Film, Romance and Paul Dale

Farewell (L'Affaire Farewell) - a romantic thriller set in the midst of the Cold War

Starring Emir Kusterica and Guilliame Canet

28 Mar 2011

(12A) 113min Based loosely on the actions of high ranking KGB official and spy Vladimir Vetrov, Farewell is a complex but tender portrait of the Cold War in free fall, a place where a passionate eccentric like Vetrov (here renamed Grigoriev) can…

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

My Last Five Girlfriends

22 Mar 2010

(12A) 87min Frothy, above average British romcom based on a novel by philosopher Alain de Botton. Brendan Patricks, Naomie Harris and Michael Sheen star. General release from Fri 19 Mar.

Blue Eyelids (Parpados Azules)

11 Jun 2009

Love, naivety and loneliness in a modern Mexican megalopolis are essayed in this charming and quirky bittersweet comedy. When factory worker Marina (Cecilia Suárez) wins an all-expenses-paid trip for two from her employer, she realises that, because of…

The Young Victoria

5 Mar 2009

ROMANCE/HISTORY Young Queen Victoria (Emily Blunt) kicks against the royal pricks but is tamed by a man whose name has become synonymous with penile piercing. Who would of thought it. Miserable old Queen Victoria was the proto feminist. As a young…

Vicky Cristina Barcelona

5 Feb 2009

COMEDY/ROMANCE Another year, another execrable Woody Allen film. Our bankrupt Icelandic friends have a proverb for this kind of thing – ‘mediocrity is climbing molehills without sweating.’ Young Americans Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina…

Faintheart

22 Jan 2009

COMEDY/ROMANCE If ever there was an argument that the business of popular filmmaking should be left to the professionals Faintheart is it. The result of an initiative by MySpace, Vertigo Films and Film4 to ‘harness the collective creativity of the…

Quiet Chaos

27 Nov 2008

DRAMA/ROMANCE Nanni Moretti’s 2001 film The Son’s Room explored a middle-class Italian family’s attempt to cope with the unexpected death of a teenage son. Quiet Chaos, which stars and is co-written by Moretti, but is directed by Antonello Grimaldi…

Ghost Town

16 Oct 2008

COMEDY/ROMANCE Middle-aged ‘smock-wearing tooth jockey’ (dentist) Bertram Pincus (Ricky Gervais) is a hateful runt of a man. He lives a life as contained as it is misanthropic. After going into hospital for an endoscopy, Bertram starts to see dead…

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day

14 Aug 2008

FARCE/ROMANCE (PG) 91min Opinionated, unemployable London governess Miss Pettigrew (Frances McDormand) has just lost another job. Dumped by her agency and homeless Miss Pettigrew manages to worm her way in to the house of American wannabe starlet…

Married Life

7 Aug 2008

DRAMA/ROMANCE (PG) 90min Suburban America, 1949. President Harry S Truman has just unveiled his Fair Deal plan and the People’s Republic of China is in the process of being born. As befits his business class status, mild-mannered Harry Allen (Chris…

Jules et Jim

3 Jul 2008

French New Wave filmmaker Francois Truffaut’s third film, made in 1962, was undoubtedly his masterpiece. Set in the 1910s and 20s it is the story of a freewheeling love triangle between alpha female Catherine (Jeanne Moreau), Austrian Jules (Oskar…

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…

Cashback

8 May 2008

In the words of Faithless’ Maxi Jazz, art student and late night supermarket shift worker Ben (Sean Biggerstaff) ‘can’t get no sleep’. Ever since he split up with his girlfriend Suzy (Michelle Ryan) he’s been wandering around in a daze. While his…

Not Here To Be Loved

2 Jul 2007

Divorced, cheerless, well heeled 51-year-old ‘huissier de justice’ (bailiff) Jean-Claude (Patrick Chesnais) lives a life of silent misery. Between repossessions and visiting his cantankerous old dad (Georges Wilson) at the nursing home, he has managed…

Stomp The Yard

13 Mar 2007

After the death of his younger brother, LA street dancer DJ (Columbus Short) avoids blame and recrimination by enrolling in the historically African-American Truth University in Atlanta, Georgia. Once there, however, he finds a whole different type of…

Becoming Jane

27 Feb 2007

As the occasionally inspired Boston Globe film critic Mark Feeney pointed out: ‘Once the implicit aim of biography was to uplift now it is to unveil.’ And so it is that we reach the point where it seems OK to release a film about the secret love life of…

Ballad of a Soldier - DVD review

Ballad of a Soldier

15 Jan 2007

WAR/DRAMA/ROMANCE This long overdue DVD release of Grigori Chukhrai’s 1959 anti-war film arrives thankfully clear of the hideous dubbing that so marred previous incarnations of the film. It is not difficult to see why Chukhrai’s film picked up the…

PS - DVD review

PS

18 Sep 2006

ROMANCE Films set in or around art schools are still something of a rarity (although Terry Zwigoff’s Art School Confidential should be touching down sometime in 2007) so it’s something of a shame that Dylan Rodger Dodger Kidd’s second feature never…