The Deep Blue Sea (UK, 2011)
Directed by Terence Davies
Starring Rachel Weisz, Simon Russell Beale, Tom Hiddleston, Ann Mitchell

One of the hardest things to rationalise as a film reviewer is when a director you love suddenly gets it wrong. Reviewing the latest Michael Bay disaster, or Brett Ratner-driven slice of hackery, is pretty easy: simply string together four or five superlatives, add some moral outrage and leave it to stew in its own juices. What's not so easy is trying to explain how Terence Davies has gone from something as inspired as Of Time and the City to such an abject failure in The Deep Blue Sea.Davies' output as a filmmaker has always been an acquired taste - which, in this context, is equally a loaded phrase and a straight-up compliment. Whether you like his back catalogue or not (and even he has mixed feelings), he has a distinctive voice and series of interests which set him apart from the mainstream. He has campaigned tirelessly for the promotion of British cinema, furiously refusing to accept the perceived dominance of Hollywood, both financially and artistically.You couldn't put the failure of Davies' latest film down to him being out of his depth. He has dabbled in period drama before, most prominently in The House of Mirth 11 years ago. But more than that, he has an intrinsic understanding of 1950s Britain, retaining both a childlike fondness of its cinema and a very real understanding of its social problems, which he experienced as a child. Davies has frequently described his father as "psychotic", and in Of Time and the City he painfully records both the realisation of his homosexuality and his disillusionment with religion.One thing that The Deep Blue Sea has clearly in its favour is the way it looks. Florian Hoffmeister's cinematography is lush, glossy and full of rich colours, which somewhat evokes the work of the late great Jack Cardiff. The period details are immaculate, whether it's the costumes the characters wear or the songs they sing in the pub. It's not, or at least it doesn't appear to be, a pretend version of 1950s Britain, either dreamt up by the tourist board or dropped in from Hollywood.Equally compelling is Davies' choice of music. His films have been described as having a "symphonic" quality, which goes back not just to 1950s melodrama but to the silent films which ultimately inspired them. In this case Davies turns to Samuel Barber, peppering many of Rachel Weisz's scenes with those long, elegiac strokes of the bow for which Barber was rightly famed. You won't find the now-clichéd Adagio for Strings sneaking in under the radar, but what there is works resoundingly well.But for all its lavish grandiosity, the big failing of The Deep Blue Sea is something so ironically simple: we just don't care about any of the people on screen. Whether because of the source material, the performances or Davies' approach to either, this is a damning indictment of Davies as a filmmaker. What has united all of his work in the past is an intrinsic connection to the characters - we can empathise with and understand them even in the most fantastical situations. This is the first film which Davies has made in which we have no connection to the characters at all, unless 'connection' can include emotions like contempt, anger and disdain.Part of the problem lies in the casting of Rachel Weisz. Davies said that she was the only person who could play Hester Collyer, and looking at her you can understand why. Weisz does have a kind of classical beauty which recalls Deborah Kerr, and she wears period costume very well. But while she may look the part, she fails completely on a dramatic level, leaving us annoyed by every word and action of hers on screen.When Weisz was performing in A Streetcar Named Desire, she gave an interview bemoaning the lack of dramatic filmmaking in Hollywood. She pointed to the paucity of adventurous drama in a time of obsession with genre, and in particular to a dearth of decent female leads. It's hard to argue against that, but someone urgently needs to tell her that 'drama' and 'moaning for two hours' are not the same thing. Hester does nothing but cry, moan, scream, smoke and stare mournfully into middle distance. Weisz is worse here than she is in The Lovely Bones, so much so that at times you wish her character would just get on with it and top herself.The male characters in the film fare no better. Simon Russell Beale is a very talented Shakespearean actor, and as with Weisz he looks the part as the elderly judge firmly in his mother's pocket. But he very quickly drifts into a stiff-upper-lip stereotype, as the film makes no effort to challenge our expectations of his occupation or social standing. Tom Hiddleston gets an equally duff hand, starting and ending as a caricature, namely the pilot who can't get over the war and return to a normal life.It would be tempting in light of this to put Davies in the same camp as Noah Baumbach. He is guilty of the same cardinal sin of The Squid and the Whale: giving us a film without any empathetic characters, let alone an interesting story. The difference is that Baumbach seems to have genuine contempt for his audience, branding them as philistines if they don't understand why it is engaging to watch over-privileged pseudo-intellectuals whinging about their massive houses and expensive educations. Davies shows no such contempt: he has just mis-steped in such a dramatic way that this would appear to be the case.One could argue that the failure of The Deep Blue Sea is a failure of the source material rather than its cinematic execution. Terence Rattigan's later work, written after the Second World War, is by and large dated and uninteresting. Early-1950s theatre was an empty and nostalgic celebration of pre-war life, with plays which seemed to lack any bearing on or interest in reality. The Deep Blue Sea is no exception, and its celebration of the British stiff-upper-lip feels horribly stale in 2011.While all of this is true, however, the responsibility of making a film work ultimately lies with its director. There have been many filmmakers which have taken average scripts and acquitted themselves perfectly well: either of John Hillcoat's films are reasonable examples. But Davies makes the fatal error of assuming that we should care or be interested, rather than giving us any reason to of its own accord. He plays everything so straight that there is no way in for a modern audience, for whom the wartime attitudes seem at best admirably outdated and at worst totally absurd.The big dramatic problem with The Deep Blue Sea lies in Hester's frustration or repression - something Weisz would know all about from A Streetcar Named Desire. If you're going to show repression, there has to be a pay-off or some form of character development to make all this pressure worthwhile, whether it's a happy ending or a lonely suicide. But this moment never arrives; the central relationship is tedious, unbelievable, and goes absolutely nowhere.The Deep Blue Sea reminds us of two great periods of British filmmaking. Firstly, it recalls the great work of Powell and Pressburger in the 1940s and early-1950s, as they grabbed the conventions of melodrama by the scruff of the neck and produced works of profundity, nuance and visual splendour. And secondly, it reminds us just how important the British New Wave was in eroding these conventions, removing the veils of ignorance, escapism and denial which blighted so much of 1950s cinema.The Deep Blue Sea is caught between the devil and its title, lacking the brilliance of the former and the relevance of the latter. You sit there amongst the tedious story and annoying characters, yearning for Malcolm McDowell to burst in brandishing a machine gun and inform the characters that the world they knew and fought for is long gone. Only time will tell how damaging this will prove to Davies' craft as a filmmaker. It is at very best an admirable failure, being a beautifully shot folly for an audience that no longer exists.

