Love Like Poison (France, 2011)
Directed by Katell Quillévéré
Starring Clara Augarde, Lio, Michel Galabru, Stefano Cassetti

For all the doom and gloom around sequels, prequels, reboots and remakes, 2011 has also been a year of striking debut features. Adding to The Guard, Sarah's Key and Oranges and Sunshine, we now have Love Like Poison from French-Ivorian director Katell Quillévéré. What appears on the surface to be just another coming-of-age story slowly reveals itself as a subtle, haunting and emotionally charged look at religion, sexuality and adolescence.Love Like Poison is set in the Brittany countryside and follows a 14-year-old girl called Anna Falguères (Clara Augarde) as she prepares to take Catholic communion for the very first time. Her mother and father are recently estranged, and the former increasingly seeks comfort in the company of local priest Père François (Stefano Cassetti). Both women are left to care for Anna's bedridden grandfather, who spends his days listening to old records and smoking cigars. While all this is going on, Anna is being wooed by Pierre, a boy younger than her who loves his football and loves her even more.The first real asset of Love Like Poison is its strong colour palette. Tom Harari's cinematography is melancholic and beautiful, resting on a prominence of blues and in particular whites. The white is not intrusive like the shimmering walls of a hospital, but pale, wan and pure like the chalk cliffs of the French and English coasts. Sometimes it is so bright that it drowns out the characters, like the yardsticks of purity to which they must aspire, knowing full well that their desires will cause them to fall short. In one scene where Père François lies praying in his bed, his black clothes fade into the dark blue covers, like he is sinking or even drowning in the gathering darkness.In its evocative and symbolic use of colour, the film draws an immediate comparison with Three Colours - Blue. The visual similarities are clear, with both Krzysztof Kieslowski and Quillévéré using different shades of blue to emphasise the sadness, grief and alienation which surrounds the central characters. And there is a narrative similarity in that one of the central characters has lost her husband, and is finding it hard to connect with the world around her. But whereas Kieslowski took a very humanist perspective, focussing on the hidden reserve of Juliette Binoche's character, Quillévéré is more concerned with the conflict between three kinds of devotion - to God, to one's family, and to the passion of young love. It takes more of a religious angle, albeit one in which religion does not come up with all of the answers.The central character in Love Like Poison faces three different but related dilemmas as she moves to take her first step into adulthood. The first concerns her attitude towards religion and the church. Anna's faith at the beginning of the film seems well-rooted and taken for granted: she keeps a picture of Christ at her bedside, and attends church with her family, of her own will as much as out of ritual. But by the end of the film this has grown lukewarm, as she faints in front of the Bishop and remains silent when he asks questions to the congregation, asking them to affirm their faith. There has not been a decisive volte-face on Anna's part, but doubts have entered her life which makes an outright committal impossible.The second dilemma concerns Anna's attitude towards her family. There are a number of awkward conversations between Anna and her mother as her confirmation approaches. Anna asks her mother about what she looked like at her age, and gets an inconclusive answer. Later her mother comes into the bathroom as she is topless, saying that she wants to look at her; Anna unfolds her arms to reveal her bare breasts and snipes sarcastically: "Do I turn you on?" Anna has to care for her mother for much of the film, and is determined not to end up like her, looking upon her relationship with Père François with some suspicion.In her effort to avoid turning into her mother, Anna turns towards the affections of her estranged father. When he first returns home to deal with the death of Anna's grandfather, he seems to genuinely want to bond with her, taking her to the beach and talking about coming to live with him in Quimper. But as the action moves on the distance between them re-emerges: he leaves without a moment's notice to return to his new life, leaving Anna angry and alone.This encounter leads onto the third of Anna's dilemmas, namely her relationship with and attitude towards men. Her grandfather is dismissed as harmless but becomes pervy as the film rolls on, fantasising over a magazine and getting turned on by Anna washing him. Both her father and the priest come across as well-meaning but ultimately incompetent, or at least too at odds with their own desires to be of any real use. Pierre, on the other hand, begins very aggressively, pinning her down on the rock to kiss her when they are out in the woods. But by the time they take their tops off they are on equal terms, and when Anna kisses Pierre in his room, she seems to have come into her own.What makes Love Like Poison interesting as a coming-of-age film is that the struggles of the central character don't feel isolated, like some weird disease which only affects young people. The adults in the film have the same concerns and qualms with regard to religion and relationships, and there are no convenient plot devices to tone these down. Where American coming-of-age films tend to portray the step into adulthood as something with a definite endpoint, with the lines between child and adult clearly drawn, the characters in Love Like Poison are still walking the treacherous emotional path that Anna has just begun to explore.Love Like Poison is a deeply atmospheric film. Beyond its visual claustrophobia, its use of sound and music in particular is haunting and thought-provoking. In one early scene, when Anna wanders through the ruins to meet the priest, a version of 'Greensleeves' can be heard. This folk tune, erroneously attributed to Henry VIII as a love song to Anne Boleyn, has strong sexual connotations: "green gown" was a euphemism for prostitute, since such garments would disguise any grass stains caused by outdoor lovemaking.Over the end credits, where Anna seems to have found some kind of uneasy peace with Pierre, there is a choral version of Radiohead's 'Creep', previously used on trailers for The Social Network. Although the effect is not as powerful as in Fincher's film, it cements the tone of unease and eeriness which lifts the film while keeping the air close and thick with rumour. Like Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, Love Like Poison is a film in which on the surface nothing is happening, but in fact there is so much going on.There are a couple of flaws with the film which stop it totally achieving a knock-out punch. Apart from some standard quibbles over paucity of plot and occasionally languorous pacing, the main concern is over the amount of nudity. For the most part the film handles the matter sensitively, if not poetically; while it doesn't shy away from nudity as a concept or rite of passage, it doesn't by and large see this as an excuse for ill-judged gratuity. But while the woodland scenes are well-judged by showing hardly anything, the sight of the old man's erection is disgusting, even when it's in his trousers, and when Anna lifts her dress to show him her womanhood, it feels totally unnecessary to both plot and mood.Love Like Poison is a very promising debut effort which both avoids the clichés of coming-of-age stories and does just about enough to cover up its own flaws. Katell Quillévéré directs with finesse and sensitivity, creating an atmosphere of great unease and a host of complex characters, anchored by Clara Augarde's great central performance. You will want to spend some time afterwards trying to work out where you stand with regard to the people on screen, especially over Anna's state of mind in the denouement. While not perfect, it contains much to be admired, along with a great deal that will linger.

