Question and intrigue surround tonight’s event: is it a gig? Is it a film screening? Well, actually it’s a bit of both; a retro homage to the dawn of cinema, when silent films where accompanied by a live score performed by a group of proficient musicians.

As the audience enters the Elektra theatre, there is no variety performance, no juggling clowns or ragtime pianists, no wren’s livers or ocelot spleens. Yet there is still a strange sense of occasion and excitement in the air.

The band’s instruments are setup below the screen in what would have been the orchestra pit. A violin and autoharp rest in their cases, notated scores are perched on music stands. Yes there are several keyboards, an electric guitar and a multitude of flickering lights from pedals, samplers and the PA, but magic and mystery still abounds.

A speaker from Birds Eye View (seriously, it took me about a week to get that one) gives a short introduction. Their organisation promotes female filmmakers, or in this instance female film-scorers with the work also scripted by the late, great Clara Behringer.

Blue Roses are announced and as the polite applause subsides there is a brief moment when it feels as if modern technology may have failed us. Sat waiting in halogen lights, the film fails to roll and the illusion is momentarily shattered. A silent collective intake of breath and they finally fall, the titles roll and we tumble down the rabbit hole into a dramatic maelstrom of whirling organ and vaudeville piano.

As the characters emerge onscreen this subsides into the more subtle sounds of scraped cymbals and worm-like synths. The band continues in this fashion with an astonishing attention to detail and expert musicianship, following the narrative to the nth degree.

If there is any criticism of tonight, it’s that it’s often very difficult not to be entranced by the band’s performance rather than allow them to simply support and emphasise those of the actors. But that would deny them the sense of space they create, with brushed snares like rattlesnakes, minute music boxes and languid guitar chords all in harmony with the varying moods and subtexts of the piece.

Different characters have returning themes, which develop according to plot and mood. Particularly memorable is the drunken music hall and sultry tango of the Italian dancer who tempts Jekyll in to awakening his inner Hyde. The darkly romantic violin motif, seductively tempestuous at the crux of the piece, later returns as a seedy and base atonal slur following the troubled doctor’s fall at the hands of his demon. This “impossible separation of man’s two natures; good and evil” is synonymous with these intertwining musical themes.

As Jekyll concocts his fatal elixir, the tension builds with a discordant, nagging guitar groove at odds with the free-jazz skittering drums. This later wrestles with the soft pizzicato synth of Millicent’s theme, the love interest and calming influence on the doctor’s soul, before giving way to B-movie Theremins as he descends into total control by Hyde.

The score is a labour of love for the band who have obviously poured themselves into a deeply narrative and evocative suite soundtracking perfectly this classic piece of cinema. It ends as it begins with grinding organ and crashing cymbals before tonight’s musicians take a well deserved bow to a standing ovation; a promising future for revisiting the past.

The runaway success of The Artist may have unexpectedly thrust silent cinema into the modern day limelight, but fanatics of the genre have always been pushing for ways to spread their gospel without any Hollywood hype.

One such method has been the scoring of contemporary soundtracks for these bygone works with no previously recorded music; the mood and emotions of their otherwise mute protagonists having been originally scored by live musical accompaniment.

Having hosted the likes of Murnau’s Nosferatu set to German trip-hop in the past, on Monday night the Tyneside Cinema takes a step deeper into this increasingly revived tradition.

Following stunning performances at BFI Southbank and the Latitude and Green Man Festivals, critically acclaimed alt-folk act Blue Roses reprise their haunting score to the classic silent film Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde for one final live performance.

Led by Yorkshire musician Laura Grove and signed to XL recordings, the multi-instrumental trio’s 2009 debut album was a spellbinding, lost at sea, ghost of an album. With fragile intertwining music boxes and ethereal one-woman choirs more akin to Joni Mitchell soundtracking a lost Tim Burton movie, it will be very interesting to see how they tackle the intense terror and inner turmoil of this canonical horror. The beautiful simplicity of their music, however, should ring true with John Barrymore’s iconic performance as scientist Jekyll, with his transformation into the monstrous Mr Hyde achieved through performance alone and without the aid of prosthetic makeup or effects.

Having been commissioned by Birds Eye View, who celebrate both female filmmakers and contemporary female musicians, and with the band’s music swathed in spectral folklore, we are confident it will be one not to miss.