Rating:
Verdict: An absolute and obsolete calamity

About Schmidt (USA, 2002)
Directed by Alexander Payne
Starring Jack Nicholson, Hope Davis, Dermot Mulroney, Kathy Bates

As much as I go on about directors in these reviews, there are some films which wouldn't be half as good without the central performance of their star. Alexander Payne's About Schmidt is a clear case in point, featuring Jack Nicholson in his best form for well over a decade. But over and above his commanding turn, the film succeeds as both a drama and a comedy, with a multitude of funny moments and genuine emotional involvement with the characters.It's often the case with independent filmmakers that they strive to depart so far from Hollywood convention that they forget the basic rules of story and character construction. It's great to create a film which unfolds naturally through its characters, but many independent films end up with little more than a bunch of unlikeable, overly quirky or neurotic people wandering around aimlessly for two hours and generally being annoying.Although Alexander Payne is deeply embedded in American indie cinema, he avoids these traps with grace and skill, to deliver a film populated by characters which not only feel real but are genuinely likeable. Contrary to what Noah Baumbach may think, real people do not spend their every waking hour complaining about their lives or putting other people down, no matter how troubled or depressed they are. A lot of the time people talk nonsense or embarrass themselves, and they don't sound like they spent the past ten minutes rehearsing every word of the next scene.Payne's screenplay (co-written with Jim Taylor) embraces this aspect of humanity for what it is. His direction and treatment of the characters is very hands-off: he never feels the need for an obvious artistic flourish to create something 'distinctive', nor to push the characters in a given direction that would feel contrived. His focus is constantly on maintaining the realism of the situations that unfold and the naturally uncomfortable moments which are allowed to emerge. It's a triumph of understated writing and direction which puts About Schmidt streets ahead of The Squid and the Whale.If the script is a royal flush, then Jack Nicholson is the ace up Payne's sleeve. In About Schmidt he delivers what is to date his last truly great performance, a masterclass of subtlety and ambiguity which is so far removed from his image as an over-the-top, scenery-chewing hell-raiser. It's as though he took the role as a means to giving the finger to all the critics who derided him for slipping into self-parody so often in the years following The Shining.There have been many occasions in recent memory when Nicholson has phoned in his neurotic, smart alec shtick - think of The Witches of Eastwick, As Good As It Gets and certain portions of Batman. But he remains a great actor, who unlike his good friend Marlon Brando didn't just give up when the pay cheques got big enough. Seeing his performance here, I am reminded of the famous line from Sunset Boulevard: "I am [still] big. It's the pictures that got small."Payne directs Nicholson to do as little as possible as Warren R. Schmidt, a decision which works like a dream. Because the character's movements are so small, and Nicholson's diction so weary and leaden, you soon forget you're watching Nicholson playing a crotchety old guy: he becomes a crotchety, sad, frustrated old man, who just happens to be played by Jack Nicholson. This means that when things threaten to get wacky or kooky, the film generally keeps its feet on the ground, anchored by a man who feels constantly unable to express what he really wants to say.About Schmidt is a film about ageing and retirement, particularly about how the relationships we have built up in our working life alter dramatically when we are deemed too old to keep coming into the office. Following his impersonal sending-off party, Schmidt finds that he is quickly forgotten at his workplace in spite of his long years of service. His former boss tells him he can drop by any time, but when he does his replacement is quick to brush him off, telling him in the kindest possible way that he is no longer needed.Schmidt's personal relationships also suffer. In the absence of a work-related routine, his wife Helen (June Squibb) becomes more domineering, making him pay for a Winnebago and picking up