THEN CAME YOU

Stars: Craig Ferguson, Kathie Lee Gifford, Ford Kiernan, Phyllida Law and Elizabeth Hurley.
Writer: Kathie Lee Gifford
Director: Adriana Trigiani

Rating: ★ ★ ★

In what feels like, for most of its running time, two old friends having a lark in the Scottish countryside finds just enough heart and honesty at key moments to keep Then Came You from being just a sweetly disposable confection. Craig Ferguson, exuding true leading man charisma, shares genuine chemistry with co-lead and scripter Kathie Lee Gifford…which is fortunate, because it’s all the narrative really asks of them.

In an all-too-rare bigscreen outing, Ferguson transposes his stand-up/talkshow persona into the role of Howard Awd, a widower overseeing a lochside estate that was once his home but is now a guesthouse. With his best mate Gavin (Ford Kiernan, delivering the goods in that rom-com staple role), Awd is struggling to keep alive the memory of his late wife by maintaining the magnificent but increasingly dilapidated manor (shot at the picturesque Ardkinglas House in the Scottish coastal hamlet of Cairndow).

Into Awd’s life comes Annabelle Wilson, a Nantucket widow carrying her late husband’s ashes in an empty chocolate box (because her husband’s favourite movie was Forrest Gump, in the first of many movie references that include Titanic, The Way We Were and, amusingly, Braveheart). As Annabelle, Gifford is no Streep but she certainly does all she has to do to convince as a likable fish-out-of-water Yank with a little dark cloud over her soul.

From the moment she’s off the train and in Awd’s care, the pair are giggling and bonding and bickering like a couple of silver-haired teenagers. This almost becomes too much of a good thing, until Ferguson brings the acting chops in a scene where he fronts up about the true nature of his own grief. It’s a relatively brief sequence but it is all the film needs to provide enough grounded emotion in the pic’s second half.

Despite sharing above-the-title credit, Elizabeth Hurley (more breathtakingly beautiful than ever) has only a handful of scenes as Awd’s fiancee; the great Phyllida Law pulls of a thankless role as the pivot of a subplot that never rings true. Adriana Trigiani, ably directing her first feature since the undervalued 2014 melodrama Big Stone Gap, unloads large passages of exposition via disembodied dialogue; Annabelle’s reason for being in Scotland is plonked down by an off-camera Gifford as the pair drive around the stunning countryside (the hardest working crew member was the drone pilot, without a doubt). 

That’s not a big deal, as narrative is secondary to niceties in this type of mature-age romantic fantasy. With two seasoned performers outfront, clearly comfortable in each other’s company, Then Came You will nicely serve the Senior’s Club ticket holders seeking postcard locales and personable dramedy.

DESTINATION WEDDING

Stars: Winona Ryder, Keanu Reeves.
Writer/Director: Victor Levin

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

Finally afforded the screen time together that their Gen-X fanbase has been pining for going on three decades, Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder play the most adorably unlovable rom-com couple ever in Victor Levin’s cynical but deceptively sweet Destination Wedding.

From the sitcom-y airport meet-cute in the opening frames to that knock on the door in the final seconds, Levin’s structure is as formulaic as the genre gets. However, the devilish charm of his debut feature is in the caustic detail of his dialogue and his casting of two stars who, despite their iconic status amongst fans of a certain age, have never really been afforded this kind of punchy, rat-a-tat repartee. They have the whole film to themselves – there are no other speaking parts – so the balance is certainly redressed.

Ryder plays Lindsay, a SJW-lawyer who brings down irresponsible corporations; Reeves is Frank, an executive for a company who hands out ‘Best Of...’ awards to big business. They are thrust into each other’s orbit on the way to a destination wedding in San Luis Obispo; Lindsay was once engaged to the groom, who happens to be Frank’s half-brother. Neither are seeking romance or companionship, yet find themselves drawn together via their misanthropy, cynicism and general despair at the notion of a life-long bond and all who seem to be working towards one.