Rating:
Verdict: A striking and haunting debut

The Secret Garden (UK, 1993)
Directed by Agnieszka Holland
Starring Kate Maberly, Andrew Knott, Heydon Prowse, Maggie Smith

There is a long tradition in British cinema of great films being made as a collaboration between British and foreign talent. Many films which are considered classics are distinctive because of this marriage of different national and cultural outlooks: Michael Powell had Emeric Pressburger, and James Ivory had Ishmael Merchant.

It therefore makes absolute sense for The Secret Garden, a quintessentially English story by Frances Hodgson Burnett, to be scripted by a Briton but directed by a Pole. Like her contemporary Krzysztof Kieslowski, Agnieszka Holland is a director who knows how to bring out the delicate humanity of any given scene. Her sensitive approach to the material and knack for working with child actors combine beautifully, to create a masterful adaptation on a par with Shadowlands and Three Colours - Blue.The Kieslowski comparison is not a frivolous one, since Holland collaborated with him on the screenplay for Three Colours - Blue. And while her body of work is nowhere near as powerful or consistent, she shares Kieslowski's humanist sensibility and an understanding of the subtleties of human emotion. She has the same knack for expressing complex themes through the most subtle and innocent of interactions, conveyed through visuals which are effortlessly beautiful. There is also an incidental link in the casting: Irene Jacob, who appears briefly as Mary's mother, played the central role in Three Colours - Red.

The Secret Garden is a beautiful film from whichever angle you approach it. It was shot by Roger Deakins, who would later win a BAFTA for his work on No Country for Old Men. Deakins contrasts the early, drained-out footage of the gardens, filled with pale greens and faded browns, with later lush images of what seems like the whole world in bloom. The film also includes some beautiful time-lapse footage of the garden changing from winter to spring, with flowers blooming and butterflies emerging from cocoons.The film has a genuine sense of wonder which is tragically absent from many more contemporary children's films. This point can be illustrated perfectly by comparing The Secret Garden with the family films of Chris Columbus. Regardless of Columbus' other shortcomings as a director (of which there are many), his attempts at 'wonder' or 'fantasy' feel incredibly manufactured. The first two Harry Potter films feel like they have been test-screened to within an inch of their lives, and all the imagination has been sucked out in a bid to not offend the fans.The Secret Garden, on the other hand, manages to be faithful to its source material without taking off any of its dark or slightly rough edges. Like all great children's films, there is a balance between joy and tragedy, and the film doesn't shy away from letting the audience share in the characters' misery. Just like James and the Giant Peach, the story starts with the parents of the central character being tragically killed (in the book it is cholera, in the film it's an earthquake). We follow Mary through the lonely aftermath as she struggles to fit into the forbidding new world that is laid before her, and as with James it takes something quite magical to bring her round.