on all his habits. Schmidt reciprocates, making a long list in his first letter to Ndugu about all the aspects of his wife that he can't stand. He disapproves of his daughter's marriage, reacting as badly to her defiance of him as to her fiancee's gesture of friendship. The longer the film goes on, the lonelier Schmidt becomes, and the more he begins to think that his whole life has been for nothing.In its blend of pathos, droll wit and fatalism, About Schmidt bears an uncanny resemblance to Krapp's Last Tape, Samuel Beckett's brilliant 1958 play about an old man listening to tape recordings of his younger self, with a general sense of futility and resentment about past, present and future. There is less emphasis on Schmidt's past than there is on Krapp's, but in both cases the main action has already passed. The characters are in terminal decline, not only in physical health but in motivation, with an increasing sense that every commitment they have made in life means precious little to anyone anymore, least of all to them.That's not to say that About Schmidt is all doom and gloom. In fact it's a barrel of laughs, and not all of them consist of wry smiles in the corners of one's mouth. Some of the set-pieces are hilarious, such as Nicholson trying to get settled on the waterbed, or the famous scene of him and Kathy Bates sharing awkward glances in the crowded hot tub. The script is full of cracking lines, many of which go to Bates: she offers Nicholson some pills for his neck pain with the reassurance that "these were left over from my hysterectomy".Payne's timing as a director is impeccable and his long-time editor Kevin Tent allows the payoffs and punch-lines the time they need to breathe. The slow, thoughtful pace of both the film and Nicholson's dialogue gives us time to take in and laugh at his facial tics and expressions - especially when he's on the hysterectomy pills. The running joke of Schmidt taking out his anger by writing to a child is a consistent highlight: whenever the words "Dear Ndugu" come up in the voiceover, we know we're going to laugh for a good five minutes.But About Schmidt's self-deprecating comedy has poignant intentions behind it, which are revealed in the final scene. Schmidt returns home from the wedding further alienated from his daughter to find that someone has written to him on Ndugu's behalf. He reads the letter, which expresses gratitude at all he has done for the boy, and he slowly but surely bursts into tears. Having gone through two hours of sad sympathy for this man, we find him joyously vindicated, and we share in the joy that his life has benefited someone, even in an unconscious way.About Schmidt is a great comedy-drama which finds both director and star at the top of their game. Despite occasional moments which are slow or seem overly quirky, there is so much to cherish in these characters that you either forgive such flaws or quickly learn to overlook them. Whether Nicholson manages to turn in another performance like this in his remaining career remains to be seen. But on the basis of this, one of these every ten years would be well worth waiting for.

Rating:
Verdict: Poignant, pathos-ridden and painfully funny

The Kids Are All Right (USA, 2010)
Directed by Lisa Cholodenko
Starring Annette Bening, Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Mia Wasikowska

The American film industry has noticeably changed since Brokeback Mountain was snubbed at the Oscars. The critical acclaim and awards lavished upon Milk and A Single Man shows that American cinema is now more willing than ever to talk about different forms of sexuality. The latest such film is The Kids Are All Right, a light-hearted, well-balanced comedy drama which looks set to scoop several nominations at next year's awards.It would be easy to dismiss The Kids Are All Right as either a cheap gimmick for Hollywood to prove its 'right-on' credentials, or the latest quirky offering from Sundance which has no life outside a festival audience. But the merest glance at the cast and crew lists blows both preconceptions out of the water. Lisa Cholodenko is well-placed to direct: not only is the film semi-autobiographical, but she previously explored lesbian relationships in her feature-length debut High Art. Julianne Moore has played her fair share of Sapphic characters, sometimes seriously (The Private Lives of Pippa Lee), sometimes less so (Chloe).