While Reeves and Ryder may not seem the obvious leads for a movie that would have soared in generations past in the hands of, say, Walter Matthau and Eileen Brennan, or Richard Dreyfuss and Lily Tomlin, the darlings of 80s/90s cinema turn their callous-hearted characters into legitimately redeemable love birds. Reeves in particular seems to revel in delivering Levin’s dark, delicious words; the chemistry between he and Ryder (typically flinty, utterly endearing) is both sweet and sour, a coming-together of damaged souls who might just be able to mend each other over time.

Do not expect windswept, late-evening soft-glow late in the third act (as one of the interstitial title-cards states, “Just what the world needs – another Goddamn sunset wedding”), but instead a more seasoned perspective on the prospect for enduring romance. In their teen-dream heyday, a Reeves/Ryder romantic entanglement would have set every under-18’s ticker into cardiac arrhythmia; in 2019, the actors get to play understated, doubtful and resigned to a compromised human connection. Their more mature selves provide no less a love story, and Reeves and Ryder prove no less engaging, because of the passage of time.

THE WAY WE WEREN'T

Stars: Fiona Gubelmann, Ben Lawson, Keith Powell, Amber Stevens, Alexandra Davies, Alan Simpson, Kristi Clainos, Alyssa Diaz, Ronnie Gene Blevins and Tobin Bell.
Writers: Brian DiMuccio, Aran Eisenstat and Rick Hays.
Director: Rick Hays.

Rating: ★ ★ ★

Two adorably goofy, not-yet-their-adult-selves thirty-somethings meet cute and get hitched way too quickly in the silly but sweet (and surprisingly saucy) farce The Way We Weren’t, the feature directorial debut of industry tech veteran Rick Hays. Satirically acknowledging in name only the classic Streisand/Redford romance, this occasionally funny, energetically upbeat effort provides a solid vehicle for likable stars Fiona Gubelmann and Australian Ben Lawson, whose performances broadly embody all the things that can go wrong when you lie to a new partner, bed them then wed them with next to no rational thought. In other words, ‘Married at First Sight: The Movie’.

Plotting is a barely-there framework for all the rom-com convolutions viewers tuning into this sort of film will expect/demand. Charlotte has waited 14 years to marry a guy who is no longer interested in a life with her; Brandon is a commitment-phobe who can pull the babes but is deep in debt. When she does time after accidentally toppling her fiancé over a walking trail fence and he finds his latest conquest in passionate throws with another guy, fate brings them together - first online, where lying is standard; then, in person, where the lying continues, mixed in with him spending beyond his means and her vamping it up uncomfortably in the bedroom.

When the seriousness of their romance takes over, the myriad of lies become increasingly hard to conceal. The free-for-all comedy of the first half begins to take on a semi-serious tone by Act 3, which the script (penned by three writers no less, including director Hays) has most certainly not earned. But old pros Tobin Bell and Alexandra Davies, as Brandon’s hippy drug-culture parents, and that old chestnut - the uppity outdoor party featuring potential employers – combine to usher out The Way We Weren’t on the high that the best of the genre delivers.    

Despite its overall air of familiarity, there are some pleasingly left-of-centre flourishes that enliven the episodic plotting. The couple are drawn together in their love for a Swedish cop show, the central character of which narrates the early stages of the romance; Gubelmann’s comic timing is tops, whether taking relationship advice from a grade-schooler or reacquainting herself with the modern bro/dude’s bedroom expectations; and, a couple of sex scenes that are…well, let’s say ideally suited for the European market. The film veers into There’s Something About Mary territory with an extended gag about Brandon’s misshapen manhood.

Although clearly made on a non-studio budget, all tech contributions are top quality. The bouyant, colourful lensing of DOP Paul Toomey captures key LA locales in bright tones that ably supports the underlying sweetness of Charlotte and Brandon’s narrative.

SALT BRIDGE

Stars: Rajeev Khandelwal, Chelsie Preston Crayford, Usha Jadhav, Kaushik Das, Shoorjo Dasgupta, Adam Grant and Mayur Kamble.
Writers: Abhijit Deonath and Shvetal Vyas Pare.
Director: Abhijit Deonath.