But despite its references to Indian religion and the rather uncomfortable scene of the children 'summoning' Colin's father, the film's 'magic' is rooted firmly in Christianity. Burnett was a prominent exponent of Christian Science, a doctrine of Christianity rooted in the belief that all of God's creation (that is, all nature) is made in His image and therefore inherently good. While this proposal might seem hard to stomach, The Secret Garden does have a very prominent Christian thread running through it, which is no more threatening or disagreeable than the fiction of C. S. Lewis (hence the Shadowlands comparison).Viewed through a Biblical prism, the garden at Misslethwaite Manor starts out as essentially Eden, with Colin's parents more or less as stand-ins for Adam and Eve. The tragic death of Colin's mother (a literal Fall, if you like) causes 'man' in the form of his father to leave the garden and barricade it up. He is shutting out all that is good because of his own guilt and shame, choosing the darkness as penance for what he believes he has done.

When Mary enters the garden, finding it overgrown and in desperate need of care, she is like Lucy when she first wanders through the wardrobe: the world is special and has signs of life, but the overall mood is one of sorrow and neglect. She rediscovers the joy of nature through her innocence and curiosity, and in discovering the 'magic' she learns to live with herself and to appreciate the good in others, rather than spurning them or treating them as servants.From a slightly different angle, the scenes involving Colin reuniting with his father could be compared with Jesus' time in the Garden of Gethsemane - perhaps what the garden had to go through to regain its former glory. These scenes are of a father rediscovering his son having turned his face away for so long, returning to a place that once embodied death and not only finding life but being welcomed. The final conversation between Mary and Lord Craven is like the encounter between Jesus and Mary Magdalene outside the tomb: the line about Mary "bringing them back to life" may be corny, but it does convey the idea of redemption through acceptance.

But there is more to The Secret Garden than just good old-fashioned morals. The film is thoroughly entertaining, thanks to the elegant dialogue in Caroline Thompson's screenplay. The three child actors are all highly enjoyable and convincing, with Kate Maberly and Heydon Prowse showing wisdom and grace beyond their years. Maberly may spend the first half-hour constantly in a strop, but she has a Puck-like quality which keeps her character interesting. The adult performers are also entertaining, with Maggie Smith turning in a typically domineering performance as Mrs. Medlock and John Lynch holding his own as Lord Craven (even if his long hair and moustache make him unduly resemble Colin Farrell).There are a couple of small faults with The Secret Garden. Although it does generally succeed in being charming under its own steam, it does drift into Disney convention as more animals appear. There's only so many times you can show cuddly deer before we start to feel manipulated. The ending is sentimental and a little cloying, and highlights once again the presence of unnecessary narration. It may be a children's film, but that doesn't mean you have to state the bleeding obvious at any given moment.The Secret Garden is a very fine children's film which recalls the best work of Richard Attenborough and Lionel Jeffries. Its Christian morals are presented in a very subtle way for such a prominently allegorical work, and it is every bit as fresh and entertaining now as when first released. As a spiritual film about or involving children it is on a par with Shadowlands, and as a children's film in general it is an amiable companion to The Railway Children. The film is touching, charming and captivating in equal measure, and despite its little faults it is essential viewing.

Rating: 4/5
Verdict: An evergreen family favourite

Three Colours - Blue (France, 1993)
Directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski
Starring Juliette Binoche, Benoit Regent, Emmanuelle Riva, Florence Pernel, Guillaume de Tonquedac

Stanley Kubrick said that Krzysztof Kieslowski was one of the few filmmakers who could “dramatise ideas rather than just talking about them… allowing the audience to discover what’s really going on rather than being told. [He does] this with such dazzling skill, you never see the ideas coming and don't realize until much later how profoundly they have reached your heart.”

Like many times before, Kubrick was spot on, and Three Colours – Blue is proof of it. For while it is not the strongest of Kieslowski’s films, nor the best instalment of the Three Colours trilogy, it is a deeply intelligent and subtle film which rewards and flatters its audience while inviting them to do the intellectual legwork. It manages to take a relatively simple story about bereavement, and preserve its beautiful simplicity while expanding upon the greater themes present in and around such events.

The most obvious feature of Blue is its beautiful cinematography. Slawomir Idziak captures a wonderful range of blue shades which reflect the underlying theme and tone of melancholy. As in Red, the titular colour is everywhere to show how the corresponding emotion permeates everything – for just as the red brotherly love surrounds and ultimately prevails in society, so the blue sadness is everywhere in life.

