christopher-underwood

In the UK and especially in London it would be the cool and colourful 'swinging sixties', and with this film it was about to happen. Although Richard Lester had made The Knack...and How to Get it (1965) very different and very black and white but he also made the Beatles with A Hard Day's Night (1964) and Help! (1965) but surely it was with this Antonioni one it was really changing. Some thought this film was boring but is seemed so shocking and thrilling for us baby boomers. I had always liked Antonioni, especially his 50s trilogy of, L'Avventura, La Notte and L'Eclisse and I really loved his first moody and stunning colour film, Red Desert (1964). But then this one, two years later, gave us David Hemmings seeming much like David Bailey, the man of the moment photographer, and the models, like the amazing Verusehka and both of the two of them on most posters. Admittedly there is not a lot of action but there is a lot of photography and modelling and with Vanessa Redgrave in that much forgotten park and a killing or not. At the centre of this are those blow ups (and some mimes) and there is some cannabis smoked and The Yardbirds. But it is about those photographs and that park that it is so thrilling for this young man who it seems is bored with his girlfriends and his models and his antique propeller. In the UK and especially in London it would be the cool and colourful 'swinging sixties', and with this film it was about to happen. Although Richard Lester had made The Knack...and How to Get it (1965) very different and very black and white but he also made the Beatles with A Hard Day's Night (1964) and Help! (1965) but surely it was with this Antonioni one it was really changing. Some thought this film was boring but is seemed so shocking and thrilling for us baby boomers. I had always liked Antonioni, especially his 50s trilogy of, L'Avventura, La Notte and L'Eclisse and I really loved his first moody and stunning colour film, Red Desert (1964). But then this one, two years later, gave us David Hemmings seeming much like David Bailey, the man of the moment photographer, and the models, like the amazing Verusehka and both of the two of them on most posters. Admittedly there is not a lot of action but there is a lot of photography and modelling and with Vanessa Redgrave in that much forgotten park and a killing or not. At the centre of this are those blow ups (and some mimes) and there is some cannabis smoked and The Yardbirds. But it is about those photographs and that park that it is so thrilling for this young man who it seems is bored with his girlfriends and his models and his antique propeller.

I rather liked it, directed by Na Hong-jin, but not as much with his later one of the The Wailing (2016) and having that folk horror element. I know that some prefer this and it is rather nasty and the girl having a bad time but it is thrilling and exciting, and again I like all the unusual buildings, gardens and streets and shops of South Korea. But again I don't really like with all the Asian humour. I know that the cops, certainly in these films, are silly and lazy but I don't really like all the slapstick, especially in the middle of a serial killer. Nevertheless this is very good, Kim Yoon-seok much running around, splendid with the girl's daughter and it makes for a change with all this fighting but without guns.

It's not bad but being Spanish, English and French there may have been some problems during the different languages. It looks wonderful in the woods, made in Basque in the Northern Spain and of course Gary Oldman was great throughout. The script is not as good as is should have been and every now and again we really wondered what was going on. The French actress, Virginie Ledoyen, was great and had also very good when I had saw her in Oliver Assayas's, Cold Water (1994) but I wasn't really sure whether the Italian actress, Aitana Sanchez-Gijon was really not happy in this film but she was fine in The Machinist (2004). Half way through Oldman went off with the 'backwoods' men and it was for Paddy Considine in charge and he didn't seem anything like as good as Oldman. I noted that he was the writer and director of Tyrannosaur (2001) that I thought it rather splendid, so in this one I think the script just needed it to be tightened it up. Some have mentioned the Straw Dogs and Deliverance which is has a feeling about it but unfortunately nothing like as good of either of those.