Rating: ★★★½

Examining the Indian immigrant experience from a fresh and personal perspective, director Abhijit Deonath melds traditional male role-model expectations with contemporary relationship melodrama to largely winning affect in his debut feature, Salt Bridge. Shot entirely in Australia, with Sydney and Canberra locales doubling as the fictional township of the title, the long-in-production independent project will play well with diaspora populations, who all-too-rarely get to see their transplanted lives in a thoughtful big-screen narrative.

Most recently, of course, Garth Davies’ hit Lion (2016) cast an eye over the Indian expat existence; central to Deonath’s plot are the shared themes of memory and reconciliation with the past (though far less overtly stated here). The director introduces his protagonist, thirty-something medical researcher Basant (Rajeev Khandelwal) staring longingly from a train window, his mind revisiting a moment long ago that still consumes him. Khandelwal is terrific, exuding the soulful sensitivity of a man burdened with a dark past, yet every inch the classic Indian leading-man type (his brooding pout recalling Hollywood actor Jason Patric in his prime).

With his equally-photogenic wife Lipi (Usha Jadhav) and listless teen son Riju (Shoorjo Dasgupta) counting on him to fulfill his potential and provide for their new Australian suburban life, Basant decides to take driving lessons with instructor Madhurima (Chelsie Preston Crayford). Also immersed in the migrant life (she’s a New Zealander, married to an Indian), the pair soon bond in the most charming and innocent of ways. One of N.Z.’s most accomplished young actresses, Crayford (What We Do In The Shadows, 2014; Eagle vs Shark, 2007) and her leading man share a lovely chemistry, ensuring their developing platonic friendship is entirely believable.

Soon, their friends and then the wider Indian society take an interest in the new besties, assuming the most salacious, and Basant finds himself outcast from his community, his family and, regrettably, Madhurima. Having posed the question ‘Can a man and woman just be friends?’, Deonath dissects the issue within the broader context of the modern male’s role in Indian culture. His script (penned with the assistance of Shvetal Vyas Pare) succinctly embraces the hot-button topic of toxic masculinity and India’s patriarchal traditions, but does so through the filter of western cultural influence. If the story structure and momentum occasionally stumbles (most notably, a confusing sequence in the wake of a near-tragedy at the film’s midway point), Deonath’s skill with character and dialogue more than compensates.

Deonath drives home his gender subtext by focussing Basant’s research work on mitochondria, the power generator of any complex living cell, the existence of which is maternally inherited. The nods to modern science extend all the way to the film’s title – a ‘salt bridge’ occurs in proteins, creating a bond between oppositely charged residues that are sufficiently close to each other to experience electrostatic attraction; it is a deft, if slightly highbrow way, of defining the relationship between Basant and Madhurima.

Salt Bridge is a commercially savvy undertaking as well, including an explosively colourful Holi celebration and some neat dance moves, although it is far too influenced by its western setting to go ‘full Bollywood’. Australian viewers will be bemused by the people-free (and very green) parklands, empty highways, pristine cityscapes and autumnal suburban streets that provide the backdrop for the drama; it is a perception of life on these shores that plays well overseas, but is a bit of a stretch to those of us caught in the metropolitan crush of everyday life.

All tech aspects exceed any budgetary constraints, with the film looking lived-in and real while still seeming professionally polished in every respect. Especially noteworthy is Miguel Gallagher’s camerawork, whose eye for finding beauty is even on-song when framing the not-always inspirationally picturesque national capital.

FIRST LIGHT

Stars: Stefanie Scott, Théodore Pellerin, Saïd Taghmaoui, Percy Hynes White, Jahmil French, James Wotherspoon and Kate Burton.
Writer/director: Jason Stone.

Reviewed at Monster Fest 2018 at Melbourne’s Cinema Nova on November 23.

WINNER: Best International Film, Monster Fest 2018

Rating: ★★★★

Millennial types that stare blank-faced and shrug when you mention the great films of 1970s Hollywood make a grab at one the decade’s best with First Light. In Jason Stone’s low-key, highly charged UFO drama, an alien encounter imbues an everyday suburbanite with an inexplicable connection to lights in the sky. Whether you know it or not, kids, you’ve now got your own generation’s Close Encounters of The Third Kind.

