(Thomas Vinterberg, 2015)
Chemistry is so important to on-screen romance. And in this tale of one woman and three men, it is important that she have some chemistry with at least two of them.
And while Cary Mulligan and Matthias Schoenaerts have an undeniable bucketload of chemistry as the two leads here - Batsheba Everdeene and Gabriel Oak, and yes, like Dickens, Thomas Hardy had a serious case of give-your-characters-apallingly-unsubtle-clues-to-their-personalities-in-their-names-itis - that mysterious quality is conspicuous by its absence in her scenes with Michael Sheen (as Mr Boldword) and Tom Sturridge (as the caddish soldier Frank Troy). And while that works in the movies favour in one sense (we really really want Batsheba and Gabriel to end up together), it absolutely does not in another (there is never really any doubt that Batsheba and Gabriel will end up together).
Still, three of those four actors are fine, and Sturridge is easily hateable as Frank, partly because the character is utterly unsympathetic and partly because he is so terrible in the role; modern and smug and posturing, he fails to communicate the suffering that has made Frank what he is.
Vinterberg's film does a good job of capturing what makes Hardy, well, Hardy. The landscape is a character here; beautiful and terrible and ever-present. Cutaways of nature between scenes suggest the small scale of the human problems on display. Passion broils beneath the surface of everyone, and Mulligan and - especially - Schoenearts do a good job of showing that, with each of their scenes seeming on the brink of something. It always looks fantastic, with a rich palette of browns and deep greens reflecting the earthy passions of Hardy's world in contrast to the more delicate tones of Jane Austen, say. and while novelist David Nicholls' script skirts romcom cliche, it never quite mis-steps, instead finding the simple dramas in Hardy's tale.
All in all it works because it treats the cliches of period romantic drama as if they are not cliches at all, as if they are the best thing ever. And that makes them feel somewhat fresh.
Showing posts with label Matthias Schoenaerts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Matthias Schoenaerts. Show all posts
Wednesday, 27 May 2015
Monday, 24 November 2014
THE DROP
(2014, Michaël R. Roskam)
Dennis Lehane's "Animal Rescue" is a near-perfect little story with a pleasing twist in the tale. It establishes its world and people quickly and economically, and it has a beginning, middle and an end that make it feel heftier and more grounded than it actually is. In adapting it and expanding it out to make an actual screenplay, Lehane has sacrificed some of it's lean beauty. But crucially he has kept that ending - still tremendously satisfying - and this cinematic version has its own specific compensations.
The story focuses on sad, lonely Brooklyn barkeep Bob (Tom Hardy) who finds a pit bull puppy in a bin on the way home from work one night. The bin belongs to Nadia (Noomi Rapace), similarly lonely. She persuades Bob to keep the animal and he finds his life transformed by it and his acquaintance with her. Transformed for the better until the arrival of Eric (Matthias Schoenarts), her violent ex-boyfriend, who claims he owns the dog, and trades on the reputation he has in the neighbourhood for the murder of one of Bob's old friends a decade before. All of that comes pretty much straight from the story. Lehane adds more material on Cousin Marv (James Gandolfini), Bob's cousin and the bar owner, and his dealings with the Chechen gangsters who back him and organise the drops to the bar, and a dogged police detective (John Ortiz) who just can't help himself dig into the robbery that occurs in the first act of the film.
Roskam directs with a fine feel for wintry grit and seedy banality, from the bar itself to Bob's house, a mausoleum of sorts to his dead parents, and the whole thing recalls Sidney Lumet in it's minor-key pathos and quiet sense of menace.
The performances sell it - Hardy is terrific as the introverted Bob, allowing his slow realisations and determined decisions to play out in his eyes, while Gandolfini gives a great reading of bitterness and thwarted ambition in his last role, and Schoenarts is effortlessly threatening as Eric.
It all works, but never adds up to very much, however fine that ending is.
Dennis Lehane's "Animal Rescue" is a near-perfect little story with a pleasing twist in the tale. It establishes its world and people quickly and economically, and it has a beginning, middle and an end that make it feel heftier and more grounded than it actually is. In adapting it and expanding it out to make an actual screenplay, Lehane has sacrificed some of it's lean beauty. But crucially he has kept that ending - still tremendously satisfying - and this cinematic version has its own specific compensations.
The story focuses on sad, lonely Brooklyn barkeep Bob (Tom Hardy) who finds a pit bull puppy in a bin on the way home from work one night. The bin belongs to Nadia (Noomi Rapace), similarly lonely. She persuades Bob to keep the animal and he finds his life transformed by it and his acquaintance with her. Transformed for the better until the arrival of Eric (Matthias Schoenarts), her violent ex-boyfriend, who claims he owns the dog, and trades on the reputation he has in the neighbourhood for the murder of one of Bob's old friends a decade before. All of that comes pretty much straight from the story. Lehane adds more material on Cousin Marv (James Gandolfini), Bob's cousin and the bar owner, and his dealings with the Chechen gangsters who back him and organise the drops to the bar, and a dogged police detective (John Ortiz) who just can't help himself dig into the robbery that occurs in the first act of the film.