It's clear from the outset that The Kids Are All Right is not just a 'lesbian couple movie', any more than Brokeback Mountain was just a 'gay cowboy movie'. The film never treats the sexual preference of its central couple as a gimmick, something to set it apart from other dramas and generate Oscar buzz (that happened of its own accord). Neither is it a film which relies overly on quirkiness to set its characters apart, in the manner of Little Miss Sunshine. The entire story is grounded in the assumption that this family is not only functional but completely normal.Considering its Sundance background and its awards hype, one could naturally assume The Kids Are All Right is a political film. The relationship between Nic and Jules is on one level a demonstration of how gay or lesbian couples are just as capable as their heterosexual counterparts at raising a family, and that by extension they should be accorded the same rights. But in fact the main thrust of the film is not political but social, being an examination of the modern family unit regardless of the gender make-up of the parents, or indeed the children (there is a long discussion as to whether Laser is gay).

Making a film with a lesbian couple which focuses on the family as a unit rather than as individual genders is a very smart move. Superficially, it means that we avoid any of the Hollywood stereotypes surrounding gay or lesbian characters; we don't have to put up with anyone mincing or living entirely in dungarees. But more than that, it allows the film to explore deep social issues such as gender, power and fatherhood in a uniquely subtle way. Nic and Jules behave like any other bickering couple, always picking up on each other's faults, arguing and swiftly apologising. The distance which comes between them as a result of Jules' misadventure with Paul is the kind of distance that would result from any extra-marital affair. Because of this familiarity, audiences can identify with their predicament, whilst absorbing the message that gays and lesbians should not be treated as a special case, legally or psychologically.The Kids Are All Right raises a number of fascinating questions surrounding fatherhood, and in particular the issue of fatherhood by proxy. The film taps into the whole debate about where responsibility lies, and whether the concept of fatherhood lies mainly in nature or in nurture. Mark Ruffalo's character is the sperm donor which produced both Nic and Jules' kids, and so he is technically their father. But because he is their father by proxy (i.e. by sperm donation rather than actual intercourse), it is not clear whether he is responsible for them or not. Nic and Jules certainly don't think so, referring to Paul as their "sperm donor" rather than 'husband' or 'partner'. Paul may be well-meaning, but in the end it comes down to emotional rather than biological ties; it is the children as much as anyone else who say they don't need him, or even want him.

A lot of The Kids Are All Right is about everyone involved growing up. Alongside Joni's imminent departure for college, the whole family undergoes a process of maturity that comes as a result of the struggle with Paul. Although it never drifts into caricature, the depiction of the family at the start of the film is fairly idyllic; they live comfortably in a peaceful neighbourhood with two cars, and the children are very well-behaved. Up until Paul's arrival, they have pretty much had it easy, like a child being kept at home. Paul's presence sees this child being thrust into the wider world where everything is more complicated and it is a lot easier to get hurt.This brings us to the central plot twist involving Jules sleeping with Paul. The affair comes about because Jules is doing some landscape gardening on Paul's plot, while her desire to be creative is dismissed by Nic. Feeling ignored by her partner, Jules inadvertently kisses Paul, and the two end up sleeping together on several occasions. Jules becomes so paranoid about their relationship that she fires her Mexican assistant, wrongfully assuming that he is on to them.You can understand why this particular twist was chosen, since it's a logical way of putting distance between Nic and Jules: Jules feels unappreciated by Nic, while Paul thinks she is really talented, and one thing leads to another. And this decision also harks back to the legal grey area surrounding fatherhood by proxy: in the eyes of the law, Jules is having an affair, but on biological terms she is sleeping with the father of her child. But it's still a little problematic because of how easily Jules ends up kissing Paul. Having built up her relationship with Nic, it seems a little contrived that she would be so quick to kiss him, let alone pull down his trousers and admire what she sees.

There is a surprising amount of sex in The Kids Are All Right, from Joni's smutty school-friend to the gay porn watched by Nic and Jules, not to mention the actual sex scenes with Paul and either Jules or Tanya. On the one hand, the film should be praised for being so upfront about the sexuality of its characters and how social attitudes have changed. And beyond a number of topless glimmers, there isn't much in the way of full-on nudity. But the overtly sexual tone may be unnerving to some, particularly in the first 20 minutes.The final niggle with the film is what could be called its 'message moment', the point in awards contenders when a character stands up and delivers the central message of the film. Sure enough, there is an awkward moment when Julianne Moore stands up, turns off the TV and speaks for a couple of minutes, as the camera cuts back and forth between a close-up of her face and the rest of the family. She speaks about how hard it is to keep a family together, and how much she loves both Nic and the kids no matter what happens. It's well-meaning but contrived, and all the little digressions about reading Russian novels don't sit easily.Most of the problems with The Kids Are All Right are decisions which the filmmaker would steadfastly defend, and in the end they are not enough to derail or compromise the film. Even when it treads dangerously close to the overtly smug territory of Ordinary People or The Squid and the Whale, it gets away with it because the characters are likeable, the story is interesting and most of all we care about the family. Annette Bening and Julianne Moore are on very good form, and it would come as no surprise if one or both of them finally won the Oscar they deserve. After all, The Kids Are All Right is a damn good film, as warm and inviting as the family it depicts.