Steven Spielberg’s 1977 sci-fi classic featured a thirty-something Richard Dreyfuss as a contactee strangely obsessed with visions of a distant mountain. ‘Thirty-something’ protagonists are way too old for the modern movie audience (unless they are comic-book hero alter-egos), so a savvy Stone has recast his lead as high-schooler Alex (Stefanie Scott). Also, ‘strange obsessions’ are hard to conjure, even for the modern effects wiz; having survived a near drowning via the visitation of glowing orb entities, Alex doubles-down on that distant yearning with telekinetic powers (good, especially when called upon flip ex-boyfriend’s cars) and high-radiation levels (bad, especially for…well, everybody).

Along for the ride is Sean (Théodore Pellerin), the audience conduit whose doe-eyed, unshakeable commitment to Alex provides the emotional core of Stone’s narrative. Scenes of the young man’s home life establish him as a teen of integrity and character; parent-less, he hangs with his smart-mouth, street-wise younger brother Oscar (a scene-stealing Percy Hynes White) and cares for his near-catatonic grandmother, whose arc is small but provides one of the year’s great movie moments.

Sean yearns for the closeness he shared with Alex once before, a wish that is granted after her near-death encounter, the bubbly teen queen now a sullen, silent introvert, clearly not herself. The pair are drawn into a chase drama enabled by rogue UFO chaser Cal (Said Taghmaoui) and driven by Federal agency head Kate (Kate Burton), their open road odyssey affording the actors space to build a warm, sincere chemistry. It also allows a further ironic nod to old-school Hollywood - Sean compares their plight to Bonnie and Clyde, to which Alex replies, “I don’t know who that is.” 

Stone opens on some thrill-inducing images of the orbs illuminating the early evening sky, before settling into a long passage of character definition and tension building - another common trait it shares with CE3K. If Stones skimps on the grand effects sequences that made Spielberg’s work so memorable, Stone doesn’t let us forget that his characters are always being watched. His expert use of drone footage to capture the ‘God’s eye’ perspective, or more precisely that of the inhabitants of the orbs, represents some of the most effective creative use of the technology yet.

In working through Spielberg’s familiar story beats, First Light plays like an American-indie-meets-X-Files spin on Romeo & Juliet; there are also some unmissable nods to John Carpenter’s Starman and Douglas Trumbull’s Brainstorm (two more ‘oldies’ the target audience won’t know), as well the inevitable and not unfounded YA comparisons that pitch it as, though remarkably better than, the Twilight series.

Also like Spielberg’s film, momentum drags a little in its third act when the G-men and their tech take over the film. It’s a minor period of disconnect in a film that mostly feels gritty, human and real, despite its otherworldly premise. First Light builds to a soaring denouement (pumped by some demographic-appropriate musical accompaniment from M83’s ‘Outro’) that reassures the audience that, in this world or beyond, we are not alone.

CHASING COMETS

Stars: Dan Ewing, John Batchelor, Isabel Lucas, Stan Walker, Rhys Muldoon, Justin Melvey, George Houvardas, Gary Eck, Peter Phelps and Beau Ryan.
Writer: Jason Stevens
Director: Jason Perini

Rating: 3/5

‘The engaging true story of a rugby league player’s faith-based search for enlightened soulfulness’ is not the opening salvo a critic expects to ever write, especially given the pre-release marketing for Chasing Comets was all boozy blokes and locker room skylarking. Yet writer Jason Stevens, whose life transformation from laddish layabout to celebrity celibate provides the basis for director Jason Perini’s likably roughhewn sports/faith dramedy, exhibits a keen eye for gentle melancholy and good-natured integrity with his debut script.

Leading man Dan Ewing progresses from playing a country footballer fighting aliens in Occupation (2018) to playing a country footballer fighting temptation in Wagga Wagga. The Home & Away heartthrob stars as the improbably named Chase Daylight, glamour boy of local bush leaguers The Comets and well on the path to first grade NRL glory. Yet ill-discipline and a tendency to be easily distracted by his hedonistic mate Rhys (Stan Walker) threatens to undo all the good faith placed in him by his single mum Mary (Deborah Galanos), manager/mentor Harry (Peter Phelps) and very patient girlfriend Brooke (Isabel Lucas).