Birds Eye View – Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde with live score by Blue Roses is tonight (Monday 14th) at the Tyneside Cinema. Tickets are £10 or £8 for concessions.

“It’s an oddly shaped film,” director Tina Gharavi admits. “But people are hearing about it and starting to request it. It’s starting to come to life”. Like some Frankenstein’s monster, I Am Nasrine, Tina’s oddly shaped film, has taken on a life of its own.

Since it opened the Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival last year, it’s gone international, recently shown at the Persian Film Festival in Australia and the Middle East Now film festival in Florence. The attention the film is getting has come as a pleasant surprise for Tina, who wrote and directed the film based on the experience of immigrants in the UK. It’s also garnered a lot of love locally, packing out the Tyneside Cinema whenever it is shown there.

So we’re glad to hear that the venerable cinema will again be screening I Am Nasrine as part of the Festival of Belonging, organised by Newcastle Centre for the Literary Arts, alongside a chat between Tina and author Jackie Kay.

Tina, an acclaimed documentary maker, university lecturer and all-round lovely person, explains how her first feature film fits into the theme of the festival: “The whole film is about identity, the idea of displacement and how people who have to migrate deal with displacement.”

Made on a shoestring budget, largely with volunteers, the film stars Micsha Sadeghi as Nasrine, who is forced to leave Tehran with her brother, Ali, when she runs into trouble with the authorities. This sets them off on a journey of self-discovery as they try to make a new life in Newcastle.

It is a story of dis-location that is becoming ever more important in multicultural Britain and across the globe – a story Tina is passionate about telling.

“People are displaced for many reasons – climate refugees, political ones. The current conflict in Syria has created hundreds and thousands of refugees. We have to realize it’s a common phenomena, it’s only going to increase and we need to deal with it so people aren’t traumatised by the experience.”

Tina’s own traumatic experience of exile is poured into the film. She came to Britain in 1979 because of the Iranian Revolution, aged six, with her father. “My mum stayed in Iran, so for me there’s quite a big rupture because of that.

“I started to go back to Iran in 2000, and I reacquainted myself with my mum and my culture. That’s what led me to make this film – the disconnection of living between the east and the west.”

Tina has negotiated these apparently conflicting aspects of her own identity by rejecting the idea of belonging to any sovereign state: “Nationhood is a false concept,” she states.

“It’s the people who make you feel you belong – the community.” This theme comes through in Nasrine’s story, as she is welcomed and befriended by members of the Traveller community, who literally cross borders and make their homes wherever the wind takes them.

The issues around this story are so important to Tina and her team that they took the risk of shooting part of the film in Iran, despite a huge crackdown by the Iranian government. Because of this, she and Micsha may never be able to step foot in their homeland again. But Tina has no regrets: “If we didn’t make the film, they would’ve won. We really wanted to say what needed to be said for the people and for ourselves.”

Being crafted with such passion, and at such risk, it’s no surprise I Am Nasrine has been praised as a touching and affecting film. It’s a film whose creator should be proud to be sending into the world, no matter how oddly shaped it may be.

Screening of I Am Nasrine, with Tina Gharavi in conversation with Jackie Kay, 2pm, Sunday 6 May. Tickets: £8 / £6.95 concessions and students.

It almost makes us feel silly. After spending the majority of the last month crooning ourselves horse about the six candles that NARC magazine was jabbing into its cake, the Tyneside Cinema, the regions most warmly loved home for independent and otherwise brilliant cinema has whipped out 75 of the things for its own little celebration.

There’s exceedingly more to it than cake of course, in fact a veritable feast of anniversary events are in the pipeline (which you can read all about in this month’s NARC) the focal point of which, is the 75 hours of film for a mere 75p a screening. This marathon of movie magic is taking place over the weekend of the 26th and 27th of May and the lineup, voted for by the punters, is as follows.