Rating: 3.5/5
Verdict: Better than all right

The Social Network (USA, 2010)
Directed by David Fincher
Starring Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, Armie Hammer

When a director you admire drops the ball, it's bad news. It becomes worse news if other parties choose to reward said director with good reviews and awards nominations - the more encouragement he or she gets, the more likely it is that it will happen again. So as the months roll by and the director's next project looms, you sit there on tenterhooks, hoping that it was just a blip and that this time it will be different.After The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, David Fincher's future seemed to hang in the balance. When it emerged he was making a film about Facebook, it was hanging by a thread. Even when the first trailers emerged, trepidation remained as to whether it would be even faintly compelling for those of us who can't write HTML. How wrong we all were. The Social Network is one of the best films of 2010 and about as big a return to form as you can get.

Within ten minutes of The Social Network starting, you can put to bed all fears that Oscar buzz had somehow gone to Fincher's head. His new film is better than Benjamin Button in every conceivable way: it's tauter, has more substance, is more engaging and doesn't keep collapsing into a bottomless pit of sentimentality. The Social Network is classic Fincher in both its subject and execution: intelligent, multi-layered, complicated and icy cool.Purely from a visual point of view, The Social Network is a sight to behold. Following on from his work on Zodiac, Fincher uses the cutting edge in digital photography and visual effects to create a uniquely enveloping cinematic world. Like his contemporary Christopher Nolan, Fincher has a real gift for finding reality in the fantastical, grounding all his bright and lofty ideas into something which we would easily recognise. Jeff Cronenweth, who also shot Fight Club, shoots the opening scenes with a perfect balance of gloss and brooding, bringing out the best in Harvard's intimidating architecture.Fincher has managed to do what Noah Baumbach never managed - to take a bunch of horrible people and make them engaging and interesting. This becomes an even bigger coup when you consider that most of the so-called action scenes in The Social Network consist of writing code and hacking into servers. Like Scott Pilgrim vs. the World earlier this year, The Social Network manages to take something which on the surface is impenetrable to anyone with a life, and find the interesting stories within that.

The Social Network is not primarily about Facebook, any more than Scott Pilgrim is primarily about video games. It is instead about an extraordinary paradox: the world's biggest friendship tool was invented by someone incapable of friendship, who may also be a tool. The Mark Zuckerberg presented on screen is someone of immense intelligence and programming skill, but who is completely inept when is comes to physical interaction (of whatever sort) with other human beings. It takes him a minute to realise that he is being dumped, and a whole hour of the film to talk to the girl in question (ranting online about her bra size didn't help matters).The casting of Jesse Eisenberg is significant, considering he played a similar character in The Squid and the Whale. But there is a crucial difference between Walt and Mark, and this is the difference which makes the film compelling. Walt is so utterly assured of his own intelligence that he feels the need to constantly belittle others; both he and his close circle of friends are so completely up themselves that we just don't care what happens to them. Mark may appear to be the same - obnoxious, privileged, highly intelligent - but he is completely unaware of how socially inept he is. He expects so much of other people but doesn't know how to deal with it when they fall short. As the lawyer remarks at the end of the film, "you're not an asshole Mark, you're just trying really hard to be one."

Despite the presentation of this character, The Social Network is not a thinly-veiled attack on the real-life Zuckerberg. Neither does it attempt to compensate for this portrayal with bald hagiography on the part of his classmates. Our sympathies shift between the characters, and the only constant is that all of them have incredible intellects and are living extraordinary lives beyond our wildest dreams.The film is on one hand a character study of Zuckerberg and the highly intellectual undergraduates which Harvard unleashes on the world. Where Revenge of the Nerds' characters were well-meaning and loveable, the nerds in this film are ambitious, aggressive and uncompromising. They're not a million miles from the modern-day jocks, embodied by the Winkevoss twins. The party scenes in The Social Network refine the template founded in Animal House, keeping the sense of chaos but disposing of anything distractingly adolescent. The fact that Fincher keeps his cool even when two characters are being fellated in a toilet is a clear demonstration of the film's self-discipline.

