film reviews, interviews, features | BRWC

Category: REVIEWS

Here is where you would find our film reviews on BRWC.  We look at on trailers, shorts, indies and mainstream.  We love movies!

  • My Golden Days: Review

    My Golden Days: Review

    A coming of (middle) age drama that sees Paul (Mathieu Amalric) reflect on his teenage years as he returns home to Paris after almost a decade.

    His focus lingers on his long distance romance with the lost love of his life – a typically French bouquet of sex, cigarettes and poetry. Love letters are read to camera through tear-stained eyes and rain-streaked windows, but their increasingly desperate earnestness rings hollow against the couple’s acts of infidelity and insensitivity.

    Paul’s troubled childhood with a mentally ill mother and emotionally distant father is swept over swiftly, and while his brief detour to the USSR sparks the sense of teenage rebellion and political revolution that lingers over the film like cigarette smoke, these chapters could have been better integrated into the narrative; the film’s episodic structure is all but abandoned a third of the way in, hinting at a lack on conviction in the storytelling.

    Nevertheless, the film is held together by strong lead performances from a baby-faced and brooding Quentin Dolmaire as a younger Paul, while Lou Roy-Lecollinet does her best with the somewhat cliché Esther, who descends on a tiresome trajectory from aloof seductress to emotional wreck.

    My Golden Days appears to be a personal journey for writer/director Arnaud Desplechin, and there’s more than a whiff of masculine fantasy fulfilment about it, but Paul’s own mantra of ‘I felt nothing’ is oddly apt.

    My Golden Days (French title: Trois souvenirs de ma jeunesse; also titled My Golden Years) is a 2015 French drama film directed by Arnaud Desplechin. It is a prequel to the 1996 film My Sex Life… or How I Got into an Argument. It was screened as part of the Directors’ Fortnight section of the 2015 Cannes Film Festival where it won the SACD Prize.

  • Review: The Honourable Rebel

    Thought that all women in the 1940s were shy and retiring types? Elizabeth Montagu shatters that perception. In this documentary film by Mike Fraser, co written with Elizabeth’s nephew he tells her story, The Honourable Rebel, through the use of dramatic re-enaction, interviews and the inimitable narration of Dame Diana Rigg reading Elizabeth’s own words of her extraordinary life.

    Elizabeth Montagu was certainly a rebel and a well bred one at that. She had the sort of life that saying: “the truth is sometimes strange than fiction”, coming from a good family and most certainly expected to marry well Elizabeth had other ideas. She fell into spying, the dramatic escape into Switzerland is heart pounding and then a scritpt writer. As for her love life – well Elizabeth certainly lived in the same way as the beliefs she upheld – authentically. The documentary tells off her love affair in the purest sense with Renata Borgatti.

    The dramatic re-enactions and narration work very well but the interviews with the various individuals who knew Elizabeth not as much, it took away from the action.

    Dorothea Myser-Bennett was utterly captivating and engaging as Elizabeth, if you want to know what perfect casting looks like then this is it. As interesting as it was to learn about Elizabeth’s early life it felt unnecessary and distracting as the inference could be that because she was born in aristocracy that is where she developed all this confidence which is unfair. Also, Elizabeth in many respects was not only her own woman but didn’t define herself or her happiness through her different jobs and her sexuality both equally fluid. Yet own of my main criticisms is the documentary felt as it was saying that she found her ultimate happiness with a man which I don’t think is true.

    Elizabeth Montagu is an inspiring figure whose story deserves to be watched and it is shame it took so long to bring it to screen. Mike Fraser’s documentary does more than an admirable job.

    The Honourable Rebel opens in cinemas on Friday 4 December 2015.

  • Review: Racing Extinction

    Who wants to be a superhero? The question is doesn’t. I know I do and in watching Racing Extinction by Louie Psihoyos, the oscar winning director of The Cove (2009), his claim, albeit on the surface simple and achievable, is to do just one thing and you could save the planet.

    According to one expert interviewed on Racing Extinction in 100 years 50% of the world’s species will be extinct. We are all have a part in this extinction yet as Louie Psihoyos says near the start of the documentary: “…think of this qs the biggest story in the world. We’re living in the age of dinosaurs but we could do something about it.”

    The documentary then takes the familiar route of experts talking about the rate of extinction with one amongst them cataloguing sounds of species – some now extinct as well as photographing species. There are some powerful scenes in there and one phrase that packed a punch for me was the expert compiling the forensic arc: “The whole world is singing…we’ve just stopped listening.”

    All of that is interesting and then the meat (pardon the pun) of the documentary focuses on China and the illegal shark fin business as well as David Doubilet educating the viewer that extinction is two fold direct and indirect. The direct impact is by man – raising too much cattle, CO2 emissions and then the indirect impact the acidification of the oceans. It’s not until the end of the documentary that the viewer is told what they can do in order to reduce the rate of extinction: going meat free once a week, reduce the use of cars etc.