@ CLASSIC

Mulholland Drive (15)

Evil Dead 2 (18)

A Clockwork Orange (18)

The Great Dictator (PG)

Freaks (15)

The Princess Bride (PG)

Jurassic Park (PG)

The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert (15)

Goodfellas (18)

Fargo (18)

—–

@ ROXY

Strangers On A Train (PG)

Audition (18)

The Wicker Man (15)

Get Carter (18)

Chasing Amy (18)

Akira (15)

The Third Man (PG)

Stop Making Sense (PG)

The Marriage of Maria Braun (15)

Jules Et Jim (PG)

The Lives of Others (15)

—–

@ ELECTRA

The Ladykillers (U)

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (15)

Donnie Darko (15)

Reservoir Dogs (18)

Bicycle Thieves (U)

Three Colours Red (15)

Once Upon a Time in the West (15)

Annie Hall (15)

Volver (15)

A bigger feature is on its way later in the month, but for now you can gorge yourself on just how brilliant a line up that actually is. More information available at the Tyneside Cinema’s website.

Image courtesy of Jill O’Donnell

Ladies, like those jumbo packs of Kit Kats, always come in groups of four. Always. Life has taught me this lesson, cinema has taught me this lesson, it’s an undeniable fact of chemistry and, to a lesser extent, maths.

The Plastics in Mean Girls, four; The Pink thingys in Grease, four; The Heathers in The Heathers, four; even The Spice Girls in Spice World The Movie, five, but mere months away from severing Geri like the erroneous lump of gangrenous flesh that she was.

Universal proof. Or Paramount, I forget who.

Anyway, with the news that frat-twat lolstravaganza American Pie is about to drag its bleeding body through the cinematic cat flap and wheeze to death in front of anyone with a shred of nostalgia left in them still fresh in my mind, I approached Damsels in Distress with some caution. ‘New girl comes to new school and needs new friends, there’s a boy involved somewhere and don’t we all learn a nice lesson’ – it’s been done, to death, and then done again as it was being lowered into the ground.

Thankfully though Damsels In Distress, rather than gluging heartily from the stale wine of teen comedy, manages to get a cork into the fermenting bottle and pull out a far more thoughtful and clever vintage for us all to share. There’s no fart gags, erection jokes, slapstick humour or Sum 41 in the soundtrack, it’s just a smart comedy set within the confines of a university campus.

As for a plot, I honestly wouldn’t know where to start.

There are, arguably, one or two central ideas that tie the film together, but to label them as the overarching theme of the film would be, frankly, wrong. There’s the suicide prevention centre and mood-lifting tap dancing classes that the girls run, but this always little more than background music to the cacophony of set pieces and ideas that litter Whit Stillman’s long awaited return to film making.

There’s a ton of relationships that flitter off and on during the film, Adam Brody (or Seth from The OC to you and me) appearing early and looking as if he’s about to set up a long winded cheesy romantic story and then, well… not; a whole host of eye-wateringly dumb jock types who are seen by the girls more as social projects than love interests; the much coveted, charming, chiseled French guy, who’s ultimately only interested with getting his plot into the nearest spoiler. None of which engross you long or hard enough to be classed as the backbone.

Overall then, Damsels in Distress as best viewed as a sketch film. Every set-piece is as relevant and entertaining is it is fleeting and frivolous. That might sound like a contradiction in terms but it’s this sort of joyous aimlessness that gives the film it’s overall charm. You’ll never be totally sure exactly what’s going on, but not in a hang-on-who’s-he-shagging Vanilla Sky way, Damsels is like peeling all the lids off your tins and pulling a random one out for dinner, always tasty, but no illusion of forethought.

If there’s one thing that must be taken away from this film though, it’s the performance of Greta Gerwig. Cast as the ring leader of the group, she pulls out the sort of glazed-over deadpan performance that will surely now make her the go-to girl for any future Woody Allen in a dress type role. Funny films always lend themselves to being quotable afterwards, but every last inch of funny in this film comes from the delivery.

So, a reasonably funny film, with no discernable plot, that hops and flits from one idea to the other, and contains only one noteworthy performance. On the face of it not a gleaming recommendation, but this is a film I heartily recommend you see. Choc full of chemistry and playfulness, this shoegazing look at life and love seeps charisma, and is probably destined for a long career on the DVD shelves of people who know what the perfect film is for a rainy Sunday.

You’ll probably not get why, but you’ll enjoy this, even if it’s only because of the dance instructions at the end.

Damsels In Distress opens Friday the 27th of April at the Tyneside Cinema

Twee. For some, the very world alone is enough to send them into rabid convulsions and the sort of blind rage that usually ends with a borrowed copy of 500 Days Of Summer being thrown out of a third storey window with the empty case floating down swiftly behind it. For others, d’awwwwww.