The film is also a detailed examination of just how ruthless and cut-throat modern capitalism is. Harvard students are presented as born-and-bred winners, who invent jobs rather than taking them and don't know how to take coming second. The film examines how painfully easy it is to get left behind, both in the fall-out between Eduardo Savarin and Shaun Parker, and in the fate of the Winklevoss twins. The last time we see them on screen, they have just come second in a very close race. The film ends on a spiky note, commenting that they "finished sixth" at the Beijing Olympics.Most of all, The Social Network is about the nature of modern-day friendships and the rapid speed at which life seems to move. Aaron Sorkin's Rashomon-like screenplay balances three timeframes and shows us different versions of what occurred in those fateful days in 2003-4. The characters talk with a natural impatience, demanding that you keep up with them or get left behind; it takes a good few minutes to get in the zone and be a part of their conversations. The film brilliantly demonstrates how Facebook and its counterparts have become a proxy or substitute for genuine friendship. The computer screens act as an artificial barrier between individuals; regardless of how much information we share, we are drifting apart even as technology brings us together.

The film is not quite flawless due to a couple of problematic scenes. Having spent so much of its running time in claustrophobic rooms with the intensity building, the boat race is like someone taking the lid of a pressure cooker; we feel like we need it, but the film is never quite the same again. This sequence feels like a very deliberate way to end the twins' part of the story, as if the film couldn't deal with four stories running side by side. The ending also drags a little for the simple fact that so much of this is recent history; how do you put a definite ending on something which is still ongoing?In spite of these little niggles, The Social Network is one of the best films of the year and a high point in Fincher's illustrious career. It is every bit is intense and atmospheric as The Ghost Writer, and every bit as entertaining as Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. It raises all the right questions about its subject and contains a number of very fine performances, particularly from Eisenberg and Andrew Garfield. If nothing else, it's the most exciting film you could make about a bunch of unlikeable men sitting in dark rooms arguing about copyright. Inception remains the best film of the year, but this is a very close second.

Rating: 4.5/5
Verdict: One of the year's best films

Winter's Bone (USA, 2010)
Directed by Debra Granik
Starring Jennifer Lawrence, John Hawkes, Garrett Dillahunt, Dale Dickey

There has always been a certain amount of prejudice surrounding festival films, particularly films which cause a stir at Sundance. Without wishing to sound snobbish, the recent output of films from said festival has been a complete mixed bag. The good or interesting efforts, like Teeth and The Killer Inside Me, demonstrate the resourcefulness of low-budget filmmakers, while The Squid and the Whale and Little Miss Sunshine are either too quirky and cute for their own good, or far too smug to be taken seriously.Winter's Bone is one of the better recent offerings from the Sundance 'stable', containing a number of interesting scenes and beautiful visuals anchored by a remarkable central performance by Jennifer Lawrence. The film attempts to explore addiction in an unconventional way, drawing on fairy tales and the work of Terence Malick to show the plight of one family in the Ozark Mountains. It's heavily flawed and narratively uneven, but there is also much here to be admired.

On the good side, Winter's Bone has a haunting visual sensibility which is enhanced through Michael McDonough's beautiful cinematography. The film was shot entirely on location in the mountains of Arkansas and Missouri, and Granik's camera really pulls you into this isolated community. The screen is bathed is silvery greys and a range of blue shades to create an air of melancholy and convey just how long everything has been here. None of the buildings look like they were built specifically for the shoots, all the roads are rocky and the vehicles are beaten-up and battle-scarred.Like Slumdog Millionaire and Precious before it, Winter's Bone has been accused in some quarters of 'poverty porn', i.e. of examining poverty-stricken individuals or communities in such a way as to belittle them to cause guilt or entertainment to the viewing public. The merest glance at the plot summary for any of these films renders this argument totally bankrupt, and that is particularly true for Winter's Bone. Instead of getting us to revel in depictions of people who are vulnerable or inferior, the film is about said individuals demonstrating strength and resourcefulness.

The film is anchored by a brilliant central performance by relative newcomer Jennifer Lawrence. Several critics have compared her to Jodie Foster (with whom she is due to star in The Beaver), and the comparison is valid to a very large extent. There is the same sense of intuition, of someone who knows exactly how to play a scene without any Method-like familiarity with the situation, and whose understatement both comforts an audience and engages them in increasingly sinister circumstances. It's a strong performance of a very interesting heroine figure.Although it is staged and acted naturalistically, so much of Winter's Bone plays out like an epic poem or a Grimm's fairy tale. Like many fairy tales, our heroine has to go off on a quest, and on the way has to confront a (literal) brood of menacing antagonists, out to either forestall her or destroy her altogether. And this is not a more recent Disney vehicle, in which the plot is so formulaic that we know that Ree will survive and learn something in the process. The stakes here are very high, and very real, as demonstrated by the really uncomfortable scenes where Ree is beaten up and kidnapped.

