THE LOBSTER

(Yorgios Lanthimos, 2015)

There are some brilliant ideas and moments here. The central conceit is the kind of thing that shows how imaginatively conservative so much cinema is: it imagines a world where single people are sent to a hotel in order to pair off within 45 days. If they do not, they are transformed into the animal of their choosing. Some evenings, they head off to a local forest to hunt "loners", rogue singles who have forsworn relationships and live off the land. David (Colin Farrell), recently abandoned by his wife for another man, arrives at the hotel with his brother in the form of a dog, and befriends a man with a limp (Ben Wishaw) and a man with a lisp (John C Reilly), while eluding the affections of a desperate woman (Ashley Jensen). Halfway through the action shifts to the forest as David joins the loners. Here, and against the rules, he falls for a woman who is short-sighted, like him (Rachel Weisz), but if the leader (Leá Seydoux) finds out, they will be in danger.
This is all told in a series of deadpan scenes with flat, affectless delivery of dialogue, Lanthimos' coldly controlled style, and a severe score of several pieces for string quartet sawing away in the background.
While there are some moments of brilliant comedy, much of the success of the material is down to the cast. Farrell and Wishaw do extremely well at halting and awkward loneliness, while Olivia Coleman is another standout as the matter-of-fact hotel manager. Weisz's voiceover is played for some big laughs too, but the story takes a strange turn towards the climax and becomes surprisingly moving.
The allegory at the heart of the story is a little too broad and vague to sustain an entire narrative, even if sometimes it becomes more precise and pleasingly cynical. There are shots here at online dating logarithms, tinder and our cultural acceptance of couples over singles which are often provocative, but much of it is too scattershot to have much of an effect, for all that it is still witty and accessible.It occasionally hints at making more profound statements about human attraction and repulsion - why we need other people and what it does to us - but never quite commits to that.

THE BOURNE LEGACY

(Tony Gilroy, 2012) In the considerable absence of both the star and key director of the first three Bourne films, series writer Tony Gilroy has crafted a sequel which is in fact a clever spin-off. In so doing, he recalibrates many of the elements which made the original films such pleasurable popular entertainments, to extremely mixed effect. The template for Bourne films is surprisingly strong and Gilroy perhaps departs from it a little too much. His story takes place in the same universe and timeframe as Paul Greengrass' The Bourne Ultimatum and fleetingly includes some of the same characters but it focuses on new, if somewhat familiar, players. Chief among those is Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner), an "Outcome" Agent from another one of what emerges are many US Defense Training Programmes creating perfect killers (or "assets" as the lingo of these films has it). Cross has been altered and augmented by "chems" partly designed by a Dr Martha Shearing (Rachel Weisz) which make him more physically efficient and mentally sharp. Both characters find themselves on the run from the suits in Governent (led here by Edward Norton and Stacy Keach) when Bourne's actions expose the entire programme to risk, and the decision is made to destroy it and kill everyone involved. Cross needs his chems - his junkie-like desperation is one of many interesting angles Gilroy takes on this story - and he needs Shearings help to get them, leading them to Manilla in the Phillipines. The first act is by far the best and most intriguing in the film - Gilroy interlaces the events from The Bourne Ultimatum while drip-feeding the audience information about this other corner of the Bourne universe. We see Cross battle the elements alone in the Alaskan wilderness while Shearing examines another Outcome Agent and the Bourne mess unfolds, sending Defense Bureaucrats running for cover, trying to shift the blame. What Gilroy does brilliantly here is something Greengrass only suggested; he depicts the upper echelons of US Government as an explicitly corporate entity, characterised by the impersonal blandnesses of meetings in generic conference rooms, dominated by business-language and the sort of terms that reduce human life to abstraction without any emotional weight. As such, Norton's character doesn't really have any character; he is the ultimate corporate executive, intelligent, calculating, hard-working and utterly without morality, he is all about the bottom line. This seems a sort of extension of Gilroy's work on the terrific Michael Clayton; another film where one man goes up against the terrifying might of an enormous Corporation. That was a drama with thriller elements, whereas The Bourne Legacy is an action-thriller, and Gilroy's approach is a bit of a problem. For this is very much a Writers film, full of long scenes where people talk in rooms. The best example is a jarringly lengthy interrogation of Shearing by two agents in her home, during which tension slowly grows until the action explodes with Cross' arrival. Another is Cross and Shearing's long exchange in the car as they first escape, which is crucial to the eventual emotional charge their relationship bears but still seems a mite overlong. Greengrass would probably have cut these scenes down, but Gilroy indulges himself, which damages his films pacing; this film feels a lot longer - due mainly to middle-act drag - than the punchy, staccato briskness of the three originals. Also less punchy are the films action sequences; some may find the refusal of Greengrass' death-by-a-thousand cuts shakycam style refreshingly classical and coherent, but it renders the action scenes here good, when in Greengrass' hands, they might have seemed great. They may even have the faint whiff of obligation; Gilroy doesn't seem to relish them, and he even fails to include the blistering hand-to-hand fight so central to each of the previous Bourne films. That's a shame, since Renner is a fantastic action lead, convincingly rugged yet capable of an impressive emotional range. He suggests Cross has a great deal of internal conflict even before his bosses try to kill him, but once the hunt is on, he has little to do beyond run, jump, punch and shoot. He and Weisz have some chemistry but both are a little wasted here. Visually, Gilroy is competent and nothing more. While DP Robert Elswit makes predictably beautiful use of the Alaskan mountains, Manila is never really evoked the way Greengrass effortlessly did with Moscow, Tangiers or Berlin, and there are no really memorable or startling images here. It all peters out after that gripping opening, and is disappointingly bereft of any climactic confrontation - Cross and Shearing just want to get away, setting up an obvious possible sequel - even if the scale of the final action set-piece is impressive. It's never boring, is filled with interesting ideas and good moments, but The Bourne Legacy is a definite step down from the first three Bourne films.

