Stephen Groenewegen
Joined Jul 2000
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Stephen Groenewegen's rating
Beau Travail ("Good Work") is loosely based on Herman Melville's classic novella Billy Budd. Billy Budd was a tragedy brought about partly by the strictures of military discipline, but was really a story of masculinity and power; a powerful psychological study of three characters and personalities unable to coexist without damaging or destroying each other.
French director Claire Denis transfers the story from the eighteenth century British navy to a unit of the French Foreign Legion in an African outpost. The exotic backdrop of the Foreign legion - with its all-male bonding and strict discipline - is inspired. Having the film narrated by Galoup, the film's Claggart character, is not. Claggart was fascinating to Melville because he could discern no real reason for his hatred of Budd; it was ascribed to his nature and essentially unfathomable. Denis and the actor playing Galoup (Denis Lavant) seem to lack insight into his motives as well, so he's a poor choice to carry the story. Equally frustrating is Denis' lack of focus on Sentain (Gregoire Colin), the charismatic Budd who's supposed to drive the action. Instead, there's a lot of empty posing in the desert. The climax - the first real incident in an overlong film - is over too quickly to be satisfying.
French director Claire Denis transfers the story from the eighteenth century British navy to a unit of the French Foreign Legion in an African outpost. The exotic backdrop of the Foreign legion - with its all-male bonding and strict discipline - is inspired. Having the film narrated by Galoup, the film's Claggart character, is not. Claggart was fascinating to Melville because he could discern no real reason for his hatred of Budd; it was ascribed to his nature and essentially unfathomable. Denis and the actor playing Galoup (Denis Lavant) seem to lack insight into his motives as well, so he's a poor choice to carry the story. Equally frustrating is Denis' lack of focus on Sentain (Gregoire Colin), the charismatic Budd who's supposed to drive the action. Instead, there's a lot of empty posing in the desert. The climax - the first real incident in an overlong film - is over too quickly to be satisfying.
Jesus' Son, directed by New Zealander Alison Maclean, is based on the short stories of Denis Johnson. The short story origins go a long way to explaining the movie's patchy feel. Billy Crudup is christened FH (F*** Head) by his mates because he fouls up everything and everyone he comes across. The common link in most of FH's otherwise random misadventures is Michelle (Samantha Morton), a junkie he meets at a party and falls in love with. It's a bare thread to hang the film on, but Morton manages to centre things for a while. She gives the film's liveliest performance, making Michelle a lot more interesting than FH and the other eccentrics he meets (played by the likes of Denis Leary, Dennis Hopper and Holly Hunter in cameo roles).
Drug taking is not a spectator sport, and watching the semi-dazed FH wander wintry America in the early 1970s quickly becomes tiresome. We've seen this sort of material too often in independent American features for it to be fresh, and Maclean's fluid direction and ability with actors cannot disguise the episodic nature of the material. FH veers from boring to downright unlikeable, and I didn't care much about him or his potential redemption. Not helping was my failure to connect with the grotesque humour. There's only so many laughs you can wring from squashed animal foetuses and a man with a hunting knife stuck in his eye.
Drug taking is not a spectator sport, and watching the semi-dazed FH wander wintry America in the early 1970s quickly becomes tiresome. We've seen this sort of material too often in independent American features for it to be fresh, and Maclean's fluid direction and ability with actors cannot disguise the episodic nature of the material. FH veers from boring to downright unlikeable, and I didn't care much about him or his potential redemption. Not helping was my failure to connect with the grotesque humour. There's only so many laughs you can wring from squashed animal foetuses and a man with a hunting knife stuck in his eye.
Me, Myself, I combines two genres of romantic comedy: the "body swap" with the "what if?" story (you know, Dating the Enemy meets Sliding Doors). The film flounders a little in the first twenty minutes or so as it establishes Pamela (Rachel Griffiths), single and luckless in love. Pamela is a journalist, and has just met a fellow writer (Sandy Winton) who seems to be the perfect mate. Until she sees him with his kids... Pamela is wondering what her life would have been like if she'd married high school sweetheart Robert Dickson (David Roberts) when WHAM! she's hit by a car. She comes to in the arms of married Pamela (also Rachel Griffiths) who takes her home to her suburban house, three kids and married life with Robert.
This is writer-director Pip Karmel's first feature (she received an Oscar nomination for editing Shine). Karmel is obviously close to her material, but she's not overly protective of it - she wants us to enjoy her conception. She has the perfect star in Rachel Griffiths, who we're more used to seeing in supporting roles (most famously, Muriel's Wedding and Hilary and Jackie). She carried a film in Amy, but she played a glum, washed-out single mum. Here, she's a lot of fun. You want to know more about Pamela, and the subtle differences between the single and married Pamelas are simply, but impressively, conceived. She's well supported by David Roberts and Sandy Winton, as husband and potential boyfriend. Refreshingly for a romantic comedy, the men aren't thoroughly likeable or dislikeable. I found it easy to suspend my disbelief with Me, Myself, I. It's that rare beast: an Australian romantic comedy that's funny, and leaves you with a warm glow inside when it's over.
This is writer-director Pip Karmel's first feature (she received an Oscar nomination for editing Shine). Karmel is obviously close to her material, but she's not overly protective of it - she wants us to enjoy her conception. She has the perfect star in Rachel Griffiths, who we're more used to seeing in supporting roles (most famously, Muriel's Wedding and Hilary and Jackie). She carried a film in Amy, but she played a glum, washed-out single mum. Here, she's a lot of fun. You want to know more about Pamela, and the subtle differences between the single and married Pamelas are simply, but impressively, conceived. She's well supported by David Roberts and Sandy Winton, as husband and potential boyfriend. Refreshingly for a romantic comedy, the men aren't thoroughly likeable or dislikeable. I found it easy to suspend my disbelief with Me, Myself, I. It's that rare beast: an Australian romantic comedy that's funny, and leaves you with a warm glow inside when it's over.