribund genre for years now, excepting Marc Webb’s acerbic and adventurous (500) Days of Summer. Despite promising a similarly caustic examination of the gap between real-life relationships and romantic clichés…

Potiche

Catherine Deneuve and Gerard Depardieu star in playful French comedy

23 May 2011

(15) 103 min Catherine Deneuve has a gift of a role in this deliciously subversive farce from the prolific François Ozon. Deneuve is Suzanne, the ‘potiche’ or trophy wife, blithely content to be a domestic goddess in the shadow of insufferable…

GFF blog: You Instead premiere creates perfect T in the Park vibe

Featured musician Jo Mango talked to us at the after-party

2 Mar 2011

Sigma Films – the Glasgow-based company behind the likes of Red Road, Hallam Foe and Young Adam – celebrated its 15th birthday with the premiere of You Instead on Friday night. The film tells the tale of two bickering rockstars – played by Luke…

Sex in art: Four examples of Scottish eroticism

The Wicker Man, Young Adam, Love Made Easy and The Quarrel of Oberon and Titania

1 Feb 2011

You can find good examples of Scottish eroticism without having to wallow through smut. The List picks four artworks that are worth seeking out for some homegrown, highbrow kicks