The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (MA15+)
Director: Niels Arden Opley
Stars: Michael Nyqvist, Noomi Rapace
Rating: 4/5
146-minutes, now screening
The original title for the late Stieg Larsson’s first instalment of the Millenium series was Men Who Hate Women, and it’s little wonder that the executors of his estate – Larsson’s father and brother – tinkered with the English translation of both the title and the text.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo sounds so much more exotic and dangerous than the rather frightening and offensive original. Larsson’s partner, Eva Gabrielsson – herself engaged in a long-running battle with her partner’s family – is still smarting over the translation, and those encountering investigative journalist, Michael Blomqvist (Michael Nyqvist) for the first time might be tempted to agree with me when I argue the original translation more accurately describes this nasty, disturbing story about a series of violent murders in Sweden.
The film opens as Blomqvist reels from the after-effects of a defamation case that will see him head off to gaol in a matter of months. Turning his back on the magazine he helped to build, the journalist heads off into the wilds of Sweden to research the decades-old case of a missing woman.
As he unravels the disappearance of Harriet (Ewa Froling), a series of clues surface courtesy of the titular computer whiz, Lisbeth (Noomi Rapace).
I’m assured by fans of the print version of Larsson’s work that the film is a fairly faithful adaptation, which has me a little nervous about the written descriptions of violent rape and murder throughout the film.
The minutiae and tedium of Blomqvist’s daily routine don’t quite cross over to the screen, despite the lengthy screen-time, and Nyqvist (As It is in Heaven) and Rapace are excellent in their roles as the crime-fighting duo. Unnerving as this film was, I find myself looking forward to seeing Lisbeth play with fire and hornets’ nest.
Director welcomes fuss over his little film
Welcome (M)
Director: Philippe Lioret
Stars: Vincent Lindon, Firet Ayverdi
Rating: 5/5
109-minutes, now screening
I spoke to writer-director, Philippe Lioret last week about his controversial new film. Using faltering English, the shy filmmaker explained that he never thought his little film would cause so much fuss. Welcome was just a simple story about love and loss, and making connections.
But after its release, this unassuming film raked in the awards and gradually forced change in a region that jealously guards its borders. In France, up until recently, people who gave aid to illegal immigrants ran the risk of spending up to five years in prison.
One of Lioret’s two leads, swimming instructor, Simon (Vincent Lindon) watches helplessly as his marriage disintegrates and his wife spends more and more evenings with a sympathetic colleague serving illegal immigrants at a soup kitchen in Calais – the closest French town to the United Kingdom.
When a young man comes to Simon looking to work on his swimming skills, the coach quickly realises that he’s not just helping with a hobby. Bilat (Firat Ayverdi) plans to circumvent the tough security on cross-Channel transport by swimming the seventeen miles to Dover so that he can reunite with the girl he once knew back in Kurdistan.
Despite his initial instinct to not get involved, Simon soon realises that helping Bilat just might offer new hope for his dying relationship with Marion (Audrey Dana). Welcome is simple, but remarkably effective in its efforts to evoke an emotional response from the audience.
The performances from Lindon and Ayverdi are touching and heartbreaking, and Lioret’s direction understated and devastating.
All of these elements combined to prompt France and the European Union to amend the draconian ways they treat illegal immigrants and those who offer them help.
THE BINGE
Goulish girls from Japan
Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl (MA15+)
Vengeance (MA15+)
Stone Bros (MA15+)
If You See God, Tell Him... (M)
All now available through Madman Entertainment
I confess a fascination for the weirdness that trickles – and sometimes gushes – out of Japan. I’m not quite in the realm of reading sado-masochistic manga on the train, but I have been known to check out the work of Takashi Miike and other J-horror and J-gore filmmakers.
Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl is the latest film from Yoshihiro Nishimura, who also made Tokyo Gore Police and the soon-to-be-released Mutant Girls Squad. You get the picture. It’s an acquired taste, but if you prefer stylised J-gore to your run-of-the-mill Saw and Hostel franchises, this might be the way to go.
Johnnie To’s Vengeance is a little more conventional, if Hong Kong vengeance flicks are your deal; and the story of French chef, Costello (Johnny Hallyday) wreaking havoc in Hong Kong after the murder of his daughter is violent, but oddly satisfying.
If you’re looking for something more laid-back, then Richard Franklin’s Stone Bros – featuring a mull-dulled road-trip across Australia – is mostly inoffensive, sometimes funny, and argues not all indigenous films have to be harrowing. And fans of the cranky Adrian Edmondson (The Young Ones) will get the odd giggle from the television series, If You See God, Tell Him, which pits Edmondson’s Gordon against his hapless uncle Godfrey (Richard Briers), whose head injury has left him with a less than reliable short-term memory.
I have enough trouble watching Mother and Son, but this occasionally laugh-out-loud funny show shoots some cruel barbs in the direction of family and dementia.