Thus, it’s pretty easy to divide the audience for Delicacy straight down the middle. If you’re willing to dangle merrily from the branches of the twee tree, you’ll probably comfortably enjoy this film as the skin-deep waltz through a blossoming odd-couple romance that it is.

If, however, you’d rather smear your unmentionables in honey while providing a urine sample to a beehive, I’d strongly advise giving this one as wide a berth as possible.

Audrey Tautou is, let’s face it, one of the most charming and captivating screen presences of our time. Somewhere between chasing after her lost love in A Very Long Engagement and setting the standard for every cute and quirky female lead in Amelie (via running around in a smart car with Tom Hanks, which we’ll never again speak of) she’s probably the only woman on the entire planet I’d, unironically, let call me “babes”.

In Delicacy though she stars as Nathalie Kerr who, despite sounding like a dinner lady from Inverness, is a beret-go-lucky young girl enraptured in the arms of the perfect husband in their quaint but cosy Parisian flat. One of those relationships that you utterly loathe your friends for having.

Tragedy strikes when (no, this isn’t a spoiler, it’s the plot) they’re cruelly ripped apart by the small inconvenience of his untimely death. Nathalie spirals into grief, and the next thing she knows she’s been alone for three years and the rest of the world has changed around her. What follows is the story of his forays back into the real world of emoting with a deliberately gawky looking and awkward sweater enthusiast Markus.

Cast in this role is Fracois Damiens (no, me neither) a man who, despite possessing the sort of kind eyes you’d be used to seeing in an Anime grandmother, does look a little like a man who’s been found buried in a house fire with the Frankensiten mask he’d been inexplicably wearing half melted to his face. Playing the balding, goofy Swede, he looks like a man genetically abused to replace the forklifts in the IKEA stock room.

She’s beautiful, he’s not. The point is drilled home repeatedly throughout the course of the film. Needlessly so, at points.

Sadly the film is little more than the idea that “beauty comes from within” stretched out from start to finish. The themes of loss, heartache, recovery and bravery take something of a backseat to the repeatedly used set pieces of better looking bellends attempting to muscle in ahead of our knight in tweed armour, only to be rebuffed by either the feisty Tautou, or just smacked in the chops.

That said though, whilst it’s a waste of a nice idea, it’s still a nice idea. There’s some genuinely heart-warming moments and the closing scene almost makes up for a lot of the previous shortcomings. Also, where a lot of romantic films struggle to find a common ground that will interest viewers of both sexes, Delicacy seems to tell the story from both sides of the chromosome, and allow the viewer to enjoy it that way. Take note Hollywood.

If you’re looking for an endorsement, or a warning flag, I can only refer you back to my original comment. You’ll either quite like this film, because you tend to quite like these films; or you’ll not, because you don’t. It’s a by-numbers Francophile rom-com that’s romantic, comedic, and French enough to tick all the boxes, but isn’t likely to stay with you long after the credits are finished rolling.

Not Tautou’s finest hour, but hey, there’s hope for us all yet. Apparently.

Delicacy opened on Friday the 13th of April at the Tyneside Cinema.

If there’s one thing I’ve noticed about films, it’s that they all have distinctive sections. Chapters, if you will, but ones that are merely about the tone of the piece than the events that unfold within. For example, a film like the Empire Strikes Back goes through many different tones (intrigue, adventure, betrayal, revelation, despair, hope) but a film like Sex & The City only goes through one (nail varnish).

So then, it’s probably best to surmise Morten Tyldum’s Nordic fist in the face of the thriller genre that way. At first it’s very cool, and then it’s utterly fucking mental.

Based on the book by almost impossible to find the keyboard shortcut for Jo Nesbø, Headhunters is the winding tale of Roger Brown the money loving recruitment bigwig who supplements his lavish lifestyle and relationship to a 6 foot blonde by stealing priceless works of art from the men he’s paid to get to know. Laced with debt and insecurities in equal measure, fate throws up the appealing prospect of stealing one last painting from the new boy in town and living photoshop torso Clas Grave.

Naturally, it’s not all as simple as that. Clas, as well as being the heir to various paintings reclaimed from the Nazis, is a former military tracker with blood colder than dead frog in a cocktail; where Roger googles business men and opens their letters with his thumb, Clas finds their footprints in the dirt and opens their ribcages with his bare hands. Clever comparisons a go-go.