There are very few shots in which something blue does not feature, as Kieslowski shows how one tragic event can contaminate everything and alter our perception of reality in the unhealthiest ways. The colours range from the faded blue folders containing the compositions to the glaring ultraviolet of the swimming pool. Even the score itself is shot in an inky blue, with some interesting lens work which illuminates individual notes as the camera scrolls along.

Other visual tropes, however, do not work quite so well. There is a running motif of ‘blackouts’ throughout the film, in which Juliette Binoche’s bereaved wife remembers life before the car crash: her husband’s music starts up, the screen goes to black for a few seconds, and then returns. It’s an interesting device, hinting perhaps at the concept of synaesthesia (the confusion of senses, such as seeing colours when you hear music). But ultimately this is used too often and too close together to seem genuinely effective. Likewise there seems little purpose in the ‘worm’s eye view’ of the car which opens the film, since it isn’t referenced or repeated later like so much in Kieslowski’s work.

Running in tandem to the visual theme of melancholy, we have the central narrative theme of liberty, or more specifically emotional liberty. The film focuses more on negative freedom (the freedom from something) than on positive freedom (the freedom to be or do something), although the film suggests towards the end that the two are irrevocably intertwined.

The theme of negative liberty is mainly communicated through the distance of the central character. Julie has positive freedom, insofar as she is able to do whatever she likes. But she takes no pleasure in this freedom, and her bereavement causes her to disconnect from the life she had before. She throws her husband’s most recent compositions in a skip, puts the family home up for sale, reverts to her maiden name when finding a new apartment, and tells the man she has just slept with that he will not miss her. Binoche gives a powerful performance, showing just how traumatised and distant this woman is, and in turn just how life-changing grief can be.

There is a comparison between Three Colours – Blue and Pink Floyd – The Wall, since both are visually powerful statements about self-imposed isolation, caused by deep psychological trauma. But where Pink Floyd – The Wall is terrifyingly upfront about its psychosis, with much of its content being played for shock value, Three Colours – Blue is much more internalised and minimalist. It invites you into the character’s pain, up to a certain point, and never loses sight of the all-important humanity at the heart of the story. Where Alan Parker plays on the distance to show how degenerate a man come become, Kieslowski maintains a level of intimacy: we are rebuffed by Binoche, but we never feel disrespected.

As with Pink, Julie de Courcy’s isolation is steadily tested both by chance encounters and the lasting power of her late husband and his friends. There is a fleeting undercurrent in the film surrounding the relationship between freedom and chance. At the beginning of the film a boy is trying to get a ball onto a stick, failing miserably with each passing attempt. He then accomplishes the trick just before the car crash happens. Similarly, Julie’s one-time lover, who is attempting to finish her husband’s final work, admits that he found her by chance as much as perseverance.

The first test which Julie undergoes is the man being beaten up in the street: she could intervene and stop it, but she reasons that it is none of her business and therefore she does nothing. In this instance her inaction would appear to damage his chances, but later on her inaction brings her friendship: in refusing to sign the landlady’s petition, the prostitute living on the floor below befriends her and looks out for her interests. Kieslowski is being deliberately equivocal with us, arguing that while the freedom to do nothing is still a big part of liberty, it is not for that reason to be readily condoned.

As the film wears on, it becomes increasingly clear that Binoche’s character is finding it hard to let go of her past. The biggest clue to this is the fact that she keeps her blue beads hanging in the new flat. The glass beads are like vessels in which the sadness and memories have become permanently trapped, but rather than being repulsive they are so much a part of her that she cannot bring herself to throw them away. Similarly, when she visits the strip club to unwittingly help her new-found friend, she begins to open up a little more, acknowledging that some good can come from her current circumstances.

So many foreign films pride themselves on being unnecessarily complex; in an attempt to part from clichés and genre conventions, they tie themselves in knots and lose their audience along the way. While it is therefore obtuse to complain about Blue being too simple, when compared to the whole trilogy this is slightly problematic. We get all the quality we associate with Kieslowski, including the ambiguous ending which fits with the remit of it being an anti-tragedy. But because its story is so stripped-down, Blue has none of the mystery which Red has, either in its story or its style, and even when it veers close to Red in its conclusion, it doesn’t pack quite the same punch.Despite these little niggles, Three Colours – Blue is a sumptuous and stylish film, and a fine beginning to Kieslowski’s trilogy. Binoche’s performance is very impressive, matching Red’s Irène Jacob for both intrigue and charisma. Kieslowski’s direction is masterful, the film is beautiful to behold and the central themes are conveyed with artful subtlety. Most of all, the film is a reminder to all of us of the need for love and the freedom that it brings. To echo its final lines, if were have not love, we are but hollow brass.

Rating: 4/5
Verdict: Sumptuous and stylish, though not as good as Red