When one indiscretion too many proves the final straw for Brooke, Chase descends into a funk that sees him benched by Coach Munsey (Peter Batchelor) and his potential begin to stagnate. At precisely the moment that Chase has a (symbolic) breakdown, up steps ‘The Rev’ (George Houvardas) who, with his daughter Dee (the lovely Kat Hoyos; pictured, below), begins to school Chase in the character building properties of Christian principles, in particular an adherence to abstinence; Chase becomes a born-again virgin. This revelation proves a giggly delight to his teammates, led by player ‘personality’ Beau Ryan (one of several real-life league cameos, including South Sydney general manager Shane Richardson and commentator Daryl ‘The Big Marn’ Brohmann, as well as Sydney socialite-types DJ Havana Brown and gossip journo Jo Casamento).

In the early ‘00s, Stevens garnered sports-page coverage and copped some infantile ridicule when his life of celibacy became public fodder. At the height of his NRL fame, the representative-level tough guy did not skirt around what it meant to be devout, but he largely refrained from religious grandstanding (despite having the sporting stature and media profile to successfully do so). His script for Chasing Comets not-so-subtly redresses that balance; there are preachy passages that will fall heavily on the ears of non-believers and those that have turned up for that blokey yarn about country league shenanigans the trailer promised.

Of course, this tendency towards message-moviemaking does not diminish its legitimacy as a solid slice of local sector filmmaking. Notably, it sits alongside J.D. Scott's Spirit of the Game (2016) as an early Australian entrant in the burgeoning ‘faith-based’ genre coming out of the U.S; Stevens and Perini’s narrative is every frame as committed to the cause as such sports-themed Christian films as the Oscar-winning The Blind Side (2009), Soul Surfer (2011), When The Game Stands Tall (2014) and Woodlawn (2015).

Steven’s screenwriting inexperience cannot be totally ignored – his women characters are largely one-note, either pitched as redemptive angels or sly temptresses; Lucas is neither, but struggles to find much to work with as the hard-done-by Brooke. Also, the production drops the ball at a couple of key moments; for some reason, Chase’s re-emergence as the town’s sporting hero is staged offscreen, the thrill of the game-winning try (surely the very moment for which these sort of films exist) left to veteran Peter Phelps to convey – while alone, listening to a radio in a Chinese restaurant.

Taking into consideration the moments when it stumbles, the most satisfying aspect of Chasing Comets is that emerges as greater than the sum of its parts; it shouldn’t work so well as a contemporary mix of small-town charm, hard man mateship and heavenly intervention, but Steven’s story certainly does.

ADRIFT

Stars: Shailene Woodley, Sam Claflin, Grace Palmer, Jeffrey Thomas, Elizabeth Hawthorne, Tami Ashcroft, Kael Damiamian.
Screenplay: Aaron Kandell, Jordan Kandell and David Branson Smith.
Director: Baltasar Kormákur.

Rating: 4/5

When free-spirited 24 year-old Tami Oldham met 33 year-old ocean-faring adventurer Richard Sharp in 1983, the attraction was instant and the bond profound. In Baltasar Kormákur’s Adrift, the cinematic retelling of the pair’s ill-fated open-ocean undertaking from Tahiti to San Diego, leads Shailene Woodley and Sam Claflin must convince not only as seasoned sailors capable of the 4000 nautical mile journey, but also doe-eyed, die-hard romantics in the thrall of each others company.

In adapting Oldham’s autobiography Red Sky in Mourning: A True Story of Love, Loss and Survival at Sea, scripters Aaron and Jordan Kandell and David Branson Smith have structured a narrative that serves two masters. Firstly, the blossoming romance of two spiritually compatible young people sharing a destiny; secondly, the tragic trajectory dictated by the facts of the story. The result is a rarity in modern cinema terms; an un-ironic, openhearted romance that doubles as a psychological study in survival trauma. Every bruise earned and every tear shed over the course of the pair’s ordeal feels entirely authentic.   

Having previously explored man’s helplessness in the face of an unforgiving Mother Nature in Everest (2015) and The Deep (2012), Kormákur understands the intricacies of ‘survivalist cinema’. He convincingly conveys the gruesome physical impact a life-threatening event can have, but he also comprehends the essential human qualities that his protagonist must exhibit to ensure their plight engages the audience. Structurally, he utilizes a fractured, Nolan-esque storytelling style that jars at first, but which corals both plot strands into a quietly devastating reveal (at least, for those who haven’t read the book).