Roskam directs with a fine feel for wintry grit and seedy banality, from the bar itself to Bob's house, a mausoleum of sorts to his dead parents, and the whole thing recalls Sidney Lumet in it's minor-key pathos and quiet sense of menace.
The performances sell it - Hardy is terrific as the introverted Bob, allowing his slow realisations and determined decisions to play out in his eyes, while Gandolfini gives a great reading of bitterness and thwarted ambition in his last role, and Schoenarts is effortlessly threatening as Eric.
It all works, but never adds up to very much, however fine that ending is.
Saturday, 10 November 2012
RUST AND BONE
(Jacques Audiard, 2012)
Audiard here takes two of the stories from Craig Davidson's fine collection, "Rust and Bone", and fuses them into one gritty, emotional melodrama. That fusion shouldn't really work. The stories - one about a bare knuckle boxer, the other about an Orca trainer injured by an animal - are utterly different in tone and setting. But it helps that Audiard keeps few of the details from Davidson, and that so much of the story of this film is of his own invention, expanding upon what he has adapted from the book.
He transforms the material into a bruising love story. Ali (Matthias Schoenaerts) is newly arrived on the French Riviera with his young son. They stay with his sister while he moves between jobs - as a bouncer and a security guard. Working at a club he meets Stephanie (Marion Cotillard) an attractive, possibly dangerous party girl. Later, she is crippled by an accident at work, and she contacts Ali again. Slowly, a strange relationship forms between them as both seek to find themselves once more.
The leads are crucial to the success of this film. Cotillard has more of the standout moments - her discovery that her legs are gone, her sexual reawakening and excitement at Ali's physicality - and she plays each with a sensitivity and rawness of emotion that is powerful and believable, but Schoenaerts is a fitting partner for her, making Ali a wounded brute, capable of surprising sensitivity and feeling yet also never far from an explosion. They make the union between the characters feel inevitable and fascinating.
Then there is Audiard's evolving style. He finds a key to each scene which makes it ring with a visceral sense of the truth of the moment - whether its the texture of the ground upon which Ali is fighting, a tooth spinning onto it, or the way he and Stephanie pant together during sex, or her flashes of memory of her accident, the water swirling with debris and blood. Every sequence has this exhilarating pulse of life in it. Some moments feel almost like the Dardennes tackling a torrid melodrama, others recall Michael Mann in their sensual poetry and attention to the fleeting beauty of the everyday. His use of sound is sublime too, and the soundtrack choices are particularly perfect, from Katy Perry to Bon Iver, each amplifying the emotional impact of the visuals they play over.
That is the main impression of any Audiard film; the emotion. Once the love story kicks in here, the muted chemistry between the principals becomes something far more powerful and intense, and the fine cast here make those feelings sting. The lovely moment when Stephanie returns to the Ocean Park to see old friends and communes with her Orca through glass is a great example of his art - it is beautiful, yes, with a natural sense of cinema, but it also feels emotionally wrenching. Just like this film, then.
Audiard here takes two of the stories from Craig Davidson's fine collection, "Rust and Bone", and fuses them into one gritty, emotional melodrama. That fusion shouldn't really work. The stories - one about a bare knuckle boxer, the other about an Orca trainer injured by an animal - are utterly different in tone and setting. But it helps that Audiard keeps few of the details from Davidson, and that so much of the story of this film is of his own invention, expanding upon what he has adapted from the book.
He transforms the material into a bruising love story. Ali (Matthias Schoenaerts) is newly arrived on the French Riviera with his young son. They stay with his sister while he moves between jobs - as a bouncer and a security guard. Working at a club he meets Stephanie (Marion Cotillard) an attractive, possibly dangerous party girl. Later, she is crippled by an accident at work, and she contacts Ali again. Slowly, a strange relationship forms between them as both seek to find themselves once more.
The leads are crucial to the success of this film. Cotillard has more of the standout moments - her discovery that her legs are gone, her sexual reawakening and excitement at Ali's physicality - and she plays each with a sensitivity and rawness of emotion that is powerful and believable, but Schoenaerts is a fitting partner for her, making Ali a wounded brute, capable of surprising sensitivity and feeling yet also never far from an explosion. They make the union between the characters feel inevitable and fascinating.
Then there is Audiard's evolving style. He finds a key to each scene which makes it ring with a visceral sense of the truth of the moment - whether its the texture of the ground upon which Ali is fighting, a tooth spinning onto it, or the way he and Stephanie pant together during sex, or her flashes of memory of her accident, the water swirling with debris and blood. Every sequence has this exhilarating pulse of life in it. Some moments feel almost like the Dardennes tackling a torrid melodrama, others recall Michael Mann in their sensual poetry and attention to the fleeting beauty of the everyday. His use of sound is sublime too, and the soundtrack choices are particularly perfect, from Katy Perry to Bon Iver, each amplifying the emotional impact of the visuals they play over.
That is the main impression of any Audiard film; the emotion. Once the love story kicks in here, the muted chemistry between the principals becomes something far more powerful and intense, and the fine cast here make those feelings sting. The lovely moment when Stephanie returns to the Ocean Park to see old friends and communes with her Orca through glass is a great example of his art - it is beautiful, yes, with a natural sense of cinema, but it also feels emotionally wrenching. Just like this film, then.
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