Tag: Emma Thompson

Late Night

Posted on by victorfraga

Katharine Newbury (Emma Thompson) is a temperamental talkshow host whose ratings are plummeting. She has been on air for nearly three decades, and her delivery has become tedious and repetitive. She takes matters into her own hands in order to avoid being replaced. She meets up with her writers for the very first time ever. She’s so formidable and arrogant that she doesn’t even bother to learn their names and instead calls them by numbers (one to eight). She’s shocked to find out that one of her writers whom she vaguely remembers died in 2013.

The team of writers and entirely male. Katherine decides to instil some freshness by hiring a female for the very first time. Factory worker Molly (Mindy Kaling) – who has no experience with comedy at all – becomes their new “diversity hire”, in a sheer gesture of tokenism. Ironically, Kaling herself wrote the film script herself. A very deft and nifty script, churning out a joke every minute or so – mostly to satisfactory results.

The film title has a double significance. It refers to both the name of the show hosted by Katherine (which looks suspiciously like Late Night with David Letterman) and her age, suggesting that a professional nearing the seventh decade of her life is in her twilight years. Or not.

The film script often touches on sexism in the comedy industry. Women carry the heavy burden of having to excel, to outperform their male counterparts, in order to prove that they were worth hiring. Over and over and over again. All eyes are on Molly. And not just on her performance. Some of her male colleagues want to bed her. The males carry on using the ladies’ toilet even after Molly is hired in order “to have a poo”. That’s because the facilities did not fulfil a purpose prior to Molly’s arrival (because no other woman works there). Slut-shaming becomes a powerful device to humiliate and disqualify women in the final quarter of this 102-minute feature (I can’t tell you more without spoiling the movie for you).

There are also plenty of hilarious jokes and sharp commentary about racism (Molly is Indian), ageism (Katherine is often slammed for being too old) and even about the bizarre and questionable efforts to counter discrimination (such as the “white saviour”). Katherine invites two black men to get into a cab, claiming that she wants to help them. They say that they don’t wish to go anywhere. She cunningly replies: “That doesn’t matter, that’s how white saviours work”, promptly pushing the two people into the car.

Predictably, Molly becomes a very prolific writer, with Katherine and her other seven writers increasingly reliant on her creative output. Yet the relationship between the two women is far from rosy. Catherine is casually cruel and unabashedly unscrupulous. A little bit like Meryl Streep’s Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada (David Frankel, 2006). Gradually, Katherine’s layers of inviolable confidence begin to collapse one by one, revealing a frail and apprehensive woman grappling with a sexist and ageist industry, plus an ailing husband at home. She finds a very unexpected and scandalous venting outlet for her frustrations, which could precipitate her permanent demise. Thompson is outstanding, adroitly combining dramatic and comedic skills. The ending is rather moving, and I could see a few tears being shed.

Late Night premieres at Sundance London, which is taking place between May 30th and June 2nd. It is on general release on Friday, June 7th.

The Children Act

Posted on by victorfraga

Both Emma Thompson and Ian McEwan are national treasures. The London born-actress already has a multiple number of Oscars and Baftas under her belt, normally recognised for playing strong-minded and witty characters in period dramas, aristocratic settings and literary adaptations. The Children Act is no exception, as she plays a super classy and stern high judge handling extremely complex cases. The iconic thespian teams up with one of the country’s most prolific novelists and screenwriters, the Hampshire-born Ian McEwan. His books seem to turn into films as a smoothly as the waters running down the Thames. Recent adaptations include Atonement (Joe Wright, 2007) and On Chesil Beach (Dominic Cook, 2018).

Directed by Richard Eyre, The Children Act tells the story of Fiona Maye (Emma Thompson), an affluent high court judge handling morally and ethically challenging cases. She works in the Royal Courts of Justice. The prominent building located on the Strand is featured consistently in the movie, both from inside and outside. Fiona’s work demands are very high, and they soon begin to take their toll on her marriage to Jack (Stanley Tucci). He’s frustrated with Fiona’s coldness and complete absence of sex, and insists that he should have an affair in order to compensate for the non-compliance of her “marital duties”. Fiona feels insulted by his proposition.

The first half of the film is a court drama in every conceivable aspect. Fiona is asked to rule on the case of Adam (Fionn Whitehead, whose scrawny face and expressive complexion you will probably recognise from Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, 2017), an intelligent 17-year-old Jehovah’s Witness who refuses a life-saving blood transfusion on religious grounds. Adam’s parents are adamant that death is preferable to receiving someone else’s blood into their body, in a sheer display’s of the religion’s strict doctrine. Because Adam is a few days short of his 18th birthday and therefore still a minor, the decision lies in the hands of Fiona. She takes the very unusual decision to visit Adam in hospital in order to decide whether he’s has been duped by his parents or is genuinely convinced about his fate. The two bond in a very unexpected way: through music.

