All articles by Jonathan Romney – Page 43
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Reviews
House Of Flying Daggers
Dir/scr: ZhangYimou. Chi-HK. 2004. 119minsBeyond a doubt the mostvisually ravishing film on offer at Cannes this year, Zhang Yimou's return tothe sword-fighting genre - following last year's Hero - mixes action,romance and a touch of dance to uneven but often thrilling effect.Acquired by Sony PicturesClassics in the US, the film ...
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Reviews
The Holy Girl (La Nina Santa)
Dir/scr.Lucrecia Martel Arg-Spain-It. 2004. 106minsThecombination of Catholic anxiety and female sexual awakening is hardly a novelone in auteur cinema, but it receives an idiosyncratically oblique treatment inThe Holy Girl. Director-writer Lucrecia Martel made her name with debut TheSwamp (La Cienaga), which marked her out as a central figure of thenew ...
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Reviews
The Consequences Of Love (Las Consecuencias Del Amor)
Dir/scr:Paolo Sorrentino, Italy. 2004. 100minsAn ice-coolexistential drama neatly poised on the borderline of thriller territory, PaoloSorrentino's elegant second feature marks the Neapolitan writer-director assomeone who knows just how to impose an individual stamp on idiosyncraticmaterial. A hyper-stylised, often slyly witty portrait of a loner in crisis,the film possibly gestures in ...
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Reviews
En Route (Unterwegs)
Dir: Jan Kruger. Germany 2004. 80mins.A psychological road movie in which an outsider opens up tensions within a holidaying family, Jan Kruger's low-key but absorbing drama won one of the three Tiger Awards at this year's Rotterdam Film Festival. It should bring further plaudits to the young German director, whose ...
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Reviews
Peep 'TV' Show
Dir: Yutaka Tsuchiya. Japan 2004. 98mins.A portrait of alienated cyber-youth, Peep 'TV' Show is so much of the moment - so hyperbolically trendy, even - that it risks becoming dated overnight. But as a fiction with a quasi-documentary flavour, Yukata Tsuchiya's panorama of a voyeuristic technological culture makes for revealing ...
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Reviews
War (Vojna)
Dir: Jake Mahaffy. USA 2004. 84 mins.Virtually a one-man labour of love, Jake Mahaffy's War is one of those works that French critics sometimes term a 'UFO' - a film that comes out of nowhere, or comes direct and unmediated from its director's unconscious. Working over four years without no ...
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Reviews
Asshak, Tales From The Sahara (Asshak, Geschichte Aus Der Sahara)
Dir: Ulrike Koch. Switzerland/Germany/Netherlands 2004. 110mins.Effectively an ethnographic documentary reinforced with a slender strand of narrative, Asshak is a generally engrossing portrait of the customs and beliefs of the Tuareg nomads of the Sahara. Given the current favour for films with an ethnographic and environmental slant, notably The Story Of ...
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Reviews
Aaltra
Directors: Benoit Delepine, Gustave Kervern. Belgium. 2004. 90 mins.Tell people that a festival's hot ticket is a black-and-white Belgian road comedy, and you're liable to be greeted with scepticism, especially when the protagonists are two middle-aged men in wheelchairs. Nevertheless, Aaltra is this year's surprise delight at Rotterdam (where it ...
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Reviews
Aaltra
Directors: Benoit Delepine, Gustave Kervern. Belgium. 2004. 90 mins.Tell people that a festival's hot ticket is a black-and-white Belgian road comedy, and you're liable to be greeted with scepticism, especially when the protagonists are two middle-aged men in wheelchairs. Nevertheless, Aaltra is this year's surprise delight at Rotterdam (where it ...
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Reviews
Anatomy Of Hell (Anatomie De L'Enfer)
Dir: Catherine Breillat France 2004. 77mins.Forthright French director Catherine Breillat made her international breakthrough in 1999 with Romance, the centrepiece of a retrospective at the Rotterdam Film Festival. Breillat has returned to Rotterdam to premiere her tenth film Anatomy Of Hell, which takes Romance's sexual explorations even further, into territory ...