That’s about where the aforementioned tone shift takes place. Where the opening has the “cool” signatures of naked Swedish lasses, swanky art parties, and perfectly executed break-ins, the latter half’s “utterly fucking mental” section throws up such happenstances as wearing poorly fitted clothes and complete submersion in human feces.

As thrillers go, there’s few that suit the word as well as Headhunters. There’s as many twists and turns as someone trying to tie a bin bag with a numb hand and few, if any of them, are telegraphed more than a moment in advance. Films like that often struggle to make a lot of sense along the way, but this largely keeps a cohesion throughout.

It’s not without some issues. While the plot contains no glaring holes and inconsistencies, a lot of it’s revelations require a significant suspension of disbelief. If you’re the kind of person who’s going to lean over to whoever you’re with and whisper “eh, well why didn’t they just…” then this film definitely isn’t for you. You’re probably the type of person who eats savoury popcorn as well though, so I’ve no sympathy.

Fans of The Girl With… series will probably find a lot of common ground between this and Stieg Larsson’s goth-murder-sex fest, although instead of a dark haired girl with a few screws loose and too much eye-liner, this one focuses slightly more on a knockout blonde in a plush house. There’ll be a whole hos of lazy comparisons between the two simply based on the Scandinavian connection, but it’s not an analogy that’s without merit. However, with the fact that the film goes off on such a tangent it loses a sizeable chunk of its own credibility, you’re better off grouping it somewhere closer to the James Bond end of the scale; don’t ask questions, just shut your mouth and enjoy yourself.

With an American remake ALREADY (allegedly) in the works, it’s not a shabby idea to check this one out on its original run. There’s a few moments contained within that are just about done on the right side of cheesy, but that a Hollywood version, and I say this with total certainty, will execute in such a manner as to have your eyes roll harder than faster than a barrel of cemented distain down a smooth hill of contempt. They’ll also probably cast Ashton Kutcher and you’ll have to go to an Empire to see it. Don’t take that chance.

Overall, an imperfect film that manages to keep you engrossed and entertained throughout. A thoroughly frilly thriller filled with thrills.

Headhunters is on daily at the Tyneside Cinema.

On 27 February (and once more on 1 March) the Tyneside Cinema is screening I am Nasrine by local director Tina Gharavi. I am Nasrine was an “incredible labour of love”, 7 years in the making, and was born when Gharavi visited Iran after 23 years away. She realised that she wanted to tell the story of first generation migrants.

It is a film about displacement and was intended to strip the romanticised and exotic view that has been given to Iran in the recent past and Gharavi felt there were stereotypes that needed, finally, to be broken down. It is not just a film about Iran though; the story is shared between Iran and our beloved North East. The crew got to work with people from all walks of life and often found those from the most under privileged were often the most generous.

Tina has been known to thank the unemployed, travellers, gypsies, asylum seekers and gangsters, not to mention those trying to get a start in the film industry for making this film come to fruition.

Gharavi made this film because there were no stories on the screen that she could recognise or could liken to her own experience. She notes “the importance of seeing your experiences reflected in the mirror of cinema (or any art) and how it is more important for us than we can imagine. Without it, I think people go mad.”

Everybody involved in the making of this film took risks and the film nearly didn’t make it back to the UK when Gharavi was stopped at customs after filming in Iran. After I am Nasrine neither Tina nor lead actress Micsha Sadeghi will be able to return to Iran unless its politics change. However, both felt this a sacrifice worth making.

I asked Tina how she felt about the screening being held in our most historic of cinemas, she is nervous to say the least: “Bringing a film back home is the scariest of places. I have already shown at the Tyneside once (our Gala screening) and my stomach was in knots.

“But it played so well for an audience and people were so generous and supportive. I am sure it will be fine. But I still have butterflies thinking about it!”. And just when you thought one film wasn’t enough it seems Ms Gharavi has a lot more to come including a Kurdistan set thriller/horror, a documentary on the American justice system and a new feature length film.

To keep track of the new screening and its endeavours check The Facebook page It’s a rare opportunity to see a truly independent film in a truly independent cinema so get to it.

Friday past, we ran a little preview piece about a film coming up at The Tyneside Cinema, namely the “innovative, ethereal and distinctive” documentary Bombay Beach. Saturday past, we rescheduled our fake tan and waxing appointments and actually went to see the thing.

