Reviews

Having just watched this film at the Melbourne Film Festival where Breillat introduced the film, I can say that it is the most approachable and moving film she has made in recent memory.

While the film reduces Breillat's usual focus on sexuality and sexual power, it more than makes up for in its humane but disturbing focus on other power elements in relationships within and across modern bourgeois families and those classes below. I think that too few reviewers miss the class critique presented by Breillat but it is there and adds a whole new layer of significance to this film.

Basing the story on her own real-life experience of being defrauded by a major con, this autobiographical account of sudden disability from stroke and the manipulative strangers who take advantage of her sets up an austere, quietly unsettling premise as a platform for Isabelle Huppert's extraordinary performance as Breillat's alter-ego, Maud.

Whereas Breillat's previous films sometimes fail in her use of non-professional actors lacking range or depth of performance, Huppert fills this role with a technical brilliance and emotional and intellectual depth that allows the viewer to gain some hold on the rationale behind a woman's almost willing complicity in a swindling of which she is the unfortunate target. The word "victim" hardly seems appropriate here. Breillat and Huppert are reaching for something else.

You'll need to see the film to reach your own conclusion of this elusive "something else". It's enough to say that the film remains gripping throughout and thoroughly watchable, not least for the shimmering, alchemical performance by Huppert who is at the height of her powers in this performance.

I had high expectations on entering the cinema to see this film as it had been rated highly by Sight and Sound and I have a genuine interest in the music.

However the film is extremely poorly made, perhaps one of the clumsiest and most amateurishly created films in recent years. And for a film which is almost purely about sound, the quality of sound is, to put it bluntly, horrendous. The audio mix seems to have been sourced via handy-cam so it's impossible to appreciate what Villalobos is trying to explain in terms of sound quality and bass lines (which are almost completely lost in the film's audio).

Combine that with sloppy, long-winded, hand-held footage of various clubs and parties in Europe and the overall effect is very weak. Unfortunately, Villalobos, while an impressive DJ, doesn't make up for the film's technical shortcomings and is by turns excruciatingly fidgety (the drugs no doubt), campy and emotionally distant.

Stick to "24 Hour Party People"...

One of the above reviewers associated this film with the works of Tarkovsky in the use of imagery. What an outrageous slur against one of the great directors of film.

To give you some idea of what a w--k-fest this film is, the entire credits are shown at the beginning of the film. Most in the audience found this hilarious but only later did I realise why this is done - so we don't find the credits more entertaining than the film. Yet today, 2 days after watching the film, this fact - the credits at the start of the film - were the true highlight of the movie. What innovation! What genius!

Despite the long, drawn out feel of the film, it is neither poetic, dreamlike nor moving. Directed by Lucile Hadzihalilovic (one of Gaspar Noe's gang - he of "Irreversible" and "Seul Contre Tous"), the film aims for strangeness and profundity but veers off course pretty quickly. It isn't even kooky, funny, insightful, shocking or (if you'll excuse my language) entertaining...

And it certainly is not art. So what the hell was I watching??

Noe can get away with irreverent, eccentric or questionable imagery because there is real muscle on the bones of his films. This film is a flabby imitation, with only the trickery left to prop it up.

Don't get me wrong, I love French cinema. My wife is French, I love France, the language, the culture, French literature and history. But this film gives French cinema a bad name.

To the clown who ran the Sydney Film Festival in 2005 (Lynden Barber) - you picked an embarrassingly bad collection of films. To have this as one of the closing films of the festival highlighted what rubbish you served up.

I'm not quite sure what people mean when they say this film is "difficult". On the surface, the film has a very straightforward storyline of a priest (played brilliantly and movingly by Depardieu) struggling with his own demons that materialise internally and externally.

From this basic premise the film can be explored from several key standpoints to obtain real insights into subjects such as the power/source of faith, the relationship between thought/belief and one's relationship to the world we inhabit.

Moreover, the questioning employed by Pialat and Depardieu means that the path of thought through these issues is profound, intense and disturbing. The film provokes the intellect constantly and I could understand that if there was nothing more to the film, one might say that "is that it?"

What takes this film much further is the emotional undercurrent - both understated and abyssal, the stunning cinematography and restrained direction. These factors combine to create a complete cinematic experience.

One scene stands out in this respect: we watch the priest wander the countryside in a daze and he pauses on the side of a hill, lush with spring grass. Depardieu looks up, eyes searching for insight, an answer, a response. In a brilliant stroke of luck, passing clouds obscure the sun and Depardieu instinctively internalises this shifting light with a simultaneous passing of emotion portrayed through his face and posture. We watch both the internal shifting cloud of emotion and the changing light create a charge and intensity that is rarely seen in cinema. There is an element of the `unknowable' in this scene that still moves me, even after many viewings.

I also enjoy making comparison between this film and Dreyer's "Das Wort" (The Word), my favourite of Dreyer's works which has some common theme's, explored from different perspectives.

A truly great film, worthy of the Palme D'or it won.

Ho Ho Ho, what a load of crap this film turns out to be. Watching this with my family I came up with the line "I'm looking for Joey Nova" as a running joke throughout the movie. Say it with that deep Italian, New York accent and you'll understand the attraction as a central theme in the film.