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Reviews
La Chose Publique
Dir: Mathieu Amalric. France. 2003. 85minsAnd you thought they didn't make them like this any more' an old-fashioned political essay in film-on-film, the latest from director Mathieu Amalric - better known as an actor, though he does not cast himself here - wears its Godard influences proudly on its sleeve, ...
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Reviews
Coming And Going (Vai E Vem)
Dir: Joao Cesar Monteiro. Portugal. 2003. 179minsShown posthumously at Cannes out of competition following his death from cancer in February this year, Coming And Going is the epic final testament of Portuguese actor-director Joao Cesar Monteiro, who had some claim to being European cinema's single most eccentric talent. His films, ...
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Reviews
For She's A Jolly Good Fellow (Elle Est Des Notres)
Dir: Siegrid Alnoy. France. 2003. 100minsA portrait of a woman ' indeed, a society ' on the verge of a nervous breakdown, Siegrid Alnoy's debut feature is ostensibly a variation on a familiar topic, but quickly establishes its vision with steely confidence. Coolly inventive and rigorous, Alnoy's debut is likely ...
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Reviews
Playing 'In The Company Of Men' (En Jouant 'Dans La Compagnie Des Hommes')
Dir: Arnaud Desplechin. France. 2003. 118minsOne of France's more cerebral directors, Arnaud Desplechin has a reputation for risk-taking, as shown by his period drama Esther Kahn, which faced a prickly critical reception at Cannes in 2000. With his latest film, which played in Un Certain Regard, he has hardly gone ...
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Reviews
The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part 1: The Moab Story
Dir: Peter Greenaway. UK-Neth-Sp-Lux-Hung-It-Ger-Russ. 2003. 126mins.Peter Greenaway's new trilogy The Tulse Luper Suitcases is merely the central element in a sprawling archipelago of a multi-media body of work. The project will take in film, TV, books, the internet and no less than 92 DVDs, each devoted to one of the ...
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Reviews
Gozu
Dir: Takashi Miike. Japan. 2003. 129minsAudiences never know quite what to expect from the indefatigably prolific Japanese oddball Takashi Miike: sometimes a couple of wildly inspired sequences will leaven a routine film, sometimes he relentlessly beats you into submission. With the barely-describable Gozu, however, Miike's crazed imagination delivers the goods ...
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Reviews
Kitchen Stories (Salmer Fra Kjokkenet)
Dir: Bent Hamer. Norway, 2003. 95minsA charmingly glum, low-key audience-pleaser, Norwegian comedy Kitchen Stories was always likely to be one of the sweeter features on offer at Cannes. Although its drily reserved Nordic humour never approaches the harder edges of, say, Aki Kaurismaki's comedies, it should appeal to anyone with ...
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Reviews
That Day (Ce Jour-La)
Dir: Raoul Ruiz. France-Switzerland. 2003. 105minsLong-term followers of the maverick Raoul Ruiz - or indeed, viewers who discovered him through his unlikely 2001 box-office hit Time Regained - are used to expecting the unexpected. But the Swiss-set That Day (Ce Jour-La) is unpredictable largely for being uncharacteristically predictable, even mechanical. ...
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Reviews
Young Adam
Dir: David Mackenzie. UK, 2003. 93mins.Scottish director David Mackenzie recently divided British critics with the release of his first feature, the rough-and-ready digital drama The Last Great Wilderness. His follow-up, Young Adam, is a more rigorous proposition that amply confirms Mackenzie's promise. A powerful, disturbing adaptation of the novel by ...
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Reviews
The Principles Of Lust
Dir: Penny Woolcock. UK. 2003. 105mins.A dark moral tale with a steely eye for life's nastier side, The Principles Of Lust is a compelling and discomforting narrative with intellectual ambitions only too rare in UK cinema. Its visual rawness, distinctly European feel and provocative subject matter will no doubt make ...