As Tami, Shailene Woodley delivers on the dramatic promise of her teen roles (The Descendants, 2011; The Spectacular Now, 2013; The Fault in Our Stars, 2014; the Divergent trilogy) with a performance of strong, sensual physicality, inspiring fortitude and complex emotionality. This role serves a specific functionality for the actress at a key juncture in her career; just as Sally Field did with Norma Rae (1979), or Julia Roberts did with Sleeping With The Enemy and Dying Young (both 1991), or Sandra Bullock did with A Time to Kill (1996), its timing is not accidental. Woodley challenges herself, her fan base and her perception in Hollywood with a role that demands a maturity, technique and natural charisma that she delivers with Oscar-worthy command.

Claflin is handed the less showy of the two performances (he spends most of the movie prone and battered), but creates a likable, charming all-round believably sweet foil for Woodley to fawn over.   

Importantly, Adrift achieves a seamless, entirely believable tropical storm simulation; ‘that’ moment, when the yacht is tossed and Tami and Richard are left at the mercy of the cyclonic conditions, is one of the most convincingly staged of its kind in film history.

CAFÉ SOCIETY

Stars: Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Blake Lively, Steve Carell, Corey Stoll, Parker Posey, Judy Davis, Paul Schneider and Anna Camp.
Writer/Director: Woody Allen

Opening Night Film, 69th Festival du Cannes; reviewed at the Salle Debussy Theatre.

Rating: 4/5

Given the richness of Vittorio Storaro’s breathtaking cinematography and the rose-coloured hint of melancholy it invokes, the urge is to posit Café Society in with Woody Allen’s ‘Americana’ period of the 1980s. Just as The Purple Rose of Cairo and Radio Days reminisced on bygone days, his latest is an often giddy, always gorgeous love-letter to both the Los Angeles of Hollywood’s golden era and New York’s swinging jazz club scene of the 1930s.

Yet for all the declarations of passion and sun-bathed joie de vivre of lovers encircling each other, Allen’s characters are an immoral, shallow, even shady bunch. They are descendants of comic creations that the auteur has crafted superbly in past works, that much is true, just not the films that Cafe Society aesthetically recalls. These self-absorbed philanderers and shallow socialites are the miscreants of Crimes and Misdemeanors, Manhattan Murder Mystery and Match Point.

To his own narration, Allen opens his film poolside in LA, as a Hollywood party is in full swing. Uber-agent Phil Dorfman (Steve Carell) is holding court, name-dropping with sleazy Hollywood abandon (“I’m expecting a call from Ginger Rogers”), when he hears from his East Coast sister, Rose (Jeanne Berlin, stealing most scenes she is in); his nephew Bobby (Jesse Eisenberg) is heading his way and needs work. The young man’s arrival leads to some neat fish-out-of-water bits that don’t particularly further the plot (notably an extended gag about Bobby’s first visit from a professional girl), before he is given a menial job at the agency and assigned to Phil’s PA Vonnie (Kristen Stewart) on weekends to be shown around town.

Eisenberg, riffing on Allen as has become de rigueur for the director’s leading men, and Stewart, whose lightness of touch proves a revelation and classically photogenic charms are adored by Storaro’s lens, have developed a sweet rapport after past efforts together (Adventureland, 2009; American Ultra, 2015). Their courtship scenes are the best moments in Café Society, especially a sequence that has them tour Beverly Hills, taking in the star’s palatial digs while wonderfully revealing character and chemistry. Another glorious set-up, during which the electricity in Bobby’s apartment blacks out and he tends to Vonnie’s broken heart by the glow of candlelight and streetlamp, all but guarantees DOP Storaro mention come Oscar time.

Soon, the machinations of plot take over and we learn that the love that keeps Vonnie from Bobby is very close to home. The west coast scenes skip along at a lively pace, endearing each character and milking the most from a storyline that is not very ambitious (and, to Allen’s fans, a tad familiar) but which engages thanks to Allen’s ensemble and masterful sense of timing.