    At the end it comes down to this – is it convincing and whether you believe the data. However, whether you feel motivated to make a change after watching the documentary is one thing but what is for certain it is certainly educational, engaging and interesting to watch.

    Racing Extinction airs on Discovery Channel UK at 9pm on Wednesday 2 December.

  • Jonathan Degrelle’s Orphyr: Review

    Jonathan Degrelle’s Orphyr: Review

    Similar to Jack and the Beanstalk comes the short film Orphyr, a tale from the north of France.

    A peasant in the French countryside, Orphyr, facing financial ruin is helped in unusual ways by a mysterious Green Lady. ‘Dame verte’ recognises and rewards his kindness to animals and nature.  This is French director Jonathan Degrelle’s first short film, who cites his major influences as Tim Burton & Guillermo del Toro.

    Orphyr features a great performance by well-known French actress Corinne Masiero, in a particularly mean and unappealing role, as well as a rich and dominating sound track accompanying the film. Degrelle says the film is intended for a young audience, however the message remains ambiguous…is this film hallucinating or just drunk?

    A little rough around the edges but an interesting first film.

  • Interview: Mike Fraser – Director Of The Honourable Rebel

    The Honourable Rebel hits UK cinema screens on 4 December and BRWC was lucky enough to ask its director Mike Fraser, who has over 47 years of industry experience about what drew him to the story of the indomitable and inimitable: Elizabeth Montagu, co-writing the script with Elizabeth’s nephew and the need to temper and balance out even the most exciting stories!

    What attracted you to this project?

    I was immediately attracted by her story. Here was a woman born in the first decade of the 20th century who had the courage, determination, ability, intelligence and quick wittedness to lead a life that most people could only ever dream of or watch in the cinema or on television and yet in this case it was real.

    What do you think is so compelling about Elizabeth Montagu’s life story?

    Her story is so compelling because of her character. She was feisty, talented, impulsive, interesting and interested, loved music, her home at Beaulieu and her fellow man, and woman.

    Why did you decide to use a mixed narrative to tell this story: the dramatic scenes as well as interviews with people who knew Elizabeth Montagu?

    There was no footage of her. None of her peers (she would have been 105 when we made the film had she lived) could be interviewed. So I used a mixture of dramatic feature film re-enaction interspersed with interviews with people who knew her in later life, to remind us that this was a real story and of course the inimitable Diana Rigg narration with that wonderful, tremulous voice of an elderly lady looking back on her very exciting life and how she felt at the time.

    Whilst it is an interesting documentary, it struck me that it would also work as a thrilling feature film: were you ever tempted to scrap the documentary and shoot it as a straight feature film?

    Her story is not just interesting but also thrilling, so I was very tempted to make it into a feature film, but my budget was limited and there is too much to tell. There is enough material in the book to make 30 x 1 hour episodes for television.. I had just enough money, if I was careful, to make a 97 minute documentary drama feature.

    Do you think there is a risk of information overload from having the dramatic re-enaction, the wonderful Dame Diana Rigg narration and interviews with people who knew Elizabeth Montagu? Was there ever a point where you were tempted to edit out the interviews with people who knew Elizabeth?

    With such an incredible story over a period of many years there was a risk of information overload. I needed to create a balance between her exciting life and real people talking about her. These two then coupled with the inimitable Diana Rigg describing, as if she was Elizabeth reading from her own book, how she felt at certain moments during the film, her story. The fact that we were able to shoot the film mainly at and around Palace House in the beautiful Beaulieu Estate also gave it that realism.

    Watching this documentary, I wondered whether it might have been more engaging to just focus on one part of her life rather than telling from cradle to grave. Why did you think it important to tell the story in the way you did?

    There were so many chapters and stories in her autobiography that it would have been impossible to choose one part to focus upon. I knew that I had a maximum hundred minutes to tell the story and rather than focus on just one point of her life I decided to make it as a ripping yarn with narration and interviews folded into it.

    You co-wrote this documentary with others including Ralph Montagu – was that beneficial or were you worried you wouldn’t be able to tell the story as you would like given Ralph’s participation?

    It was very easy to co-write this film with Ralph Montagu. We had collaborated before on a cut-down version of his father’s life and no one knew more about his aunt and her book than him. He edited her original transcript.

    The casting of Elizabeth is central to engaging the audience in her story – how did Dorothea Myer-Bennett get involved in the project?

    Dorothea Myer-Bennett was the first of 17 actresses who auditioned for the part. She walked out of the room. I turned to my casting director and two other colleagues and said we need not look any further. They reminded me that I had 16 other people to audition for the part. So we continued. It turned out that six of them were also superb. So the seven returned for a later audition. I still chose Dorothea. The others were brilliant, but choosing Dorothea was the best decision I made.

    Looking at your filmography you’ve worked on a number of major feature films as editor – would you ever go back or are you now firmly focused on being a director?

    I have been in this industry for 47 years and I have suddenly found that I love telling stories on film so that is what I want to continue to do. Tell stories with a beginning, a middle and an end and a distinct lack of visual effects and any sort of technical trickery which muddles that storytelling.