My expectations of the film had it sitting somewhere between a jovially-soundtracked Panorama episode, and that episode of The Simpsons where Bart, Milhouse, Martin and Nelson go on a road trip to the World’s Fair, but end up getting stranded at a wig shop. In reality though, Bombay Beach is something much, much more original.

Following the lives of three separate residents of the forgotten American town of Bombay Beach, the film is part fly-on-the-wall documentary, part surreal staged imaginarium that constantly treads a line between harsh social commentary and deleted scene from Where The Wild Things Are. Sobering in parts, surreal in others.

Ultimately it’s a frightening look at just want can happen to civilisation when politicians, corporations, and various other “decision-makers” get things horribly wrong. Bombay Beach was designed to be a social utopia and vacation hotspot of what once was America’s blossoming South-Western tip, now it’s essentially a ghost town.

Where there should have been tens of thousands of tourists making the pilgrimage to an artificial haven in the desert, there are now less than 300 inhabitants, most living under the poverty line surrounded by the ruins of hotels and various other attractions. It takes you at least an hour to get to the nearest hospital, and a lot of people get around in golf buggies because the nearest petrol station is 20 miles out of the way. The truth of this place is stranger than any fiction.

Which in itself is the source of its only problem. Traditionally fact and fiction tend, cinematically speaking, to have something of an oil/water relationship. You can wrap one up in the other, but trying to have a clear distinction between the two looks and tastes slightly weird. The deliberately choreographed scenes (which include dancing, fire engines, and a slightly creepy metaphor about racial and social mobility using china doll masks) are all excellent, but do leave you wondering precisely how genuine the rest of the film is. And given what a bizarre place Bombay Beach actually is, makes you wonder why director Alma Har’el felt they were necessary.

That aside though, this an absolutely spellbinding spyglass into the decaying remnants of the American Dream. The relationships, aspirations and frankly startling revelations about the over-dosing of childhood medication are all the stuff of serious perception-challenging filmmaking and make it one of the most unique pieces of cinema I’ve seen for a while.

There’s only two screenings left in it’s current run at The Tyneside Cinema though, so if you want to catch it (you do) then you’ve got either  12.00 and 18.40 on Tuesday the 21st to choose from.

Under normal circumstances we wouldn’t usually preview a film. Producers and directors spend an obscene amount of money on trailers and plastering Owen Wilson’s nose on the side of the 306, so you don’t need us excitedly point at things for you.

Except this time you actually might. Bombay Beach, the quasi-documental look at how and where the “American Dream” went to die, is coming to the Tyneside Cinema for the briefest of runs and we didn’t want it to pass you by. Mostly because it looks brilliant and has been soundtracked by Beirut and Bob Dylan.

First-time director Alma Har’el’s innovative, ethereal and distinctive documentary focuses on the residents of a dead end desert town in California, Bombay Beach. Har’el finds a motley cast of wonderful characters including a bipolar seven-year-old, a lovelorn high school football star, and an 80-year-old former Oil employee who spends his time trying to earn money by selling cigarettes on to his neighbours. Bolstered by a soundtrack featuring music by Beruit and Bob dylan, Bombay Beach beautifully mixes the comic and the tragic as the stories of these residents poetically exemplify the failure of the american dream.

With only three screenings (spread over two days) scheduled for this potential beaut, it’s the sort of thing that could easily have passed us all by. The Guardian called it “involving, mystifying, and carefully orchestrated”, and Little White Lies reckon it “drifts in and out of reality and leaves your head somewhere in-between”. That’s more than good enough for us.

Checkback here on Monday morning for a full review.

Bombay Beach is screening at The Tyneside Cinema on Saturday the 18th of February (16.45) and Tuesday the 21st (12.00 and 18.40)

Roman Polanski. If there’s one thing he hates more than the US immigration desk (allegedly), it’s the preening, sneering, false politeness and suffocating civility of the modern day middle-classes. If you don’t believe me, watch this film.

Set in the claustrophobic surroundings of a small, but upscale New York apartment, two contrasting couples are brought together through the medium of one of their kids knocking the front teeth out of the other. A Wallsend conference, as it’s known in this part of the world.