I can’t tell you too much about the second half of the film without spoiling it, but let’s just say that Fiona makes a decision, and the tension moves away from the court room into her personal life. The ghosts of her ruling come to knock at her door wherever she goes. Literally. She is consistently confronted about her coherence and toughness. Meanwhile, she also has to grapple with her collapsing marriage. Fiona is confident and firm, yet unable to discuss her relationship with her husband. The very English inability to voice their feelings resurfaces, also present in On Chesil Beach. This is a film about reconciling professional judgment with personal judgment.

Emma Thompson is sterling. Could you conceive a bad performance by the award-winning actress? She’s also elegant, stern, a little motherly and very feminine. Naturally, this is an Oscar-baiting film. Thompson was immediately tipped for the Best Actress Academy Award.

But this is isn’t a perfect movie. The abundance of topics it attempts to approach makes it a little convoluted. They include Jehovah’s witness faith, the difference between law and morals, monogamy, female sexuality, right to die, and a lot more. But where it does succeed it does so extremely well, particularly in the topic of how a judge separates his personal from his professional life. Also, the second half of the movie is far less credible than the first part.

There is also an issue with some of the plot devices. A certain Newcastle visit feels redundant and unexplained, and even the relationship with Jack seems a little disconnected from the rest of the story. I wonder whether these elements were explored in more detail in the book, and just got lost in translation in the film screenplay.

This is also a film for American viewers, always hungry for “classy” Britain material. All of the ingredients are there: aristocratic London, with piano recitals, poems by W. B. Yeats (who was, in fact, Irish, but still British-sounding enough for American viewers), plenty of wigs, forensic pomp and circumstance. All very effective, if also extremely formulaic. All in all, the whole thing feels a little bit like a television court drama, except that its duration of 105 minutes is more suitable to cinema audiences.

The Children Act is out on general release in UK cinemas on Friday, August 24th. It’s out on VoD on Friday, January 11th.

Alone in Berlin

Posted on by victorfraga

Several historical films about the Third Reich have been been made this century, including The Downfall and (Oliver Hirschbiegel, 2004) and Sophie Scholl: The Last Days (Marc Rothemund, 2006. Both films were successful, realistic and convincing endeavours, which have become widely recognised and acclaimed worldwide. Both films are in German. Even Hollywood films about the controversial and turbulent period of German history were often made in German, such as The Good German (Steven Soderbergh, 2006), forcing the heartthrob George Clooney to learn and speak some of the language of Nietzsche.

Swiss Director Vincent Pérez instead chose to adapt the German classic romance ‘Alone in Berlin’ by German writer Hans Fallada to the silver screen entirely in English. Ironically, the film premiered at the Berlin Film Festival with subtitles in German. Even the famous Alexanderplatz in Berlin became Alexander Square, and Nazi officials have a strangely and vaguely British accent.

Both the book and the eponymous film are based on the true story of a German couple who resisted the Nazi regime by handing out hand-written postcards spurring people to resist and even fight Hitler. They were inevitably caught, swiftly judged and sentenced to death. British actor Emma Thompson plays Anna Quangel, while Irish Brendan Gleeson interprets her husband – both very convincing as experienced actors.

While the performances are good and the cinematography mostly accurate, the English language makes the film very ineffective. Responsive mimicry is virtually impossible, and the movie feels like a strange tale set in a post-modern bizarre dimension that never existed. A profoundly romanticised and sanatised film with no innovative devices, which relies instead on elaborate settinga and strong performances from well-known and widely recognised actors. Alone in Berlin is a tentative tearjerker, but it will not make you cry.

An alternative solution would have been a film released in two languages, like German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder did in Despair (1978) and Lili Marleen (1981). This would have enabled Pérez to keep the desired actors without compromising authenticity.

Alone in Berlin is offensive to Berliners. It is the equivalent to making a film about Winston Churchill set in London entirely spoken in German opening at the London Film Festival with subtitles in English (in fact one has been made since this review was written last year and, surprisingly enough, it’s not in German). Of course this would never happen. This is for at least two reasons. Firstly, Hitler was a bad man and therefore many people think of German as an unpleasant language. Secondly and most importantly, Hitler lost the war, and history is always written by the victors in their own language. Had Hitler won the war, we would probably be queuing in Leicester Square to watch Allein in London starring Margit Carstensen and Markus Bausteimer.

This does not mean that a good and creative movie can never be made in a foreign language. In 2001 Michael Haneke adapted Elfriede Jelinek’s book ‘The Piano Teacher’ to a film by the same name. Although entirely set in German-speaking Vienna, the film is entirely in French. Haneke made such choice simply because he wanted French actress Isabelle Huppert in the main role. The difference is the poetic licence of the film, which rendered the movie powerful despite the language disconnect. Unfortunately, Alone in Berlin does not possess such quality.

Alone in Berlin was part of the Official Competition at the 66th Berlinale in February 2016, when this piece was originally written. It open in UK cinemas on June 30th, 2017 – maybe it’s even showing in Leicester Square.

Click here for our review of another equally romanticised yet far more effective film also starring Brendan Gleeson showing right now in cinemas!