As a treatment of addiction, the film takes a very different approach to the likes of Trainspotting or Requiem for a Dream, which focus very much on the personal turmoil of the characters and their escaping into fantasy. The drug element of Winter's Bone is much more incidental, something which is condemned fleetingly by several characters but which also seems to be a tolerated part of the community. There are brief hints that the substance has made Ree's mother so helpless, and Ree herself is repulsed by the drug. But there is no attempt to turn the story into a TV-movie of the week about the triumph of the human spirit; the crystal meth becomes another unseen menace, cohabiting with the other characters.Winter's Bone is also about blood (in the familial sense) and the code of silence in communities. In one key exchange, Lawrence is attempting to extract information from Dale Dickey; when she is reluctant to tell her anything, she shouts: "doesn't our blood mean anything to you?". It's a film very much about the cadence of people's voices, and what is implied by silence is every bit as important as what is actually said. We've seen dozens of films about suburban neighbourhoods in which the neighbours shun or turn on newcomers who ask questions. But few have managed to transfer this to a rural setting, and Winter's Bone deserves commendation for this.

The problems with the film, however, are every bit as noticeable as its assets. For one thing, the story is very thin, and the resulting slow pace to spread the story out makes the film seem a lot longer than 100 minutes. Like the later work of Terence Malick, it's a film which relies as much on the tone and the shape of the landscape to keep our attention as it does on character development, and there are moments where Winter's Bone veers too close to the first half of The New World, in terms of its plodding storytelling.Because the story is so thin, the most harrowing moments of the film do not carry nearly as much weight as they should. The scenes of Ree being beaten up and threatened by the townsfolk serve their purpose, even if the degree of violence is not justified half as well as in The Killer Inside Me. But the final twist involving a trip to a secret location and bones being severed somehow doesn't fit with all that has gone before. As with The Road, it's not the twist itself that is the problem, it's the execution - there's so little effective build-up that there isn't the tension needed to make it as shocking as it needs to be.

On top of this, a lot of the scenes in Winter's Bone are diverting and, frankly, a bit dull. We don't really need to see Ree attempting to teach her young brother to skin a squirrel to eat, or showing him how to use a gun to shoot the things. Scenes like this play out too slowly and distract from the matter in hand; this in turn lowers the level of suspense and hence the twists are not all that remarkable. The mother, who never speaks, is almost a superfluous character. We understand how isolated and endangered Ree and her siblings are without her, and she makes very little impact on the events that unfold.In years to come Winter's Bone will probably be known more as a calling card for Lawrence than as a genuinely great movie in its own right. It could do for her career what Taxi Driver or Bugsy Malone did for Foster's, and on the basis of this she deserves the same level of success. Beyond that it's a decent work with an interesting slant on addiction and some solid direction from Granik. But its slight nature and troublesome execution make its hard to fully recommend it.

Rating: 3/5
Verdict: Long on beauty, short on story

The Squid and the Whale (USA, 2005)
Directed by Noah Baumbach
Starring Jeff Daniels, Laura Linney, Jesse Eisenberg, Anna Paquin

Ordinary People has got a lot to answer for. Ever since Robert Redford’s terribly smug debut won the Best Picture Oscar in 1980, there have been a string of films from Hollywood which consist of rich, successful people complaining about how hard it is being rich and successful. But very few of these films are as annoying, or grating or wretchedly self-obsessed as Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale.To give credit where it’s due, The Squid and the Whale is technically well-directed for a film of its size and budget. The lighting is decent, the camerawork is fairly professional and the sound quality is okay. You clearly aren’t just watching a collection of home videos with all the colours drained out in a desperate bid to look arty. And the film does manage to evoke its period setting rather well: there aren’t any obvious errors in the cultural references, and the costumes do look the part.

But really, you know you’ve got a stinker on your hands when a film billed as a gripping family drama can only be praised for its lighting and costumes. If you want a film that’s technically well-shot and evokes its 1980s period setting, go back and watch Back to the Future, or Gregory’s Girl, or if you’re really desperate, Dirty Dancing.Whereas these films gave us families which felt genuine, with characters you wanted to spend time with, The Squid and the Whale has you hating the characters after ten minutes and the relationship goes downhill from there. Walt’s family of uptight, pretentious pseudo-intellectuals never stop complaining about how difficult their lives are – despite the fact they have enough money to rent two houses, can afford to send their kids to nice schools, and live in one of the richest parts of New York City. When Laura Linney’s mother gets published in The New Yorker, she reacts with all the enthusiasm of someone who found some chewing gum on her shoe.It is perfectly possible to make films about characters that are completely detached from the real world and make their stories interesting or compelling. On the one hand, we have all the best work of Woody Allen or Nicole Holofcener, who peel through the neurotic anxiety of the American elite to produce genuinely moving and poignant drama. On the other hand, we have something like Savage Grace, which uses the distance of its characters to savage the lifestyle which produced them, using Barbara Baekeland’s mental and sexual decay to illustrate the horrors of a world governed by limitless wealth and limited responsibilities.