THE DEEP BLUE SEA

(Terence Davies, 2011)

Terence Davies seems one of those artists who only truly operates at full capacity when he is intimately, personally connected with his material. His early work, all of it nakedly autobiographical, is where he built his reputation, and is extraordinary. He arrived seemingly fully-formed; a confident style in place, his thematic obsessions obvious straightaway, and Still Voices, Distant Lives and The Long Day Closes are both fully realised and quite masterful in their mining of Davies' own boyhood experiences in Post-War Liverpool. Since then, his feature work - adapting Classic novels for The Neon Bible and The House of Mirth - has been stylish and powerful, in a muted, repressed fashion, but lacking the spark of greatness of his first films.
The same could be said of The Deep Blue Sea. An adaptation of a Terrence Ratigan play, it finds Davies back in his favourite era - "around 1950" - meaning that the period recreation is fastidious, beautiful and just a smidgen enbalmed. While his period films are all located in a precisely detailed world, it is the soulful quality to that world which makes it so warm and distinctive, and that is evident here too, in the impromptu singalongs in cosy pubs and a Tube platform turned Blitz bomb shelter, in the small kindnesses of strangers. Yet the beautifully darkened pallette and the finely arranged set design - all of it making Weisz's red coat seem to glow in the dark - are a trifle suffocating in their perfection.
The story is a study of a dying relationship. Weisz's character is trapped in a polite marriage with an older man (Simon Russell Beale, splendid), a Judge dominated by his spitefully puritan, wealthy mother. When she meets a dashing, emotionally immature ex-RAF pilot named Freddie (Tom Hiddleston) she discovers the pleasures of physical passion for the first time and her life is changed. She leaves her husband and moves in with Freddie but his limitations make them ultimately incompatible, and in the opening scene we see her attempt suicide.
Weisz is tremendous throughout, presenting a complex, intelligent woman, bewitched by sexual rapture and all too aware of how it is ruining her life, perceiving his flaws but not caring, ashamed of herself yet desperate for him still. Hiddleston plays Freddie as a big child, all sunshine and jokes in good times, but throwing tantrums and storming off when it gets difficult.
Though Davies does a good job opening out the play, chopping up the chronology, using a stunning and mostly wordless opening sequence to relay much of the backstory, the fact the the majority of the action occurs in two locations makes it hard to forget the theatrical origins of the piece. That means it's hard to know who is responsible for the slightly chilly emotional tone; Davies or Rattigan. This is a world with a generally calm, stiff upper lip surface, broken by Hester and Freddies passion, but mainly containing it's emotional storm deep within.
Somehow that translates into a film where we watch the characters struggle with strong feelings while feeling little ourselves.
That is a small sin in such a controlled and confident piece of cinema which frequently reaches sublime heights, but it is still a sin.