Tag Archives: Kate Beckinsale

Love and Friendship (Whit Stillman, USA, 2016)

Film Blurb, Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , ,

love and friendship movie poster

Based on Jane Austen’s Lady Susan, Love and Friendship won me over in the end. But I did wonder if it wasn’t too slight, derivative and possibly better as a play. It’s a stupid think to say — and wrong also –but for lack of a better way of putting it: I at first didn’t think it was cinematic enough (except for the explanatory subtitles at the beginning and in the letter -reading/writing scenes which structure the narrative). I thought it too talky. But then the film’s languid rhythms, its classic but slightly askew compositions and it’s tone – which a friend described as on the right side of arch – won me over. I did end up loving it. But I wasn’t sure I would until it ended.

Adrien Garvey has described Love and Friendship as a sketched-in heritage film, which I think describes it beautifully. It doesn’t offer the visual pleasures of the traditional heritage films such as A Room with a View (James Ivory, UK, 1985) or other Jane Austin adaptations: the sumptuousness of place (here the stately home is slightly run-down), costume (modest for the period, slightly worn, like the best clothes of those who can’t quite afford them) or setting: none of this is used as spectacle here. But then, to its credit, it also eschews the nostalgic tone of heritage in favour of a smarter, slightly more worldly and wittily cynical flavour. Unlike Chlōe Sevigny, who’s every appearance as Alicia Johnson seems to leap off the screen, Kate Beckinsale seems to lack charisma in the first scenes. But then her performance wins you over on merit: Her Lady Susan takes no relish in her wickedness; she doesn’t underline or make a show of it; all Beckinsale does simply becomes who the character is. It’s a shrewd, witty and understated performance. And then there’s James Fleet who steals every scene he’s in with mere intonation.

Love and Friendship is an elegant chamber piece that feels slight, echoey, thin and empty at the beginning but fills out, gets richer, more resonant, and more enjoyable as it unfolds. Very typical and very good Whit Stillman.

Pamela Hutchinson has written a wonderful piece on the film’s use of intertitles that you can find here.

José Arroyo

Total Recall (Len Wiseman, USA, 2012)

Sci-fi, Uncategorized, , , , , , , ,

total recall

It sometimes feels cinema today is making the world a muddier, greyer place. That may be why animated films rule the box-office: they’re bright, colourful; they create and convey a world of romance, action and adventure, a cheerful one. All the romance, action and adventure in most other types of cinema take place in a world made grey or yellow/brown by digital. It’s all the colour of steel and smog. This is part of the problem with Total Recall. It has fantastic sets; when you look closely you see how marvelously designed they all are …but they’re so grey and unattractive; and as the original Total Recall from 1990 showed, the depiction of dystopia can go together with a more cheerful colour palette and pleasing design, at least for the world above-ground.  Also, the action here doesn’t quite work. Each individual shot is fine but the architecture of a scene seems arbitrary. One doesn’t know who’s shooting whom and why; or why one has to shoot someone at all; or where one has to go to in order to escape being shot. One ends up simply not caring. Everyone (Colin Farrell, Kate Beckinsale, Bryan Cranston) is ok in it but no one is really good and there are no audience moments, like the jokes we got in the original; the Paul Verhoeven version included the audience in on the joke and gave them something else (it’s like an existential quest within a cartoon; between Arnie socking people it’s not afraid to ask what is being? what is a person? who am I? how do I know? – it’s a great movie). Here, one asks why was this movie made? Who was it made for? Why am I bothering with it? There was almost no reaction from the audience to any of it.

José Arroyo