The story shifts to New York and characters that were peripheral comedy relief become the centre of an ever-expanding narrative. Bobby returns home and begins to walk in the shadow of thuggish big brother Ben (Corey Stoll), robbing the film of Carell’s and Stewart’s presence and the ‘zing’ they share with Eisenberg. As Bobby’s east coast love interest Veronica, Blake Lively is every bit as captivating as Stewart but is afforded far less character development; an underworld subplot that involves murder and corruption feels unconvincing and perfunctory (and often overtly bloody). The Woody Allen who once perfectly captured the alienation of a New Yorker in Los Angeles is nowhere to be found here; Allen’s LA story is sublime, while his NYC-set narrative stutters.

Allen last filled the Cannes opening slot with arguably his best film in recent memory, Midnight in Paris. If Café Society does not match the sheer delight of that period piece gem, nor attains the caustic and captivating immorality of, say, Crimes and Misdemeanours, it fits with a body of work from a director still determined to explore the shading between the themes of love and deceit, truth and pretension, desire and commitment. Though not the sum of its many wonderful parts, Café Society still represents a captivating melding of the light-and-dark complexity of Allen’s best work. 

PIKU

Stars: Amitabh Bachchan, Deepika Padukone, Irrfan Khan, Balendra Singh and Moushumi Chatterjee.
Writer: Juhi Chaturvedi.
Director: Shoojit Sircar. 

Watch the trailer here.

Rating: 4/5

Bollywood’s biggest stars revel in life’s smallest moments in Piku, Shoojit Sircar’s sweetly insightful family ‘dramedy’/road movie. As the ailing patriarchal figure, the legendary Amitabh Bachchan brings both dramatic heft and lightness of touch to a showy role, but it is Deepika Padukone who emerges as the film’s heart and soul.

Bachchan plays proud Bengali-born 70-something widower Bashkor Banerjee, a cantankerous shut-in suffering from a severe bout of constipation. The passing of a stress relieving ‘motion’ has become the soul focus of his life, much to the chagrin of his daughter, Piku (Padukone). An architect on the verge of earning partnership status in a top firm, her life has become increasingly consumed by her father’s needs, both medicinal and psychological.

When the opportunity arises for the pair to travel cross-country from their Delhi base to the family home in Kolkata, they employ cab company owner Rana (a very fine Irrfan Khan) to drive them. The 1500 kilometre journey allows for many truths to be explored, the destination representing a spiritual home for both father and daughter. The frankness of Juhi Chaturvedi’s script and the skill with which she forms naturally free-flowing and over-lapping dialogues keeps the film buoyant and energised. The sparse use of lowbrow humour in a film that that explores potential cures for Bashkor’s condition ensures the three key cast members never stoop to puerile scatology.

Still exuding the towering, screen-consuming personality that embodied his iconic character Vijay in Yash Chopra’s 1975 classic Deewaar, a boisterous Bachchan fearlessly goes that extra yard in the name of both truth and laughter; he is a joy to watch. But Padukone, too often lumbered with the ‘pretty girl’ role in recent films, matches the great actor beat-for-beat in occasionally fiery dramatic moments. It seems entirely plausible that the pair have been living together for too long, and that the clashing stems from a very real fear that they will soon not be together anymore. Despite the drama feeling slightly over-extended by the middle of the third act, the tears shed and romantic developments feel very real.

With his fourth feature, Kolkata-born Sircar solidifies his reputation as a filmmaker with an assured touch across a variety of genres. After his 2005 debut Yahaan, a contemporary warzone romance, he enjoyed a critical and commercial hit with Vicky Donor, a smart farce that found favour with international audiences drawn to its ‘sperm-donor’ premise. In 2013, Sircar explored counter-espionage techniques and fervent nationalism in Madras Café, an ultra-realistic action thriller set against the Tamil Civil Wars of the 1980s.

Sircar enters a gentler realm with his narrative here, the likes of which is synonymous with auteur James L Brooks. The Oscar winner’s skill at scripting bittersweet, deeply human moments is honoured in the structure of Piku. It recalls both Terms of Endearment, in which a put-upon daughter (Debra Winger) struggled with an eccentric parent (Shirley Maclaine); and, As Good As It Gets, which posited a churlish curmudgeon (Jack Nicholson) in a car with mismatched travel buddies (Greg Kinnear, Helen Hunt).

