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RodrigoMMIX
Reviews
Hannibal Rising (2007)
A disappointing prequel
I went to see this with high hopes but - I'm afraid, my dears - it soon became apparent it has none of the sureness of touch and creepy black humour that made Anthony Hopkins' Lector so watchable and memorable, and little of the pace and tension that drove "Manhunter (1986)", Michael Mann's superlative version of Red Dragon.
The film starts pacey enough but soon goes downhill.
Part of the problem is that young Mr Ulliel is simply not up (yet) to playing evil personified.
Unfortunately, the deficiencies in his performance are simply not shored up by the rest of the cast. The other characters are mostly gross caricatures; the baddies are diabolical beyond belief; and the role-reversal whereby Hannibal becomes almost the good guy is incongruous, implausible, and inconsistent with the rest of the corpus.
It is however prettily photographed. Oh, and the voice coach gets my admiration for the range and breadth of funny accents.
By Dawn's Early Light (2001)
Mawkish, cliché-driven, rites-of-passage movie
This is the story of Mike (a troubled teenager from L.A.) forced, by his wealthy parents, to spend a summer holiday with his grumpy grandpappy. They set off together across the United States on horseback, via the school of hard knocks, discovering the good life, and teaming up with a bunch of cowboys. During the course of the journey (and accompanied by a great deal of squirming from this viewer), Mike is transformed from a poor spoilt rich kid into a young good ole boy.
Rousing performances from Richard Crenna (as the grandfather) and David Carradine (as the trail boss). Ben Cardinal plays the obligatory Native American with tight-lipped panache and baby-faced Patrick David turns in a credible performance as Mike's new best friend.
Un long dimanche de fiançailles (2004)
Hugely satisfying, hugely fulfilling, film.
This film tells the story of a young couple, Mathilde (Audrey Tautou) and Menoch (Gaspard Ulliel). They are childhood sweethearts who become engaged just before Menoch is called up to fight in the trenches of the Great War. He goes missing during the Battle of the Somme and Mathilde devotes the next few years trying to discover what had happened to him.
That bare-bones synopsis does no justice to one of the most fulfilling films I have ever seen. Part mystery, part war, part romance, it is woven together into a complete, satisfying whole.
Its two hugely-entertaining hours are rewarding because of steady and coherent plot and character development, inter-cut with clever use of metaphor and symbolism. Don't be put off by this if it sounds high-falutin: this film isn't. It's witty and accessible, its charm lying in its refusal to take itself too seriously. It is full of in-jokes (which you're invited to share) and mocking self-references (which are satisfying to spot).
One of my favourite bits is when the narrator explains that Mathilde had polio as a child and that treatments proved ineffective. This is rapidly inter-cut with insert shots of the polio bacillus wriggling about, and various treatments. It only occupies thirty seconds or so on-screen but it involves five or six setups. It's this degree of image density that gives the film such a rich texture.
A good example is the long series of running gags involving the postman. These are incidental to the plot but they provide another layer of anticipatory interest: every time the postman appears you know something bizarre is going to happen.
Yet, there's also good old-fashioned suspense in abundance. Throughout the film, Mathilde tries to read omens. She plays superstitious mind-games with child-like intensity: "If the dog comes into the room, before dinner is called, Manech is alive". They crank up the suspense. Firstly, you wonder if the precise sequence of events she seeks will actually go the way she wants it; secondly, because they never unfold exactly in the way you wonder whether their usefulness as portents is limited.
The photography is outstanding. It oozes atmosphere and period. The camera moves lovingly from cream and umber domestic sets, to steel blues and iron greys for the battle scenes. Interspersed with these are visually startling scenes, dressing in bright vivid colours the most commonplace of things - a steam train snaking across the summer countryside, a lighthouse at sunset - resonating perfectly with the hyper-realism of hand-tinted early 20th century postcards.
Tautou turns in a faultless performance as the relentless heroine. Her fragile callipered leg (a legacy of childhood polio) is a metaphor for a will of steel. Ulliel is outstanding (he's just picked up the César for Most Promising Newcomer for this) as the innocent abroad, blasted apart by the horror of war.
The two leads are simply the best amongst what is a full set of extraordinary performances from some of France's best character actors. Remarkably, the one who looks a lot like Jodie Foster actually is Jodie Foster, doing - in impeccable French in an extended cameo - her bit for the patria and her soldier husband.