But because the story of The Squid and the Whale is semi-autobiographical, Baumbach actively celebrates the artistic detachment of his adolescence. Jesse Eisenberg, clearing standing in for Baumbach, is the annoying intellectual kid who spouts off nonsense about Kafka and Fitzgerald having never read a damn thing by either. He has the arrogance to pretend that he wrote Pink Floyd’s ‘Hey You’, explaining to the school’s psychiatrist that he was good enough to write it, and the fact that it was already written was “a technicality”. For all the arrogance that surrounds The Wall, and all the flaws with Alan Parker’s adaptation, Pink Floyd’s work has acres more to say about the traumas of growing up than this self-indulgent piece of waffle.Having already wrecked a great Pink Floyd song, the film proceeds to trash a couple of other great works. At one point Walt and his dad go to a screening of David Lynch’s Blue Velvet; we are shown the climactic scene in which Dorothy Vallens turns up naked at Jeffrey Beaumont’s house, shocking his girlfriend Sandy and frightening the life out of the rest of us.

That would be fine, but as the following scenes play out it becomes clear that Baumbach is trying to stage his own version of Blue Velvet. Sophie, Walt’s girlfriend, is the safe refuge that Sandy is to Jeffrey, while Anna Paquin’s student is the darker-haired, more risky option that Dorothy represents. The fact that Walt ditches Sophie later in the film is a smug attempt by Baumbach, not just to put him up there with one of America’s greatest directors, but to point out where he went wrong in the process. Add in a backhanded reference to the Eraserhead baby and you get one very irritated film fan.The dialogue in The Squid and the Whale is just as irritating and off-putting as the actors who deliver it. Almost every line could be construed as a snooty put-down, and the family has a very low opinion of anyone who is neither a family member or a writer of some kind. Bernard keeps telling his son Frank that he shouldn’t aspire to be a tennis player. He calls his tutor a philistine, and when asked what that means, he answers: “a guy who doesn’t care about books or interesting movies and things.” Later, he uses his last moments before being loaded into an ambulance to call his wife a bitch, and decry her reservations about Jean-Luc Godard’s A Bout de Souffle.In the midst of all this hoity-toity bitch-slapping, the film attempts to play to a broader crowd by introducing bawdy subplots about the boys’ emerging sexuality. Walt gets a hand-job off-screen from Sophie and apologises for ‘finishing’ so quickly, while Frank humps a shelf and smears his locker and library books with semen. At least when Porky’s or Lemon Popsicle tried such gross-out nonsense, it was within a deeply adolescent context, and could at least be tolerated as being within the expected tone. In a film like The Squid and the Whale, which tries desperately to prove how clever and sophisticated it is, it’s completely misjudged and deeply embarrassing.On top of all that, the film lacks any positive depictions of women. Joan Berkman, played by Laura Linney, has abuse heaped on her throughout; her eldest son likens their home to a brothel and blames all their problems on her. We also have to believe that someone as beautiful and intelligent as Anna Paquin (Rogue from the X-Men movies) would be instantly attracted to Jeff Daniel’s ageing, arrogant lothario. Girlfriends come and go as the men please, and Sophie’s affections are rebuffed by Walt’s constant desire to seem on a higher intellectual plane.

The bottom line in all of this is: why would you want to spend time with these people? Why would you want to spend time with characters who do nothing but argue, moan and complain about things which are either irrelevant or insignificant? Film reviewers spend years of their lives persuading people to be adventurous with their film choices, choosing films which don’t reflect their circumstances but which might appeal on a higher level. The Squid and the Whale is the kind of film that would make people reconsider, lower their expectations in life, and go back to watching Michael Bay – because hey, sometimes stuff blowing up is more entertaining.The Squid and the Whale is one of the smuggest, most self-satisfied films in living memory. It seems to have been made entirely for the intellectual has-beens it depicts, which probably explains its level of acclaim in America. For the rest of us, who can’t sit around complaining all day, it has nothing which is remotely engaging, or relevant, or emotionally involving: it doesn’t even have a proper ending. Like its characters, it has a bunch of ideas, none of which are its own, but no heart and very little soul.

Rating: 1/5
Verdict: Self-indulgent tripe of the highest order