FILM .... with Tim Milfull
Potiche (M)
Director: François Ozon
Stars: Catherine Deneuve, Fabrice Luchini. Gérard Depardieu
Rating: 4/5 103-minutes, screening from 24 April
Australian audiences have waited much too long since French writer-director François Ozon’s last film (5x2) screened in Australia, especially considering he has been making films in the interval. One of France’s more quirky filmmakers, Ozon offers cinema filled with wonderful colours and sounds, and usually, spectacular partnerships or ensembles of actors.
In his latest film, Potiche, Ozon reunites with Catherine Deneuve for the first time since 8 Femmes (2002), and invites her to take on an impressive lead role as an underappreciated housewife who is about to fling off the shackles of domesticity.
Deneuve plays heiress-cum-housewife Suzanne Pujol, who has spent her adult life raising two beautiful children, running a huge household, and enduring a monotonous marriage with her insufferable husband, Robert (Fabrice Luchini).
When industrial action at the family umbrella factory drives Robert to a heart attack, Mayor Maurice Babin (Gérard Depardieu) mediates an unusual solution: perhaps Suzanne could step in and manage the company that once was owned by her family? Fortunately, the howls of derisive laughter fall on the deaf ears of Suzanne and Maurice – who may or may not be hiding a secret past – and to the dismay of Robert, his wife takes over as CEO and resurrects the company.
Despite the doubts of her family, Suzanne proves to be a formidable manager, and the newly empowered matriarch gradually realises she has even greater ambitions. This delightfully retro film alternately relishes and despises its prehistoric characters, and Suzanne’s charming efforts to overturn the chauvinism that is suffocating herself and her sisters unfold with suitable grace
Deneuve is wonderful as the reawakened Suzanne and her fellow cast members – including the simply awesome Depardieu – offer admirable and often hilarious performances.
Labor of love hits right note
Mrs Carey’s Concert (PG)
Directors: Bob Connolly, Sophie Raymond
Rating: 4/5 95-minutes, screening from 28 April
Every two years, Sydney’s upper-class MLC girls’ school stages a concert at the Sydney Opera House and, at the insistence of the school’s director of music Karen Carey, every student must participate whether they like it or not.
In Bob Connolly’s latest documentary Mrs Carey’s Concert we follow three girls as they come to terms with exactly what that participation might involve. Filmed in a very traditional, observational style over 18 months, Connolly and co-director Sophie Raymond watch as Carey coerces and cajoles her charges into creating something beautiful on the big day.
While most of the documentary’s conflict comes in the form of the beautiful but incorrigible Iris – who takes quiet and vicious delight in undermining Carey’s efforts to galvanise her fellow students into performance – the music director faces another challenge in building up the confidence of the supremely talented Emily, whose virtuosic playing brings many to tears but who also is prone to crippling self-doubt (and a recent past plagued by adolescent silliness).
We haven’t seen Connolly in more than a decade, since he and his wife Robin – who died in 2002 – released Facing the Music.
But with such a time-intensive project like this latest film, it’s no surprise that the maker of Joe Leahy’s Neighbour (1989) and Rats in the Ranks (1996) may seem to have been quiet. Mrs Carey’s Concert obviously is a labour of love, with Connelly’s affectionate connection to the school through his daughters shining through the story. But the true stars are the passionate Emily, the wilfully disruptive Iris, the impressively patient Karen Carey and a stunning Opera House concert.
THE BINGE
Powerful and confronting
Lebanon (MA15+) now available through Madman
Gasland (M) now available through Madman
Monsters (M) now available through Madman
The Last Exorcism (MA15+) available through Hopscotch from 21 April
Samuel Moaz’s Lebanon offers a personal impression of events that have had long-ranging local and global implications in the Middle East. The former Israeli tank driver-turned-documentary maker uses the claustrophobic interior of a decrepit tank to tell of the kinds of horrors that unfolded in Lebanon during the conflict that tore the country apart in 1981.
This powerful and confronting film puts both its cast and the audience through an emotional wringer that will resonate long after seeing the film.
Gasland tells a different horror story altogether as Josh Fox investigates the devastating impact gas mining has had upon thousands of lives across the United States, as unscrupulous miners use highly toxic processes to extract their product. And despite local protests from similar industries in Australia, it seems we’re heading down a similar road.
While the title might suggest a thrilling encounter with aliens, Gareth Edwards’s Monsters is as much about the inhumane face of humanity as it is about monsters. This road trip story sees two Americans making their way across Mexico to the US, on their way encountering the long-term effects of an accident that saw a space probe crash to earth and release alien microbes into the environment. Featuring some very impressive special effects and a compelling commentary about intolerance and xenophobia, Monsters is evidence of some exciting new talent.
And finally in this “horrific” edition of The Binge, The Last Exorcism is exactly what the title suggests. This shaky-cam faux doco succeeded in creeping me out with its obscene voices, self-dislocating limbs, and deluges of pea soup. Well done, director Daniel Stamm.