Filled with top tech contributors, of particular note is the lensing of DOP Kamaljeet Negi (working with Sircar for the third time). The angles he achieves within the confines of the vehicle aid the character drama immeasurably; a sequence shot in the riverside town of Banaras, captured just after ‘the magic hour’ has passed and lamps are beginning to illuminate the waterfront, evokes a dreamlike, romantic ambience that is particularly beautiful.

THE AGE OF ADALINE

Stars: Blake Lively, Michiel Huisman, Harrison Ford, Ellen Burstyn, Kathy Baker, Amanda Crew and Anthony Ingruber.
Writer: J. Miles Goodloe and Salvador Paskowitz.
Director: Lee Toland Krieger.

Rating: 4/5

After his acid-tongued, ultra-contemporary take on burdened romance in 2012’s Celeste and Jesse Forever, director Lee Toland Krieger embraces a far more fantastical and glowingly cinematic incantation of fateful love with his follow-up, The Age of Adaline.

Boldly departing from her small-screen persona in her first film-carrying lead role, Blake Lively plays Adaline Bowman, a well-to-do turn-of-the-century 29 year-old whose life appears cut short when her car plunges into river waters turned freezing by a freak North Californian snowfall. Taking its mystical cue from the likes of Back to the Future and The Natural, a bolt of lightning strikes her over-turned vehicle and affords Adaline the apparent virtue of eternal youth.

A soothing voice-over smartly imbues the premise with credible fantasy and a lovingly cinematic extended montage (recalling the weepy opening from Pixar’s Up) leads to the modern day, where the still 29 year-old Adaline lives a work-focussed life in a very photogenic San Francisco. After eight decades, she no longer indulges in notions of romance; her blessing has become a curse, her life spent alone, bar the companionship of her now aged daughter, Flemming (Ellen Burstyn). But Adaline’s existential defences are worn down by the persistent romancing of rich philanthropist, Ellis Jones (Michiel Huisman, very charming), who whisks his dream girl off to a family get-together on their lush estate.

The second-act kicker brings added emotional depth, when Ellis’ father William lays eyes upon Adaline and both are gripped by overwhelming memories of the soulful romance they shared 50-odd years hence. As William, Harrison Ford emerges as Krieger's trump card; the moment when they reconnect, and William’s intellectualism is confronted by a torrent of emotions, represents some of Ford’s best ever frames of film. It is a raw, vulnerable performance that ensures the film soars and draws fresh reserves out of Lively (the definition of 'Supporting Actor', surely); their scenes together are deeply moving, transcending any ‘fantasy genre’ trappings. (Kudos, too, to the casting department for finding Anthony Ingruder, whose physical and vocal rendering of a twenty-something Ford in flashback is uncanny).

Krieger’s vivid, melancholic melodrama emerges as a major work in the tough-to-pull-off ‘romantic fantasy’ genre subset. The cult fan base that fondly recall Jeannot Szwarc’s Somewhere in Time, the Christopher Reeve/Jane Seymour weepie from 1980 in which self-hypnosis brings together lovers born 100 years apart, will adore the narrative boldness that Krieger employs and the visual richness that DOP David Lanzenberg paints with to sell the premise. Nor will they bat a tear-sodden eyelid at the multi-generational leaps in logic that scriptwriters J. Miles Goodloe and Salvador Paskowitz slyly ask of their audience.

Revelling in the role that will come to define her transition from tabloid starlet to bigscreen A-lister, Lively exhibits maturity beyond her years and recalls the incandescent bigscreen presence of the likes of Jessica Lange, Eva Marie Saint or Françoise Dorléac. The Oscar-worthy work of Australian costumer Angus Strathie (Moulin Rouge, Catwoman) never overwhelms the star, although it has every right to. Fittingly, all below-the-line department heads - Claudia Pare’s production design; Martina Javorova’s art direction; Shannon Gottlieb’s set decoration - on The Age of Adaline bring their A-game.