What follows is one of most excruciatingly honest and socially aware pieces of cinema that’ll crop up this calendar year. In its relatively short 80 minute running time, the story lurches from the mild-mannered bourgeoisie conflict resolution, which could all be marketed under the banner of “white people problems”, to all-consuming, claws out, bilious warfare.

It’s not without its flaws though. Attempting to adapt a play for the screen will always throw up various problems (see Spielberg’s equestrian misadventure War Horse), so taking one originally written in French must be harder still. Yasmin Reza, who originally wrote it for the stage, has been drafted in as a co-writer of the screenplay, so the pitfalls of mistranslation have been largely avoided, but the problems that remain are all with the premise. A fact I report with as much sorrow as I do suprise.

The problem is, that after numerous incidents (including the most brillant and scientifically faithful projectile vomiting sequence I’ve ever seen) you simply can’t suspend your disbelief enough to grasp why it’s still going on. None of the characters want to be there, two have other places they urgently need to be, one is clearly unwell and the other is having a breakdown. Any normal human beings would have left half an hour in.

If you can put that out of your mind though, the film is thoroughly enjoyable from start to finish. Kate Winslet, who I’ve never been a huge fan of, is relentlessly brilliant here in a role of a power-suit clad, power-woman fighting every natural urge she has to put maintain her strong veneer of a power-suit clad power-woman. Christoph Waltz also, who most people will recognise from Inglorious Basterds, could well be playing the exact same character of the clinically evil Nazi general, albeit having gone into PR rather than the SS.

Allegiances shift, accusations fly, tones change and the film remains a steady level of fascinating throughout. It really makes you want to see the play as well but sadly my French is… well… le shit.

There’s also a great underlying arc that shows how quickly and easily the two kids who’ve caused all this bother manage to just forget about and get on with things. The real children are the grown-ups, squabbling needlessly and playing make believe that they’re all cultured, civilised individuals.

Slight plot point aside, there’s a great film here, and one that’ll delight anyone who’s ever subconsciously unpicked the big daft tapestry of middle-class social norms. Polanski does a fantastic job of leading us into a story that’s as tense and farcical as it is self-aware and smart. A remarkable feat considering his overhanging extradition charges forced the whole film to be shot in Paris.

Best of all, with Valentine’s day about to rear its grotesque corporate head, the film offeres definite proof that “the couple” is nature’s single greatest mistake. Take a date to see this and then, on your way out, tip the remnants of your popcorn over their head and scream “IS THAT REALLY WHAT YOU WANT!? IS IT!?”. If you ever hear from them again, they’re in it for the long haul.

****~ (4/5)

I had high hopes for The Descendants, George Clooney is old enough and famous enough now to make bolder choices with his films. And gladly, he has made those bold choices. Up In the Air, Fantastic Mr Fox and The Men Who Stare at goats were all quirky successes so surely The Descendants is going to be the same?

It’s not. It is the not so age-old classic, multi-millionaire’s wife goes into a coma after a boating accident, multi-millionaire’s wife’s infidelity comes to light, multi-millionaire bonds with his daughters while his wife dies.

Matt King (Clooney) is a very rich man and a bit of a rubbish Dad. While his wife is dying he has to deal with a rebelling teen, a troublesome 10-year-old and a boy called Sid, whose presence did not add enough to warrant it in my opinion. Oh and I should probably mention the acres of beautiful Hawaiian land he owns; because his great-great-great-great-great-grandmother or something was Queen of the island, which he has to sell.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWHNXJ1K4yA

The premise of the film seems to be that even rich people can have sucky lives too. I didn’t always find it easy to empathise with the family because they have been made so remote, physically, fiscally and emotionally.

The acting is strong and the story simple. There is humour throughout the film, which goes great lengths to highlight the abject misery the family are actually going through. There are two scenes which portray this misery perfectly. The first is the awkward scene where Matt rants at his comatose wife for all the pain and suffering she has caused the family.

The second is the beautiful shot we see of teenage Alex (Shailene Woodley) who plummets to the bottom of a swimming pool to let out her grief on hearing about her mother’s imminent death, we follow her scream through the water and see it break the leafy surface.

I’m glad I saw this film but I’m in no rush to see it again, nor do I think it’s Clooney’s best film in recent years. It is a serious and slow look at a crumbling family in upper-class suburbia. It is mellow and a little bleak at times and, unfortunately, it does get a bit boring at points.

[Rating: 3/5]