Rob De Niro plays a aging cop looking for Joey Nova (James Franco), a young junkie with an terribly predictable connection to the cop. The moment De Niro reveals the connection, I felt so sad that he was asked to utter such a pathetic script. Watch De Niro's expression closely when he has to say the unutterably bad line.

My family, including my brother who is a massive fan of De Niro (and why not when the guy has a string of truly awesome and unrepeatable characterisations from his early career) came to the conclusion that in America, you can always buy talent, but you can't make them (only make them fake them) drink from the putrid stream served up by Hollywood as "cinema".

Only for those who like to bang their head against a wall.

I'd give it 0 out of 5.

OK, so I've already put my comments for this film but I just had to respond to the person who claims that we should make room for this film alongside films such as "Blue Angels" and "Casablanca". Someone else said that there's an Oscar in this film...try the Golden Turkey Awards.

I have only one thing to say - YOU STOOGES! You can't be for real, can you? Which film were you watching? Or better said - who's payroll are you on, poor buggers.

I really hate when the Studios use public forums such as this to plug crud such as this film pretending to be Joe and Jane Public.

Want to know why De Niro looks so pained during this film? Try writing the excuse of a script down on paper and read it to yourself.

Yeah, painful isn't it?

Watch at your peril. And please don't take close friends...

Meaningful glances and soapy dialogue, wooden acting and titillating, sex scenes. This film has most things that shout stereotypically `Spanish Film'. Oh, I love tinkly piano music over dialogue and this film has that too.

There is a scene with brief moments of tango that are ruined by lame acting of the lead actress Paulina Gálvez. She gets to take her clothes off regularly for a string of lovers and good luck to her. She plays a lawyer in Spain that…well I don't know…

Prettily lit and clean, sterile cinematic compositions add nothing to the film so how this made it to the cinema is anyone's guess. If you have been spoilt with Almodovar, it is pretty clear that melodrama does not have to end up as dross.

This film says nothing and takes forever to do it.

Having seen almost everything produced by Lars Von Trier, several times, I have to admit some excitement at the chance to see his latest work.

After the first 10 minutes, the film appeared flat to me and I was thoroughly unconvinced by Bjork's acting which diminished the film completely. It is not until the last 1/4 of the film that I felt that Bjork had gone beneath the surface of the character. I also had the very strong impression from her changed pallor and skin tone that Von Trier and/or the part had broken her psychologically. The acting is raw but without finesse.

I later thought about Bjork's performance in comparison to Emily Watson in "Breaking the Waves" and Bodil Jørgensen in "The Idiots". Bjork's performance has a patina of "celebrity" and little else compared to the other 2 women who managed to wrench intelligence and passionate all-consuming devotion from their respective characters. They both had the necessary skill and emotional strength required to carry these central roles. Naive, yes but there was something else going on, some life force nurtured by the naiveté. In Bjork's character and acting, the naiveté is turned into an incomprehensible silliness without dimension.

I found it painful at times to watch her amateurish performance and recalled the final scene in "Europa"/"Zentropa" with the lead character's slow drowning. Bjork gives us 100 minutes of on-screen drowning.

I also found frustrating the move towards "White-Americanisation" of this work - a lack of serious intellect that infuses everything that Von Trier does. It might make it popular in the US but leaves me cold, like most of their fast food. For example "The Idiots" (performed in Danish) is the most serious in trilogy which just goes to show how dumbed-down English speaking audiences are in their film diet. Is it the English language that is becoming dumbed-down in film or just the scripts being produced?

Standout performances were smaller parts of Peter Stormare as Jeff and Katrine Falkenberg as the prison guard, Suzan.

One positive note from this film. I hope many people go to see it due to its apparent accessibility and enjoy it. With a bit of luck they will then go to the video store to watch "The Idiots" and "Breaking the Waves" to complete the trilogy and see the truly great cinema Von Trier is capable of with real actors rather than pop stars.

With his long coveted Palme D'or under his arm, I am looking forward to more Von Trier brilliance demonstrated by his other work.

I give this one 2/10.

The storyline starts with an British industrial chemist whose wife dies in unusual circumstances and then finds his life surrounded by strange disasters. The strangest is winning a ticket to Australia on a el cheapo bus tour through the outback with pack of 70's style Ocker stereotypes and token Asian.

As an Australian watching this film, my skin crawled all the way through as an archetypal English gent (Linus Roache) – reserved, emotionally constipated and good looking in the Hugh Grant style learns how to let go and release the creative spirit with the help of Grace(Danielle Cormack), an independent woman on the run from her partner, a drug dealing doctor.

With plenty of pacey set pieces you could be fooled into thinking that something is happening – it isn't, and the characters go nowhere in particular. A little like the aborted bus trip that drives(pun intended) the short storyline.

John Polson, noted for his remarkable performances as an actor in films such as `The Boys' and `Idiot Box' does a flip turn directing this embarrassing, tepid affair that will soon forgotten. The comedy was cheap and nasty and was worsened by the suspect use of Choung Dao as the `silent Asian' to shore up a flimsy script suffering from a drought of intellect and humour.

Score:

Puke factor: 4/5

Comedy factor: 1/5 (if you're over 55)

Value: 0/5